How Macaulay's Educational System Completely Changed India's Overall Way of Thinking?

April 6

2013

Minute on Indian Education of February 1835 was not only turning point in the educational system of India but also the turning point in the history of India. Since peoples educational status have a great influence in deciding the future of the country.

April 6, 2013

How Macaulay's Educational System Completely Changed India's Overall Way of Thinking?

Name: Dhyey Shah Roll: 11110029

Lord Macaulay was the person who introduced British education in India through his famous Minute on Indian Education of February 1835. Due to this an educational system came into existence with the aim to create a class of Anglicized Indians who could serve as cultural intermediaries between the British and the Indians. >> Situation of Education in the overall Indian society just before 1835:
[ii] [iiii] [iv]

For getting an idea about it accurately we will see some of the results of surveys conducted by British Raj in order to studying prevailing education system of that time before replacing with their own. These surveys were first conducted in Bombay Presidency and the Madras Presidency around 1820s. After that a limited, semi-official survey was also made ten years later by W. Adam, a Baptist missionary, on the State of Education in Bengal and Bihar. England Madras Presidency Total Population 95,43,610 (in 1811) 1,28,50,941 (in 1823) No. Students attending schools App 75,000 1,57,195 [ Comparison of England and Madras Presidency in terms of students enrolled in schools ] [iii] Brahmins & Vaishya Sudra Other Muslims Total Male Kshatriya Caste Students No. of Students 30,211 13,459 75,943 22,925 10,644 1,53,182 [ Caste wise data of no. of students falsifying popular belief about Brahmins having monopoly in education and Sudras having no education] [iii]
Muslims 6% Other Caste 15% Sudra 50% Brahmins & Kshatriya 20% Vaishya 9%

April 6, 2013

How Macaulay's Educational System Completely Changed India's Overall Way of Thinking?

Name: Dhyey Shah Roll: 11110029

>> W. Adams Report of 1835 showed that in the then states of Bengal and Bihar, there were 100,000 indigenous elementary schools or one school for every 31 or 32 boys of school-going age, as the author calculated. The Madras Report which was the most comprehensive showed that there were 12,498 schools containing 188,650 students comprising of 1,53,182 boys and 35468 girls. According to the Survey of Indigenous Education in the Province of Bombay (1820-30), there were 16 schools of higher learning in Ahmednagar and in Poona there were 164 such schools out of a total of 222 educational institutions of all description. Madras Presidency reported 1,101 schools (with 5431 students) of higher learning, Rajahmundry heading the list with 279 such schools. Trichnopoly had 173, Nellore 137 and Tanjore 109. In these Higher Learning institutes used to teach, according to their specialization, Medical System (Including plastic surgery! ) [v], Music, Temple designing, the Vedas, or Law, or Astronomy, or Poetics etc. And interestingly again in Madras presidency in Astronomy, out of a total of 806 scholars, Brahmins were only 78 and Sudras 195 and other lower castes 510. In Medical Science, Brahmin scholars were only 31 out of a total of 190. The rest belonged to the Sudras and other castes. According to the Survey of Indigenous Education in the Province of Bombay (1820-1830), Brahmins constituted only 30% of the total scholars in that province. ------------The facts collected in these surveys conducted by British Raj clearly points out following things: Before British education system came in India, India was not illiterate and uneducated (even after so many foreign invasions) as it is portrayed.

April 6, 2013

How Macaulay's Educational System Completely Changed India's Overall Way of Thinking?

Name: Dhyey Shah Roll: 11110029

There is a popular notion that Education in India was monopolized by the Brahmins; but the data destroys this myth completely. It was unthinkable for the British that India could have had a proportionately larger number receiving education than those in England itself.

But seeing these conclusions, some really important questions can be raised like: If it is true, what did just happen in around 100 years which changed Sudras socio-economic status? Why most of Indians themselves are not aware of a big part of their own history and possess so many misled beliefs about their own history? Probable answers lie in Macaulays Educational system which was introduced shortly after these surveys. >> First we will see motives of this new educational system through a part of a speech given by Lord Macaulay himself in British Parliament in 1835: I have traveled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native selfculture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation. [vi][vii] If we see the history of India afterwards, till the independence and even today, the words of Macaulay seems to describe the reality. >> After the surveys, British educational system was introduced and students of this system were given many benefits in terms of government jobs and status in the society. All the old

April 6, 2013

How Macaulay's Educational System Completely Changed India's Overall Way of Thinking?

Name: Dhyey Shah Roll: 11110029

educational institutes used to get high amount of donation from government. This donation was stopped and got diverted to new educational institutes. As a result of this entire movement the whole old education system of India was preserved till 19 th century collapsed. [Of course it didnt happen all of a sudden; it took some decades to change the mindset of people to accept new teaching methods.] >> As we have already seen literacy in India was even more than that of England in 1800s time ( by the first data table) but it became suddenly low as evident in all the censuses conducted in the end of 19th century and afterwards. Here are the possible reasons for that: English was introduced as first language and all the other subjects were either taught in English or with mere translated English contents. Not all students could cop up with this change and left studying. Since many research[viii] evidently suggests that creative ability of a student who study in the language with which he/she is brought up, while expressing in that language is much more than a student who studied in a foreign language, while expressing in the same foreign language. Also instruction based subjects can be learnt in considerably less time in the language with which the student is brought up. [Note: However, research also shows that learning foreign languages as secondary languages is beneficiary in cognitive development].

The curriculum of this education system was designed such that students coming out of it could serve as cultural intermediaries between the British and the Indians. Many parents found it irrelevant, and since the old education system was no longer there they made their children join traditional occupation without any proper education. [ Note:

April 6, 2013

How Macaulay's Educational System Completely Changed India's Overall Way of Thinking?

Name: Dhyey Shah Roll: 11110029

This wasnt always the case in India as the popular belief depicts. In fact many stories written in that era tells us that society used to encourage getting education and training from the experts of that particular field before joining the traditional occupation. ] >> Along with the decline in the literacy, Macaulays education system completely changed Indias overall way of thinking just as he predicted. Over the period of time Indians started believing that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own. This mindset became so dominated in 20th century many (if not all) people started feeling ashamed of speaking their own mother tongue [Even today I often find such people]. This attitude was not just limited to language; it got extended to arts, history, clothing, lifestyle etc. In Macaulays own words in his letter to his father: Indian in colour, British in taste[ix] type characteristics started disseminated through almost everywhere in India. >> How did it happen? How can someone like something about which he/she has no knowledge? For example: let say I have never learnt anything about Indian classical music, I will never have any opinion about it but if I start learning English music as a part of my curriculum, I will have my opinion about it. As human nature is always comparative, I will rate English music as better than classical music but there will be no possibility that I will develop liking for Indian classical music. Since Indians did not learn about their own, and most of the things they learnt in the curriculum was British, they started rating everything Foreign better than Indian. This whole discussion may raise a really valid question: Is it really bad? If yes, why is it bad?

April 6, 2013

How Macaulay's Educational System Completely Changed India's Overall Way of Thinking?

Name: Dhyey Shah Roll: 11110029

>> There is nothing bad in learning and liking valuable aspects of any culture in the world but cultural heritage of any society is backbone of that society and if the society forgets that heritage, it cease to retain its identity. Also that is a loss to overall humankind since it is a loss to overall world heritage.

References:
i) Stephen Evans, Macaulay's minute revisited: Colonial language policy in nineteenthcentury India, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development volume 23 issue 4 (2002), abstract P. Kanagasabapathi, Indian Models Of Economy Business And Management, PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd.,New Delhi, 2008 , pp 18-20 Dharampal, The beautiful tree: indigenous Indian education in the eighteenth century, Biblia Impex, 1983, Chapter-5, 6 Ram Swarup, Indian Educational System during Pre-British Daystc, Dialogue April-June, Volume 9 No. 4, 2008 http://www.vigyanprasar.gov.in/dream/jan2000/article2.htm Planning Commission - Government of India: Chairman: S.P. Gupta, India Vision 2020: The Report : Report of the Committee on India Vision 2020, Academic Foundation, New Delhi, 2004, Page 49, Print http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/pipermail/rad-green/2010February/037830.html Istvn Kecsks, Tnde Papp, Foreign language and mother tongue, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., Mahwah, NJ, 2000 http://journals.chapman.edu/ojs/index.php/VocesNovae/article/view/202/535

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Inspiration: Speeches Delivered By Rajiv Dixit