Government could not altogether ignore the new spirit. At the time of the renewal of the Company’s Charter in 1813, Parliament asked the Company to take measures for the “introduction of useful knowledge and religious and moral improvements”, and further directed that “a sum of not less than a lac of rupees should be set apart each year, and applied to the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in India”. Unfortunately no immediate or important results followed. It was not until 1823 that a Committee of Public Instruction was appointed in Bengal, and then steps were taken to establish a Sanskrit College in Calcutta. Against this a spirited protest was made by Raja Rammohan Roy in the form of a petition to the Governor-General, Lord Amherst. This historic document admirably sums up the views held by advanced and progressive minds of the time. Referring to the proposed Sanskrit College the Raja remarks, “The pupils will here acquire what was known two thousand years ago, with the addition of vain and empty subtleties…..” “The Sanskrit system of education,” continues the document, “would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness such had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the Government, it will consequently promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry and anatomy, with other useful sciences which may be accomplished with the sum proposed, by employing a few gentlemen of talents and learning educated in Europe, and providing a College furnished with the necessary books, instruments and other apparatus.”
The petition brings into prominent relief the divergent views of the Government on the one hand and advanced thinkers, both Indian and European, on the other. While the Committee of Public Instruction spent its resources in printing Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian works and maintaining the Sanskrit College and the Madrasa, the missionaries, helped by liberal Indians, set up schools and colleges for education on Western lines and established a School-Book Society for selling English books. The prevailing spirit of the time is clearly indicated by the fact, noted by Trevelyan, that “upwards of 31,000 English books were sold by the School-Book Society in the course of two years, while the Committee did not dispose of Arabic and Sanskrit volumes enough in three years to pay the expense of keeping them for two months, to say nothing of the printing expenses”.
The new ideas soon made their influence felt even in the Committee of Public Instruction. It was gradually divided into two parties known properly as the ” Orientalists” and the ” Anglicists ” or the English party. The latter held that public funds should henceforth be devoted only to the imparting of liberal education on Western lines through the medium of English. Although this could naturally reach only a limited number of pupils, it was argued that ultimately this knowledge would spread through them to the masses by means of vernacular literature. This is the famous “filtration theory ” advocated by the “Anglicists”.
The appointment of the famous missionary, Alexander Duff, on the Committee of Public Instruction strengthened the hands of the English party and it scored its first triumph when Lord William Bentinck established the Medical College in Calcutta in February, 1835. The appointment, in 1834, of Thomas Babington Macaulay, the new Law Member, as President of the Committee completed the discomfiture of the Orientalist party. By his vehement denunciation of classical Indian learning and eloquent pleadings in favour of Western education in his Minute of 2nd February, 1835, he carried Bentinck with him and on 7th March, 1835, the Council decided that henceforth the available public funds should be spent on English education. The existing oriental institutions like the Sanskrit College and the Madrasa, were to continue, but fresh awards of stipends to students of these institutions and the publication of classical texts must cease. The funds thus released were to be spent “in imparting to the native population a knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of the English language.”
The cause of English education was still further advanced by the regulation introduced by the first Lord Hardinge that all public services were to be filled by an open competitive examination held by the Council of Education (the successor of the Committee of Public Instruction), preference being given to the knowledge of English. Virtually English education was made the only passport to higher appointments available to the Indians, and hence its popularity and rapid progress were equally assured.
The chief defect of the system, as it was worked out in Bengal, was the disproportionate attention paid to the English education of the middle-class gentry as against the education of the masses through vernacular schools. William Adam, who was appointed by Bentinck’s Government to investigate the condition of indigenous education, wrote valuable reports (in 1835, 1836 and 1838) on the subject. He described the miserable condition of the vernacular schools and the widespread ignorance and superstition prevailing among the masses. But Government relied on the “filtration theory”, and little was done to improve the system of primary education for the masses.
This evil, however, was not so acute outside Bengal. In Bombay, Madras and the North-Western Provinces, English education developed on similar lines, thanks either to the enterprise of the missionaries or the initiative taken by the Government. But there was less keenness for English education and naturally more attention was paid to the improvement of indigenous schools and the spread of education through the vernaculars.
The advantages of English education were reaped mostly by the middle-class Hindus. The Hindu aristocracy and the Muslim community generally held aloof from it. But although confined to a few, English education produced memorable results. It not only qualified Indians for taking their share in the administration of their country, but it also inspired them with those liberal ideas which were sweeping over England and led to such momentous measures as the Catholic Emancipation Act (1829), the Reform Bill (1832), the Abolition of Slavery (1833), and the New Poor Law (1834). Unfortunately some grave defects characterised the new system of education from the very beginning. In the first place it was too literary, and, secondly, it was entirely divorced from religious and moral instruction. The first may be ascribed to a great extent to the personality of Macaulay, and the second was entirely due to the peculiar circumstance that the Government had to steer clear of the Christian zeal of the missionaries on the one hand, and the deep-rooted religious ideas of the Hindus and Muslims on the other. Their decision not to interfere in religious matters in any way was, in the circumstances, a wise one.
