Why did James Mill and Thomas Macaulay think that European education is essential in India?
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Answer:
James Mill and Thomas Babington Macaulay think that European education is essential for India because they were of the opinion that the knowledge of the East was unscientific, illogical and irrational. They contended that the western education was scientific and logical.
James Mill and Thomas Macaulay felt that knowledge of English would allow Indians to read some of the finest literature that the world had produced; it would make them aware of the developments in Western science and philosophy. The teaching of English could thus be a way of ‘civilising’ people, changing their tastes, values and culture. They also felt that the aim of education should be to teach what was useful and practical. So Indians should be made familiar with the scientific and technical advances that the West had made, rather than with the poetry and sacred literature of the ‘Orient’.