write a short note on 'macaulay minute'.
Answers
1.1 To give the students knowledge about the changing system of education inIndiaduring British rule.
1.2 To make the students understand the Macaulays Minute of Indian education System.
1.3 To make them aware about the reports of Adam regarding Indian Education System.
2. INTRODUCTION
Thomas Babington Macaulay, who is generally regarded as the architect of the system of education inIndiaduring the British rule, was a great essayist, historian, linguist, orator, politician, statesman and thinker. He was regarded as one of the first rate literary figure of his times. As a parliamentarian, he made his mark in British parliament. He came toIndiain 1838 and joined as the law member of the executive council of the governor-General. He was also appointed as the president of the general committee on Public instruction by governor general Lord William Bentinck.
Macaulay wrote his famous minute onFeb. 2, 1835in which he vehemently criticized almost everything Indian: astronomy, culture, history, philosophy, religion etc., and praised everything western. On this basis he advocated the national system of education forIndiawhich could best serve the interest of theBritish Empire. His minutes was accepted and Lord William Bentinck issued his proclamation inn march 1935 which set at rest all the controversies and led to the formulation of a policy which became the corner stone of all educational programmes during the British period in India.
Pressing his debate to westernise India, the British politician (President, General Committee of Public Instruction), on February 2, 1835, circulated Minute on Education -- a treatise that offered definitive reasons for why the East India Company and the British government should spend money on the provision of English language education, as well as the promotion of European learning, especially the sciences, in India.
Macaulay concluded his Minute with a characteristically dramatic flourish, threatening to resign from his position if his proposals were rejected. Just about a month after the circulation, the Minute became policy, when William Bentinck (Governor General of India) got convinced enough to sign the resolution.
William Bentick (illustration)
For Macaulay, this was his victory against his detractors, especially the Orientalists (East India Company officials, scholars, translators and collectors) who supported study and instruction in India in traditional languages.
Macaulay's Minute reviewed
The Minute is based on an idea that English education is not just superior in 'science', but would also inculcate superior morals, etc. that were responsible for making the English superior.
While the Minute acknowledged the historic role of Sanskrit and Arabic literature in the subcontinent, it also contended that they had limitations.
Macaulay v/s traditional languages
"A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia," Macaulay wrote in the Minute.
He envisaged creating "a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect".
A professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at IIT-Madras, in his passage for The Hindu, argued:
I contend, nonetheless, that the Macaulay Minute is both overrated and somewhat misjudged in Indian cultural studies. It is true that it came from a man who was directly charged with the formation of a loyal local herd that would be indebted in serving the colonial administration. He was, after all, a bureaucrat of high standing, obliging the Supreme Council of India for five years.
...Macaulay here [in the Minute] is speaking of a nation's progress towards a more cosmopolitan outlook, but he is not thereby denigrating its own native cultures and practices. For instance, he speaks very highly of 19th century England and English literature and poetry of course, but also makes the claim that had the English literati not familiarised themselves with ancient Greek and Roman writings, they would never have produced a Shakespeare. "What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of [16th century writers Thomas] More and [Roger] Ascham, our tongue is to the people of India.
- Sudhir Chella Rajan
However, a member of the Program on Liberation Technology at Stanford University and previous contributor to rights-based campaigns in India wrote in his Macaulay's "Minute on Indian Education":
His characterisation of Indian languages and traditions is openly racist and represents an important danger that any discourse on institutions can get into. At the surface, it may look like the discourse on institutions today is different, especially with an emphasis in some quarters that societies are different and that each need to develop institutions that suit themselves. But we only need to scratch beneath the surface to see manifestations of racism and notions of "White man's burden" that embody the discourse on institutions today.
- Vivek Srinivasan
You can be your own judge of whether Macaulay was an angel or a villain in his ways of shaping of the subcontinent's history by yourself reading his Minute.
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