COLONIAL

EDUCATION
Priya Sharma
22518021
“The Indian education system, like the Indian
bureaucratic system is Victorian and still in the 19th
century. Our schools are still designed to produce
clerks for an empire that does not exist anymore.”
- Sugata Mitra
Contents
◦ Focus On Orientalism
◦ Advent of English education
◦ Charter of 1813
◦ Colonial Education till 1854
◦ Macaulay's minutes and orders of Bentinck
◦ Wood’s Despatch 1854
◦ Who was educated
◦ Impacts of Colonial Education
◦ Views of Different Historians
 INTRODUCTION
THE INTRODUCTION OF COLONIAL EDUCATION IN INDIA WAS
CRUCIAL BECAUSE-
◦ It altered the social landscape
◦Setback to indigenous education & Cultural Erosion
◦crafted to serve colonial interests
◦Introduction of Western scientific and rational thought
◦Spread of ideas like liberty, equality, and nationalism
Why colonial education was introduced?

◦A great deal of strategic maneuvering went into the creation of a blueprint

for social control in the guise of a humanistic program of enlightenment as
marked by Gauri V.

◦Representation of Indians as morally and intellectually deficient provided

the ameliorative motive and self-righteous justification for colonial
intervention.
Focus on Orientalism
◦ Study and interpret ancient Indian texts
◦ Use it to truly understand Indian society
◦ Warren Hastings laid the foundation of the Calcutta Madarsa in
October, 1780
◦ 1784 William Jones founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal
◦ Bhagwat Gita was translated into English by Charles Wilkins
◦ The Sanskrit College established by Jonathan Duncan in 1791
◦ Fort William College established by Richard Wellesley in 1800
◦ The Indian texts were interpreted by “enlightened outsider”
 Advent of English Education
.
After Battle of Plassey in 1757 and when Britishers got the Diwani rights, they realized that they have
no option other than employing Natives for clerical posts.

1 2
Charter Act of 1813 Assumption of a new
Introduced 2 major responsibility towards Relaxation of controls
changes- native education over missionary activity
in India

Colonial officials hoped education would mold Indians into ‘babus’ – loyal to the
colonial regime
Charter of 1813
◦ Considered to be the true beginning of Western Education through Section 43 of the Charter
◦ Implemented due to the efforts of Charles Grant- regarded as the father of modern education in
India.
◦ Allowed Christian Missionaries to spread education
◦ Beginning of allocation of one lakh rupees per year on education
◦ Holt Mackenzie proposed the development of new schools for the training of Eastern and Western
learning in 1823
◦ formation of a General Committee on Public Instruction to oversee the execution of
recommendations
◦ establishment of the Company’s Training College at Haileybury and Fort William College in
Calcutta
 Colonial education till 1854
“a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”

◦ 1828- Lord William Bentinck appointed as new Governor General - a turning point in the
education policy of the British Raj
◦ Appointed Thomas B. Macaulay as president of the General Committee of Public
Instruction.
◦ 2 February 1835- he issued his famous Minute - became the basis for the introduction of
English education in India.
◦ Both were from Utilitarian school of thought- belief that British, culture alone-represented
civilization
◦ Wanted “Indian in blood in colour but English in taste, opinions, morals and intellect”
◦ After evaluating Macaulay’s proposal, Lord Bentinck passed a resolution on 7th March 1835.
 4 Orders passed by Bentinck
◦ funds appropriated for the purpose of
education would be employed in English
education
◦ western literature and sciences would
be taught in English
◦ Persian would be replaced by English as
the official language
◦ available funds would be used to
encourage higher education rather than
elementary.

Thomas B. Macaulay Lord William Bentinck

 Further Alterations
◦ Lord Auckland succeeding Bentinck, in Minute of 1839- attempted to resolve the Anglo-
Oriental controversy revolving around education
◦ restored the grants previously been sanctioned to the Oriental colleges
◦ Established of Central Colleges in Patna, Benares and Allahabad
◦ Hardinge, the next Governor General initiated further developments
◦ In 1844-45,the Council of Education made plan to establish a Central University modelled on
the London University and offering degrees in Arts, Science, Law, Medicine and Civil
Engineering, in Bengal
◦ Lord Dalhousie established schools at District and village level- Successful in 8 districts by
1850
◦ James Mill supported vernacular languages.
 Wood’s Despatch 1854

◦ Magna Carta of English Education in India

◦ shifting focus towards elementary mass education in India
◦ using vernacular languages in primary education
◦ English language in higher education
◦ For the first time, the village pathshala was to teach a systematic curriculum
Prerequisite for a reader according to Englishmen

◦ Claim that literature can be read meaningfully only when a high degree of morality is present
in the mind of reader
◦ To bring this morality, according to Gauri Viswanathan, Western aesthetic principles were
infused within the literature
◦ The authority of indigenous literature necessarily required external support and validation to
be more than merely self-confirming.
◦ Gauri Viswanathan argues that the appreciated irony is that English literature appeared as a
subject in the curriculum of the colonies long before it was institutionalized in the home
country
◦ England being a well established church society did not had grounds for secular practice of
education- which was majorly practiced underground by the aristocratic and clerical orders.
◦ Due to a spirit of experimentation India was merely being used as a “fair and open field for
testing the non-religion theory of education.”
◦ Evidences of communications between the Court of Directors and the governor- general-in-
council in Calcutta shows India had become an experimental laboratory for testing educational
ideas that had either been abandoned in England or fallen victim to insuperable opposition
from entrenched traditions and orthodoxies.
◦ A play like Kalidas’ Shakuntala, which delighted Europeans for its pastoral beauty and lyric
charm and led Horace Wilson, a major nineteenth-century Sanskrit scholar, to call it the jewel
of Indian literature, was disapproved of as a text for study in Indian schools and colleges, and
the judgment that “the more popular forms of [Oriental literature] are marked with the greatest
immorality and impurity” held sway.
◦ The colonizers wanted unfortified minds of natives falsely seduced by the “impurities” of the
traditional literature of the East.
◦ Bruce McCullys English Education and the Origins of Indian Naturalism marks growth of
Indian nationalism was spurred by the formal training of Indians in the liberal doctrines of
Western thought.
 WHO WILL BE EDUCATED?
◦ Bentinck believed in theory of DOWNWARD FILTRATION

◦ “Education is to be filtered to the common people. Drop by drop, the education

should go to the common public so that at due time it may take the form of a vast
stream which remained watering desert of the society for long times and high class of
people should be educated and common people gain influence from them”

◦ "At present we don't aim at educating directly the common people. We aim at creating
a class of persons, who among their countrymen distribute some of the knowledge we
gave.“- Macaulay's Minutes
 Impact of Colonial education
◦ A group found employment in the colonial educational institutions.
◦ It led to the emergence of a new social class – the bhadralok. Eg- Raja
Rammohan Roy
◦ Sekhar Bandopadhyay- there was a rise of a ‘civil society’ which was
’articulate in defending its rights while locating its identity’ who questioned
evil practices of the society
◦ Bhadralok came under influence of Christian Missionaries-few conversions-
Cherished western education
◦ Views of Students altered- studied about liberty, representation and
freedom
◦ Young Bengal movement- provoking the more conservative sections of
society
◦ Later reform Movements- Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Swami Dayanand
◦ David Kopf, in his British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance, argues that the
dynamics of Indian modernization were set in motion by the British. There developed
during the 18th century an Indian national consciousness of the arts and sciences. He
credits orientalism for awakening the consciousness among the Indians along modern
lines. contributed to the formation of a new Indian middle class and assisted in
the professionalization of the Bengali intelligentsia. He calls the impact “urban
and secular”

◦ Gauri Viswanathan critiques Kopf saying that singular credit cannot be given to the
British for ‘national awakening’ in India.
◦ If a heightened national consciousness emerged in the late eighteenth century among
the Bengali elite, the only possible explanation for it in Kopf’s analysis is the
introduction of institutions and ideas developed in the West argues Gauri V.
The introduction of English literature was meant to inculcate a proper
training in morality and ethics as it was considered to be the ‘ideal
representation of English Identity’
Gauri Viswanathan
Colonial modernity hardly paid attention to the diverse range of cultural
learning sites and their educational practices. Instead, their focus was on the
role of teachers’ perceptions of ‘order and discipline’ as cited by N. Kumar in
The politics of gender, community and modernity.
 Krishna Kumar’s View- “the most negative of all the
consequences”
◦ In "Political Agenda of Education: A Study of ◦ Change of curriculum towards “worth learning”
Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas" (2005) ◦ Curricular changes necessitated teacher training
◦ British used education to serve their colonial interests
◦ introduction of the examination system, thereby
◦ colonial education policies were designed to train evolving a “bureaucratic, centralized system of
Indians for subordinate administrative roles education”
◦ In “Appropriate Knowledge: Conflict of Curriculum and ◦ Schools thus emerged as a “certifying authority” [that]
Culture” Kumar elaborates on zones of “conflict” regulated social mobility.
between the indigenous and colonial educational ◦ In Meek Dictator: The Paradox of Teacher’s Personality
systems, and how resolutions of these conflicts
– position of teacher from well respected reduced to
“moderated the transition from old to new hierarchies”
meek salaried servant of the government
◦ Colonial education drew both teachers and students
◦ Girls were educated by Britishers to become “better
having been supported by resources drawn from the
wives for English-educated Indian men … and more
community—to state control.
enlightened mothers”
Anil Seal’s View
◦ Anil Seal - "The Emergence of Indian Nationalism: Competition and Collaboration in the
Later Nineteenth Century" (1968)
◦ Positive perspective
◦ Motive was to create a class of Western-educated Indians
◦ colonial education as a double-edged sword : while it served the British purpose of
controlling India, it also inadvertently sowed the seeds of Indian nationalism
◦ middle class began to demand political rights and reforms
Partha Chatterjee's View
◦ Partha Chatterjee - "The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories"
(1993)
◦ reshaped the consciousness of the Indian elites
◦ British were unable to fully control the ideological outcomes of their educational policies, as
the educated Indian elites began to reinterpret Western ideas in the context of their own
nationalist struggles

Bipin Chandra's View

◦ "India's Struggle for Independence" (1988)
◦ Crucial role in growth of Nationalism
◦ While colonial education was limited in scope and intent, it inadvertently contributed to the
political awakening of the Indian middle class, leading to the emergence of leaders who
challenged British rule
Crucial events-
• 1771: Charles Grant recommended introducing English education in India, but the British Raj
rejected the suggestion
• 1784: James Mill formed the Asiatic Society for Oriental Learning
• 1791: Banaras Sanskrit College was established
• 1801: Fort William College, the first college for Western education, was established
• 1857: The Universities of Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay were established
• 1882: The University of Punjab was established
• 1887: The University of Allahabad was established
Sources
◦ Gauri Viswanathan- Masks of Conquest
◦ David Kopf- British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance
◦ N. Kumar in The politics of gender, community and modernity
◦ Krishna Kumar -Appropriate Knowledge: Conflict of Curriculum and Culture
◦ Partha Chatterjee - The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories
◦ Bipin Chandra - India's Struggle for Independence
THANK YOU!