The English Education Act 1835 was a legislative Act of the Council of India, gave effect to a

decision in 1835 by Lord William Bentinck, then Governor-General of British India, to reallocate
funds the East India Company was required by the British Parliament to spend on education and
literature in India. They had not supported tradition of Muslim and Hindu education and the
publication of literature in the native learned tongues (Sanskrit and Persian); henceforward they
were to support establishments teaching a Western curriculum with English as the language of
instruction. Together with other measures promoting English as the language of administration and
of the higher law courts (replacing Persian), this led eventually to English becoming one of the
languages of India, rather than simply the native tongue of its foreign rulers.
In discussions leading up to the Act Thomas Babington Macaulay produced his famous
Memorandum on (Indian) Education which was scathing on the inferiority (as he saw it) of native
(particularly Hindu) culture and learning. He argued that Western learning was superior, and
currently could only be taught through the medium of English. There was therefore a need to
produce—by English-language higher education—"a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour,
but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect" who could in their turn develop the tools to
transmit Western learning in the vernacular languages of India. Among Macaulay's
recommendations were the immediate stopping of the printing by the East India Company of Arabic
and Sanskrit books and that the Company should not continue to support traditional education
beyond "the Sanskrit College at Benares and the Mahometan College at Delhi" (which he
considered adequate to maintain traditional learning).

The Act itself, however, took a less negative attitude to traditional education and was soon
succeeded by further measures based upon the provision of adequate funding for both approaches.
Vernacular language education, however, continued to receive little funding, although it had not
been much supported before 1835 in any case. British support for Indian
learning[edit]
When the British Parliament had renewed the charter of the East India Company for 20 years in
1813, it had required the Company to apply 100,000 rupees per year[1] "for the revival and promotion
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."[2] This had
gone to support traditional forms (and content) of education, which (like their contemporary
equivalents in England) were firmly non-utilitarian.
By the early 1820s some administrators within the East India Company were questioning if this was
a sensible use of the money. James Mill noted that the declared purpose of the Madrassa
(Mohammedan College) and the Hindu College in Calcutta set up by the company had been "to
make a favourable impression, by our encouragement of their literature, upon the minds of the
natives" but took the view that the aim of the company should have been to further not Oriental
learning but "useful learning". Indeed, private enterprise colleges had begun to spring up in Bengal
teaching Western knowledge in English ("English education"), to serve a native clientele which felt it
would be more important that their sons learnt to understand the English than that they were taught
to appreciate classic poetry.
Broadly similar issues (‘classical education’ vs ‘liberal education’) had already arisen for education in
England with existing grammar schools being unwilling (or legally unable) to give instruction in
subjects other than Latin or Greek and were to end in an expansion of their curriculum to include
modern subjects. In the Indian situation a complicating factor was that the 'classical education'
reflected the attitudes and beliefs of the various traditions in the sub-continent, 'English education'
clearly did not, and there was felt to be a danger of an adverse reaction among the existing learned
classes of India to any withdrawal of support for them.
This led to divided counsels within the Committee of Public Instruction. Thomas Babington
Macaulay, who was Legal Member of the Council of India, and was to be President of the
Committee, refused to take up the post until the matter was resolved, and sought a clear directive
from the Governor-General on the strategy to be adopted.
It should have been clear what answer Macaulay was seeking, given his past comments. In 1833 in
the House of Commons Macaulay (then MP for Leeds),[3] had spoken in favour of renewal of the
Company's charter, in terms which make his own views on the culture and society of the sub-
continent adequately clear:
I see a government[4] anxiously bent on the public good. Even in its errors I recognize a paternal
feeling towards the great people committed to its charge. I see toleration strictly maintained. Yet I
see bloody and degrading superstitions gradually losing their power. I see the morality, the
philosophy, the taste of Europe, beginning to produce a salutary effect on the hearts and
understandings of our subjects. I see the public mind of India, that public mind which we found
debased and contracted by the worst forms of political and religious tyranny, expanding itself to just
and noble views of the ends of government and of the social duties of man.
Finishing with a peroration holding it a moral imperative to educate the Indians in English ways, not
to keep them submissive but to give them the potential eventually to claim the same rights as the
English:
What is that power worth which is founded on vice, on ignorance, and on misery—which we can hold
only by violating the most sacred duties which as governors we owe to the governed—which as a
people blessed with far more than an ordinary measure of political liberty and of intellectual light—
we owe to a race debased by three thousand years of despotism and priest craft? We are free, we
are civilized, to little purpose, if we grudge to any portion of the human race an equal measure of
freedom and civilization.
Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that we may keep them submissive? Or do we
think that we can give them knowledge without awakening ambition? Or do we mean to awaken
ambition and to provide it with no legitimate vent? Who will answer any of these questions in the
affirmative? Yet one of them must be answered in the affirmative, by every person who maintains
that we ought permanently to exclude the natives from high office. I have no fears. The path of duty
is plain before us: and it is also the path of wisdom, of national prosperity, of national honour.
The destinies of our Indian empire are covered with thick darkness. It is difficult to form any
conjecture as to the fate reserved for a state which resembles no other in history, and which forms
by itself a separate class of political phenomena. The laws which regulate its growth and its decay
are still unknown to us. It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it
has outgrown that system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for
better government, that, having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future
age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I
attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history. To
have found a great people sunk in the lowest depths of slavery and superstition, to have so ruled
them as to have made them desirous and capable of all the privileges of citizens would indeed be a
title to glory all our own.[5]
The sceptre may pass away from us. Unforeseen accidents may derange our most profound
schemes of policy Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there are triumphs which are followed
by no reverses. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the
pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our
morals, our literature and our laws.[6]

Macaulay's "Minute Upon Indian Education"[edit]

To remove all doubt, however, Macaulay produced and circulated a Minute on the subject.
[7]
Macaulay argued that support for the publication of books in Sanskrit and Arabic should be
withdrawn, support for traditional education should be reduced to funding for the Madrassa
at Delhi and the Hindu College at Benares, but students should no longer be paid to study at these
establishments.[8] The money released by these steps should instead go to fund education in
Western subjects, with English as the language of instruction. He summarised his argument:
To sum up what I have said, I think it is clear that we are not fettered by the Act of Parliament of
1813; that we are not fettered by any pledge expressed or implied; that we are free to employ our
funds as we choose; that we ought to employ them in teaching what is best worth knowing; that
English is better worth knowing than Sanskrit or Arabic; that the natives are desirous to be taught
English, and are not desirous to be taught Sanskrit or Arabic; that neither as the languages of law,
nor as the languages of religion, have the Sanskrit and Arabic any peculiar claim to our engagement;
that it is possible to make natives of this country thoroughly good English scholars, and that to this
end our efforts ought to be directed.[9]
Macaulay’s comparison of Arabic and Sanskrit literature to what was available in English is forceful,
colourful, and nowadays often quoted against him.
I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern
tongues. .... I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good
European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.[9][10] Honours might be
roughly even in works of the imagination, such as poetry, but when we pass from works of
imagination to works in which facts are recorded, and general principles investigated, the superiority
of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable."[9]
He returned to the comparison later:
Whoever knows [English] has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest
nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may be safely
said, that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which
three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. The question now
before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach
languages, by which, by universal confession, there are not books on any subject which deserve to
be compared to our own; whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems
which, by universal confession, whenever they differ from those of Europe, differ for the worse; and
whether, when we can patronise sound Philosophy and true History, we shall countenance, at the
public expense, medical doctrines, which would disgrace an English farrier, --Astronomy, which
would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school,--History, abounding with kings thirty feet
high, and reigns thirty thousand years long,--and Geography, made up of seas of treacle and seas of
butter.[9]
Mass education would be (in the fullness of time) by the class of Anglicised Indians the new policy
should produce, and by the means of vernacular dialects:
In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them,
that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We
must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions
whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in
morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country,
to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to
render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.[9]

The Act[edit]
Bentinck wrote that he was in full agreement with the sentiments expressed.[11] However, students at
the Calcutta Madrassa raised a petition against its closure; this quickly got considerable support and
the Madrassa and its Hindu equivalent were therefore retained. Otherwise the Act endorsed and
implemented the policy Macaulay had argued for.
The Governor-General of India in Council has attentively considered the two letters from the
Secretary to the Committee of Public Instruction,[12] dated the 21st and 22nd January last, and the
papers referred to in them.
First, His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the great object of the British Government ought to be
the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India; and that all the funds
appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed on English education alone.
Second, But it is not the intention of His Lordship in Council to abolish any College or School of
native learning, while the native population shall appear to be inclined to avail themselves of the
advantages which it affords, and His Lordship in Council directs that all the existing professors and
students at all the institutions under the superintendence of the Committee shall continue to receive
their stipends. But his lordship in Council decidedly objects to the practice which has hitherto
prevailed of supporting the students during the period of their education. He conceives that the only
effect of such a system can be to give artificial encouragement to branches of learning which, in the
natural course of things, would be superseded by more useful studies and he directs that no stipend
shall be given to any student that may hereafter enter at any of these institutions; and that when any
professor of Oriental learning shall vacate his situation, the Committee shall report to the
Government the number and state of the class in order that the Government may be able to decide
upon the expediency of appointing a successor.
Third, It has come to the knowledge of the Governor-General in Council that a large sum has been
expended by the Committee on the printing of Oriental works; his Lordship in Council directs that no
portion of the funds shall hereafter be so employed.
Fourth, His Lordship in Council directs that all the funds which these reforms will leave at the
disposal of the Committee be henceforth employed in imparting to the native population a knowledge
of English literature and science through the medium of the English language; and His lordship.

Opposition in London suppressed[edit]

On the news of the Act reaching England, a despatch giving the official response of the Company's
Court of Directors was drafted within India House (the company's London office). James Mill was a
leading figure within the India House (as well as being a leading utilitarian philosopher). Although he
was known to favour education in the vernacular languages of India, otherwise he might have been
expected to be broadly in favour of the Act. However, he was by then a dying man, and the task of
drafting the response fell to his son John Stuart Mill. The younger Mill was thought to hold similar
views to his father, but his draft despatch turned out to be quite critical of the Act.
Mill argued that students seeking an 'English education' in order to prosper could simply acquire
enough of the requisite practical accomplishments (facility in English etc.) to prosper without
bothering to acquire the cultural attitudes; for example it did not follow that at the same time they
would also free themselves from superstition. Even if they did the current learned classes of India
commanded widespread respect in Indian culture, and that one of the reasons they did so was the
lack of practical uses for their learning; they were pursuing learning as an end in itself, rather than as
a means to advancement. The same could not reliably said of those seeking an 'English education',
and therefore it was doubtful how they would be regarded by Indian society and therefore how far
they would be able to influence it for the better. It would have been a better policy to continue to
conciliate the existing learned classes, and to attempt to introduce European knowledge and
disciplines into their studies and thus make them the desired interpreter class. This analysis was
acceptable to East India Company's Court of Directors but unacceptable to their political masters
(because it effectively endorsed the previous policy of 'engraftment') and John Cam
Hobhouseinsisted on the despatch being redrafted to be a mere holding statement noting the Act but
venturing no opinion upon it.

After the Act[edit]

Reversion to favouring traditional colleges[edit]
By 1839 Lord Auckland had succeeded Bentinck as Governor-General, and Macaulay had returned
to England. Auckland contrived to find sufficient funds to support the English Colleges set up by
Bentinck's Act without continuing to run down the traditional Oriental colleges. He wrote a Minute (of
24 November 1839) giving effect to this; both Oriental and English colleges were to be adequately
funded. The East India Company directors responded with a despatch in 1841 endorsing the twin-
track approach and suggesting a third:
We forbear at present from expressing an opinion regarding the most efficient mode of
communicating and disseminating European Knowledge. Experience does not yet warrant the
adoption of any exclusive system. We wish a fair trial to be given to the experiment of engrafting
European Knowledge on the studies of the existing learned Classes, encouraged as it will be by
giving to the Seminaries in which those studies are prosecuted,the aid of able and efficient European
Superintendence. At the same time we authorise you to give all suitable encouragement to
translators of European works into the vernacular languages and also to provide for the compilation
of a proper series of Vernacular Class books according to the plan which Lord Auckland has
proposed.
The East India Company also resumed subsidising the publication of Sanscrit and Arabic works, but
now by a grant to the Asiatic Society rather than by undertaking publication under their own
auspices.[13]

Mill's later views[edit]

In 1861, Mill in the last chapter ('On the Government of Dependencies') of his 'Considerations on
Representative Government' restated the doctrine Macaulay had advanced a quarter of a century
earlier – the moral imperative to improve subject peoples, which justified reforms by the rulers of
which the ruled were as yet unaware of the need for,
"There are ... [conditions of society] in which, there being no spring of spontaneous improvement in
the people themselves, their almost only hope of making any steps in advance [to 'a higher
civilisation'] depends on the chances of a good despot. Under a native despotism, a good despot is a
rare and transitory accident: but when the dominion they are under is that of a more civilised people,
that people ought to be able to supply it constantly. The ruling country ought to be able to do for its
subjects all that could be done by a succession of absolute monarchs guaranteed by irresistible
force against the precariousness of tenure attendant on barbarous despotisms, and qualified by their
genius to anticipate all that experience has taught to the more advanced nation. Such is the ideal
rule of a free people over a barbarous or semi-barbarous one. We need not expect to see that ideal
realised; but unless some approach to it is, the rulers are guilty of a dereliction of the highest moral
trust which can devolve upon a nation: and if they do not even aim at it, they are selfish usurpers, on
a par in criminality with any of those whose ambition and rapacity have sported from age to age with
the destiny of masses of mankind"
but Mill went on to warn of the difficulties this posed in practice; difficulties which whatever the merits
of the Act of 1835 do not seem to have suggested themselves to Macaulay:[14]
It is always under great difficulties, and very imperfectly, that a country can be governed by
foreigners; even when there is no disparity, in habits and ideas, between the rulers and the ruled.
Foreigners do not feel with the people. They cannot judge, by the light in which a thing appears to
their own minds, or the manner in which it affects their feelings, how it will affect the feelings or
appear to the minds of the subject population. What a native of the country, of average practical
ability, knows as it were by instinct, they have to learn slowly, and after all imperfectly, by study and
experience. The laws, the customs, the social relations, for which they have to legislate, instead of
being familiar to them from childhood, are all strange to them. For most of their detailed knowledge
they must depend on the information of natives; and it is difficult for them to know whom to trust.
They are feared, suspected, probably disliked by the population; seldom sought by them except for
interested purposes; and they are prone to think the servilely submissive are the trustworthy. Their
danger is of despising the natives; that of the natives is of disbelieving that anything the strangers do
can be intended for their good.[15]

See also[edit]
 Education in India
 Indianisation
 Timeline of Hindu texts

Languages with official status in India

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 States and union territories of India by the most commonly spoken official language.[1][a]

India has various official languages at the Union and state/territory level. However, there is
no national languagein India.[2][3][4] The article 343, point 1, specifically mentions that, "The official
language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script. The form of numerals to be used for the
official purposes of the Union shall be the international form of Indian numerals."[4] English is used in
official purposes such as parliamentary proceedings, judiciary, communications between the Central
Government and a State Government. States within India have the liberty and powers to specify
their own official language(s) through legislation. In addition to the official languages, the constitution
recognises 22 regional languages, which includes Hindi but not English, as scheduled languages,
that are not be confused with official status of the Union.
States can specify their own official language(s) through legislation. The section of the Constitution
of India dealing with official languages therefore includes detailed provisions which deal not just with
the languages used for the official purposes of the union, but also with the languages that are to be
used for the official purposes of each state and union territory in the country, and the languages that
are to be used for communication between the union and the states.

Contents

 1History
 2List of scheduled languages of India
 3Official languages of the Union
 o 3.1Parliamentary proceedings and laws
o 3.2Judiciary
o 3.3Administration
o 3.4Implementation
o 3.5Legislature and administration
o 3.6State judiciary
o 3.7List of official languages by states and territories
 4Union–state and interstate communication
 5See also
 6Notes
 7References
 8External links

History[edit]
The official languages of British India were English, Urdu and Hindi, with English being used for
purposes at the central level.[5] The Indian constitution adopted in 1950 envisaged that English would
be phased out in favour of Hindi, over a fifteen-year period, but gave Parliament the power to, by
law, provide for the continued use of English even thereafter.[6]Plans to make Hindi the sole official
language of the Republic were met with resistance in many parts of the country. English and Hindi
continue to be used today, in combination with other (at the central level and in some states) official
languages.
The legal framework governing the use of languages for official purpose currently is the Official
Languages Act, 1963, the Official Language Rules, 1976, and various state laws, as well as rules
and regulations made by the central government and the states.

List of scheduled languages of India[edit]

The Eighth Schedule to the Indian Constitution contains a list of 22 scheduled languages. The table
below lists the 22 scheduled languages of Republic of India set out in the Eighth Schedule as of May
2008, together with the regions where they are widely spoken and used as state's official language.
However, states are not mandated to choose their official languages from the scheduled languages.

Speakers
Language Family Official recognition in State(s)
[b] (in millions, 2011
)[7]

Indo-Aryan,
Assamese 15.3 Assam, Arunachal Pradesh
Eastern

Indo-Aryan, West Bengal, Tripura, Assam, Andaman & Nicobar

Bengali 97.2
Eastern Islands, Jharkhand[8]

Tibeto-
Bodo 1.48 Assam
Burman
 Speakers
Language Family Official recognition in State(s)
[b] (in millions, 2011
)[7]

Indo-Aryan,
Dogri Northwester 2.6 Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh,
n

Indo-Aryan,
Gujarati 55.5 Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, Gujarat
Western

Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Bihar, Dadra and Nagar

Haveli, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal
Hindi Indo-Aryan 528 Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Jammu and
Kashmir, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Uttar
Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal[9][10]

Kannada Dravidian 43.7 Karnataka

Indo-Aryan,
Kashmiri 6.8 Jammu and Kashmir
Dardic

Indo-Aryan, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala (The Konkan

Konkani 2.25
Southern Coast)[11][12]

Indo-Aryan,
Maithili 13.6 Bihar, Jharkhand[13]
Eastern

Malayalam Dravidian 34.8 Kerala, Lakshadweep, Puducherry

Tibeto-
Manipuri 1.8 Manipur
Burman

Indo-Aryan, Maharashtra, Goa, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman and

Marathi 83
Southern Diu
 Speakers
Language Family Official recognition in State(s)
[b] (in millions, 2011
)[7]

Indo-Aryan,
Nepali 2.9 Sikkim and West Bengal
Northern

Indo-Aryan,
Odia 37.5 Odisha, Jharkhand,[14][15][16] West Bengal[9][10]
Eastern

Indo-Aryan,
Punjabi Northwester 33.1 Chandigarh, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, West Bengal[9][10]
n

Sanskrit Indo-Aryan 0.02 Uttarakhand

Spoken by Santhal people mainly in the state

Austroasiati of Jharkhand as well as in the states
Santali 7.3
c of Assam, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram, Odisha, Tripur
a, West Bengal[17]

Indo-Aryan,
Sindhi Northwester 2.7 Gujarat and Maharashtra, especially Ulhasnagar
n

Tamil Dravidian 69 Tamil Nadu, Puducherry

Telugu Dravidian 81.1 Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Puducherry

Jammu and
Indo-Aryan,
Urdu 50.7 Kashmir, Telangana, Jharkhand, Delhi, Bihar, Uttar
Central
Pradesh and West Bengal[9][10]

Official languages of the Union[edit]

The front cover of a contemporary Indian passport, with the national emblem and inscriptions in Hindi and
English.

The Indian constitution, in 1950, declared Hindi in Devanagari script to be the official language of the
union. Unless Parliament decided otherwise, the use of English for official purposes was to cease 15
years after the constitution came into effect, i.e., on 26 January 1965. The prospect of the
changeover, however, led to much alarm in the non Hindi-speaking areas of India,
especially Dravidian-speaking states whose languages were not related to Hindi at all. As a
result, Parliament enacted the Official Languages Act, 1963,[18] [19][20][21][22][23] which provided for the
continued use of English for official purposes along with Hindi, even after 1965.
In late 1964, an attempt was made to expressly provide for an end to the use of English, but it was
met with protests from states such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, West
Bengal, Karnataka, Puducherry, Nagaland, Mizoram and Andhra Pradesh. Some of these protests
also turned violent.[24] As a result, the proposal was dropped,[25][26] and the Act itself was amended in
1967 to provide that the use of English would not be ended until a resolution to that effect was
passed by the legislature of every state that had not adopted Hindi as its official language, and by
each house of the Indian Parliament.[27]
The position was thus that the Union government continues to use English in addition to Hindi for its
official purposes[28] as a "subsidiary official language,"[29] but is also required to prepare and execute
a program to progressively increase its use of Hindi.[30] The exact extent to which, and the areas in
which, the Union government uses Hindi and English, respectively, is determined by the provisions
of the Constitution, the Official Languages Act, 1963, the Official Languages Rules, 1976,
and statutory instruments made by the Department of Official Language under these laws.
Parliamentary proceedings and laws[edit]
The Indian constitution draws a distinction between the language to be used in Parliamentary
proceedings, and the language in which lawsare to be made. Parliamentary business, according to
the Constitution, may be conducted in either Hindi or English. The use of English in parliamentary
proceedings was to be phased out at the end of fifteen years unless Parliament chose to extend its
use, which Parliament did through the Official Languages Act, 1963.[31] In addition, the constitution
permits a person who is unable to express themselves in either Hindi or English to, with the
permission of the Speaker of the relevant House, address the House in their mother tongue.[32]
In contrast, the constitution requires the authoritative text of all laws, including
Parliamentary enactments and statutory instruments, to be in English, until Parliament decides
otherwise. Parliament has not exercised its power to so decide, instead merely requiring that all such
laws and instruments, and all bills brought before it, also be translated into Hindi, though the English
text remains authoritative.[33]
Judiciary[edit]
The constitution provides, and the Supreme Court of India has reiterated, that all proceedings in the
Supreme Court (the country's highest court) and the High Courts shall be in English.[34] Parliament
has the power to alter this by law, but has not done so. However, in many high courts, there is, with
consent from the president, allowance of the optional use of Hindi. Such proposals have been
successful in the states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar.[35]
Administration[edit]
The Official Language Act provides that the Union government shall use both Hindi and English in
most administrative documents that are intended for the public, though the Union government is
required by law to promote the use of Hindi.[18][36] The Official Languages Rules, in contrast, provide
for a higher degree of use of Hindi in communications between offices of the central government
(other than offices in Tamil Nadu, to which the rules do not apply).[37] Communications between
different departments within the central government may be in English and Hindi (though the English
text remains authoritative), although a translation into the other language must be provided if
required.[38] Communications within offices of the same department, however, must be in Hindi if the
offices are in Hindi-speaking states,[39] and in either Hindi or English otherwise with Hindi being used
in proportion to the percentage of staff in the receiving office who have a working knowledge of
Hindi.[40] Notes and memos in files may be in English and Hindi (though the English text remains
authoritative), with the Government having a duty to provide a translation into the other language if
required.[41]
In addition, every person submitting a petition for the redress of a grievance to a government officer
or authority has a constitutional right to submit it in any language used in India.
Implementation[edit]
Various steps have been taken by the Indian government to implement the use and familiarisation of
Hindi extensively. Dakshina Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha headquartered at Chennai was formed to
spread Hindi in South Indian states. Regional Hindi implementation offices
at Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Bhopal, Delhiand Ghaziabad have
been established to monitor the implementation of Hindi in Central government offices and PSUs.
Annual targets are set by the Department of Official Language regarding the amount of
correspondence being carried out in Hindi. A Parliament Committee on Official Language constituted
in 1976 periodically reviews the progress in the use of Hindi and submits a report to the President.
The governmental body which makes policy decisions and established guidelines for promotion of
Hindi is the Kendriya Hindi Samiti (est. 1967). In every city that has more than ten central
Government offices, a Town Official Language Implementation Committee is established and cash
awards are given to government employees who write books in Hindi. All Central government offices
and PSUs are to establish Hindi Cells for implementation of Hindi in their offices.[42]
In 2016, the government announced plans to promote Hindi in government offices
in Southern and Northeast India.[43][44]
The Indian constitution does not specify the official languages to be used by the states for the
conduct of their official functions, and leaves each state free to, through its legislature, adopt Hindi or
any language used in its territory as its official language or languages.[45] The language need not be
one of those listed in the Eighth Schedule, and several states have adopted official languages which
are not so listed. Examples include Kokborok in Tripura and Mizo in Mizoram.
Legislature and administration[edit]
The constitutional provisions in relation to use of the official language in legislation at the State
level largely mirror those relating to the official language at the central level, with minor variations.
State legislatures may conduct their business in their official language, Hindi or (for a transitional
period, which the legislature can extend if it so chooses) English, and members who cannot use any
of these have the same rights to their mother tongue with the Speaker's permission. The
authoritative text of all laws must be in English, unless Parliament passes a law permitting a state to
use another language, and if the original text of a law is in a different language, an authoritative
English translation of all laws must be prepared.
The state has the right to regulate the use of its official language in public administration, and in
general, neither the constitution nor any central enactment imposes any restriction on this right.
However, every person submitting a petition for the redress of a grievance to an officer or authority
of the state government has a constitutional right to submit it in any language used in that state,
regardless of its official status.
In addition, the constitution grants the central government, acting through the President, the power
to issue certain directives to the government of a state in relation to the use of minority languages for
official purposes. The President may direct a State to officially recognise a language spoken in its
territory for specified purposes and in specified regions, if its speakers demand it and satisfy him that
a substantial proportion of the State's population desire its use. Similarly, States and local authorities
are required to endeavour to provide primary education in the mother tongue for all linguistic
minorities, regardless of whether their language is official in that State, and the President has the
power to issue directions he deems necessary to ensure that they are provided these facilities.
State judiciary[edit]
States have significantly less freedom in relation to determine the language in which judicial
proceedings in their respective High Courts will be conducted. The constitution gives the power to
authorise the use of Hindi, or the state's official language in proceedings of the High Court to
the Governor, rather than the state legislature, and requires the Governor to obtain the consent of
the President of India, who in these matters acts on the advice of the Government of India. The
Official Languages Act gives the Governor a similar power, subject to similar conditions, in relation to
the language in which the High Court's judgments will be delivered.[46]
Four states—Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan—[47] have been granted the right
to conduct proceedings in their High Courts in their official language, which, for all of them, was
Hindi. However, the only non-Hindi state to seek a similar power—Tamil Nadu, which sought the
right to conduct proceedings in Tamil in its High Court—had its application rejected by the central
government earlier, which said it was advised to do so by the Supreme Court.[48] In 2006, the law
ministry said that it would not object to Tamil Nadu state's desire to conduct Madras High
Court proceedings in Tamil.[49][50][51][52][53] In 2010, the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court allowed
lawyers to argue cases in Tamil.[54]
List of official languages by states and territories[edit]
List of official languages of states of India

N Official
State Additional official language(s)
o. language(s)

1. Andhra Telugu[55]
N Official
State Additional official language(s)
o. language(s)

Pradesh

Arunac
2. hal English[56]
Pradesh

Bengali in three districts of Barak Valley,[58] Bodo in Bodoland

3. Assam Assamese[57]
Territorial Council areas

4. Bihar Hindi[59] Urdu[59]

Chhatti
5. Hindi[60]
sgarh

6. Goa Konkani, English[61] Marathi[62]:27[63]

7. Gujarat Gujarati[64] Hindi[64]

Haryan
8. Hindi[65] English,[62] Punjabi[66]
a

Himach
9. al Hindi[67] Sanskrit[68]
Pradesh

Jharkha Bengali, Bhojpuri, Ho, Kharia, Khortha, Kurmali, Kurukh, Maga

10. Hindi[56]
nd hi, Maithili, Mundari, Nagpuri, Odia, Santali, Urdu[69]

Karnata
11. Kannada English
ka
N Official
State Additional official language(s)
o. language(s)

12. Kerala Malayalam English

Madhy
13. a Hindi[70]
Pradesh

Mahara
14. Marathi[71]
shtra

Manipu
15. Manipuri[72] English
r

Meghal
16. English[73] Khasi and Garo[74]
aya

Mizora
17. Mizo English, Hindi
m

Nagala
18. English
nd

19. Odisha Odia[75]

20. Punjab Punjabi[62]

Rajasth
22. Hindi
an

English, Nepali, Sikki Gurung, Limbu, Magar, Mukhia, Newari, Rai, Sherpa and Taman
22. Sikkim
mese, Lepcha[62][76] g[62]
 N Official
State Additional official language(s)
o. language(s)

Tamil
23. Tamil English
Nadu

Telanga
24. Telugu Urdu[77][78]
na

Bengali, English, Kok

25. Tripura
borok[79][80]

Uttar
26. Hindi Urdu[81]
Pradesh

Uttarak
27. Hindi Sanskrit
hand

Nepali in Darjeeling and Kurseong sub-divisions;[62]

West Urdu, Hindi, Odia, Santali, Punjabi, Kamtapuri, Rajbanshi, Kurm
28. Bengali, English[62][82]
Bengal ali and Kurukh in blocks, divisions or districts with population
greater than 10 percent[9][10][83]

List of official languages of Union Territories of India [62]

Additional official
No. Union territory Official language(s)
language(s)

Andaman and Nicobar

1. Hindi, English Bengali
Islands

2. Chandigarh English

Dadra and Nagar Haveli and

3. Gujarati, Konkani, Marathi, Hindi[84]
Daman and Diu
 Additional official
No. Union territory Official language(s)
language(s)

4. Delhi Hindi, English[56] Urdu, Punjabi[85]

Mahl (in Minicoy

5. Lakshadweep Malayalam,[86]
Island), English

6. Jammu and Kashmir Urdu[62]

7. Ladakh Urdu, English

8. Puducherry Tamil, French, English Telugu, Malayalam [c][87][88]

Union–state and interstate communication[edit]

The language in which communications between different states, or from the union government to a
state or a person in a state, shall be sent is regulated by the Official Languages Act and, for states
other than Tamil Nadu, by the Official Languages Rules. Communication between states who use
Hindi as their official language is required to be in Hindi, whereas communication between a state
whose official language is Hindi and one whose is not, is required to be in English, or, in Hindi with
an accompanying English translation (unless the receiving state agrees to dispense with the
translation).[28]
Communication between the union and states which use Hindi as their official language (classified
by the Official Language Rules as "the states in Region A"), and with persons who live in those
states, is generally in Hindi, except in certain cases.[89] Communication with a second category of
states "Region B", which do not use Hindi as their official language but have elected to communicate
with the union in Hindi (currently Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Punjab)[90] is usually in Hindi, whilst
communications sent to an individual in those states may be in Hindi and English.[91] Communication
with all other states "Region C", and with people living in them, is in English.[92]

See also[edit]
Wikisource has original
text related to this article:

Official Languages Act,

1963

 Languages of India
 List of Indian languages by number of native speakers
 Indian States by most popular languages
 The Eighth Schedule to the Indian Constitution

Notes[edit]
1. ^ Some languages may be over- or underrepresented as the census data used is at the state-level.
For example, while Urdu has 52 million speakers (2001), in no state is it a majority as the language
itself is primarily limited to Indian Muslims yet has more native speakers than Gujarati.
2. ^ Includes variants and dialects
3. ^ See Official languages of Puducherry

 Words and phrases in more than 30 Indian languages

Author(s): Elmer H. Cutts Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Jul., 1953),
pp. 824-853 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical
Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1842459 Accessed: 12-03-2020 10:52 UTC

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The Background of Macaulay's Minaute

ELMER H. CUTTS
 THOMAS Babington Macaulay's "Minute on Education," written in I835 for Lord William
Bentinck, governor general of British India, was the decisive and final piece in a long series of
propaganda articles written over a period of more than half a century in the formation of British
educational policy in India.1 Macaulay's standing in British intellectual and political circles made
his advocacy of English-language education for Indian students enrolled in government-
supported colleges and universities sufficient justifi cation for Bentinck's adoption of that
program immediately after Macaulay's treatise appeared in print. The Bentinck educational
policy, which remained the essential educational policy of the British raj, called not only for the
study of the English language by Indian students but required that instruc tion in all courses of
study at the college level should be given through the medium of the English language. This
meant that all Indian aspirants for college degrees must thoroughly learn a foreign language
prior to embarking upon a career in higher education. In I835, the erection of this rather formi
dable obstacle between aspiring Indian students and the pursuit of college study seemed right
and proper, not only to Macaulay and Bentinck but also to the vast majority of Christian
missionaries in India and evangelical leaders in England. Such Indian students as were able to
surmount this obstacle of language and win a college degree received the further recognition
implicit in the distinctive appellation of "learned native."

The fact that evangelical agitation and pressure for more than half a century before i835 formed
the basic background of Macaulay's minute and of Bentinck's action is the thesis of this article.
Other pressures that devel oped stemmed chiefly from arguments originally presented by
evangelical spokesmen. The utilitarian, James Mill, for instance, when voicing his opinion in the
matter of instructing Indian students attending government supported colleges in India,
maintained that the primary objective in such

1 Macaulay's "Minute on Education," Feb. 2, 1835, is published in Henry Sharp, Selections from
the Educational Records, Bureau of Education, India, I (Calcutta, I920). (Cited hereafter as
"Sharp.") 824

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The Background of Macaulav's Minute 825 instruction should always be "useful knowledge" as
opposed to "Hindu knowledge." Less astute thinkers interpreted Mill's viewpoint to argue that
"useful knowledge" was European knowledge. The best medium by which European knowledge
might be imparted was a European language. Since India was under British rule, the obvious
European language of instruction would be English. A letter attributed to Mill, dated in I824,
indicates that Mill himself did not specifically subscribe to English-language instruction as the
educational medium. Mill merely stated the case for "useful knowledge."

With respect to the sciences, it is worse than useless to employ persons either to teach or to
learn them in the state in which they are found in Oriental books. . . . The great end should not
have been to teach Hindu learning but useful learning.2 Mill, in I832, before a committee of the
House of Commons, doubted the practicability as well as the desirability of converting India into
an English speaking country. He questioned the thesis of his day that a "community of
language" would render Britain's Indian subjects more loyal to Britain and argued that "a
community of language" had never "identified the Irish people with their governors."3 Macaulay
also doubted that India could be transformed into an English speaking country but insisted that
the required use of the English language in all Indian higher education would inevitably promote
Indian loyalty to British rule.
 I feel . . . that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of
the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us
and the millions whom we govern-a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in
tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to ... convey
knowledge to the great mass of the population.4 Although Macaulay had access to Mill's letter
cited above since it was in the Calcutta files of the General Committee of Public Instruction of
which Macaulay was president, it is unlikely that Mill's views on "useful knowl edge" had more
than incidental influence upon Macaulay's opinions expressed in his "Minute on Education." Mill
was by no means original in applying the phrase "useful learning" to the controversy over British
educational policy in India. However utilitarian the phrase might be, it had already been in 2
Court of Directors of the East India Company to the Committee of Public Instruction of Bengal,
1824, in Syed Mahmood, A History of Englisi Education in India (Aligarh, 1895), p. 30. Italics
mine. 3 House of Commons, Sessional Papers, 1831-32, IX (735), Minutes of Evidence Taken
before tIhe Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 56, par. 402. (Cited
hereafter as Sessional Papers.) 4 Sharp, p. iI6. Italics mine.

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826 Elmer H. Cutts

current evangelical usage in regard to Indian education since at least I793.5 At the same time,
Macaulay used much stronger language in castigating tra ditional Hindu and Muslim learning
than did Mill.

The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language
[English], we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any
subject which deserve to be compared to our own, whether, when we can teach European
science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, wherever they differ from those
of Europe, differ for the worse, and whether, when we can patronize sound philosophy and true
history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines which would disgrace an
English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school,
history abounding with kings thirty feet high and reigns thirty thousand years long, and
geography made of seas of treacle and seas of butter.6 Available evidence suggests the
inference that evangelical pressure in behalf of the English-language educational program for
India upon the officials of the East India Company, members of Parliament, and the British
public was anterior to utilitarian pressure in behalf of the same program. The further inference
seems tenable that such utilitarian pressure as developed was a derivative of earlier evangelical
pressure. Another pressure group whose arguments Bentinck used to defend his adoption of the
English-language program also developed from the original evangelical source. This was the
Hindu group of advocates of English language instruction whose most influential spokesman
was Ram Mohun Roy.7 In the second decade of the nineteenth century, wealthy Hindus began
to make cash endowments for the foundation of schools and colleges in which the instruction
would be in the English language and the courses of study drawn chiefly from the European
curriculum. Many of these Hindu supported English-language schools were founded as. the
direct result of Christian missionary emphasis upon English-language instruction. In i8i8, a Hindu
of means named Jai Narayana put /i,8oo into the hands of Daniel Corrie, an evangelical
chaplain of the East India Company, to found a school "to raise up his fellow countrymen from
the deplorable state into which they

Charles Grant, "Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great
Britain, particularly with respect to morals, and in the means of improving it," Sessional Papers,
i812-I3, X (282), Papers, etc., East India Company, pt. iv. See letter prefixed to above papers,
pp. 2-3, which states that Grant showed the above named disquisition to William Wilberforce
and Henry Dundas in 1793 prior to the debate in the House of Commons with reference to the
East India Company's charter of 1793. See also Sessional Papers, 1831-32, IX, p. 84, par. 704.
Grant's "Observations" is published also in Sessional Papers, 1831-32, VIII (734), Report from
the Select Committee on the Abfairs of the East India Company, with Minutes of Evi dence, App.
I. 6 Sharp, p. iIo. 7 Ram Mohun Roy to Lord Amherst, in Charles Edward Trevelyan, On the
Education of the People of India (London, I838), pp. 65-7I.

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The Background of Macaulay's Minute 827

had fallen." Corrie took the money in trust for the Church Missionary Society and within four
months had ii6 boys studying English, Bengali, Persian, and Hindi.8 Jai Narayana later added
40,000 rupees, yielding an annual income of /300 to this school's endowment. Another wealthy
Hindu, Raja Badrinath Rai, in I825 donated 20,000 rupees to the Central Female School of the
Ladies' Society for Native Female Education.9 Still another Hindu, in i827, anonymously
subscribed an annual sum of 400 rupees10 for the support of Bishop's College, founded in I8i8
by the first bishop of Calcutta, the Reverend T. F. Middleton,1" for the purpose of educating
Christian youths, Indians or English, "to become preachers, catechists, and schoolmasters."
Bishop's College would also give instruction in "English and useful knowl edge," to Hindus and
Muslims seeking secular employment.12 These examples of Hindu philanthropy in the interest
of English-language instruction were valuable to Lord Bentinck in promoting his campaign to
expend company money on English instead of Oriental education. The first educational
institution in which Ram Mohun Roy interested himself was not as valuable an example for
official citation, however. This was the Cal cutta Vidyalaya, founded in i817.13 Through Ram
Mohun Roy's influence, several Bengali gentlemen subscribed II3,I79 rupees (/II,318) to form a
permanent endowment. Roy then secured accreditation for the new college through one of his
British friends, Sir Hyde East, the chief justice. The new college, like Ram Mohun Roy's better-
known enterprise, the Society of Brahma, was eminently a compromise. Its founders advertised
the purpose of the college to be "the tuition of the sons of respectable Hindoos in the English
and Indian languages, and in the literature and science of Europe and Asia" (italics mine). In
i824, the Vidyalaya secured government assist ance and received the advice and
encouragement of the noted Sanskritist, H. H. Wilson, who was named "visitor." Presently,
through the study of a curriculum based upon the Newtonian enlightenment of the eighteenth
cen tury, the Vidyalaya became the home of a new Hindu rationalism which scoffed equally at
Hindu dharma and at Christian dogma. In I830, a deputa tion of Hindu parents lodged a protest
against one of the college's more out spoken liberal professors.14 In I833 evangelical Christians
experienced shock

8 Church Missionary Society (London), Nineteenth Report, 1818-I9, pp. 137-45. 9 Missionary
Register, I823, p. 43; I826, pp. 30I-48. I0 Episcopal Watchman, II (March, I828), i6. 11 See
below, pp. 846-47. 12 lMissionary Register, I820, pp. 2I6, 217, 529-32; I82I, pp. 47-48. 13
Fisher's Memoir, Sessional Papers, I83I-32, IX, App. I, p. 410. 14 Testimony of the Rev.
Alexander Duff, June 3, i853, House of Lords, Sessional Papers, i852-53, XXXII (20-28), p. 50,
par. 6099.

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8 28 Elmi er H. Cutts

in their turn when the Vidyalaya student body bought up a sizable shipment of Thomas Paine's
Rights of Man and Age of Reason. Paine's books appar ently were shipped from Boston to a
Unitarian missionary named William Adam and constituted a commercial enterprise on his
part.15 The purchase of the books by Vidyalaya students should have suggested to Bentinck,
Macaulay, and the missionaries the possibility that English-language instruc tion might lead
Indians to read books other than the Bible and tracts of "useful knowledge." Ram Mohun Roy did
much more to promote English-language instruc tion in India than help to endow the Calcutta
Vidyalaya. In I823, he sent a long memorial to Lord Amherst attacking the policy of the General
Com mittee of Public Instruction. Under the leadership of H. H. Wilson, that committee had
founded a Sanskrit College in Calcutta in I823. Roy called for the establishment of a college
devoted to European learning instead of a Sanskrit college. He questioned the usefulness of
Sanskrit studies. He argued that the lakh of rupees devoted to education of Indians which Parlia
ment had written into the East India Company's charter in i8I316 should"be laid out in employing
European gentlemen of talents and education to in struct the natives of India in mathematics,
natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, and other useful sciences that have raised them above
the in habitants of the rest of the world." 17 Lord Amherst took negative action on Roy's
proposal, but it is conceivable that Macaulay drew from Roy's letter when he wrote: "What we
spend on the Arabic and Sanscrit Colleges is not merely a dead loss to the cause of truth. It is
bounty money paid to raise up champions of error."18 Like Mill, Ram Mohun Roy appeared in
I83I before a parliamentary committee in England studying the renewal of the company's
charter. While giving testi mony on the question of free European emigration to India, Roy
expressed the opinion that English emigration should be unrestricted since English settlers in
India "from motives of benevolence, public spirit, and fellow feel ing toward their native
neighbours, would establish schools and other semi naries of education for the cultivation of the
English language throughout the country, and for the diffusion of a knowledge of European arts
and sciences." 19

15 Missionary Register, 1834, p. I83. '6East India Comrpany Charter Act of 1813, Act 53
George III, c. s55, sections 42, 43, 49-5.4, Statutes at Large, V, 368-70. 17 C. E. Trevelyan, p.
66. 18TSharp, p. 114. 19 Testimony of Ram Mohun Roy, Sessional Papers, 1831-32, VIII, App.
V, P. 34I.

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The Background of Macaulay's Minute 829

II

Lord William Bentinck, however, needed no prompting from European ized Hindus or British
utilitarians in inaugurating his English-language educational policy in I835. As governor of
Madras in i8o6, Bentinck had approved a plan for free English schools in the Madras
presidency, pre sented to him by a missionary named Kerr of the London Missionary Society.20
Bentinck's recall from India in the same year, after the outbreak of the Vellore Mutiny,2'
prevented this plan's operation. His recall evidently made no change in the man since in military
service in Sicily against Napoleon, Bentinck remained "a man of a violent and haughty nature,
imbued with English prejudice and regarding the English constitution as the salvation of the
human race,"22 according to Sicilian commentators. Under such circumstances, when he
received his appointment as governor general in I828, one could expect Bentinck to resume on
an India-wide scale the career that the Vellore Mutiny had cut short in the Madras presidency.
Regardless of the advice of experienced company servants, he flouted Hindu prejudice and
abolished sati (suttee), and made English instead of Persian the official language of the
government of Bengal. As an economy measure he hired more Indians at low salaries and less
Englishmen at high salaries to operate the Indian civil service.23 These two policies combined
made English-language instruction virtually mandatory in government-supported institutions of
higher learning. More Indians must know English. Otherwise, either Bentinck's economy
measures or his English-language policy must fail. Bentinck's very administrative policies
obviously predisposed him to accept Macaulay's argument. Macaulay's personal interest in India
seems to date from his election in I830 to Parliament on the Whig ticket. He regularly took the
trouble to attend the debates and vote on the East India Company's charter of i833.24 He wrote
indignantly that,

A broken head at Coldbath Fields excites more debate in this House than three pitched battles
in India.... When my right honourable friend, Mr. Charles Grant,25 brought forward his important
propositions for the future government

20 Rev. C. S. John, "Indian Civilization: Being a Report of a Successful Experiment during Two
Years on That Subject in Fifteen Tamil and Five English Native Schools," Missionary Register, I
(I813), 378. 21 Vincent A. Smith, Oxford History of India (2d ed., Oxford, 1928), p. 6Io. 22
Bentinck, Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sessional Papers, I83I-32, IX, p. IO9, par. 941.
24 Acts 3 and 4 William IV, c. 85, I833, Statutes at Large, XIII, 432-47. 25 Son of Charles Grant,
Sr., author of the "Observations," etc. See n. 5 above.

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830 Elmer H. Cutts

of India, there were not as many members present as generally attend upon an ordinary
turnpike bill.26 The actual number present, when the East India Company charter passed its
third reading on July 29, I833, was only I30.2 Since Macaulay had taken the trouble to attend the
Indian charter debates from I831 to I833, it is probable that he was acquainted with the
testimony collected by the committee of the House pursuant to writing the bill. The overwhelming
majority of the witnesses argued that the British curriculum taught in the English language was
vital to the reduction in the cost of governing India, to the elevation of Indian moral and
intellectual stand ards, to the safety of British rule, and to the successful propagation of Chris
tianity in India.28 Only James Mill and the Abbeb Dubois, a French Roman Catholic missionary
of many years' experience in India, doubted this majority conviction. Mill's testimony has been
mentioned. Dubois flatly stated that in his belief India could never be converted to Christianity
either by teaching Indians English or by any other means.29 Parliament, nevertheless, duly
wrote the majority viewpoint into law, so that the charter, as passed, indorsed Bentinck's
economy policy by opening the way in theory for any Indian to hold any office in the government
of British India. Other provisions raised the bishop of Calcutta to the rank of metropolitan of India
and gave the governor general discretionary power to allocate government funds to Protestant
sects for educating the Indian people and for conducting public worship in India."0 A further
clause created the new office of law commissioner in the govern ment of Bengal. Macaulay's
appointment as first law commissioner and member of the supreme council of Bengal sent him
to India, where he disembarked at Madras in June, 1834. From Madras, he proceeded to the
Nilgiri Hills, where Bentinck was sojourning at the time and with whom he wished to consult prior
to entering council politics in Calcutta. Macaulay's sister, Hannah More Macaulay, who had
sailed with her brother from England to meet her fiance, Charles E. Trevelyan, a member of the
General Committee of Public Instruction, proceeded directly to Calcutta. Trevelyan was one of
the strongest advocates of the English-language education program and supporter of Bentinck
in a divided committee. In December, I834, he became Macaulay's

26 Henry Beveridge, A Comprehensive History of India (O vols., London, I862), Book VII, p.
235. 27 Hansard's Debates, 3d Series, XX, I4-50. The bill passed its third reading with 2o noes
against it. 28 Sessional Papers, I83I-32, IX, pp. 60-226, 230-60. 29 Abbe Jean Antoine Dubois,
Letters on the State of Christianity in India in Which the Conversion of the Hindus Is Considered
Impracticable (London, 1823), pp. I-2 and passim. 30 Hansard, 3d Ser., XX, 50. These
provisions passed with only eight noes against them.

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Tlhe Background of Macaulay's Minute 831

brother-in-law, on which occasion Macaulay enthusiastically wrote, "I can truly say that if I had
to search India for a husband for her, I could have found no man to whom I could with equal
confidence have intrusted her happiness."31 It is obvious that Macaulay's personal relationships
with Trevelyan, had there been no other factors involved, predisposed the noted historian toward
using his influence to promote the program of his new brother-in-law. Bentinck's appointment of
Macaulay to be president of the General Committee of Public Instruction is indication of the
governor general's satisfaction with Macaulay's educational views as discussed between the two
men in the Nilgiri Hills, and Macaulay's appointment, of course, strengthened the hand of the
English-language section of the committee, which, prior to i835, had been dominated by
advocates of a classical Indian curriculum for Indians. As Macaulay put it:

What then shall that language be? One-half of the committee maintain that it should be the
English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems
to me to be-which language is best worth knowing. I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or
Arabic....32

III This was the immediate background and these were the enviroinmental factors which
surrounded Macaulay when he wrote his "Minute on Educa tion." Yet another passage from that
document will take us back to an environmental factor which not only helped to mold Macaulay's
whole personality but which had done much to create the intellectual and emotional quality of
the generation of Englishmen of which Macaulay was one of the notable members: "It is
confessed that a language is barren of useful knowledge. We are to teach false history, false
astronomy, false medicine, because we find them in company with a false religion."33 This
single refer ence to "false religion" reflects Macaulay's family, school, and even political
associations during the first thirty-five years of his life. He was reared in Clapham, one of the two
strongest Anglican evangelical centers in England. His father, Zachary Macaulay, was a close
associate of William Wilberforce and Charles Grant, both noted evangelicals and residents of
Clapham. Young Macaulay continued this association and looked upon Charles Grant, Jr., as
one of his closest friends in Parliament. At Trinity College, Cam bridge, where he matriculated in
i8i8, Macaulay moved away from evan gelicalism toward utilitarianism and presently, after
completing his studies,

31 Macaulay to Mrs. Cropper, Calcutta, Dec. 7, I834, in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and
Letters of Lord Macaulay (New York, I876), I, 339. 32 Sharp, p. IO9. 331bid., p. I15. Italics mine.

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832 Elmer H. Cutts

through his articles, published in the Edinburgh Review, he became known to the world as a
champion of Wliiggism. Even though he maintained this position in the House of Commons,
where he supported the Reform Bill of I832, Macaulay's closest associates there were his
friends Charles and Robert Grant, who had introduced and fought for the evangelical clauses
contained in the East India Company's charter of I83;. Macaulay had given these friends his
support in this effort. The Grant family and Macaulay's association with it not only help to explain
Macaulay's reference to "false religion" in his minute but are basic as well to an understanding of
the origin of the entire quarrel over British educational policy in India which came to a head in
I835. From I780 to 1835, the British government in India had followed the educational policy
inaugurated by Warren Hastings. Hastings maintained that the East India Company's
government ought to do as much or more than pre-British Muslim governments had done to
encourage the learned classes of Hindu and Muslim society along the lines of Eastern
scholarship. He also believed that such educational efforts would result in greater efficiency and
economy in British administration and promote Indian loyalty to British rule in India."4 The Court
of Directors had originally appointed Hastings governor of Bengal in I772 with specific orders to
eliminate the corruption existing in the British government of Bengal since its inception in I757.
To imple ment these orders Hastings regarded legal reform as supremely important. Education
was important to the success of legal reform. British law was obviously totally foreign to both
Hindus and Muslims, since neither com munity had the background for understanding a bill of
rights based on natural law, or the concept of equality before the law. The people of India must
be governed through their own Hindu and Muslim codes. To make this possible, Hastings
patronized, first from his own private purse and then from company funds, numerous Hindu
pandits and Muslim maulvies to work with Europeans who, for a sufficient salary, might be
willing to devote their lives to the study of Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit. An aspect of this
program was the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in I784. Halhed, Wilkins, Hamilton,
and especially Sir William Jones were among the early English Sanskritists in the society
patronized by Warren Hastings.35 Halhed's translation of the Code of Gentoo Laws, by which
Hastings might govern Britain's Hindu subjects was one of the society's earliest publications.
The withdrawal of government patronage of Oriental studies early in the nine

34Warren Hastings to the Court of Directors, "On the Ganges," Feb. 2I, I784, in George Robert
Gleig, Memoirs of Warren Hastings (London, I841), III, 159. 35 Asiatick Researches, I (I788), iv-
viii.

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The Background of Macaulay's Minute 833

teenth century enabled German and French scholars to overtake British scholars in Sanskrit
studies, though H. H. Wilson and H. T. Prinsep, both members of the General Committee of
Public Instruction, were outstanding English Sanskritists who continued in the I820's and I830's
to advocate Oriental education for Indians. Macaulay's minute, as a matter of fact, represented
the final and success ful attack upon the Hastings educational policy. Macaulay affected the
utmost surprise that anyone should be paid for studying, or, after they had completed their
studies, that they should expect any remunerative employ ment by which they might put their
specialized learning to work. Bentinck's action in making English the official language of the
British government of India had removed, all at once, the positions which graduates of
government supported Hindu and Muslim institutions might have expected to fill. These
graduates, supported by Prinsep, petitioned Bentinck to do something about their plight.
Macaulay's minute was their answer.

It would be bad enough to consult their [Indian] intellectual taste at the ex pense of their
intellectual health. But we are consulting neither. We are with holding from them the learning
which is palatable to them. We are forcing on them the mock learning which they nauseate. This
is proved by the fact that we are forced to pay our Arabic and Sanscrit students while those who
learn English are willing to pay us. . . . Why then is it necessary to pay people to learn Sanscrit
or Arabic? Evidently because it is universally felt that the Sanscrit and Arabic are languages the
knowledge of which does not compensate for the trouble of acquiring them. On all subjects the
state of the market is the decisive test.36 Then, after having proved to his own satisfaction the
worthlessness of Sanskrit and Arabic study, Macaulay reviewed the petition for employment
from the graduates of the government-supported Sanskrit and Arabic col leges, concluding with
these unsympathetic remarks:

These are surely the first petitioners who ever demanded compensation for having been
educated gratis, for having been supported by the public for I2 years, and then sent forth into the
world well furnished with literature and science. . . . Surely we might with advantage have saved
the cost of making these persons useless and miserable.37 The claim that the net result of the
whole Hastings plan of Indian educa tion resulted only in making Indians "useless and
miserable" had been put into writing in I793, seven years before Macaulay's birth, by Charles
Grant, Sr., friend and neighbor of Macaulay's father. Grant, in fact, had been the mainspring of
the drive for English-language education for India from its

36 Sharp, p. Ia2. Italics mine. 371bid., p. II3. Italics mine.

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834 Elmer H. Cutts

inception in the 1780's to the time of his death in 1823. Grant had made a considerable fortune
in India, like many another impecunious young man who took service with the East India
Company. In only four years' time, from I767 when, at the age of twenty-two, he sailed for India,
to I77I, when he returned to England, he was able to amass enough money to pay off all his
debts, settle dowries of L 300 on each of three sisters, woo and marry an English girl, and sail
back to India in 1772.38 Meanwhile, the reformer, Warren Hastings, became governor of
Bengal. Hastings' regulations had curtailed the "easy money" opportunities for company
servants, somewhat to Grant's disgust. Grant presently became an enemy of all Hastings' ideas
and policies, particularly his educational policy. Grant's hostility to the British Oriental education
program grew in direct ratio to Grant's conversion from a free-spending, heavy-drinking Nabob
gambler into a pious, church-attending Anglican evangelical. Grant's gambling had run him
heavily into debt. In the midst of his financial worries, death in quick succession claimed Grant's
brother John, an uncle in Scot land, and Grant's two infant daughters. All this occurred in I775.
Grant found initial solace in associating with certain English and Danish mission aries located in
the Dutch possession of Chinsura, near Calcutta. The East India Company's law banning active
missionary work in British India could not touch missionaries who managed to locate either in
Chinsura or the neighboring Danish settlement of Serampore. By I780, Grant had become so
thorough a convert that he wanted to try his own hand at some evangeli cal work. To escape
official notice, he secured a lonely post as commercial resident in Malda, a silk center on the
Bengal-Assam frontier where, for seven years, he promoted a Christian mission. During his
Malda experi ment, which brought him no converts but made his financial fortune, Grant not only
convinced himself that Hinduism was a most "monstrous" evil, but that schools were the primary
tools by which this "evil" might be eradi cated. In I775, Grant offered to assist the Danish
missionary, Christian F. Swartz, working in Tanjore, to establish schools,39 but for some
unrecorded reason, the project fell through. It was soon after this failure that Grant advanced
from the belief that education was necessary to eradicate the "evil" from India, to the position
that this education must be in the English language. With this in mind, after securing a post of
distinction in 1787 from Lord Cornwallis as fourth member of the Board of Trade, Grant
persistently wrote letters to prominent

38 Henry Morris, Life of Charles Grant (London, I904), pp. II, 22-32. 39 Grant to Swartz, Malda,
November, 1785, ibid., p. 98.

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The Background of Macaulay's Minute 835

clerical and lay evangelicals calling their attention to the urgency of his project.40 Aside from
gracious replies received from a few of his correspond ents and suitable contacts made for
future campaigns, Grant's only tangible success in this venture was the subscription by the East
India Company of 250 pagodas annually to the support of three English schools in Tanjore
under the direction of the Reverend C. F. Swartz.41 Grant did receive the satisfaction of hearing
that the Court of Directors agreed that teaching the natives English would "reconcile them to a
foreign dominion like ours,"42 but nothing more came of it. In India, however, Grant was able to
convince the Reverend David Brown, an army chaplain, and William Chambers, the brother of
Sir Robert Chambers, the chief justice, that English education would cure the "evils" of
Hinduism. The three men made a practical begin ning in this program in the schools of Chinsura
which Grant had saved from the money lenders by advancing / io,ooo of his own money to pay
off debts. Then, with Brown and Chambers, he served as trustee to maintain the schools in
behalf of the S.P.C.K. and to see to it that they taught reading, arithmetic, and Christianity to
Bengali, Armenian, Portuguese, and English boys through the medium of the English
language.43 Grant's enthusiasm mounted with news received in I788 from the S.P.C.K. stating
that the East India Company planned to establish English-language schools in each of the chief
cities under the company's jurisdiction.44

IV

Grant entered upon the second phase of his agitation for English educa tion for India when he
returned to England in 1790, upon the expiration of his term of office in the Calcutta Board of
Trade. For the next twenty-three years, to I8I3, he worked to open India to free missionary
activity. He selected Clapham as his place of residence and soon won over his evangeli cal
neighbors, Simeon, the Venns, the Thorntons, and William Wilberforce, as allies. Then, with
these neighbors to assist him, Grant moved to carry the fight to Parliament to rescind the
company's anti-missionary regulations and overthrow the Hastings educational policy. To this
end, Grant prepared his primary literary work, entitled "Observations on the State of Society
among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to Morals,

40Ibid., p. i o6. 41 Dispatch of the Court of Directors, Feb. I6, 1778, in Sharp, p. 4. 42 Morris, p.
1 12. 43 Ibid., p. 94; W. 0. B. Allen and Edmund McClure, Two Hundred Years: The History of
the S.P.C.K. (London, I898), p. 276; "The First Missionary to Bengal," Calcutta Review, VII
(I847), 175, 153. 44 Morris, p. I22.
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836 Elmer H. Cutts

and on the Means of Improving It," a document never published for general reading, which
remained, prior to Macaulay's minute, the foremost disqui sition upon the virtues of English-
language education for the Indian people. The "Observations" was published in full text among
the parliamentary papers relating to both the East India Company charters of I8I3 and I833,45
and since Macaulay took an interest in the Charter of I833, and since this document was written
by the father of Macaulay's "honoured friend in Parliament," it is reasonable to suppose that
Macaulay read it. Like most eighteenth-century middle-class Englishmen, Grant was a thorough
environmentalist. Change the environment and you change the man. Indian environment was all
bad because it was based on Hinduism, a "false religion." Hindu laws set up no absolute
standard of right and wrong. In twentieth-century parlance, Hindu law as well as Hindu society
was relativistic. Hence, Hindus were the most depraved people in the world. They were
completely selfishi, servile, brutal, and unpatriotic. Hindu mar riage customs robbed Hindus of all
paternal, maternal, connubial, and filial love. Women were everywhere degraded. Prostitution
was honored. All Hindus were unabashed liars.46 In his zeal for the cause, it is fairly clear that
Grant himself transgressed the literal truth in his "Observations," unless Sir Thomas Munro, a
highly placed East India Company official, was also an "unabashed liar," since Munro testified in
I8I2 before a committee of the House of Commons that:

If ... the general practice of hospitality and charity amongst each other; and above all, a
treatment of the female sex, full of confidence, respect and delicacy, are among the signs which
denote a civilized people, then the Hindoos are not inferior to the natives of Europe.... It would
be no slight praise to the women of any nation, not even to the ladies of England, to have it said,
that the correctness of their conduct was not inferior to that of the Brahmin women and the
Hindoo women of the higher castes.47 Grant, on the other hand, inquired and asseverated, "Are
we forever to preserve all the enormities of the Hindu system? . . . The true cure of darkness is
the introduction of light." Teach the Hindus and their faults will be eradicated. "There are two
ways of making this contribution, the one is by the medium of the languages of these countries,
and the other is by our own." The company, said Grant, had made a great mistake in "sub
mitting to employ the unknown jargon of a conquered people."48 Out of self-respect, the
companiy shotuld immediately establish in India "places of

45 See n. 5 above. 4 Sessional Papers, 1812-13, X, pt. iV, PP. 27-30. 47 Ibid., VII (i22), pp. I3I,
i69. Italics mine. 48 Ibid., X, 76, 78. Italics mine.

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The Background of Macaulay's Minute 837

gratuitous instruction in reading and writing English," and make India into an English-speaking,
and English-loving, country. English-language instruction in the study of Newtonian science
would presently eradicate the gross superstitions of Hinduism. Into the religious vacuum thus
created, it would be easy to insert Christianity, since Indians, having learned English, would
automatically read the Bible. Hindus, who under Hinduism suffered from social conditions
incomparably inferior to the social conditions of the "worst parts of Europe,"49 would begin to
enjoy the social conditions of the best part of Europe, namely, England, notwithstanding its
pauperized masses, corrupt politics of the rotten- borough, grisly code of penal laws, borough
tyrants and seat sellers, slave trade, anid child labor. Armed with ammunition contained in his
"Observations" and with the help of William Wilberforce, Grant made his first assault on
Parliament as the debates on the East India Company charter of I793 got under way.
Evangelical fervor had not deeply penetrated the English ruling classes on the eve of England's
war with the French Revolution, which explains the term "pious clauses" which greeted Grant's
proposals. "The promotion of the interest and happiness of the natives of British India by
empowering the Court of Directors to send out, from time to time, a sufficient number of fit and
proper persons, to act as schoolmasters, missionaries, or other wise . . ." 50 survived only two
readings. Evangelical reports maintained that the East India Company's Court of Proprietors
lobbied against these educational and religious clauses to save salary costs for extra chaplains,
and to save military expenses that would result from insurrections that might arise from
missionary tampering with Hinduism and Mohammedanism.5" The loss of the "pious clauses" in
I793 delayed their enactment for the next twenty years, but in those two decades world events
worked in Grant's favor. The Charter of I793 coincided in point of time with the entire British war
effort against the French Revolution and its principles and against Napoleon. The fear
engendered by almost twenty continuous years of war when England's empire, if not her
existence, often seemed to hang in the balance, had brought a mild evangelical conversion to
England's upper and middle classes. Instead of only one "saint" in Parliament, William Wilber
force, there was in I8I3 a sizable bloc of "saints," including both Charles Grant and his son,
Charles Junior.52 The senior Grant sat for the Scottish

49 Ibid., X, 29-30. 50 John William Kaye, Christianity in India (London, I859), pp. 5I8-I9. Italics
mine. 51 John Clark Marshman, The Life and Times of Carey, Marshman, and Ward (London,
I859), I, 49. 52 Morris, p. 330.

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838 Elmer H. Cutts

pocket borough of Inverness-shire, where, in I802, he won his first election with fifteen votes as
against eleven for his nearest opponent.53 The growth of evangelical sentiment in English upper
and middle classes further dis posed this section of the population to favor evangelical and
humanitarian legislation. The successful fight to abolish the slave trade in I806-i807 had united
evangelical forces for future political battles. The conversion of the upper and middle classes
had also stimulated the rise and growth of numer ous missionary societies whose aspirations to
spread the Gospel in India could not be realized in the face of the East India Company's
regulation prohibit ing active missionary work in that part of the British Empire. Increasing
membership in these societies could be relied upon to bring pressure to bear upon Parliament, if
it became clear that pressure on Parliament could remove the anti-missionary regulation. Grant,
himself, had been influential in founding in I799 the Anglican Society for Missions to Africa and
the East, known later as the Church Mis sionary Society,54 and the first school set up in India by
the society followed Grant's English-language plan. Daniel Corrie, an evangelical chaplain of the
company whose appointment to his chaplaincy had been upon Grant's recom mendation in
i8o6,55 organized this school in I813 in Agra. In that year, Corrie wrote, "Set our native school in
order by appointing six of the head boys to learn English on the new British plan."56 The "new
British plan" was the inexpensive Bell-Lancastrian system of education on a monitor basis by
which the instructor taught the lesson to the brighter boys and these in turn taught the same
lesson to the rest of the class. The Reverend Andrew Bell got his original inspiration for this plan
from watching the educational methods used in Hindu village schools.57 He then imported the
plan into England where Joseph Lancaster improved upon it. The English missionary societies
then brought the system back to India, proclaiming it to be the "new British plan.""8 Corrie's
school grew to thirty-five students in August, I813, and to eighty-one by February, I814, but then
suddenly declined to twenty-eight pupils in January, I8I5. The reason for this rise and drop in
attendance, however, had little to do with the type of instruction given to the boys. The reason
was entirely economic. Corrie wrote: "The children who are instructed in the city are chiefly the
children of poor starving people

53 Ibid ., p. 2z8o.ryRpr,Poedns 82 5Ibid., p. i9i; Church Missionary Society, 13th Anniversary

Report, Proceedings, 1812, p. iii. 55 Morris, p. 220. 56 Missionary Register, II, i9o. Italics mine.
57 Robert Southey, Life of the Reverend Andrew Bell (London, I844), I, I73-77 58 Missionary
Register, II (1814), 190.

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The Background of Macaulay's Minute 839

who live by beggary. To prevent this necessity on the part of the children, one rupee a month is
allowed to each for food."59 The free monthly rupee attracted a crowd, but, when Corrie shut off
the supply, his student body dropped by two thirds. Apparently it was as necessary to pay
Indians to study English as it was to pay them to study Sanskrit or Arabic, regardless of
Macaulay's testimony. In I817, the Church Missionary Society was operating at least sixty-six
one-room schools enrolling 2,346 boys and 21 girls. Each school averaged about forty boys and
all schools used Grant's English language program, but the magnitude of the enterprise now
demanded a central plan of education. The Burdwan plan, drafted in i8i8 for the society by
Lieutenant Steward,60 a company servant, contemplated fifteen grades of instruction beginning
with Bell's sand table for writing and erasing letters and figures in the sand and ending with
purely English-language instruction. In the first ten grades, the Indian children learned how to
read and write the Roman alphabet and how to make syllables. In the eleventh grade they
worked up from syllables to words and short easy sentences. In the twelfth grade they learned to
memorize and write down "select moral sentences." In the last three grades they read from
printed books published by the Calcutta School Book Society,6' such as A Compendious History
of Eng land; Selections from the Beauties of History; and Scientific Dialogues. In I8I9, following
the Burdwan model, the Church Missionary Society issued a "General Plan for Indian
Schools,"62 and in i 823, Mr. Perowne, the mis sionary in charge of the Burdwan schools,
expressed the hope in words almost identical with those used later by Macaulay in his minute,
that the schools would soon accomplish their purpose which was "to form a body of well
instructed labourers, competent by their proficiency in English to act as Teachers, Translators,
and Compilers of useful works for the masses of the people."" The educational program of the
Church Missionary Society thus conformed with Grant's ideas. Other large missionary societies,
like the Baptist Missionary Society founded in 1792, and the London Missionary Society founded
in 1795, also stressed the use of English in educating Indians, though the Baptists were more
inclined than the others toward translating the Bible into the native languages. Until I8I3,
however, the company's regulation prohibiting missionary work in British India still stood. Only
the Baptists had dared to disregard

59 Ibid., II, 233; III (1815), 64; Church Missionary Society, i4th Report, Proceedings, I8I2 i8I5, P.
297. 60 Church Missionary Society, Report, i8i8-i8ig, App. IX, pp. 263-67. 61 Fisher's Memoir,
Sessional Papers, I83I-32, IX, App. I, p. 405. 62 Missionary Register, I8I9, p. ii6. 63 Ibid., 1824,
p. 233. Italics mine.

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 840 Elner H. Cutts the ban and had sent William Carey and John Thomas to India in I792.64
These men, with help from some of Grant's friends in India, precariously operated a mission and
a school for five years on the Bengal-Assam boundary line, but the replacement of the
evangelical John Shore with Wellesley as governor general made the Baptists run to cover to
the small Danish settle ment of Serampore. There Carey with his newly arrived colleagues,
Marsh man and Ward, founded a school of translations, built their own printing press, and in the
first decades of the nineteenth century began printing Bap tist tracts, then single Gospels, then
the entire New Testament, and finally the entire Bible in Sanskrit, Bengali, Marathi, Oriya,
Hindustani, Gujerati, Panjabi, Telegu, Burmese, Persian, and even Chinese.65 Yet seclusion in
Serampore, just beyond the reach of company deportation authorities, was obviously not a
satisfactory situation to either the missionaries concerned or to the membership in the numerous
local chapters of the Baptist Mission ary Society scattered over England. Grant and Wilberforce
could obviously expect such local chapters representing all the new missionary societies to exert
pressure upon Parliament to force "pious clauses" into the Charter of I8I3. The war against
France, which promoted the growth of evangelical sentiment in England and stimulated
missionary societies, made Grant's work doubly effective. Over and above his organization of
the Church Mis sionary Society and his success in winning seats in the House of Commons for
himself and his son, Grant, in I794, had "stood for" director of the East India Company. Lacking
opposition, he was unanimously elected,66 and after spending three years in drumming up
support, Grant formally pre sented to the court his document, the "Observations."67 This placed
Grant and his Indian views on record within the governing body of the East India Company.
Also, as director, Grant could nominate men for posts in the Court of Directors and in the
general service of the East India Company. As director, Grant could also minimize the
opposition of the company's government to a new set of "pious clauses" designed for the
Charter of I8I3. If very fortunate, Grant might even convert the court into a body of men actively
favoring Christian missionary work and an English educational policy for India. Grant also used
his position in the directorate to nominate earnest evangelical young men as company
chaplains, thus strengthening

64 Periodical Accounts relative to a Society Formed among the Particular Baptists for Propa
gating the Gospel among the Heatlhen, I (I800), 7-8, I3-35. 65 Elmer H. Cutts, "Chinese Studies
in Bengal," journal of the American Oriental Society, LXII (I942), I7I-74. '6 The Royal Kalendar;
or, Complete and Correct Annual Register for England, I795, p. 226. 67 Sessional Papers, i8I2-
I3, X, pt. iV, pp. 2-3. Date of presentation was Aug. I6, 1797.

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The Background of MIacaulay's Minutte 84I the hand of the Reverend David Brown, the
chaplain with whom Grant had worked to save the Chinsura schools. Grant's first important
nomina tion was that of the Reverend Claudius Buchanan, a protege of Isaac Milner, John
Newton, and Henry Thornton, three leading English evangelicals. Buchanan sailed for India in
I797, and with Brown at once launched upon a vigorous career as a blue-law reformer by
influencing John Shore, the retiring governor general, to prohibit Sunday horse-racing and to
order church attendance at 6 A.M. every Sunday for all Christian officers and enlisted men in the
company's armed services. This order so disrupted army morale in India that a British order-in-
council revoked it, but Grant at once forwarded a new set of "moral regulations" which Shore
obligingly adopted.68 A little earlier than this, in I796, Grant interested his Clapham neighbors,
Wilberforce, Simeon, Venn, Thornton, and Babington, in a mission plan for India. On December
23, I796, Wilberforce took breakfast with Henry Dundas, president of the Board of Control, the
government agency which supervised East India Company affairs, and presented the mission
plan to him. Again at dinner the same day Wilberforce, Dundas, Grant, and some others met to
talk over the mission plan, and again, on December 26, Grant and Babington sat in with
Wilberforce and Dundas to discuss the same topic.69 By February of 1797, Wilberforce felt
sufficient progress had been made so that he could enter the statement in his diary that there
was:

considerable probability of our being permitted to send to the East Indies a cer tain number of
persons, I presume we shall want ten or twelve, for the purpose of instructing the natives in the
English language, and in the principles of Chris tianity.... When I return to town, we shall hold a
council on the business. Henry Thornton, Grant, and myself are the junto.70

Despite these preparations, Grant's plan failed to win a hearing in Parlia ment and at the same
time an effort to replace Shore with another evangeli cal named Eliot failed when Sir Arthur
Wellesley won the post.7" Chaplains Brown and Buchanan, however, were able to turn the
Wellesley appointment to good account by persuading the new governor general to establish the
College of Fort William in Calcutta for the instruction of newly arrived East India Company
servants in Indian languages and Chris tianity. Wellesley appointed Brown as provost and
Buchanan as vice-provost of the new coillege. In these capacities, the two chaplains organized a
depart

68 Hugh Pearson, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Reverend Claudius Buchanan
(Oxford, I817), pp. 101-102, 127. 69 Diary of William Wilberforce, in Robert Isaac and Samuel
Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce (5 vols., London, I838), II, i86. 70 Ibid., II, 192-93. Italics
mine. 71 Ibid., II, i 86.

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842 Elmer H. Cutts ment of translations and invited the Reverend William Carey, the Baptist
missionary, to come out from his confinement in Serampore to superintend the new department.
By I805, the College of Fort William press was printing hundreds of copies of the Gospels of the
New Testament in Marathi, Oriya, Bengali, Western Malay, and more languages for distribution
to the people of India and beyond. Brown also created the Bibliotheca Biblica, a repository for
Bibles in all languages, and Buchanan published an order in I804 that the topic at the "Annual
Disputations" would be "the advantage which the natives of this country might derive from the
translations in the vernacular tongues of books containing the principles of their respective
religions and those of the Christian faith."72 The fact that Grant was chairman of the Court of
Directors in I804 no doubt helped to stimulate this evangelical activity in India, but the
publication of Buchanan's order brought such a strong protest from "old civil servants" and
Muslim and Hindu gentlemen of Calcutta that Wellesley forbade the topic.73 This program in
Bengal along with the Vellore Mutiny of i8o6 brought on by Bentinck's encouragement of
evangelical work in the Madras presidency prompted Wellesley's successor, Minto, to dismiss
Brown and Buchanan from the staff of the College of Fort William and terminate the evangelical
work of the college. A brief storm of criticism of the evangelical aspects of Wellesley's
administration developed in England during the brief interval of liberal expression that
accompanied Fox's Ministry of All the Talents. Even so, Grant was still able to secure
appointment of three more evangelical chaplains to continue to spearhead the evangelical drive
in India pending the time that missionary activity might be legalized. The careers of two of these
three men, Corrie and Thomason, became important to Grant's educational plans beginning in
I8I3 as previously described.

V
 The post-Vellore Mutiny publications, which amounted to a chorus of "I told you so's" from
retired East India Company civil servants, represented virtually the last important opposition to
missionary activity in India seen in England until the era of Mrs. Annie Besant and George
Bernard Shaw. The principal protagonist for missionary work in India in the war of words lasting
from i8o8 to I813 was Claudius Buchanan. His antagonists included two retired East India
Company civil servants, Thomas Twining and J. Scott Waring, as well as the editorial board of
the Edinburgh Review. Buchanan,

72 Claudius Buchanan, Christian Researches (I8II), p. 239. 73 Buchanan to Major Sandys,

February, 1804, in Pearson, pp. 213-14.

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T'he Background of Macaulay's Minute 843

after losing his position with the College of Fort William, had addressed a highly vituperative
memorial to Lord Minto in which Buchanan condemned the elimination of the Bible translation
department from the college as well as Minto's action in driving the Baptist missionaries out of
Calcutta for the second time to the sanctuary of Serampore. Buchanan then escaped court
martial for disrespectful conduct toward a superior officer by sailing for England where, backed
by Grant and his Claphamite associates, he went on a speaking tour before the local chapters of
the missionary societies to reveal to members the more horrifying aspects of Hindu civilization
and the obstinacy with which the British government in India blocked every Chris tian effort to
improve Indian conditions. Buchanan published the substance of these speeches in his Christian
Researches of i8ii. The pamphlets, articles, and editorials of Twining, Scott-Waring, and the
Edinburgh Reviewv formed the rebuttal to Buchanan's speeches.74 India, these men pointed
out, was an exception to the general rule of non-Christian countries. The people of India were
passionately religious. Christian mis sionary work in India always resulted in riots and
bloodshed. The Vellore Mutiny was the supreme example. This being so, why should Christian
mis sionaries be allowed to make British rule in India unsafe? Also, argued the Edinburgh
Review-ers, was it really desirable that India be converted when none but semi-insane fanatics
of every "crack-pot" Christian sect ever went to India? Who wishes to see scrofula and atheism
cured by a single sermon in Bengal? Who wishes to see the religious hoy riding at anchor in the
Hooghly river? or shoals of jumpers [Welsh sect] exhibiting their nimble piety before the learned
Brahmins of Benares? This madness is disgusting and dangerous enough at home. Why are we
to send out little detachments of maniacs to spread over the far regions of the world the most
unjust and contemptible opinion of the Gospel? The wise and rational part of the Christian
ministry find enough to do at home to combat with passions unfavourable to human
happiness.75 Buchanan answered this "Northern Blast" from Edinburgh in i8ii with his Christian
Researches on the eve of the parliamentary hearings pursuant to the issuance of a new charter
to the East India Company in I813. The four-year controversy concerning missions had helped
Grant, Buchanan, Shore, and Wilberforce to focus the attention of the missionary society mem
74 Twining's "Letter on the Danger of Interfering in the Religious Opinions of the Natives of
India" was not available to me. A highly critical review of the "Letter" appeared in the Christian
Observer, VI, 819-25. J. Scott-Waring, "Observations on the Present State of the East India
Company," Edintburghi Review, XII (I8o8), reviewed in Christian Observer, VII, 45-69. A Bengal
Officer, Vindication of the Hindoos from the Aspersions of Claudius Buchanan, reviewed in
Christian Observer, VII, I04-30. Edinburgh Review, XII, Ix5-8i, article criticized in Chris tian
Observer, VII, 396-407. 5 Edinburgh Review, XII, 179.
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844 Elmtzer H. Cutts

bership upon1 the specific legislation into which they again initended to insert clauses legalizing
missionary and education work in India. The "saints," who had just won the fight to abolish the
slave trade, had agreed that Grant's program for India, reduced to a three-point attack upon
Indian civilization, should form their next legislative effort. The three points stated that: (I) India
must be opened to Christian missionaries; (2) India must receive an ecclesiastical establishment
of the Church of England; and (3) the East India Company must provide an educational program
to improve the moral status of the natives. Early in I812, Buchanan, Grant, Babington, Shore
(Teignmouth), Zachary Macaulay, and Wilberforce presented these points to Lord Perceval, the
Prime Minister. Perceval's assassination a few days later forced the "saints" to repeat their
maneuver with Perceval's successor, Lord Liverpool, who surprised them by offering them "A
seminary in each Presidency in India for instructing the natives for the ministry; . .. licenses for
missionaries . . . from the Board of Control . . . and . . . Bishops for India."76 Then, having
secured the Prime Minister, the "saints" opened the assault upon the House of Commons.
Between May 20 and June I2, I812, the missionary societies poured a total of 760 petitions from
boroughs and shires in every part of England, Scotland, and even Ireland into Parlia ment.77 On
June 22, Lord Castlereagh introduced a resolution stating that it was Great Britain's duty to
promote the happiness of the natives of India, to introduce "useful knowledge" among them, and
to offer legal facilities to persons desiring to go there to promote these objects.78 Wilberforce
made the principal speech. Drawing chiefly from Grant's "Observations" and Buchan an's
Christian Researches, Wilberforce eloquently described the unhappy conditions under which
Hindus lived in their present unregenerate state and the happiness in store for them when, after
Castlereagh's resolution became law, they would be able to acquire authentic learning and a
knowl edge of "true religion." The House of Commons quickly passed this reso lution by a large
majority. The Lords concurred unanimously. The com mittee hearings and floor debates in both
houses over the educational clauses repeatedly brought Grant's "Observations" to the attention
of members of Parliament. These committee hearings opened the active phase of the argu ment
between the proponents of English-language and the proponents of Indian-language education
for government-supported colleges in India. Grant, Z. Macaulay, Wilberforce, and the rest of the
"saints" urged the use

76 Pearson, p. 464. 7 A sample petition will be found in Panoplist, IX (I8I3), I89-90. This was
submitted by the London Missionary Society. 78Hansard, 3d Ser., XXVI, 827 f.; Christian
Observer, XII (May, 18I3), 407.

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The Background of Macaulay's Minute 845 of English, while Sir Thomas Munro, future governor
of the Madras presi dency and close associate of Warren Hastings in the establishment of the
rayatwarri system of land tenure in that presidency, laid the foundation in argument upon which
the Orientalists later built.

Our books alone will do little or nothing. Dry simple literature will never improve the character of
a nation. To produce this effect, it must open the road to wealth, and honour, and public
employment. Without the prospect of such a reward, no attainment in science will ever raise the
character of a people. This is true of every nation as well as India. It is true of our own. Let
Britain be subjugated by a foreign power tomorrow, let the people be excluded from all share in
the government, from public honours, from every office of high trust or emolument, and let them
in every situation be considered as unworthy of trust, and all their knowledge and all their
literature, sacred and profane, would not save them from becoming in another generation or two,
a low minded, deceitful, and dishonest race.79 Munro's argument was broader than the
immediate language controversy that later developed, but, following Munro, the Orientalists
always argued that polical liberty, economic independence, and pride in their own cultural
background were the primary essentials necessary to the enhancement of Indian happiness. No
amount of Western literature or Christianity could possibly promote this objective.

VI

The inclusion of the missionary and church provisions in the East India Company charter as
finally passed undoubtedly pleased Grant and his col leagues immensely, but Grant soon
discovered that his fight for a govern ment-supported English-language educational program
was far from won. The charter provided that the governor general might direct that one lakh of
rupees be set aside from surplus company funds, "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.
. ."80 The charter remained wholly indefinite concerning the kind of education or the language in
which such education as the governor general at his discre tion might stipulate for India. This
vagueness in the charter act of i813 made Macaulay's minute necessary twenty-two years later,
in 1835, even though the original promoters of this educational provision, namely, Grant, Shore,
Babington, Z. Macaulay, and Wilberforce, intended that this education should be a combination
of Western science and Christianity and that the 79 Sessional PaperS, 1831-32, XI (735), App.
io5, P. 467. 80 Charter Act of I 813, Act 53 Geo. III, c. 155, SCC. 43, Statttes at Lage, V, 368.

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846 Elmer H. Cutts

medium of instruction should be the English language. Yet Lords Moira and Amherst, who ruled
British India from i813 to I828, when Bentinck became governor general, did not so interpret the
educational clause in the charter, thus necessitating twenty more years of propaganda for
English education in India. For two years Grant impatiently waited for Lord Moira, Minto's
successor, to implement the educational provisions of the charter. Since Moira failed to act,
Grant used his influence in the Court of Directors to get that body to attempt to force
compliance. Moira, who was preoccupied with his Gurkha and Maratha wars, simply replied to
the court's order that in his opinion the native Indian colleges were useless and ought to be
allowed to die a natural death. He thought the missionaries might supply village schools with
"little manuals containing religious sentiments and moral maxims, "81 study of which would
accustom Indian children to think like Christians and thus lead to their easy conversion. Moira in
I8I5 also authorized his council to appropriate /6oo a year for the support of the London
Missionary Society's schools in Chinsura provided the curriculum in these schools should not
include the direct propagation of Christianity. By i8i8, there were thirty-six Chinsura schools
enrolling 3000 Indian boys, but even though the language of instruction was English, the
Chinsura schools were not colleges.82 Moira apparently never thought of establishing colleges
for Indians in which the Western curriculum would be taught in the English language. Except for
the Chinsura experiment and the continu ance of existing programs, Moira did nothing for Indian
education until i82i, when, at the request and recommendation of H. H. Wilson, a member of the
Benares Patshalla Committee appointed in I8I9, he established a large Sanskrit College in
Calcutta and appointed Wilson, as well as W. B. Martin, W. E. Bayley, and J. C. C. Sutherland to
be the committee of superin tendence.83 Except in 1814, Moira devoted no more money to
Indian educa tion than his predecessors had done.84 Moira's expenditure of company money
upon Sanskrit instead of Eng lish studies naturally infuriated the evangelicals in England as well
as the rapidly growing communities of "legal" missionaries in India. Grant, despairing of the
governor general, turned to Thomas Fanshaw Middleton,

81 Sharp, pp. 24-29. 82 Fisher's Memoir, Sessional Papers, i831-32, IX, App. I, pp. 403 if. 83
Ibid., p. 406. For Ram Mohun Roy's opposition to the S-nskrit College, see p. 828 above. 84 "An
account of all sums that have been applied to the purpose of educating the natives of India, from
the year I8I3 to the latest period to which the same can b made out; distinguishing the amount in
each year," by James C. Mclvill, Auditor India Accounts, East India House, Mar. 13, I832,
Sessional Papers, 1831-32, IX, I Public, App. I, p. 483. During the three years (i824 26) after
Moira, C92,7I5 was spent as against ?70,893 for the eleven preceding years (i813 I 823).

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The Background of Macaulay's Minute 847 the first bishop of Calcutta, to further his program.
Middleton, who had been educated for the ministry at Pembroke College, Cambridge, and who
had risen to the archdeaconship of Huntington in i8l2,85 secured his appoint ment as first bishop
of Calcutta through Bishop Tomline of Lincoln, a personal friend. He arrived in Calcutta on
November 28, I8I4. The bishop had not been in India two months before he received a long
letter from Grant on the history of Protestant missions in India and on the merits of English-
language education for Indians.8" The bishop's official comment reflected Grant's views:
"Education comprehends a great deal; more espe cially if we can induce the natives to learn
English. In learning and reading English, they will inevitably learn to think; and when the po-wer
of thinking is pretty generally diffused, the cause will be gained."87 Later in the same year,
Middleton preached a sermon in which he announced that God had not "conferred empire upon
nations merely to gratify their avarice or their ambition."88 Such justification of British
imperialism became a favorite missionary theme in India. In I820, Pearson, the superintendent
of the Chinsura schools, called for universal British rule over the Asiatic and African world
through the adoption of English-language education for the natives of both continents: "The
English language might accompany the extension of the English government, and be rendered
universal in the same short time, throughout the millions that people the banks of the Ganges,
the Canadiens, Hottentots, Negroes etc."89 A letter that Grant wrote in I8T7 to the bishop urging
action in imple menting an English education policy surpassed both Middleton and Pearson in its
expression of evangelical imperialism. Grant believed the bishop should be as an army general
leading his Christian soldiers onward into battle. "It would, as it seems to me, have been of the
highest importance if the nation and the National Church had paid an early attention to the moral
state of the many millions of benighted heathens placed by the dispensa tion of divine
Providence under British rule, particularly in British India."90 Again Middleton did not reply to
Grant, but in I8I8 he announced his plan for the foundation of Bishop's College where "English
and useful knowledge would be taught to Hindus and Muhammadans" and where Christian
youths, Indian or European, might be educated to become "preach 85 Rev. William Trollope, A
History of the Royal Fotundation of Christ's Hospital (London, i834), pp. 263, 267. 86 Grant to
Middleton, Jan. 9, i8i5, in Morris, p. 335. 87 Bishop Middleton, Bishop Hebe, S.P.C.K.
Committee of General Literature and Educa tion, "Lives of Missionaries," 3d Series, p. 23. Italics
mine. 88Ibid., p. 28. 89 Missionary Register, I 82 I, p. 53. 90 Grant to Middleton, London,
August, I8I7, in Morris, p. 336.

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848 Elmer H. Cutts

ers, catechists, and schoolmasters."9' In I820, Middleton began building the college, but died in
I822 prior to the project's completion. Grant died the next year at the age of seventy-eight,
shortly after he expressed his pleasure in learning of the appointment of the Reverend Reginald
Heber, an avowed evangelical, as second bishop of Calcutta. Daniel Corrie, one of Grant's
earlier evangelical nominees for the Indian chaplaincy, who administered the diocese of Calcutta
prior to Heber's arrival in India, vigorously pushed Bishop's College to completion, and in i824
Hindu and Muslim students enrolled in this institution to study European subjects in the English
language.92 Heber began the administration of his diocese in i823, the year in which Lord
Amherst became governor general. Both men inherited educational policies adopted by interim
incumbents in their respective offices. John Adam, who had been interim governor general93
between Moira's departure and Amherst's arrival, organized the General Committee of Public
Instruction of Bengal for the purpose of implementing the educational clauses con tained in the
charter act of I813. Adam had appointed Horace Hayman Wilson, a known Sanskritist and
champion of the Oriental educational policy, to be secretary of this committee. The committee's
president, J. H. Harington, was a charter member of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and one who,
in I8I4, had published an article advocating the government's con tinued support of Hindu and
Mohammedan schools. In the course of time, he thought, some European science and literature
might be engrafted upon these schools. He admitted that English might be taught to Indians as
an elective foreign language but that the basic languages of instruction should be those nearest
the languages commonly spoken in India.94 Of the remain ing eight members of the committee,
seven more were avowed Orientalists and only one, Holt Mackenzie, showed a mild tendency to
favor English language instruction in government-supported institutions.95 Amherst, upon his
arrival in India, ratified Adam's policy. When he ignored Ram Mohun Roy's letter urging the
government to establish an English rather than a Sanskrit college in Calcutta, this action brought
on the hue and cry among the evangelicals, Europeanized Hindu intellectuals, and even the
relatively irreligious utilitarians like James Mill against the

91 M. A. Sherring, History of Protestant Missions in India from I706 to I87I (London, 1875), p.
82. Italics mine. 92 Amelia S. Heber, Life of Reginald Heber (New York, I830), II, 97-II3, I62,
200. 93 Held office Jan. I3 to Aug. I, I 823. India Office List, 1902, p. I1$. 94 James Long, ed.
Adam's Reports on the Vernactular Edtucation izn Bengal and Bilhar (Cal cutta, i868), p. 310. 95
Sharp. p. 6o.

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The Backgrouniid of Macaulay's Minute 849

new Committee of Public Instruction that immediately preceded Macaulay's arrival in India.
Bishop Heber soon put himself at the head of these anti administration forces. Within nineteen
days of his arrival in Calcutta, he began inspecting missionary schools in Bengal hoping to
promote more English-language education and greater use of the Bell-Lancaster monitor system
of education. His pleasure at what he found is reflected in letters addressed at this time to
friends in England:

They [the people of Calcutta] send their children on Bell's system; and they seem to be fully
sensible of the advantages conferred by writing, arithmetic, and above ali by a knowledge of
English.96 The wealthy natives now affect to have their houses decorated with Corinthian pillars,
and filled with English furniture. They drive the best horses and the most dashing carriages in
Calcutta. Many of them speak English fluently and are tolerably read in English literature; and
the children of one of our friends I saw one day dressed in jackets and trowsers with round hats,
shoes, and stockings.97 I am sure they [the Hindus] ought to be encouraged and assisted as far
as possible in the disposition which they now evince, in this part of the country at least, to
acquire a knowledge of our language and laws, and to imitate our habits and example.98

With these inspections completed, Heber turned to the larger project of a complete Episcopal
visitation of his entire diocese. The diocese included all India, Ceylon, Burma, and Indonesia.
Heber chose June, a monsoon month, as the time to commence his visitation. Less than two
years later, on April 3, 1826, while he was still vigorously attempting to complete this initial
diocesan visit, the bishop died, literally from exhaustion. Heber's epitaph, still plainly readable at
St. John's Church in Trichinopoly, reads, "Be ye also ready." Heber's journal, read by thousands
of subscribers to English missionary journals, included approving pats on the back for
schoolmasters who used English and the Bell system, as well as sharp criti cism for those who
taught in their own way. Evangelical imperialism reached its highest point in Heber's sermons as
reported. At Secrole, on September 5, I824, he preached: "My brethren, it has pleased the
Almighty that the nation to which we ourselves belong is a great, a valiant and an understanding
nation; it has pleased Him to give us an empire on which the sun never sets."99 On December
12, at Cawnpore, he castigated an unfortunate schoolmaster who was not using the Bell system
and delegated Corrie to remain behind the main party to teach the unhappy man how to 96
Reginald Heber, Narratite of a lourtiney through the Upper Provinces of India from Cal cuitta to
Bombay, 1824-25 (3 vols., I828), III, 244. Italics mine. 97 Ibid., III. 252. Italics mine. 98 Bishop
Middleton, p. 157. Italics mine. 99 Ibid., p. 205. Italics mine.

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850 Elmer H. Cutts

teach,100 but he reserved his most scathing criticisms for the government supported Sanskrit
colleges at Benares and Calcutta. The government, he said, was most generous in supporting
these useless seminaries in which students wasted their time on science that knew nothing of
Galileo, Coperni cus, or Bacon, and on literature which amounted to nothing but "endless
refinements of its Grammar, Prosody, and Poetry," and on geography which enumerated six
earths and seven seas supported on the back of a huge tor toise (compare Macaulay's "seas of
treacle and seas of butter"). Heber demanded to know why the government did not support and
pay for an educational program for Hindus which would teach them "English gram mar, Hume's
History of England, the use of globes, and the principal facts and Moral Precepts of the Gospel,"
instead of "a laborious study of Sanskrit, and all the useless and worse than useless literature of
their ancestors."'101 After Heber's death, Corrie, until December, I829, again did the bus iness (f
the diocese. Bishop James reached India in I828 but died within a few weeks of his arrival, and
another year passed before Bishop Turner reached Calcutta. Turner, who died in I83I after less
than two years of serv ice, was yet able to co-ordinate existing mission schools in Calcutta and
add some new units to provide for the "educational wants of infancy, childhood, youth, and
opening manhood."''02 As a result, Calcutta by I831 boasted an infant school, a free school, a
high school, and Bishop's College for the Christian community, European and Indian.103 Turner
fully agreed with Heber and Corrie that it was "monstrous" of the Indian government to spend no
part of its educational lakh upon its native Christian subjects in India.10' After Turner's death, the
alarming mortality in bishops of Calcutta ceased with the appointment of the Reverend Daniel
Wilson to that office, since Wilson served as bishop until I833 and then as metropolitan until
I858. Bishop Wilson was a milder reformer than his predecessors, but his ordina tion sermon of
January 6, I833, followved the usual evangelical argument on Indian education:
 The Native Press and Schools for Literary Education are beginning to diffuse general
knowledge, and to lay the foundation for a historical and geographical truth: for they are
doubtless awakening a spirit of inquiry, and if this secular knowledge be conjoined with fixed
moral and religious principles, the Native

100R. Heber, II, 37-38. 101 Missionary Register, i827, p. 378. Italics mine. 102 Eyre Chatterton,
A History of the Church of England in India since the Early Days of the East India Company
(London, I924), pp. I50-54. 103 Missionary Register, I 832, pp. 202-203. 104 Ibid., pp. I79-80.
The government did support the Chinsura and other schools in which native Christians might
enroll, but gave no support to Bishop's College.

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The Background of Macaulay's Minute 85 I Mind will soon be prepared for receiving evidence
aright, and listen with humility to the proofs of Christianity.105

VII

Meanwhile, back in I828, the evangelical party scored a great victory with the appointment of
Lord William Bentinck to succeed Lord Amherst. Bentinck had already, as governor of Madras,
proved himself capable of interfering with Hindu religious customs even if it might mean mutiny.
The new appointment left only the General Committee of Public Instruc tion with its
predominately pro-Orientalist membership as the obstacle between the Anglicizing evangelicals
and their goal. Since the governor general appointed new members to this important committee,
and since it was obvious that Bentinck would appoint none but those who favored the English
program, it was only a matter of time before this obstacle also might be removed. In the interval
between I828 and I835, when Macaulay wrote his minute, Bentinck had been able to appoint
five pro-English mem bers to the committee-Messrs. Bird, Bushby, Colvin, Saunders, and Trevel
yan. The old members were Messrs. Shakespear, MacNaughten, Sutherland, J. Prinsep, and H.
T. Prinsep, all favoring the Orientalist program. Macau lay's appointment as the eleventh
member of this committee in the capacity of president thus gave him the casting vote. Yet
Bentinck was still not willing to risk the possible conversion of the new member by the
persuasive leader of the Orientalist bloc, H. T. Prinsep, a man who with fortitude had steadfastly
held his colleagues to the Hastings educational policy since the origin of the committee in I823 in
the face of virtually perpetual attack from all the forces of evangelicalism including the bishop of
Calcutta. Accord ingly, even prior to the Macaulay appointment, Bentinck commissioned Prinsep
to three years' duty in Tasmania. No sooner was Prinsep safely on the boat than the committee
passed a resolution, in I832, requiring that all students, to be eligible for scholarship aid in the
Calcutta Madrassa, a Muslim school supported by the government since the time of Warren
Hastings, must indicate their intention of studying English as well as Arabic.106 In I833, while
Prinsep was still in Tasmania, Bentinck issued an order making English the official language of
communication between the people of India and the government and between the native states
and the govern ment.107 Macaulay's appointment as president of the committee also occurred

105 Missionary Register, I833, p. 445. 106 Diary of H. T. Prinsep, in Sharp, p. I33; and minute
of H. T. Prinsep, July 9, I834, ibid., p. I03. 107 Sessional Papers, I831-32, IX, p. I09, par. 94I; p.
I3I, par. I226; p. 84, par. 703-704.

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852 Ellmer H. Ciutts

in Prinsep's abscncc, but, despite tlhese odds againist llin, Prinsep, upon his return to India,
again rallied behind him what forces he had left and presented a vigorous as well as a learned
statement of the Orientalist position in his minute, dated July 9, I834. On the basis of this minute,
the committee then divided equally and announced itself unable to advise the governor general
and council upon the future educational policy of India, except by briefly presenting the
viewpoints of both parties to the dispute.108 On February 2, 1835, Macaulay presented his
"Minute on Education" recom mending the abolition of the Arabic and Sanskrit colleges, and the
wholesale adoption of English as the language of educationl in India. HIe presenited his
document directly to Beintinck without first colnsuLlting the coilmittee. Bentinck then hastily
forwarded the minute to Prinscp, ordering him to bring it to the attention of the supreme council.
This Prinsep did, but some how the news leaked out that Bentinck was about to abolish the
Calcutta Madrassa and the Sanskrit colleges at Benares and Calcutta. T'hree petitions, each
bearing 30,000 signatures, appeared in three days' time in behalf of the threatened colleges and
this timely action saved the old institutions. Ma caulay accused Prinsep of fomenting this activity
and roundly attacked him in committee meeting, but Prinsep successfully withstood the barrage
of words and even gained time before the supreme council had time to render its final decision
to submit a note in rebuttal of Macaulay's minute, dated February I5, i835.109 Bentinck at once
forwarded Prinsep's note to Macaulay for comment. Macaulay duly annotated the document with
marginal criti cism upon which Bentinck presented it with Macaulay's minute to the supreme
council. Prinsep's argument was brilliant and by no means unconvincing. He pointed out the
inconsistent quality of Macaulay's argu ment in that Macaulay on the one hand held up Oriental
literature and science as false, ridiculous, and useless, and yet on the other hand professed to
fear that the continued study of this literature would create opposition to the reception of true
literature and science. This was similar to the trap of inconsistency into which the evangelicals
fell when they declared on the one hand that the Hindus were begging for Christian instruction
which the callous British government of India refused to give them, while on the other hand
complaining of the fact that Hindu parents regularly withdrew their children from mission schools
whenever Christianity was taught in such institutions. Prinsep's chief argument, however, was
the practical one. If Macaulay's plan were adopted, all Indians, no matter how learned, would be
reduced to the alphabet and the spelling book. The mental status of

108 Sharp, p. I04. 109 Sharp, pp. II7-30, I34.

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T'he Background of Macaulay's Minute 853

India would be lowered instead of raised. In other words, though Prinsep did not mention it, the
choice lay between the mathematics and astronomy of Aryabhata; the philosophy of Sankara
and R-am-anuja in Sanskrit litera ture as opposed to a simple textbook like Joyce's Scientific
Dialogues or a set of simple moral maxims in English. It goes without saying that the forensic
brilliance of one man could scarcely prevail over the tide of English thought habits developed for
two generations or more. Macaulay and Bentinck were creatures of this tide. Their minds were
made up for them by half a century of steady propaganda which had succeeded in justifying
imperialism in terms of the propagation of Christianity. The work of Charles Grant had further
identified English language education of Indians with both evangelical success and with the
safeguarding of British rule in India. English-speaking Indians would auto matically become
English-loving Christians. Macaulay's family background and his immediate ties vith Trevelyan in
Bengal were added factors, and Bentinck's administrative dilemma in making English the official
language while economizing by hiring Indians was important, but the main considera tion was
that Macaulay's education and recent experience in Parliament precluded his possessing an
open mind on the subject of Indian education. Prinsep's arguments fell on deaf ears. The
supreme council decided to make English the official language of instruction in government-
supported col leges. Nothing short of a twelve-year course in Arabic in the Calcutta Madrassa or
an equally long tuition in the Sanskrit College of Benares could possibly have made Macaulay
appreciate Prinsep's arguments, but, as Ma caulay boasted in his minute, he knew neither
Arabic nor Sanskrit. The heat of the controversy, unfortunately for the people of India, obscured
the fine work of Mountstuart Elphinstone, Sir Thomas Munro, and B. H. Hodgson, who, in the
Bombay and Madras presidencies and in Bengal, had evolved educational schemes which could
have advanced Indian literacy a century before Gandhi's wardha plan of education became
necessary for the accom plishment of that purpose.

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