Minute by the Hon'ble T. B. Macaulay,
Dated the 2nd February
1835.
[1] As it seems to be the
opinion of some of the gentlemen who compose the Committee of Public Instruction
that the course which they have hitherto pursued was strictly prescribed
by the British Parliament in 1813 and as, if that opinion be correct, a
legislative act will be necessary to warrant a change, I have thought it
right to refrain from taking any part in the preparation of the adverse
statements which are.now before us, and to reserve what I had to say on
the subject till it should come before me as a Member of the Council of
India.
[2] It does not appear to
me that the Act of Parliament can by any art of contraction be made to
bear the meaning which has been assigned to it. It contains nothing about
the particular languages or sciences which are to be studied. A sum is
set apart "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."
It is argued, or rather taken for granted, that by literature the Parliament
can have meant only Arabic and Sanscrit literature; that they never would
have given the honourable appellation of "a learned native" to a native
who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, and
the physics of Newton; but that they meant to designate by that name only
such persons as might have studied in the sacred books of the Hindoos all
the uses of cusa-grass, and all the mysteries of absorption into the Deity.
This does not appear to be a very satisfactory interpretation. To take
a parallel case: Suppose that the Pacha of Egypt, a country once superior
in knowledge to the nations of Europe, but now sunk far below them, were
to appropriate a sum for the purpose "of reviving and promoting literature,
and encouraging learned natives of Egypt," would any body infer that he
meant the youth of his Pachalik to give years to the study of hieroglyphics,
to search into all the doctrines disguised under the fable of Osiris, and
to ascertain with all possible accuracy the ritual with which cats and
onions were anciently adored? Would he be justly charged with inconsistency
if, instead of employing his young subjects in deciphering obelisks, he
were to order them to be instructed in the English and French languages,
and in all the sciences to which those languages are the chief keys?
[3] The words on which the
supporters of the old system rely do not bear them out, and other words
follow which seem to be quite decisive on the other side. This lakh of
rupees is set apart not only for "reviving literature in India," the phrase
on which their whole interpretation is founded, but also "for the introduction
and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the
British territories"-- words which are alone sufficient to authorize all
the changes for which I contend.
[4] If the Council agree
in my construction no legislative act will be necessary. If they differ
from me, I will propose a short act rescinding that I clause of the Charter
of 1813 from which the difficulty arises.
[5] The argument which I
have been considering affects only the form of proceeding. But the admirers
of the oriental system of education have used another argument, which,
if we admit it to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceive
that the public faith is pledged to the present system, and that to alter
the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been spent in
encouraging the study of Arabic and Sanscrit would be downright spoliation.
It is not easy to understand by what process of reasoning they can have
arrived at this conclusion. The grants which are made from the public purse
for the encouragement of literature differ in no respect from the grants
which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed
utility. We found a sanitarium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy.
Do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanitarium there if the result
should not answer our expectations? We commence the erection of a pier.
Is it a violation of the public faith to stop the works, if we afterwards
see reason to believe that the building will be useless? The rights of
property are undoubtedly sacred. But nothing endangers those rights so
much as the practice, now unhappily too common, of attributing them to
things to which they do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses the
sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of property
the unpopularity and the fragility of abuses. If the Government has given
to any person a formal assurance-- nay, if the Government has excited in
any person's mind a reasonable expectation-- that he shall receive a certain
income as a teacher or a learner of Sanscrit or Arabic, I would respect
that person's pecuniary interests. I would rather err on the side of liberality
to individuals than suffer the public faith to be called in question. But
to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and
certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those
sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning. There is not a single
word in any public instrument from which it can be inferred that the Indian
Government ever intended to give any pledge on this subject, or ever considered
the destination of these funds as unalterably fixed. But, had it been otherwise,
I should have denied the competence of our predecessors to bind us by any
pledge on such a subject. Suppose that a Government had in the last century
enacted in the most solemn manner that all its subjects should, to the
end of time, be inoculated for the small-pox, would that Government be
bound to persist in the practice after Jenner's discovery? These promises
of which nobody claims the performance, and from which nobody can grant
a release, these vested rights which vest in nobody, this property without
proprietors, this robbery which makes nobody poorer, may be comprehended
by persons of higher faculties than mine. I consider this plea merely as
a set form of words, regularly used both in England and in India, in defence
of every abuse for which no other plea can be set up.
[6] I hold this lakh of rupees
to be quite at the disposal of the Governor-General in Council for the
purpose of promoting learning in India in any way which may be thought
most advisable. I hold his Lordship to be quite as free to direct that
it shall no longer be employed in encouraging Arabic and Sanscrit, as he
is to direct that the reward for killing tigers in Mysore shall be diminished,
or that no more public money shall be expended on the chaunting at the
cathedral.
[7] We now come to the gist
of the matter. We have a fund to be employed as Government shall direct
for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country. The simple
question is, what is the most useful way of employing it?
[8] All parties seem to be
agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives
of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information,
and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some
other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into
them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual
improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing
higher studies can at present be affected only by means of some language
not vernacular amongst them.
[9] 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 the best worth knowing?
[10] I have no knowledge
of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct
estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated
Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with
men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite
ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists
themselves. 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. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature
is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support
the oriental plan of education.
[11] It will hardly be disputed,
I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers
stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any orientalist
who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared
to that of the great European nations. 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. It is,
I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which
has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language
is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments
used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or
moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the
same.
[12] How then stands the
case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by
means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language.
The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate.
It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds
with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has
bequeathed to us, --with models of every species of eloquence, --with historical
composition, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed,
and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction,
have never been equaled-- with just and lively representations of human
life and human nature, --with the most profound speculations on metaphysics,
morals, government, jurisprudence, trade, --with full and correct information
respecting every experimental science which tends to preserve the health,
to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows
that language 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 safely be said that the literature now extant
in that language is of greater value than all the literature which three
hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together.
Nor is this all. In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling
class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government.
It is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of
the East. It is the language of two great European communities which are
rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Australia, --communities
which are every year becoming more important and more closely connected
with our Indian empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature,
or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest
reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that
which would be the most useful to our native subjects.
[13] The question now before
us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, 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.
[14] We are not without experience
to guide us. History furnishes several analogous cases, and they all teach
the same lesson. There are, in modern times, to go no further, two memorable
instances of a great impulse given to the mind of a whole society, of prejudices
overthrown, of knowledge diffused, of taste purified, of arts and sciences
planted in countries which had recently been ignorant and barbarous.
[15] The first instance to
which I refer is the great revival of letters among the Western nations
at the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century.
At that time almost everything that was worth reading was contained in
the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Had our ancestors acted
as the Committee of Public Instruction has hitherto noted, had they neglected
the language of Thucydides and Plato, and the language of Cicero and Tacitus,
had they confined their attention to the old dialects of our own island,
had they printed nothing and taught nothing at the universities but chronicles
in Anglo-Saxon and romances in Norman French, --would England ever have
been what she now is? What the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries
of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people of India. The literature
of England is now more valuable than that of classical antiquity. I doubt
whether the Sanscrit literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and
Norman progenitors. In some departments-- in history for example-- I am
certain that it is much less so.
[16] Another instance may
be said to be still before our eyes. Within the last hundred and twenty
years, a nation which had previously been in a state as barbarous as that
in which our ancestors were before the Crusades has gradually emerged from
the ignorance in which it was sunk, and has taken its place among civilized
communities. I speak of Russia. There is now in that country a large educated
class abounding with persons fit to serve the State in the highest functions,
and in nowise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best
circles of Paris and London. There is reason to hope that this vast empire
which, in the time of our grandfathers, was probably behind the Punjab,
may in the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on France and Britain
in the career of improvement. And how was this change effected? Not by
flattering national prejudices; not by feeding the mind of the young Muscovite
with the old women's stories which his rude fathers had believed; not by
filling his head with lying legends about St. Nicholas; not by encouraging
him to study the great question, whether the world was or not created on
the 13th of September; not by calling him "a learned native" when he had
mastered all these points of knowledge; but by teaching him those foreign
languages in which the greatest mass of information had been laid up, and
thus putting all that information within his reach. The languages of western
Europe civilised Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo
what they have done for the Tartar.
[17] And what are the arguments
against that course which seems to be alike recommended by theory and by
experience? It is said that we ought to secure the co-operation of the
native public, and that we can do this only by teaching Sanscrit and Arabic.
[18] I can by no means admit
that, when a nation of high intellectual attainments undertakes to superintend
the education of a nation comparatively ignorant, the learners are absolutely
to prescribe the course which is to be taken by the teachers. It is not
necessary however to say anything on this subject. For it is proved by
unanswerable evidence, that we are not at present securing the co-operation
of the natives. It would be bad enough to consult their intellectual taste
at the expense of their intellectual health. But we are consulting neither.
We are withholding from them the learning which is palatable to them. We
are forcing on them the mock learning which they nauseate.
[19] 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. All the declamations in the world
about the love and reverence of the natives for their sacred dialects will
never, in the mind of any impartial person, outweigh this undisputed fact,
that we cannot find in all our vast empire a single student who will let
us teach him those dialects, unless we will pay him.
[20] I have now before me
the accounts of the Mudrassa for one month, the month of December, 1833.
The Arabic students appear to have been seventy-seven in number. All receive
stipends from the public. The whole amount paid to them is above 500 rupees
a month. On the other side of the account stands the following item:
Deduct amount realized from
the out-students of English for the months of May, June, and July last--
103 rupees.
[21] I have been told that
it is merely from want of local experience that I am surprised at these
phenomena, and that it is not the fashion for students in India to study
at their own charges. This only confirms me in my opinions. Nothing is
more certain than that it never can in any part of the world be necessary
to pay men for doing what they think pleasant or profitable. India is no
exception to this rule. The people of India do not require to be paid for
eating rice when they are hungry, or for wearing woollen cloth in the cold
season. To come nearer to the case before us: --The children who learn
their letters and a little elementary arithmetic from the village schoolmaster
are not paid by him. He is paid for teaching them. Why then is it necessary
to pay people to learn Sanscrit and 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 such subjects
the state of the market is the detective test.
[22] Other evidence is not
wanting, if other evidence were required. A petition was presented last
year to the committee by several ex-students of the Sanscrit College. The
petitioners stated that they had studied in the college ten or twelve years,
that they had made themselves acquainted with Hindoo literature and science,
that they had received certificates of proficiency. And what is the fruit
of all this? "Notwithstanding such testimonials," they say, "we have but
little prospect of bettering our condition without the kind assistance
of your honourable committee, the indifference with which we are generally
looked upon by our countrymen leaving no hope of encouragement and assistance
from them." They therefore beg that they may be recommended to the Governor-General
for places under the Government-- not places of high dignity or emolument,
but such as may just enable them to exist. "We want means," they say, "for
a decent living, and for our progressive improvement, which, however, we
cannot obtain without the assistance of Government, by whom we have been
educated and maintained from childhood." They conclude by representing
very pathetically that they are sure that it was never the intention of
Government, after behaving so liberally to them during their education,
to abandon them to destitution and neglect.
[23] I have been used to
see petitions to Government for compensation. All those petitions, even
the most unreasonable of them, proceeded on the supposition that some loss
had been sustained, that some wrong had been inflicted. These are surely
the first petitioners who ever demanded compensation for having been educated
gratis, for having been supported by the public during twelve years, and
then sent forth into the world well furnished with literature and science.
They represent their education as an injury which gives them a claim on
the Government for redress, as an injury for which the stipends paid to
them during the infliction were a very inadequate compensation. And I doubt
not that they are in the right. They have wasted the best years of life
in learning what procures for them neither bread nor respect. Surely we
might with advantage have saved the cost of making these persons useless
and miserable. Surely, men may be brought up to be burdens to the public
and objects of contempt to their neighbours at a somewhat smaller charge
to the State. But such is our policy. We do not even stand neuter in the
contest between truth and falsehood. We are not content to leave the natives
to the influence of their own hereditary prejudices. To the natural difficulties
which obstruct the progress of sound science in the East, we add great
difficulties of our own making. Bounties and premiums, such as ought not
to be given even for the propagation of truth, we lavish on false texts
and false philosophy.
[24] By acting thus we create
the very evil which we fear. We are making that opposition which we do
not find. 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. It goes to form a nest not merely of helpless placehunters
but of bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to raise a cry
against every useful scheme of education. If there should be any opposition
among the natives to the change which I recommend, that opposition will
be the effect of our own system. It will be headed by persons supported
by our stipends and trained in our colleges. The longer we persevere in
our present course, the more formidable will that opposition be. It will
be every year reinforced by recruits whom we are paying. From the native
society, left to itself, we have no difficulties to apprehend. All the
murmuring will come from that oriental interest which we have, by artificial
means, called into being and nursed into strength.
[25] There is yet another
fact which is alone sufficient to prove that the feeling of the native
public, when left to itself, is not such as the supporters of the old system
represent it to be. The committee have thought fit to lay out above a lakh
of rupees in printing Arabic and Sanscrit books. Those books find no purchasers.
It is very rarely that a single copy is disposed of. Twenty-three thousand
volumes, most of them folios and quartos, fill the libraries or rather
the lumber-rooms of this body. The committee contrive to get rid of some
portion of their vast stock of oriental literature by giving books away.
But they cannot give so fast as they print. About twenty thousand rupees
a year are spent in adding fresh masses of waste paper to a hoard which,
one should think, is already sufficiently ample. During the last three
years about sixty thousand rupees have been expended in this manner. The
sale of Arabic and Sanscrit books during those three years has not yielded
quite one thousand rupees. In the meantime, the School Book Society is
selling seven or eight thousand English volumes every year, and not only
pays the expenses of printing but realizes a profit of twenty per cent.
on its outlay.
[30] The fact that the Hindoo
law is to be learned chiefly from Sanscrit books, and the Mahometan law
from Arabic books, has been much insisted on, but seems not to bear at
all on the question. We are commanded by Parliament to ascertain and digest
the laws of India. The assistance of a Law Commission has been given to
us for that purpose. As soon as the Code is promulgated the Shasters and
the Hedaya will be useless to a moonsiff or a Sudder Ameen. I hope and
trust that, before the boys who are now entering at the Mudrassa and the
Sanscrit College have completed their studies, this great work will be
finished. It would be manifestly absurd to educate the rising generation
with a view to a state of things which we mean to alter before they reach
manhood.
[31] But there is yet another
argument which seems even more untenable. It is said that the Sanscrit
and the Arabic are the languages in which the sacred books of a hundred
millions of people are written, and that they are on that account entitled
to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the duty of the British Government
in India to be not only tolerant but neutral on all religious questions.
But to encourage the study of a literature, admitted to be of small intrinsic
value, only because that literature inculcated the most serious errors
on the most important subjects, is a course hardly reconcilable with reason,
with morality, or even with that very neutrality which ought, as we all
agree, to be sacredly preserved. It is confined that a language is barren
of useful knowledge. We are to teach it because it is fruitful of monstrous
superstitions. We are to teach false history, false astronomy, false medicine,
because we find them in company with a false religion. We abstain, and
I trust shall always abstain, from giving any public encouragement to those
who are engaged in the work of converting the natives to Christianity.
And while we act thus, can we reasonably or decently bribe men, out of
the revenues of the State, to waste their youth in learning how they are
to purify themselves after touching an ass or what texts of the Vedas they
are to repeat to expiate the crime of killing a goat?
[32] It is taken for granted
by the advocates of oriental learning that no native of this country can
possibly attain more than a mere smattering of English. They do not attempt
to prove this. But they perpetually insinuate it. They designate the education
which their opponents recommend as a mere spelling-book education. They
assume it as undeniable that the question is between a profound knowledge
of Hindoo and Arabian literature and science on the one side, and superficial
knowledge of the rudiments of English on the other. This is not merely
an assumption, but an assumption contrary to all reason and experience.
We know that foreigners of all nations do learn our language sufficiently
to have access to all the most abstruse knowledge which it contains sufficiently
to relish even the more delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers.
There are in this very town natives who are quite competent to discuss
political or scientific questions with fluency and precision in the English
language. I have heard the very question on which I am now writing discussed
by native gentlemen with a liberality and an intelligence which would do
credit to any member of the Committee of Public Instruction. Indeed it
is unusual to find, even in the literary circles of the Continent, any
foreigner who can express himself in English with so much facility and
correctness as we find in many Hindoos. Nobody, I suppose, will contend
that English is so difficult to a Hindoo as Greek to an Englishman. Yet
an intelligent English youth, in a much smaller number of years than our
unfortunate pupils pass at the Sanscrit College, becomes able to read,
to enjoy, and even to imitate not unhappily the compositions of the best
Greek authors. Less than half the time which enables an English youth to
read Herodotus and Sophocles ought to enable a Hindoo to read Hume and
Milton.
[33] To sum up what I have
said. I think it 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 Sanscrit or Arabic, that the natives are desirous to be taught English,
and are not desirous to be taught Sanscrit or Arabic, that neither as the
languages of law nor as the languages of religion have the Sanscrit and
Arabic any peculiar claim to our encouragement, 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.
[34] 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 tastes,
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.
[35] I would strictly respect
all existing interests. I would deal even generously with all individuals
who have had fair reason to expect a pecuniary provision. But I would strike
at the root of the bad system which has hitherto been fostered by us. I
would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books. I would abolish
the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit College at Calcutta. Benares is the great
seat of Brahminical learning; Delhi of Arabic learning. If we retain the
Sanscrit College at Bonares and the Mahometan College at Delhi we do enough
and much more than enough in my opinion, for the Eastern languages. If
the Benares and Delhi Colleges should be retained, I would at least recommend
that no stipends shall be given to any students who may hereafter repair
thither, but that the people shall be left to make their own choice between
the rival systems of education without being bribed by us to learn what
they have no desire to know. The funds which would thus be placed at our
disposal would enable us to give larger encouragement to the Hindoo College
at Calcutta, and establish in the principal cities throughout the Presidencies
of Fort William and Agra schools in which the English language might be
well and thoroughly taught.
[36] If the decision of His
Lordship in Council should be such as I anticipate, I shall enter on the
performance of my duties with the greatest zeal and alacrity. If, on the
other hand, it be the opinion of the Government that the present system
ought to remain unchanged, I beg that I may be permitted to retire from
the chair of the Committee. I feel that I could not be of the smallest
use there. I feel also that I should be lending my countenance to what
I firmly believe to be a mere delusion. I believe that the present system
tends not to accelerate the progress of truth but to delay the natural
death of expiring errors. I conceive that we have at present no right to
the respectable name of a Board of Public Instruction. We are a Board for
wasting the public money, for printing books which are of less value than
the paper on which they are printed was while it was blank-- for giving
artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd
physics, absurd theology-- for raising up a breed of scholars who find
their scholarship an incumbrance and blemish, who live on the public while
they are receiving their education, and whose education is so utterly useless
to them that, when they have received it, they must either starve or live
on the public all the rest of their lives. Entertaining these opinions,
I am naturally desirous to decline all share in the responsibility of a
body which, unless it alters its whole mode of proceedings, I must consider,
not merely as useless, but as positively noxious.
T[homas] B[abington] MACAULAY
2nd February 1835.
I give my entire concurrence to the sentiments
expressed in this Minute.
W[illiam] C[avendish] BENTINCK.
Source :
Columbia