Which one of the following was not recommended in Macaulay's 1835 Minute on Education ?

Correct — D, (d) Teaching of both Western and Oriental texts at higher levels of education. Teaching both was the Orientalist position, and Macaulay's Minute of 2 February 1835 was written to defeat it. The dispute had been running since the Charter Act of 1813 set aside a lakh of rupees a year for the revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement of the learned natives of India: the Orientalists on the Committee of Public Instruction, among them H.H. Wilson and H.T. Prinsep, wanted the money spent on Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian learning and on institutions such as the Calcutta Madrasa and the Sanskrit College at Benares, and were willing to add European science to that base. The Anglicists, led by Macaulay as law member and by Charles Trevelyan, wanted the classical Indian and Arabic learning dropped altogether. Macaulay's Minute is uncompromising on the point. It dismisses the whole of Sanskrit and Arabic literature in the notorious remark that a single shelf of a good European library was worth it all, argues that public money should be spent on European learning delivered through English, and proposes to create by that means 'a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect' who would in turn pass the new knowledge down to the masses — the assumption later called the downward filtration theory. What he asked for, therefore, was English as the medium, a liberal literary education on the English model, and Western learning alone at the higher levels. Lord William Bentinck's resolution of 7 March 1835 accepted the Minute and directed that government funds for education be spent on English education, ending support for the printing of oriental works and for new stipends at the oriental institutions. Option (d) states the compromise Macaulay refused, which is why it is the one thing on the list his Minute did not recommend.

Why the others are wrong

• (a)Teaching in English medium — The central recommendation of the Minute, and the one the Bentinck resolution of March 1835 carried into policy. Macaulay held that English was the language in which the useful knowledge of the world was available, that it was already the language of government and commerce in India, and that Indians would learn more from it than from any classical language of the East. Everything else in the Minute follows from this: the medium decides the syllabus, and the syllabus decides which learned class the government would fund.
• (b)‘Liberal’ literary training — Also recommended. Macaulay's model was the humane, literary education of an English gentleman — literature, history, moral philosophy, and the sciences taught as general knowledge — not technical or vocational training and not mass instruction in the vernaculars. That choice shaped Indian higher education for a century: the colleges and universities that followed turned out graduates trained for clerical and professional employment under the government rather than for industry or agriculture, and the criticism of a 'literary' education divorced from practical needs runs through every later education commission.
• (c)Teaching of Western texts alone at higher levels of education — This is the Minute's position stated plainly, and the reason it was so bitterly contested. Macaulay argued that Sanskrit and Arabic learning had nothing to offer that European learning did not offer better, and that continuing to fund it was a waste of a limited grant. The consequence was the withdrawal of support from oriental scholarship as a public enterprise. Distinguishing this option from option (d) is the whole work of the question: one describes Western texts alone, which he demanded, and the other describes Western and Oriental texts together, which he rejected.

Colonial education policy is usually taught as a sequence of five landmarks, and Macaulay's Minute is the second. The Charter Act of 1813 made the Company responsible for education for the first time by earmarking a lakh of rupees a year, but left the purpose vague enough to start a twenty-year quarrel between Orientalists, who wanted to support classical Indian learning, and Anglicists, who wanted European knowledge in English. Macaulay's Minute of 1835 and Bentinck's resolution of the same year settled it in favour of the Anglicists, adopting English as the medium of higher instruction and the downward filtration theory as the means of reaching the wider population. Wood's Despatch of 1854, often called the Magna Carta of English education in India, then built the system: a department of public instruction in each province, a graded structure from vernacular primary schools through Anglo-vernacular high schools to colleges, grants-in-aid to private institutions, teacher training, and universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, which were founded in 1857. The Hunter Commission of 1882 reviewed primary and secondary education and pressed for the transfer of primary schooling to local bodies; the Indian Universities Act of 1904 under Curzon tightened government control of the universities; and the Sadler Commission of 1917 and the Hartog Committee of 1929 continued the review. Alongside all of this ran the criticism that would matter politically — that the system produced clerks rather than skilled workers, neglected mass and vernacular education, and left the great majority illiterate — which is why national education became a demand of the Swadeshi movement and of Gandhi's basic education scheme.

Key facts

• Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education is dated 2 February 1835; he wrote it as law member of the Governor-General's Council and chairman of the Committee of Public Instruction.
• It recommended English as the medium of instruction, a liberal literary education on the English model, and the funding of Western learning alone at the higher levels.
• It rejected the Orientalist proposal to continue supporting Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian learning alongside European knowledge.
• The Minute proposed to form 'a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect', the basis of the downward filtration theory.
• Lord William Bentinck's resolution of 7 March 1835 accepted the Minute and directed that government education funds be applied to English education.
• The controversy began with the Charter Act of 1813, which set aside one lakh of rupees a year for education and left its purpose undefined.
• The Orientalists included H.H. Wilson and H.T. Prinsep, and their institutions included the Calcutta Madrasa founded in 1781 and the Sanskrit College at Benares founded in 1791.
• Wood's Despatch of 1854, called the Magna Carta of English education in India, created departments of public instruction, a graded school system, grants-in-aid and the universities established at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857.

Common traps

• Failing to separate 'Western texts alone', which Macaulay demanded, from 'Western and Oriental texts together', which he refused. Both are printed here.
• Dating the Minute to Bentinck's resolution or the reverse; the Minute is February 1835 and the resolution March 1835.
• Crediting Macaulay with founding the university system. That came with Wood's Despatch of 1854 and the universities of 1857.
• Assuming the Minute abolished the oriental institutions outright; the resolution stopped new funding and printing but existing colleges continued.
• Reading 'liberal' as political liberalism. In this context it means a general literary and humane education as opposed to a technical or vocational one.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which one of the following is known as the Magna Carta of English education in India ?

  • (a)Macaulay's Minute of 1835
  • (b)Wood's Despatch of 1854
  • (c)The Hunter Commission Report of 1882
  • (d)The Indian Universities Act of 1904

  Answer(b) Wood's Despatch of 1854

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The theory that English education given to a small class would gradually spread to the masses through them is known as :

  • (a)The downward filtration theory
  • (b)The drain theory
  • (c)The theory of paramountcy
  • (d)The subsidiary alliance

  Answer(a) The downward filtration theory