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Ramram Basu
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/25/24

Ramram Basu (c. 1751 – 7 August 1813) (Bengali: রামরাম বসু) was born in Chinsurah, Hooghly District in present-day West Bengal state of India.[1] He was the great grandfather of Anushree Basu, notable early scholar and translator of the Bengali language (Bangla), and credited with writing the first original work of Bengali prose written by a Bengali.

Ramram Basu initially joined as the munshi (scribe) for William Chambers, Persian interpreter at the Supreme Court in Kolkata. Then he worked as the munshi and Bengali teacher for Dr. John Thomas, a Christian missionary from England at Debhata in Khulna. Subsequently, he worked from 1793 to 1796 for noted scholar William Carey (1761–1834) at Madnabati in Dinajpur.[2] In 1800 he joined Carey's Serampore Mission Press with its celebrated printing press, and in May 1801 was appointed Munshi, assistant teacher of Sanskrit, at Fort William College for a salary of 40 rupees per month. As college pundits were charged not only with teaching but also with developing Bengali prose, there he began to produce a respected series of translations and new works and continued to hold that post until his death.

Basu created a number of original prose and poetical works, including Christastava, 1788; Harkara, 1800, a hundred-stanza poem; Jnanodaya (Dawn of Knowledge), 1800, arguing that the Vedas were fundamentally monotheist and that the departure of Hindu society from monotheism to idolatry was the fault of the Brahmins;[3] Lippi Mālā (The Bracelet of Writing), 1802, a miscellany; and Christabibaranamrta, 1803, on the subject of Jesus Christ.

In 1802, his Bengali textbook Rājā Pratāpāditya-Charit (Life of Maharaja Pratapaditya), written for the college's use, received a cash prize of 300 rupees. It was printed at the Serampore Mission Press, and is now credited as the first Bengali to create a work in prose and also as the first historiography in Bengali.[4] Basu also created Bengali versions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and aided in Carey's Bengali translation of the Bible.

Despite his active engagement with western missionaries and Christian texts, Basu remained a Hindu, and died in Kolkata on 7 August 1813.

Bengali novelist Pramathanath Bishi wrote a historical novel named Carey Saheber Munshi (Sahib Carey's Munshi) based on Ramram Basu's life.[5] This was filmed in 1961 by Bikash Roy as Carey Saheber Munshi.

References

1. Murshid, Ghulam (2012). "Ramram Basu". In Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A. (eds.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.
2. Murshid, Ghulam (2012). "Ramram Basu". In Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A. (eds.). Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.
3. New religious movements, religious plurality, and the Bengal Renaissance
4. Guha, Ranajit (2013). History at the limit of World-History. University Press. quote (dedication): To the memory of Ramram Basu who introduced modern historiography in Bengali, his native language, by a work published two hundred years ago
5. Kunal Chakrabarti, Shubhra Chakrabarti (22 August 2013). Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis. ISBN 9780810880245. Retrieved 6 November 2018.
• Sachindra Kumar Maity, Professor A.L. Basham, My Guruji and Problems and Perspectives of Ancient Indian History and Culture, Abhinav Publications, 1997, page 218. ISBN 81-7017-326-4.

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Tarini Charan Mitra
by Banglapedia
Accessedd: 8/25/24

Tarini Charan Mitra (c 1772-1837) head munshi of the Hindustani Language Department at fort william college and famous Bangla prose writer, was a resident of Kolkata. He was fluent in Bangla, Urdu, Hindi, Arabic, Persian and English.

In 1801 Tarini Charan joined Fort William College where he taught up to 1830. He was a member of the managing committee of calcutta school-book society (1817) and eventually became its secretary. Tarini Charan Mitra was also a member of Dharma Sabha (1830), a conservative organisation, which worked against the anti-sati movement. Tarini Charan wrote several articles in favour of sati. He collaborated with radhakanta deb and ram comul sen to translate Aesop's fables into Bangla under the title of Nitikatha. He is believed to have translated Oriental Fabulist into Bangla, Urdu and Persian in 1803. After retiring from Fort William College, Tarini Charan moved to Benares where he died in 1837. [Wakil Ahmed]

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Thomas Babington Macaulay
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/25/24

The Right Honourable
The Lord Macaulay
PC FRS FRSE

Photogravure of Macaulay by Antoine Claudet
Secretary at War
In office: 27 September 1839 – 30 August 1841
Monarch: Victoria
Prime Minister: The Viscount Melbourne
Preceded by: Viscount Howick
Succeeded by: Sir Henry Hardinge
Paymaster General
In office: 7 July 1846 – 8 May 1848
Monarch: Victoria
Prime Minister: Lord John Russell
Preceded by: Hon. Bingham Baring
Succeeded by: The Earl Granville
Personal details
Born: 25 October 1800, Leicestershire, England
Died: 28 December 1859 (aged 59), London, England
Political party: Whig
Parent(s): Zachary Macaulay; Selina Mills
Alma mater: Trinity College, Cambridge
Occupation: Politician
Profession: Historian, poet

In literary criticism, purple prose is overly ornate prose text that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing, thereby diminishing the appreciation of the prose overall. Purple prose is characterized by the excessive use of adjectives, adverbs, and metaphors. When it is limited to certain passages, they may be termed purple patches or purple passages, standing out from the rest of the work.

Purple prose is criticized for desaturating the meaning in an author's text by overusing melodramatic and fanciful descriptions. As there is no precise rule or absolute definition of what constitutes purple prose, deciding if a text, passage, or complete work has fallen victim is subjective. According to Paul West, "It takes a certain amount of sass to speak up for prose that's rich, succulent and full of novelty. Purple is immoral, undemocratic and insincere; at best artsy, at worst the exterminating angel of depravity."

-- Purple prose, by Wikipedia

From a child Surajah Dowlah had hated the English. It was his whim to do so; and his whims were never opposed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion of the wealth which might be obtained by plundering them; and his feeble and uncultivated mind was incapable of perceiving that the riches of Calcutta, had they been even greater than he imagined, would not compensate him for what he must lose, if the European trade, of which Bengal was a chief seat, should be driven by his violence to some other quarter. Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found. The English, in expectation of a war with France, had begun to fortify their settlement without special permission from the Nabob. A rich native, whom he longed to plunder, had taken refuge at Calcutta, and had not been delivered up. On such grounds as these Surajah Dowlali marched with a great army against Fort William.

The servants of the Company at Madras had been forced by Dupleix to become statesmen and soldiers. Those in Bengal were still mere traders, and were terrified and bewildered by the approaching danger. The governor, who had heard much of Surajah Dowlah’s cruelty, was frightened out of his wits, jumped into a boat, and took refuge in the nearest ship. The military commandant thought that he could not do better than follow so good an example. The fort was taken after a feeble resistance; and great numbers of the English fell into the hands of the conquerors. The Nabob seated himself with regal pomp in the principal hall of the factory, and ordered Mr. Holwell, the first in rank among the prisoners, to be brought before him. His Highness talked about the insolence of the English, and grumbled at the smallness of the treasure which he had found; but promised to spare their lives, and retired to rest.

Then was committed that great crime, memorable for its singular atrocity, memorable for the tremendous retribution by which it was followed. The English captives were left at the mercy of the guards, and the guards determined to secure them for the night in the prison of the garrison, a chamber known by the fearful name of the Black Hole. Even for a single European malefactor, that dungeon would, in such a climate, have been too close and narrow. The space was only twenty feet square. The air-holes were small and obstructed. It was the summer solstice, the season when the fierce heat of Bengal can scarcely be rendered tolerable to natives of England by lofty halls and by the constant waving of fans. The number of the prisoners was one hundred and forty-six. When they were ordered to enter the cell, they imagined that the soldiers were joking; and, being in high spirits on account of the promise of the Nabob to spare their lives, they laughed and jested at the absurdity of the notion. They soon discovered their mistake. They expostulated; they entreated; but in vain. The guards threatened to cut down all who hesitated. The captives were driven into the cell at the point of the sword, and the door was instantly shut and locked upon them.

Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that night. They cried for mercy. They strove to burst the door. Holwell who, even in that extremity, retained some presence of mind, offered large bribes to the gaolers. But the answer was that nothing could be done without the Nabob’s orders, that the Nabob was asleep, and that he would be angry if anybody woke him. Then the prisoners went mad with despair. They trampled each other down, fought for the places at the windows, fought for the pittance of water with which the cruel mercy of the murderers mocked their agonies, raved, prayed, blasphemed, implored the guards to fire among them. The gaolers in the mean time held lights to the bars, and shouted with laughter at the frantic struggles of their victims. At length the tumult died away in low gaspings and moanings.

The day broke. The Nabob had slept off his debauch, and permitted the door to be opened. But it was some time before the soldiers could make a lane for the survivors, by piling up on each side the heaps of corpses on which the burning climate had already begun to do its loathsome work. When at length a passage was made, twenty-three ghastly figures, such as their own mothers would not have known, staggered one by one out of the charnel-house. A pit was instantly dug. The dead bodies, a hundred and twenty-three in number, were flung into it promiscuously and covered up.

But these things which, after the lapse of more than eighty years, cannot be told or read without horror, awakened neither remorse nor pity in the bosom of the savage Nabob. He inflicted no punishment on the murderers. He showed no tenderness to the survivors. Some of them, indeed, from whom nothing was to be got, were suffered to depart; but those from whom it was thought that any thing could be extorted were treated with execrable cruelty. Holwell, unable to walk, was carried before the tyrant, who reproached him, threatened him, and sent him up the country in irons, together with some other gentlemen who were suspected of knowing more than they chose to tell about the treasures of the Company. These persons, still bowed down by the sufferings of that great agony, were lodged in miserable sheds, and fed only with grain and water, till at length the intercessions of the female relations of the Nabob procured their release. One Englishwoman had survived that night. She was placed in the harem of the Prince at Moorshedabad. Surajah Dowlah, in the mean time, sent letters to his nominal sovereign at Delhi, describing the late conquest in the most pompous language. He placed a garrison in Fort William, forbade Englishmen to dwell in the neighbourhood, and directed that, in memory of his great actions, Calcutta should thenceforward be called Alinagore, that is to say, the Port of God.

-- Lord Clive, by Thomas Babington Macaulay

... The fifth point, if the reasoning is sound, and the reader will judge of this, immediately characterises the whole narrative as a daring piece of unblushing impudence.

-- The Black Hole -- The Question of Holwell's Veracity, by J. H. Little, Bengal, Past & Present, Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, Vol. XI, Part 1, July-Sept., 1915

-- Minute on Education, by the Hon'ble T. B. Macaulay, by Thomas Babington Macaulay,February 2, 1835
-- Full Proceedings of the Black Hole Debate, Bengal, Past & Present, Journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, Vol. XII. Jan – June, 1916
-- A Genuine Narrative of the deplorable Deaths of the English Gentlemen, and Others, who were suffocated in the Black Hole in Fort-William, at Calcutta, in the Kingdom of Bengal; in the Night succeeding the 20th Day of June 1756., In a Letter to a Friend, from India Tracts, by Mr. J.Z. Holwell, and Friends.
-- Interesting Historical Events, Relative to the Provinces of Bengal, and the Empire of Indostan. With a Seasonable Hint and Persuasive to the Honourable The Court of Directors of the East India Company. As Also The Mythology and Cosmogony, Facts and Festivals of the Gentoo's, followers of the Shastah. And a Dissertation on the Metempsychosis, commonly, though erroneously, called the Pythagorean Doctrine. Part II. By J.Z. Holwell, Esq.
-- Forging Indian Religion: East India Company Servants and the Construction of ‘Gentoo’/‘Hindoo’ Scripture in the 1760s, by Jessica Patterson
-- Holwell's Religion of Paradise, Excerpt from The Birth of Orientalism, by Urs App
-- The Whig Interpretation of History, by Herbert Butterfield, M.A., 1965

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, PC, FRS, FRSE (/ˈbæbɪŋtən məˈkɔːli/; 25 October 1800 – 28 December 1859) was a British historian, poet, and Whig politician, who served as the Secretary at War between 1839 and 1841, and as the Paymaster General between 1846 and 1848.

Macaulay's The History of England, which expressed his contention of the superiority of the Western European culture and of the inevitability of its sociopolitical progress, is a seminal example of Whig history that remains commended for its prose style.[1]

Early life

Macaulay was born at Rothley Temple[2] in Leicestershire on 25 October 1800, the son of Zachary Macaulay, a Scottish Highlander, who became a colonial governor and abolitionist, and Selina Mills of Bristol, a former pupil of Hannah More.[3] They named their first child after his uncle Thomas Babington, a Leicestershire landowner and politician,[4][5] who had married Zachary's sister Jean [Aunt Jean is married to Uncle Babington].[6] The young Macaulay was noted as a child prodigy; as a toddler, gazing out of the window from his cot at the chimneys of a local factory, he is reputed to have asked his father whether the smoke came from the fires of hell.[7]

He was educated at a private school in Hertfordshire, and, subsequently, at Trinity College, Cambridge,[8] where he won several prizes,[/u][/b] including the Chancellor's Gold Medal in June 1821,[9] and where he in 1825 published a prominent essay on Milton in the Edinburgh Review. Macaulay did not while at Cambridge study classical literature, which he subsequently read in India. He in his letters describes his reading of the Aeneid whilst he was in Malvern in 1851, when he says he was moved to tears by Virgil's poetry.[10] He taught himself German, Dutch and Spanish, and was fluent in French.[11] He studied law and he was in 1826 called to the bar, before he took more interest in a political career.[12] Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review in 1827, and in a series of anonymous letters to The Morning Chronicle,[13] censured the analysis of indentured labour by the British Colonial Office expert Colonel Thomas Moody, Kt.[13][14] Macaulay's evangelical Whig father Zachary Macaulay, who desired a 'free black peasantry' rather than equality for Africans,[15] also censured, in the Anti-Slavery Reporter, Moody's contentions.[13]

Zachary Macaulay
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/30/24


Zachary Macaulay

Zachary Macaulay (Scottish Gaelic: Sgàire MacAmhlaoibh; 2 May 1768 – 13 May 1838) was a Scottish statistician and abolitionist who was a founder of London University and of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and a Governor of British Sierra Leone.

Early life

Macaulay was born in Inveraray, Scotland, to Margaret Campbell and John Macaulay (1720 – 1789), who was a minister of the Church of Scotland and a grandson of Dòmhnall Cam. He had two brothers: Aulay Macaulay, who was an antiquary, and Colin Macaulay, who was a general and an abolitionist. Zachary Macaulay was not educated in, but taught himself, Greek and Latin and English literature.

Career

Macaulay worked in a merchant's office in Glasgow, where he fell into bad company and began to indulge in excessive drinking. In late 1784, when aged 16 years, he emigrated to Jamaica, where he worked as an assistant manager at a sugar plantation, at which he objected to slavery as a consequence of which he, contrary to the preference of his father, renounced his job and returned in 1789 to London, where he reduced his alcoholism and became a bookkeeper. He was influenced by Thomas Babington of Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, an evangelical Whig abolitionist whom his sister Jean had married, and by whom he was influenced and introduced to William Wilberforce and Henry Thornton.

Thomas Babington
by Wikipedia
Accessed: August 30, 2024


Thomas Babington of Rothley Temple (1758–1837), by Sir Thomas Lawrence

Thomas Babington of Rothley Temple (/ˈbæbɪŋtən/; 18 December 1758 – 21 November 1837) was an English philanthropist and politician. He was a member of the Clapham Sect, alongside more famous abolitionists such as William Wilberforce and Hannah More. An active anti-slavery campaigner, he had reservations about the participation of women associations in the movement.[1]

Early life and education

He was the eldest son of Thomas Babington of Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, from whom he inherited Rothley and other land in Leicestershire in 1776. A member of the Babington family, he was educated at Rugby School and St John's College, Cambridge[2] where he met William Wilberforce and other prominent anti-slavery agitators.

Anti-slavery and philanthropy

Babington was an evangelical Christian of independent means who devoted himself to a number of good causes. His home at Rothley Temple was regularly used by Wilberforce and associates for abolitionist meetings, and it was where the bill to abolish slavery was drafted. There is a stone memorial to commemorate to this on the front lawn of Rothley which still stands today.

Babington's base in London was 17 Downing Street. He shared use of this residence with his brother-in-law, General Colin Macaulay who was similarly active in the abolitionist cause.[3]

In addition to his anti-slavery work, he also offered to pay half the cost of smallpox inoculation for people in Rothley in 1784–5. He set up a local Friendly Society to purchase corn for sale to the poor at a lower price to improve the lives and diet of his estate workers. Trusts he set up to provide housing in local villages still exist today.

Babington was active politically, and supported moves to extend voting rights to more people. He was High Sheriff of Leicestershire in 1780 and MP for Leicester from 1800 to 1818.

Family


Jean Babington (Macaulay), by Sir Thomas Lawrence

On 8 October 1787 Babington married Jean Macaulay, daughter of the Rev. John Macaulay (1720-1789) of Cardross, Dumbartonshire. Jean came from a family who like Babington, were prominently involved in the anti-slavery movement. This included two brothers Zachary Macaulay, and General Colin Macaulay: Thomas Babington Macaulay was Jean's nephew. Thomas and Jean had six sons and four daughters [=10 children]

• Thomas Gisborne Babington (1788–1871)
• Rev. John Babington (1791–?)
• Matthew Babington, JP (1792–?)
• George Gisborne Babington, FRCS (1794–1856)
• William Henry Babington, E.I.C.C.S (1803–1867)
• Lieutenant Charles Roos Babington (1806–1826)
• Lydia Rose Babington
• Jean Babington (–1839)
• Mary Babington (1799–1858), wife of Sir James Parker, Vice-Chancellor
• Margaret Anne Babington (–1819)

Babington died at Rothley Temple in 1837 at the age of 78, and is buried in the chapel there. His wife Jean died on 21 September 1845.

References

• United Kingdom portal
• Biography portal
1. Clare Midgley, Women against slavery (Routledge, 1992, p. 56)
2. "Babington, Thomas (BBNN775T)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
3. Colin Ferguson Smith, "A Life of General Colin Macaulay" (Privately Published 2019 - ISBN 978-1-78972-649-7), p 44.

Macaulay in 1790 visited Sierra Leone, the West African colony that was founded by the Sierra Leone Company for emancipated slaves. He returned in 1792 to serve on its Council, by which he was invested as Governor in 1794, as which he remained until 1799.

Macaulay became a member of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, with William Wilberforce, to campaign for the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. He later became the secretary of the African Institution. He and Wilberforce also became members of the Clapham Sect of evangelical Whigs, that included Henry Thornton and Edward Eliot, for whom he edited the magazine, the Christian Observer, from 1802 to 1816. Macaulay served on committees that established London University, and that established the Society for the Suppression of Vice. He was also a fellow of the Royal Society, and an active supporter of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and of the Cheap Repository Tracts, and of the Church Missionary Society. Macaulay contributed to the 1823 foundation of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery, and he was editor of its publication, the Anti-Slavery Reporter, in which he censured the analysis of indentured labour by the British Colonial Office expert Thomas Moody[1] However, Zachary Macaulay desired a 'free black peasantry' rather than equality for Africans.[2]


Stone plaque erected in 1930 by London County Council at 5 The Pavement, Clapham

Macaulay died on 13 May 1838 in London, where he was buried in St George's Gardens, Bloomsbury, and where a memorial to him was erected in Westminster Abbey.[3]

Personal life

Macaulay married Selina Mills, who was the daughter of the Quaker printer Thomas Mills. They were introduced by Hannah More on 26 August 1799.[4] They settled in Clapham, Surrey, and had several children including Thomas Babington Macaulay, who was a Whig historian and politician, and Hannah More Macaulay (1810 – 1873), who married Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet and was the mother of Sir George Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet.

Further reading

• Carey, Brycchan. British Abolitionism and the Rhetoric of Sensibility: Writing, Sentiment, and Slavery, 1760–1807 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
• Hall, Catherine. Macaulay and Son: Architects of Imperial Britain (Yale UP, 2013)
• Hochschild, Adam. Bury the Chains, The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery (Basingstoke: Pan Macmillan, 2005)
• Macaulay, Zachary (1900). Knutsford, Margaret Jean Trevelyan (ed.). Life and Letters of Zachary Macaulay. Edward Arnold.
• Oldfield, J.R. Thomas Macaulay in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: University Press, 2006)
• Stephen, Leslie (1893). "Macaulay, Zachary" . In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 34. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
• Stott, Anne. Hannah More – The First Victorian (Oxford: University Press, 2003)
• Whyte, I. Zachary Macaulay 1768–1838: The Steadfast Scot in the British Anti-Slavery Movement. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011). ISBN 978-1781388471.

References

1. Rupprecht, Anita (September 2012). "'When he gets among his countrymen, they tell him that he is free': Slave Trade Abolition, Indentured Africans and a Royal Commission". Slavery & Abolition. 33 (3): 435–455. doi:10.1080/0144039X.2012.668300. S2CID 144301729.
2. Taylor, Michael (2020). The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted The Abolition of Slavery. Penguin Random House (Paperback). pp. 107–116.
3. Stanley, A.P., Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey (London; John Murray; 1882), p. 248.
4. Stott, Anne (1 March 2012). "'Jacob and Rachel': Zachary Macaulay and Selina Mills". Oxford Scholarship. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199699391.001.0001. ISBN 9780199699391. Retrieved 6 August 2019.

External links

• Article Macaulay, Zachary (and Macaulay, Aulay) in the Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology (Edinburgh, 1993) ISBN 0-567-09650-5
• Negro slavery By Zachary Macaulay. Published in 1824. Cornell University Library Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection. {Reprinted by} Cornell University Library Digital Collections

Macaulay, who did not marry nor have children, was rumoured to have fallen in love with Maria Kinnaird, who was the wealthy ward of Richard 'Conversation' Sharp.[16] Macaulay's strongest emotional relationships were with his youngest sisters: Margaret, who died while he was in India, and Hannah, to whose daughter Margaret, whom he called 'Baba', he was also attached.[17]

India (1834–1838)


Macaulay by John Partridge

Macaulay in 1830 accepted the invitation of the Marquess of Lansdowne that he become Member of Parliament for the pocket borough of Calne. Macaulay's maiden speech in Parliament advocated abolition of the civil disabilities of the Jews in the UK. He extensively wrote that Islam and Hinduism had little to offer to the world, and that Arabic, Persian and Sanskrit literature had little contribution to humanity.[9] Macaulay's subsequent speeches in favour of parliamentary reform were commended.[9] He became MP for Leeds[9] subsequent to the 1833 enactment of the Reform Act 1832, by which Calne's representation was reduced from two MPs to one, and by which Leeds, which had not been represented before, had two MPs. Macaulay remained grateful to his former patron, Lansdowne, who remained his friend.

Macaulay was Secretary to the Board of Control under Lord Grey from 1832 until he in 1833 required, as a consequence of the penury of his father, a more remunerative office, than that of the unremunerated office of an MP, from which he resigned after the passing of the Government of India Act 1833 to accept an appointment as first Law Member of the Governor-General's Council. Macaulay in 1834 went to India, where he served on the Supreme Council between 1834 and 1838.[18] His Minute on Indian Education of February 1835 was primarily responsible for the introduction of Western institutional education to India.

Macaulay recommended the introduction of the English language as the official language of secondary education instruction in all schools where there had been none before, and the training of English-speaking Indians as teachers.[1] In his minute, he urged Lord William Bentinck, the then-Governor-General to reform secondary education on utilitarian lines to deliver "useful learning", a phrase that to him was synonymous with Western culture. There was no tradition of secondary education in vernacular languages; the institutions supported by the East India Company taught either in Sanskrit or Persian[citation needed]. Hence, he argued, "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." Macaulay argued that Sanskrit and Persian were no more accessible than English to the speakers of the Indian vernacular languages and existing Sanskrit and Persian texts were of little use for 'useful learning'. In one of the less scathing passages of the Minute he wrote:

I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit 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 Sanskrit 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.

He further argued:

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 Sanskrit 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 Sanskrit 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.

Hence, from the sixth year of schooling onwards, instruction should be in European learning, with English as the medium of instruction. This would create a class of anglicised Indians who would serve as cultural intermediaries between the British and the Indians; the creation of such a class was necessary before any reform of vernacular education. He stated:

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.

Macaulay's minute largely coincided with Bentinck's views[19] and Bentinck's English Education Act 1835 closely matched Macaulay's recommendations (in 1836, a school named La Martinière, founded by Major General Claude Martin, had one of its houses named after him), but subsequent Governors-General took a more conciliatory approach to existing Indian education.

His final years in India were devoted to the creation of a Penal Code, as the leading member of the Law Commission. In the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Macaulay's criminal law proposal was enacted.[citation needed] The Indian Penal Code in 1860 was followed by the Criminal Procedure Code in 1872 and the Civil Procedure Code in 1908. The Indian Penal Code inspired counterparts in most other British colonies, and to date many of these laws are still in effect in places as far apart as Pakistan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Zimbabwe, as well as in India itself.[20] This includes Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which remains the basis for laws which criminalize homosexuality in several Commonwealth nations.[21]

In Indian culture, the term "Macaulay's Children" is sometimes used to refer to people born of Indian ancestry who adopt Western culture as a lifestyle, or display attitudes influenced by colonialism ("Macaulayism")[22] – expressions used disparagingly, and with the implication of disloyalty to one's country and one's heritage. In independent India, Macaulay's idea of the civilising mission has been used by Dalitists, in particular by neo-liberalist Chandra Bhan Prasad, as a "creative appropriation for self-empowerment", based on the view that the Dalit community was empowered by Macaulay's deprecation of Hindu culture and support for Western-style education in India.[23]

Domenico Losurdo states that "Macaulay acknowledged that the English colonists in India behaved like Spartans confronting helots: we are dealing with 'a race of sovereign' or a 'sovereign caste', wielding absolute power over its 'serfs'."[24] Losurdo noted that this did not prompt any doubts from Macaulay over the right of Britain to administer its colonies in an autocratic fashion; for example, while Macaulay described the administration of governor-general of India Warren Hastings as being so despotic that "all the injustice of former oppressors, Asiatic and European, appeared as a blessing", he (Hastings) deserved "high admiration" and a rank among "the most remarkable men in our history" for "having saved England and civilisation".[25]

Return to British public life (1838–1857)


Macaulay by Sir Francis Grant

Returning to Britain in 1838, he became MP for Edinburgh in the following year. He was made Secretary at War in 1839 by Lord Melbourne and was sworn of the Privy Council the same year.[26] In 1841 Macaulay addressed the issue of copyright law. Macaulay's position, slightly modified, became the basis of copyright law in the English-speaking world for many decades.[27] Macaulay argued that copyright is a monopoly and as such has generally negative effects on society.[27] After the fall of Melbourne's government in 1841 Macaulay devoted more time to literary work, and returned to office as Paymaster General in 1846 in Lord John Russell's administration.

In the election of 1847 he lost his seat in Edinburgh.[28] He attributed the loss to the anger of religious zealots over his speech in favour of expanding the annual government grant to Maynooth College in Ireland, which trained young men for the Catholic priesthood; some observers also attributed his loss to his neglect of local issues. In 1849 he was elected Rector of the University of Glasgow, a position with no administrative duties, often awarded by the students to men of political or literary fame.[29] He also received the freedom of the city.[30]

In 1852, the voters of Edinburgh offered to re-elect him to Parliament. He accepted on the express condition that he need not campaign and would not pledge himself to a position on any political issue. Remarkably, he was elected on those terms.[citation needed] He seldom attended the House due to ill health. His weakness after suffering a heart attack caused him to postpone for several months making his speech of thanks to the Edinburgh voters. He resigned his seat in January 1856.[31] In 1857 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Macaulay, of Rothley in the County of Leicester,[32] but seldom attended the House of Lords.[31]

Later life (1857–1859)


The Funeral of Thomas Babington Macaulay, Baron Macaulay, by Sir George Scharf

Macaulay sat on the committee to decide on the historical subjects to be painted in the new Palace of Westminster.[33] The need to collect reliable portraits of notable figures from history for this project led to the foundation of the National Portrait Gallery, which was formally established on 2 December 1856.[34] Macaulay was amongst its founding trustees and is honoured with one of only three busts above the main entrance.

During his later years his health made work increasingly difficult for him. He died of a heart attack on 28 December 1859, aged 59, leaving his major work, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second incomplete.[35] On 9 January 1860 he was buried in Westminster Abbey, in Poets' Corner,[36] near a statue of Addison.[9] As he had no children, his peerage became extinct on his death.

Macaulay's nephew, Sir George Trevelyan, Bt, wrote the "Life and Letters" of his uncle. His great-nephew was the Cambridge historian G. M. Trevelyan.

Literary works

As a young man he composed the ballads Ivry and The Armada,[37] which he later included as part of Lays of Ancient Rome, a series of very popular poems about heroic episodes in Roman history which he began composing in India and continued in Rome, finally publishing in 1842.[38] The most famous of them, Horatius, concerns the heroism of Horatius Cocles. It contains the oft-quoted lines:[39]

Then out spake brave Horatius,
The Captain of the Gate:
"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?"

His essays, originally published in the Edinburgh Review, were collected as Critical and Historical Essays in 1843.[40]

Historian

During the 1840s, Macaulay undertook his most famous work, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, publishing the first two volumes in 1848. At first, he had planned to bring his history down to the reign of George III. After publication of his first two volumes, his hope was to complete his work with the death of Queen Anne in 1714.[41]

The third and fourth volumes, bringing the history to the Peace of Ryswick, were published in 1855. At his death in 1859 he was working on the fifth volume. This, bringing the History down to the death of William III, was prepared for publication by his sister, Lady Trevelyan, after his death.[42]

Political writing

Macaulay's political writings are famous for their ringing prose and for their confident, sometimes dogmatic, emphasis on a progressive model of British history, according to which the country threw off superstition, autocracy and confusion to create a balanced constitution and a forward-looking culture combined with freedom of belief and expression. This model of human progress has been called the Whig interpretation of history

Herbert butterfield's devastating attack on the whig interpretation of history
by Google AI
Accessed: 8/25/24

Herbert Butterfield's seminal work, “The Whig Interpretation of History” (1931), launched a scathing attack on the prevailing historiographical approach of his time. He targeted the tendency of many historians to write history from a Whig or Protestant perspective, which distorted the past to conform to present-day values and ideologies.

Key Criticisms

• Presentism: Butterfield argued that Whig historians imposed their own contemporary concerns and values on the past, rather than seeking to understand events as they unfolded.
• Teleology: He criticized the tendency to view history as a linear progression towards a predetermined goal, such as the triumph of liberty or democracy.
• Lack of historical context: Whig historians often ignored or downplayed the complexities and nuances of the past, instead presenting a simplistic narrative that reinforced their own biases.

Alternative Approach

Butterfield advocated for a more nuanced and contextualized understanding of history. He emphasized the importance of:

• Historical particularity: Seeking to understand events as they were perceived by contemporaries, rather than imposing modern interpretations.
• Complexity: Acknowledging the multifaceted nature of historical events and avoiding simplistic or reductionist narratives.
• Objectivity: Striving for a more neutral and detached approach, untainted by present-day agendas or ideologies.

By challenging the Whig Interpretation, Butterfield’s work has had a lasting impact on historiography, influencing generations of historians to adopt a more critical and contextual approach to understanding the past.

This philosophy appears most clearly in the essays Macaulay wrote for the Edinburgh Review and other publications, which were collected in book form and a steady best-seller throughout the 19th century. But it is also reflected in History; the most stirring passages in the work are those that describe the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688.

Macaulay's approach has been criticised by later historians for its one-sidedness and its complacency. Karl Marx referred to him as a 'systematic falsifier of history'.[43] His tendency to see history as a drama led him to treat figures whose views he opposed as if they were villains, while characters he approved of were presented as heroes. Macaulay goes to considerable length, for example, to absolve his main hero William III of any responsibility for the Glencoe massacre. Winston Churchill devoted a four-volume biography of the Duke of Marlborough to rebutting Macaulay's slights on his ancestor, expressing hope "to fasten the label 'Liar' to his genteel coat-tails".[44]

Legacy as a historian

The Liberal historian Lord Acton read Macaulay's History of England four times and later described himself as "a raw English schoolboy, primed to the brim with Whig politics" but "not Whiggism only, but Macaulay in particular that I was so full of." However, after coming under German influence Acton would later find fault in Macaulay.[45] In 1880 Acton classed Macaulay (with Burke and Gladstone) as one "of the three greatest Liberals".[46] In 1883, he advised Mary Gladstone:

[T]he Essays are really flashy and superficial. He was not above par in literary criticism; his Indian articles will not hold water; and his two most famous reviews, on Bacon and Ranke, show his incompetence. The essays are only pleasant reading, and a key to half the prejudices of our age. It is the History (with one or two speeches) that is wonderful. He knew nothing respectably before the seventeenth century, he knew nothing of foreign history, of religion, philosophy, science, or art. His account of debates has been thrown into the shade by Ranke, his account of diplomatic affairs, by Klopp. He is, I am persuaded, grossly, basely unfair. Read him therefore to find out how it comes that the most unsympathetic of critics can think him very nearly the greatest of English writers…[47]

In 1885, Acton asserted that:

We must never judge the quality of a teaching by the quality of the Teacher, or allow the spots to shut out the sun. It would be unjust, and it would deprive us of nearly all that is great and good in this world. Let me remind you of Macaulay. He remains to me one of the greatest of all writers and masters, although I think him utterly base, contemptible and odious for certain reasons which you know.[48]

In 1888, Acton wrote that Macaulay "had done more than any writer in the literature of the world for the propagation of the Liberal faith, and he was not only the greatest, but the most representative, Englishman then living".[49]

W. S. Gilbert described Macaulay's wit, "who wrote of Queen Anne" as part of Colonel Calverley's Act I patter song in the libretto of the 1881 operetta Patience. (This line may well have been a joke about the Colonel's pseudo-intellectual bragging, as most educated Victorians knew that Macaulay did not write of Queen Anne; the History encompasses only as far as the death of William III in 1702, who was succeeded by Anne.)

Herbert Butterfield's The Whig Interpretation of History (1931) attacked Whig history. The Dutch historian Pieter Geyl, writing in 1955, considered Macaulay's Essays as "exclusively and intolerantly English".[50]

On 7 February 1954, Lord Moran, doctor to the Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill, recorded in his diary:

Randolph, who is writing a life of the late Lord Derby for Longman's, brought to luncheon a young man of that name. His talk interested the P.M. ... Macaulay, Longman went on, was not read now; there was no demand for his books. The P.M. grunted that he was very sorry to hear this. Macaulay had been a great influence in his young days.[51]

George Richard Potter, Professor and Head of the Department of History at the University of Sheffield from 1931 to 1965, claimed "In an age of long letters ... Macaulay's hold their own with the best".[52] However Potter also claimed:

For all his linguistic abilities he seems never to have tried to enter into sympathetic mental contact with the classical world or with the Europe of his day. It was an insularity that was impregnable ... If his outlook was insular, however, it was surely British rather than English.[53]

With regards to Macaulay's determination to inspect physically the places mentioned in his History, Potter said:

Much of the success of the famous third chapter of the History which may be said to have introduced the study of social history, and even ... local history, was due to the intense local knowledge acquired on the spot. As a result it is a superb, living picture of Great Britain in the latter half of the seventeenth century ... No description of the relief of Londonderry in a major history of England existed before 1850; after his visit there and the narrative written round it no other account has been needed ... Scotland came fully into its own and from then until now it has been a commonplace that English history is incomprehensible without Scotland.[54]

Potter noted that Macaulay has had many critics, some of whom put forward some salient points about the deficiency of Macaulay's History but added: "The severity and the minuteness of the criticism to which the History of England has been subjected is a measure of its permanent value. It is worth every ounce of powder and shot that is fired against it." Potter concluded that "in the long roll of English historical writing from Clarendon to Trevelyan only Gibbon has surpassed him in security of reputation and certainty of immortality".[55]

Piers Brendon wrote that Macaulay is "the only British rival to Gibbon."[56] In 1972, J. R. Western wrote that: "Despite its age and blemishes, Macaulay's History of England has still to be superseded by a full-scale modern history of the period."[57] In 1974 J. P. Kenyon stated that: "As is often the case, Macaulay had it exactly right."[58]

W. A. Speck wrote in 1980, that a reason Macaulay's History of England "still commands respect is that it was based upon a prodigious amount of research".[59] Speck claimed:

Macaulay's reputation as an historian has never fully recovered from the condemnation it implicitly received in Herbert Butterfield's devastating attack on The Whig Interpretation of History. Though he was never cited by name, there can be no doubt that Macaulay answers to the charges brought against Whig historians, particularly that they study the past with reference to the present, class people in the past as those who furthered progress and those who hindered it, and judge them accordingly.[60]

According to Speck:

[Macaulay too often] denies the past has its own validity, treating it as being merely a prelude to his own age. This is especially noticeable in the third chapter of his History of England, when again and again he contrasts the backwardness of 1685 with the advances achieved by 1848. Not only does this misuse the past, it also leads him to exaggerate the differences.[60]

On the other hand, Speck also wrote that Macaulay "took pains to present the virtues even of a rogue, and he painted the virtuous warts and all",[61] and that "he was never guilty of suppressing or distorting evidence to make it support a proposition which he knew to be untrue".[62] Speck concluded:

What is in fact striking is the extent to which his History of England at least has survived subsequent research. Although it is often dismissed as inaccurate, it is hard to pinpoint a passage where he is categorically in error ... his account of events has stood up remarkably well ... His interpretation of the Glorious Revolution also remains the essential starting point for any discussion of that episode ... What has not survived, or has become subdued, is Macaulay's confident belief in progress. It was a dominant creed in the era of the Great Exhibition. But Auschwitz and Hiroshima destroyed this century's claim to moral superiority over its predecessors, while the exhaustion of natural resources raises serious doubts about the continuation even of material progress into the next.[62]

In 1981, J. W. Burrow argued that Macaulay's History of England:

... is not simply partisan; a judgement, like that of Firth, that Macaulay was always the Whig politician could hardly be more inapposite. Of course Macaulay thought that the Whigs of the seventeenth century were correct in their fundamental ideas, but the hero of the History was William, who, as Macaulay says, was certainly no Whig ... If this was Whiggism it was so only, by the mid-nineteenth century, in the most extended and inclusive sense, requiring only an acceptance of parliamentary government and a sense of gravity of precedent. Butterfield says, rightly, that in the nineteenth century the Whig view of history became the English view. The chief agent of that transformation was surely Macaulay, aided, of course, by the receding relevance of seventeenth-century conflicts to contemporary politics, as the power of the crown waned further, and the civil disabilities of Catholics and Dissenters were removed by legislation. The History is much more than the vindication of a party; it is an attempt to insinuate a view of politics, pragmatic, reverent, essentially Burkean, informed by a high, even tumid sense of the worth of public life, yet fully conscious of its interrelations with the wider progress of society; it embodies what Hallam had merely asserted, a sense of the privileged possession by Englishmen of their history, as well as of the epic dignity of government by discussion. If this was sectarian it was hardly, in any useful contemporary sense, polemically Whig; it is more like the sectarianism of English respectability.[63]

In 1982, Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote:

[M]ost professional historians have long since given up reading Macaulay, as they have given up writing the kind of history he wrote and thinking about history as he did. Yet there was a time when anyone with any pretension to cultivation read Macaulay.[64]

Himmelfarb also laments that "the history of the History is a sad testimonial to the cultural regression of our times".[65]

In the novel Marathon Man and its film adaptation, the protagonist was named 'Thomas Babington' after Macaulay.[66]

In 2008, Walter Olson argued for the pre-eminence of Macaulay as a British classical liberal.[67]

Works

• Works by Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay at Project Gutenberg
• Lays of Ancient Rome originally published in the year 1842.
• The History of England from the Accession of James II . Philadelphia: Porter & Coates. 1848 – via Wikisource.
• 5 vols (1848): Vol 1, Vol 2, Vol 3, Vol 4, Vol 5 at Internet Archive
• 5 vols (1848): Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4, Vol. 5 at Project Gutenberg
• volumes 1–3 at LibriVox.org
• Critical and Historical Essays(1843), 2 vols, edited by Alexander James Grieve. Vol. 1, Vol. 2
• "Social and Industrial Capacities of the Negroes". Critical Historical and Miscellaneous Essays with a Memoir and Index. Vol. V. and VI. Mason, Baker & Pratt. 1873.
• Lays of Ancient Rome: With Ivry, and The Armada. Longmans, Green, and Company. 1881.
• William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: Second Essay (Maynard, Merrill, & Company, 1892, 110 pages)
• The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay(1860), 4 vols Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3, Vol. 4
• Machiavelli on Niccolò Machiavelli (1850).
• The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay(1881), 6 vols, edited by Thomas Pinney.
• The Journals of Thomas Babington Macaulay, 5 vols, edited by William Thomas.
• Macaulay index entry at Poets' Corner
• Lays of Ancient Rome (Complete) at Poets' Corner with an introduction by Bob Blair
• Works by Thomas Babington Macaulay at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)

Arms


Coat of arms of Thomas Babington Macaulay

Notes

The arms, crest and motto allude to the heraldry of the MacAulays of Ardincaple; however Thomas Babington Macaulay was not related to this clan at all. He was, instead, descended from the unrelated Macaulays of Lewis. Such adoptions were not uncommon at the time according to the Scottish heraldic historian Peter Drummond-Murray but usually made from ignorance rather than deceit.

Crest

Upon a rock a boot proper thereon a spur Or.[68]

Escutcheon

Gules two arrows in saltire points downward argent surmounted by as many barrulets compony Or and azure between two buckles in pale of the third a bordure engrailed also of the third.[68]

Supporters

Two herons proper.[68]

Motto

Dulce periculum[68] (translation from Latin: "danger is sweet").

See also

• Philosophic Whigs
• Whig history further explains the interpretation of history that Macaulay espoused.
• Samuel Rogers#Middle life and friendships

Portals:

• Biography
• Poetry
• United Kingdom

Citations

1. MacKenzie, John (January 2013), "A family empire", BBC History Magazine
2. Biographical index of former Fellows of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 1783–2002 (PDF). The Royal Society of Edinburgh. 2006. ISBN 090219884X.
3. "Thomas Babbington Macaulay". Josephsmithacademy. Archived from the original on 12 May 2018. Retrieved 10 October 2013.
4. Symonds, P. A. "Babington, Thomas (1758–1837), of Rothley Temple, nr. Leicester". History of Parliament on-line. Institute of Historical Research. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
5. Kuper 2009, p. 146.
6. Knight 1867, p. 8.
7. Sullivan 2010, p. 21.
8. "Macaulay, Thomas Babington (FML817TB)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
9. Thomas, William. "Macaulay, Thomas Babington, Baron Macaulay (1800–1859), historian, essayist, and poet". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/17349. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
10. Galton 1869, p. 23.
11. Sullivan 2010, p. 9.
12. Pattison 1911, p. 193.
13. Rupprecht, Anita (September 2012). "'When he gets among his countrymen, they tell him that he is free': Slave Trade Abolition, Indentured Africans and a Royal Commission". Slavery & Abolition. 33 (3): 435–455. doi:10.1080/0144039X.2012.668300. S2CID 144301729.
14. Thomas Babington Macaulay, Social and Industrial Capacities of the Negroes (Edinburgh Review, March 1827), collected in Critical, Historical and Miscellaneous Essays, Volume 6 (1860), pp. 361–404.
15. Taylor, Michael (2020). The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted The Abolition of Slavery. Penguin Random House (Paperback). pp. 107–116.
16. Cropper 1864: see entry for 22 November 1831
17. Sullivan 2010, p. 466.
18. Evans 2002, p. 260.
19. Spear 1938, pp. 78–101.
20. ""Government of India" - A Speech Delivered in the House of Commons on the 10th of July 1833". http://www.columbia.edu. Columbia university and Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 21 September 2018.
21. "377: The British colonial law that left an anti-LGBTQ legacy in Asia". http://www.bbc.co.uk. BBC News. 28 June 2021. Retrieved 29 June 2021.
22. Think it Over: Macaulay and India's rootless generations[permanent dead link]
23. Watt & Mann 2011, p. 23.
24. Losurdo 2014, p. 250.
25. Losurdo 2014, pp. 250–251.
26. "No. 19774". The London Gazette. 1 October 1839. p. 1841.
27. "Macaulay's speeches on copyright law". Archived from the original on 24 December 2016. Retrieved 8 December 2015.
28. "Lord Macaulay". Bartleby. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
29. "The Rector". Glasgow university. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
30. "Biography of Lord Macaulay". Sacklunch. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
31. "Lord Macaulay". The Sydney Morning Herald. 15 March 1860. Retrieved 1 November 2013.
32. "No. 22039". The London Gazette. 11 September 1857. p. 3075.
33. "Thomas Babington Macaulay". Clanmacfarlanegenealogy. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
34. "From the Director" (PDF). Face to Face (16). National Portrait Gallery. Spring 2006. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
35. "Death of Lord Macaulay". The New York Times. 17 January 1960. Retrieved 25 October 2013.
36. Stanley, A. P., Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey (London; John Murray; 1882), p. 222.
37. Macaulay 1881.
38. Sullivan, Robert E (2009). Macaulay. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p. 251. ISBN 978-0674054691. Retrieved 16 December 2019.
39. "Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay Horatius". English verse. Retrieved 23 October 2013.
40. Macaulay 1941, p. x.
41. Macaulay 1848, Vol. V, title page and prefatory "Memoir of Lord Macaulay".
42. Macaulay 1848.
43. Marx 1906, p. 788, Ch. XXVII: "I quote Macaulay, because as a systematic falsifier of history he minimizes facts of this kind as much as possible."
44. Churchill 1947, p. 132: "It is beyond our hopes to overtake Lord Macaulay. The grandeur and sweep of his story-telling carries him swiftly along, and with every generation he enters new fields. We can only hope that Truth will follow swiftly enough to fasten the label 'Liar' to his genteel coat-tails."
45. Hill 2011, p. 25.
46. Paul 1904, p. 57.
47. Paul 1904, p. 173.
48. Paul 1904, p. 210.
49. Lord Acton 1919, p. 482.
50. Geyl 1958, p. 30.
51. Lord Moran 1968, pp. 553–554.
52. Potter 1959, p. 10.
53. Potter 1959, p. 25.
54. Potter 1959, p. 29.
55. Potter 1959, p. 35.
56. Brendon 2010, p. 126.
57. Western 1972, p. 403.
58. Kenyon 1974, p. 47, n. 14.
59. Speck 1980, p. 57.
60. Speck 1980, p. 64.
61. Speck 1980, p. 65.
62. Speck 1980, p. 67.
63. Burrow 1983.
64. Himmelfarb 1986, p. 163.
65. Himmelfarb 1986, p. 165.
66. Goldman 1974, p. 20.
67. Olson 2008, pp. 309–310.
68. Burke 1864, p. 635.

[See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Babington_Macaulay for "General and cited sources," "Further reading," and "External links"]

[admin]

Ugolino della Gherardesca
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/25/24

Nothing in history or fiction, not even the story which Ugolino told in the sea of everlasting ice, after he had wiped his bloody lips on the scalp of his murderer, approaches the horrors which were recounted by the few survivors of that night.

-- Lord Clive, by Thomas Babington Macaulay

Portrait of Ugolino by Johann Kaspar Lavater

Ugolino della Gherardesca (c. 1214 – March 1289), Count of Donoratico, was an Italian nobleman, politician and naval commander. He was frequently accused of treason and features prominently in Dante's Divine Comedy.

Biography

In the 13th century, the states of Italy were beset by the strife of two parties, the Ghibellines and the Guelphs. While the conflict was local and personal in origin, the parties had come to be associated with the two universal powers: the Ghibellines sided with the Holy Roman Emperor and his rule of Italy, while the Guelphs sided with the Pope, who supported self-governing city-states.


Coat of arms of the House of della Gherardesca

Pisa was controlled by the Ghibellines, while most of the surrounding cities were controlled by the Guelphs, most notably Pisa's trading rivals Genoa and Florence. Under the circumstances, Pisa adopted the "strong and vigilant government" of a podestà "armed with almost despotic power".[1]

Ugolino was born in Pisa into the della Gherardesca family, a noble family of Germanic origins whose alliance with the Hohenstaufen emperors had brought them to prominence in Tuscany and made them the leaders of the Ghibellines in Pisa.

Between 1256 and 1258 he participated in the war against the philo-Genoese giudicato of Cagliari, in Sardinia. Ugolino then obtained the southwestern portion of the former Judicate, with its rich silver mines, where he founded the important city of Villa di Chiesa, today Iglesias.


Ugolino and his sons by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, 1861, Petit Palais.

As head of his family, the Ghibelline party and podestà of Pisa, Ugolino took action to preserve his power in the face of the political hostility of Pisa's neighbours. In 1271, through a marriage of his sister with Giovanni Visconti, judge of Gallura, he allied himself with the Visconti, the leaders of the Guelphs in Pisa. In doing so, he aroused the suspicions of his fellow Ghibellines.[2]

The subsequent disorders in the city in 1274 led to the arrest of both Ugolino and Giovanni, who were accused of plotting to undermine Pisa's government and, with the support from Tuscany's Guelphs, share power among themselves. Ugolino was imprisoned and Giovanni banished from Pisa. Giovanni Visconti died soon afterwards, and Ugolino, no longer regarded as a threat, was set free and banished. In exile, Ugolino immediately began to intrigue with the Guelph cities of Florence and Lucca. With the help of Charles I of Anjou, he attacked his native city and forced it to make peace on humiliating terms, pardoning him and all the other Guelph exiles.[2] After his return, Ugolino at first remained aloof from politics but quietly worked to reassert his influence.

In 1284, war broke out between Pisa and Genoa and both Ugolino and Andreotto Saracini were appointed as captains of two divisions of fleets by Albertino Morosini, the Podestà of Pisa. The two fleets met in August in the Battle of Meloria. The Genoese fought valiantly and destroyed seven Pisan galleys and captured twenty-eight. Among the eleven thousand captives was the Podestà.[1] Ugolino and his division set the sign of surrender and withdrew, deciding the battle in favour of Genoa.[1] This flight was later interpreted as treachery but not by any writer earlier than the 16th century.[3]

When Florence and Lucca took advantage of the naval defeat to attack Pisa, Ugolino was appointed podestà for a year and succeeded in pacifying them by ceding certain castles. When Genoa suggested peace on similar terms, Ugolino was less eager to accept, for the return of the Pisan prisoners, including most of the leading Ghibellines, would have diminished his power.[2]

Ugolino, now appointed capitano del popolo for ten years, was now the most influential man in Pisa but was forced to share his power with his nephew Nino Visconti, son of Giovanni. The duumvirate did not last, as Ugolino and Nino soon quarrelled.[2] In 1287, Nino, striving to become Podestà, entered into negotiations with Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, Archbishop of Pisa, and the Ghibellines. Ugolino reacted by driving Nino and several Ghibelline families out of the city, destroying their palaces and occupying the town hall, where he had himself proclaimed lord of the city.


Torre della Muda, Giovanni Paolo Lasinio, engravings dated 1865.

In April of that year, Ugolino again refused to make peace with Genoa, even though the enemy was willing to be content with financial reparations. Ugolino still feared the return of the captured Pisans, who saw Ugolino as the cause for their prolonged captivity and had sworn to get their revenge for this.

In 1288, Pisa was hit by a dramatic increase in prices, resulting in food shortages and riots among the bitter populace. During one of these riots, Ugolino killed a nephew of the archbishop, turning the latter against him. On 1 July 1288, after leaving a council-meeting discussing peace with Genoa, Ugolino and his followers were attacked by a band of armed Ghibellines. Ugolino withdrew into the town hall and repelled all attacks. The archbishop, accusing Ugolino of treachery, aroused the citizens. When the town hall was set on fire, Ugolino surrendered. While his illegitimate son was killed, Ugolino himself – together with his sons Gaddo and Uguccione and his grandsons Nino (surnamed "the Brigand") and Anselmuccio – were detained in the Muda, a tower belonging to the Gualandi family.[2] In March 1289, on orders of the archbishop, who had proclaimed himself podestà, the keys were thrown into the Arno river and the prisoners left to starve.

Their corpses were buried in the cloister of Saint Francis Church and remained there until 1902, when they were exhumed and transferred to the Gherardesca family chapel.

Literary afterlife

The historical details of the episode are still involved in some obscurity, and although mentioned by Villani and other writers, it owes its fame entirely to Dante's Divine Comedy. Dante's account has been paraphrased by Chaucer in the Monk's Tale of the Canterbury Tales, as well as by Shelley.[2] Irish poet Seamus Heaney also recounts the legend in his poem "Ugolino", a free translation from Dante, found in his 1979 book Field Work. Giovanni Pascoli writes of Ugolino in "Conte Ugolino", a poem from his Primi Poemetti.

Ugolino in Dante's Inferno

-- The Convivio, by Dante Alighieri
-- The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, by Dante Alighieri
-- De Monarchia of Dante Alighieri, by Dante Alighieri and Aurelia Henry

Dante and Virgil in the Inferno before Ugolino and His Sons by Priamo della Quercia (15th century)

Dante placed Ugolino and Ruggieri in the ice of the second ring (Antenora) of the lowest circle of the Inferno, which is reserved for betrayers of kin, country, guests, and benefactors.

Ugolino's punishment involves his being entrapped in ice up to his neck in the same hole with his betrayer, Archbishop Ruggieri, who left him to starve to death. Ugolino is constantly gnawing at Ruggieri's skull. As Dante describes it,

[I saw two shades frozen in a single hole
packed so close, one head hooded the other one;
the way the starving devour their bread, the soul
above had clenched the other with his teeth
where the brain meets the nape.

— (Canto XXXII, lines 124–29), [4]

Ugolino's gnawing of Ruggieri's head has been interpreted as meaning that Ugolino's hatred for his enemy is so strong that he is compelled to "devour even what has no substance."[5] Ugolino, though punished for his betrayal of his people, is allowed some closure for the betrayal that he himself was forced to suffer under Ruggieri, when he is allowed to act as Ruggieri's torturer for eternity. According to Frances Yates, both are "suffering the torments of the damned in the traitors' hell; but Ugolino is given the right to oppress ... Archbishop Ruggieri with a ghastly eternal punishment which fits his crime."[6]

Ugolino and his children


Ugolino and his sons in their cell, as painted by William Blake circa 1826.


Ugolino gnawing at his own fingers, in an engraving by Domingos Sequeira

According to Dante, the prisoners were slowly starved to death and before dying Ugolino's children begged him to eat their bodies.

'Father our pain', they said,
'Will lessen if you eat us you are the one
Who clothed us with this wretched flesh: we plead
For you to be the one who strips it away'.

— (Canto XXXIII, ln. 56–59)

… And I,
Already going blind, groped over my brood
Calling to them, though I had watched them die,
For two long days. And then the hunger had more
Power than even sorrow over me

— (Canto XXXIII, ln. 70–73), [4]

Ugolino's statement that hunger proved stronger than grief has been interpreted in two ways, either that Ugolino devoured his offspring's corpses after being driven mad with hunger, or that starvation killed him after he had failed to die of grief. The first and more ghastly of these interpretations has proved the more popular and resonant. For this reason Ugolino is known as the "Cannibal Count" and is often depicted gnawing at his own fingers ("eating of his own flesh") in consternation, as in the sculpture The Gates of Hell by Auguste Rodin, in Ugolino and his Sons by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and in other artwork, though this may also simply refer to Ugolino's own statement in the poem that he gnawed his fingers in grief.

Ugolino in Borges

The case of Ugolino and Ruggiero is behind the story of the short story "The Wait" (La espera) of Jorge Luis Borges in the collection named The Aleph (El Aleph) (1949).

Scientific analysis of the remains

In 2002, paleoanthropologist Francesco Mallegni conducted DNA testing on the recently excavated bodies of Ugolino and his children. His analysis agrees with the remains being a father, his sons and his grandsons. Additional comparison to DNA from modern-day members of the Gherardesca family leave Mallegni about 98 percent sure that he has identified the remains correctly. However, the forensic analysis discredits the allegation of cannibalism. Analysis of the rib bones of the Ugolino skeleton reveals traces of magnesium, but no zinc, implying he had consumed no meat in the months before his death. Ugolino also had few remaining teeth and is believed to have been in his 70s when he was imprisoned, making it further unlikely that he could have outlived and eaten his descendants in captivity. Additionally, Mallegni notes that the putative Ugolino skull was damaged; perhaps he did not ultimately die of starvation, although malnourishment is evident.[7][8]

In 2008, Paola Benigni, superintendent to the Archival Heritage of Tuscany, disputed Mallegni's findings in an article, claiming that the documents assigning the burial to Ugolino and his descendants were Fascist-era forgeries.[9]

Notes

1. "Count Ugolino of Pisa", Bentley's Miscellany 55 (1864), p. 173–78.
2. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Villari, Luigi (1911). "Della Gherardesca, Ugolino". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 965–966.
3. G. del Noce, in Il Conte U. della Gherardesca (1894), takes treachery as the only motive behind the flight, while Daniella Bartoli, in the 6th volume of his Storia della letteratura italiana, suggests Ugolino's alliance with the Ghibellines as the motive.
4. Alighieri, Dante. The Inferno. Translated and edited by Robert Pinsky. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996
5. Joan M. Ferrante. The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy. Princeton University Press (1984).
6. Frances A. Yates. "Transformations of Dante's Ugolino". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14(1/2) (1951), p. 92–117. doi:10.2307/750354. JSTOR 750354.
7. Nicole Martinelli, "Dante and the Cannibal Count" Archived 2009-01-06 at the Wayback Machine, Newsweek (1 February 2007).
8. Francesco Mallegni, M. Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut. Il conte Ugolino di Donoratico tra antropologia e storia (2003). ISBN 978-8884920591
9. Paola Benigni, Massimo Becattini. "Ugolino della Gherardesca: cronaca di una scoperta annunciata". Archeologia Viva 128 (2008). pp. 64–67.

Literature

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ugolino della Gherardesca.
• Paola Benigni, Massimo Becattini. "Ugolino della Gherardesca: cronaca di una scoperta annunciata". Archeologia Viva 128 (2008). pp. 64–67.
• Thomas Caldecot Chub. Dante and His World. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. (1996).
• Joan M. Ferrante. The Political Vision of the Divine Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1984).
• Robert Hollander. "Inferno XXXIII, 37–74: Ugolino's Importunity". Speculum 59(3) (July 1984), p. 549–55. doi:10.2307/2846299. JSTOR 2846299.
• Robert Hollander. Circle 9 The Trustees of Princeton University (1997).
• James Miller. Dante & the Unorthodox; The Aesthetics of Transgression. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid University Press (2005).
• Gilbert, Allan H. Dante's Conception of Justice. Duke University Press, 1925.
• Francesco Mallegni, M. Luisa Ceccarelli Lemut. Il conte Ugolino di Donoratico tra antropologia e storia (2003). ISBN 88-8492-059-0.
• Nicole Martinelli, "Dante and the Cannibal Count", Newsweek (1 February 2007).
• Guy P. Raffa. Circle 9, Cantos 31–34. University of Texas at Austin (2002).
• Theodore Spencer. "The Story of Ugolino in Dante and Chaucer". Speculum 9(3) (July 1934), p. 295–301. doi:10.2307/2853896. JSTOR 2853896.
• Paget Toynbee, A Dictionary of the Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante, Oxford University Press (1968).[1]
• Frances A. Yates. "Transformations of Dante's Ugolino". Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 14(1/2) (1951), p. 92–117. doi:10.2307/750354. JSTOR 750354.

External links

• World of Dante, canto 33: Multimedia website with Italian text and Allen Mandelbaum's translation, as well as art
• The Princeton Dante Project

[admin]

Indian Education Commission (1882-83)
by YourArticleLibrary
Accessed: 8/25/24

-- Report of the Indian Education Commission, Appointed by the Resolution of the Government of India dated 3rd February 1882, Calcutta, Printed by the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1883

-- William Wilson Hunter, by Wikipedia

The Calcutta School-Book Society was an organisation based in Kolkata during the British Raj. It was established in 1817, with the aim of publishing text books and supplying them to schools and madrasas in India.

In 1814, four years before the establishment of the Calcutta School Society and three years before the formation of the Calcutta School-Book Society, the London Missionary Society, under the supervision of Robert May, set up 36 elementary schools in Chinsurah, West Bengal, India (now Chunchura).[1]

Fort William College was created in 1800 by Lord Wellesley, the Governor-General at the time. A growing eagerness and enthusiasm towards education led to the translation and printing of the Bible in Sanskrit, Bengali, Assamese and Oriya. Scholars like Mrityunjay Vidyalankar and Ramram Basu did the work with foreign language experts and alongside, the Ramayana, Mahabharata and other Indian epics were skilfully translated into different languages. The Calcutta School-Book Society followed a similar path and helped Bengali prose writers achieve national and international acclaim. As a result of rise of widespread higher education, journalism became a major component of British society, with magazines like the Magazine for Indian Youth and newspapers like the Samachar Darpan (The News Mirror) becoming a widespread phenomenon. Mass education, however, came much later in 1885 with the Hunter Education Commission, which ended James Long's and other missionary organisations' zealous ideas of dissipating education among the masses, in an expression of the continuing battle for superiority of the British over the natives.

To strengthen their political colonisation of India, the British strategised emotional and intellectual colonisation and, in the Charter of 1833, announced English as the official language of British India. This ideology had at its fulcrum, Thomas Babington Macaulay’s assertion of the British ideology that Western learning was superior to Oriental languages and indigenous Sanskrit and other vernacular knowledge. The setting up of several colleges in Calcutta, India, namely the Hindu College in 1816 and the Sanskrit College in 1824, portrays this shift of emphasis from the study of Oriental languages in Fort William College to the establishment of the English language, ensuring that all Indian students studying in these new colleges and schools, which were developed under the Calcutta School Society (1818), had to learn English whether they liked it or not.

In the shadow of this shift in cultural paradigm, the Calcutta School-Book Society also known as the Calcutta Book Society, was instituted on 4 July 1817, in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata), the then capital of the British Empire. The society was set up under the patronage of Lord Marquess of Hastings who was Governor-General at that point of time. The School-Book Society was set up with the coming of Western methods in education to India and henceforth, the rising demand for textbooks and dictionaries. The society also encouraged the establishment of new elementary schools. The Calcutta School Society, an educational institution independent from the School-Book Society was set up on 1 September 1818. The government established it with a sole aim 'to endorse education beyond the curriculum' and to introduce similar teaching techniques at different schools and to develop, build or reconstruct old and new schools. The Calcutta School-Book Society on the other hand aimed at publishing textbooks for these new schools and other institutions of higher learning.

-- Calcutta School-Book Society [Calcutta Book Society], by Wikipedia

Essay Contents:

1. Essay on the Background of Indian Education Commission
2. Essay on Composition of the Council
3. Essay on the Report of Indian Education Commission
________________________________________

1. Essay on the Background of Indian Education Commission:

1. There was no spread of mass education due to the indifferent and apathetic attitude of the Government since 1854. The progress of primary education was extremely slow.
2. The system of indigenous education was gradually decaying due to willful neglect of the Government as well as want of native patronage.
3. There was no suitable Government help to primary education.
4. The Government did not help in any way the Indian private enterprise in education which was the directive of the Despatch. It was practically crushed and consequently primary education was neglected.
5. The Government had little intention to withdraw gradually from the arena of education which the framers of the Despatch intended.
6. The quality of instruction was deteriorated at an alarming rate.
7. The Despatch categorically discarded the Downward Filtration Theory but it was still favoured by the Government.
8. The system of “grant-in-aid” did not work properly. It was not carried out by the Government as suggested by the Despatch. The Indian private enterprise did not get much financial assistance from the Government. Educational expenditure was mainly directed to Government educational institutions.
The declared non-interference on the part of the Government in education was not carried into effect. But the number of Government educational institutions was increasing day by day. A strong belief was created in the minds of the common people that the Government was trying to destroy the private enterprise in education. Thus the Government was determined to destroy the very spirit of the Despatch.
9. National consciousness was aroused in India which was demanding national education based on national cultural tradition as against western culture. At the end of the 19th century Hindu chauvinism was at its peak.
10. The missionaries were also dissatisfied. After the Despatch they thought they would be the chief agency in Indian education. But their hope was totally frustrated. They criticised the Government policy of religious neutrality in education which they characterised as “Godless and irreligious”. They were agitating against the step-mother-like attitude of the Education Department.
They even started campaign in England and a Council known as the “General Council of Education in India” was set up there in 1878. The missionaries sent a deputation to the then Secretary of State for India (Lord Huttington) and the future Governor-General of India (Lord Ripon) to place their grievances.
________________________________________

2. Essay on Composition of the Council:

The Commission was appointed on 3rd Feb., 1882, by Lord Ripon. It is the first Education Commission in India. Sir William W. Hunter, a member of the Governor General’s Executive Council, was its chairman. Hence it is commonly known as the Hunter Commission. It consisted of twenty members.
The Indian members of the commission were Syed Ahmed Khan, Mr. Haj Ghulam of Amritsar, Mr. Anand Mohan Bose, Mr. P. Rangananda Mudaliar, Babu Bhudeb Mukherjee, Justice K. T. Telang and Maharaja Jyotindra Mohan Tagore. Dr. W. Miller was the representative of the missionaries in the Commission. Mr. B. L. Rice, the then D.P.I, of Mysore was appointed the Secretary of the Commission.
The main objectives and terms of reference of the Commission were:
………. “to enquire into the manner in which effect had been given to the principles of Despatch of 1854 and to suggest such measures as it might think desirable with a view to the further carrying out of the policy therein laid down”.
1. To enquire especially about the primary education as there was a strong demand for mass education;
2. To consider ways and means about the expansion of the grant-in-aid system;
3. To enquire into the activities of the provincial department of education;
4. To enquire about the respective role of the Government Institutions and private institutions in a national system of education;
5. To decide Government attitude towards religious instruction.
Activities of the Indian Universities, technical education and education of the Europeans were kept outside the purview of the Commission.
The Commission toured throughout the country for eight months. It worked for seven weeks in Calcutta. The commission appointed provincial Committees which gave reports about education of their respective provinces. The final report was based on these provincial reports. In 1883 the Commission submitted its voluminous report of 600 pages with 222 resolutions. It is an important historical document.
________________________________________

3. Essay on the Report of Indian Education Commission:

Policy:

It severely criticised the educational policy of the Government. It opined that the Government has been going against the directives of the Despatch. Private educational institutions were not at all financially helped by the provincial Governments.
The Commission as such proposed liberalisation of the grant-in-aid system; the Government should refrain from establishing new educational institutions; primary education should be handed over to local bodies; and secondary and collegiate education to responsible committees.
The Commission suggested two important measures for working out the policy:
(a) The Government should curtail its educational activities and withdraw from direct enterprise;
(b) It should organise a proper system of grant-in-aid.
1. Primary Education:
The Commission paid special attention to the-subject of primary education. In view of the slow progress of primary education during the period 1854-1882, the subject of primary education figures prominently in the Report of the Indian Education Commission.
The Commission declared boldly that while every branch of education can justly claim the fostering care of the State, the elementary education of the masses, its provision, extension and improvement deserves the greatest attention in any national system of education.
The Commission made altogether 36 important recommendations for the spread of elementary education which can conveniently be divided into the following six heads:
A – Policy;
B – Encouragement to indigenous schools;
C – Legislation and Administration;
D – School administration (internal management);
E – Training of teachers;
F – Finance.
A-Policy:
i. Primary education should be self-sufficient. It should not be preparatory to secondary education.
ii. Mass education is needed to remove mounting illiteracy. Primary education should be regarded as the instruction of the masses through the vernacular in such subjects as will fit them best for their position in life.
iii. Strenuous efforts of the State should now be directed to the improvement, provision and extension of elementary education of the masses.
iv. Highest priority should be attached to the extension and development of primary education without which no national system of education can be laid down.
v. Immediate attention should be devoted to those districts which are backward in respect of primary education.
B – Indigenous institutions: Encouragement to indigenous schools:
i) The Commission was of the opinion that these schools deserved encouragement and incorporation into official system. The Commission was fully aware of the utility of the indigenous schools and recommended that these should form the basis of mass education. This was a recommendation in the right direction.
ii) The commission recognised the merits and demerits of the indigenous schools. “Admitting, however, the comparative inferiority of indigenous institutions we consider the efforts should now be made to encourage them. They have survived competition, and thus have proved that they possess both vitality and popularity”. The Commission defined the indigenous schools “as one established or conducted by natives of India on native methods”. For the improvement of these schools the Commission made the following recommendations:
iii) Instruction in indigenous schools should be secular;
iv) The system of “payment by result” should be introduced as a method of financing the indigenous schools. This was not a happy recommendation. A better system would have been that of “capitation grants”;
v) The Commission suggested that an attempt should be made to improve the teaching in indigenous schools, gradually and steadily. For this purpose training of teachers should be encouraged;
vi) The system of inspection and standard of examination should be improved;
vii) Indigenous schools should be open to all irrespective of caste, creed and sex;
viii) The Commission held the view that the administration of indigenous schools should be handed over to the District and Municipal Boards. Financial support should be given to these schools by the Boards. The Education Departments of the provincial Governments should help financially to the District and Municipal Boards. This was no doubt a memorable proposal for democratization of Indian education,
ix) Financial help should be provided to encourage the depressed classes to receive education.
C – Legislation and Administration:
The Commission recommended that the control of primary education should be made over to District and Municipal Boards. These local boards should form “Education Boards” in their localities. The primary schools of their localities should be handed over to these “Education Boards”. But unfortunately the “Education Boards” failed to fulfill the desired expectation in respect of improvement in the field of primary education.
D – School Administration (internal management of schools):
i) There should be no attempt to achieve uniformity. The content of instruction, i.e., the curriculum in primary schools should be adopted to the local needs and environment and should be simplified wherever possible,
ii) Practical subjects such as Indian methods of arithmetic and accounts (book-keeping), agriculture, physical science, hygiene, medicine, fine arts etc. should be introduced.
iii) School managers should be free to choose the text books for their schools.
iv) Utmost elasticity should be permitted regarding hours of the day and the seasons of the year during which schools are to remain open.
v) There should be provision for physical exercise and native games and sports in primary schools.
vi) Primary education should not be compulsory in any province.
vii) The Inspectors themselves will take examinations as far as possible.
viii) Instruction should be through the mother-tongue of the children
ix) There should be one Normal School in each sub-division for training primary teachers.
E – Training of Teachers:
To improve the standard of teaching, the indigenous school teachers and their probable successors should be encouraged to undergo training. Inspite of the positive directive in the Despatch there was no remarkable improvement in this field. The Commission laid great emphasis on the training of primary teachers. It emphasised the need of establishing more Normal Schools for the training of teachers so that there might be at least one Normal School in each Sub-division and under a Divisional Inspector.
The Commission recommended that the teachers should not only know the principles of teaching but also they should learn how to apply them in practice. The Government should bear all the expenses of training of teachers.
F- Finance:
In the opinion of the Commission finance is the greatest obstacle in the way of primary education.
So it made important recommendations with regard to finance:
i) A specific fund should be created in each local-self Govt. for primary education.
ii) Local funds should be utilised mainly for primary education.
iii) It was the duty of the Provincial Government to assist the local funds by a suitable system of grant-in-aid.
iv) The accounts of the primary education fund in municipal areas should be separated from those for the rural areas.
v) The Provincial Governments should bear the expenditure for Normal Schools and School Inspection.
vi) The Commission desired that one-third of the total expenditure for primary education should be borne by the Provincial Government; but it was silent regarding from where the huge money required for primary education would be available. For this lacuna in the Report most of the recommendations of the Commission for the development of primary education remained ineffective.
vii) The report emphasised “payment by results” to the primary schools. This was no doubt a wrong suggestion.
viii) Free studentships to poor students and scholarships to meritorious students were also recommended.
ix) The doors of all the Government and aided primary schools should be open to all.
2. Secondary Education:
Soon after the receipt of the Despatch, the number of secondary schools under Government control multiplied rapidly. Due to the provision of grant-in-aid there was a large increase in the number of private Secondary schools also.
The Commission had to make recommendations on two important matters connected with the expansion of secondary education:
(1) Firstly, it had to suggest ways and means for seeming a more rapid expansion of secondary education;
(2) Secondly, the Commission had to recommend the best agency for expansion of secondary education.
Opinion was strongly divided on this subject:
(a) One view held that Government ought to multiply the number of secondary schools directly under its control,
(b) Another view favoured private enterprise, particularly Indian private enterprise, as an effective means of expanding secondary education because it is less costly and will take shorter time. The Commission recommended that the Govt. ought to withdraw from the field of direct management of secondary schools and encourage private enterprise as largely as possible.
It was of opinion that the relation of the State to primary education was different from that to secondary education. It was a duty of the State to provide primary education. Secondary education did not have such a paramount claim upon the State. Government was not under an obligation to provide it directly.
The Commission, therefore, recommended that secondary education should, as far as possible, be provided on the grant-in-aid basis and Government should withdraw, as early as possible from the direct management of secondary schools. The Commission emphasised that the system of grant-in-aid should liberally and judiciously be followed. The goal of Govt. efforts should be to transfer gradually all Government secondary schools to a suitable non-Government agency.
The Govt., of course, could establish secondary schools in places “where they may be required in the interests of the people, and where the people themselves may not be advanced or wealthy enough to establish such schools for themselves with a grant-in-aid”. The Commission emphasised that the duty of the Govt. was restricted only to the establishment of one efficient and Model High School, Govt. or aided, in each district.
Regarding the use of mother-tongue as the medium of instruction the recommendation of the Commission was disappointing and unsatisfactory. It was silent on the subject, and evidently favoured the use of English. Thus the mother-tongue as a medium of instruction was neglected by the Commission. The Despatch, of course, favoured the mother-tongue as the medium of instruction at the secondary stage. Again, the Commission did not lay down any definite policy with regard to Middle Schools.
The Despatch also emphasised the importance of training of secondary teachers for qualitative improvement of education. But no satisfactory measures were taken to train secondary teachers. There were only two training institutions at that time for secondary teachers in India (Madras and Lahore). The Commission emphasised training of secondary teachers with some hesitation both in theory and practice, in the principles of teaching and practice of teaching.
More normal schools should be established for training of Secondary teachers and the Govt. should bear all the expenses of these institutions. In respect of appointments, in Government or aided schools, preference should be given to trained teachers. In the cases of graduate teachers the period of training may be shorter (one year) than that for other teachers.
Secondary education was mainly theoretical, narrow and unpractical. The Despatch explicitly stated that the instruction in secondary schools should be practically useful. But this advice for vocational education was utterly neglected. The Commission, therefore, gave considerable attention to the provision of vocational courses at the upper secondary stage (VIII – X) with a view to preparing pupils for various walks of life.
It recommended a bifurcation of the secondary course and said:
“We, therefore, recommend that in the upper classes of high schools there be two divisions, – one leading to the Entrance Examination of the Universities, the other of a more practical character, intended to fit youths for commercial or non-literary pursuits”. The first is known as “Course ‘A’ and the Second ‘B’ course. But the attempt to popularise the ‘B’ Course ultimately failed.
3. Collegiate and University Education:
The Government Resolution appointing the Commission observed that it would “not be necessary for the Commission to enquire into the general working of the Indian Universities”. The Commission, therefore, could not study the problem of collegiate education in a comprehensive manner and hence its recommendations on this subject are not so important.
The Report of the Commission did little to improve University education. The Commission was also precluded from studying professional colleges because that “would expand unduly” the task before it.
But its recommendations on other matters reacted indirectly on the development of collegiate education in two ways:
a) Firstly, the recommendations led to a great expansion of secondary education. As there was no alternative channel and University degree was regarded as passport of lucrative Govt. posts the students who passed matriculation examination joined the colleges. As a result the number of students seeking admission to colleges increased substantially.
b) Secondly, the recommendations of the Commission created a background in which Indian private enterprise could thrive. Contrary to missionary institutions new institutions managed by Indians came into the field in large numbers.
The Commission also voluntarily made some direct references to the development of collegiate education.
These are:
a) Gradual withdrawal by the Govt. from the field of collegiate education;
b) More liberal grants to colleges in order to encourage Indian private enterprise in collegiate education;
c) Necessity of the maintenance of higher education in India;
d) Freedom to private colleges to determine college fees;
e) Introduction of a large number of optional subjects;
f) Liberal grants for libraries and research work;
g) Scholarships to poor but meritorious students.
As a result of these recommendations higher liberal education expanded rapidly at the cost of professional and technical education. Quality of higher education had also been lowered.
4. Special Recommendations for the Establishment of Special schools and Colleges for the Children of Native Princes and the Muhammedans:
The Commission recommended the establishment of institutions, schools and colleges, for the education of princes and children of native chiefs. On account of the existence of wide disparity between the educational advancement of the Hindus and Muslims, the commission also proposed to provide some special educational facilities to the Muslim community to encourage them to receive education.
Hence, it was recommended that Government should award scholarships, stipends and free studentship to Muslim students in large numbers, and to establish Muslim Normal Schools and appoint Muslim Inspectors. This recommendation was not a happy one as it led to communal trouble in later years.
5. Adult Education:
Mass illiteracy in India attracted the attention of the Commission, and hence it recommended the establishment of Night Schools for adults.
6. Religious Education:
The missionaries demanded that religion should be made an integral part of education. The Commission discarded this demand and recommended complete religious neutrality in the field of education. It, of course, favoured religious instruction on voluntary basis and recommended preparation of text books on morality and organisation of religious lectures.
7. Women’s Education:
The Commission was fully conscious of the low rate of literacy among Indian women. It found that 95.5% of women were illiterate. “It will have been seen that female education is still in an extremely backward condition and that it needs to be fostered in every legitimate way………….. Hence we think it expedient to recommend that public funds of all kinds – local, municipal and provincial – should be chargeable in an equitable proportion for the support of girls’ schools as well as for boys’ schools”.
For the spread of women education the commission made some important recommendations:
a) Govt. should give more liberal grants to private girls’ schools;
b) School fees should be nominal;
c) Govt. should give award grants to women teachers;
d) Prizes should be given to girls above 12;
e) Establishment of Normal Schools for training of women teachers;
f) Introduction of simpler and easier curriculum for girls than boys;
g) Organisation of a separate Inspectorate for girls’ education and appointment of lady Inspectors.
8. Role of the Missionaries in Indian Education:
The missionaries hoped that they would dominate the entire educational arena in India. In order to fulfill this objective they were agitating even in England. But the recommendations of the Commission totally frustrated their expectations. The fate of the missionaries was completely sealed by the Commission. Their demand for spreading education as the main agency was rejected by the Commission.
The Commission favoured purely Indian private enterprise and not European private enterprise like the missionaries. “The private effort, which it is mainly intended to evoke is that of the people themselves”, the Commission remarked. It further observed: “We think it will to put on record our unanimous opinion that withdrawal of direct departmental agency should not take place in favour Of missionary bodies and the departmental institutions of the higher order should not be transferred to missionary management”. It is evident thus that missionary enterprise was regarded as inferior to Indian private enterprise.
9. Gradual Withdrawal of the Government from Educational Field:
It was the policy of the Commission to make the Government free from the responsibilities of national education. It recommended that the responsibilities of mass education should be entrusted to the Indian people. Therefore, the people were required to raise funds for their own education.
The money thus saved could be utilised in sanctioning grants-in-aid to a larger number of institutions. Accordingly primary education was placed under the control and supervision of Local Boards and secondary and collegiate education was entrusted to the fostering care of Indian private enterprise under the proper direction of the Government.
10. Grant-in-Aid System:
The Commission laid special stress on the improvement and extension in the system of grant-in-aid. It gave directions to all the provinces to set up a general principle in this respect consistent with their local needs. It, however, wiped out the distinction between Government and non-Government institutions. The rules of grant-in-aid were liberalised, made simpler and lenient.
Every application for a grant-in-aid should receive an official reply and in case of refusal the reasons for such refusal should always be given. Grants be paid without delay when they become due according to the rules. Interference with internal affairs of the institutions was forbidden.
11. Results:
The Government of India accepted almost all the recommendations except the recommendation regarding religion.
The report produced three major results:
a) Administration of primary education was entirely handed over to the Local Self-Government Bodies.
b) Withdrawal by the Government from the field of secondary education was partially carried out.
c) Place of Indian enterprise in national education was recognised.
12. Criticism:
(1) The Commission favoured withdrawal by the Govt. from the field of education as early as possible. This was a memorable recommendation with far-reaching effects.
(2) It intended rapid development of education from primary to uni¬ersity level with the help of both Govt. and private enterprises.
(3) The commission emphasised keenly on adult education with the intention to remove mass illiteracy in our country more than a century ago and thus the intention was definitely good.
(4) Administration of primary education was left to the local Self-Government bodies mostly represented by Indians. Thus an attempt was made to democratise and Indianise educational administration. The attempt is no doubt praiseworthy.
(5) Indian enterprise in a national system of education was recognised by the Commission.
(6) Recommendations with regard to the place of the missionaries and religion in education were also no doubt commendable.
(7) The Commission virtually supported the educational policies laid down in the Despatch of 1854 and Standby Despatch of 1859. No new policy was recommended by the Commission. The only and most important policy recommended by the Commission was regarding the place of missionaries in education. But we should remember that it was not the function of the Commission to frame policy but to execute.
(8) Vocational education in the upper classes of secondary schools was recommended and two types of Courses ‘A’ and ‘B’ were to be introduced for the purpose. But the ‘B’ course was not implemented. Technical and industrial education was not recommended by the Commission with obvious reasons. This major defect was exhibited later in the field of secondary education which the national leaders wanted to rectify.
(9) The Commission laid emphasis on primary education, but it was not made free, universal and compulsory.
(10) It failed to make any suitable provision for financing primary education. Most of its financial recommendations with regard to primary education were not carried out due to lack of adequate finances.
(11) The principle of “payment by result” was not a happy recommendation. It was not good for the country and as such it was later abolished by Lord Curzon.
(12) The Commission was almost silent on the question of medium of instruction at the secondary stage and thereby indirectly supported English as the medium of instruction and neglected the claim of the mother-tongue and other modern Indian languages.
(13) The Commission made some recommendations with regard to training of teachers at secondary stage in half-hearted manner and these were not implemented in right earnest, and this non-implementation led to dearth of trained teachers in the field of secondary education.
(14) The recommendation for granting special educational facilities to the Muslim students introduced communalism in education in later years.
(15) The area of recommendation of the Commission was narrow. The Government desired that the Commission should only enquire into limited and specific fields of education.
(16) The Commission made some casual recommendations with regard to higher education. As a result, some defects originated in the field of higher education which Lord Curzon had to heal up. These included lop-sided development of liberal education, neglect of professional education, deterioration in the quality of higher education and neglect of modern Indian languages.

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First Indian Education Commission or the Hunter Commission
by YourArticleLibrary
Accessed: 8/26/24

-- Report of the Indian Education Commission, Appointed by the Resolution of the Government of India dated 3rd February 1882, Calcutta, Printed by the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1883

-- William Wilson Hunter, by Wikipedia

Lord Ripon the then Governor-General of India appointed the first Indian Education Commission on February 3, 1882 under the Chairmanship of Sir William Hunter, a member of the Executive Council of Viceroy. So this Commission is popularly known as Hunter Commission. The Government desired that “the commission should specially bear in mind the great importance which the Government attaches to the subject of primary education”. Though the development of primary education was one of the main objects contemplated by the Despatch, 1854, yet owing to the variety of circumstances expected result could not be achieved in the field of primary education.

The government clearly admitted the negligence of primary education and so the Commission was directed “to enquire particularly into the manner in which effect has been given to the Despatch of 1854 and to suggest measures as it may think desirable in order to the further carrying out the policy there in laid down”. Besides, the Commission was also required to suggest ways and means by which the system of grant-in-aid could be extended.

After considering the different aspects of education in general and primary education in particular the Commission submitted its voluminous report nearly of 700 pages with various important suggestions for the future progress of education. A brief account of the recommendations of the commission is given below. The Commission defined the indigenous schools “as one established or conducted by natives of India on native methods”, and recommended that the indigenous schools should be developed, patronized and admitted into new educational pattern. Indigenous schools imparting secular education should be recognized and encouraged.

The system of payment by results should be followed for giving grant-in-aid to the indigenous schools. Before going to give recommendation regarding primary education the Commission defined it “as the instruction of the masses through the vernacular in such subjects as will fit them for their position in life and be not necessarily regarded as a portion of instruction leading up to the University”.

The Commission recommends that:

I. “In selecting persons to fill the lowest offices under Government. Preference be always given to candidates who can read and write”.

II. Extension of primary education in backward districts especially the areas inhabited by aboriginal races.

III. Entrusting the District and Municipal Boards with the work of the management of primary education. These boards were entrusted with the supervision of primary education as a result of the Local self-Government Act.

IV. Formation of school district taking the area of any municipal or rural unit of Local self-Government and establishment of schools placed under their jurisdiction in each district.

V. District and Municipal Boards were directed to assign specific funds to primary education.

VI. The accounts of rural and urban primary institutions be separated so that the funds of rural institutions might not be misappropriated by urban primary schools.

The Commission gave positive direction that the local funds should be utilized exclusively on primary education. Besides local funds, the provincial governments should contribute to local funds and such financial help had not been specified.

Regarding school administration, Commission suggested that the upper and lower primary examinations should not be made compulsory and “care should be taken not to interfere with the freedom of the managers of aided schools in the choice of text­books”.

The Commission also emphasized the promotion of the physical development of the pupils by the encouragement of native games, special care for the discipline, manners and character of the children. Besides, the Commission suggested for the establishment of Normal schools under a Divisional Inspector for the training of teachers and also allowed the provinces to adopt a curriculum suiting to their needs and inclusion of certain subjects of practical utility.

With a view to expand secondary education the Commission recommended:

I. The gradual withdrawal of the Government from this field and to transfer secondary education to efficient private bodies by sanctioning grant-in-aid to it;

II. Establishment of model Government high school in each district;

III. At the secondary stage two types of courses were recommended. Course ‘A’ was to be pursued to the entrance examination of the Universities and course ‘B’ was to be a ‘more practical character, intended to fit Youths for commercial or other non-literary pursuits’.

Thus the commission laid special emphasis on the diversification of courses. As regards the medium of instruction at the secondary stage the commission did not refer to the use of mother tongue and also did not lay down any definite policy with regard to middle schools and left them to the care of the private management. Though the Commission was not authorized by the government to enquire into the general working of the Indian Universities, yet the Commission made some minor recommendations about collegiate education.

The Commission suggested that “The rate of aid to each college be determined by the strength of the staff, the expenditure on its maintenance, the efficiency of the institution and the wants of the locality”. Special financial assistance to the institutions could be made for the construction of building, furniture, library and scientific apparatus. Further the Commission suggested for the writing of moral textbook based upon the fundamental principles of natural religion, arrangement of religious talks by the Principal or Professor in each session, empowering private college to levy less than government institutions etc.

The Commission’s recommendations were very significant pertaining to missionary enterprise in India. The Commission made very clear cut suggestion on the subject of private agency which was to take over the task of education from the government. It is mentioned in the report. “The private effort which it is mainly intended to evoke is that of the people themselves. Natives of India must constitute the most important of all agencies and educational means are ever to be co-extensive with educational wants”. Thus, it is evident that missionary enterprise was regarded as inferior to private institution in the sphere of private venture in educational field.

In the sphere of grant-in-aid the commission examined all the prevailing systems i.e. Salary Grant system of Madras, the Payment by Results system of Bombay, and the Fixed period system of Northern and Central India. In this connection the Commission allowed full discretion to all the provinces consistent with their local needs.

In addition to these, the Commission suggested pertaining to women education; the liberal grants for girls’ schools, award grants to women teachers, facilities in appointment, differentiation of curriculum etc. Besides these, the Muslim education, Religious education. Education of aboriginals. Adult education were equally emphasized by the Commission.

Though some of the recommendations of the Commission were quite significant and befitting to the time even then those were not free from criticism. The fact is that the Commission failed to realize the true magnitude of the problem of primary education and it did not visualize the possibility of introducing universal primary education. Though the bifurcation of the course at the secondary stage was useful, yet it could not be effectively implemented. Because the non-literary course could not attract a sufficient number of pupils.

By charging less fees the private institutions attracted more students; but the institutions were insufficiently staffed, miserably equipped and utterly unfit to give useful education. Efficient teachers were not available to teach modern Indian languages. To speak the truth the new system of education, did not take due notice of cultural heritage of the country.

After the recommendations of the Hunter Commission, district boards and local boards were entrusted for the expansion of primary education. The rights and duties of these local boards were codified. With respect to granting aid to local boards provincial Governments framed regulations. This system adversely affected the indigenous institutions as there was maximum control of the Government upon education.

Thus, by the end of the nineteenth century the indigenous system of education almost went out of existence and the entire fabric of the system was shattered to pieces. But the roots of the modern type of primary education went deeper and deeper into the soil of the country.

The local boards increased their expenditure on primary education. But consideration of the population of the country and the magnitude of illiteracy the funds were quite inadequate for the acceleration of the pace of primary education. Though there was vertical progress owing to good teaching and effective supervision, but horizontally it proceeded at a snails’ pace.

At the secondary level the private enterprise was much encouraged. During the period the secondary education attained a high level of progress and the number of schools rose from 3,916 in the year, 1882 to 5,124 in 1902. However, all provincial Governments had included practical education in some measures in the curricula. But the ‘B’ course introduced in some schools could not enjoy popularity. In 1902, when 23,000 candidates appeared at the matriculation examination only 2,000 candidates appeared in vocational subjects.

The progress of provincial languages was dealt a serious blow, due to the non-implementation of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction. Instead, English language dominated the field of secondary education. As a result, free intellectual growth of the pupils was stunted and cramped.

The recommendations of the Commission indirectly influenced the expansion of college education and as a result some of the new Universities were established at Punjab, Allahabad etc. the increase in the number of High Schools and the student’s population forced for the establishment of new colleges. The formation of National Congress in 1885 and the National Movement contributed much to the advancement of education.

Instead of accepting Government posts some of the national leaders look the reins of private educational institutions and contributed their mite for educational expansion. But it is worthy to note that the increase in number of institutions and the enormous growth of indents population greatly affected the standard of education. The Christian Missionaries were very much disillusioned after the publication of the Hunter Commission Report. Consequently they changed their educational policy and concentrated their attention solely to mass education.[???]

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Minute by the Hon'ble T. B. Macaulay
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
February 2, 1835

From: Bureau of Education. Selections from Educational Records, Part I (1781-1839). Edited by H. Sharp. Calcutta: Superintendent, Government Printing, 1920. Reprint. Delhi: National Archives of India, 1965, 107-117.

[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 construction, 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 honorable 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 anybody infer that he meant the youth of his pachalic 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 lac 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 authorise 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 prepare a short Act rescinding that 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 down-right 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 differed in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility. We found a sanatarium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy. Do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanatarium there, if the result should not answer our expectation? 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 instructions, 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 sole,nn manner that all its subjects should, to the end of time, be inoculated for the smallpox: 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.

On 2 February 1898 — that is to say, when Fuhrer was still deeply entrenched in his main dig at Sagarwa — the Government of Burma wrote to the Government of the NWP&O concerning complaints it had received from a monk named U Ma. These involved a certain Dr. A. A. Fuhrer, Archaeological Surveyor to the Government of the NWP&O. Shin U Ma had first taken the complaints to a local government official in Burma, Brian Houghton, and had then backed them up with tangible evidence in the form of letters received from Dr. Fuhrer. Houghton had duly passed U Ma's complaints and copies of his letters on to government headquarters in Rangoon, as a consequence of which they arrived on the desk of the Chief Secretary to the Government of the NWP&O, who passed them on to the Secretary of the Department of Revenue and Agriculture, Archaeology and Epigraphy. From there they made their way to the desk of the Commissioner of Lucknow.

As soon as he returned to his offices at the Lucknow Museum in early March Fuhrer was confronted with the communication from Burma and asked to explain himself. According to the file, his letters to the Burmese monk went back as far as September 1896, when he had written to U Ma about some Buddhist relics he had sent him, allegedly obtained from Sravasti. The contents of this first letter indicate that the two had met while the Burmese was on a pilgrimage to the holy sites in India and had struck up a friendship not unlike that described by Rudyard Kipling in his novel Kim (then in the process of being written in England), which begins with a wandering Tibetan lama being greatly moved by the knowledge of Buddhism shown by the Curator of the Lahore Museum (Rudyard's father J. L. Kipling).

Dr. Fuhrer and U Ma had then come to some arrangement for the one to send the other further relics. On 19 November 1896 Fuhrer wrote again to U Ma to say that:

The relics of Tathagata [Sakyamuni Buddha] sent off yesterday were found in the stupa erected by the Sakyas at Kapilavatthu over the corporeal relics (saririka-dhatus) of the Lord. These relics were found by me during an excavation of 1886, and are placed in the same relic caskets of soapstone in which they were found. The four votive tablets of Buddha surrounded the relic casket. The ancient inscription found on the spot with the relics will follow, as I wish to prepare a transcript and translation of the same for you.

This letter of 19 November 1896 was written more than a year after Fuhrer's first trip into Nepal made in March 1895 (during which he made his discovery of the Asokan inscription on the stump at Nigliva Sagar), but just before he set out on his second foray into Nepal (where he would meet up with General Khadga Shumsher Rana at Paderiya on 1 December 1896). Yet already, it seems, he had found Kapilavastu. In the year referred to in his letter — 1886 — he was still a relative newcomer to the NWP&O Archaeological Department and had yet to conduct his first excavation.

Fuhrer's next letter to U Ma was dated 6 March 1897, three months after his much trumpeted Lumbini and Kapilavastu discoveries. In it he referred to more Buddha relics in his keeping which he would hold on to until U Ma returned to India. Seven weeks later, on 23 June, there was a first reference to a 'tooth relic of Lord Buddha', and five weeks on, on 28 August, a further reference to 'a real and authentic tooth relic of the Buddha Bhagavat [Teacher, thus Sakyamuni]' that he was about to post to U Ma.

The letters now began to come thick and fast. On 21 September Dr. Fuhrer despatched 'a molar tooth of Lord Buddha Gaudama Sakyamuni ... found by me in a stupa erected at Kapilavatthu, where King Suddhodana lived. That it is genuine there can be no doubt.' The tooth was followed on 30 September by an Asokan inscription Fuhrer claimed to have found at Sravasti. Then on 13 December Fuhrer wrote to say that he was now encamped at Kapilavastu, in the Nepal Tarai, where he had uncovered 'three relic caskets with dhatus [body relics] of the Lord Buddha Sakyamuni, adding that he would send these relics to U Ma at the end of March. What is most odd here is that on 13 December 1897 Fuhrer had not yet entered the Nepal Tarai, having been given strict instructions that he was not to do so until 20 December.

This bizarre hoaxing — for no element of financial fraud seems to have been involved — could not go on. The arrival in Burma of the Buddha's molar tooth seems to have been too much for the hitherto credulous Burmese monk, who soon afterwards wrote what sounds like a very angry letter protesting at the remarkable size of the tooth in question. This letter was evidently forwarded from Lucknow to Basti and then probably carried by mail runner to Fuhrer's 'Camp Kapilavastu' at Sagarwa. It was replied to on 16 February 1898, when the Archaeological Surveyor was still encamped at Sagarwa. Writing at some length, Fuhrer went to great pains to mollify the Burmese, declaring that he could quite understand why `the Buddhadanta [Buddha relic] that I sent you a short while ago is looked upon with suspicion by non-Buddhists, as it is quite different from any ordinary human tooth' — as indeed it was, since it was most probably a horse's tooth — 'But you will know that Bhagavat Buddha was no ordinary being, as he was 18 cubits in height [18" x 18 = 27 feet] as your sacred writings state. His teeth would therefore not have been shaped like others: In a further bid to shore up the credibility of the tooth, Fuhrer went on to say that he would send U Ma —

All The Buddha We Could Handle

an ancient inscription that was found by me along with the tooth. It says, 'This sacred tooth relic of Lord Buddha is the gift of Upagupta.' As you know, Upagupta was the teacher of Asoka, the great Buddhist emperor of India. In Asoka's time, about 250 BC, this identical tooth was believed to be a relic of the Buddha Sakyamuni. My own opinion is that the tooth in question is a genuine relic of Buddha.

This supposed Asokan inscription was afterwards found to be written in perfectly accurate Brahmi Prakrit, its most obvious models being the many similar relic inscriptions found at Sanchi and other Buddhist sites, with which Fuhrer was very familiar through his work on Epigraphia Indica.

-- The Buddha and Dr. Fuhrer: An Archaeological Scandal, by Charles Allen

[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 [not] 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.

[admin]

English Education Act 1835
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/26/24

-- Lord William Bentinck, by Wikipedia
-- Thomas Babington Macaulay, by Wikipedia
-- The Whig Interpretation of History, by Herbert Butterfield, M.A., 1965
-- Report of the Indian Education Commission, Appointed by the Resolution of the Government of India dated 3rd February 1882, Calcutta, Printed by the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1883
-- William Wilson Hunter, by Wikipedia
-- Indian Education Commission (1882-83), by YourArticleLibrary
-- First Indian Education Commission or the Hunter Commission, by YourArticleLibrary
-- Minute by the Hon'ble T. B. Macaulay, by Thomas Babington Macaulay

English Education Act 1835
Council of India
Enacted by: Council of India
Status: Repealed

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 the British East India Company, to reallocate funds it was required by the British Parliament to spend on education and literature in India. Previously, they had given limited support to traditional Muslim and Hindu education and the publication of literature in the then traditional languages of education in India (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 (instead of Persian, as under the Mughal Empire), 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

When the 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 lac 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...."

-- Minute by the Hon'ble T. B. Macaulay, by Thomas Babington Macaulay

This had gone to support traditional forms (and content) of education, which (like their contemporary equivalents in England) were firmly non-utilitarian. [non-utilitarian: decorative and not designed to be useful (Cambridge Dictionary] In 1813, by the request of Colonel John Munro, the then British Resident of Travancore and Pulikkottil Dionysius II, a learned monk of Orthodox Syrian Church, Gowri Parvati Bayi, the Queen of Travancore granted permission to start a Theological college in Kottayam, Travancore. The queen granted the tax free 16 acre property, ₹ 20,000, and the necessary timber for construction. The foundation stone was laid on 18 February 1813 and the construction completed by 1815. The structure of the Old Seminary Building is called Naalukettu translated into English as central-quadrangle. The early missionaries who worked here – Norton, Henry Baker, Benjamin Bailey and Fenn – rendered remarkable service. Initially called Cottayam College, the Seminary was not exclusively meant for priest training. It was a seat of English general education in the State of Travancore and is regarded as the "first locale to start English education" in Kerala and the first to have Englishmen as teachers in 1815 itself. In course of time it even came to be known as Syrian College. The students were taught English, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Syriac and Sanskrit over and above Malayalam along with Theological subjects.

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 [plan] 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. 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.

In the peroration, he emphasized the moral imperative of educating 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.

Macaulay's "Minute Upon Indian Education"

To remove all doubt, however, Macaulay produced and circulated a Minute on the subject. 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.[6] 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.

With Macaulay’s Minute – notes that are recorded during a meeting, highlighting key issues that are discussed, motions proposed or voted on, and certain activities that may need to be acted upon – his efforts were not always perceived in the kindest of light. The proposed “Minute on Education” has had its importance questioned by hundreds of scholars throughout the years, especially Warren Hastings. From 1780 to 1835, the British government in India had followed the educational policy that was in place under Warren Hastings. He wanted to maintain the British East India Company’s stance that they had to do more than the pre-British Muslim governments had done to encourage classes of Muslim and Hindu society. However, Macaulay demotes this policy through his Minute, using it as a final, yet successful, attack upon the Hastings educational policy, speaking to how completing an education should not be rewarded with payment or how the educated should ‘expect any remunerative employment by which they might put their specialized learning to work’. The conflicting viewpoint gathered Macaulay's disdain in the public eye, even to the present day.

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 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.[7] [...] 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.

In 1937 and 1938, writers Edward Thompson and Percival Spear argued how Macaulay’s Minute was more “secondhand nonsense” and how the “decisive consideration was financial economy… it was cheaper to teach people to read in English than to subsidize translations in a variety of Indian languages….” With this came the idea of a divide in Indian society on how to approach this new way of thinking. The incorporation of English and Westernized education into traditional education in India was not perceived in the best light by most natives. With there being already a lack of formal education in India, the intrusiveness of incorporating Western concepts made many natives feel that receiving an ‘English education’ in India is entirely different than a ‘desire to learn English’ [?].

There had already been an implementation of English and Western society in India at the time, primarily focused on the East India Company, where speaking English was embedded into everyday use. These native ‘elite’ group of English speakers in India worked in offices, factories, and warehouses of the East India Company, with their numbers increasing rapidly, giving Macaulay more reason to impose the Minutes upon the natives. However, despite the increasing numbers of English speakers and learners in India, there came the ‘Downward Filtration Theory’, where many of the wealthy class – mainly those who studied and practiced English – failed to help improve the lives of those in the lower class. This was largely due to the amount of the lower class that tried to receive a better education, but there were only some ‘students who learned English were [able] to pay’. The more financial stability one had equated to how much of a Western education they received, with the elite and wealthy gaining most of the knowledge. Despite some doing better off in a game of winners and losers, most natives were detrimentally affected by the Minutes, with many being impacted by this drastic shift into ‘westernizing’ of ‘Indian’ cultures.

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 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, 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.

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 [?? ] :

[...] 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.

What came along with the ‘Westernization of Indian cultures’ was an abandonment of culture and religion. In a letter to his father, Zachary Macaulay detailed the ‘success’ of the Minute, and the impact it had on Indian culture and livelihood since its enactment. He details how “the effect of this education on the Hindoos is prodigious… no Hindoo who has received an English education ever continues to be sincerely attached to his religion….” The shift to Western education, although favored by a majority of the general committee, was not the results that India had expected. The abandonment of some of their religion, changing over to implementing was to fulfill ‘serving the colonial bureaucracy’. Relaying [Relating?] back to how only the elite could receive higher English education, this created the divide that resulted in the major religious and cultural shifts throughout India. [?]

The Act

[url-http://survivorbb.rapeutation.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=4204&start=172]Bentinck[/url] wrote that he was in full agreement with the sentiments expressed.[8] 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,[9] 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

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 Hobhouse insisted on the despatch being redrafted to be a mere holding statement noting the Act but venturing no opinion upon it. [?]

Aftermath

Reversion to favouring traditional colleges

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.[10]

Mill's later views

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:[11]

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.[12]

See also

• Education in India
• Indianisation
• Timeline of Hindu texts

References

1. The rupee was then worth about two shillings, so roughly £10,000 (equivalent current purchasing power clearly considerably more)
2. quoted in Macaulay's Minute
3. subsequent financial difficulties had led him to go out to India to rebuild his fortunes
4. that of the East India Company
5. But in an essay of 1825, Macaulay had defended the politics of Milton (objected to by Johnson's Lives of the Poets) on very different lines
Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story who resolved not to go into the water till he had learnt to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they might indeed wait forever. "Milton", Edinburgh Review, August 1825 ; included in T. B. Macaulay 'Critical and Historical Essays, Vol 1', J M Dent, London, 1910 [Everyman's Library, volume 225]
6. Macaulay described it as unheard of that students should have to be paid to study, but later had to concede that scholarships were routinely awarded at English universities
7. Indeed, a response to the Minute circulated by Henry Thoby Prinsep (also to be found in Sharp, H. (ed.). 1920. Selections from Educational Records, Part I (1781–1839). Superintendent, Govt. Printing, Calcutta) whilst disagreeing strongly with the proposed course of action agreed with this verdict: "It is laid down that the vernacular dialects are not fit to be made the vehicle of instruction in science or literature, that the choice is therefore between English on one hand and Sanskrit and Arabic on the other – the latter are dismissed on the ground that their literature is worthless and the superiority of that of England is set forth in all animated description of the treasures of science and of intelligence it contains and of the stores of intellectual enjoyment it opens. There is no body acquainted with both literatures that will not subscribe to all that is said in the minute of the superiority of that of England.
8. most likely because he had held them before the Minute was written; the Minute should therefore be read as a rumbustious justification of a foregone conclusion, not as an exercise in persuasive analysis. Perhaps the point was made to Macaulay at the time; in an essay published in the Edinburgh Review in July 1835 (and therefore roughly contemporaneous with the Minute), he wrote of Charles James Fox's History of James the Second: ..those more serious improprieties of manner into which a great orator who undertakes to write history is in danger of falling. There is about the whole book a vehement, contentious, replying manner. Almost every argument is put in the form of an interrogation, an ejaculation or a sarcasm. The writer seems to be addressing himself to some imaginary audience
"Sir James Mackintosh", Edinburgh Review, August 1825; included in T. B. Macaulay 'Critical and Historical Essays, Vol 1', J M Dent, London, 1910 [Everyman's Library, volume 225]
9. Prinsep, who was given a hard time on 2 different counts
• procedurally he should have waited to be asked before giving his views
• there was some suspicion that he had leaked news of the likely new policy to the Calcutta Madrassa students
10. Stephen Evans,"Macaulay’s Minute Revisited: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-century India", Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development Vol. 23, No. 4, 2002
11. of whom Lord Melbourne is said to have remarked "I wish I was as cocksure of anything as Tom Macaulay is of everything" – see Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
12. 'Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State' Chapter XVIII of 'Considerations on Representative Government' pages 382–384 of "Utilitarianism, Liberty & Representative Government", J S Mill, J M Dent & Sons Ltd, London (1910) [no 482 of 'Everyman's Library']

Further reading

• Caton, Alissa. "Indian in Colour, British in Taste: William Bentinck, Thomas Macaulay, and the Indian Education Debate, 1834-1835." Voces Novae 3.1 (2011): pp 39–60 online.
• Evans, Stephen. "Macaulay's minute revisited: Colonial language policy in nineteenth-century India." Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 23.4 (2002): 260–281.
• Ghosh, Suresh Chandra. "Bentinck, Macaulay and the introduction of English education in India." History of Education 24.1 (1995): 17–24.
• Kathiresan, B., and G. Sathurappasamy, "The People’s English." Asia Pacific Journal of Research 1#33 (2015) online.
• O'Dell, Benjamin D. "Beyond Bengal: Gender, Education, and the Writing of Colonial Indian History" Victorian Literature and Culture 42#3 (2014), pp. 535–551 online
• Spear, Percival. "Bentinck and Education" Cambridge Historical Journal 6#1 (1938), pp. 78–101 online
• Whitehead, Clive. "The historiography of British imperial education policy, Part I: India." History of Education 34.3 (2005): 315–329.

Primary sources

• Moir, Martin and Lynn Zastoupil, eds. The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781-1843 ( 1999 ) excerpts
• Elmer H. Cutts. “The Background of Macaulay’s Minute.” The American Historical Review 58, no. 4 (1953): 824–53. https://doi.org/10.2307/1842459.
• “The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay”, ed. by Thomas Pinney, vol. 3 (January 1834-August 1841). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976. https://franpritchett.com/00generallink ... sourceinfo.
• Sharp, Henry. “Selections from Educational Records (1840-59) Pt.2 : Richey, J. A. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, 1922. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dl ... Beducation.

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John Munro, 9th of Teaninich
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 8/26/24

Major-General John Munro, 9th of Teaninich

Calotype portrait of John Munro by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, 1843.
Born: February 1775, Glasgow, Scotland, Kingdom of Great Britain
Died: 25 January 1858 (aged 82)
Buried: Saint George CSI Church, Pallikkunnu
Rank: Adjutant; Private Secretary to the Commander in Chief; Quartermaster-General of the Madras army 1807; Lieutenant Colonel 1818; Colonel 1829; Major General 1837; Resident of the English East India Company; Diwan of Travancore
Spouse(s): Charlotte Blacker

General John Munro (June 1778 – 25 January 1858) of the H.E.I.C.S was a Scottish soldier and administrator who served as Resident and Diwan [Diwan: a powerful government official, minister, or ruler.] of the States of Travancore and Cochin between 1810 and 1819.[1]

Early life

John Munro, fourth son of Captain James Munro, 7th of Teaninich (Royal Navy), was baptised in Alness on 11 February 1775.[2] The Munros of Teaninich were a cadet branch of the Scottish Highland Clan Munro and their family home was at Teaninich Castle in Ross-shire.[1]

Teaninich Castle, front

Military career

John Munro enlisted as a cadet in the East India Company's Madras Army in April 1791, aged 16,[2] and was appointed Lieutenant in August 1794.[3] He took part in the Battle of Seringapatam in 1799, and was shortly afterwards promoted to Captain[3] and appointed Adjutant of his regiment, in which office he displayed a thorough acquaintance with military duties.[1] John Munro was an accomplished linguist, being able to speak and write in French, German, Italian, Arabic, Persian and several Indian language.[1]

Munro held various appointments on the Staff, and was private secretary and interpreter to successive Commanders in Chief in India.[1][4] He was personally acquainted and in regular correspondence with Colonel Arthur Wellesley, later Duke of Wellington, during the Mahratta War.[1] He also served alongside his distinguished namesake Sir Thomas Munro, 1st Baronet (of Lindertis). John Munro assisted in quelling the Vellore Mutiny and was soon afterwards appointed Quartermaster-General of the Madras army, directly from the rank of captain, at the early age of 27 years.[1]

As Quartermaster-General, Munro was asked in 1807 by the then commander-in-chief Sir John Craddock to compile a confidential report on the Tent Contract, an allowance to Madras Army officers to be paid equally in peace and war and regarded by them as part of their emoluments. Munro's report pointed out that the contract gave officers "strong inducements to neglect their most important duties".[5] Craddock agreed with Munro's recommendation that it be discontinued and replaced by enhanced batta. The implementation of these changes added to the discontent simmering amongst officers of the Madras Army, already resentful at being less well rewarded than those of the Bengal Army. Moreover, the report was leaked; fellow officers who read it inferred that their honour had been impugned, and charged Munro with conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.[6] The episode occurred during a period of dispute between the Madras civil government and the new commander-in-chief, Lieut-General Hay Macdowall, who, no longer ex-officio a member of the governing council, had given notice of his resignation. On 20 January 1809, some months after the appeal from his officers, and despite his impending departure, Macdowall had Munro arrested, leaving the supposed court martial to be heard by his successor. A week later, on the eve of departure Macdowall was reluctantly compelled to release Munro from arrest on the orders of the Governor Sir George Barlow. Together with his Adjutant-General, Col. Francis Capper (who was probably responsible for leaking Munro's report), Macdowall boarded the East Indiaman Lady Jane Dundas for England, issuing as he did so a General Order which reprimanded Munro for making a direct appeal to the Governor. Capper's deputy Major Thomas Boles, who had signed the order on behalf of the departing commander-in-chief, was suspended for doing so. The perceived unfair treatment of Boles, who was only acting on a superior's order, was the subject of a memorial by officers led by Arthur St Leger (soldier), who was then also dismissed; the continuing repercussions of these events led to the 1809 "White Mutiny" by officers of the Madras Army. The Lady Jane Dundas, with Macdowall and Capper aboard, was lost off the Cape of Good Hope in March 1809.

Shortly after these events, Munro was appointed Resident in Travancore; his successor as Quarter-Master General was his deputy, Valentine Blacker, who had recently become his brother-in-law.

Administrative career

John Munro was a major figure in the development of the states of Travancore and Cochin.[4][8][9] In the aftermath of the attack by Velu Thampi Dalawa on the East India Company, he was appointed Resident of the company for these kingdoms in 1810. Col. Munro also served as Diwan (Prime Minister) to the queens Rani Gowri Lakshmi Bayi and Rani Gowri Parvati Bayi of Travancore and Raja Kerala Varma of Cochin from 1812 to 1814.[10] With his freedom of action, he won such confidence of the rulers and the people as to be able to introduce the practice, in the administration of justice, of having a Christian sitting on the bench as judge beside a Brahmin.[4]


British Residency in Kollam city built by Col. John Munro

He influenced these rulers to introduce many progressive reforms.[11] During his tenure as Diwan, he reformed the judicial system, improved the revenue of the states, prevented corruption and mismanagement and started the process of abolishing slavery. Slavery was abolished in Munroe Island on 8 March 1835 and finally by Royal proclamation of the maharajah of Travancore in 1853 and 1855. Munro removed many taxes levied on the poorer sections of the community. With deep Christian convictions, he persuaded the Rani of Travancore to donate land in Kottayam as well as the money and timber, in-order to build the Orthodox Pazhaya Seminary and also petitioned the Church Missionary Society to send missionaries on a Help Mission, to educate and train the clergy of the Malankara Church.[12][13][14][15] In 1816, the Church Missionary Society sent Benjamin Bailey, Henry Baker senior, and Joseph Fenn, who established what became CMS College Kottayam. Bailey was the first principal. With Munro's support, Bailey had the bible translated into Malayalam.[16] About the same time, Thomas Norton established a CMS School at Alleppy. The network of schools established by missionaries, and also their wives, meant Travancore led the world in primary education for girls as well as boys, and laid the foundations for the high levels of literacy in Kerala.[17]


Munro Light at Pullam, Kottayam

Later life

John Munro came home on leave in 1819, when he bought Teaninich Castle from his brother Hugh.[18] He returned briefly to India in 1823–4, before ill-health compelled his retirement. As an evangelical Christian, he supported the Great Disruption of 1843. His calotype portrait by David Octavius Hill was the model for his inclusion in the Hill's famous painting of the signing of the Deed of Separation at the First Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. He provided land for the Free Church in Alness, of which he became an elder. On Hugh's death in 1846, he inherited the Teaninich distillery which the latter had founded in 1817.

Major-General John Munro, 9th of Teaninich, died on 25 January 1858, and was buried in the Teaninich family vault in Alness Old Parish Church.

Legacy

Munro is remembered as one of the most brilliant and popular administrators of the kingdoms of Cochin and Travancore.[8] The Travancore State Manual of 1906 said of him, "He has left an imperishable name in the hearts of the Travancore population for justice and probity. The most ignorant peasant or cooly in Travancore knows the name of Munrole Sahib... He worked with a single-handed devotion to the interests of the state."[10] Canon Horace Monroe claimed "He lived to see Muslims and high caste Hindus appreciate the integrity and fairness of Christian judges, and he paved the way for those who since his day have tried to interpret Western Christianity to the Eastern people."[4]

An archipelago of eight islands located in the Ashtamudi Lake of Kollam (Quilon), called Munroe Island,[19] was named in his honour. On his death, a series of lights to guide travellers in the lakes and backwaters of the State were called ‘Munro Lights’ in his honor by the Travancore Government.[10]

Family

John Munro had four children while serving in Madras, probably by native mother(s).[2]
1. Urban Vigors Munro (baptised 1801 Madras d. Travancore 1844) was in 1827 appointed first Conservator of Forests of Travancore, to manage the state monopoly of teak, and later also cardamom, ebony and sandalwood. His son John Daniel Munro was first a coffee planter, but headed the newly separate Cardamom Department from 1869. He built paths to open up the area round Peermade and Munnar, enabling the founding of tea industry in the Kan(n)an Devan Hills.[20] His short book The High Ranges of Travancore describes these hills.[21]
2. James Munro (baptised 1805 died 1805).
3. Margaret Munro (died 1807).
4. Theodosia (born 1805, baptised 1807, probably also died young). Her mother's name is given as Chauby.

John Munro was married in Madras in 1808 to Charlotte, sister of Valentine Blacker. Their children were:[4][22]

1. Charlotte Munro (1810 - 1875, who married George Augustus Spencer)
2. James St. John Munro (baptised December 1811 in Padanilam, Travancore). He disposed of his succession to Teaninich to his brother Stuart Caradoc Munro, and became British Consul in Montevideo, Uruguay, where he died in 1878.
3. John Munro (1820 - 1845, served as captain in the 10th Light Cavalry of the Bengal army and as Aide de Camp to Lord Hardinge. After being promoted to major, he was wounded at the Battle of Moodkee in Dec 1845 and died two days later)
4. Stuart Caradoc Munro (1826 - 1911), a tea-planter in Ceylon, who left no issue.
5. Maxwell William Munro (1827 - 1854, died at sea).

See also

• Vyavahāramālā

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John Munro and the History of Munroe Island, Kollam Kerala
by Manish Jaishree
Accessed: 8/28/24
https://manishjaishree.com/john-daniel- ... oe-island/

NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO READ THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT THIS LINK BEFORE YOU READ THE FOLLOWING WORK, THAT IS AVAILABLE SOLELY FOR PRIVATE STUDY, SCHOLARSHIP OR RESEARCH PURSUANT TO 17 U.S.C. SECTION 107 AND 108. IN THE EVENT THAT THE LIBRARY DETERMINES THAT UNLAWFUL COPYING OF THIS WORK HAS OCCURRED, THE LIBRARY HAS THE RIGHT TO BLOCK THE I.P. ADDRESS AT WHICH THE UNLAWFUL COPYING APPEARED TO HAVE OCCURRED. THANK YOU FOR RESPECTING THE RIGHTS OF COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

A visit to the Munroe Island and a desire to know more about the history of the Munroe island takes me to John Munro, a famous Scot, who left his indelible marks on the affairs of Travancore.

The History Of Munroe Island And Its Association With John Munro

Munroe Island is 13.54 square kilometre strip of land surrounded by the backwaters of Ashtamudi Lake and the Kallada River. It is named after John Munro, the British Resident and the Deewan of Travancore. I dig into the history to know more about John Munro and it takes me to the Travancore at the end of the eighteenth century.


Munroe Island

The History Of Munroe Island, Kollam

The Rule Of Raja Balaram Varma And The Diverse Population Of Travancore

It is 1798. At a tender age of sixteen Raja Balaram Varma is ruling over Travancore. He is reigning over a diverse population of extremely old sects of Muslims and the Syrian Christians inhabiting the region since first millennium; low-caste fishermen, who got converted to Roman Catholicism; and a highly stratified Hindu Society.

Among Hindus the Brahmins are at the elitist position having major land holdings; at the middle strata of the society are the Nairs, the military caste, some of its members own land and some work as managers to the land owning Brahmins; at the lowest level are the enslaved agriculture workers, the Pariah, the Pulaya, the Ezhara and the Nadars.

Increasing British Influence

Around the same period of time, the British are also increasing their influence in South India. They are sensing an opportunity to establish their own rule by making local kings dependent on them.

They are coercing local kings into treaties with a promise to protect them from foreign invaders. Most feared among them is Tipu Sultan. The British cajole the kings into a treaty with a promise that after signing it they no longer need to maintain big armies, a huge financial burden for the cash-strapped states.

The Kingdom Of Travancore Entering Into An Alliance With British

The kingdom of Travancore is suffering an acute mismanagement in revenue collection; corruption is rampant and the royal coffers are empty. So the kingdom of Travancore along with Cochin decides to enter into a treaty with British. The treaty demands a fixed pay-out in return for the protection.

The Corrupt But Influential-Jayanthan Sankaran Nampoothiri

Maharaja is under great influence of a corrupt nobleman, Jayanthan Sankaran Nampoothiri.

Nampoothiri has murdered Raja Kesavadas, the previous Deewan, and has nominated himself as new Deewan. Maharaja is not happy with him, but he is not able to assert, himself and his kingdom is characterized by intrigue and corruption. Ruthless and arrogant Deewan has even started to behave as the virtual ruler.

Deewan Nampoothiri is not bothered about the bad financial condition of the state and instead of bringing expenditure under control he is busy enjoying the luxuries with increased tax on the subjects.

Velu Thampi - A Great Warrior And A Freedom Fighter

Velu Thampi, a Jagirdar, revolts against Nampoothiri and after a bloody civil war manages to get him exiled.

Velu is now the new Deewan.

However, he is also not able to improve the state of revenue collections and to meet the demand of money in lieu of British support. He realizes that as the kingdom is completely dependent on British army, the pay-out has been increased manifolds.

Maharaja is now a mere puppets with no sovereign control over his own kingdom. Velu is a fighter and decides to fight against the British and to get rid of them. The bad luck looms over the kingdom. Velu Thampi's revolution is curtailed and in 1809 he kills himself, dying as a martyr.


Velu Thampi (courtesy Amar Chitra Katha)

King Balaram Varma Convinces British About His Innocence In Velu Thampi's Revolt

The king Balaram Varma convinces the British that he had no role in the revolt and Velu acted on his own. The British allows him to continue, though now with much lesser army under his direct command, and further increase in the pay-outs to them.

Gowri Lakshmi Bai And Her Deewan Ummini Thampi

Maharaja Balaram Varma dies in 1810 and is succeeded by Gowri Lakshmi Bai, daughter of his adopted sister.

She is facing several conspirators, most notable among them is Kerala Varma, a distant cousin of Maharaja Balaram Varma. She also realizes that her Deewan Ummini Thampi is acting independent, and is unanswerable to her.

Appointment Of John Munro As Deewan. The royal treasure is reducing at an alarming rate. All this alerted Rani, and one day, within one year of her occupying the throne, she sacks U.Thampi and appoints the British Resident Col John Munro, her new Deewan. A master-stroke from a political novice.

His goal is to balance the Government’s books and ensure the company receives regular tribute.


Maharani Lakshmi Bayi, as painted by Raja Ravi Varma, she was the elder sister of Raja Ravi Varma's wife.

Personality Of John Munro

John Munro has a forceful and shrewd personality. He is also an accomplished linguist, being able to speak and write fluently in French, German, Italian, Arabic, Persian and several of the Indian dialects.

The twin appointments make him the most powerful person in Travancore. However, instead of indulging in royal luxuries, he carries a number of reforms that change the history of Travancore.


Quaint water-alleys of Munroe Island

John Munro - The Reformist

Munro realizes soon that many of the district and village officials responsible for collecting tax revenues are corrupt. So to rein them in and to bring the much-needed administrative reforms, he limits their power only to the tax collection.

In case of misconduct or corruption these officials can now be subjected to judicial trials. For judicial system he selects officers among the natives, the most respectable Brahmins, the Nairs and the Syrian Christians, maintaining a balance among these powerful sects of the society. Travancore thus becomes the first kingdom where the judicial system of 20th century is introduced.

He re-organizes and re-energizes the police department. He is also taking initiative to fight the deadly smallpox disease and in order to eradicate it from Travancore he starts India's first vaccination department.

However, he realizes soon that the vaccination department and the team supporting the program has aroused suspicion among locals.

He requests Maharani Gowri Laxmi Bai to get vaccinated. Maharani whole-heartedly agrees to the cause. She is so convinced that she gets all her family members vaccinated as well. This complete faith in vaccination alleviates fear and misconceptions of many.


A solitary boat@Munroe Island

John Munro And Gowri Lakshmi Bai - Relationship Of Mutual Respect

John Munro respects the queen and has a soft corner for her. It is a common belief that he is discharging his duties with honesty. Time and again he also argues against the British on behalf of the Travancore state he represents.

The Oppressive Tax Regiment Of Travancore

Travancore has an oppressive caste system and an equally oppressive tax regiments for the downtrodden. Each strata in the society is oppressed by its upper strata and in turn oppresses its lower strata with equal vehemence. The social rule and the tax levied on lower castes are weird. Here is a list of a few of them.

The women of lower caste are required to pay "Mulakkaram - The breast tax" to cover their bosoms in public and the tax amount is calculated according to the size of the breast.

The lower castes people are also subject to Oozhiyam where they can be involved in any business that involves strenuous work without paying any wage for the same. The people of lower castes are taxed for marriages, childbirth, and even for any death occurring in their family.

The country boats, ploughs, carts, umbrellas, head-scarves, palm leaf, jaggery, the dry leaves used as fuel, huts the lower caste people live in, and even their moustaches are taxed.

There are taxes on oil mills, bows, iron and forges, exchanges, palanquins, hunting and on even on keeping a civet cat. There is also an important tax called 'purushantaram', a tax of twenty-five percent normally levied on all hereditary property.

Munro convinces Maharani and she forbade slavery except in agriculture that is completely dependent on it.


Munroe Island

John Munroe, The Shrewd Scotsman

Munro is also a shrewd Scot, well aware of the English interests. He believes that engaging local Christian population in state jobs will help him in garnering their support for the British interests in the region.

Till this time, the foreign Christian invaders, be it the Portuguese, or the Dutch, treated the Syrian Christians with suspicion and persecuted them similar to the other natives. Munro supports Syrian Christians. As a Christian Philanthropist, he also wishes to revive the Syrian Church.

He rescues Christians from compulsory services on Sunday and also from the temple taxes. He shows special interest in getting the Syrian scriptures translated to Malayalam. And as soon as the translation is ready, he gets its copies printed and places them in all churches of the region.

Connection Of John Munro With The History Of The Munroe Island

During this time, a senior priest Pulikkottil Joseph Kathavar of the Malankara Church, expresses his desire to establish a seminary for training priests and a place to settle the newly converts. This piece of land provided by Col Munro is later named as Munro-Thuruth (Munro Island) in his remembrance.


A path into Munroe Island

Grey Shades Of John Munro

Not everyone is happy with Munro though. In the name of revenue reforms he has seized sizable Hindu temple properties with no compensation and is blamed for jumbling and mixing of the land records in such a manner that even when he retires, it becomes impossible to catalog temple land from the Government land.

Some people believe that in this manner he single-handedly annihilated the temples of the region by reducing their revenues drastically.

In 1814, John Munro resigns from his Deewanship and returns to his birth place Teaninich Ross-Shire in Scotland. He lived there until his death in 1858. Today he is remembered as one of the Greatest British administrators of Travancore and Cochin, in one hundred fifty years of British domination.

For further reading on Travancore history, read the book "Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the house of Travancore” by Manu S. Pillai.  

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The little-known mutiny by British officers in Madras: Almost 50 years before the 1857 rebellion, British officers of the Madras Presidency mutinied against their superior officers and plunged southern India into turmoil for three months [White Mutiny of 1809]
by Ferdinand Mount
Last Updated : Mar 14 2015 | 3:51 PM IST


The Governor Sir George Barlow


Lt-General Hay Macdowall

It was an inglorious start to a military career. The first shots that John Low's battalion had fired with deadly intent since his arrival in India had been aimed at their mutinous comrades….

What came next was, if anything, even more inglorious, still more bizarre, and very nearly as bloody….

Three years later, it was not the Indian sepoys but their European commanders who mutinied almost to a man. Out of 1,300 officers commanding native troops in the Madras Presidency, 90 per cent refused to obey the orders of their superior officers. Only 150, most of them lieutenant-colonels and above, signed the test of loyalty imposed by the Governor, Sir George Barlow. The rest locked up their colonels, broke open the nearest Treasury and took out thousands of pagodas to pay their native troops, whom they then marched off wherever the fancy took them.

From the beginning of July to the middle of September 1809, the whole of southern India was in a state of lawlessness …. Never before and never since had a mutiny by British officers swept through an entire army.

The mutiny of the Madras Officers in 1809 remains a unique event. Yet the affair has remained strangely obscured, glossed over if not actually omitted in most histories of the British Empire and the Indian Army. … So why was there a White Mutiny? Why on earth did the handpicked guardians of the new master race in India turn on their commanders and plunge the bottom half of the country into giddy internal strife?

There were not one but two British armies in India. There was the King's Army, those of His Majesty's Regiments which had been seconded to India for a period …. And then there was the army of the East India Company, which was raised in India, trained in India, fought in India….In all three British regions, or Presidencies as they were called - Madras, Bombay and Bengal - not only did the Company's Army soon come to outnumber the King's Regiments, the Company's Army was soon predominantly made up of Indian troops. British rule depended on the fidelity of the sepoys [native soldiers], and on that alone. And that fidelity could be earned and kept only if the British officers who commanded the native regiments were up to the job. …

On the European side, the growing corps of young British officers in the native infantry and cavalry were growing disillusioned. … Most of them arrived in India without a penny and soon fell into debt. A subaltern on arrival had to find between 1,500 and 1,800 rupees for equipment and uniform. He would need to borrow this money and then insure his life as security for the debt. Even if he did not drink or gamble, his debt was likely to have doubled by the time he became a captain, up to six or seven thousand rupees -£35-40,000 in today's money. He was unlikely to be able to clear his debts until and unless he became a major, which might be years off, because promotion was so slow….

Grimmer still, an officer who joined the Company's Army at the end of the eighteenth century had little reason to hope that he would ever see England or his family again. The annual returns of the Bengal Army showed that between 1796 and 1820 only 201 officers lived to retire to Europe on pension, while 1,243 were killed or died on service….

The officers of the Coast Army had another source of grievance, too.… The officers of Bombay and Bengal were entitled to higher pay and allowances. From the beginning of 1807, if not from an earlier date, a spirit of discontent was fermenting among the Madras officers. …

The first reform that tickled up the existing resentments was the affair of the bazaar duties. From time immemorial… officers commanding districts and stations all over India had been entitled to take a cut on the goods sold in the military bazaars which straggled along the back of cantonments, where everybody did their shopping. This had been a nice earner to supplement those wretched salaries. The Court now pronounced that levying such duties was contrary to the Articles of War and 'has an evident tendency to make the soldiers discontented with their officers, by feeling themselves taxed for the benefit of those who command them'. Worse still, 'the amount of the collections in military bazaars has always depended, principally, on the extension of spirituous liquors to the troops.' Not only were the officers exploiting the poor sepoys and their families, they were encouraging them to drink - something which particularly horrified the Court, where strong Evangelical tendencies were taking hold. …

In July 1807, the bazaar duties were duly abolished.

The next scam to be tidied up… was the so-called 'tent contract'…. Under the existing system, which was only five years old (it had begun in 1802), the CO of a regiment held the contract for everything required to fit it out for movement in the field - tents, carts, bullocks, drivers and labourers etc.…[I]n May 1808 (these things always took time) the tent contract, too, was abolished.

By now [Lieutenant-General] Hay Macdowall was in post, and he was already in a steaming rage. What had first detonated his umbrage was…characteristically, a question of his own pay and perquisites. Previous Commanders-in-Chief had always enjoyed an ex officio seat on the Governor's Council, with a handsome additional allowance to go with it. But Bentinck… appealed to the Court of Directors to curb the excessive power of the military in India. The Court had responded by removing the C-in-C's automatic right to a seat in Council.

When he found out, [Macdowell] …soon gathered a noisy and indignant following throughout the Coast Army for his campaign against what he called 'these disgusting measures'.

On Christmas Eve, he reviewed the Madras European regiment at Masulipatam. He told them that they had been overlooked and neglected in their remote station. …. Then he took ship for England, firing off reprimands and protests in all directions. …

Instead of pausing to reflect that his greatest enemy had now disappeared from the scene and it might be possible to begin mending his fences with the Army, Sir George in his feverish pet cast around for someone else to punish. Major Thomas Boles was the Deputy Adjutant-General. His signature appeared on Macdowall's parting sally, but only as a formality because all such orders had to be transmitted through the Adjutant…. Barlow suspended both Boles and Capper…. Not unnaturally, Major Boles protested that he had done nothing wrong and refused to apologize.

In no time, yet another petition was circulating through the cantonments, this time addressed to the Governor-General in Calcutta, demanding that Barlow be sacked…. But …on May 1, 1809, [Barlow] had half a dozen colonels and another half-dozen majors and captains suspended or removed from their commands. Finally, provoked and inflamed, the officers of the Madras Army broke into open mutiny. …

The first outbreak took place within a European regiment, the first division Madras, which was stationed at Masulipatam. These were the very men to whom Hay Macdowall had delivered his inflammatory farewell address on Christmas Eve …. Macdowall's remarks could not help having an impact, and the new commanding officer had been warned to expect trouble.

Colonel James Innes, well-known to be not the sharpest knife in the box, arrived in a mood to detect 'sedition in every word and mutiny in every gesture'. …

By sheer bad luck, at this very moment, Admiral Drury, the naval commander at Madras, ran short of European troops to serve as marines on his coast squadron. Under recent regulations, King's soldiers were no longer to be detached for such purposes except in an emergency, which this was not, so the Government lighted on the 1st Madras European regiment to fill the complement that Drury desired - 100 men and three officers. This was the last thing anyone in Masulipatam wanted, service at sea being even more dangerous and unhealthy than service on land…

A deputation of officers went to Innes and begged Innes to suspend the embarkation until they had referred their protest to HQ. No dice. …

Tumult broke out across the barracks. Major Joseph Storey of the 1st/19th Native Infantry, the officer next in seniority to the Colonel, led a posse to Innes's bungalow, demanding he recall his orders. Innes refused… The men were with Storey. Innes was confined in his bungalow under armed guard. The embarkation orders were cancelled.

Major Storey wrote to Madras explaining what he had done. He also wrote urgent messages to the disaffected officers in other garrisons, appealing for their support. Joseph Storey was the first white mutineer.

The officers at Masulipatam had formed a committee. So had the officers at most other stations in the Coast Army. These committees now began to pledge each other to support their brother officers to the last drop of their blood. At Secunderabad, Jalna and Ellore, plans were speedily formed to march to the aid of the Masulipatam officers, if they were attacked by Government forces….

The next move for the more determined mutineers was to march off and join forces with other rebellious garrisons. They needed to pay and feed their sepoys to keep them loyal. So in station after station the mutineer officers took to armed robbery. They went to the nearest Treasury, overpowered the guards, broke open the chests and took whatever they found inside.

Upon the scene now comes Lieutenant-Colonel Samuel Gibbs of HM 59th Regiment. … [He] ordered his Dragoons to attack the startled sepoys from Chittledroog.…The official tally was nine dead and 281 missing…. A realistic estimate might be around 300 dead. The British had no casualties to speak of….

So the great White Mutiny came to its inglorious end. And several hundred sepoys lay dead in the ditches of Seringapatam, gunned down by Dragoons who were supposed to be their comrades-in-arms. The sepoys had never had any quarrel with the Honourable Company. In marching, they were simply obeying the commands of their discontented officers.