Nationalism and truth can be at odds. Indians in blood...has a context- Follow this- In the year 1813, the British Parliament asked the East India Company to set aside a sum of Rupees One Lakh every year to be spent on the education of natives. Split in two camps, the Company officials debated- on what kind of education this money to be spent- natives’ indigenous system of education or a British type of education. Lord Macaulay reached India in 1834 and joined the debate and argued in favour of a British type of modern education system with emphasis on sciences and western philosophy. Since there was only One Lakh Rupees available every year, Lord Macaulay thought it impossible to import a huge army of teachers from Britain. Instead, he advocated in training a great number of Indians who would translate the western literature into their own. Indian historians have deliberately picked up few sentences from the middle of a large paragraph to paint Lord Macaulay as a mind-‘slaver’.Read the full paragraph- “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”.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 06:09:05 +0000
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