December 04, 2018 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
The Birth of Indian English
It was a given that education was
compulsory for the Hindu barbarians who now were a part of the mighty British
Empire and that they had to be civilized.
The question of debate was whether the
medium of education ought to be their native tongues of Sanskrit and Persian or
whether they needed to be completely replaced with the Western curriculum with
English being the language of instruction.
The debate would have remained a debate and
in fact in the early days the East India Company indeed invested a significant
sum to the promotion of indigenous sciences and education of the Hindus and
Moslems.
The British Parliament in 1813 had renewed
the charter of the East India Company for 20 years only on the condition that
the company would set aside an amount of 100,000 rupees per year “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.”
I consider it truly admirable that the
members of the parliament of United Kingdom took upon themselves the task of
teaching science to the natives even if it was directed towards their own
personal gain.
Hindu College and a Madarassa (Aliah
University) were set up in Calcutta in 1820s by the East India Company but
thinkers and philosophers such as the Scottish James Mill was strongly critical
of such moves.
He considered Oriental Learning to be
totally useless and in his opinion resources being scare had to spent only on
the Western knowledge through English education.
What I found fascinating about James Mill that
in a treatise titled “Elements of Political Economy” that he wrote way back in
1821one of the bedrock of his thesis was that “the chief problem of political
reformers is to limit the increase of population, on the assumption that
capital does not naturally increase at the same rate as population.”
I am impressed that even in 1820s when the
world population had barely crossed over 1 billion it concerned James Mill from
the economical perspective.
Though James Mill argued for the English
Western education he was not taken so seriously.
At the time India was under the command of
Governor-General Lord William Bentinck who was a progressive man who clearly
saw the primitiveness of the Hindu and Moslem society that he was governing.
It was he in whom the politician Lord
Macaulay found a leader who would listen to his radical and perhaps even
offensive views concerning the native Hindu and Moslem culture and traditional
practices.
Both the Governor-General and Lord Macaulay
found a native who not only agreed to their views but also helped them in
implanting those in the Hindu-Moslem society that was not only ultra
conservative but deeply and widely riddled with superstitious and antagonistic religious
beliefs.
He was none other than the greatest Bengali
ever to be born.
His name will be revealed in the nights to
come.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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