December 08, 2018 Saturday
Bedtime Story
The Foresightedness of Lord Macaulay
The vanishing or the obscurity of such
religions like Brahmo Samaj speaks volumes about traits needed for a religion
to become historically a success and meme of significance that we had discussed
in one of our bedtime story series not too long ago.
Any “weak” religion that lacks the claim of
absolute truth, the claim of absolute single monotheistic god, the claim of
absolute single holy book passed on from god to the prophet, an absolute sacred
place intrinsically linked either with the birth of religion of some very
valuable person connected to it and most important list of serious punishments
for violating commandments of god would not find much appeal with the masses.
Such religion would have a low memetic
potential with regards to its own cultural transmission much like a rhino virus
with low virulence that either has poor capacity to illicit pronounced cold
symptoms such as sneezing or poor ability to infect the nasal mucosa of
critical number of population.
Second what I found more fascinating about
the address of Lord Macaulay is the amount of prescience it contains concerning
both the British Empire and the natives over which it ruled supreme.
Lord Macaulay had the wisdom to see through
the fact that in imparting the English education and Western ideas and
knowledge they would be planting the seeds of their own demise as colonial
masters even though for a short term these English-educated Hindus and Moslems
would surely aid in greasing the machinery of both the Empire and the revenues
of the Company.
Yet at the same time he also knew that even
after the end of colonialism (he was not so disillusional to suppose that Empires
can go on endlessly) the colonies of the United Kingdom would carry on the
scientific, liberal and legal values that today still manifest itself in
India’s legal jurisprudence as the Indian Penal Code.
Yet, this was not the speech that titled
the tables in favor of the English language from Sanskrit or Persian.
It was what Lord Macaulay wrote in the
Minute on Indian Education published in February of 1835 that convinced the
Governor General Lord William Bentinck to reform secondary education on utilitarian
lines (an euphemism for Western science knowledge).
Until then the secondary education or
whatever remnants of it was there used to be either in Sanskrit or Persian.
Lord Macaulay made it crystal clear that he
wished all funding for the promotion of Sanskrit and Persian language books to
be dramatically curtailed limiting it only to the Madrassa in Delhi and the
Hindu College at Benares.
“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;”
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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