Macaulay - Sanskrit and English

A classmate asked me, if the above comment by Macaulay was true.

No, that's a false quotation. This is a frequently circulated paragraph, which exploits the eagerness of some Indians to believe that English rule was very destructive, especially of India's "ancient education."

Why Macaulay, not Clive or Hastings or Cornwallis or Dalhousie, the different powerful Viceroys of India? Because this purports to be a quotation from his famous essay, Minute on Education. I first saw this about ten years ago, which simply made me curious about this essay, and thanks to internet, I saw the full text on Columbia University's website. There are several refutations of this quotation also, among which the best arguments are by Michel Danino, and quoted in Quora. I urge readers to read both Macaulay's Minute and Danino's response.

An obvious clue should be the phrase "not one person who is a beggar, who is a thief." There is no country in the world with neither beggars not thieves, and India is and was no exception.

Macaulay was an English supremacist and had contempt for Indian and Sanskrit literature. He made the most dramatic changes in Indian governance - but we have kept most of them.

The East India Company gave subsidies for Vedic patashalas and madrasas for teaching Quran, continuing practices of the kings they defeated. He ended those subsidies and introduced Science, Maths and English into Indian schools and colleges. Personally, I believe Macaulay did India a great favour on this aspect. Those who read Macaulay's Minute would realize that his intentions were noble, though his ignorance of Indian heritage was lamentable.

Sanskrit scholars of English descent (members of Asiatic Society) like Horace Wilson and James Prinsep, opposed Macaulay's plan to introduce English as language of education in Bengal Madras and Bombay provinces, warning that Indians will lose all sense of pride of their native languages and culture. That these people, whose services to India and its culture should be in every history textbook, at least in India, are not acknowledged, speaks volumes of the prejudices of the Indian Government and its textbook writers.

A similar debate happened later between Gandhi and Tagore - Gandhi wanted the abolition of English language, abandonment of democracy, abolition of railways and western medicine. His most strident clarion call was for Indian citizens to boycott English courts, especially their law practices, and the most patriotic lawyers of the Congress Party, indeed did exactly that, giving up very lucrative careers. These include Gandhi himself, Jawaharlal Nehru, Vallabhai Patel, Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), Rajendra Prasad and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. Two major historical non-Congress politicians who did not boycott courts were Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Bhimrao Ambedkar.

Tagore hotly criticized Gandhi for being parochial.   "The winds of all national cultures must blow into the house of India which should not become a closed prison" he warned. 

After 1947 Nehru followed Tagore rather than Gandhi in this aspect.

During the writing of constitution of India there was another debate whether Hindi or Sanskrit should be India's national language. The loudest voices in favor of Sanskrit were that of Ambedkar and a Muslim we have mostly forgotten, who argued that Sanskrit was the language of scholarship and learning for several thousand years where as Hindi was merely the language of the bazaar and had no scientific of legal literature. Also Hindi speakers should not make others second class citizens, whereas Sanskrit was equally difficult for all being no one's mother tongue.

Hindi won the contest by one vote - the casting vote of Rajendra Prasad, the president of the Constituent Assembly

My friend Balaji Dhandapani sent me this message :

Dear Gopu. The Muslim member of constituent assembly who fought for Sanskrit as the National language is Mr. Naziruddin Ahmad of West Bengal. This is what he said in the assembly when the debate came on :

If you have to adopt any language, why should you not have the world's greatest language? It is today a matter of great regret that we do not know how with what veneration Sanskrit is held in outside world. I shall only quote a few brief remarks made about Sanskrit to show how this language is held in the civilised world. Mr. W. C. Taylor says, "Sanskrit is the language of unrivalled richness and purity."

Dr.P.Subbarayan from Madras presidency fought for Hindi with Roman script. !!!

It is the pattern of ruling dispensations to glorify themselves and shower those whom they have overthrown with contempt and calumny.

It is sheer irony that most Indians criticize British for most of the problems and flaws of independent India, while generally ignoring all the best that they have done for us, except for passing remarks that English or cricket was their best gift. It is sheer hypocrisy, considering that most of the political financial military administrative educational institutions today are English or European in origin or inspiration.

Fortunately, we have no copyright on such hypocrisy.

Related Essays

1. Madras - India's first modern city
2. An Englishman's Tamil inscription
3. Trautmann on FW Ellis (Chennai pattanathu Elleesan)
4. The Thames and the Cooum
5. Margaret Thatcher
6. அடையாறு போர்

Madras - India's first modern city

Mr S Muthiah, who has written a history of Madras, Madras Discovered, and is founder of Madras Musings and chief instigator of the Madras Day celebrations, gave the first Sir S Subramanya Aiyar lecture at the University of Madras. Title: "India's First Modern City." This began with a photo of the statue of S Subramanya Aiyar, whom I and the students at the lecture did not recognize or know. He had been the first Indian Vice-Chancellor of a university - Madras University. He persuasively argued that Madras should be the considered the first modern city of India (not Calcutta). 

He recently gave another version of this lecture at a TIE meeting during the Madras Day celebrations in August, 2014. Here is a brief summary.

Sir S Subramanya Aiyar, First Indian Vice Chancellor

St George - a portrait from St Mary's Church, Armenian Street

Madras was "No man's sand"! Fort St George was founded on a strip of sand between the Portuguese settlement at San Thome and the Dutch settlement in Tiruvorriyur. The place was chosen as a good place to buy Indian made cotton textiles, for sale in England. Sir Francis Day was allowed to build the fort by the local chieftain, Darmala Venkatadri, Nayak of Poonamalee.

The English East India company had no interest in empire, they only wanted trade. Pondichery French Governor Dupleix's ambition stoked by his wife Jean Begum, really prompted the colonial ambitions of their rivals, the English. After a war, of which most Indians are ridiculously unaware, the French captured Madras but returned to English in exchange for Quebec, a province of Canada, as part of the Treaty of Aix-le-Chapelle.

(Mr Muthiah thinks the English got the better end of the deal. But I think the French needed Quebec for its forests, as they were running out of firewood. England had plenty of coal. And the cotton revolutions of John Kay's shuttle, Hargreave's spinning jenny etc had not yet happened, so England really needed Madras textiles.)

The several firsts for which Madras can be proud of, and entitling it to the claim as the first modern city of India, listed here.

Major Stringer Lawrence started the Madras regiment, the basis of the Indian army. This was after the ridiculous ease with which the French won the Adayar war. 

Governor Charles Trevelyan started the Indian civil service before Britain got one.

St George's school and orphanage on Poonamallee high road based on their earlier versions in Fort St George, first model of European education in Asia and continues to be the model for school in India today.

Governor's bank - first operating in Fort St George - later became Bank of Madras, then merged with banks of Calcutta and Bombay to become Imperial bank which later became State Bank of India.

A hospital to help sick lads became General Hospital.

In 1688 first Municipal corporation outside England started.

The Oldest library belongs to the Madras Literary Society, which saw several firsts under FW Ellis.

Armenians, exiled form Persia, came as traders and traded from West Asia to Philippines. Armenian constitution was drafted in madras!

Coral merchant street was where Jews lived.

Chepauk palace built by Nawab Of Carnatic on money borrowed from EIC which debt was written off by transfer of nawab's lands from Ganjam to Kanyakumari: this was the true beginning of British empire.

Chepauk Palace - which gave EIC an empire!

Ripon Building - the first Indian municipal corporation

College of Ft St George replaced by Haylebury college, for training civil servants.

College of Engineering (started as Survey college) Guindy. Presidency college in 1857.

Oldest school of Art and oldest veterinary college. Oldest postal system. St. Andrews Kirk built on traditional well foundation, traditional Indian design.

Parry's, the second oldest company in India, built by Dare.

Spencer's was the largest retail empire in Asia. They ran 450 railway restaurants and catered to all trains.

The call for satyagraha went from Madras when the Rowlatt act was passed.

Some Links

1. Adayar War

2. அடையாறு போர்

3. The Seven Year's War - a video

4. College of Fort St George - FW Ellis

Madras Literary Society - the first library

Armenian Church in Georgetown

Madraspolitani - Latin name for Madras

Tailpiece: Did you know that the Latin name of Madras is Madraspolitani or even that there are Latin inscriptions in Madras? Here is one from a plaque in the St Mary's Church in Armenian street.