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Lord William Bentinck's resolution of 1835 on Indian education: a rejected draft1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

J. F. Hilliker
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Extract

In January 1835, the General Committee of Public Instruction, the semiofficial body responsible for administering the Government of India's education funds, reported deep internal division over matters of principle. One group within the Committee, the orientalists, wanted to continue the existing policy of supporting traditional Indian learning, with the prospect of gradually engrafting European subject-matter upon it. Their opponents, the Anglicists, urged the substitution of Western for Eastern studies (with some safeguards for the latter) and the use of English as the principal language of instruction. Because the dispute was hampering all but the most routine activity, the Committee requested the government to settle the question.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 113 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 40 - 45
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1981

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References

Notes

2 General Committee of Public Instruction to Government, 21 and 22 January 1835, India Office Records: India Public Consultations, 7 March 1835, Nos. 7, 14.Google Scholar

3 ibid., No. 15. Macaulay's minute has been published a number of times, e.g. in Sharp, H. (ed.), Selections from educational records. Part I, 1781–1839,Google Scholaribid., Nos. 17, reprinted Delhi, 1965, 107–17.

4 Ross, minute, 10 February 1835. India Office Records: India Public Consultations, 7 March 1835, No. 16; Morison, minutes, 18 February and 3 March 1835, ibid., Nos. 17, 18.

5 N.d., University of Nottingham Library: Bentinck Papers (collection of the Duke of Portland), PwJF 1334.

6 India Office Records: India Public Consultations, 7 March 1835, No. 19. Also in Sharp, , Selections, 130–1.Google Scholar

7 ibid., 118–30; Prinsep, diary (1865), ibid., 132–4; Prinsep, minute, 20 May 1835, India Office Records: India Public Consultations, 3 June 1835, No. 8. The original of Prinsep's note, with Macaulay's comments, is in National Archives of India: India Public Consultations, 7 March 1835, No. 19 and KW (Keep-With). (“Keep-Withs” were items kept on file in India but not copied and sent in the Consultations to London.)

8 National Archives of India: India Public Consultations, 7 March 1835, No. 19 and KW.

9 Diary, , Sharp, , Selections, 132–4; minute, 20 May 1835, India Office Records: India Public Consultations, 3 June 1835, No. 8.Google Scholar

10 Rosselli, John, Lord William Bentinck: the making of a liberal imperialist, 1774–1839, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974, 213, 217 and 324.Google Scholar

11 ibid., 307.

12 Clive, John, Macaulay: the shaping of the historian, New York, 1973, 365–6;Google ScholarPhilips, C. H. (ed.), The correspondence of Lord William Cavendish Bentinck, Governor-General of India, 1828–1835, Oxford, 1977, I, xli–xlii.Google Scholar

13 For evidence of imbalance in the development of Indian education, see, e.g., Nurullah, Syed and Naik, J. P., A students' history of education in India (1800–1961), revised edition, Bombay, 1962, 135–43, 157–60, 165–8, 197–8, 331–2.Google Scholar