Minute by H.T. Prinsep, May 20, 1835
Minute by H. T. Prinsep, dated the 20th May 1835.
At the meeting of the Council when the letter of the Secretary to the committee of Public Instruction forwarding the Minute of Mr. W.R. Macnaghten was laid before us it was resolved by the majority not to reconsider the resolutions passed by the late Governor-General in Council on the 7th March last but to allow them to stand as the rules for the guidance of the Committee in their future proceedings. My voice and vote were with the minority on this occasion, and, as I think the question of the first importance, concerning deeply the character and credit of the Government, and look upon the decision that has been passed as calculated to alienate the affections of all the influential classes of the population and to do infinite injury in other respects I am not content to give a silent vote.
It is laid down in the resolution above referred to that "the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science" and "that all funds appropriated to purposes of education would be best employed on English education alone." Leaving, however, all existing professors and students in seminaries of oriental literature now supported by Government in possession of their stipends, it is ordered that no scholarships or stipends shall hereafter be given to students; and, upon a vacancy occurring in any oriental professorship, a special report is to be made to Government upon the number and condition of the class (so) that the Government may decide whether it shall be continued. No funds are to be expended hereafter in printing oriental works, and all the funds left at the disposal of the Committee by the discontinuance of oriental professorships, scholarships, and printing are to be devoted to the teaching of English literature and science, through the medium of the English language.
This resolution is looked upon by Mr. Macnaghten and by those who think with him in the Committee as containing a hostile declaration against the literature of the country inconsistent with past and with recent professions of the Government, as proclaiming a principle unfair and illiberal in itself and calculated to set against those without whose cooperation we can do nothing to promote science and literature, and as ordering an entire change in the course of proceedings pursued hitherto by the Committee with eminent success; such a change too has rendered it impossible that the same men, whose influence and exertions in the Committee and weight of character in the country have mainly contributed to that success, should continue to act as members, thus depriving the cause of public instruction of all the aid derived from their talents and information and marking in the face of the world that a course is about to be pursued which they cannot reconcile with their ideas of fairness and propriety. This however is not all; Mr. Macnaghten refers to the Act of Parliament which made the assignment of funds the appropriation of which has been trusted to this Committee. He there finds that "the revival and promotion of literature" amongst the natives of India and "the encouragement of learned men" are specifically indicated as the objects first to be provided for from the funds assigned. He doubts not, and neither can any one that reads the provision and refers to the proceedings that occurred when it passed, doubt that the literature meant to be so revived and encouraged was the literature of the two great classes of the population, the Moosulmans and the Hindoos. Of course this was not to be to the exclusion of other useful knowledge, the improvement of the country in science and civilization being not less an object with the framers of the act than the revival of its literature, accordingly words follow those above cited which declare the funds assigned to be also applicable to "the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences." But the whole scope and tenor as well as the literal meaning of the provision shows that the two objects were intended to be combined and prosecuted in concert. They have been so hitherto and the funds have accordingly assumed a distribution providing, for all that is thus indicated. The revival of literature has been promoted by the assistance given to seminaries of education previously existing, and by the establishment of fresh, and likewise through the printing and publishing of classical works hitherto only to be procured in manuscript. To these objects a certain proportion of the funds assigned has been applicable. The encouragement of learned men, the next thing indicated, has been effected as well through the support afforded them in institutions of education and in the superintendence and preparation of works for publication as by other advantages incident to the system pursued, amongst which not the least effectual is the provision for securing prolonged study by stipends to promising students. All this has been done for the natives and their literature, while the establishment of English classes in all existing seminaries and of fresh seminaries specifically for the teaching of English and English science and the attempts made by translation to make that science accessible to those ignorant of English have all had for their object the fulfilment of the other purposes indicated in the Act of 53rd Geo. III, viz. "the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences," assuming this to mean the sciences of Europe. Thus, while through the old established seminaries and by their reform upon principles approved by the influential classes connected with them, and through the printing and publishing of their classics the first purpose indicated in the words of the Act has been sought to be accomplished, there has yet remained applicable to the cultivation of European science and English literature by far the larger proportion of the new fund set apart in 1813 by the legislature. If a comparison were to be made of the sums spent in printing native works and in providing new machinery for teaching the languages of the east or new stipends for successful scholars of its literature with the amounts lavished on English masters and on teachers of the rudiments of European science and on professors of law and metaphysics and natural philosophy, etc., etc., it will be found that the former bear but a small proportion to the aggregate of the latter thus showing that in the appropriation of the lakh of rupees even on the principles of the Orientalists, the desire to teach our own language and literature and science has always prevailed over the revival of the old literature and that we have given to what is last stated in the enactment as a purpose of assignment, perhaps even an undue preference. It has always, however, been a matter of discussion and difference amongst the members of the Committee where the line ought to be drawn-some desiring to give more to one branch, some to the other, but never yet has there been any one member of the Committee who has gone the length of the Government resolution and expressed the opinion that all the funds set apart by the Act of Parliament for the different objects therein declared ought to be employed on English education alone, to the exclusion of even the vernacular dialects of the country.
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The fourth member of the Legislative Council of India had then recently been appointed President of the Committee of Public Instruction but in this reference and the discussion of which it was the issue he had taken no part. After the two letters of the Committee submitting the reference had been sent in, Mr. Macaulay laid before the Governor-General the minute of his views on the subject which is recorded in the proceedings of the Executive Council and is the basis of the resolution of the 7th March.
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This minute was evidently a partizan paper advocating in a controversial and not very moderate tone the cause of one section of the Committee. It proceeded further than the warmest advocates of that side had yet ventured. Its assertions and arguments therefore demanded some investigation before they should be adopted as the basis of any grave proceedings of the Government. Without instituting, however, any such enquiry and, as far as is known to me without consulting any one of those in whom he was in the habit of placing confidence, the late Governor-General immediately upon the perusal of the minute in question, before any of the papers had been laid before the Council or discussed, added to it the declaration of his entire concurrence and so forwarded it to the Secretary of the Department for circulation. I circulated it and in a few days the box was returned to me with a brief minute by Mr. Ross, stating his own opinion to be opposed to the grant of scholarships and his wish that all should be left free to follow the course of instruction they preferred but without notice of the statements of doubtful accuracy contained in the minute of Mr. Macaulay. I was not then aware of Colonel Morrison's intention to record his opinion on the subject. His minute reached me some days afterwards. In the interval, however, of the circulation of Mr. Macaulay's minute it got wind I know not from what quarter that it was the intention of Government to abolish the Mudrusa and Sanscrit colleges. I was waited upon twice by the head preceptor of the former and utterly denied that there was any such intention. But the report was too widely circulated, and too well vouched to be so checked and the whole town of Calcutta was soon in a ferment. In the course of two days a petition respectful in language but strong in the points to which it adverted was signed by upwards of eight thousand educated Mohommedans, and a similar petition in behalf of the Sanscrit College was under preparation by the Hindoos. Seeing this ferment and sensible of the mischief that must follow the adoption to the full of the recommendations contained in the minute of Mr. Macaulay which seemed to me to be assented to by the Governor-General, I took upon myself, in my capacity of Secretary, to submit to the Head of the Government a note explaining many of the circumstances on which Mr. Macaulay had, in my opinion, built erroneous conclusions or had written from imperfect information. I forwarded my note to the Governor-General and was at first asked through Mr. Pakenham, the Private Secretary, to withdraw it under a verbal assurance that the minute of Mr. Macaulay would be sent down to the Committee of Education of which he was President, and myself a member, in order that the matter might there be fully argued and discussed. I was of course satisfied that the mischief should be so stopped and circulated the note no further. In the meantime Colonel Morrison also appeared alive to the importance of the question and recorded his minute in behalf of native literature in which he deprecated any hasty innovations hostile to it and concluded with recommending a reference of the question to England. The matter was brought forward at the very next meeting of Council when this recommendation as well as the promise held out to me, were both disregarded and the resolution of the 7th March was passed, stopping short indeed of the threatened abolition of the Sanscrit and Arabic colleges but directed towards the insidiously undermining of both, and for the first time avowing the principle that oriental literature and instruction were thenceforward to receive no further aid from Government, not being considered objects deserving of its encouragement. The resolution is evidently founded on the minute of Mr. Macaulay above adverted to, and not upon the references from the Committee at large to the points submitted in which it nowhere adverts. It is thus based upon a minute advocating with all the warmth of controversy one particular side of a debated question without the opportunity having been given to those opposed to this view to offer any explanations or reply. Nay the late Governor-General would not allow the answer prepared to it to appear on record, for upon finding that Mr. Macaulay's paper was not to be referred to the Committee of Public Instruction for further discussion, as I have been led to expect would be done, I submitted to His Lordship whether my note also should not be recorded for the correction of some of the statements of the minute which were erroneous or founded on imperfect information. I was met by a rebuke for having taken upon myself so much, accompanied by the declaration that Secretaries are the organs and not advisers of the Government and that their submitting notes at all was under sufferance and an irregularity.
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I think, therefore, I am fully warranted by what fell under my view in the course of the whole transaction in calling the resolution of the 7th March a rash Act.
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I have gone into great length in stating the impressions left on my mind by the measure I have above discussed, and yet I feel that there is an infinity more to say. I have not thought it necessary to make on this occasion any detailed reply to the minute of Mr. Macaulay in which the measure originated, because although my previous note discussing its propositions has not been recorded the substance of it is well known to the members of Government and it would be reviving a discussion already set to rest were I again to go over the same grounds.
I fear I cannot expect that the question will now be reopened. I record this minute, therefore, as a protest against the continuance of measures founded on the principles of the resolution of the 7th March and as a declaration of the extremely mischievous and injurious tendency which I believe to be inherent in them. The true principle in my opinion is that of leaving the natives to choose their own courses of education and to encourage all equally on the part of Government making it our business to give to them the direction to true science and good taste in literature which the superior lights of Europe ought to enable us to bestow. Any deviation from this principle of free choice and equal encouragement can only do mischief to the cause by exciting feelings of distrust and perhaps irritation.
I need not add in conclusion that I am decidedly adverse to printing the resolution of the 7th March in order to give it further publicity as is proposed in the last letter on the subject received from the Committee.
H.T. PRINSEP
20th May 1835
From: Bureau of Education. Selections from Educational Records, Part I (1781-1839). Edited by H. Sharp. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1920. Reprint. Delhi: National Archives of India, 1965, 134-139.