Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education

Also called: Macaulay's Minute · Topic: Europeans in India and the Rise of Company Rule · NCERT: Class 8, Ch 4 "The Colonial Era in India"

Meaning

Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education was a note (a "minute") written in 1835 by Thomas Babington Macaulay, the Law Member of the Governor-General's Council. It argued that the East India Company should spend its education money on teaching Western knowledge through English, not on Sanskrit, Arabic or Persian learning. [2]

It matters because it ended the long argument between the Orientalists and the Anglicists. A short resolution on 7 March 1835, under Lord William Bentinck, put Macaulay's view into action, and it shaped Indian higher education for the next hundred years. [2][3]

Explanation

Background: what India had, and the money question

• India already had a large learning system before the British arrived:
• pathashalas (village schools that taught reading, writing and basic maths)
• madrasas (Islamic schools that taught Arabic, Persian, law and theology)
• viharas (Buddhist monasteries that were also places of study)

• apprenticeship learning (a boy learned a craft like weaving or metalwork by working beside a master)

• These schools taught practical skills and cultural values together.

• British officials surveyed these schools themselves in the early 19th century:
• They counted hundreds of thousands of village schools across India.
• Bengal and Bihar alone had about 1,00,000 to 1,50,000 village schools up to 1830.

• The teaching was cheap and worked well. There were no big buildings and no fixed fees, and school hours fitted around the farming seasons.

• The Charter Act of 1813 said the Governor-General must spend at least ₹1,00,000 every year on educating Indians. [2]

• The money now existed.

• The new question was: what kind of education should it pay for?

• The General Committee of Public Instruction was set up in Calcutta in 1823 to decide this. Most of its early members were Orientalists, so at first it supported Indian learning. [2]

The debate: Orientalists vs Anglicists

• Orientalists were European scholars of Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic texts. Today such scholars are called Indologists.
• They wanted to strengthen the old centres of learning and teach in Indian languages.

• Their reason was that Indians would trust new knowledge more if it came in their own languages and through their own texts.

• Anglicists were officials who wanted European-style education taught in English.

• In the 1820s and early 1830s, younger and more radical members joined the Committee, and the Orientalists lost their grip on it. [2]
• Macaulay's Minute settled the debate in favour of the Anglicists.

What the Minute said

• Macaulay's own admission: he said he had "no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic".
• His main claim: "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia."
• His aim: to create a class of people "Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect."
• This group is what the phrase 'brown Englishmen' means: Indian by birth, English in their thinking.

• This class would act as a link between the British rulers and the millions they ruled.

• The real purpose was practical. The Company wanted cheap Indian clerks for the lower levels of its administration.

• Bringing an Englishman from Britain cost a lot.
• An Indian clerk who could read English cost much less and did the same paperwork.

What followed and the results

• 7 March 1835: Bentinck's government passed a short resolution putting the Minute into action. It is often called the English Education Act of 1835. [2][3]
• 1854, Wood's Despatch: Sir Charles Wood built a full system on Macaulay's base. [5]
• It ordered a separate education department in every province.

• It led to the universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras in 1857. [5]

• Traditional schools slowly died out.

• Government money and government jobs went to English schools.

• Pathashalas and madrasas got no grants, no recognition and led to no jobs, so parents stopped sending their children there.

• English became the language of prestige.

• A deep gap opened between a small English-educated elite and the large majority who knew only their mother tongue.

• This gap still exists in modern India.

• Educated Indians lost touch with their own heritage. Many could read English poets and English history but could not read Sanskrit, Persian or regional texts from their own past.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: Company rule. The Minute was written in 1835, during the governor-generalship of Lord William Bentinck. [2][3]
• Place: Calcutta, the seat of the Governor-General and of the General Committee of Public Instruction (set up in 1823). [2]
• Key people:
• Thomas Babington Macaulay, Law Member of the Governor-General's Executive Council. He also drafted the penal code that later became the base of Indian criminal law and argued that Europeans and Indians should be equal before the law. [3]
• Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General whose government passed the resolution of 7 March 1835. [2][3]

• Sir Charles Wood, author of the Despatch of 1854. [5]

• Evidence:

• The Minute itself is an official government record. Macaulay's Minutes on Education in India, written in the years 1835, 1836 and 1837 is kept as a rare book on the Government of India's Indian Culture Portal. [4]
• Early 19th-century British surveys of village schools give us the Bengal-Bihar school figures.
• The 1813 Charter Act, the 1835 resolution and Wood's Despatch of 1854 are the official documents that show how the policy changed over time.

Don't confuse with

• Charter Act of 1813: this act provided the money (at least ₹1,00,000 a year) for Indian education. It did not say what kind of education to pay for. The 1835 Minute decided that question. [2]
• Wood's Despatch (1854): this was written by Sir Charles Wood, not Macaulay. It built the system (provincial education departments and the 1857 universities). Macaulay's Minute only set the direction. [5]
• Orientalists vs Anglicists: Macaulay was an Anglicist. The Orientalists defended Indian languages and texts. The General Committee of 1823 was Orientalist at first. [2]
• Macaulay's penal code: this was a separate piece of work by the same man. It became the base of Indian criminal law. It is not part of the education Minute. [3]

Prelims Hooks

• Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education was written in 1835. Macaulay was the Law Member of the Governor-General's Council, not the Governor-General. [2]
• The resolution acting on the Minute was passed on 7 March 1835, under Governor-General Lord William Bentinck. [2][3]
• Order of events: Charter Act (1813) → General Committee of Public Instruction, Calcutta (1823) → Macaulay's Minute (1835) → Wood's Despatch (1854) → universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras (1857). [2][5]
• Famous line: "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia". Macaulay admitted he knew no Sanskrit or Arabic.
• His aim was a class "Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect", the so-called 'brown Englishmen'.
• Trap: the Charter Act of 1813 set aside ₹1,00,000 a year for education. It did not make English the medium of instruction. [2]

Mains Points

• Education as a tool of rule. The 1835 Minute was more an administrative decision than an educational one.
• The Company needed cheap, loyal clerks who could read English.
• This fits a wider pattern of Company rule: revenue settlements, the Subsidiary Alliance and English education all served the same goal of low-cost control.

• The 1,00,000–1,50,000 village schools in Bengal and Bihar go against the 'civilising mission' claim. The British replaced a cheap, widespread, locally funded system with a narrow, costly, urban one.

• The first modern Indian debate on the medium of instruction. The Orientalist–Anglicist argument started a debate that came back again and again:

• national education during the Swadeshi movement
• Gandhi's Nai Talim (basic education through useful work)
• the language question after 1947

• Irony: the Orientalists defended Indian languages for colonial reasons (to make British rule easier to accept), not nationalist ones.

• A result nobody planned. Macaulay wanted loyal middlemen.

• But English-educated Indians read Mill, Burke and Mazzini and took in ideas of liberty and nationhood.
• This class produced the early Congress leadership.
• Colonial education created both the clerk and the critic of British rule.

Related concepts

• Orientalists
• Calcutta Madrasa 1781
• Sanskrit College Benaras 1791
• Charter Act 1813
• Hindu College 1817
• Orientalist-Anglicist controversy
• William Bentinck
• Downward filtration theory
• Wood's Despatch 1854

Read more

• Colonial education: Macaulay and the 'brown Englishmen'