Examine the forces at work for the introduction of western education in India. Analyse the thrust given to it by the Christian Missionaries.

Answer:

The introduction of western education in India was the outcome of several converging forces, administrative necessity, evangelical zeal, utilitarian conviction and Indian reformist demand. The Christian missionaries, though driven by their own purposes, gave the movement much of its early energy and institutional shape.

Administrative and economic forces

• The Company needed English-knowing clerks, interpreters and subordinate officials at low cost.
• Macaulay's Minute of 1835 sought a class Indian in blood but English in taste and opinion.
• Bentinck's resolution of 1835 made English the medium of official instruction.
• Wood's Despatch of 1854, the 'Magna Carta' of Indian education, created a systematic structure.

Ideological forces

• Evangelicals such as Charles Grant and William Wilberforce believed education would spread Christianity.
• Utilitarians like James Mill saw western knowledge as the instrument of rational improvement.
• The Anglicist-Orientalist controversy was resolved decisively in favour of English.
• Faith in the superiority of western science and literature underlay the whole enterprise.

Indian demand

• Rammohan Roy petitioned in 1823 for instruction in modern science rather than Sanskrit learning.
• Indian reformers saw English education as the key to employment and modern knowledge.
• The Hindu College at Calcutta (1817) was founded with Indian initiative and money.

The missionary thrust

• The Serampore trio, Carey, Marshman and Ward, pioneered schools, printing and vernacular translation.
• Alexander Duff established English-medium instruction as a vehicle of Christian influence.
• Missionaries opened the first schools for girls and for depressed classes, whom others neglected.
• They advanced vernacular printing, grammars and dictionaries, aiding education generally.
• The Charter Act of 1813 permitted their entry and allotted a lakh of rupees for education.

Assessment of missionary role

• Their motive was conversion, and few converts resulted from the schools.
• Their zeal nonetheless created institutions, teachers and textbooks before the state acted.
• Their work in female and low-caste education had lasting social consequences.

Consequences of the policy

• The downward filtration theory confined education to a narrow elite and neglected mass literacy.
• Vernacular and traditional learning were starved of funds and declined.
• Universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were founded in 1857 on the London model.
• The Hunter Commission of 1882 later tried to redress the neglect of primary education.
• The educated class turned western liberal ideas against colonial rule itself.

Western education thus arose from a convergence of colonial need, ideological conviction and Indian demand, with the missionaries providing much of the pioneering effort. As historians observe, the outcome escaped all its promoters' intentions: the English-educated class it created became not the loyal instrument of empire but the leadership of Indian nationalism.