Lord
Macaulay (Thomas Babington Macaulay) was born on October 25, 1800, and died on
December 28, 1859. He arrived in India (Madras) on 10th June 1834 as a member
of the Supreme Council of India. William Bentinck was the then Governor
General. He returned to England early 1838, and resumed his writing career
there. Macaulay was in India, thus, only for nearly four years, but he was
destined to impact the lives of millions of Indians forever.
2. MACAULAY'S FAMILY
Lord
Macaulay's father Zachary Macaulay himself had seen overseas service in the
West Indies and Sierra Leone, and was highly regarded for his contribution to
public life. Zachary was against slavery and worked closely with Wilberforce
and others.
Macaulay
was a student of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge and was called
to the bar in 1826. His
nephew-biographer George Trevelyan wrote that Macaulay did not make it a
serious profession (Trevelyan 1876 :
101). Macaulay was greatly attached to his family: his father, mother, and two
sisters. Once he
wrote to his mother,
How
sick, and sleepless, and weak I was lying in bed, when I was told that you were
come! How well I remember with what an ecstasy of joy I saw that face
approaching me, in the middle of people that did not care if I died that night
except for the trouble of burying me! The sound of your voice, the touch of
your hand, are present to me now, and will be, I trust in God, to my last hour
(from a letter of Macaulay to his mother dated March 25, 1821, in Trevelyan
(1876).
Macaulay
loved his sisters, Hannah and Margaret, deeply. Both were younger to him by ten
and twelve years respectively. His letters to them were full of affection and
concern for their welfare. He was truly affected much when his sisters got
married one after another. Macaulay wrote philosophically in November 1832,
The
attachment between brothers and sisters, blameless, amiable, and delightful as
it is, is so liable to be superseded by other attachments that no wise man
ought to suffer it to become indispensable to him. That women shall leave the home
of their birth, and contract ties dearer than those of consanguinity, is a law
as ancient as the first records of the history of our race, and as unchangeable
as the constitution of the human body and mind. To repine against the nature of
things, and against the great fundamental law of all society because, in
consequence of my own want of foresight, it happens to bear heavily on me,
would be the basest and most absurd of selfishness (Trevelyan 1876: 265).
INDIANS
CANNOT BE EDUCATED BY MEANS OF THEIR MOTHER-TONGUE: ENGLISH IS THE LANGAUGE
How, then, stands the case? We
have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their
mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own
language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even
among the languages of the west. It abounds with works of imagination not
inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every
species of eloquence; with historical compositions, which, considered merely as
narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of
ethical and political instruction, have never been equaled; with just and
lively representations of human life and human nature; with the most profound
speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, and trade; with
full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends
topreserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of
man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual
wealth, which all th wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded int
4he course of ninety generations. It may be safely said, that the literature
now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature
which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world
together. Nor is this all. In India, English is the language spoken by the
ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of
Government. It is like to become the language of commerce throughout the seas
of the East. It is the language of two great European communities which are
raising, the one in south of Africa, the other in Australasia; communities
which are every year becoming more important, and more closely connected with
our Indian empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or
at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason
to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would
be the most useful to our native subjects.
DO
WE ABDICATE OUR RESPONSIBILITY?
The question now before us is
simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we shall teach
languages, by which, by universal confession, there are not books on any
subject which deserve to be compared to our own; whether, when we can teach
European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession,
whenever they differ from those of Europe, differ for the worse; and whether,
when we can patronise sound Philosophy and true History, we shall countenance,
at the public expense, medical doctrines, which would disgrace an English
farrier, --Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding
school,--History, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty
thousand years long,--and Geography, made up of seas of treacle and seas of
butter.
INDIANS
CAN ATTAIN EXCELLENCE IN ENGLISH
It is taken for granted by the
advocates of Oriental learning, that no native of this country can possibly
attain more than a mere smattering of English. They do not attempt to prove
this; but they perpetually insinuate it. They designate the education which
their opponents recommend as a mere spelling book education. They assume it as
undeniable, that the question is between a profound knowledge of Hindoo and
Arabian literature and science on the one side, and a superficial knowledge of
the rudiments of English on the other. This is not merely an assumption, but an
assumption contrary to all reason and
experience. We know that
foreigners of all nations do learn our language sufficiently to have access to
all the most abstruse knowledge which it contains, sufficiently to relish even
the more delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers. There are in this very
town natives who are quite competent to discuss political or scientific
questions with fluency and precision in the English language. I have heard the
very question on which I am now writing discussed by native gentlemen with a
liberality and an intelligence which would do credit to any member of the
Committee of Public instruction. Indeed it is unusual to find, even in the
literary circles of the continent, any foreigner who can express himself in
English with so much facility and correctness as we find in many Hindoos.
Nobody, I suppose, will contend that English is so difficult to a Hindoo as
Greek to an Englishman. Yet an intelligent English youth, in a much smaller
number of years than our unfortunate pupils pass at the Sanscrit college,
becomes able to read, to enjoy, and even to imitate, not unhappily, the
compositions of the best Greek Authors. Less than half the time which enables
an English youth to read Herodotus and Sophocles, ought to enable a Hindoo to
read Hume and Milton.
Regards
K.K Singh
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