AssignmentEnglish Language in Pakistan

TopicColonial Reasons for Introducing English

in the Indo-Pak Sub-Continent

ClassM.A (ELT 1)

Submitted to: Farukh Shaah

Submitted by: Imran Maqsood

Background of colonisation of Subcontinent

Pepper, or 'Black Gold' as it was known, was exported from Subcontinent to Greece in the fourth century BC, but the real flood of trade began in the first century AD. Recipes from rich Roman households testify to the popularity of the spice in ancient Rome. Romans were sending about 120 ships-a-year from Egypt to trade with India and bring back enormous quantities of pepper.

The trade along this spice route was one of the most influential commercial activities in history and directly affected the course of world events. The colonisation of the Indian subcontinent were largely a result of European attempts to find sea routes to the East. While the British East India Company formed in 1600 to compete with the Dutch spice trade, resulted in the colonisation of the Indian subcontinent.

Establishment of East India CompanyIn 1601 the East India Company was chartered, and the English began their first inroads into the Indian Ocean. East India Company created its own first outpost at Surat. This small outpost marked the beginning of a remarkable presence that would last over 300 years and eventually dominate the entire subcontinent. In 1612 British established a trading post in Gujarat.

In 1614 Sir Thomas Roe was instructed by James I to visit the court of Jahangir to arrange a commercial treaty and to secure sites for factories. Sir Thomas was successful in getting permission and East India Company set up factories at Ahmedabad, Agra, Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. Once in India, the British began to compete with the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the French.

The defeat of the redoubtable Indian ruler Tipu Sultan in 1799 marginalised French influence. This was followed by a rapid expansion of British power. By the middle of the 19th century, the British had gained direct or indirect control over almost all of India. Subcontinent was the most populous and valuable province of the British Empire and thus became known as "the jewel in the British crown".

The East India Company officers lived like princes, the company finances were in shambles, and the company's effectiveness in India was examined by the British crown after 1858. As a result, the East India Company lost its powers of government and British India formally came under direct British rule, with an appointed Governor-General of India. The East India Company was dissolved the following year in 1858. A few years later, Queen Victoria took the title of Empress of India.

Education Policy during the Early British PeriodWhen the British Parliament had renewed the charter of the East India Company for 20 years in 1813, it had required the Company to apply 100,000 rupees per year “for the revival and promotion of education.” By the early 1820s some administrators within the East India Company were questioning if this was a sensible use of the money. James Mill noted that the declared purpose of the Madrassa in Calcutta and the Hindu College in Benares set up by the company had been “to make a favorable impression, by our encouragement of their literature, upon the minds of the natives” but took the view that the aim of the company should have been to further not Oriental learning but “useful learning.” Indeed, private enterprise colleges had begun to spring up in Bengal teaching Western knowledge in English, to serve a native clientele which felt it would be more important that their sons learnt to understand the English.

The colonial era saw huge differences of opinion among the colonialists themselves about education for Indians. During the early British period there were two major schools of thoughts: the orientalists, who appreciated the past greatness of the natives and believed that education should happen in Indian languages (of which they favoured classical or court languages like Sanskrit or Persian). They know that there is much to learn from the Indians. They believed that Indian history, languages, religions, and traditions needed to be studied and that Indians should be ruled in accordance with their own tradition and culture. The orientalists established schools to study the vernacular and classical languages of the region and maintained the established norms of the society.

In contrast to orientalists, anglicists like Thomas Babington Macaulay, who strongly believed that India had nothing to teach in its own subjects and the best education for them should happen in English. He believed in the “supremacy of English and Western culture” and held “oriental learning in contempt”. The anglicists thought that it was there duty to civilise the Indians by introducing English traditions, culture and Christianity. The anglicists wanted to promote English by teaching European literature and science through the medium of English language.

The orientalists, after an initial supremacy of power, lost their control and anglicists took over. The change from orientalist to an anglicist viewpoint did not occur without strong criticism from the orientalists. Mackenzie predicted that such policies would antagonize the Indians and might lead to problems;

however, his views were ignored. Orientalists strongly opposed this step but they had lost their influence and their views were not taken into consideration.

Thomas Babington Macaulay introduced English education in India, especially through his famous minute of February 1835. He called an educational system that would create a class of anglicised Indians who would serve as cultural intermediaries between the British and the Indians. Macaulay succeeded in implementing ideas previously put forward by Lord William Bentinck, the governor general since 1829. Bentinck favoured the replacement of Persian by English as the official language, the use of English as the medium of instruction, and the training of English-speaking Indians as teachers.

However, Bentinck's ideas were rejected by the Court of Directors of the East India Company and he retired as governor general.

English Education Act 1835The English Education Act was a legislative Act of the Council of India in 1835 giving effect to a decision in 1835 by William Bentinck, the East India Company was required by the British Parliament to reallocate funds to spend on education and literature in India. Formerly, they had supported traditional Muslim and Hindu education and the publication of literature in the native learned tongues (Arabic and Sanskrit); henceforward

They were to support establishments teaching a Western curriculum with English as the language of instruction

Replacement of Persian by English as the official language Training of English-speaking Indians as teachers

Together with other measures promoting English as the language of administration and of the higher law courts (replacing Persian), this led eventually to English becoming one of the languages of India, rather than simply the native tongue of its foreign rulers.

The Act Thomas Babington Macaulay produced was scathing on the inferiority of native culture and learning. The Act itself however took a less negative attitude to traditional education, and was soon succeeded by further measures based upon the provision of adequate funding for both approaches. Vernacular language education, however continued to receive little funding.

Under Macaulay, thousands of elementary and secondary schools were opened though they usually had an all-male student body. Universities in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras were established in 1857, just before the Rebellion. By 1890 some 60,000 Indians had matriculated, chiefly in the liberal arts or law.

About a third entered public administration, and another third became lawyers. The result was a very well educated professional state bureaucracy. By 1887 of 21,000 mid-level civil service appointments, 45% were held by Hindus, 7% by Muslims, 19% by Eurasians (European father and Indian mother), and 29% by Europeans. Of the 1000 top -level positions, almost all were held by Britons, typically with an Oxbridge degree. The government, often working with local philanthropists, opened 186 universities and colleges of higher education by 1911; they enrolled 36,000 students (over 90% men). By 1939 the number of institutions had doubled and enrolment reached 145,000. The curriculum followed classical British standards of the sort set by Oxford and Cambridge and stressed English literature and European history. Macaulay’s aim was to create a nation of clerks, half westernized, half native, who could economically man the offices of the British Raj. Much of the weakness of the education system still stems from Macaulay’s attempts at reform.

Legal modernizationAfter 1857 the colonial government strengthened and expanded its infrastructure via the court system, legal procedures, and statutes. New legislation merged the Crown introduced a new penal code as well as new codes of civil and criminal procedure, based largely on English law and they were all in English language. So, this was also an attempt to impose English language on the locals.

Local SchoolsLocal schools for pre-adolescent children were in a flourishing state in villages in the early nineteenth century. They were village institutions, maintained by village elders with local funds. However, the British policies in respect of education and land control adversely affected both the village structure and the village institutions education. The British legal system and the rise of caste consciousness since the second half of the nineteenth century made it worse. Gradually, village as the base of solidarity became too weak to create and maintain its own institutions by the end of the nineteenth century. But British education became solidified into India as missionary schools were established during the 1820s. New policies in 1835 gave rise to the use of English as the language of instruction for advanced topics. Now because of the language barrier education becomes more difficult for the common people of India.

Indian Civil Service

The Army and the Civil Service were the main instruments of British power, staffed by only a small number of white officials. This imperial service became, "a large vested interest of the educated upper middle class. By 1913–14, for example, the Government of India devoted no less than 53 million pounds (65 percent of the total budget of 82 million pounds) to the army and civil administration.

The Indians in the Civil Service were to be brought up as gentleman and an "Eton in India" was established, thereby perpetuating a political ruling class of Indians owing their position to England. The native Indians in the Civil Service became the bridge by which Englishmen governed the masses or as the official Macaulay said in 1834, we “must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern”. The Indian civil service held nearly every senior, non-military, position in the government and through the creation of a new ruling caste, and propaganda, "invented an ideology of imperial service and amassed a scholarly literature in which India’s history, society, economy and culture were interpreted as a story of chaos from which only the Indian Civil Service rule had been able to save them."

Reasons for Introducing English in the SubcontinentThe British introduced English in the subcontinent for the extra linguistic purposes. According to Rubin, extra linguistic policies are changes in the local distribution of the usage of indigenous languages that are made for non-linguistic purposes. The role of Persian and other vernaculars was well defined in the pre-British era and there were no real linguistic need for a change. However, the British felt that by introducing English as the official language, they could introduce Western culture and values to India and thus civilize them.

British believed that it was there responsibility of the whites to Christianise heathens and thus save them from eternal damnation. Thus, the purpose of introducing English were not merely linguistic but extra linguistic.

Persian was a symbol of the Muslim rule in India. The change in the official language in 1835 thus reflected the shift in the power dynamics and showed the British control over India. So, the British planned their language policy carefully designed as is defined by cooper

“Language planning refers to deliberate efforts to influence the behaviour of others with respect to the acquisition, structure or functional allocation of their language codes.”

If judged by this definition, the British policy was highly effective. Even today, over fifty years after the end of direct British rule, the English language flourishes and grows as an indigenised variety with local norms, variation and uses.

When English language was introduced in the subcontinent, Muslims refused to get western education. In the time it took Sir Syed Ahmed Khan to convince them otherwise, Hindus had progressed far ahead and Muslims consequently had few economic opportunities. He played a vital role for the development of English. In 1875 Sir Syed founded Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College (now Aligarh University) because he believed that Muslims could best improve their social and economic standing by gaining Western education. He published bi-lingual newspaper in English and Urdu and also made arrangements for Muslims to get scientific knowledge in English. That was the time when English language started spreading in sub-continent and grew its roots stronger and stronger. Sir Syed never emphasized on turning culture and changing norms of our society but simply said that learning English would prove beneficial.

Reason of maintaining English as an official languageAt the time of independence, English was maintained as an official language in both India and Pakistan. English was the language of the state machinery in British India and the new government of Pakistan were used to working in this language. English was therefore kept as an official language in Pakistan for pragmatic and functional reasons. However English was an exclusive language and used only by the educated and the powered classes. Thus to maintain its status was to protect the established hegemony.

Effects of Colonial EraIndia had been ruled by foreign invaders before but they all accepted the basic structure of Indian society and blended their cultures with it. The British always stayed aloof, in a superior world of their own and thus created two worlds in India. The following quote illustrates the utter confusion the Indian people were plunged into when two completely alien cultures met. “We must form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, in intellect.” - Thomas Macaulay, seen as the father of Western education in the subcontinent.

All this contributed to a distortion of the Indian class structure. By getting western education, the Hindu middle classes emerged much sooner than the Muslim. Also, there were two kinds of Muslim middle classes when they belatedly emerged: those who studied English and those who did not. The result was that education could not spread to the masses for a linguistic and cultural gulf was created. In the past it had not been so hard to get education. One already knew the main language. All one had to do was refine it and directly gain knowledge. The British made the knowledge of Arabic, Persian and Urdu seem redundant. Thus education today remains a monopoly of the middle and upper classes in the urban areas. The roots of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism are found in the introduction of English education and customs. The efforts of Christian missionaries to convert people also exacerbated this.

There is an impression even now that the English compassionately desired the spread of education when the very idea was abhorrent to them. They did not want Indians to imbibe modern ideas and attempt the overthrow. It was actually individual English educationists, journalists and missionaries who opened India’s horizon to the world of analytical literature and science. To this day we have much to thank them for.

Summing up, The British rule in the subcontinent had a lasting Impact on the lives of the Indian people. They exploited the Indian Territory for their own interests and left the land in more disorder and confusion than they found it in, as

Their attitude of superiority shattered the confidence of the people Education was not made easily accessible to poor class Their agrarian revolution did not help improve yield and caused

landholdings to become more fragmented, The traditional Indian industry was ruined Construction of railways was done keeping the British interests in mind

the not Indian interests The new political system which lacked personal element was not more

effective than the old one.

Conclusion:It appears that although there are positive legacies of colonial, the negative impact outweighs them. Many of our current problems can directly be traced to colonial policies.