Macaulays Minute Revisited: Colonial

Language Policy in Nineteenth-century

India
Stephen Evans
English Language Centre, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong
Kong
This paper examines a crucial episode in the history of language policy in British colonial education: the OrientalistAnglicist controversy of the 1830s over the content and
medium of government education in India. The bitter dispute over colonial
language-in-education policy during this period raised fundamental questions about
the roles and status of the English language and the Indian vernacular and classical
languages in the diffusion of Western knowledge and ideas on the subcontinent. At the
heart of many accounts of the controversy, not least those of a polemical nature, is
Thomas Babington Macaulays famous Minute of 1835, which advocated the creation
of a class of anglicised Indians who would serve as cultural intermediariesbetween the
British and their Indian subjects. This paper reassesses Macaulays influence on
British language policy in 19th century India. It begins by examining the background
to the OrientalistAnglicist dispute in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and then
moves on to analyse the content and purpose of the Minute. The second part examines
the short-term and long-term consequences of Macaulays scheme in India and in other
British colonial contexts.

Introduction
This paper examines the influence of Macaulays famous Minute on education
on colonial language policy in 19th century India. The study was prompted by
Phillipsons (1992) account of Macaulays apparently instrumental role in the
promotion of English-language education in India and other British colonial
contexts during this period. Phillipson claims that Macaulays formulation of
the goals of British educational policy in his Minute of 2 February 1835 ended
the long-standing controversy between the Anglicists and Orientalists over the
content and medium of Indian education (p. 110). By strongly siding with the
Anglicist faction, Macaulay ensured that educational funding would be devoted
to the British model, a decision which Phillipson believes firmly slammed the
door on indigenous traditions of learning (p. 110). According to Phillipson,
Macaulays strategy, which was apparently endorsed at the Imperial Conferences of 1913 and 1923, had a seminal influence on language policy throughout
the British Empire, where the job of education was to produce people with
mastery of English (p. 111).
Having castigated Macaulay for riding roughshod over traditional Indian
learning and imposing English as the master language of the Empire, Phillipson
chooses to backtrack somewhat in the notes at the end of his chapter on the colonial linguistic inheritance. Seemingly oblivious to the content and tone of his
earlier analysis, Phillipson notes that Macaulays role in the elaboration of
educational policy has tended to be exaggerated and misunderstood (p. 133).
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While a good deal of evidence exists to support this observation, critics might
argue that nowhere are these tendencies more in evidence than in his own
account of Macaulays role in the development of language policy on the subcontinent. Phillipson also acknowledges that the policy embodied in the Minute was
a fait accompli by the time Macaulay reached India, and never fully implemented
(p. 133). The relegation of these brief qualifying remarks to an endnote is perhaps
evidence of Phillipsons reluctance to present a detailed, emprically grounded
account of Macaulays role in Indian education lest it undermine the force of his
studys central thesis, that the promotion of English in the Empire was the
outcome of a colonialist conspiracy. Though not without its merits, this interpretation of British motives in India and elsewhere as this paper seeks to
emphasise does not always accord comfortably with the evidence.
As was intimated above, there is considerable evidence to suggest that
Macaulays role in the promotion of English-language education in India has
tended to be overstated. The testimony of Arthur Mayhew, a senior educational
administrator in India, indicates that this tendency to magnify the Minutes
importance was apparent well before the end of colonial rule:
Macaulay by his eloquence and wealth of superlatives has often been made
solely responsible for cutting off Indian education from the roots of
national life. Let it be remembered here that he was not the prime mover,
that his intervention was late and that the forces which he represented
would probably have been successful without his singularly tactless and
blundering championship. (Mayhew, 1926: 1213)
A decade later, Spear (1938: 83) reached a similar conclusion, though in more
poetic language:
Macaulay has been too much praised and too much blamed; his contribution was like the lightning flash which vividly illumines the storm and
reveals the landscape, albeit in fantastic proportions and bewildering
lights, but which neither directs its course nor ordains its conclusion.
Recent scholarship has also tended to downplay Macaulays influence. In a study
of educational development in Madras, Frykenberg (1988: 312) apparently found
no reference to Macaulays Minute in government records, either around the
time of its composition or in the decade which followed, leading him to conclude
that the Minute made virtually no impact in southern India. Frykenbergs findings therefore call into question Phillipsons view that Macaulay exerted a seminal influence on colonial language policy until well into the 20th century.
Indeed, Frykenbergs main argument, that the historiography of modern India
needs to be freed from the misleading myth of English as a colonialist imposition on a defenceless and hapless India (p. 305), is diametrically opposed to the
central thrust of Phillipsons chapter on language policy in India and the Empire.
This paper assesses the merits of these divergent interpretations of
Macaulays role in the introduction and spread of English-language education in
British India. It begins by examining the background to the OrientalistAnglicist
controversy, then moves on to analyse the content and purpose of his Minute,
and finally assesses its impact on British language policy on the subcontinent
before the First World War.

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Orientalism in British India

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the East India Company gave little
encouragement to educational development on the Indian subcontinent
(Benson, 1972), and was particularly opposed to the introduction of
English-language education on the grounds that the diffusion of Western knowledge and ideas might exert a subversive influence on traditional Indian society
and culture (David, 1984; Rahim, 1986). During this period, Government-sponsored initiatives in education, such as the establishment of the
Calcutta Madrasa and the Sanskrit College, were exclusively concerned with the
promotion of Oriental learning in Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian (Spear, 1938). The
East India Companys modest patronage of traditional Oriental studies was one
manifestation of the prevailing policy of Orientalism, which was the official
ideology of British India from the time of Warren Hastings (177385) until the
arrival of the liberal reformer William Bentinck (182835), whose Governor-Generalship witnessed a decisive shift towards Anglicism in official circles
(Rosselli, 1974).
The policy of Orientalism interwove the companys political need to reconcile
Indians to the emerging British Raj (Viswanathan, 1989) with the scholarly
interest of individual British officials in Indian languages and culture (Pachori,
1990). Aware of the fragile basis of British power in India, Hastings (the policys
progenitor) believed that effective governance depended on the presence of an
elite corps of acculturated British officials, who, through their knowledge and
sympathetic understanding of Indian institutions, laws and customs, would
exercise power in the manner of traditional Indian rulers (Kopf, 1969). The
convergence of British political and intellectual interests is revealed in the establishment of the Calcutta Madrasa, to which Hastings contributed personally, and
the Sanskrit College at Benares, which owed its foundation to the initiative of the
Company official Jonathan Duncan. Through its patronage of the two institutions, the company signalled its willingness to uphold the scholarly traditions of
its Islamic and Hindu predecessors, a policy which was intended to conciliate
influential sections of the Indian community by demonstrating British respect
and admiration for indigenous languages and culture.
Despite growing pressure for the introduction of English-language education,
during the first two decades of the 19th century British education policy in India
retained a predominantly Orientalist character. Influenced by Hastings policy
of conciliation and accommodation,administratorssuch as Munro, Malcolm and
Elphinstone believed that Britains mission in India was to reinvigorate rather
than replace Indian civilisation, and to this end argued that education policy
should be directed towards the improvement of Oriental studies for the influential classes in society. Though convinced of the superiority of Western learning,
officials in the 1820s believed that European arts and sciences should be gradually engrafted onto traditional Indian education for the learned elites, who
would then act as cultural intermediaries between the British and the masses.
The notion of engraftment lay at the heart of the companys education
programme during the 1820s, and was to form the basis of the Orientalists case
in their dispute with Macaulay in the following decade. In accordance with this
policy, the General Committee of Public Instruction (GCPI) in Bengal cautiously

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introduced modern science and English at the Calcutta Madrasa and the Sanskrit
College, and established new colleges at Calcutta, Agra and Delhi whose
curricula were intended to blend Indian and Western learning (Zastoupil &
Moir, 1999). However, the pace and nature of change disappointed reformers in
Calcutta and London, who believed that the Orientalist faction on the GCPI had
little real desire to promote Western education (Sirkin & Robinson Sirkin, 1971).
Impatience with the progress of engraftment in the government colleges was one
manifestation of a growing sense of disenchantment with the wider policy of
Orientalism among a new generation of officials, merchants and missionaries,
who, confident in the supremacy of British power, culture and religion, increasingly came to believe that Britains mission on the subcontinent involved the
transformation of Indian culture and society through the agencies of the English
language and Christianity (Metcalf, 1995).

Anglicism in British India

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Hastings view that Europeans should
assimilate themselves to their surroundings through the sympathetic study of
Indian languages and culture gradually gave way to the belief that Indians
should become acquainted with Western knowledge and the English language
in order to assimilate themselves to their rulers (Clive, 1973). At the forefront of
the campaign to anglicise Indian education and society was the evangelical
movement, which in the last two decades of the 18th century was becoming
increasingly influential in the company, in Parliament, and in British public life
generally (Porter, 1999). In India, evangelical fervour found expression in the
work of the company official, Charles Grant, who believed that the introduction
of Western education and Christianity would transform a morally decadent
society. These views are apparent in his influential treatise, Observations on the
State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain (1792), which was written
to support the evangelical campaign to persuade Parliament, prior to the
companys charter renewal, to open India to the proselytising and educational
activities of the missionary societies. The proposal was rejected in 1793, but when
Parliament debated the companys charter 20 years later, the evangelical movement was able to secure the inclusion of a clause which legalised missionary
work in British India (Adams & Adams, 1971), a measure which was to have a
significant impact on the spread of English-language education on the subcontinent.
In his Observations, Grant argued that education was the key to the transformation of Indian society:
The true cure of darkness, is the introduction of light. The Hindoos err,
because they are ignorant; and their errors have never fairly been laid
before them. The communication of our light and knowledge to them,
would prove to be the best remedy for their disorders (Zastoupil & Moir,
1999: 83).
The central issue for Grant, as it would be for Macaulay in the 1830s, was the
medium through which this light and knowledge should be imparted. Like his
more illustrious successor, Grant argued for the adoption of English as the

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language of instruction on the grounds that it would provide direct access to the
superior arts, philosophy and faith of Britain. Grant believed that the diffusion of
English-language education would silently undermine, and at length subvert,
the fabric of error that enveloped Indian society (p. 84), a process which would
ultimately lead to its moral and intellectual regeneration. To encourage the study
and use of English, Grant urged the authorities to introduce English as the
language of government and (to meet the demand which would inevitably arise
from this change) to establish free schools providing instruction in the language.
Grants belief that the introduction of the language of the conquerors would be
an obvious means of assimilating the conquered people to them (p. 85)
espoused a vision of Britains imperial mission which was diametrically opposed
to the prevailing policy of reconciliation, and may be regarded as an early manifestation of the shift in British attitudes towards India, from interest and appreciation to criticism and disdain, which was to build in momentum in the early
decades of the 19th century. Grants proposals for the promotion of
English-language education in India were similar to those of Macaulay four
decades later. Although, as Ghosh (1995) notes, we have no direct evidence that
he had read Grants tract, given the nature of Macaulays upbringing, education
and associations, it is inconceivable that he had not studied Observations before
penning his Minute. Macaulays father, Zachary, was a prominent figure in the
Clapham sect, an influential evangelical network whose membership included
Grant and Wilberforce, and in the early 1830s Grants son, Charles Jr, was one of
Macaulays closest political associates (Clive, 1973).
Although the evangelical movement provided the initial anglicising impulse,
pressure for the introduction of Western education in India came from other
British groups during the 1820s. The most influential of these were the advocates
of free trade and utilitarianism, whose views on the need to transform a static,
degraded society through the infusion of European ideas and practices echoed
those of Grant and others in the evangelical movement (Spear, 1938). The utilitarian view of Indian society was reflected in the History of British India (1817) by
James Mill, who occupied a senior position in the companys London offices
between 1819 and 1836. Mills influence is evident in a despatch of February 1824
which he drafted on behalf of the Court of Directors about the curricula at the
Calcutta Madrasa and the Sanskrit College. In the despatch, Mill criticised the
GCPIs policy of engraftment, arguing that the great end should not have been to
teach Hindoo learning, or Mahomedan learning, but useful learning (Zastoupil
& Moir, 1999: 116). Although Mill shared Grants contempt for Oriental learning,
he was by no means convinced that English was an appropriate medium for the
diffusion of useful knowledge. Unlike Grant, who advocated complete immersion in English, Mill believed that modern European learning could be communicated more effectively through translations of English-language texts into the
Indian vernacular languages rather than through direct study of the originals
(Zastoupil, 1994).
Mills despatch elicited a vigorous reaction from the GCPI, who, in a letter of
18 August 1824, claimed that the state of public feeling in Bengal was an impediment to the introduction of Western education. Although the GCPI observed that
the prejudices of the natives against European interference with their education
in any shape are considerably abated, it cautioned that these prejudices might

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very easily be roused by any abrupt and injudicious attempts at innovation

(Zastoupil & Moir, 1999: 121). In formulating its response, the GCPI appears to
have taken particular account of the sensitivities of the traditional learned elites,
who (according to the GCPI) evinced a good deal of antipathy to Western
learning. The GCPI therefore concluded that the cooperation of these classes
would have to be secured before any far-reaching educational reforms could be
contemplated. While the GCPIs cautious stance in relation to the learned elites
was entirely justified, what it chose not to do and this was understandable
given the predominance of Orientalists on the GCPI was to report the mounting
pressure for the introduction of English-language education from middle-class
Hindus. In Calcutta, growing interest in Western education was reflected in the
establishment in 1816 of Hindu College, a privately managed institution of
higher learning (Majumdar, 1955), while in Madras demand for English was
manifested in the proliferation of private tutorial schools offering rudimentary
instruction in the language (Frykenberg, 1986). While much of this interest in
English undoubtedly sprang from pragmatic considerations, there also existed a
small but influential group of Indians, led by Rammohun Roy, who demanded
not only the teaching of English as a language, but also the content of a modern
English education, which they believed was the key to the revival of Indian
culture (Zastoupil & Moir, 1999).
During the first two decades of the 19th century, therefore, the authorities
came under increasing pressure from British and Indian reformers to promote
Western learning and the English language on the subcontinent (Frykenberg,
1988). While officials with Orientalist sympathies were in the ascendant, pressure for the introduction of English-language education was resisted. In the late
1820s, however, Orientalist control over British cultural policy in India began to
diminish following the appointment of a reformist Governor-General, William
Bentinck, and the rise to prominence of Macaulays future brother-in-law,
Charles Trevelyan, a political officer with strong evangelical convictions.
Bentincks term in office instituted a period of reform during which India was
subjected to a battery of changes designed to convert its culture and institutions
to Western norms (Washbrook, 1999). These reforms included the abolition of
widow suicide and female infanticide, the suppression of the Thugs, and
Macaulays Minute on education.

The OrientalistAnglicist Controversy

The circumstance which gave rise to Macaulays entry into the controversy
over Indian education was the interpretation of a clause in the Charter Act of
1813 which stipulated that, out of any surplus revenue, a sum of not less than one
lac of rupees a year (about 10,000) should be set aside for the revival and
improvement of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of
India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences
(Zastoupil & Moir, 1999: 91). In retrospect, the provisions of the Charter Act
embody two characteristics which were to distinguish educational development
in the Empire for the next 150 years. Firstly, by (apparently) according equal
emphasis to Western and Indian learning, the Act represented a compromise
between two competing visions of Britains mission on the subcontinent: the

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Anglicist vision of a moribund culture transformed by modern science and the

Orientalist vision of an ancient culture revived by its traditional learned classes.
The reluctance of the Charter Acts framers to present a clear vision of educational aims is perhaps the first instance of the confusion of purpose that was to
characterise policy and practice in British colonial education. Secondly, by
assigning a meagre sum from surplus revenue towards the realisation of these
conflicting objectives, the Act provided early evidence of British parsimony in
colonial education. Indeed, as Governor-General Auckland was to observe in his
1839 Minute on education, the OrientalistAnglicist controversy was as much
the result of government penny-pinching as it was about abstract educational
principles:
insufficiency of the funds assigned by the State for the purposes of Public
Instruction has been amongst the main causes of the violent disputes which
have taken place upon the education question, and that if the funds previously appropriated to the cultivation of Oriental literature had been
spared, and other means placed at the disposal of the promoters of English
Education, they might have pursued their object aided by the good wishes
of all. (Zastoupil & Moir, 1999: 307)
In hindsight it would appear that many of the language-related problems in
British colonial education sprang from the reluctance of officials to formulate
and implement firm policies in relation to the respective roles of English and the
vernacular languages in education. Though conscious of the need to promote the
teaching and learning of English, British policy makers in Asia and Africa were
generally at pains (for pedagogical and/or political reasons) to emphasise that
English should not be studied at the expense of the native languages. In many
colonial contexts, the absence of a clear policy, or the disjunction between policy
and practice, led to frequent complaints that graduates of colonial schools tended
to fall between two stools, both linguistically and culturally. The inability or
reluctance of the British government to provide adequate funding for educational development merely compounded the language malaise which afflicted
colonial education, a malaise which is perhaps traceable to the terms of the
Charter Act of 1813.
A year after the passage of the Charter Act, the Court of Directors sent a
despatch to the Bengal Government offering guidance on the implementation of
the Acts educational provisions. Although these provided a degree of support
for the introduction of modern science, the content and tone of the despatch are
more reflective of the traditional Orientalist preoccupation with caution and
conciliation than the modernising aspirations of the Anglicists. The despatch is
significant not only because it affords evidence of the Orientalists ascendancy in
the domain of cultural policy, but also because it reveals that from the outset
political considerations were a central feature of British education policy in
India. In framing their guidelines on educational development, the Directors
emphasised that they had kept in view
those peculiar circumstances of our political relation with India which,
having necessarily transferred all power and pre-eminence from native to
European agency, have rendered it incumbent upon us, from motives of

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267

policy as well as from a principle of justice, to consult the feelings, and even
yield to the prejudices, of the natives, whenever it can be done with safety to
our dominions. (Zastoupil & Moir, 1999: 94)
The Directors concluded their despatch by expressing the belief that any expenditure on education would be justified if it resulted in an improved intercourse
of Europeans with the natives, a state of affairs which they felt would produce
those reciprocal feelings of regard and respect which are essential to the permanent interests of the British Empire in India (p. 96).
Despite the political motivations which underlay the Directors early policy
initiatives, such was the companys parsimony that little was accomplished until
the establishment of the GCPI in 1823 (Clive, 1973). In the decade that followed its
inception, the GCPI adhered to a policy of engraftment which involved the
gradual introduction of Western science and English in the colleges under its
auspices, an approach which reflected the ascendancy of the Orientalist faction
headed by H.H. Wilson. The Orientalists were to remain the dominant influence
on education policy in Bengal until 1833, when Bentinck appointed Charles
Trevelyan to the GCPI in place of Wilson, who had returned to England to take
up the chair of Sanskrit at Oxford. Once appointed, Trevelyan immediately set
about attacking the Oriental colleges, which he described, perhaps with good
reason (Fisher, 1919), as sleepy, sluggish, inanimate machines (cited in Hilliker,
1974: 282). At the same time, Trevelyan initiated a vigorous campaign in support
of the Anglicist cause in the press, in which he publicised his controversial
scheme to romanise the Indian vernaculars, and in private correspondence with
Bentinck, in which he advocated the establishment of our language, our
learning, and ultimately our religion in India (Philips, 1977: 1239). Despite the
traditional association of Macaulay with the promotion of English in India, the
evidence suggests that Trevelyans single-mindedness, energy and persistence
were fundamental to the success of the Anglicist campaign during the 1830s
(Hilliker, 1974). Indeed, according to Clive (1973), such was Trevelyans influence in 18331834 that the battle between the Anglicists and Orientalists had
largely been fought and won before Macaulay set foot in India.
While Trevelyans passionate espousal of the virtues of Western education
provided Bentinck with the moral and intellectual justification for reform, ideals
and principles were not the only factors behind the shift towards an
English-oriented language policy during the 1830s. As would prove to be the
case in other colonial contexts, education policy in India was also determined by
what Carlyle several decades later was to term the dismal science. In consequence of the parlous state of the companys finances, Bentinck was sent to India
with strict instructions to cut administrative costs prior to the charter renewal in
1833 (Philips, 1977). One of Bentincks principal means of achieving this was to
replace British expatriates with Indians in the judicial and administrative
branches of government. To this end, Bentinck was able to secure the inclusion of
a clause in the 1833 Charter Act opening up all government posts to qualified
persons irrespective of religion, birth, descent or colour (cited in Adams &
Adams, 1971: 167). While this measure sprang in part from a growing conviction
that Indians should participate in government, the fact that Europeans monopolised high office for the greater part of the Raj indicates that the policy was

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primarily motivated by economic considerations. Bentincks scheme to make

greater use of Indians in the public sector was inextricably linked to his policy to
adopt English as the official language in place of Persian. The gradual introduction of English in government during the 1830s, and (particularly) the companys
announcement in 1844 that English-educated Indians would receive preferential
treatment in public-sector appointments, fuelled the already existing demand
for English in the centres of British administration in India (Mukherjee, 1989).
The OrientalistAnglicist controversy finally came to a head in 1834, when
Trevelyan and other reformers on the GCPI (whose numbers had been swelled
by Bentinck) proposed replacing Sanskrit and Arabic studies with
English-language instruction at Agra College. These proposals provoked a deep
division of opinion on the GCPI. Since the two factions were unable to reconcile
their differences, it was decided that the dispute should be settled by the Governor-General on the basis of policy statements submitted by the two groups
(Zastoupil & Moir, 1999). In their submission (21 January 1835), the Anglicists
sought to justify their proposed reforms by affirming the superiority of European
literature and science over traditional Oriental learning, a position which had
long been held by evangelicals and utilitarians, and one indeed with which their
adversaries most readily concurred. As Grant had done, the Anglicists argued
that Western knowledge and ideas should be imparted through the medium of
English, thereby enabling Indians to engage in a direct intellectual dialogue with
Europeans, rather than (as Mill had advocated) by means of translations, a
process which they considered to be slow and inefficient. It is important to note,
however, that the Anglicists English-medium immersion programme was
intended solely for the influential classes rather than the masses, whom they
believed should be taught through the media of the vernacular languages.
Indeed, the Anglicists claimed that one of the ultimate objectives of their
programme was the cultivation of the Indian vernaculars through the agency of
the English-educated elite:
it is most fully admitted that the great body of the people must be enlightened through the medium of their own languages, and that to enrich and
improve these, so as to render them the efficient depositories of all thoughts
and knowledge, is an object of the first importance. (Zastoupil & Moir,
1999: 140141)
In their submission the following day, the Orientalists argued that the Anglicists
plan to divert funds from Arabic and Sanskrit studies to courses in English literature and science not only contravened the educational provisions of the 1813
Charter Act, but also overturned the policy of engraftment which the GCPI had
been steadily pursuing since its inception a decade earlier. Although the Orientalists believed that the introduction of Western learning was the surest means
of promoting Civilization and its concomitant blessings (Zastoupil & Moir,
1999: 158), they deprecated any crude sudden sweeping innovation as having a
tendency to defeat rather than promote the object in view. On the question of
language instruction, they doubted if the mere teaching the English Language
would make the youth of India wiser or better, and although they advocated the
means of such Instruction being placed within the reach of all would not
render recourse to it compulsory in any way (p. 158).

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Although the two submissions revealed sharply divergent views about the
future direction of education policy, on two central issues the Orientalists and
Anglicists were in broad agreement. Firstly, both groups favoured the introduction and spread of European literature and science. Secondly, both parties
believed that the ultimate objective of British policy should be the development
of vernacular education for the masses, based on a vernacular literature enriched
by the infusion of Western knowledge and ideas (Clive, 1973). Both groups
agreed that the Indian vernacular languages, in their present condition, were
inadequate media for the teaching of modern subjects. The issue at the heart of
the OrientalistAnglicist dispute was therefore the best means of revitalising the
vernaculars given the limited funds that the government was prepared to make
available for educational development. The Orientalists maintained that this
could be accomplished only by means of the Indian classical languages, whereas
the Anglicists believed that the only credible medium of instruction was English.
As a result of the impasse on the GCPI, Bentinck referred the education question to Macaulay, who had arrived in India in June 1834 to take up the post of
legal member of the Governor-Generals council. The consequences are well
known: Macaulay duly penned his Minute of 2 February 1835 in support of the
Anglicist cause; Bentinck, stirred into action by the force of Macaulays rhetoric,
promptly issued a resolution signalling that henceforth the great object of British
policy in India would be the promotion of English-medium education; and for
the next hundred years language policy in the Pax Britannica was founded on the
principles that Macaulay had so eloquently expounded in his Minute. In fact, the
evidence suggests that Bentinck had made his decision on education policy
several months before the Minute was written. For example, in a letter of 7
December 1834, Macaulay gleefully informed his sister that the Anglicists now
consider the victory as gained in the educational controversy, and that Bentinck
intended very speedily to pronounce a decision in their favour (cited in Clive,
1973: 365). A careful reading of the Minute also provides clear evidence that
Macaulay was fully apprised of Bentincks intentions: If the decision of His
Lordship in Council should be such as I anticipate, I shall enter on the performance of my duties with the greatest zeal and alacrity (Philips, 1977: 1412). What
also tends to be overlooked in the more simplistic accounts of the Minutes influence on Indian education is that a number of Macaulays proposals were
discarded or modified in the aftermath of its publication. However, before we
examine the consequences of the Minute, both in the short and long terms, we
need to analyse the arguments which formed the basis of Macaulays case.

Macaulays Minute
Since the decision to promote English education had been taken well before
the Minutes composition, Macaulays purpose was essentially to justify the
policy which had already been agreed upon rather than to persuade Bentinck to
support the Anglicist position. Macaulay was aware that in formulating its
education policy the GCPI was bound by the Charter Act of 1813, which
required the East India Company to encourage both Western and Oriental
learning. While the Anglicists project accorded with the Acts stipulation that
funds be assigned for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the

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sciences, it was apparently at variance with its requirement that education

policy should also be directed towards the revival and improvement of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India. Though perhaps not
an explicit statement of British intentions, it was generally accepted that this
objective envisaged the revival and improvement of Arabic and Sanskrit literature rather than English literature. Macaulays first task was therefore to address
the terms of the Charter Act, which (as the Governments legal member) he must
have recognised provided little justification for the course he was advocating.
Indeed, as Spear (1938) notes, the flimsiness of Macaulays legal case accounts for
the content and tone of the Minute: the withering attack on Indian learning, the
source of its continuing notoriety, was intended to distract attention from the
provisions of the Charter Act, which he knew provided the Orientalists with
their strongest argument. Given the fragility of his case, it is not surprising that
Macaulay addressed the legal issue in a perfunctory manner, brushing aside the
arguments of the Orientalists with what Spear (1938: 84) describes as an
olympian statement of opinion that the Act of 1813 intended the exact opposite of
what its words implied.
Having concluded that the grant at the Governments disposal could be used
to promote learning in any way which may be thought most advisable (Philips,
1977: 1405), Macaulay proceeded to discuss the most useful way of employing it.
Since all parties agreed that the vernacular languages contained neither literary
nor scientific information and were thus too poor and rude to be used as
instructional media, the GCPI was faced with a straightforward choice between
Sanskrit/Arabic and English, the central question being, according to Macaulay,
which language is the best worth knowing? (p. 1405). Macaulays case for
English was founded on his belief in the intrinsic superiority of English literature
and science over Indian learning, and on his conviction that a strong desire for
English-language education existed among certain segments of the Indian population.
Macaulay maintained that his low estimate of the value of Indian learning was
shared by his adversaries in the Orientalist camp: I have never found one among
them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth
the whole native literature of India and Arabia (p. 1405). According to Macaulay,
the claims of English were hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stood pre-eminent
among the languages of the West. Whoever knew English had ready access to all
the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created
and hoarded in the course of ninety generations (p. 1406). The important political and economic role which English was beginning to assume in India and in
the emerging Empire also provided a strong justification for promoting education in the language. Thus, whether viewed from the perspective of Britains
growing imperial interests, or its value as the repository of a superior body of
knowledge and thought, English was the language which Macaulay believed
would be most useful to our native subjects (p. 1406). The simple question
before the British authorities was whether, when it was in their power to teach
English, they would instead teach languages in which
there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our
own, whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems

Macaulays Minute Revisited

271

which, by universal confession, wherever 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 of seas of treacle and seas of butter. (p. 1406)
Apart from extolling the virtues of English literature and science vis--vis traditional Indian learning, Macaulay sought justification for his plan by arguing that
Indians evinced a far stronger desire to learn English than Sanskrit or Arabic. In
setting out his case, Macaulay challenged the time-honoured Orientalist argument that the promotion of Oriental studies helped to conciliate the influential
classes in Indian society. Macaulay contended that unanswerable evidence
existed to prove that we are not at present securing the co-operation of the
natives; in fact, the policy of engraftment was having quite the opposite effect.
For Macaulay, the state of the market should determine language policy (p.
1409):
We are withholding from them the learning which is palatable to them. We
are forcing on them the mock learning which they nauseate. This is proved
by the fact that we are forced to pay our Arabic and Sanskrit students while
those who learn English are willing to pay us. (p. 1408)
Having presented his case for English, Macaulay advanced the idea of downward filtration, which proposed that the meagre parliamentary grant be used to
cultivate a class of anglicised Indians who would not only serve as cultural
brokers between the British and their Indian subjects, but who would also refine
and enrich the vernacular languages, and thereby render them fit media for
imparting Western learning to the masses:
In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am
opposed. I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited
means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do
our best to 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 tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect. To that class we
may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those
dialects with terms of science borrowed from the western nomenclature,
and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the
great mass of the population. (p. 1412)
While the sentence advocating the creation of an acculturated Indian elite is justifiably regarded as the epitome of cultural and linguistic imperialism, Macaulays
critics have tended to overlook the significance of the preceding sentence, which
indicates that his controversial scheme was entirely dictated by government
parsimony, and have similarly chosen to ignore the import of the following
sentence, which reveals that the development of vernacular education constituted an important element in the Anglicists project.

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Macaulay accompanied his plan with three specific measures designed to

strike at the root of the bad system which has hitherto been fostered by us (p.
1412). Though careful to stress that existing interests should be respected, he
nevertheless proposed that the Calcutta Madrasa and Sanskrit College (Calcutta)
be abolished, that the printing of Arabic and Sanskrit books be discontinued, and
that no further stipends be awarded to students wishing to pursue Oriental
studies at the Delhi Madrasa and Sanskrit College (Benares). Macaulay
concluded his Minute with a characteristically dramatic flourish, threatening to
resign from his position as President of the GCPI if his proposals were rejected.
He knew that this was an empty threat, and, as he anticipated, Bentinck immediately gave his entire concurrence to the Minute.
In some accounts of British education policy in India Bentincks approval of
Macaulays scheme is equated with implementation, its mere composition being
apparently sufficient to ensure its widespread adoption during the long afternoon of the Raj. What tends to be overlooked, however, is that many of
Macaulays proposals were abandoned or substantially modified in the months
and years which followed the Minutes composition, and it is to these developments that we now turn.

Bentincks Resolution
Bentinck appears to have been anxious to settle the education controversy
before his departure from India (Rosselli, 1974). As noted above, he gave the
Minute his immediate assent, and to effect its speedy implementation, he deliberately prevented any discussion of Macaulays scheme in the GCPI. Seed (1952)
claims that Bentinck purposely withheld action on the education question until
the very end of his term in office because he feared that the radical nature of the
policy would arouse the opposition of the Court of Directors in London, upon
whose blessing all policies ultimately depended. Seed further argues that the
timing of Bentincks decision was shaped by his experience in Madras in 1807,
when he was dismissed from the Governorship for his alleged insensitivity to
Indian religions and customs. By introducing the controversial new policy on the
eve of his departure, Bentinck perhaps calculated that he would succeed in
avoiding a similar humiliation.
Bentincks underlying caution is evident in his Resolution of 7 March 1835
giving effect to the new policy. In accordance with Macaulays proposals, the
Resolution stated that the great object of the British Government ought to be the
promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India, and
that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of education would best be
employed on English education alone (Zastoupil & Moir, 1999: 195). However,
in a significant departure from the Minute, Bentinck disavowed any intention to
abolish any College or School of Native learning, while the Native Population
shall appear to be inclined to avail themselves of the advantages which it affords
(p. 195). Although the Resolution stipulated that no further stipends be awarded
for Oriental studies, it was careful to direct that native scholars already in receipt
of government grants would continue to enjoy their allowances. Bentincks
concessions on these points seem to have been prompted by pressure from influential groups in Calcuttas Muslim and Hindu communities, who, upon hearing

Macaulays Minute Revisited

273

news of Macaulays scheme, submitted petitions to the government protesting

against the new policy. The Governor-Generals softening stance towards
Oriental studies a matter of weeks after expressing his entire concurrence with
the Minute would therefore appear to bear out Rossellis (1974: 221) contention
that Bentinck let Macaulay fire the rhetorical big guns while ensuring that
vested interests suffered little actual damage.
Notwithstanding Bentincks compromises over the Oriental colleges and
government stipends, the Resolution signalled a significant shift in language
policy in that the teaching of English would henceforth be the principal objective
of public education. To give effect to the new policy, the GCPI set about establishing English schools in the major towns of Bengal using savings which
resulted from the curtailment of its Oriental programmes (Zastoupil & Moir,
1999). It is important to note, however, that the authorities in Calcutta formulated
and began implementing the new policy on their own initiative rather than
seeking prior approval from the Court of Directors. In fact, the documents
relating to the new policy did not reach the companys London offices until
January 1836, that is, almost a year after Bentinck had given his initial assent. It
was not, however, until January 1841 that the controversy over Macaulays
Minute was finally laid to rest, and it would be a further 13 years before the
British produced, in the shape of Woods despatch, their definitive statement on
language policy in India.

Aucklands Minute
The papers reporting the change of policy arrived in London a month after the
publication in The Asiatic Journal of a letter by H.H. Wilson, which Zastoupil and
Moir (1999) believe was part of a carefully orchestrated campaign by Orientalist
sympathisers to reverse the Macaulay-Bentinck project. In his letter, Wilson
combined a vigorous defence of engraftment with a disdainful attack on the
Anglicists scheme, in which he implored British policy makers not to resort to
measures of spoliation to provide funds for rearing clerks and copyists
(Zastoupil & Moir, 1999: 218). Wilson believed that the diffusion of Western
knowledge could be better accomplished through the agency of the traditional
learned classes, who possessed the time, interest and ability to appreciate the
great works of English literature and science, rather than through a class of smatterers who viewed English largely in terms of the worldly advantages it might be
instrumental in conferring. Sensing the deleterious effects which might flow
from the spread of English-language education, Wilson advised the GCPI to cultivate English soundly and circumscribedly, cultivate native literature liberally
and judiciously, and seek to bring them into an intimate association as the joint
vehicles of useful knowledge (p. 221).
Wilsons ideas appear to have exerted a significant influence on the official
charged with drafting the Court of Directors response to the new policy, John
Stuart Mill, who had joined his father James in the companys employ in the early
1820s. In his despatch, Mill expressed the directors objections to Bentincks
Resolution, which they believed represented a sudden and radical departure
from the officially sanctioned policy of engraftment (Sirkin & Robinson Sirkin,
1973). The directors particularly deprecated the Anglicists plans to reduce the

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Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

number of Oriental stipends, to divert endowment funds from Oriental studies

to English instruction, and to close down the GCPIs Oriental publication
programme. Although the directors cautiously approved the opening of five
English schools in Bengal, they were reluctant to sanction the widespread
promotion of English-language education, recommending instead a return to the
GCPIs well-established policy of not obtruding English instruction upon the
people (Zastoupil & Moir, 1999: 230).
Despatches from the Court of Directors could not be sent to Calcutta without
the approval of the Board of Control, the parliamentary body that supervised the
companys administration in India. In accordance with this practice, Mills
proposed despatch was sent to the President of the Board, Sir John Hobhouse, in
October 1836 after having received the directors assent. Two months later,
Hobhouse, an admirer of Macaulay, wrote to the Chairman of the company, Sir
James Carnac, expressing his strong objections to Mills draft (Zastoupil & Moir,
1999). However, mindful of the need to avoid further controversy, Hobhouse
(acting on the advice of Bentincks successor, Lord Auckland) recommended that
the Court of Directors refrain from passing judgement on the new policy.
Though still supportive of Mills views, Carnac accepted Hobhouses suggestion, and in consequence the proposed despatch was withdrawn. Instead, the
directors sent a brief despatch acknowledging receipt of the papers announcing
the change of policy, but, in accordance with Hobhouses wishes, avoided giving
a definitive ruling (Clive, 1973). Meanwhile, the government in Bengal was
coming under increasing pressure from influential sections of the Hindu and
Muslim communities to reverse the cuts to Oriental studies instituted by
Bentinck. Growing Indian agitation in Calcutta, together with the London
authorities reluctance to formulate an authoritative response, appear to have
prompted Auckland to seek a compromise to the protracted dispute. Auckland
presented his compromise settlement in a Minute of 24 November 1839. As was
noted earlier, Auckland recognised that money as much as principles lay at the
heart of the controversy. Aucklands resolution of the dispute thus involved
ensuring that sufficient funds were made available to both Oriental and English
studies, and that neither branch was given reason to believe that its funds were
being diverted for other purposes.
Aucklands Minute appears to have been instrumental in breaking the deadlock over language policy that had prevailed in London since Hobhouses rejection of Mills proposed despatch in late 1836. When after a five-year delay the
Court of Directors finally delivered their verdict on the Macaulay-Bentinck
project, Aucklands compromise formed the basis of their recommendations,
particularly in relation to the key issue of funding. In accordance with the Orientalists demands, the directors signalled their
firm conviction that the Funds assigned to each Native College or Oriental
Seminary should be employed exclusively on instruction in, or in
connexion with, that College or Seminary, giving decided preference
within those Institutions to the promotion, in the first instance, of perfect
efficiency in Oriental Instruction. (Zastoupil & Moir, 1999: 334)
The directors support for Oriental studies was also manifested in their sanctioning of an annual grant to the Asiatic Society for printing Oriental works, and

Macaulays Minute Revisited

275

in their provision of scholarships to the Oriental colleges in proportion to their

endowments. Although the directors reaffirmed Bentincks declaration that the
great object of British policy in India should be the promotion of European
science and literature, they by no means endorsed the Macaulay-Bentinck view
that such learning should be imparted exclusively through the medium of
English. In keeping with the despatchs spirit of compromise, the directors stated
that the dissemination of European knowledge could be effected by translations
in the Vernacular tongues or, by means of the English Language (p. 335), which,
perhaps significantly, is the only reference to English in the entire document. In
fact, the directors circumspect pronouncement on the medium of instruction
issue represents a significant retreat from the English-only policy propounded in
the 1835 Resolution:
We forbear at present from expressing an opinion regarding the most efficient mode of communicating and disseminating European Knowledge.
Experience does not yet warrant the adoption of any exclusive system. We
wish a fair trial to be given to the experiment of engrafting European
Knowledge on the studies of the existing learned Classes, encouraged as it
will be by giving to the Seminaries in which those studies are prosecuted,
the aid of able and efficient European Superintendence. At the same time
we authorise you to give all suitable encouragement to translators of European works into the vernacular languages and also to provide for the
compilation of a proper series of Vernacular Class books according to the
plan which Lord Auckland has proposed. (p. 335)
The Court of Directors 1841 despatch might therefore be regarded as a
quintessentially British compromise in that it sought to balance the interests and
claims of the Orientalist and Anglicist parties while at the same time forbearing
to offer a definitive ruling on the language of instruction. Although the directors
were careful to preserve or reinstate key elements of the Orientalists traditional
programme, the despatch represented a victory for the Anglicists since it
confirmed that the primary goal of British policy in India was the dissemination
of European literature and science. However, the directors recommendation
that Western learning be imparted by means of either the vernacular languages
or English would have found favour with moderates in both parties, since the
development of vernacular education was an important long-term objective of
both the Anglicists and the Orientalists. The fact that both parties shared similar
overall aims on the question of vernacular education suggests that it may not be
particularly illuminating to view the 1841 despatch in terms of victory or defeat
for either Orientalist or Anglicist viewpoints since, as Viswanathan (1989) has
observed, the two positions should not be seen as polar opposites but as points
along a continuum of attitudes. Viewed from this perspective, the directors
Despatch of 1841 represented the final stage of a steady retreat initiated by
Bentincks Resolution from the extreme Anglicist position occupied by
Macaulay in his Minute (Carson, 1999).

Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

276

Woods Despatch
Perhaps the most significant feature of the 1841 despatch was the key role
assigned to the vernacular languages in the diffusion of European learning. This
increasing interest in vernacular education was an inevitable consequence of the
search for common ground by the Orientalists and Anglicists in the aftermath of
Macaulays Minute. As we have seen, advocates from both parties broadly
agreed on the desirability of enriching the Indian vernacular languages and
employing them as instructional media. This emerging consensus over the need
to promote vernacular education paved the way for the policy set out in Woods
Despatch (1854), the so-called Magna Carta of British education in 19th-century
India (Moore, 1965).
Woods Despatch reaffirmed that the central objective of British policy in
India was the diffusion of European knowledge. As in the past, the crucial question was the medium through which this learning should be communicated.
Wood acknowledged that hitherto European knowledge had generally been
imparted directly in English, on account of the lack of suitable translations, but
claimed that [i]t is neither our aim nor desire to substitute the English language
for the vernacular dialects of the country (Richey, 1922: 367). Wood further
maintained that in any general system of education, English should be taught
where there is a demand for it, but at the same time such instruction should
always be combined with a careful attention to the study of the vernacular
language of the district. Woods Despatch therefore envisaged an education
system in which both English and the vernacular languages played important
roles in the transmission of European literature and science:
We have declared that our object is to extend European knowledge
throughout all classes of the people. We have shown that this object must be
effected by means of the English language in the higher branches of institution, and by that of the vernacular languages of India to the great mass of
the people. (Richey, 1922: 392)
Although Aucklands compromise settlement of the late 1830s had envisaged a
dual role for English and the vernaculars, the 1854 Despatch represented a significant shift in British policy in that it abandoned the elitist policy of downward
filtration in favour of education for the masses, with English used as the principal medium of instruction at secondary and tertiary levels, and the vernacular
languages used to impart European knowledge at elementary level.
Woods Despatch formed the basis of British language policy on the subcontinent until the passage of the Government of India Act of 1919, which transferred
control of education to Indian ministers and the provincial legislatures (Hartog,
1939). The Despatchs status as the definitive statement of British educational
aims is underlined by the Indian Education Commissions landmark report of
1883, which expressed no wish to depart from Woods dual language system,
despite increasing evidence that elementary vernacular education was receiving
less attention and funding than English secondary education, a state of affairs
which the Commission claimed that it decidedly did not wish to see.

Macaulays Minute Revisited

277

The Effects of British Language Policy in India

The half-century which followed the promulgation of Woods Despatch
witnessed a rapid increase in the number of English/Anglo-vernacular
secondary schools under the auspices of state-assisted missionary societies and
(particularly) private Indian organisations. During the same period, vernacular
education at elementary level remained at a low ebb in consequence of government neglect and parsimony, and Indian apathy (Mayhew, 1926). As was noted
earlier, the expansion of English education during this period reflected the
strong demand for English in the principal urban centres of British India. As in
other colonial contexts, this demand sprang from an awareness that a smattering
of English opened up the prospect of employment in the lower rungs of government or European-controlled commercial organisations. The Indian students
who attended English-medium schools were generally from the poorer classes in
society (rather than the traditional learned elites), and were primarily interested
in the language rather than the content of a Western education (McCully, 1966).
Since their interest in English was largely motivated by occupational concerns,
students tended to abandon their studies once they had acquired a rudimentary
knowledge of the language in order to take up clerical positions in the public or
private sectors. While this practice was deprecated by European educators in
India, it might be observed that students workplace language needs were not
best served by the academic curriculum and examinations offered in the
English-medium stream, which, since they reflected current practice in British
schools, were wholly inappropriate both linguistically and culturally for
students studying in a second language.
By the turn of the century the deleterious consequences of the spread of
English education in India were becoming increasingly apparent. From an
educational perspective, the most serious effects of British language policies and
practices were the excessive emphasis on English in the schools, the neglect of the
vernacular languages as subjects and instructional media, and the unrealistically
early introduction of English as a teaching medium. Despite the importance
attached to the teaching and learning of English in the education system, the
results were often found to be unsatisfactory (Nurullah & Naik, 1951).
The educational problems stemming from the expansion of English-medium
education in the second half of the 19th century prompted a wide-ranging review
of language policy during Lord Curzons term as Viceroy (Bhutani, 1973). Interestingly, Curzon laid the blame for these failings firmly at Macaulays door: Ever
since the cold breath of Macaulays rhetoric passed over the field of Indian
languages and textbooks, the elementary education of the people in their own
tongue has shrivelled and pined (cited in Adams and Adams, 1971: 170).
Curzons review resulted in the formulation in 1904 of a government resolution
on education policy, which inter alia sought to invigorate vernacular education
along the lines envisaged in Woods Despatch. It is worth quoting at length from
the resolutions position on language policy since the problems it describes and
the principles it espouses were to be repeated in other British colonial contexts
during the course of the 20th century.
It has never been part of the policy of the Government to substitute the
English language for the vernacular dialects of the country. It is true that the

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Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

commercial value which a knowledge of English commands, and the fact

that the final examinations of the high schools are conducted in English,
cause the secondary schools to be subjected to a certain pressure to introduce prematurely both the teaching of English and its use as a medium of
instruction; while for the same reasons the study of the vernacular in these
schools is liable to be thrust into the background. This tendency however
requires to be corrected in the interest of sound education. As a general rule
a child should not be allowed to learn English as a language until he has
made some progress in the primary stages of instruction and has received a
thorough grounding in his mother-tongue.
It is equally important that when the teaching of English has begun, it
should not be prematurely employed as the medium of instruction in other
subjects. Much of the practice, too prevalent in Indian schools, of committing to memory ill-understood phrases and extracts from text-books or
notes, may be traced to the scholars having received instruction through
the medium of English before their knowledge of the language was sufficient to enable them to understand what they were taught. The line of division between the use of the vernacular and of English as a medium of
instruction should, broadly speaking, be drawn at a minimum age of 13. No
scholar in a secondary school should, even then, be allowed to abandon the
study of his vernacular, which should be kept up until the end of the school
course. If the educated classes neglect cultivation of their own languages,
these will assuredly sink to the level of mere colloquial dialects possessing
no literature worthy of the name, and no progress will be possible in giving
effect to the principle, affirmed in the Despatch of 1854, that European
knowledge should gradually be brought, by means of Indian vernaculars,
within the reach of all classes of the people. (cited in Nurullah & Naik, 1951:
484)
The reorientation of language policy during this period was not, however,
solely motivated by pedagogical concerns; there was also a political rationale for
it. By the close of the Victorian era British administrators were increasingly
aware that the indiscriminate spread of English-medium education in the second
half of the 19th century had brought into being a class of disaffected would-be
clerical workers (known as the Babus). This was not Macaulays elite class of
Anglicised Indians: as Viceroy Mayo had observed in the 1870s, [i]f you wait till
the bad English, which the four hundred Babus learn in Calcutta, filters down
into the forty millions of Bengal, you will ultimately be a Silurian rock instead of a
retired judge (cited in Loh, 1975: 3). Alienated to some extent from their cultural
roots by their smattering of western knowledge and English, denied power and
responsibility by the British, and, perhaps crucially, disillusioned by the
increasing shortage of employment opportunities, the discontented products of
the English schools were increasingly seen as a potential political threat to the Raj
rather than as a class of cultural intermediaries between the British and the
Indian masses.

Macaulays Minute Revisited

279

Conclusion
When the Colonial Office began to take a systematic interest in the problems of
colonial education after the First World War through its Advisory Committee
on Education in the Colonies the Indian experience proved to be a decisive
influence on language-in-education policy in the Empire. From the outset the
Advisory Committee was determined to prevent a recurrence of what Lord
Lugard (1925: 2) termed the unhappy results of English education in India.
Lugard, the foremost influence on British colonial policy in the interwar years,
warned that the spread of English education in Africa had already produced a
Babu-like class imbued with theories of self-determination and half understood
catch-words of the political hustings. For Lugard (and the Advisory
Committee), the solution to the political and pedagogical problems associated
with English education lay in the adaptation of education to the mentality, aptitudes, occupations and the traditions of the various peoples (Oldham, 1925:
426). A necessary corollary of adaptation was a vastly expanded role for the
vernacular languages (and a concomitant contraction in that of English) in colonial education (Westermann, 1925). The pro-vernacular policy was endorsed by
the Imperial Education Conference in 1927, and was formally set out in the Advisory Committees 1927 report, The Place of the Vernacular in Native Education
(Whitehead, 1991).
Although pedagogical concerns appear to have been an important factor in
the development of the adaptation concept (Cox, 1956), there is little doubt that
the policy to promote elementary vernacular education was also designed to
nurture and sustain British rule (Mwiria, 1991). Phillipson (1992) therefore has
some justification in arguing that colonial language policy was intended to reinforce and perpetuate British hegemony. The evidence suggests, however, that
the British sought to accomplish their imperial objectives in Africa and Asia by
doing precisely what Phillipson and others would presumably applaud, namely
promoting indigenous languages and cultures in education and restricting as far
as possible the teaching and learning of English. Although Phillipson criticises
Macaulay for slamming the door on indigenous traditions of learning and
imposing English as the master language of the Empire, there is a good case for
arguing that the Advisory Committees vernacular-oriented policy of the 1920s
and 1930s was far more sinister in intent than the English-oriented policy
propounded (however arrogantly) by Macaulay in the 1830s. Whereas the
former was designed at least in part to keep Britains native subjects ignorant,
weak and submissive, the latter, by providing access to the knowledge, ideas and
techniques of the West, offered the means by which the indigenous peoples of
Africa and Asia could throw off the British yoke.
Correspondence
Any correspondence should be directed to Stephen Evans, English Language
Centre, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
([email protected]).

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Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

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