ENGLISH EDUCATION TO DESTROY TIMELESS BHARAT’S NATIONAL HINDU IDENTITY-IV 

V.SUNDARAM I.A.S.

Front cover of the book

In Chapter 2 of this book, these authors have described in detail as to how the introduction of Macaulay system of English education introduced in 1835 laid a solid foundation for the destruction of the ancient Gurukula system of education, Hindu religion, Hindu culture, Hindu society and Sanatana Dharma.

LORD MACAULAY
(1800-1859)

LORD WILLIAM BENTINCK (1774-1839)

Lord Macaulay arrived in India in 1834 and took up the post of the Legal Member in the Governor General’s Council in Calcutta. Lord William Bentinck (1774-1839) was the Governor General of India at that time. Even before coming to India Macaulay’s anti-Hindu and anti-Indian views on education policy were well-known. He drafted his famous Minutes on Education Policy on 2 February 1835 and 7 March 1835. Lord Bentinck put his seal of approval on the Minutes of Macaulay on 7 March 1835.

What really emerges from the official and known records is that Macaulay, Lord Bentinck and Sir Charles Trevelyan (1807-1886) PLOTTED TOGETHER TO DEFEAT THE STRONG CASE MADE OUT FOR THE CONTINUANCE OF ORIENTAL SYSTEM OF EDUCATION IN INDIA WHICH WAS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED BY ORIENTALISTS LIKE H.H Wilson, J.C.C Southerland, J.T Princep and, James Princep of the Brahmi script decipherment fame. These Orientalists were all members of the General Committee of Public Instruction (GCPI). Macaulay carried the day along with Charles Trevelyan, who was his brother-in-law. There is also clear documentary evidence to prove that Macaulay had written to his sister in December 1834 itself mentioning that Lord Bentinck had given his informal consent in favour of Christian missionaries in India and Macaulay’s English-oriented approach to the policy on Indian Education.

According to Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit, in order to discontinue the teaching of Sanskrit and also to dismantle and discard the entire prevailing education system, Macaulay resorted to the most absurd logic and launched a blistering attack on the opposition by the Orientalists. To quote Macaulay’s words: ‘As it seems to be the opinion of some of the Gentlemen who compose the General Committee of Public Instruction (GCPI) that the course which they have hitherto pursued was strictly prescribed by the British Parliament in 1813 … it is argued, or rather taken for granted, that by literature the Parliament can have meant only Arabic and Sanskrit literature; that they never would have given the Honourable appellation of a ‘learned native’ to a native who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the metaphysics of Locke, and with the physics of Newton; but that they meant to designate by that name only such persons as might have studied in the sacred books of the Hindoos all the uses of Cusa-Grass, and all the mysteries of absorption into Deity … This does not appear to be a satisfactory interpretation ... if the Government has given to any person a formal assurance — nay, if the Government has excited in any person (‘s) mind a reasonable expectation, —  that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher of a learner of Sanskrit or Arabic, I would respect that person’s Pecuniary interests … But to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those languages may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning’.

JAMES PRINSEP
(1799-1840)  

Abb.: James Prinsep

[Bildquelle: Wikipedia, GNU FDLicence]

H.H.WILSON

(1786-1860)

In order to understand the above Minutes of Macaulay, it is necessary to look at the Charter Act of 1813 passed by the British Parliament that Macaulay is referring to above. The relevant portion (Clause XLIII) of the East Indian Company Charter Act of 1813 says: “And be it further enacted … after defraying the expenses of the military, civil, and commercial establishments, and paying the interests of debt, in manner herein-after provided, a sum of not less than one Lakh of Rupees in each year shall be set apart and applied to the revival and improvement of literature and encouragement of the learned natives of India, and for the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the British territories in India.

It is a well-documented fact that the above quoted Clause XLIII above was incorporated duly in the 1813 Charter Act of the Company largely because of Lord Minto’s views favoring the ‘revival’ of literature and traditional Indian learning as set out in his well-known Minutes of 6 March 1811. We can see from Macaulay’s mean, mendacious, malicious and mischievous Minutes above that he not only re-interpreted the 1813 Act absurdly but also imputed pecuniary motives to those distinguished Orientalists who were opposing Macaulay’s evangelical, colonial and racist designs against the traditional Indian educational system.

Macaulay himself admitted (rarest of the rare admission indeed!!!) that he had no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic languages. And yet, despite this admission, we cannot fail to see the overweening racial arrogance oozing out of the following foolish Minutes of Macaulay: ‘I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanskrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. 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 Arabic (he meant Arabia).  The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those Members of the General Committee for Public Instruction (GCPI) who support the Oriental plan of education. … It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at preparatory schools in England’.

The anti-Hindu, anti-national and anti-social Congress party---the private zamindari of Sonia Gandhi--- and her paid slavish minions in the UPA Government subscribe to the views of Lord Macaulay expressed in the paragraph above.

Macaulay savagely attacked the Sanskrit language and Gurukula system of education when he wrote the following Minutes: ‘It is confessed that a language is barren of useful knowledge. We are to teach it because it is fruitful of monstrous superstitions. WE ARE TO TEACH FALSE HISTORY, FALSE ASTRONOMY, FALSE MEDICINE, BECAUSE WE FIND THEM IN COMPANY OF A FALSE RELIGION’. This is the view of the Firangi Memsahib Sonia Gandhi and the savagely ignorant anti-Hindu highly educated secular Indians of today-- 175 years after Lord Macaulay spoke those words.

After saying all this, Macaulay made out the following case for the immediate introduction of English as a medium of education in India. “We have to educate a people, who cannot at present be educated by means of their own mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the West. It abounds with the works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us … whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of the generations. It may safely be said that the literature now extant in that language, is of a 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 … whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of the 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.”

When I re-read the above outlandishly foolish Minutes of Macaulay, I cannot help observing that he seems to take special delight in declaring thus: ‘I won’t be satisfied if you are already aware of my Himalayan imperial colonial ignorance and Christian superciliousness stemming from my racial arrogance. My White English Christian soul shall rest in peace, only if I can get on top of a public podium and proclaim with imperial authority the boundless extent, altitude, magnitude, and volume of my colossal British colonial ignorance of ancient India and her deathless culture.’

Finally, the real colonial intention of the policy of permanent mental enslavement of the natives of India was declared by Lord Macaulay at the end of his famous Minutes cited above: ‘We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern — A CLASS OF PERSONS INDIAN IN BLOOD AND COLOUR, BUT ENGLISH IN TASTES, IN OPINIONS, IN MORALS AND IN INTELLECT’.

And the rest is history. Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit have rightly concluded that in FREE INDIA TODAY, WE ARE MORE BURDENED WITH MACAULAYISM THAN IN BRITISH INDIA. The ‘Class’ created by Macaulay for British colonial purposes in 1835 continues to remain firmly entrenched in the India of today and continues to be the ‘Interpreter’ between the Indian masses and the new political bosses. Our decadent and colonial educational system even today continues to produce only ‘Interpreters’ who are “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and intellect”.

During the past six centuries the most belligerent, the most rapacious, the most power-drunk section of humanity has been precisely the Christian Western world. Its armies followed by its priests and merchants … its peculiar brand of “Christian Love” has generally manifested itself in pitiless extermination, enslavement, coercion, destruction of traditional cultures and their values … and the spread of alcoholism and venereal diseases and mercenary ruthlessness and the like.

In Chapter 3 titled ‘History of Indian History Writing’, Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit, have convincingly proved how the tool of history and history writing has been mischievously used by the Congress Government and Communist Governments after our Independence to politically intimidate and culturally undermine the Hindus of India.

Max Mueller wrote as follows to the Duke of Argyll on December 16, 1868: “India has been conquered ONCE, but India must be conquered AGAIN, and that second conquest should be CONQUEST BY EDUCATION”.

What did Max Mueller mean by FIRST CONQUEST? He was referring to the victory of Lord Macaulay and his English system of education, in 1835, over the Oriental learning that had been recommended by distinguished Orientalists like H.H Wilson, James Princep. These distinguished Orientalists had recommended the continuance and wider diffusion of traditional learning through languages like Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarathi, Assamese, Hindi, Arabic, Urdu and Persian. We can see the clever timing of Max Mueller’s letter. One generation had passed after the introduction of English as a medium of education in 1835. The Universities of Madras, Calcutta and Bombay had been established by 1860. The first batch of “brown Sahib” graduates in English education had come out of these Universities.

It was in the larger British colonial interests to mislead the minds of these young ‘brown Sahibs’ about the cultural heritage of ancient India. Physical and geographical political enslavement of India had been completed by 1850. The imperial foundations for the cultural enslavement and colonization of the minds, hearts and souls of the Indians had been well and truly laid by Lord Macaulay in collusion with the Governor General Lord William Bentinck in 1835. Max Mueller wanted this process to be taken to its logical conclusion through the hastening of the process of SECOND CONQUEST.

The SECOND CONQUEST was fully achieved by 1900 in a matter of less than two generations. Thus the following dream of Macaulay expressed vigorously in his Minutes of 1835 had thus become a reality in 1900: ‘We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern — A CLASS OF PERSONS INDIAN IN BLOOD AND COLOUR, BUT ENGLISH IN TASTES, IN OPINIONS, IN MORALS AND IN INTELLECT’. Maulana Jawaharlal Nehru had just such a mindset and he was very proud of that slavish mentality.

MAX MULLER (1823-1900)

When Max Mueller spoke about the need for the SECOND CONQUEST in 1868, he was clear in his mind that not only British authorities in England and India but also the newly arrived Indian ‘brown Sahibs’ turned out by our Universities at that time should participate with gusto in publicly proclaiming the denigrating assessments of Macaulay on the knowledge contained in Sanskrit literature as absolutely fair, correct and authentic. These ‘brown Sahibs’ were expected to function with the rare degree of dedication and cold-blooded detachment as Anglican torch bearers of the new English system of anti-Sanskrit and anti-Hindu enslaving education. These half-baked hybrid Indians with a colonial mindset started endorsing wholeheartedly the following assessment of Lord Macaulay. ‘It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in Sanskrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgements used at Preparatory Schools in England.’

According to Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit, this ‘class’ of persons created by Macaulay and supported by Max Mueller have continued their colonial cultural and intellectual depredations even in post-Independent India. This was made possible by the imposition of minority-appeasing political programme and pernicious  philosophy of anti-Hindu “secularism” of Jawaharlal Nehru who served as the First Prime Minister of Independent India for 17 long years from 1947 to 1964.

The two authors have rightly pointed out that as a fallout from the policy of anti-Hindu minority appeasement of the Government of India, in a strange manner history has virtually taken over the media space available for academics, during the last 10 years. The endless debates, newspaper articles, talks in seminars, acrimonious television shows, radio talks and publication of books and pamphlets would easily prove this point. This is an unprecedented development. It is hard to believe that even Court Cases have been filed and the Human Rights Commission has been approached for requisite legal relief on the subject of Curriculum, in general, and Social Science Curriculum, including history Curriculum, in particular, alleging ‘SAFFRONISATION’, ‘COMMUNALIZATION’ and ‘TALIBANISATION’ of Education and History.

The authors have rightly pointed out that history, history writing and history teaching have, indeed become newsworthy not only in India but also in most other parts of the world. The reasons may be different, varying from country to country — the construction of a National History Curriculum in England and Wales, the decision of National History Standards in Germany, the approach to invasion of Latin American countries by the Europeans, the development of new curricula in the successor states of the former USSR, or even the re-writing of History text books in Russia after the collapse of the former USSR. To quote the words of Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit, “Issues of identities, heritage and citizenship, all rooted in the past, have become the hot stuff of politics.”

I fully endorse the view of these two authors when they write: “To say that History is a science, as many Marxist historians propagate, is nothing but a fallacy”. David Clarke was right when he expressed the view that History is an ‘undisciplined’ discipline. The writing of history involves not only facts but also the political, social, economic and other kinds of ideological agendas and claptrap of historians.

According to Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit problems begin when the hard facts of history are trimmed, selectively quoted or presented in a coloured and distorted manner or even swept under the carpet to suit the historian’s Marxist agenda. Such attempts and practices have led to the presentation of not only factually incorrect history but also distorted history, which finally results in the distortion of a nation’s history, it’s peoples past and their identity.

Against this background these two authors have come to the irrefutable conclusion that for the past 40 years, the stage of Indian history has been dominated, managed and controlled by those openly professing a Marxist approach to history and proudly flaunting their membership cards of one communist party or another. They have controlled not only institutions of Higher learning but also the national research funding agencies like the University Grants Commission (UGC), the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR), the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR). Even the elementary and Higher Secondary Education and educational organisations like the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), The State Councils of Educational Research and Training and Boards of Secondary Education have not escaped the vicious Marxist attention. All of them have been forced to function under their thumbs. These two authors have concluded thus: “Through people selectively placed in these organisations, our Marxist activists have implemented their political, social and economic agenda and got their own books, research monographs and textbooks published, prescribed and taught”.

One of the most disturbing — and of course interesting — aspects of the recent campaign of the ‘eminent’ Marxist historians has been their contention that history cannot be re-written or revised (once the Marxists have re-written them!!!) One of the known toadies of the Marxist party, a dubious scholar called R.S Sharma, recently wrote an article in a newspaper in which he shamelessly said that there should not be any tampering with history, at least in those areas on which there is a general consensus among historians. When asked about the topics on which there is “general consensus” and the historians among whom this consensus has been arrived at, he preferred to maintain a mysterious silence. Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit have said in this context: “All one could gather is that there is agreement among some of the ‘eminent’ historians and the topics are those that can be used for blackening the ancient period of Indian history. Thus the hardcore of this argument is that whatever has been written by the ‘eminent’ historians on those areas of ancient Indian history is final. No modification, no addition and no deletion could be made on their pronouncements”.

Just as there is a raging controversy on the writing of Indian History, so also there is an intensely hot debate going on regarding the nature of the history of Latin America and Mexico. The debate is whether it should be viewed as the discovery of a new world and new economic resources for Europe or it should be seen as the destruction of the independently developed native civilizations by technologically more advanced nations that have an unending lust for looting others’ treasures and making people subservient.

When the question of celebrating 500 years of the ‘discovery’ of South America arose in Europe in the 1990s, a simple but very sharp historical statement was made by the historians from Latin America: “IT MAY BE A SUBJECT OF CELEBRATIONS FOR EUROPEANS BUT FOR US IT IS A SUBJECT OF MOURNING BECAUSE JUST IN A FEW YEARS THE EUROPEANS DESTROYED OUR CIVILIZATION DEVELOPED OVER SEVERAL THOUSANDS OF YEARS”.

WHAT THE NATIVE HISTORIANS OF SOUTH AMERICA OF FEELING ABOUT THE APPROACH OF EUROPEAN HISTORIANS TODAY, SO ALSO THE GENUINE HISTORIANS OF INDIA ARE FEELING ABOUT THE MISLEADING, MALICIOUS, AND MALAFIDE MARXIST APPROACH TO THE WRITING OF INDIA’S ANCIENT HISTORY AND CULTURE. The Greek tragedy of India is that all the instruments of the Indian state –-- the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary--- all heavily infected, infiltrated and subverted by the menacing Marxist Deathly Virus——are completely regulating and controlling (even strangulating!!!) the writing of ancient Indian history and culture.

ENGLISH EDUCATION TO DESTROY TIMELESS BHARAT’S NATIONAL HINDU IDENTITY-III

V.SUNDARAM I.A.S.
 
 

‘Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water’ - Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616). ‘

“And in the end, through the long ages of our quest for light, it will be found that truth is still mightier than the sword. From out of the welter of human carnage and human sorrow and human weal the indestructible thing that will always live is a sound idea” – General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964).

'To all new truths, or renovation of old truths, it must be as in the ark between the destroyed and the about – to – be renovated world. The raven must be sent out before the dove, and ominous controversy must precede peace and the olive wreath’ – Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834).

Cover page of book by Sri Dharampal (1922 - 2006)

In the second part of my review of the multidisciplinary book titled ‘EDUCATING TO CONFUSE AND DISRUPT: Defiling History and Education System of India’, authored by two brilliant academics, humanists and ardent patriots, Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit, I have already stated that the title of their Second Chapter, ‘The Beautiful Tree’ has been derived from the title of an explosive book on indigenous education in India in the 18th century, written by Sri Dharampal (please see the cover page above) and how the traditional system of learning was destroyed root and branch by the British colonial rulers in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dharampal himself in his preface has said that he has derived the title of ‘The Beautiful Tree’ for his book from the historic speech of Mahatma Gandhi delivered at Chatham House, London on October 20, 1931. Mahatma Gandhi had used this term to refer to the time honoured system of Gurukula education in India from times immemorial and how the British Government in India used its imperial might to destroy this ’Beautiful Tree’

Front cover of the book

After explaining how the traditional Indian Gurukula educational system was derived from  Varna-ashrama Dharma, Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit have described in an outline form the four stages of life in ancient India — Brahmacharya, Grihastha, Vanaprastha and Sanyas. Of these, the first stage i.e, Brahmacharya was concerned with education. The education of the child began with the Upanayana Samskara (sacred-thread ceremony). This Upanayana Samskara did not merely mean the admission of a pupil in the register of a school on the payment of prescribed fees. With Upanayana a new phase was initiated into a child’s life. After this ceremony, the child was handed over to the Guru (the teacher) who accepted him as his pupil. The Guru was expected to keep the pupil in his close proximity and teach him all Shastras. This came to be metaphorically described as the Guru keeping the child in his ‘womb’, impregnating him with his spirit and delivering him in a new birth; a transformed, educated and civilized human being. It was this phenomenon that Satapatha Brahmana describes as becoming Dvija (born a second time), and it was not the reference to the Varna Brahmins, as is popularly misconceived and misunderstood today. The Taittriya Aranyaka lays down that a teacher must teach with all his heart and soul.

A teacher was anxious to ensure the sustenance and continuity of his school of thought, and pupils also travelled from distant places to learn a particular branch of knowledge from a particularly renowned Guru. This was the underlying basis of the Gurukula system of old. In ancient India the important branches of knowledge that attracted pupils in large numbers included different subjects such as literature, grammar, religion, philosophy, logic, polity, economics, mathematics, astronomy, astrology, medicine, surgery, accountancy, commerce, agriculture, music, dance, painting, architecture, sculpture and the like. What is important in this context is the fact that some of the centres of learning were more famous for one branch of learning than the others. For example, Takshashila University was famous as a great seat of learning for Economics, Polity and Military Science; while Kashi was famous for Vedic Studies and Medicine. So, this great idea of one centre of learning specializing in one field and becoming famous everywhere did not come from the West!

Broadly speaking there evolved 4 different types of institutions for the spread of education and learning in ancient India. They were, A – Gurukulas (The Homes Of Teachers As Schools), B – Parishads (Academies), C - Goshthis (Conferences) and D – (University Education). In ancient India there were no regular budgetary provisions for the financial support of education by the government and no funding agencies like the University Grants Commission / Commission for Higher Education / Commission for Primary Education etc. How then did these educational institutions and individual teachers survive? THE ANSWER LIES IN THE FACT THAT THEY RECEIVED HELP FROM KINGS, INDIVIDUALS AND THE SOCIETY. Vidya-daana (giving of education) was pronounced to be the best of gifts, with higher religious sanctity than even Bhoomi-daana (the gift of land). Religion had a great hold on the minds of the people and this spiritual exaltation of Vidya-daana inspired a wide and warm response to the cause of education, both from the public and the government. It therefore became possible to impart free education to all the poor students who were eager to learn.

Governments used to help the cause of education in many indirect ways too. They offered scholarships to students to enable them to complete their education. Often, they sponsored literary debates and offered fabulous rewards to winning scholars. Vikramaditya and Harsha are well known for their patronage to learned men. In making various appointments they used to show preference to men of learning.

Today, a pernicious view seems to have emerged that schools and colleges can never be free from political (party all the time!) control as long as the State exists. All the states at present are anxious to control educational institutions and curriculum as soon as they give grants to them. In totalitarian states, education has become a means of propaganda for the dissemination of government’s views and policies. The states in ancient India, however, never attempted to control education, simply because it was liberally subsidizing it. There were no Directors of Public Instruction, Inspectors/ Deputy Inspectors of Schools to direct and control the educational policy and progress.

According to Dharampal such a decentralized system of indigenous education existed in India from the Himalayas to Kanyakumari and from the Rann of Kutch to the Bay of Bengal, till the end of the 18th century. THEN GRADUALLY IN A MATTER OF LESS THAN 50 YEARS, THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT IN INDIA DESTROYED THIS ANCIENT SYSTEM. Whatever of it that remaned on 15^th August 1947, was destroyed by Maulana Jawaharlal Nehru and his pro-Islamic and pro-Christian and patently anti-Hindu Congress Party and Congress Government after our independence.

Dharampal has pointed out that instructions regarding the collection of information about the extent and nature of indigenous Indian education and its contemporary state were largely the consequence of the long debate in the House of Commons in 1813 relating to the promotion of “Religious and Moral improvement” (Induced and forced fraudulent religious conversion to Christianity!!) in India. Before any new policy could be devised, the existing position on ground needed to be known. Thus the information which is available today, whether published or still in manuscript form in government records, about different parts of India largely belongs to the period from 1820s to 1840s.

Sir Thomas Munroe (1761-1827)

Right from 1822 instructions were issued both by the Government of Madras and the Board of Revenue to the 21 District Collectors in Madras Presidency to collect data relating to village schools to be sent to the Board of Revenue for onward transmission to the Government of Madras. All these reports relating to the period from 1822 to 1825 have been carefully studied, analysed and presented by Dharampal in a very incisive manner in his book referred to above. Sir Thomas Munroe (1761-1827), the Governor of Madras and Father of Ryotwari Settlement in Madras Presidency was responsible for ordering this pioneering and extensive survey. Sir.Thomas Munroe reported after doing the survey that ‘every village in Madras Presidency had a school’.

13 years after the initiation of the survey in the Madras Presidency a more limited semi-official survey of indigenous education was taken up in the Presidency of Bengal. This came to be known as the celebrated William Adam’s Reports or to give the full title, Reports On The State Of Education In Bengal In 1836 And 1838. WILLIAM ADAMS REPORTED THAT THERE WERE 1,00,000 VILLAGE SCHOOLS IN BENGAL AND BIHAR TILL THE 1830’S.

In 1820, G L Prendergast, a Member of the Governor’s Council in Bombay reviewed the system of indigenous education in his jurisdiction and said: ‘There is hardly a village, great or small, through out our territories, in which there is not at least one school and in larger villages more’.

Dr G W Leitner (1840-1899)

62 years later, Dr G W Leitner, former Principal of Government College, Lahore and Director of Public Instruction in the Punjab prepared an even more voluminous survey of indigenous education there. The survey is very similar to that of the report of William Adams in language and conclusions. His reports showed that at the time of British conquest of the Punjab in 1845, there were more than 3,30,000 pupils in the schools of different denominations in the Punjab. This number had declined to less than 1,90,000 in 1882 – within 37 years of British misrule in that province.

Dr G W Leitner himself wrote that till 1845 in these indigenous Sanskrit and Arabic schools, highest standards of instruction and education were maintained in the fields of Oriental Literature, systems of Oriental Law, Logic, Philosophy and Medicine.

In the light of all this analysis of available data, Dharampal has rightly concluded: ‘The common impression which emerges from the 1822-1825 Madras Presidency Data, the Reports of W Adam on Bengal and Bihar, 1835-1838, and the later Punjab Survey by Dr G.W Leitner is that of a wide-spread neglect and decay in the field of indigenous education within a few decades after the onset of British rule in India. … The 1769 – 70 famine in Bengal when according to official British records, one third of the population actually perished, may be taken as a mere forerunner of what was to come.’

Total socio-economic and cultural destruction of India was deliberately planned by the colonial British Government in India right from 1757. Karl Marx was a bigger political scoundrel than the Marxists / Communists of India today. This will be clear from what he wrote in 1853: ‘ENGLAND HAS TO FULFIL A DOUBLE MISSION IN INDIA: ONE DESTRUCTIVE, THE OTHER REGENERATING — THE ANNIHILATION OF THE OLD ASIATIC SOCIETY, AND THE LAYING OF THE MATERIAL FOUNDATION OF WESTERN SOCIETY IN INDIA’. This is what the Communist Governments in Kerala and West Bengal are attempting to achieve in the shortest possible time today!! Prakash Karats, Brinda Karats, Sitaram Yechurys, Buddhadeb Bhattacharyas are the greatest enemies of Sanatana Dharma, Hindu Society, Hindu culture and Hindu Civilization. For these vicious vermin, Peking is there Varanasi, Moscow is their Prayag, Stalin is their Buddha and Mao-se-Tung their Mahatma Gandhi.

With great sorrow and inner anguish, the dark and tragic story of total destruction of ancient Gurukula system of education in India has to be told in more graphic detail.

Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit have drawn heavily upon the pioneering work of Dharampal relating to the fully documented colonial British destruction of the Indian indigenous Gurukula system of education in the 18th and 19th centuries. We can see from Dharampal’s book that India was far ahead of England in the field of school education up to the end of 18th century and also up to 1825. William Adam in his Report of 1835 had stated that 100,000 village schools existed in Bengal and Bihar in 1830.

IN MADRAS PRESIDENCY IN 1823 DURING THE TIME OF GOVERNOR SIR THOMAS MUNROE, THERE WERE 11,575 VILLAGE SCHOOLS WITH 157,195 STUDENTS AND 1,094 COLLEGES WITH 5,434 STUDENTS. THE POPULATION OF MADRAS PRESIDENCY AT THAT TIME WAS 10.28 MILLION. ENGLAND HAD VERY MUCH FEWER SCHOOLS FOR THE CHILDREN OF THE COMMON PEOPLE AT THAT TIME. AROUND THE SAME TIME LESS THAN 10,000 SCHOOLS EXISTED IN ALL OF ENGLAND. THE POPULATION OF ENGLAND AT THAT TIME WAS AROUND THE SAME TIME WAS 9.8 MILLION.

We have noted that the population of Madras Presidency in 1823 was 10.28 Million. Exactly 51 years later, the population of Madras Presidency had tripled reaching a level of 31.30 Million. By that time the supercilious and super-incumbent Office of Director of Public Instruction (DPI) and State promoted institutions had replaced all the traditional village schools in Madras Presidency. The DPI Report for the year 1879-1880 stated that the total number of all educational institutions (primary schools, secondary schools, colleges and all special educational institutions) was 10,553. Out of this, primary schools numbered 10,106. The total number of students in the British directed colonial system of education (mainly to produce a few clerks and a large number of half-baked slaves!!!) had been brought down to 2,38,960 students. Even a cursory perusal of these official figures will show how education declined in Madras Presidency during the period from 1823 to 1880.

Dharampal has brought out the fact that the same position prevailed in Bombay Presidency. More than 15,000 traditional village schools went out of existence in Bombay Presidency during the period from 1820 to 1885. G.L Prendergast, a Member of the Governor’s Council in Bombay Presidency, recorded the following Minute in April 1821: “I need hardly mention what every member of the Governor’s Council knows as well as I do, that there is hardly a village, great or small, throughout our territories, in which there is not at least one school, and in larger villages, more; many in every town, and in large cities in every division; where young natives are taught reading, writing and arithmetic, upon a system so economical, from a handful or two of grain, to perhaps a Rupee per month to the school master, according to the ability of the parents, and at the same time so simple and effectual, that there is hardly a cultivator or petty dealer who is not competent to keep his own accounts with a degree of accuracy, in my opinion, beyond what we meet with amongst the more splendid dealers and bankers keep their books with a degree of ease, conciseness and clearness I rather think fully equal to those of any British merchants.”

Sir Thomas Munroe , the Governor of Madras, gave the same assessment has that of G.L Prendergast in Bombay, in respect of more than 10,000 traditional Village Schools in Madras Presidency in 1825.

IN THE LIGHT OF ALL THIS ANALYSIS DHARAMPAL HAS COME TO THE CONCLUSION THAT THE ANCIENT INDIAN SYSTEM OF GURUKULA EDUCATION COLLAPSED TOTALLY DURING THE BRITISH COLONIAL PERIOD FROM 1780 TO 1850.

Professor Makkhan Lal and Professor Rajendra Dixit have stated in Chapter 2 of their book that the involvement of the British in the Indian education system began with Warren Hastings, the first Governor General of British India from 1773 to 1785. Hastings was sympathetic to the Indian culture and civilization. He extended his full assistance to Sir William Jones who established the Asiatic Society of Bengal at Calcutta in January 1784. Hastings was deeply involved in promoting various scholarly enterprises, including those of translating Sanskrit and Persian literature into English. He was also instrumental in founding the Calcutta Madrasa in 1781 and persuading his London authorities to grant a permanent endowment of the revenue of a few villages to meet it’s expenditure in this regard.

Warren Hastings (1732-1818)

Sir.William Jones (1746-1794)

It was Hastings  who was responsible for directing Charles Wilkins (1749-1836) to translate the Bhagawat Gita into English which was published in London in 1785 under the title ‘Bhagvat-Geeta, or Dialogues of Kreeshna and Arjoon (London: Nourse, 1785)’. Warren Hastings wrote a very perceptive and prophetic foreword to this work in which he observed: “The writers of the Indian philosophies will survive, when the British dominion in India shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrances.”

In 1792, due to the efforts of Jonathan Duncan, the Benaras Sanskrit College was established during the period of Lord Cornwallis. While making his proposal for the establishment of this college, Duncan cited two vital reasons, A – “The natives will understand that this college will be run by themselves without being participated by British subjects, who are to Rule over them”. B – “By preserving and disseminating a knowledge of the Hindoo Law, and proving a Nursery of future Doctors and Expounders thereof to assist the European Judges in the due regular, and uniform administration to its genuine Letter and Spirit to the Body of the people”.

Thus Warren Hastings’s policy of promotion of Oriental Learning through Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic was also maintained by Lord Wellesley who founded the Fort William College in 1800. Though its students were European boys and its aim was to train the newly recruited East India Company officials, the College was steeped in the traditional Indian perspective that Warren Hastings and others had helped foster. Great Oriental scholars like H. T Colebrooke and H.H Wilson served there, along with Indian scholars of Sanskrit and Persian.

The British policy of promotion of traditional learning received a setback in 1813 when the Charter Act of 1813 was passed. This Act for the first time made it possible for the British Christian missionaries to operate freely in India to pursue their proselytization policies in India. By this time missionaries, traders and utilitarian’s, had started opposing the continuance of traditional system of education in India and were making out a strong case for the spread of English language and Christianity in India.

Charles Grant (1746-1823)                                        James Mill (1773-1836)

The man who had prepared the ground for the Christian conversion of India was a man called Charles Grant who served in the East India Company from 1768 to 1790. He had consistently opposed the pro-Oriental learning policies of Warren Hastings, Lord Cornwallis and Lord Wellesley. James Mill who was working in the London Office of the East India Company also played a part along with Charles Grant for bringing about this change of attitude of the East India Company.

Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1777-1833)

The evangelical pressure from this imperious English Man got further strengthened by people like Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1777-1833) in Bengal. He was born in a wealthy Brahmin family. He studied Sanskrit, Persian, Greek and Italian. He came under the influence of Christianity and Islam. He foolishly advocated the introduction of Monotheism in Hinduism and founded the Brahmo Samaj. When Lord Amherst Governor General of India from 1823 to 1828, established the Calcutta Sanskrit College, Raja Ram Mohan Roy strongly opposed it. He wrote to Lord Amherst on 11 July, 1823 that the teaching of Sanskrit was the best way to keep Indian in the dark and in ignorance of real knowledge. He was a firm believer in the proselytization programmes of men like Charles Grant, Wilberforce and James Mill which later came to be articulated and more forcefully expressed in the famous Minutes of THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY (1800-1859) in 1835

Lord Amherst (1773-1857)

Lord Amherst was able to overrule the views of anti-Sanskrit people like James Mill and Raja Ram Mohan Roy because of the dominant role played by two great British Orientalists, like H.H Wilson and James Prinsep in the General Committee for Public Instruction (GCPI). This Committee categorically noted in 1826 that Raja Ram Mohan Roy’s views on Sanskrit learning were not representative of Hindu opinion at that time, but were the thoughts “of one individual alone, whose opinions are well known to be hostile to those entertained by almost all his countrymen”.



Thus what becomes clear from the contemporary documents is that Raja Ram Mohan Roy was not really a reformer of Hindu society as has been propagated mischievously by the British and Marxists historians, but a spokesperson of Charles Grant, James Mill, Wilberforce and Lord Macaulay.

The collapse of Sanskrit-based Oriental learning began with the departure of H.H Wilson to take up Sanskrit professorship at Oxford in 1833 and the appointment of Charles E. Trevelyan (who later became the Brother-in-Law of Lord Macaulay) to the General Committee for Public Instructions (GCPI) in Calcutta. Lord William Bentinck was the Governor General at that time. Lord Macaulay came to join his Council in 1834. These three political ‘evangelists’ conspired together to give a death blow to the Gurukula system of education in India. The cheap, petty and criminally egoistic role played by Lord Macaulay in this conspiracy to destroy the soul of the age-old system of Indian education has to be told in greater detail.

Charles Trevelyan Lord William Bentinck (1774-1839)Lord Macaulay(1800-1859(1807-1886)          Governor General of India (1828-1835)