Thomas B. Macaulay's "Minute on Indian Education"

2ND OF FEBRUARY, 1835

As it seems to be the opinion of some of the gentlemen who compose the Committee of Public
Instruction, that the course which they have hitherto pursued was strictly prescribed by the British
Parliament in 1813, and as, if that opinion be correct, a legislative act will be necessary to warrant
a change, I have thought it right to refrain from taking any part in the preparation of the adverse
statements which are now before us, and to reserve what I had to say on the subject till it should
come before me as a member of the Council of India. 

It does not appear to me that the Act of Parliament can, by any art of construction, be made to
bear the meaning which has been assigned to it. It contains nothing about the particular languages
or sciences which are to be studied. A sum is set apart "for the revival and promotion of literature
and the 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." It is argued, or
rather taken for granted, that by literature, the Parliament can have meant only Arabic and
Sanscrit literature, that they never would have given the honorable appellation of "a learned
native" to a native who was familiar with the poetry of Milton, the Metaphysics of Locke, and 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 the Deity. This does not appear to be a very satisfactory interpretation. To take
a parallel case; suppose that the Pacha of Egypt, a country once superior in knowledge to the
nations of Europe but now sunk far below them, were to appropriate a sum or the purpose of
"reviving and promoting literature, and encouraging learned natives of Egypt," would anybody
infer that he meant the youth of his pachalic to give years to the study of hieroglyphics, to search
into all the doctrines disguised under the fable of Osiris, and to ascertain with all possible accuracy
the ritual with which cats and onions were anciently adored? Would he be justly charged with
inconsistency, if, instead of employing his young subjects in deciphering obelisks, he were to order
them to be instructed in the English and French languages, and in all the sciences to which those
languages are the chief keys? 

The words on which the supporters of the old system rely do not bear them out, and other words
follow which seem to be quite decisive on the other side. This lac of rupees is set apart, not only
for "reviving literature in India," the phrase on which their whole interpretation is founded, but also
for "the introduction and promotion of a knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the
British territories,"--words which are alone sufficient to authorise all the changes for which I
contend.

If the Council agree in my construction, no legislative Act will be necessary. If they differ from me,
I will prepare a short Act rescinding that clause of the Charter of 1813, from which the difficulty
arises.

The argument which I have been considering, affects only the form of proceeding. But the
admirers of the Oriental system of education have used another argument, which, if we admit it
to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceive that the public faith is pledged to the
present system, and that to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been
spent in encouragmg the study of Arabic and Sanscrit, would be down-right spoliation. It is not
easy to understand by what process of reasoning they can have arrived at this conclusion. The
grants which are made from the public purse for the encouragement of literature differed in no
respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or
supposed utility. We found a sanatarium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy. Do we
thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanatarium there, if the result should not answer our
expectation? We commence the erection of a pier. Is it a violation of the public faith to stop the
works, if we afterwards see reason to believe that the building will be useless? The rights of
property are undoubtedly sacred. But nothing endangers those rights so much as the practice,
now unhappily too common, of attributing them to things to which they do not belong. Those
who would impart to abuses the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of
property the unpopularity and the fragility of abuses. If the Government has given to any person a
formal assurance; nay, if the Government has exdted in any person's mind a reasonable
expectation that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher or a learner of Sanscrit or Arabic, I
would respect that person's pecuniary interests--I would rather err on the side of liberality to
individuals than suffer the public faith to be called in question. But to talk of a Government
pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may
become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning. There
is not a single word in any public instructions, from which it can be inferred that the Indian
Government ever intended to give any pledge on this subject, or ever considered the destination
of these funds as unalterably fixed. But had it been otherwise, I should have denied the
competence of our predecessors to bind us by any pledge on such a subject. Suppose that a
Government had in the last century enacted in the most sole,nn manner that all its subjects
should, to the end of time, be inoculated for the smallpox: would that Government be bound to
persist in the practice after Jenner's discovery? These promises, of which nobody claims the
performance, and from which nobody can grant a release; these vested rights, which vest in
nobody; this property without proprietors; this robbery, which makes nobody poorer, may be
comprehended by persons of higher faculties than mine.--- I consider this plea merely as a set
form of words, regularly used both in England and in India, in defence of every abuse for which no
other plea can be set up. 

I hold this lac of rupees to be quite at the disposal of the Governor General in Council, for the
purpose of promoting learning in India, in any way which may be thought most advisable. I hold
his Lordship to be quite as free to direct that it shall no longer be employed in encouraging Arabic
and Sanscrit, as he is to direct that the reward for killing tigers in Mysore shall be diminished, that
no more public money shall be expended on the chanting at the cathedral. 

We now come to the gist of the matter. We have a fund to be employed as Government shall
direct for the intellectual improvement of the people of this country. The simple question is, what
is the most useful way of employing it? 

All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the
natives of this part of India, contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover,
so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to
translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual
improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can
at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them. 

What then shall that language be? One-half of the Committee maintain that it should be the
English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to
me to be, which language is the best worth knowing? 

I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit 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 Sanscrit 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 Arabia. The intrinsic superiority
of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who
support the Oriental plan of education.

It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers
stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any Orientalist who ventured to maintain
that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But
when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded, and general
principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I
believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from
all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most
paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral
philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same.

How, then, stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language. The claims of our own language it is hardly necessary to recapitulate. It stands pre-eminent even among the languages of the west. It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions, which, considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equalled; with just and lively representations of human life and human nature; with the most profound speculations on metaphysics, morals, government, jurisprudence, and trade; with full and correct information respecting every experimental science which tends to preserve the health, to increase the comfort, or to expand the intellect of man. Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth, which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and hoarded in the course of ninety generations. It may safely be said, that the literature now extant in that language is of far greater value than all the literature which three hundred years ago was extant in all the languages of the world together. Nor is this all. In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government. It is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East. It is the language of two great European communities which are rising, the one in the south of Africa, the other in Australasia; communities which are every year becoming more important, and more closely connected with our Indian empire. Whether we look at the intrinsic value of our literature, or at the particular situation of this country, we shall see the strongest reason to think that, of all foreign tongues, the English tongue is that which would be the most useful to our native subjects. 

The question now before us is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language, we
shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, 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 which, by universal confession, whenever they differ from those of Europe, differ
for the worse; and whether, when we can patronise sound Philosophy and true History, we shall
countenance, at the public expense, medi- cal doctrines, which would disgrace an English
farrier,--Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school,--History,
abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long,--and Geography,
made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter. 

We are not without experience to guide us. History furnishes several analogous cases, and they all
teach the same lesson. There are in modern times, to go no further, two memorable instances of
a great impulse given to the mind of a whole society,--of prejudices overthrown,--of knowledge
diffused,--taste purified,--of arts and sciences planted in countries which had recently been
ignorant and barbarous. 

The first instance to which I refer, is the great revival of letters among the Western nations at the
close of the fifteenth and the begi:ning of the sixteenth century. At that time almost every thing
that was worth reading was contained in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Had our
ancestors acted as the Committee of Public Instruction has hitherto acted; had they neglected the
language of Cicero and Tacitus; had they confined their attention to the old dialects of our own
island; had they print- ed nothing and taught nothing at the universities but Chronicles in
Anglo-Saxon, and Romances in Norman-French, would England have been what she now is? What
the Greek and Latin were to the contemporaries of More and Ascham, our tongue is to the people
of India. The literature of England is now more valuable than that of classical antiquity. I doubt
whether the Sanscrit literature be as valuable as that of our Saxon and Norman progenitors. In
some departments,--in History, for example, I am certain that it is much less so. 

Another instance may be said to be still before our eyes. Within the last hundred and twenty
years, a nation which has previously been in a state as barbarous as that in which our ancestors
were before the crusades, has gradually emerged from the ignorance in which it was sunk, and
has taken its place among civilized communities.--I speak of Russia. There is now in that country
a large educated class, abounding with persons fit to serve the state in the highest ftmctions, and
in no wise inferior to the most accomplished men who adorn the best circles of Paris and London.
There is reason to hope that this vast empire, which in the time of our grandfathers was probably
behind the Punjab, may, in the time of our grandchildren, be pressing close on France and Britain
in the career of improvement. And how was this change effected? Not by flattering national
prejudices: not by feeding the mind of the young Muscovite with the old women's stories which
his rude fathers had believed: not by filling his head with lying legends about St. Nicholas: not by
encouraging him to study the great question, whether the world was or was not created on the
13th of September: not by calling him "a learned native," when he has mastered all these points
of knowledge: but by teaching him those foreign languages in which the greatest mass of
information had been laid up, and thus putting all that information within his reach. The languages
of Western Europe civilized Russia. I cannot doubt that they will do for the Hindoo what they have
done for the Tartar.

And what are the arguments against that course which seems to be alike recommended by
theory and by experience? It is said that we ought to secure the cooperation of the native public,
and that we can do this only by teaching Sanscrit and Arabic. 

I can by no means admit that when a nation of high intellectual attainments undertakes to
Superintend the education of a nation comparatively ignorant, the learners are absolutely to
prescribe the course which is to be taken by the teachers. It is not necessary, however, to say
any thing on this subject. For it is proved by unanswerable evidence that we are not at present
securing the Cooperation of the natives. It would be bad enough to consult their intellectual taste
at the expense of their intellectual health. But we are consulting neither,--we are withholding from
them the learning for which they are craving, 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 Sanscrit students, while those
who learn Engiish are wiling to pay us. All the declamations in the worid about the love and
reverence of the natives for their sacred dialects will never, in the mind of any impartial person,
outweigh the undisputed fact, that we cannot find, in all our vast empire, a single student who will
let us teach him those dialects unless we will pay him. 

I have now before me the accounts of the Madrassa for one month,-in the month of December,
1833. The Arabic students appear to have been seventy-seven in number. All receive stipends
from the public. The whole amount paid to them is above 500 rupees a month. On the other side
of the account stands the following item: Deduct amount realized from the out-students of
English for the months of May, June and July last, 103 rupees.

I have been told that it is merely from want of local experience that I am surprised at these
phenomena, and that it is not the fashion for students in India to study at their own charges. This
only confirms me in my opinion. Nothing is more certain than that it never can in any part of the
world be necessary to pay men for doing what they think pleasant and profitable. India is no
exception to this rule. The people of India do not require to be paid for eating rice when they are
hungry, or for wearing woollen cloth in the cold season. To come nearer to the case before us,
the children who learn their letters and a little elementary Arithmetic from the village
school-master are not paid by him. He is paid for teaching them. Why then is it necessary to pay
people to learn Sanscrit and Arabic? Evidently because it is universally felt that the Sanscrit and
Arabic are languages, the knowledge of which does not compensate for the trouble of acquiring
them. On all such subjects the state of the market is the decisive test.

Other evidence is not wanting, if other evidence were required. A petition was presented last year
to the Committee by several ex-students of the Sanscrit College. The petitioners stated that they
had studied in the college ten or twelve years; that they had made themselves acquainted with
Hindoo literature and science; that they had received certificates of proficiency: and what is the
fruit of all this! "Notwithstanding such testimonials," they say, "we have but little prospect of
bettering our condition without the kind assistance of your Honorable Committee, the indifference
with which we are generally looked upon by our countrymen leaving no hope of encouragement
and assistance from them." They therefore beg that they may be recommended to the Governor
General for places under the Government, not places of high dignity or emolument, but such as
may just enable them to exist. "We want means," they say, "for a decent living, and for our
progressive improvement, which, however, we cannot obtain without the assistance of
Government, by whom we have been educated and maintained from childhood." They conclude
by representing, very pathetically, that they are sure that it was never the intention of
Government, after behaving so liberally to them during their education, to abandon them to
destitution and neglect. 

I have been used to see petitions to Government for compensation. All these petitions, even the
most unreasonable of them, proceeded on the supposition that some loss had been sustained-
that some wrong had been inflicted. These are surely the first petitioners who ever demanded
compensation for having been educated gratis, for having been supported by the public during
twelve years, and then sent forth into the world well furnished with literature and science. They
represent their education as an injury which gives them a claim on the Government for redress,
as an injury for which the stipends paid to them during the infliction were a very inadequate
compensation. And I doubt not that they are in the right. They have wasted the best years of life
in learning what procures for them neither bread nor respect. Surely we might, with advantage,
have saved the cost of making these persons useless and miserable; surely, men may be brought
up to be burdens to the public and objects of contempt to their neighbours at a somewhat
smaller charge to the state. But such is our policy. We do not even stand neuter in the contest
between truth and falsehood. We are not content to leave the natives to the influence of their
own hereditary prejudices. To the natural difficulties which obstruct the progress of sound science
in the East, we add fresh difficulties of our own making. Bounties and premiums, such as ought
not to be given even for the propagation of truth, we lavish on false taste and false philosophy.

By acting thus we create the very evil which we fear. We are making that opposition which we do
not find. What we spend on the Arabic and Sanscrit colleges is not merely a dead loss to the
cause of truth; it is bounty-money paid to raise up champions of error. It goes to form a nest,
not merely of helpless place-hunters, but of bigots prompted alike by passion and by interest to
raise a cry against every usetul scheme of education. If there should be any opposition among the
natives to the change which I recommend, that opposition will be the effect of our own system. It
will be headed by persons supported by our stipends and trained in our colleges. The longer we
persevere in our present course, the more formidable will that opposition be. It will be every year
reinforced by recruits whom we are paying. From the native society left to itself, we have no
difficulties to apprehend; all the murmuring will come from that oriental interest which we have, by
artificial means, called into being, and nursed into strength. 

There is yet another fact, which is alone sufficient to prove that the feeling of the native public,
when left to itself, is not such as the supporters of the old system represent it to be. The
Committee have thought fit to lay out above a lac of rupees in printing Arabic and Sanscrit books.
Those books find no purchasers. It is very rarely that a single copy is disposed of. Twenty-three
thousand volumes, most of them folios and quartos, fill the libraries, or rather the lumber-rooms,
of this body. The Committee contrive to get rid of some portion of their vast stock of oriental
literature by giving books away. But they cannot give so fast as they print. About twenty
thousand rupees a year are spent in adding fresh masses of waste paper to a hoard which, I
should think, is already sufficiently ample. During the last three years, about sixty thousand rupees
have been expended in this manner. The sale of Arabic and Sanscrit books, during those three
years, has not yielded quite one thousand rupees. In the mean time the School- book Society is
selling seven or eight thousand English volumes every year, and not only pays the expenses of
printing, but realises a profit of 20 per cent. on its outlay.

The fact that the Hindoo law is to be learned chiefly from Sans- crit books, and the Mahomedan
law from Arabic books, has been much insisted on, but seems not to bear at all on the question.
We are commanded by Parliament to ascertam and digest the laws of India. The assistance of a
law Commission has been given to us for that purpose. As soon as the code is promulgated, the
Shasster and the Hedaya will be useless to a Moonsiff or Sudder Ameen. I hope and trust that
before the boys who are now entering at the Madrassa and the Sanscrit college have completed
their studies, this great work will be finished. It would be manifestly absurd to educate the rising
generation with a view to a state of things which we mean to alter before they reach manhood. 

But there is yet another argument which seems even more untenable. It is said that the Sanscrit
and Arabic are the languages in which the sacred books of a hundred millions of people are
written, and that they are, on that account, entitled to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the
duty of the British Government in India to be not only tolerant, but neutral on all religious
questions. But to encourage the study of a literature admitted to be of small intrinsic value, only
because that literature incuIcates the most serious errors on the most important subjects, is a
course hardly reconcileable with reason, with morality, or even with that very neutrality which
ought, as we all agree, to be sacredly pre- served. It is confessed that a language is barren of
useful know- ledge. We are to teach it because it is fruittul of monstrous superstitions. We are to
teach false History, false Astronomy, false Medicine, because we find them in company with a
false religion. We abstain, and I trust shall always abstain, from giving any public encouragement
to those who are engaged in the work of converting natives to Christianity. And while we act
thus, can we reasonably and decently bribe men out of the revenues of the state to waste their
youth in learning how they are to purify themselves after touching an ass, or what text of the
Vedas they are to repeat to expiate the crime of killing a goat? 

It is taken for granted by the advocates of Oriental learning, that no native of this country can
possibly attain more than a mere smattering of English. They do not attempt to prove this; but
they perpetually insinuate it. They designate the education which their opponents recommend as a
mere spelling book education. They assume it as undenlable, that the question is between a
profound knowledge of Hindoo and Arabian literature and science on the one side, and a superficial
knowledge of the rudiments of English on the other. This is not merely an assumption, but an
assumption contrary to all reason and experience. We know that foreigners of all nations do learn
our language sufficiently to have access to all the most abstruse knowledge which it contains,
sufficiently to relish even the more delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers. There are in this
very town natives who are quite competent to discuss political or scientific questions with fluency
and precision in the English language. I have heard the gentlemen with a liberality and an
intelligence which would do credit to any member of the Committee of Public Instruction. Indeed it
is unusual to find, even in the literary circles of the continent, any foreigner who can express
himself in English with so much facility and correctness as we find in many Hindoos. Nobody, I
suppose, will contend that English is so difficult to a Hindoo as Greek to an Englishman. Yet an
intelligent English youth, in a much smaller number of years than our unfortunate pupils pass at
the Sanscrit college, becomes able to read, to enjoy, and even to imitate, not unhappily, the
compositions of the best Greek Authors. Less than half the time which enables an English youth
to read Herodotus and Sophocles, ought to enable a Hindoo to read Hume and Milton.

To sum up what I have said, I think it clear that we are not fettered by the Act of Parliament of 1813; that we are not fettered by any pledge expressed or implied; that we are free to employ our fiinds as we choose; that we ought to employ them in teaching what is best worth knowing; that English is better worth knowing than Sanscrit or Arabic; that the natives are desirous to be taught English, and are not desirous to be taught Sanscrit or Arabic; that neither as the languages of law, nor as the languages of religion, have the Sanscrit and Arabic any peculiar claim to our engagement; that it is possible to make natives of this country thoroughly good English scholars, and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed. 

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 taste, 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. 

I would strictly respect all existing interests. I would deal even generously with all individuals who
have had fair reason to expect a pecuniary provision. But I would strike at the root of the bad
system which has hitherto been fostered by us. I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and
Sanscrit books, I would abolish the Madrassa and the Sanscrit college at Calcutta. Benares is the
great seat of Brahmanical learning; Delhi, of Arabic learning. If we retain the Sanscrit college at
Benares and the Mahometan college at Delhi, we do enough, and much more than enough in my
opinion, for the Eastern languages. If the Benares and Delhi colleges should be retained, I would at
least recommend that no stipends shall be given to any students who may hereafter repair
thither, but that the people shall be left to make their own choice between the rival systems of
education without being bribed by us to learn what they have no desire to know. The funds which
would thus be placed at our disposal would enable us to give larger encouragement to the Hindoo
college at Calcutta, and to establish in the principal cities throughout the Presidencies of Fort
William and Agra schools in which the English language might be well and thoroughly taught. 

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. If, on the other hand, it be the
opinion of the Government that the present system ought to remain unchanged, I beg that I may
be permitted to retire from the chair of the Committee. I feel that I could not be of the smallest
use there--I feel, also, that I should be lending my countenance to what I firmly believe to be a
mere delusion. I believe that the present system tends, not to accelerate the progress of truth,
but to delay the natural death of expiring errors. I conceive that we have at present no right to
the respectable name of a Board of Public Instruction. We are a Board for wasting public money,
for printing books which are of less value than the paper on which they are printed was while it
was blank; for giving artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd
physics, absurd theology; for raising up a breed of scholars who find their scholarship an
encumbrance and a blemish, who live on the public while they are receiving their education, and
whose education is so utterly useless to them that when they have received it they must either
starve or live on the public all the rest of their lives. Entertaining these opinions, I am naturally
desirous to decline all share in the responsibility of a body, which unless it alters its whole mode of
proceeding, I must consider not merely as useless, but as positively noxious.