Macaulay’s or English Education Act of India 1835

India is home to the world’s largest English-speaking population, whose Modern Education System is dominated by English medium schools & colleges overshadowing the education system running on regional or local languages. In India speaking in English is considered a matter of respect, wisdom, wealth, and intelligence. Nowadays, Indians are more English, than Englishmen. But, do you know where all it gets started?

The British rule of nearly 400 years has converted Bharat to India. The British rule has changed how an average Indian thinks, works, eats, communicates, travels, and worships. The Britisher has taken away Kohinoor, Gold, Masala, Wood from India and in turn gifted railways, buildings, tea, and most importantly they gifted their language English to India.

Prior to 1835 the British East India company always try to promote and teach Indians in local languages like Sanskrit, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, etc. But, with the arrival of Thomas Babington Macaulay the Secretary of the then Governor-General of India Lord William Bentinck in 1834 there was a shift in the Education System of India. Where English has been introduced in the schools and major subjects were started to be taught in English only.

Before 1835 there was no tradition of secondary education in vernacular languages; the institutions then supported by the East India Company taught either in Sanskrit or Persian. Hence, Thomas Babington Macaulay argued, “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.” Macaulay argued that Sanskrit and Persian were no more accessible than English to the speakers of the Indian vernacular languages and existing Sanskrit and Persian texts were of little use for ‘useful learning’.

The English Education Act 1835 was a legislative Act of the Council of India, gave effect to a decision in 1835 by Lord William Bentinck, then Governor-General of the British East India Company, to reallocate funds it was required by the British Parliament to spend on education and literature in India. 

The Act states that

1. The Council is of opinion 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 be best employed on English education alone.
2. No to abolish of 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.
3. Council directs that all the existing professors and students at all the institutions under the superintendence of the Committee shall continue to receive their stipends.
4.  a large sum has been expended by the Committee on the printing of Oriental works; his Lordship in Council directs that no portion of the funds shall hereafter be so employed.
5. all the funds which these reforms will leave at the disposal of the Committee be henceforth employed in imparting to the native population knowledge of English literature and science through the medium of the English language
6. support for the publication of books in Sanskrit and Arabic should be withdrawn.
7. The Affiliation of Madrassa at Delhi and the Hindu College at Benares will be retained
8. The official court language would be now Engish only.

The motive behind the introduction of this act by Macaulay was to produce—by English-language higher education—”a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect” who could in their turn develop the tools to transmit Western learning in the vernacular languages of India.