10-17-2007, 11:16 PM
The British had little choice but to use English as the language of government and higher education. In India the languages used in these two fields had been foreign ones for centuries. The language of government and of the courts was Persian until 1837. Advanced and middle-level education had always been foreign, in Sanskrit for the Hindus and in Arabic for the Muslims. Sanskrit, a "dead" language, was that of Hindu religious literature, while Arabic was the language of the Koran, the only writing the ordinary Muslim would wish to read. In fact, the allegiance of the Muslims to the Koran and to Arabic was so intense that they refused to participate in the new English-language educational system and, in consequence, had been excluded from government, the professions, and much of the economic life of the country by 1900.
No vernacular language could have been used to teach the really valuable contributions of the West, such as science, technology, economics, agricultural science, or political science, because the necessary vocabulary was lacking in the vernaculars. When the university of the native state of Hyderabad tried to translate Western works into Urdu for teaching purposes after 1920, it was necessary to create about 40,000 new words. Moreover, the large number of vernacular languages would have made the choice of any one of them for the purpose of higher education invidious. And, finally, the natives themselves had no desire to learn to read their vernacular languages, at least during the nineteenth century; they wanted to learn English because it provided access to knowledge, to government positions, and to social advancement as no vernacular could. But it must be remembered that it was the exceptional Indian, not the average one, who wanted to learn to read at all. The average native was content to remain illiterate, at least until deep into the twentieth century. Only then did the desire to read spread under the stimulus of growing nationalism, political awareness, and growing concern with political and religious tensions. These fostered the desire to read, in order to read newspapers, but this had adverse effects: each political or religious group had its own press and presented its own biased version of world events so that, by 1940, these different groups had entirely different ideas of reality.
Moreover, the new enthusiasm for the vernacular languages, the influence of extreme Hindu nationalists like B. G. Tilak (1859-1920) or anti-Westerners like M. K. Gandhi (1869-1948), led to a wholesale rejection of all that was best in British or in European culture. At the same time, those who sought power, advancement, or knowledge continued to learn English as the key to these ambitions. Unfortunately, these semi-westernized Indians neglected much of the practical side of the European way of life and tended to be intellectualist and doctrinaire and to despise practical learning and physical labor. They lived, as we have said, in a middle world which was neither Indian nor Western, spoiled for the Indian way of life, but often unable to find a position in Indian society which would allow them to live their own version of a Western way of life. At the university they studied literature, law, and political science, all subjects which emphasized verbal accomplishments. Since India did not provide sufficient jobs for such accomplishments, there was a great deal of ''academic unemployment," with resulting discontent and growing radicalism. The career of Gandhi was a result of the efforts of one man to avoid this problem by fusing certain elements of Western teaching with a purified Hinduism to create a nationalist Indian way of life on a basically moral foundation.
No vernacular language could have been used to teach the really valuable contributions of the West, such as science, technology, economics, agricultural science, or political science, because the necessary vocabulary was lacking in the vernaculars. When the university of the native state of Hyderabad tried to translate Western works into Urdu for teaching purposes after 1920, it was necessary to create about 40,000 new words. Moreover, the large number of vernacular languages would have made the choice of any one of them for the purpose of higher education invidious. And, finally, the natives themselves had no desire to learn to read their vernacular languages, at least during the nineteenth century; they wanted to learn English because it provided access to knowledge, to government positions, and to social advancement as no vernacular could. But it must be remembered that it was the exceptional Indian, not the average one, who wanted to learn to read at all. The average native was content to remain illiterate, at least until deep into the twentieth century. Only then did the desire to read spread under the stimulus of growing nationalism, political awareness, and growing concern with political and religious tensions. These fostered the desire to read, in order to read newspapers, but this had adverse effects: each political or religious group had its own press and presented its own biased version of world events so that, by 1940, these different groups had entirely different ideas of reality.
Moreover, the new enthusiasm for the vernacular languages, the influence of extreme Hindu nationalists like B. G. Tilak (1859-1920) or anti-Westerners like M. K. Gandhi (1869-1948), led to a wholesale rejection of all that was best in British or in European culture. At the same time, those who sought power, advancement, or knowledge continued to learn English as the key to these ambitions. Unfortunately, these semi-westernized Indians neglected much of the practical side of the European way of life and tended to be intellectualist and doctrinaire and to despise practical learning and physical labor. They lived, as we have said, in a middle world which was neither Indian nor Western, spoiled for the Indian way of life, but often unable to find a position in Indian society which would allow them to live their own version of a Western way of life. At the university they studied literature, law, and political science, all subjects which emphasized verbal accomplishments. Since India did not provide sufficient jobs for such accomplishments, there was a great deal of ''academic unemployment," with resulting discontent and growing radicalism. The career of Gandhi was a result of the efforts of one man to avoid this problem by fusing certain elements of Western teaching with a purified Hinduism to create a nationalist Indian way of life on a basically moral foundation.