06-03-2004, 01:49 AM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> Posted on May 21 2004, 05:56 AM
William Carey and the Modernization of India
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
William Carey and the Modernization of India .
<b>I have no faith in the modern doctrine of the rapid improvement of the Hindoos, or of any other people. The character of the Hindoos is probably much the same as when Vasco da Gama first visited India, and it is not likely that it will be much better a century hence</b>.
. <span style='color:red'><b>What they had hoped to achieve in India is, two centuries later, still incomplete, substantially because Secular Humanism undermined what the Christians were seeking to do</b>.</span>
. <span style='color:red'><b>The crux of his argument was that sati was not a religious practice enjoined by the Hindu scriptures. It could therefore be banned by the Government without violating the principle of separation of religion and state</b>.</span>
<i>They believed that it was necessary for us to freely dialogue and debate truth, because we all tend to believe rationalizations that are untrue. Freedom of conscience is incomplete without the freedom to change oneâs beliefs, i.e. convert. A state that hinders conversion is uncivilized because it restricts the human quest for truth and reform.</i>
<b>Today Indian historians blame the Sikhs for being traitors because they did not participate in Indiaâs âFirst War of Independenceâ. The âblameâ, in fact, belongs to those builders of modern India. Their excellent work made Sikhs then think that Indiaâs interests at that point in history were being better served by these reformer-administrators than by the feudal lords fighting for their own rule</b>.
<b>We have seen that the scriptural mandates behind Indiaâs social and intellectual evils worked powerfully against reforms. Even if an individual British officer believed some Hindu customs to be wicked, he could not use the State power against those customs</b>.
<b>They are forced to reject the fatalistic idea that reform is not possible. That premise had ruled Indian civilization and ruined India for two thousand years. Careyâs belief that human suffering can be and should be resisted has dominated the last two hundred years of Indian history</b>.
<b>It became possible for India to make the transition from Persian as the court language, to Urdu, and then to the regional languages (at least, in the lower courts) because of Careyâs labour and leadership in turning the vernaculars into literary languages through Bible translation</b>.
Like the growth of a tree is the development of a language . . . <b>In countries like India and China, where civilization has long ago reached its highest level, and has been declining for want of the salt of a universal Christianity, it is the missionary again who interferes for the highest ends, but by a different process</b>. .
Lord Macaulayâs Minute served as a rocket booster, launching into a sustained orbit the educational revolution of India. <b>Few Indian historians, however, seem to know that the man immediately behind Macaulayâs Minute was Careyâs younger contemporary, Alexander Duff, a close friend of Macaulayâs brother-in-law, Charles Trevelyan. Duff, who under Careyâs inspiration pioneered English education in Calcutta, also started the controversy between an Oriental and an English education for India</b>. Macaulay was asked to help resolve that controversy.
That anticipated day of Indiaâs Independence and (Evangelical) Englandâs ultimate triumph finally came in 1947. <b>Macaulay had anticipated it almost prophetically more than a century earlier. India asked for and became independent of the British Raj. Yet it retained and resolved to live by the British laws and institutions, as a member of the British Commonwealth. For example, the Indian Penal Code of 1861 which is still the basis for law in Indian jurisprudence, was drafted by Macaulay himself as âCodes of Criminal and Civil Proceduresâ, when he served as Indiaâs Law Minister</b>.
Thus Indiaâs Independence in 1947 was not only a victory for Mahatma Gandhi and the âFreedom Fightersâ, but even more fundamentally, a<b> triumph for Careyâs Evangelical England. It marked the victory of the early missionaries over the narrow commercial, political, and military vested interests of England, as well as a victory for the heart and mind of India</b>.
The violent movements and the human rights violations of the 1970s, â80s and early â90s raise serious doubts about whether or not human rights and freedoms will last for long in India. They cannot last if we choose to forget the faith and spirit of Indiaâs modernizers.
William Carey and the Modernization of India
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
William Carey and the Modernization of India .
<b>I have no faith in the modern doctrine of the rapid improvement of the Hindoos, or of any other people. The character of the Hindoos is probably much the same as when Vasco da Gama first visited India, and it is not likely that it will be much better a century hence</b>.
. <span style='color:red'><b>What they had hoped to achieve in India is, two centuries later, still incomplete, substantially because Secular Humanism undermined what the Christians were seeking to do</b>.</span>
. <span style='color:red'><b>The crux of his argument was that sati was not a religious practice enjoined by the Hindu scriptures. It could therefore be banned by the Government without violating the principle of separation of religion and state</b>.</span>
<i>They believed that it was necessary for us to freely dialogue and debate truth, because we all tend to believe rationalizations that are untrue. Freedom of conscience is incomplete without the freedom to change oneâs beliefs, i.e. convert. A state that hinders conversion is uncivilized because it restricts the human quest for truth and reform.</i>
<b>Today Indian historians blame the Sikhs for being traitors because they did not participate in Indiaâs âFirst War of Independenceâ. The âblameâ, in fact, belongs to those builders of modern India. Their excellent work made Sikhs then think that Indiaâs interests at that point in history were being better served by these reformer-administrators than by the feudal lords fighting for their own rule</b>.
<b>We have seen that the scriptural mandates behind Indiaâs social and intellectual evils worked powerfully against reforms. Even if an individual British officer believed some Hindu customs to be wicked, he could not use the State power against those customs</b>.
<b>They are forced to reject the fatalistic idea that reform is not possible. That premise had ruled Indian civilization and ruined India for two thousand years. Careyâs belief that human suffering can be and should be resisted has dominated the last two hundred years of Indian history</b>.
<b>It became possible for India to make the transition from Persian as the court language, to Urdu, and then to the regional languages (at least, in the lower courts) because of Careyâs labour and leadership in turning the vernaculars into literary languages through Bible translation</b>.
Like the growth of a tree is the development of a language . . . <b>In countries like India and China, where civilization has long ago reached its highest level, and has been declining for want of the salt of a universal Christianity, it is the missionary again who interferes for the highest ends, but by a different process</b>. .
Lord Macaulayâs Minute served as a rocket booster, launching into a sustained orbit the educational revolution of India. <b>Few Indian historians, however, seem to know that the man immediately behind Macaulayâs Minute was Careyâs younger contemporary, Alexander Duff, a close friend of Macaulayâs brother-in-law, Charles Trevelyan. Duff, who under Careyâs inspiration pioneered English education in Calcutta, also started the controversy between an Oriental and an English education for India</b>. Macaulay was asked to help resolve that controversy.
That anticipated day of Indiaâs Independence and (Evangelical) Englandâs ultimate triumph finally came in 1947. <b>Macaulay had anticipated it almost prophetically more than a century earlier. India asked for and became independent of the British Raj. Yet it retained and resolved to live by the British laws and institutions, as a member of the British Commonwealth. For example, the Indian Penal Code of 1861 which is still the basis for law in Indian jurisprudence, was drafted by Macaulay himself as âCodes of Criminal and Civil Proceduresâ, when he served as Indiaâs Law Minister</b>.
Thus Indiaâs Independence in 1947 was not only a victory for Mahatma Gandhi and the âFreedom Fightersâ, but even more fundamentally, a<b> triumph for Careyâs Evangelical England. It marked the victory of the early missionaries over the narrow commercial, political, and military vested interests of England, as well as a victory for the heart and mind of India</b>.
The violent movements and the human rights violations of the 1970s, â80s and early â90s raise serious doubts about whether or not human rights and freedoms will last for long in India. They cannot last if we choose to forget the faith and spirit of Indiaâs modernizers.