Beginning of English Education in India

The British government emphasizes English as a medium of instruction in India as they wanted to praise the British conquerors and their regimes. However, the main reason for enforcing the British education system in India was to create a class of anglicized Indians. This was the cleverest way to de-route the future Indian generations from their culture and traditions. Also, Britishers wanted to create the dominance of western culture in the entire Indian subcontinent.

An English education system is one that uses English as the primary medium of instruction, especially when it is not the student's native language. It means English is regarded as the common language of people who have a first language other than English. In addition, English is one of the most spoken languages in the world. In India, English had been introduced by the British. In this article, we have discussed how the inception of English education was taken place in India.

Thomas Babington Macaulay is fully attributable to the official introduction of English education in India. Although the essential order on the topic was issued by Lord William Bentinck (then Governor-General of India), on 7th March 1835. This issued order is known as the ‘The English Education Act 1835’ and it was a legislative Act of the Council of India. It has taken effect on 1835 in the British Parliament with the decision by Bentinck to reassign funds required by the East India Company to spend on education and literature in India.

The decision to apportion funds had provoked serious discussion in colonial circles that we now know as the ‘Anglicist-Orientalist controversy’. Due to this controversy, there was a debate back than that- whether Indians should be educated in their vernacular languages or whether education in English should be promoted.

At first, the British East India Company was not interested in the development of the education system in India because their main motive was trade and profit-making. To govern in India, they planned to educate a small section of the middle and upper classes to create a class of "Indians in blood and color, but English in thinking" who would act as interpreters between the government and the masses.

Until 1813, the company had followed the conventional pattern of government sponsorship to Indian learning. In 1813, the Charter Act sanctioned some funds towards the revival and expansion of literature and also to encouraged the learned natives of India.

A Committee of Public Instruction was made in 1823 to give effect to this establishment. This committee instantaneously observed the ambiguity between the promotion of oriental learning and the other western learning and became involved in a living controversy. This was the situation that Bentick encountered upon his arrival and from which he took advantage.

In Calcutta, Bentick found a progressive group of intellectuals led by Raja Ram Mohan Roy who had helped the Britishers to found a college for western learning and advocated its introduction. The great Raja represented the then rational Indian opinion for spreading English education in India.

Currently, modern forms of education are incomplete without sufficient knowledge of English. Therefore, it is important for children to get used to English from an early age. This allows them to learn and conversant with English since their childhood. In addition, this also improves their knowledge of English from an early age.

Moreover, India's growing economic power and the newfound spending power of its citizens seem to be boosting new demand for private English education in India.

Epilogue

Though “the inception of the English education system in India” was the result of British dominance and their own selfish interests. But, at present, being the global language of communication, learning “the English language” has tremendous advantages.

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Happy reading!