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ABSTRACT
Thomas Babington Macaulay’s 1835 minute on Indian education is widely held to be representative of the views which underpinned the English East India Company’s replacement of Persian with English as the official language of administration in India in 1837, and the promotion of English and Indian vernacular languages as part of colonial educational policy. Yet, it is often overlooked that Macaulay failed to even mention Persian in his condemnation of “oriental learning”, focusing his attention solely on the shortcomings of Sanskrit and Arabic. Macaulay’s omission of Persian is telling: despite its centrality to Mughal rule and the political transactions of the East India Company alike, Persian did not fit easily into emergent colonial formulations regarding Indian languages and their relationships with particular locales, ethnicities and religions. Through an examination of colonial discussions regarding Indian education, this article argues that the complicated, often contradictory, status of Persian in educational discourse allowed the language to elude definitive categorisation and to survive in government schools and colleges during the nineteenth century. It further suggests that as multilingual cultures were formalised and reconfigured within the domain of colonial education, the continued presence of Persian alongside vernaculars such as Urdu, Hindi, and Bengali at colonial institutions both shaped – and disturbed – their identification as viable modern languages.
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Notes
1 Persian words, with the exception of proper names, have been transliterated according to the scheme followed in Francis Joseph Steingass, A Comprehensive Persian–English Dictionary, including the Arabic words and phrases to be met with in Persian literature (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1892).
2 Catriona Ellis, “History of Colonial Education: Key Reflections,” in Handbook of Education Systems in South Asia, ed. Padma M. Sarangapani and Rekha Pappu, Global Education Systems (Singapore: Springer Singapore, 2020), 363–89, 368.
3 Ibid.
4 “East India Company Charter Act of 1813, section 43,” in The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781–1843, ed. Lynn Zastoupil and Martin Moir (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999), 90–2.
5 See e.g. Tithi Bhattacharya, The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal (1848–85) (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005); Krishna Kumar, Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas (New Delhi: Sage, 1991); Parna Sengupta, Pedagogy for Religion: Missionary Education and the Fashioning of Hindus and Muslims in Bengal (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); and Sanjay Seth, Subject Lessons: The Western Education of Colonial India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007).
6 Stephen Evans, “Macaulay’s Minute Revisited: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-Century India,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 23, no. 4 (2002): 260–81; and Lynn Zastoupil and Martin Moir, “Introduction,” in The Great Indian Education Debate, 1–72.
7 See e.g. Evans, “Macaulay’s Minute Revisited;” Daud Ali and Indra Sengupta, Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
8 Parimala V. Rao, Beyond Macaulay: Education in India, 1780–1860 (London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2020), 165.
9 Kevin L. Schwartz, “The Curious Case of Carnatic: The Last Nawab of Arcot (d. 1855) and Persian Literary Culture,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 53, no. 4 (2016): 533–60; see also Kevin L. Schwartz, Remapping Persian Literary History, 1700–1900 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020); Hayden Bellenoit, “Between Qanungos and Clerks: The Cultural and Service Worlds of Hindustan’s Pensmen, c. 1750–1850,” Modern Asian Studies 48, no. 4 (2014): 872–910; and Nile Green, “The Antipodes of ‘Progress’: A Journey to the End of Indo-Persian,” The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere, ed. Abbas Amanat and Assef Ashraf (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 216–51. Similarly, data from printing presses in north India shows that private presses catered to a much wider readership which consumed works in Persian than educational curricula and statistics suggest.
10 See Tariq Rahman, “Decline of Persian in British India,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 22, no. 1 (1999): 47–62.
11 For instance, see Kavita Saraswathi Datla, The Language of Secular Islam: Urdu Nationalism and Colonial India (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻ i Press, 2013); Anindita Ghosh, Power in Print: Popular Publishing and the Politics of Language and Culture in a Colonial Society, 1778–1905 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006); Walter N. Hakala, Negotiating Languages: Urdu, Hindi, and the Definition of Modern South Asia, South Asia across the Disciplines (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016); Christopher R. King, “The Hindi-Urdu Controversy of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh and Communal Consciousness,” Journal of South Asian Literature 13, no. 1/4 (1977/78): 111–201; Francesca Orsini, ed., Before the Divide: Hindi and Urdu Literary Culture (New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2010); Francesca Orsini, The Hindi Public Sphere 1920–1940: Language and Literature in the Age of Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); and Bhavani Raman, Document Raj: Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial South India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012).
12 For an analysis of the economic aspects of the colonial state’s educational endeavours and their limitations, see Latika Chaudhary, “Land Revenues, Schools and Literacy: A Historical Examination of Public and Private Funding of Education,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 47, no. 2 (2010): 179; Latika Chaudhary, “Determinants of Primary Schooling in British India,” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 1 (2009): 269–302.
13 For this reason, missionary institutions are also excluded from the analysis.
14 Moir and Zastoupil, “Introduction,” 23.
15 Ibid., 26.
16 Report of the General Committee on Public Instruction of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal for the Year 1836 (Calcutta: Baptist Missionary Press, 1837) [henceforth, RGCPI], 2.
17 Gauri Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), 89.
18 Tim Allender, Ruling Through Education: The Politics of Schooling in the Colonial Punjab (New Delhi: New Dawn Press, 2006), 4.
19 Rao, Beyond Macaulay, 221–3.
20 Robert Ivermee, Secularism, Islam and Education in India, 1830–1910, Empires in Perspective 25 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2015), 8.
21 Rao, Beyond Macaulay, 216–19.
22 Ibid.
23 RGCPI of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, for the Year 1839–40 (Calcutta: Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1841), 87–106.
24 For a discussion of the halkabandi system, see Tim Allender, “William Arnold and Experimental Education in North India, 1855–1859: An Innovative Model of State Schooling,” Historical Studies in Education/Revue d’histoire de l’éducation 16, no. 1 (2004): 63–83.
25 Reports consulted: RGCPI of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, for the Year 1836 (Calcutta: Baptist Missionary Press, 1837); RGCPI […] 1839–40; Reports of the GCPI of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, for the Year 1843–1854: IOR/V/24/905-907, India Office Records, British Library; Henry Stewart Reid, General Report on Public Instruction in the North Western Provinces (Agra: Secundra Orphan Press, 1856) [henceforth GRPI]; Henry Stewart Reid, Report on the State of Popular Education in the North-Western Provinces in the Year 1859–60 (Allahabad: Government Press, 1860); Matthew A. Kempson, Report on the Progress of Education in the North-Western Provinces for the Year 1865–66 (Allahabad: Government Press, 1866); Matthew A. Kempson, Report on the Progress of Education in the North-Western Provinces for the Year 1866–1867 (Bareilly, 1867); and Report on the Progress of Education in the North Western Provinces and Oudh (Allahabad: Government Press, 1874).
26 Report on the Administration of the NW Provinces for the Year 1870–71 (Allahabad: Government Press, 1872), 38.
27 Report on the Progress of Education in the North Western Provinces and Oudh (Allahabad: Government Press, 1874).
28 See reports listed above.
29 See, for example: Peter Gottschalk, Religion, Science, and Empire: Classifying Hinduism and Islam in British India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
30 More recent historical writing has also tended to conflate Arabic and Islamic learning in India, to the detriment of both a richer Indo-Arabic literature and the role of Persian in transmitting religious instruction: Tahira Qutbuddin, “Arabic in India: A Survey and Classification of Its Uses, Compared with Persian,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 127, no. 3 (2007): 315–38. See also Ivermee, Secularism, Islam and Education.
31 “Letter dated August 18, 1824, from the GCPI to the Governor-General,” in Moir and Zastoupil, The Great Indian Education Debate, 118–24.
32 “Letter, dated August 18, 1824, from the GCPI to the Governor-General,” in Moir and Zastoupil, The Great Indian Education Debate, 93–8.
33 Macaulay, “Minute recorded in the General Department by Thomas Babington Macaulay, law member of the governor-general’s council, dated 2 February 1835,” in Moir and Zastoupil, The Great Indian Education Debate, 162–72.
34 “Petition of the Muslim Inhabitants of Bengal,” in Moir and Zastoupil, The Great Indian Education Debate, 189–91.
35 “Petition of the Students of Sanskrit College,” in Moir and Zastoupil, The Great Indian Education Debate, 254–6.
36 Ram Mohan Roy, “1823 Address to Lord Amherst,” in Moir and Zastoupil, The Great Indian Education Debate, 110–14.
37 Christopher A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 39–58.
38 Edward East, “Reform of the Mofussil Courts,” in Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to Enquire into the Present State of the Affairs of the East India Company (London: J.I. Cox, 1830), ii, 161–4. Original emphasis.
39 Ibid.
40 Stemming from the same root, European science and Christianity were deeply intertwined, resulting in an ideological stance that Peter Gottschalk has termed “Scientism”: Gottschalk, Religion, Science and Empire, 14–36.
41 For example, William Adam, Report on the State of Education in Bengal (Calcutta: Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1835), 125; and “Report on the Calcutta Madrissa,” IOR/F/4/1289/51,641, India Office Records, British Library.
42 J.C.C. Sutherland, Letter, dated 22 January 1835: IOR/F/4/1846/77,633, India Office Records, British Library; see also BL/IOR/F/4/1170/30,639-40.
43 Ishita Pande, Medicine, Race and Liberalism in British Bengal: Symptoms of Empire (Abingdon: Routledge, 2010), 73.
44 Robert Travers, Ideology and Empire in Eighteenth Century India: The British in Bengal (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
45 Charles Grant, Observations on the State of Society among the Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, particularly with respect to Morals; and on the means of improving it (London, 1813), 150.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid., 197–8.
48 For example, works such as James Mill’s history, in which the “Muslim invasion” cast a dichotomy between “foreign” tyrants and indigenous subjects: James Mill, The History of British India, ed. Horace Hayman Wilson, 5th ed. (London: Piper, Stephenson and Spence, 1858), ii, 479–85. John Malcolm’s history of the Sikhs viewed the Muslims in a similar light: see Jack Harrington, Sir John Malcolm and the Creation of British India (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 75.
49 “Reform of the Calcutta Madrasa and of the Hindu College at Benaras,” IOR/F/4/708/19,201, India Office Records, British Library.
50 Ibid.
51 Charles E. Trevelyan, On the Education of the People of India (London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1838), 217. Emphasis mine.
52 Ibid., 151.
53 Ibid. The missionary, Brian Hodgson, had a similar view of the consequences of introducing English, although he was saw these as a case against the introduction of English: Brian Houghton Hodgson, Pre-eminence of the Vernaculars: or the Anglicists answered. Being four letters on the education of the People of India (Serampore: Serampore Missionary Press, 1847).
54 Adam, Report on the State of Education in Bengal; William Adam, Second Report on the State of Education in Bengal: District of Rajshahi (Calcutta: Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1836); William Adam, Third Report on the State of Education in Bengal: Including Some Account of the State of Education in Behar, and a Consideration of the Means Adapted to the Improvement and Extension of Public Instruction in Both Provinces (Calcutta: Bengal Military Orphan Press, 1838).
55 Trevelyan, On the Education, 138.
56 Ibid., 91.
57 Ibid., 139–40.
58 Ibid.
59 For example: Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2004).
60 Trevelyan, On the Education, 117–18.
61 Report of the GCPI of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, for the Year 1839–40, 87–106.
62 Ibid, lxxiii.
63 Ibid, 104.
64 M.S. Dodson, “Translating Science, Translating Empire: The Power of Language in Colonial North India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 47, no. 4 (2005): 809–35.
65 GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for 1850–1, 221.
66 Following Lord Auckland’s Minute of 1839, Arabic translations of European scientific works were procured from Egypt. GRPI in Bengal, 1843–44, 13; see also Dodson, “Re-presented for the Pandits;” for the scientific Arabic curricula which Matthew Lumsden tried to introduce to the Calcutta Madrasa, see Ivermee, Secularism, Islam and Education, 64–5.
67 Rare exceptions occurred in state-institutions funded by private endowments such as waqf. There is a wealth of literature on this topic. See, for instance, Ivermee, Secularism, Islam and Education; N. Chatterjee, The Making of Indian Secularism: Empire, Law and Christianity, 1830-1960 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Viswanathan, Masks of Conquest.
68 Ibid. See also A. Powell, “‘Old Books in New Bindings’: Ethics and Education in Colonial India,” in Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India, ed. D. Ali and I. Sengupta (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
69 GRPI in the North-Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, 1854–55, 43–8.
70 General Report of the GCPI of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal for 1840–41 & 1841–42, 297–8.
71 Report of the GCPI of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, for the year 1839–1840, xxiv; xxxi; M.Z. Ḥusain, Imām Baksh Ṣahbā’ī ki adabī kkidmāt (Patna, 2002), 122.
72 Reid, Report on Indigenous Education … 1851/52, 84.
73 BL, IOR/F/4/1170/30,640, fo.587–653.
74 Reid, Report on Indigenous Education … 1851/52, 56.
75 Adam, Third Report, 72–5.
76 “Petition of the Muslim Inhabitants of Bengal.”
77 BL, IOR/F/4/1170/30,640, fo.587–653.
78 Adam, Second Report, 25–6; BL, IOR/F/4/1170/30,640, fo.587–653.
79 GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for the year 1852–53, 197. This provides the duration of existence of Persian schools in five districts. GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for the year 1854–55, xxiii–xxxi.
80 BL, IOR/F/4/708/19,201.
81 Report of the GCPI of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, for the year 1839–1840, xxiv; xxxi; see also reports of Pandit Ram Dayal’s “influence”: GRPI in the North-Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for the year 1852–3, xxxi.
82 For lists of Ṣahbā’ī’s students: Ḥusain, Imām Bakhsh Ṣahbā’ī, 150–70. These included students enrolled in the English part of the Delhi College. GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for the year 1852–53, xxxix.
83 For example Ghosh, Power in Print; Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Hakala, Negotiating Languages, 165–70. See also essays in India’s Literary History: Essays on the Nineteenth Century, ed. Stuart H. Blackburn and Vasudha Dalmia (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2004).
84 Hakala, Negotiating Languages, 7.
85 Ibid., 155–87.
86 See Orsini, Before the Divide; David Lelyveld, “Colonial Knowledge and the Fate of Hindustani,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 35, no. 4 (1993): 665–82.
87 GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for 1844–45: IOR/V/24/905, lxii.
88 GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for 1846–47: IOR/V/24/905, India Office Records, British Library, 21.
89 GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for 1844–45, xcvii.
90 Wood’s Despatch of 1854. Text republished in: “Appendix D,” GRPI in the Lower Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, 1857–1858 (Calcutta: Baptist Missionary Press, 1849), 12.
91 GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for 1844–45, lxii.
92 GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency for 1849–50 (Agra, 1851), 20.
93 GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for 1844–45, lxiii. See also Schwartz, Remapping Persian Literary History, 68.
94 Green, “The Antipodes of ‘Progress,’” 217.
95 Drawing on Walter Hakala’s work, Kevin Schwartz makes a similar point regarding the “myth of Urdu’s linear advancement and monolingual supremacy”: Schwartz, Remapping Persian Literary History, 70; and Hakala, Negotiating Languages.
96 This was common to the progression of students in multiple institutions. Reports of the GCPI of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal, for the Year 1842–1843, cxc; GRPI in the North Western Provinces of the Bengal Presidency, for 1846–47, lxii–lxiii, xvi–xvii.
97 Ibid.
98 Pritchett, Nets of Awareness; see also Altaf Husain Hali, Hali’s Musaddas: The Flow and Ebb of Islam, trans. Javed Majeed and Christopher Shackle (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).
99 Datla, The Language of Secular Islam.
100 Green, “The Antipodes of ‘Progress’,” 237–51.
101 For instance, Hali turned to Arabic rather than Persian as a source for Urdu in order to avoid reliance on Persian. See Javed Majeed and Christopher Shackle, “Introduction” in Hali, Hali’s Musaddas, 29. See also Green, “The Antipodes of ‘Progress,’” 250.
102 For a discussion of Persianised Bengali and its fate in late nineteenth-century India, see Ghosh, Power in Print, 259–94.
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Zahra Shah
Zahra Shah completed her DPhil in History at the University of Oxford in November 2017. Her doctoral thesis, entitled “Between Classical and Cosmopolitan: Persian in Early Colonial India, c.1757–1857”, studied Persianate literary culture in north India and sought to understand the changing social relations which underpinned literary production and circulation under the English East India Company.