The Tradition of Orientalism in British India


 
 
Concept Explanation
 

The Tradition of Orientalism in British India

The main objective of the East India Company was to make profits and notto take over the responsibility of educating Indians. Though the missionaries opened a few English schools, their main purpose was to promote Christianity. Later on British in India wanted not only territorial conquest and control over revenues, but also felt that they had a cultural mission: they had “civilize the natives”, change their customs and values. Some minute steps were taken to reform the education sectoir in India, but the first major step was the Charter of India Act 1813, which granted one lakh rupees for the education in India.

In 1835, Thomas Macaulay (Member of Legislative Council) said " We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions of people, who would be Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste and opinion."   The British decided to take steps in the field of education in India. But a controversy arose between the Orientalists and the Anglicists regarding the medium of education.

The Orientalists favoured the traditional system with Sanskrit and Persian as the medium of instruction while Anglicists favoured English as the medium of instruction.

British and the Tradition of Orientalism:

  • In 1783, a person named William Jones arrived in Calcutta. He had an appointment as a junior judge at the Supreme Court that the company had set up. In addition to being an expert in law, Jones was a linguist.
  • He had studied Greek and Latin at oxford, knew French and English, had picked up Arabic from a friend, and had also lea rant Persian.
  • At Calcutta, he began spending many hours a day with pundits who taught him Sanskrit language, grammar and poetry; soon he was studying ancient Indian texts on law, philosophy, religion, politics, morality, arithmetic, medicine and the other sciences.
  • Jones discovered that his interests were shared by many British officials living in Calcutta at the time. Englishmen like Henry Thomas Colebrook and Nathaniel Halhed were also busy discovering the ancient Indian heritage, mastering Indian languages and translating Sanskrit and Persian works into English. Together with them, Jones set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and started a journal called Asiatic researches.
  • The attitude towards Colebrooke and William Jones towards India:

  • Jones and Colebrook came to represent a particular attitude towards India.
  • They shared a deep respect for ancient cultures, both of India and the west.
  • In order to understand India it was necessary to discover the scared and legal texts that were produced in the ancient period.
  • For only those texts could reveal the real ideas and laws of the Hindu and Muslims, and only a new study of these texts could from the basis of future development in India.
  • So Jones and Colebrook went about discovering ancient texts, understanding their meaning, translating them and making their findings known to others. This would not only help the British learn from Indian culture, but it would also help Indians rediscover their own heritage, and understand the lost glories of their past. In this process the British would become the guardians of Indian culture as well as its masters.
  • Influenced by such ideas, many company officials argued that the British ought to promote Indian rather than western learning. They felt that institutions should be set up to encourage the study of ancient Indian texts and teach Sanskrit and Persian literature and poetry. The officials also thought that Hindus and Muslims ought to be taught what they were already familiar with, and what they valued and treasured, not subject that were alien to them. Only then, they believed, could the British hope to win a place in the hearts of the “natives”; only then could the alien rulers expect to be respected by their subjects.

    With this object in view a Madrasa a was set up in Calcutta in 1781 to promote the study of Arabic, Persian and Islamic law; and the Hindu college was established in Banaras in 1791 to encourage the study of ancient Sanskrit texts that would be useful for the administration of the country.

    On the other hand, some British officials were in strong criticism of the Orintalists and favoured Anglicits.

    WILLIAM JONES LEARNING PERSIAN.

     
     
     


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