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English Education and Social Reform in Late Nineteenth Century Bombay: A Case Study in the Transmission of a Cultural Ideal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Ellen E. McDonald
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One of the functions of higher educational systems everywhere has been the recruitment of an elite; for until the mass-education experiments of the twentieth century, highly educated members of major historical societies have been the chosen few. Similarly, the content of higher education has formed a culture the monopoly of which has served to set the highly educated apart from the common man. Hence the system of higher education in most societies forms a well-recognized institutional avenue of approach, not only to a society's high literary culture, but to prestige and power as well. These important properties of higher educational systems suggest that the content of higher education may have a social utility for the educated elite quite apart from its informational value. In this paper we examine the relationship between the college curriculum and the social reform activities of the educated elite of one Indian province, Bombay, in the late nineteenth century.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , May 1966 , pp. 453 - 470
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1966

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References

1 This has been most clearly recognized in the cases of Britain and traditional China. In the British case, higher education trained young men in the mores appropriate to “gentlemen” and therefore rulers, while in the traditional Chinese case, higher education opened the door to both Confucian culture and official preferment, the one a sine qua non of the other.

2 Calcutta and Madras.

3 Bombay

4 Calcutta matriculated 167 at its first examination, Madras 36, and Bombay 21 in 1859. About 1 student passed the matriculation at Bombay for every 8 who appeared for it in the following decade, and this proportion did not substantially decrease for some time thereafter.

5 Annual Report of the Director of Public Instruction in the Bombay Presidency for the Year 1866–67 (Bombay, 1867), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as ARDPI with year.

6 These figures computed from tables of caste and community of students in government and private high schools and colleges which appear in the annual reports of the Director of Public Instruction, Bombay, for most years from 1870 to 1885.

7 ARDPI 1867–68, Appendix B, 172.

8 Tables of occupation of parents of students in government colleges and high schools in the annual reports of the Director of Public Instruction, Bombay, for most years from 1870 to 1885 show that children of government officials and pensioners rose from about 20% of students in 1870–71 to about 38% of students in 1884–85. Children of mercantile families rose from 11% to 16.5% of students in the same period, while children of professional persons and others in private employment fell from 28% to just over 15% of students.

9 As in evidence given before the Bombay Provincial Committee of the Education Commission in 1882, recorded in Report of the Bombay Provincial Committee, Education Commission, Vol. II: Evidence taken before the Bombay Provincial Committee and Memorials Addressed to the Education Commission (Calcutta 1884), 256, 285, 328, 441, 453, and 488. Hereafter cited as RBPC II.

10 Singer, Milton, “The Great Tradition in a Metropolitan Center: Madras,” Traditional India, Structure and Change, ed: Singer, Milton (Philadelphia 1959), p. 141.Google Scholar

11 Sir Alexander Grant, Director of Public Instruction in Bombay from 1865 to 1868, discussed the Oxford influence on Bombay University in the following terms: “The leading fact which, I think, discloses itself in comparing the Universities of Calcutta and Bombay … is that there is a difference of kind between these two Universities corresponding to the differences between Cambridge and Oxford. The Calcutta University has been, I believe, chiefly moulded by Cambridge men, and the Bombay University has certainly taken its direction from a preponderance of Oxford men among its founders. The result of this difference of direction has been … to give a preponderance to mathematical and physical studies in Calcutta, and to historical and philosophical studies in Bombay.” Quoted in Howell, A. P., Note on the State of Education in India during 1866–67. Selections from the Records of the Government of India, Home Department, LXVII (Calcutta 1868), 58.Google Scholar

12 Clarke, F., Education and Social Change (London 1940), p. 23.Google Scholar

13 Clarke, p. 24.

14 Naik, J. P. (ed.), A Review of Education in Bombay State 1855–1955 (Poona 1958), p. 17.Google Scholar

15 In fact, students were advised against it. Said N. G. Chandavarkar to students of Fergusson College in 1904, “No one advises you to read largely; large reading is apt to be desultory reading; but whatever you read, read it with thought. … For this purpose you must learn to discipline your minds by means of reverence for truth.” Chandavarkar, N. G., Speeches and Writings of Sir Narayen G. Chandavarkar, ed. Kaikini, L. V. (Bombay 1911), p. 226.Google Scholar

16 The consequences of this change were to be enormous, suggesting as it did the existence of a classical Indian source for contemporary wisdom parallel to the classical European source, Latin and Greek literature.

17 Dakshina fellows were advanced students who acted as teaching assistants in freshman courses in return for a stipend from the Dakshina fund. This was originally an award in cash made to various learned Brahmans under the Peshwas, which was continued after British conquest in 1818 as a subsidy to learning. Part of the fund covered the running expenses of Deccan College; the remainder covered the fellowships and a prize fund for Marathi literature administered by the Dakshina Prize Committee.

18 ARDPI 1874–75, Appendix A, 143–44.

19 But the Senate did not give in without a struggle. Reported Temple himself: “It was argued that a Native cannot do better than obtain at college a thoroughly good general education as a groundwork, that with this he may go forth into tile world with his mind braced and disciplined, and may then prosecute with advantage any profession, scientific or other. In answer thereto it was urged that this system may doubtless be efficacious for some important professions, such as the public service, the law, and many sorts of private service, but it is not equally suitable for those who are to follow scientific professions.” [Sir Richard Temple, India in 1880 (London 1881), p. 152.Google Scholar]

20 Of 649 undergraduate majors between 1879 and 1889, 43% chose history and political economy, 18% chose natural science, 17% chose language and literature, 11% chose logic and moral philosophy, and 11% chose mathematics as their special subject. Bombay University Calendar for the Year 1898–99 (Bombay 1898), pp. 143–57.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as BUG with year.

21 These were: pure and applied mathematics, experimental physics “treated mathematically,” chemistry, botany, zoology, animal physiology, physical geography and geology, logic and psychology.

22 Vice-Chancellor of the university in 1892–93 and a graduate of 1868.

23 Dongerkery, S. R., A History of the University of Bombay 1857–1957 (Bombay 1957), pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

24 Analysis of student majors chosen during 1890–98 shows increasing interest in the subject of lan guage and literature. Of 645 undergraduate majors between 1890 and 1894, 23% chose history and political economy, 13% chose logic and moral philosophy, 12.5% chose mathematics, 20.5% chose natural science, and 31% chose language and literature. Between 1895 and 1898, of 620 graduates, 5.5% chose history and political economy before this major was closed and 27% chose Roman history and jurispru dence, with the obvious intention of preparing for the study of law. Eight percent chose logic and moral philosophy, 9% chose mathematics, 16% chose physical and biological science, and 34.5% chose language and literature. BUC 1898–99, 157–82.

25 Clarke, p. 25.

26 Newsome, David, Godliness and Good Learning: Four Studies on a Victorian Ideal (London 1961), p. 5.Google Scholar

27 Newsome, p. 68.

28 Newsome, pp. 224–34.

29 ARDPI 1874–75, Appendix A, 143–44.

30 ARDPI 1868–69, Appendix B, 225.

31 ARDPI 1868–69, Appendix B, 227.

32 ARDPI 1868–69, Appendix B, 226.

33 ARDPI 1894–95, 32.

34 Rajaram College in Kolhapur, in the Southern Mahratta jagirs, began in 1885 an annual prize competition for original dramas to be performed by students. The competition instantly became popular and stimulated the development of modern Marathi drama.

35 See the very suggestive interpretations of the kinds of meaning this and other Shakespearean plays convey to non-Western readers in modern times in Philip Mason, Prospero's Magic (London 1964).

36 ARDPI 1864–65, Appendix B, 26.

37 Bacon, Francis, Advancement of Learning and Novum Organum (New York 1900), p. vii.Google Scholar

38 Bacon, p. xi.

39 Model examination papers of Ranade, M. G., reprinted ARDPI 1860–1861, Appendix G, 108.Google Scholar

40 Bacon, p. 80.

41 The catalog of the British Museum lists 36 editions of this work published between 1736 and 1907, of which all but 8 were published between 1800 and 1907. Parts of the work were also published separately in 1820, 1823, 1829, and 1852, and there were seven editions of Butler's collected works including The Analogy between 1804 and 1900. The secondary literature includes at least the 39 titles listed in the same catalog as published between 1736 and 1928, including one volume of Remarks on Butler's Analogy (1854) by an Indian Christian, John Syama Rao.

42 Butler, Joseph, The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, to Which are Added Two Brief Dissertations on Personal Identity, and the Nature of Virtue, ed. Cummings, Joseph (New York 1875), pp. 41–42.Google Scholar

43 Butler, pp. 42–3.

44 Butler, p. 114.

45 Butler, p. 125.

46 Butler, p. 126.

47 Butler, pp. 126–7.

48 Butler, p. 128.

49 Butler, p. 131.

50 Cf. the activities of the Poona and Bombay Prarthana Samajes, where a wide variety of Western and Asian literature was sifted for similarity of ideas. This is not to suggest that Butlerian ideas were blankly opposed to Indian tradition; nor, conversely, are Butlerian beliefs and bhakti beliefs similar, for in specifics they differ. There is, however, a general comparability of ideas which in no way detracts from what Heimsath rightly considers the uniqueness of the social reform movement. Nor do I imply that Butlerian ideas were juxtaposed with Hindu philosophy in the minds of educated Indians in this fashion; rather, they were juxtaposed with Indian social realities.

51 Chandavarkar, p. 54.

52 Ranade, M. G., “Religious and Social Reform,” quoted in Jagirdar, P. J., Studies in the Social Thought of M. G. Ranade (Bombay, 1963), p. 31.Google Scholar

53 Jagirdar, p. 40.

54 Jagirdar, p. 44.

55 A Birds-eye View of Indian Society and Reform in the Bombay Presidency, by a Native Gentleman (Bombay, 1878), p. 11.Google Scholar

56 Chandavarkar, pp. 81–2.

57 Chandavarkar, pp. 223–4.

58 The principal of Deccan College spoke in 1880 with pride of the reputation of cooperation earned by Deccan College graduates, who were “well-known in native society for the steady support they give one another and the marked fellow feeling they display after they have left College and in various matters of life quite other than scholastic.” ARDPI 1879–80, Appendix C, 88.

59 At Deccan College, for instance, the only student organization in existence prior to 1892 was the Debating Society, which had at best a “fitful existence.” Fraser, J. Nelson, Deccan College: A Retrospect 1851–1901 (Poona, 1902), p. 90.Google Scholar

60 See the newspaper comments on reformers included in D. K. Karve's Marathi autobiography, selections from which appear in Karve, D. D. (Tr.), The New Brahmans: Five Maharashtrian Families (Berkeley, 1963), pp. 42–46.Google Scholar

61 Chandavarkar, pp. 50–51.

62 Bhatt, H. M., “Mr. Justice Ranade on Social Reform,” Deccan College Quarterly V (January, 1897), 15.Google Scholar

63 Chandavarkar, p. 224.

64 Ranade, M. G., “Butler's Method of Ethics,” reprinted in The Miscellaneous Writings of the Late Hon'ble Justice M. G. Ranade (Bombay, 1915), pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

65 Modak, V. N., in RBPC II, 397.Google Scholar

66 ARDPI 1877–78, Appendix C, 81.

67 Bhatt, p. 13.

68 Paranjpye, R. P., Rationalism in Practice, The Kamala Lectures (Calcutta, 1935), p. 15.Google Scholar

69 Cf. Farquhar, J. N., Modem Religious Movements in India (New York, 1915), pp. 433–44Google Scholar; and Heimsath, Charles, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform (Princeton, 1963), p. 54.Google Scholar

70 Telang in 1892 married off his eight-year-old daughter at the height of an ugly and protracted controversy over child-marriage in which he had been one of the main protagonists of raising the age of marriage for girls.

71 Quoted in Chandavarkar, pp. 28–29.