Solomon2
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No, I was wondering if someone more experienced than I at dealing with the cumbersome Hansard on-line records could find it.
Does this describe you, Albatross?
The Strategy which is still effectively working even after two hundred years
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Solomon2
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Working with the Hansard system, it appears Parliament didn't meet on February 2, 1835.
However, Macaulay did publish his Minute on Indian Education in February, 1835:
"...admirers of the Oriental system of education have used another argument, which, if we admit it to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceive that the public faith is pledged to the present system, and that to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been spent in encouragmg the study of Arabic and Sanscrit, would be down-right spoliation. It is not easy to understand by what process of reasoning they can have arrived at this conclusion. The grants which are made from the public purse for the encouragement of literature differed in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility. We found a sanatarium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy. Do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanatarium there, if the result should not answer our expectation? We commence the erection of a pier. Is it a violation of the public faith to stop the works, if we afterwards see reason to believe that the building will be useless? The rights of property are undoubtedly sacred. But nothing endangers those rights so much as the practice, now unhappily too common, of attributing them to things to which they do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of property the unpopularity and the fragility of abuses. If the Government has given to any person a formal assurance; nay, if the Government has exdted in any person's mind a reasonable expectation that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher or a learner of Sanscrit or Arabic, I would respect that person's pecuniary interests--I would rather err on the side of liberality to individuals than suffer the public faith to be called in question. But to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning...
"...All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India, contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them.
'What then shall that language be? One-half of the Committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be, which language is the best worth knowing?
"I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.--But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education.
"It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any Orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded, and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same.
"How, then, stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language...
"...there is yet another argument which seems even more untenable. It is said that the Sanscrit and Arabic are the languages in which the sacred books of a hundred millions of people are written, and that they are, on that account, entitled to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the duty of the British Government in India to be not only tolerant, but neutral on all religious questions. But to encourage the study of a literature admitted to be of small intrinsic value, only because that literature incuIcates the most serious errors on the most important subjects, is a course hardly reconcileable with reason, with morality, or even with that very neutrality which ought, as we all agree, to be sacredly pre- served. It is confessed that a language is barren of useful know- ledge. We are to teach it because it is fruittul of monstrous superstitions. We are to teach false History, false Astronomy, false Medicine, because we find them in company with a false religion. We abstain, and I trust shall always abstain, from giving any public encouragement to those who are engaged in the work of converting natives to Christianity. And while we act thus, can we reasonably and decently bribe men out of the revenues of the state to waste their youth in learning how they are to purify themselves after touching an ***, or what text of the Vedas they are to repeat to expiate the crime of killing a goat?...
"... We know that foreigners of all nations do learn our language sufficiently to have access to all the most abstruse knowledge which it contains, sufficiently to relish even the more delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers...
"...it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population...
"...I would strike at the root of the bad system which has hitherto been fostered by us. I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books, I would abolish the Madrassa and the Sanscrit college at Calcutta. Benares is the great seat of Brahmanical learning; Delhi, of Arabic learning. If we retain the Sanscrit college at Benares and the Mahometan college at Delhi, we do enough...
"...I believe that the present system tends, not to accelerate the progress of truth, but to delay the natural death of expiring errors. I conceive that we have at present no right to the respectable name of a Board of Public Instruction. We are a Board for wasting public money, for printing books which are of less value than the paper on which they are printed was while it was blank; for giving artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, absurd theology; for raising up a breed of scholars who find their scholarship an encumbrance and a blemish, who live on the public while they are receiving their education, and whose education is so utterly useless to them that when they have received it they must either starve or live on the public all the rest of their lives. Entertaining these opinions, I am naturally desirous to decline all share in the responsibility of a body, which unless it alters its whole mode of proceeding, I must consider not merely as useless, but as positively noxious. "
I suppose the OP "quote" is a sensationalized summary of the report - one that does Macaulay little justice.
Don't you think this Minute has great relevance to the Pakistan of today?
However, Macaulay did publish his Minute on Indian Education in February, 1835:
"...admirers of the Oriental system of education have used another argument, which, if we admit it to be valid, is decisive against all change. They conceive that the public faith is pledged to the present system, and that to alter the appropriation of any of the funds which have hitherto been spent in encouragmg the study of Arabic and Sanscrit, would be down-right spoliation. It is not easy to understand by what process of reasoning they can have arrived at this conclusion. The grants which are made from the public purse for the encouragement of literature differed in no respect from the grants which are made from the same purse for other objects of real or supposed utility. We found a sanatarium on a spot which we suppose to be healthy. Do we thereby pledge ourselves to keep a sanatarium there, if the result should not answer our expectation? We commence the erection of a pier. Is it a violation of the public faith to stop the works, if we afterwards see reason to believe that the building will be useless? The rights of property are undoubtedly sacred. But nothing endangers those rights so much as the practice, now unhappily too common, of attributing them to things to which they do not belong. Those who would impart to abuses the sanctity of property are in truth imparting to the institution of property the unpopularity and the fragility of abuses. If the Government has given to any person a formal assurance; nay, if the Government has exdted in any person's mind a reasonable expectation that he shall receive a certain income as a teacher or a learner of Sanscrit or Arabic, I would respect that person's pecuniary interests--I would rather err on the side of liberality to individuals than suffer the public faith to be called in question. But to talk of a Government pledging itself to teach certain languages and certain sciences, though those languages may become useless, though those sciences may be exploded, seems to me quite unmeaning...
"...All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India, contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides, that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular amongst them.
'What then shall that language be? One-half of the Committee maintain that it should be the English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic and Sanscrit. The whole question seems to me to be, which language is the best worth knowing?
"I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.--But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is, indeed, fully admitted by those members of the Committee who support the Oriental plan of education.
"It will hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the Eastern writers stand highest is poetry. And I certainly never met with any Orientalist who ventured to maintain that the Arabic and Sanscrit poetry could be compared to that of the great European nations. But when we pass from works of imagination to works in which facts are recorded, and general principles investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable. It is, I believe, no exaggeration to say, that all the historical information which has been collected from all the books written in the Sanscrit language is less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridgments used at preparatory schools in England. In every branch of physical or moral philosophy, the relative position of the two nations is nearly the same.
"How, then, stands the case? We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue. We must teach them some foreign language...
"...there is yet another argument which seems even more untenable. It is said that the Sanscrit and Arabic are the languages in which the sacred books of a hundred millions of people are written, and that they are, on that account, entitled to peculiar encouragement. Assuredly it is the duty of the British Government in India to be not only tolerant, but neutral on all religious questions. But to encourage the study of a literature admitted to be of small intrinsic value, only because that literature incuIcates the most serious errors on the most important subjects, is a course hardly reconcileable with reason, with morality, or even with that very neutrality which ought, as we all agree, to be sacredly pre- served. It is confessed that a language is barren of useful know- ledge. We are to teach it because it is fruittul of monstrous superstitions. We are to teach false History, false Astronomy, false Medicine, because we find them in company with a false religion. We abstain, and I trust shall always abstain, from giving any public encouragement to those who are engaged in the work of converting natives to Christianity. And while we act thus, can we reasonably and decently bribe men out of the revenues of the state to waste their youth in learning how they are to purify themselves after touching an ***, or what text of the Vedas they are to repeat to expiate the crime of killing a goat?...
"... We know that foreigners of all nations do learn our language sufficiently to have access to all the most abstruse knowledge which it contains, sufficiently to relish even the more delicate graces of our most idiomatic writers...
"...it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population...
"...I would strike at the root of the bad system which has hitherto been fostered by us. I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books, I would abolish the Madrassa and the Sanscrit college at Calcutta. Benares is the great seat of Brahmanical learning; Delhi, of Arabic learning. If we retain the Sanscrit college at Benares and the Mahometan college at Delhi, we do enough...
"...I believe that the present system tends, not to accelerate the progress of truth, but to delay the natural death of expiring errors. I conceive that we have at present no right to the respectable name of a Board of Public Instruction. We are a Board for wasting public money, for printing books which are of less value than the paper on which they are printed was while it was blank; for giving artificial encouragement to absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, absurd theology; for raising up a breed of scholars who find their scholarship an encumbrance and a blemish, who live on the public while they are receiving their education, and whose education is so utterly useless to them that when they have received it they must either starve or live on the public all the rest of their lives. Entertaining these opinions, I am naturally desirous to decline all share in the responsibility of a body, which unless it alters its whole mode of proceeding, I must consider not merely as useless, but as positively noxious. "
I suppose the OP "quote" is a sensationalized summary of the report - one that does Macaulay little justice.
Don't you think this Minute has great relevance to the Pakistan of today?
Albatross
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“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
― Edward L. Bernays
This is again for brainwashed likes of yours who feel they belong to world's oldest democracy and are part of a very just and balanced system though in reality you guys are being manipulated and ruled by less than a dozen invisible beings. But your ego wont let you admit it so therefore its useless to teach someone like you whoz continuously wearing that ALL KNOWING avatar.
We are getting off topic .
Why dont you enlighten us about the great role brits played in developing subcontinent while shedding light on subjects like the way they 1) Spread equality among all inhabitants.
2) Tried their best to not cause any bloodshed.
3) Educated all without any preferences.
4)Spent all the money they earned from subcontinent only on the well being of its inhabitants.
5) were never involved in any conspiracy to over throw the rulers at that time.
6)never violated the rules they accepted while attempting to obtain a license for a small trading company.
Its a long list MR ALL KNOWING but if you answer these six it will set the ground for an interesting debate.
Solomon2
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I know who Bernays was. He worked in advertising, mostly for tobacco and fruit companies, and was very successful and both marketing products to consumers and steering government policies to benefit his clients. He was a master of persuasion, but never engaged in coercion - which is the essential difference between marketing and brainwashing or mind control.
That ego can block someone from learning is indeed a great danger. I try to be sensitive to it. How about you?
That's what I'm doing, isn't it? But if you want me around more, you're going to have to have an attitude adjustment - starting with greater politeness.
Developereo
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In a totalitarian system, the government controls the media and the masses.
In a democratic system, the media (moguls) control the government and the masses.
The reality is that Athenian democracy simply does not scale up beyond a certain point so, while people do have some control over local affairs, the national dialog is essentially controlled by the media moguls.
To paraphrase Marx, "the illusion of control is the opium of the democratic masses".
Albatross
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He started with "“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society." As you admitted he was a successful career guy who knew how things worked in DC and this is what he had to say .As for as the persuasion or coercion is concerned its all how you see a particular thing.
When Bush convinced the whole world that Iraq had WMD's which if not destroyed would endanger world peace that would be called persuasion in your dictionary but to me that was coercion and time proved I was right .
"I am not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde
Therefore I like to learn from kids like you so go ahead I dont have a thing called ego but my problem is I cant tolerate Bullshit and hypocrisy for long anyways you go ahead and discuss those six points I mentioned in my earlier post and I will try to be KIND with you .
American_Millenium
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Our ancestors had nothing called Aryan or Dravidian races, you are telling us the same colonial bullshit of Aryan-Dravidian divide.Tell us about ancient Indian book where there is mention of Aryan and Dravidian as a race.
Your ancestors are not historians or archaeologists or geneticists or anthropologists or linguists . Your ancestors are irrelevant to the discussion.
Solomon2
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I try not to abuse the English language by equating "persuasion" with "brainwashing".
If you have a problem then you have an ego. Otherwise you wouldn't care enough to consider a situation a problem, right? You'd just roll over and accept it.
That said, you might reflect upon how an ego can be employed. It can be your attitude of, "I'm right, so there!" Another approach is, "My methods are right, so there!" And there is another approach I can think of, "There isn't any better way than such-and-such because the facts aren't available."
I can think of two problems people have who are reared in an educational system that values rote learning over reasoning are (1) they are vulnerable to educators who instill false facts and (2) they have trouble accepting that facts they didn't learn the first time are most relevant.
INDIC
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bornmoron
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May be fake,,,,but TRUE !!!
American_Millenium
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Same with you, comrade.
I'm referring to how your ancestors are irrelevant to the discussion. Telling me that it's the same for my ancestors doesn't change the fact that historians, archaeologists, geneticists, anthropologists, linguists all agree with me.
What is the relevance of referring to my ancestors? LOL
INDIC
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I have read my ancient books, there is the mention of the word Arya and Dravida in them many times but nowhere they are mentioned as a race. The so called Aryan invasion theory comes with many fake stuffs and I can point them out but your intellect is not of that level to comprehend it. Now, we even have genetic studies which proves the so called Aryan and Dravidian have a common ancestry and we also know what existed between Indus Valley civilization and Vedic culture .
faithfulguy
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I have read my ancient books, there is the mention of the word Arya and Dravida in them many times but nowhere they are mentioned as a race. The so called Aryan invasion theory comes with many fake stuffs and I can point them out but your intellect is not of that level to comprehend it. Now, we even have genetic studies which proves the so called Aryan and Dravidian have a common ancestry and we also know what existed between Indus Valley civilization and Vedic culture .
The point is that Aryan invasion is still the most viable possibility.
INDIC
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Who knows if it was an invasion on migration since archaeologist couldn't find any proof of war of so called Aryan invasion and so called subjugation of Dravidians. some European historian found a grave mount in Harappa and faked it as a dravidian killed by Aryan invaders but later proved that was a graveyard with bodies belonging to different point of history.
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