The East IndiaCompany was formed in 1599 at a meeting attended by leading London merchants and after more than 150years the company had the key to the domination of Bengaland Indiagenerally. The battle of Plassey was fought in 1757 but Clive declined theresponsibility of Diwani or revenue administration and it was in 1722 that theEast India Company took it over and still later in 1790, the responsibility foradministering criminal justice. The Company was, however, interested in politicaldomination only to the extent such domination increased its own dividends. Itwas directly interested neither in Empire nor in the Kingdom of Christ– and certainly not in the suppression or advancement of indigenous culture. Butthere were exceptions as well. Warren Hastings established the CalcuttaMadrasah in 1781, Sir William Jones established the Royal Asiatic Society ofBengal in 1784 and Sir Thomas Munro too was much impressed by the Indianculture. These men came to be called ‘Brahmanised Britons’ because they admiredIndian culture and deprecated the idea of introducing Western civilization orChristianity into India. By the beginning of the 19thcentury, Britain– or East India Company – was more or less the master of the situation in India. In 1813the commercial monopoly of the Company was ended, and the British in India assumed,beside police functions, educating and civilizing mission as well. A tokengrant of Rupees one lakh per year was made for education and the idea was topromote only Oriental education. Printing presses in different parts of thecountry and books in the vernacular as well as in English were coming out sincethe beginning of the 18th century. Along with grammars, dictionariesand translations, the printing presses also gave rise to the first evernewspaper – Hicky’s Bengal Gazette (1780), and others followed in due course.Last came the private schools that imparted English education – such schoolshave been started as early as 1717 at Cuddalore near Chennai. 1718 at Mumbai(by Richard Cobbe, a chaplain), and 1720 at Kolkata, endowed by theThomlinsons, culminating in the established of Hindu Collegein 1817. Started by Raja Ram Mohan Roy and his friends – David Hare and SirEdward Hyde East, it became the Presidency College in 1855, stillrecognized as one off the premier educational institutes. Western education wasspreading fast in different parts of India and was doing much betterthan the institutions imparting oriental education. The Orientalists and theAnglicists continued to wrangle but it was quite evident that the former weresteadily losing ground, and Macaulay’scelebrated Minute settled the issue at last. He declared that it was bothnecessary and possible to “make the natives of this country good Englishscholars and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed.” On 7thMarch, 1835, Lord William Bentinck resolved that “the great object of theBritish Government ought to be the promotion of European Literature and scienceamong the natives of India, and all funds appropriated for the purpose ofeducation would be best employed on English education alone.” From 1835 was theAnglicizing period. During the 20 years between 1835 to1855 thenumber of those educated in English had been rapidly increasing. It is saidthat even in 1834-5, 32,000 English books sold in India, as against 13,000 in nativeIndian languages. The vogue for English books increased, and the demand camemore from English educated Indians than from the Englishmen in India. Westernways – in manners and customs- became current in bigger towns and cities. In1853 the first railway was established in India, in 1854 the first telegraphline and a modern postal system were inaugurated. Distance was being abridgedand a common medium of communication was being established. Modern Europeanscientific techniques (including medicine and surgery) were slowly beingintroduced in India.It was thus thought that Indiawas eventually progressing from its static and secure medievalism to a dynamicmodernism. Indians started with reading, speaking andcomprehending English, and they soon started writing also. Once this started,Indian writing in English had to range from the most utilitarian prose to themost ambitious verse-epics, for example. On the other hand, Indian writing inEnglish was but only one of the manifestations of the new creative urge in India – what is often referred to as theliterary Renaissance in India.The study of English literature stimulated literary creation in Bengali,Marathi, Telegu, Gujrati and other Indian languages. And Indo-Anglianliterature had the same origin as the other modern literature in India,though here the foreign element seemed more pronounced. The filiations betweenthe modern Indian literatures (including Indian English Literature) and Englishliterature have been close. |
