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The Ideal of Utility in British Indian Policy: Tropes of the Colonial Chrestomathic University, 1835–1904

2014; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 37; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00856401.2014.887965

1479-0270

Ali Qadir,

African cultural and philosophical studies

AbstractThe now natural ideal of defining higher education through its societal utility is a relatively recent historical formation, and in the case of South Asia, its construction is entangled with the colonial history of the institutionalisation of modern higher education in the nineteenth century. Drawing on Robert Young's history of the Bentham-inspired ‘chrestomathic’ University of London, this article reviews the shifting construction of practicality in British Indian higher education policy in the formative period between 1835 and 1904. The article underlines the continuities and ruptures over time in the policy rhetoric of utility as a normative ideal and points out some implications for understanding colonialism.Keywords: utilitarianismuniversityhigher education policyBritish colonialismSouth Asianineteenth centuryconstructionism Notes1 This is a common view in higher education, as in most sectors, including in South Asia. It follows from a Parsonian ‘modernisation’ perspective that presumes predetermined development pathways based on largely a-cultural, ‘universal laws’ of societal transformation. See, for instance, discussions by Pertti Alasuutari, ‘Modernization as a Tacit Concept Used in Governance’, in Journal of Political Power, Vol. 4, no. 2 (2011), pp. 217–35; and Charles Taylor, ‘Two Theories of Modernity’, in Public Culture, Vol. 11, no. 1 (1999), pp. 153–74. This perspective is evident in recent South Asian higher education policy reforms, where we see them being justified by reference to ‘advanced’ economies or by comparing a particular nation's ‘level’ with that of global best performers or regional averages.2 Robert J.C. Young, ‘The Idea of a Chrestomathic University’, in Robert J.C. Young, Torn Halves: Political Conflict in Literary and Cultural Theory (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), pp. 184–221. Also see Craig Calhoun, ‘The University and Public Good’, in Thesis Eleven, Vol. 84, no. 7 (2006), pp. 7–43; and Gerard Delanty, ‘The Sociology of the University and Higher Education: The Consequences of Globalization’, in C. Calhoun, C. Rojek and B. Turner (eds), The Sage Handbook of Sociology (London: Sage, 2005), pp. 530–45. For a critique of utilitarianism in the post-modern university, see Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).3 Young, ‘The Idea of a Chrestomathic University’.4 Ibid., p. 304.5 Nancy L. Adams and Dennis M. Adams, ‘An Examination of Some Forces Affecting English Educational Policies in India: 1780–1850’, in History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 11, no. 2 (1971), pp. 157–73; L. Zastoupil and M. Moir (eds), The Great Indian Education Debate: Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1780–1840 (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1999); and Ali Qadir, ‘Good Subjects: Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, English and the Punjab University’, in Pakistan Journal of History and Culture, Vol. XXX, no. 2 (2009), pp. 43–66.6 Ali Qadir, ‘Between Secularism/s: Islam and the Institutionalisation of Modern Higher Education in Mid-Nineteenth Century British India’, in British Journal of Religious Education, Vol. 35, no. 2 (2013), pp. 125–39.7 I am grateful to one of the reviewers for pointing out that the most comprehensive review of English utilitarian influence in colonial administration is Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1959), although it has little mention of higher education. For a brief comment on the importance of utilitarians in British Indian school educational policy, see Elmer H. Cutts, ‘The Background of Macaulay's Minute’, in The American Historical Review, Vol. 58, no. 4 (1953), pp. 824–53; and Percival Spear, ‘Bentinck and Education’, in Cambridge Historical Journal, Vol. 6, no. 1 (1938), pp. 78–101. These are discussed further below.8 Spear, ‘Bentinck and Education’, p. 78.9 Henry R. James, Education and Statesmanship in India 1797–1910 (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1911), p. 37.10 This was followed by another Resolution in 1913, but it was largely a repetition of the earlier policy for the purpose of this analysis.11 K.N. Pannikar, Culture, Ideology, Hegemony: Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India (London: Athens Press, 2002).12 Young, ‘The Idea of a Chrestomathic University’, p. 299.13 Sydney Smith, ‘Review of Edgeworth's Professional Education’, in Edinburgh Review, Vol. 29 (Oct. 1809), p. 46.14 Young, ‘The Idea of a Chrestomathic University’, p. 299.15 Samuel T. Coleridge, ‘Speech to Parliament, 1829’, quoted in ibid., pp. 317–18 (emphasis original).16 Edward Copleston, A Reply to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review Against Oxford Containing an Account of Studies Pursued in that University (Oxford: J. Cooke, J. Parker, J. Mackinlay, 1810), p. 112.17 Jeremy Bentham, Chrestomathia, Being a Collection of Papers Explanatory of the Design of an Institution, Proposed to be Set on Foot under the Name of the Chrestomathic Day School, or Chrestomathic School, for the Extension of the New System of Instruction to the Higher Branches of Learning. For the Use of the Middling and Higher Ranks in Life of 1816 (London: Payne and Foss, 1815).18 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (London: Parker, Son and Bourn, 1863), p. 13.19 James W. Bailey, Utilitarianism, Institutions and Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Geoffrey F. Scarre, Utilitarianism (London: Routledge, 1996); and William H. Shaw, Contemporary Ethics: Taking Account of Utilitarianism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).20 Young, ‘The Idea of a Chrestomathic University’. See also Gerard Delanty, ‘The Idea of the University in the Global Era: From Knowledge as an End to the End of Knowledge?’, in Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy, Vol. 12, no. 1 (1998), pp. 3–25; and G. Delanty, ‘The University and Modernity: A History of the Present’, in Kevin Robins and Frank Webster (eds), The Virtual University? Knowledge, Markets and Management (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 31–48.21 Space prevents a review here of the much-discussed debate around the medium of education in British Indian education policy. For more on that discussion, see, for example, Stephen Evans, ‘Macaulay's Minute Revisited’, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Vol. 23, no. 4 (2002), pp. 260–81; and Zastoupil and Moir, The Great Indian Education Debate. For an analysis of how this debate relates to the establishment of the vernacular-language Punjab University in Lahore, see Qadir, ‘Good Subjects’.22 Spear, ‘Bentinck and Education’, p. 84.23 Henry Sharp (ed.), Selections from Education Records, Part I: 1781–1839 (Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1920), p. 116.24 Cutts, ‘The Background of Macaulay's Minute’, p. 824. The Minute is reproduced in Sharp (ed.) Selections from Education Records, pp. 107–17. It is considered emblematic of the ‘oppressive’ British educational policy in India. However, it has rarely been contextualised against the backdrop of the utilitarian movement then current in England, of which Macaulay was a part through his connection with the Clapham Group and, specifically, his father's friend, Charles Grant. See Cutts, ‘The Background of Macaulay's Minute’, p. 831.25 Ibid., p. 833.26 Spear, ‘Bentinck and Education’, p. 78.27 Sharp, Selections from Education Records, p. 108.28 Ibid., p. 110 (emphasis added).29 Ibid., p. 116.30 Evans, ‘Macaulay's Minute Revisited’, p. 269. ‘Macaulay by his eloquence and wealth of superlatives has often been made solely responsible for cutting off Indian education from the roots of national life. Let it be remembered here that he was not the prime mover, that his intervention was late and that the forces which he represented would probably have been successful without his singularly tactless and blundering championship’. Arthur Mayhew, The Education of India: A Study of British Educational Policy in India, 1835–1920, and of Its Bearing on National Life and Problems in India Today (London: Faber and Gwyer, 1926), pp. 12–3.31 Sharp, Selections from Education Records, p. 115.32 Ibid., pp. 110–1.33 Shanti S. Tangri, ‘Intellectuals and Society in 19th Century India’, in Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 3, no. 4 (1961), pp. 368–94.34 For a fascinating figure, see S. Cromwell Crawford, Ram Mohan Roy: Social, Political, and Religious Reform in 19th Century India (New York: Paragon House, 1987).35 R.J. Moore, ‘The Composition of Wood's Education Despatch’, in The English Historical Review, Vol. 80, no. 314 (1965), pp. 70–85.36 Cutts, ‘The Background of Macaulay's Minute’, pp. 824–5.37 Ibid., p. 825.38 Evans, ‘Macaulay's Minute Revisited’, p. 264.39 ‘Despatch from the Court of Directors of the East India Company to the Governor General of India in Council, No. 49, 19 July 1854’, in H. Sharp and J.A. Richey (eds), Selections from the Educational Records of the Government of India (Calcutta: Government Printing Press of India, 1922), pp. 364–93.40 Suresh Chandra Ghosh, The History of Education in Modern India 1757–1998 (Himayatnagar, Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2000), p. 74. See also Mayhew, The Education of India; Moore, ‘The Composition of Wood's Education Despatch’; and Hamiuddin Khan, History of Muslim Education (1751–1854) (Karachi: Academy of Educational Research, 1973).41 James, Education and Statesmanship in India, p. 37.42 Spear, ‘Bentinck and Education’, p. 91.43 Sharp and Richey, ‘Despatch’, p. 364.44 Moore, ‘The Composition of Wood's Education Despatch’, p. 80.45 Ghosh, The History of Education in Modern India, pp. 81–2.46 Tangri, ‘Intellectuals and Society in 19th Century India’, p. 86 (emphasis added).47 Robert Eric Frykenberg, ‘Modern Education in South India, 1784–1854’, in The American Historical Review, Vol. 91, no. 1 (1986), pp. 37–65.48 Alexander John Arbuthnot, Papers Relating to Instruction in Madras Presidency (Madras, 1855), p. 47.49 ‘The Opening of the Madras University’, Annual Reports of the Madras University (Madras, 1842), cited in Frykenberg, ‘Modern Education in South India’, p. 55.50 Tweeddale to Lord Fitzgerald, February 23 1843, Tweeddale Collection, Eur. MSS. F/96, Home Private Letter Book, pp. 84–7, IOR.51 Frykenberg, ‘Modern Education in South India’, p. 58.52 Government of India, ‘Indian Educational Policy, Being a Resolution Issued by the Governor General in Council on the 11th March’ (Calcutta: Government Printing, India, 1904).53 Ibid., pp. 33–41.54 Ibid., pp. 50–1.55 Ibid., p. 7.56 Ibid., p. 19.57 Ibid., p. 3.58 Evans, ‘Macaulay's Minute Revisited’, p. 277. See also Tangri, ‘Intellectuals and Society in 19th Century India’, p. 369; Bruce Tiebout McCully, English Education and the Origins of Indian Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940); and David O. Allen, ‘State and Prospects of the English Language in India’, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 4 (1854), pp. 265–75.59 Harald Fischer-Tiné and Michael Mann (eds), Colonialism as Civilizing Mission (London: Wimbledon Publishing Company, 2004).60 See Khan, History of Muslim Education; G.W. Leitner, History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab: Since Annexation and in 1882 (Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications, [1883] 2002); and Qazi Muhammad Barkatullah, Education during Middle Ages under the Muslims (Los Angeles, CA: Crescent Publications, 1974). Relevant information can also be derived from accounts of Islamic education in the Middle East, notably by Charles Michael Stanton, Higher Learning in Islam: The Classical Period 700–1300 AD (Savage, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990); and Ahmad Shalaby, History of Muslim Education (Karachi: Indus Publications, 1979).61 I am grateful to one of the reviewers for pointing out this second example.62 Higher Education Commission, Annual Report 2007–08 (Islamabad: Government of Pakistan, 2009).63 TFIHE, Challenges and Opportunities: Report of the Task Force on Improvement in Higher Education in Pakistan (Islamabad: Ministry of Education, Government of Pakistan, 2002), p. 1. For contestations of the ‘myth’ of the knowledge-based economy as a naturalised ‘set of assumptions and cultural claims’, see John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, David J. Frank and Evan Schofer, ‘Higher Education as an Institution’, in P.J. Gumport (ed.), Sociology of Higher Education: Contributions and Their Contexts (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), p. 200.