On the Education of the People of India

A key Anglicist text in the educational debates of colonial India, arguing for a Western curriculum and English-language instruction.

Charles Edward Trevelyan (Author)

9781108276641, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 2 June 2011

234 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.4 cm, 0.3 kg

Charles Edward Trevelyan (1807–1886) published Education of the People of India in 1838. The work is a rigorous defence of the educational reforms that took place in colonial India during the 1830s, which led to a western-based curriculum replacing traditional Indian learning. The work is a response to the arguments of orientalists such as H. H. Wilson (1786–1860), recently retired from government office in India, but still advocating an orientalist educational policy. In this work Trevelyan puts forward his arguments for the moral and intellectual advantages of English as the principle language of instruction and defends the government's resolution of March 1835 that specified that Indians should be educated by the study of European literature, culture and science. It was one of the most influential Anglicist tracts of the Indian educational debates, and it gives valuable insight into the ideas behind what became standard government educational policy.

1. The measures first adopted for educating the natives
2. The study of foreign languages and literature a powerful instrument of national improvement
3. The violent opposition made by oriental scholars to the resolution of the 7th March 1835
4. Objections answered
5. Proofs that the time has arrived for taking up the question of national education
6. The establishment of a seminary at each Zillah station, a necessary preliminary to further operations
7. The political tendency of the different systems of education in use in India
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]