DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9551#0335
A LETTER ON ENGLISH
EDUCATION.*
To his Excellency the Right Honorable Lord
Amherst, Governor General in Council.
My Lord,
Humbly reluctant as the natives of India are to obtrude
upon the notice of Government the sentiments they
entertain on any public measure, there are circumstances
when silence would be carrying this respectful feeling
to culpable excess. The present rulers of India, coming
from a distance of many thousand miles to govern a
people whose language, literature, manners, customs, and
ideas, are almost entirely new and strange to them,
cannot easily become so intimately acquainted with their
real circumstances as the natives of the country are them-
* It is well known that among those persons who laboured for
the spread of English Education in this country Raja Ram
Mohan Roy was one of the foremost. The old Hindu College
owed its origin to the exertions of Sir Edward Hyde East, David
Hare, and Ram Mohun Roy. After the establishment of the
Hindu College there began the celebrated controversy between
the ' Orientalists,' i. e. persons who were for the encouragement
of the study of the oriental languages and against the introduc-
tion of English Education, and the ' Anglicists,' i. e. the
.advocates of English Education, of whom Ram Mohun Roy was
one of the most prominent. This controversy raged for some 12
years or more till it was ended by the Resolution of Lord
William Bentinck, of the 7th May 1835. It was at the first stage
of this controversy, when the Orientalists had induced the
Government to sanction the establishment of a Sanscrit College,
that the above letter was written, the object of it being to
protest against the proposed measure. It was owing perhaps to
this agitation that the foundation stone of the building, intended
for the Sanscrit College, was laid in the name of the Hindu
College (February 1824,) and the Hindu College was located there
together with the Sanscrit College.—Ed.
EDUCATION.*
To his Excellency the Right Honorable Lord
Amherst, Governor General in Council.
My Lord,
Humbly reluctant as the natives of India are to obtrude
upon the notice of Government the sentiments they
entertain on any public measure, there are circumstances
when silence would be carrying this respectful feeling
to culpable excess. The present rulers of India, coming
from a distance of many thousand miles to govern a
people whose language, literature, manners, customs, and
ideas, are almost entirely new and strange to them,
cannot easily become so intimately acquainted with their
real circumstances as the natives of the country are them-
* It is well known that among those persons who laboured for
the spread of English Education in this country Raja Ram
Mohan Roy was one of the foremost. The old Hindu College
owed its origin to the exertions of Sir Edward Hyde East, David
Hare, and Ram Mohun Roy. After the establishment of the
Hindu College there began the celebrated controversy between
the ' Orientalists,' i. e. persons who were for the encouragement
of the study of the oriental languages and against the introduc-
tion of English Education, and the ' Anglicists,' i. e. the
.advocates of English Education, of whom Ram Mohun Roy was
one of the most prominent. This controversy raged for some 12
years or more till it was ended by the Resolution of Lord
William Bentinck, of the 7th May 1835. It was at the first stage
of this controversy, when the Orientalists had induced the
Government to sanction the establishment of a Sanscrit College,
that the above letter was written, the object of it being to
protest against the proposed measure. It was owing perhaps to
this agitation that the foundation stone of the building, intended
for the Sanscrit College, was laid in the name of the Hindu
College (February 1824,) and the Hindu College was located there
together with the Sanscrit College.—Ed.