द ब्यूटीफुल ट्री: १८वीं सदी में भारत की स्वदेशी गुरुकुल शिक्षा (धर्मपाल)

they are important in the context of India rather than as outstanding individuals), the manners, customs and civilisation of India were intrinsically barbarous. And to each of them, India could become civilised only by discarding its Indianness, and by adopting ‘utility as the object of every pursuit’⁹³ according to Mill; by embracing his peculiar brand of Christianity for Wilberforce; by becoming anglicised, according to Macaulay; and for Marx by becoming western. Prior to them, for Henry Dundas, the man who governed India from London for twenty long years, Indians not only had to become subservient to British authority but also had to feel ‘indebted to our beneficence and wisdom for advantages they are to receive’; and, in like manner, ‘feel solely indebted to our protection for the countenance and enjoyment of them’⁹⁴ before they could even qualify for being considered as civilised. Given such complete agreement on the nature of Indian culture and institutions, it was inevitable that because of its crucial social and cultural role, Indian education fared as it did. To speed up its demise, it not only had to be ridiculed and despised, but steps also had to be taken so that it was starved out of its resource base. True, as far as the known record can tell, no direct dismantling or shutting up of each and every institution was resorted to, or any other more drastic physical measures taken to achieve this demise. Such steps were unnecessary; the reason being that the fiscal steps together with ridicule, performed the task far more effectively. An official indication of what was to come was conveyed by London to the Madras Presidency when it acknowledged receipt of the information that a survey of indigenous education had been initiated there, much before the papers of the survey were actually sent to London. The London authorities expressed their appreciation of this initiative. They also approved of the collectors having been cautioned against ‘exciting any fears in the people that their freedom of choice in matters of education would be interfered with.’ However, this approval was followed by the observation: ‘But it would be equally wrong to do anything to fortify them (i.e. the people of the Madras Presidency) in the absurd opinion that their own rude institutions of education are so perfect as not to admit of improvement.’ The very expression of such a view in the most diplomatically and cautiously worded of official instructions was a clear signal. Operatively, it implied 85