Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, K.C.B. was the brother-in-law of Macaulay. In 1853 he had submitted a paper to the British Parliamentary Committee on Indian territories. This paper was titled, “The political tendency of the different systems of education in use in India.” Reading this paper in independent India of 2018 impresses one on the farsightedness of the then British intellectuals. This document reads thus:
A nation which made so great a sacrifice to redeem a few hundred thousand Negroes from slavery,* would shudder at the idea of keeping a hundred millions of Indians in the bondage of ignorance, with all its frightful consequences, by means of a political system supported by the revenue taken from the Indians themselves. Whether we govern India ten or a thousand years, we will do our duty by it, we will look, not to the probable duration of our trust, but to the satisfactory discharge of it, so long as it shall please God to continue it to us.
Happily, however, we are not on this occasion called upon to make any effort of disinterested magnanimity. Interest and duty are never really separated in the affairs of nations, any more than they are in those of individuals; and in this case they are indissolubly united, as a very slight examination will suffice to show.
The Arabian or Mahomedan system is based on the exercise of power and the indulgence of passion. Pride, ambition, the love of rule, and of sensual enjoyment, are called in to the aid of religion. The earth is the inheritance of the Faithful; all besides are infidel usurpers, with whom no measures are to be kept, except what policy may require. Universal dominion belongs to the Mahomedans by Divine right. Their religion obliges them to establish their predominance by the sword; and those who refuse to conform are to be kept in a state of slavish subjection.
The Hindoo system, although less fierce and aggressive than the Mahomedan, is still more exclusive : all who are not Hindoos are impure outcasts, fit only for the most degraded employments; and, of course, utterly disqualified for the duties of Government, which are reserved for the military, under the guidance of the priestly caste.
Such is the political tendency of the Arabic and Sanskrit systems of learning. Happily for us, these principles exist in their full force only in books written in difficult languages, and in the minds of a few learned men; and they are very faintly reflected in the feelings and opinions of the body of the people.
But what will be thought of that plan of national education which would revive them and make them popular; would be perpetually reminding the Mahomedans that we are infidel usurpers of some of the fairest realms of the Faithful, and the Hindus, that we are unclean beasts, with whom it is a sin and a shame to have any friendly intercourse. Our bitterest enemies could not desire more than that we should propagate systems of learning which excite the strongest feelings of human nature against ourselves.
The spirit of English literature, on the other hand, cannot but be favourable to the English connection. Familiarly acquainted with us by means of our literature, the Indian youth almost cease to regard us as foreigners. They speak of our great men with the same enthusiasm as we do. Educated in the same way, interested in the same objects, engaged in the same pursuits with ourselves, they become more English than Hindus, just as the Roman provincials became more Romans than Gauls or Italians.
What is it that makes us what we are, except living and conversing with English people, and imbibing English thoughts and habits of mind? They do so too: they daily converse with the best and wisest Englishmen through the medium of their works; and form, perhaps, a higher idea of our nation than if their intercourse with it were of a more personal kind.
Admitted behind the scenes, they become acquainted with the principles which guide our proceedings; they see how sincerely we study the benefit of India in the measures of our administration; and from violent opponents, or sullen conformists, they are converted into zealous and intelligent co-operators with us. They learn to make a proper use of the freedom of discussion which exists under our government, by observing how we use it ourselves; and they cease to think of violent remedies, because they are convinced that there is no indisposition on our part to satisfy every real want of the country.
Dishonest and bad rulers alone derive any advantage from the ignorance of their subjects.
As long as we study the benefit of India in our measures, the confidence and affection of the people will increase in proportion to their knowledge of us. But this is not all. There is a principle in human nature which impels all mankind to aim at improving their condition; every individual has his plan of happiness; every community has its ideas of securing the national honour and prosperity. This powerful and universal principle, in some shape or other, is in a state of constant activity; and if it be not enlisted on our side, it must be arrayed against us.
As long as the natives are left to brood over their former independence, their sole specific for improving their condition is, the immediate and total expulsion of the English.
A native patriot of the old school has no notion of anything beyond this; (Note: an intellectual challenge to India of 2018!) his attention has never been called to any other mode of restoring the dignity and prosperity of his country.
It is only by the infusion of European ideas that a new direction can be given to the national views. The young men, brought up at our seminaries, turn with contempt from the barbarous despotism under which their ancestors groaned, to the prospect of improving their national institutions on the English model.
So far from having the idea of driving the English into the sea uppermost in their minds, they have no notion of any improvement but such as rivets their connection with the English, and makes them dependent on English protection and instruction.
The existing connection between two such distant countries as England and India, cannot, in the nature of things, be permanent; no effort of policy can prevent the natives from ultimately regaining their independence.
But there are two ways of arriving at this point. One of these is, through the medium of revolution; the other, through that of reform. In one, the forward movement is sudden and violent, in the other, it is gradual and peaceable. One must end in a complete alienation of mind and separation of interest between ourselves and the natives; the other in a permanent alliance, founded on mutual benefit and good will.
The only means at our disposal for preventing the one and securing the other class of results is, to set the natives on a process of European improvement, to which they are already sufficiently inclined.
They will then cease to desire and aim at independence on the old Indian footing. A sudden change will then be impossible; and a long continuance of our present connection with India will even be assured to us. The natives will not rise against us, because we shall stoop to raise them; there will be no reaction, because there will be no pressure; the national activity will be fully and harmlessly employed in acquiring and diffusing European knowledge, and naturalizing European institutions.
The educated classes, knowing that the elevation of their country on these principles can only be worked out under our protection, will naturally cling to us. They even now do so. There is no class of our subjects to whom we are so thoroughly necessary as those whose opinions have been cast in the English mould; they are spoiled for a purely native regime; they have everything to fear from the premature establishment of a native government; their education would mark them out for persecution.
This class is at present a small minority, but it is continually receiving accessions from the youth who are brought up at the different English seminaries. It will in time become the majority; and it will then be necessary to modify the political institutions to suit the increased intelligence of the people, and their capacity for self-government.
In following this course we should be trying no new experiment. The Romans at once civilized the nations of Europe, and attached them to their rule by Romanizing them; or, in other words, by educating them in the Roman literature and arts, and teaching them to emulate their conquerors instead of opposing them. Acquisitions made by superiority in war, were consolidated by superiority in the arts of peace; and the remembrance of the original violence was lost in that of the benefits which resulted from it. The provincials of Italy, Spain, Africa and Gaul, having no ambition except to imitate the Romans, and to share their privileges with them, remained to the last faithful subjects of the Empire; and the union was at last dissolved, not by internal revolt, but by the shock of external violence, which involved conquerors and conquered in one common overthrow.
The Indians will, I hope, soon stand in the same position towards us in which we once stood towards the Romans.
Tacitus informs us, that it was the policy of Julius Agricola to instruct the sons of the leading men among the Britons in the literature and science of Rome and to give them a taste for the refinements of Roman civilization. We all know how well this plan answered. From being obstinate enemies, the Britons soon became attached and confiding friends; and they made more strenuous efforts to retain the Romans, than their ancestors had done to resist their invasion.
It will be a shame to us if, with our greatly superior advantages, we also do not make our premature departure be dreaded as a calamity. It must not be said in after ages, that ‘the groans of the Britons were elicited by the breaking up of the Roman Empire; and the groans of the Indians by the continued existence of the British.
These views were not worked out by reflection, but were forced on me by actual observation and experience. I passed some years in parts of India, where owing to the comparative novelty of our rule and to the absence of any attempt to alter the current of native feeling, the national habits of thinking remained unchanged. There high and low, rich and poor, had only one idea of improving their political condition. The upper classes lived upon the prospect of regaining their former preeminence; and the lower, upon that of having the avenues to wealth and distinction reopened to them by the re-establishment of a native government. Even sensible and comparatively well-affected natives had no notion that there was any remedy for the existing depressed state of their nation except the sudden and absolute expulsion of the English.
After that, I resided for some years in Bengal, and there I found quite another set of ideas prevalent among the educated natives. Instead of thinking of cutting the throats of the English, they were aspiring to sit with them on the grand jury or on the bench of magistrates.
(*It was not from any motive of philanthropy that England redeemed a few hundred thousand Negroes from slavery. In a leading article on the “Armenian Problem,” the London Times of Tuesday, September 8, 18%, wrote: “Foreigners disbelieve in the existence of the philanthropic ideas and feelings amongst us; they naturally believe that when we allege them as a ground of international action we are using them as a cloak to cover ulterior ends. Quite recently one of the greatest of modern German historians ascribed England’s zeal against the slave trade at the Congress of Verona to her commercial jealousy. England, says Von Treitschke, had her own colonies well supplied with Negroes. She protested against the slave-trade because she desired to deprive her rivals of a similar advantage.”)
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