For greater than a century now, Bengalis have proudly quoted Gopal Krishna Gokhale as saying that “what Bengal thinks at this time, India will suppose tomorrow”. This line will be present in numerous essays and speeches, and none which have cited it, whether or not from Harvard or from Howrah, have cared to test with the supply. Apparently, it was sufficient for them that one other Bengali had mentioned that Gokhale had mentioned it. What Gokhale truly mentioned on the Indian Nationwide Congress assembly at Benares in 1905 was that “what educated Indians suppose at this time, the remainder of India thinks tomorrow”.
The convenience with which Bengalis imagine, and have satisfied others to imagine, that they’ve performed a novel position within the making of recent India, is symptomatic of a deeper downside. It’s extensively held, particularly by Bengalis, that modernity initially arrived in India below the auspices of the so-called Bengal Renaissance. That is the interval within the early nineteenth century when Bengali initiative and British assist led to the creation of English-medium faculties and schools that allowed the bhadralok to accumulate after which transmit to their compatriots the concepts and strategies prevalent in industrialising Europe.
There’s one downside with this story — it’s false. The primary college to supply natives “European studying” was based in Tanjore in 1784. The thought for a faculty originated with John Sullivan, the East India Firm’s Resident (or consultant) in Tanjore, who then obtained his getting older translator, Christian Fredrich Schwarz, a outstanding Prussian missionary, to handle it. However the land and preliminary funding for the varsity got here from Tuljaji Bhonsle, the Raja of Tanjore, who gifted the varsity an annual income of 500 pagodas (or about £200). Sullivan wished literate clerks and Schwarz wished converts. However what did Tuljaji, a realized patron of classical studying, need from the varsity? He, and his successor, Serfoji, wished their topics to accumulate the information — locked away in English-language books — that was serving to the British “terminate each occasion” of their favour. This ambition acquired specific significance after the Second-Anglo Maratha Struggle (1803-05) left the Firm in command of the Deccan. By 1806, a decade earlier than Calcutta started to stir, Serfoji had already arrange in Tanjore a public college system, capped by a school inside his palace, to be able to create a brand new Maratha elite fluent in English and conscious of the scientific strategies present in Europe.
Serfoji didn’t completely get his method. Alarmed by his ambition, the Firm scuttled his plans to revive the Maratha trigger. However the Firm couldn’t stop the English-speaking graduates of Tanjore’s faculties from being eagerly recruited by different kingdoms. Over the following half century, an important and efficient dewans in Southern and Western India, from Travancore and Mysore by way of to Baroda and Indore, originated from Tanjore. These ministers not solely argued with the English in English — in addition they helped their Maharajas make the most of emergent applied sciences. Thus, earlier than Thomas Macaulay had even arrived in India, Swati Tirunal, the Maharaja of Travancore, and his tutor and dewan, English Subba Rao, a graduate of Schwarz’s college in Tanjore, had already begun establishing faculties to show English, hospitals to dispense “European” drugs, and an observatory that aimed to be “second to none on this planet”. Travancore additionally surged forward in experimenting with “Western” music, in commissioning translations and printing literary works, and even in using Shakespeare. For example, the primary drama within the English language was composed not in Bengal, as is often claimed, however in Trivandrum in 1825. Written by English Subba Rao, the nice polymath of that period, the play, entitled Krishna Kumari, make clear the vices that had led the Rajputs to lose their hallowed independence. So whereas the denizens of British India had been studying English to acquire employment as clerks, the dewan of Travancore was utilizing the exact same language to assist the Native States perceive why they had been succumbing to the British. Little marvel, then, that the Firm repeatedly tried to banish English Subba Rao, its officers fretting that his training meant that he “isn’t unacquainted with our coverage”.
The truth that “trendy studying” started not in Bengal however in Tanjore, and never in British India however in a Native State, invitations us to reassess our relationship with the English language and the concepts it carried to our shores. As a result of we’ve hitherto targeted on how Bengalis in British India greeted training within the English language, with their attribute extra of both enthusiasm or disdain, we’ve been inspired to see the arrival of English as a welcome or unwelcome imposition. The keen or embittered babu could have been probably the most seen consequence of English studying in Calcutta, however the identical books produced a really completely different end result within the Native States. There, trendy training helped Maharajas and their ministers protect their sovereignty and devise reforms to undertake new applied sciences and advance commerce. For the Native States, the English language was not a present or a yoke however a weapon.
In fact, because the many years handed, British India was in a position to outstrip the Native States — the latter had been prevented from seeing their most formidable instructional ventures by way of. However it’s value noting that whilst English training unfold in British India, Bengal didn’t play an outsize position. Bombay and Madras greater than stored tempo from the 1830s onwards, and so did the rest of India from the 1850s onwards — as we will see from the a whole bunch of periodicals and newspapers that circulated in these areas throughout this time. For this reason, by the point Gokhale spoke in Benares in 1905, all educated Indians had been turning into an issue for the British — not solely these in Bengal. What we have to bear in mind is that lengthy earlier than Indians in British India started speaking again to the English in English, it was the Native States that confirmed how phrases might be used as shields and swords.
Rahul Sagar is International Community Affiliate Professor at New York College Abu Dhabi. This essay attracts on his new guide, Krishna Kumari: The Tragedy of India. The views expressed are private
