The reason I decided to send
my reactions, my comments, to a wider Indian audience than just to the author
of the essay entitled “Macaulay, Again”, written in Marathi, is
that the process Macaulay’s Minute
started almost two hundred years ago – to be precise in 1835 -- has been being
re-enacted and continued with even greater vigor in today’s India.
(A) First, I want to
congratulate the author for writing the article in Marathi and to express how
gratified I am for the language chosen as the medium.
(B) Second, I want to get one
reaction out of my system right away even though the sentence that has triggered
my reaction is only incidental, rather tangential, to the essay: “{The British}
gave us a unified law and order” – my informal translation. I have heard and read such a sentiment so
often that it has jaded me, made me weary and sick. I may humbly point out that such an assertion
absolutely makes no sense. Every society,
civilization, or nation has law and order.
No society, worth the name, can last or persist even for a few decades
without law and order, let alone for centuries. (Somalia Nigeria Sudan
As far as the law and order
being “unified” or consistent throughout the political entity, let me say that all
strong empires do that. Romans, Arabs,
and Turks did that in their empires; and, I am sure, it was so in Ashoka’s
Mauryan empire too, which by the way extended into today’s southern and eastern
Afghanistan India
I am not presenting these comments
in any particular order. They are mostly
“general”; however, they are fully applicable to the present-day Indian
situation:
1.
There seems to be
great confusion caused by the use of the Marathi word “saahitya” to mean both
“lalit vaangmay”
(creative/imaginative – a poor choice of words in English – literature or “belles lettres” (in French) and
“shaastra/
vidnyaan-vishayak likhaan ”, meaning discursive, ratiocinative writing
related to science and technology. I do
not know what word Macaulay used in his Minute
on Education; but if he did use the word “literature” to mean two quite
different animals, then he is the father of this confusion. It has sadly continued in the present essay
and, maybe, in India
2.
If, on the other
hand, we restrict the use of the word “saahitya” to consistently mean only “lalit vaangmay” (creative or imaginative
literature), then Sanskrit had plenty of it.
But, the Chair of the General Committee of Public Instruction, T.B. Macaulay,
had no inkling of it because, as he himself confessed, he did not know Sanskrit
or Arabic (and, I bet, not Persian/Farsi, either). He had, however, no excuse for this ignorance
because Sir William Jones had already translated Kalidasa’s Shakuntala; and Goethe, the German poet,
who died three years before the date of the Minute,
was familiar with it. In fact, in my judgment, just three Sanskrit plays
-- Bhasa’s one-act-play Urubhanga,
Shudraka’s The Little Clay Cart, and Shakuntala -- are superior to the entire
“imaginative” literature, say, created in the U.S. from before its birth to
this date. In this sense of literature
or saahitya (lalit vaangmay), it
never becomes “kaal-baahya” or
outdated. A classic is forever.
3.
As far as science
and modern knowledge (technology) are concerned, they can be taught and
promoted in any language. If (and when) you do not have this
specialized knowledge in your mother tongue, it can be translated
(Incidentally, I learned Math, Physics and Chemistry in Marathi when I was in
high school). In other words, one needs
to separate, distinguish between, the two issues -- the medium of instruction and
the content
of instruction, bhaashaa and vidyaa.
4.
If superstition
is parading as science or “knowledge” in any country or at any time, it (undha-shraddhaa) can be challenged and
demolished in any language. Our
Maharashtrian reformers did just that.
5. The essay states that Macaulay was aware of
the difficulty (the expense, perhaps) of teaching English to the large native
population of Indians. (a) He,
therefore, proposed to train a small group of Indians in English who could act
as a link, an intermediary, between the British and their subjects. (b) He also said the old (ancestral)
languages need to be preserved (and nourished) as a duty even when a new
language is learned (“navee bhashaa shiktanaa aplyaa junyaa bhaashaanche jatan
karane aaple kartavy aahe”). I applaud
both these ideas.
6.
There also seems
to be confusion between “education” and “training”. In my view, they are not the same. In order to get jobs, we train. In order to be “cultured”, we educate. If employment were the (only) goal of
education, no body would study liberal arts and humanities. Maybe, that is the reason hardly any of my
younger relatives have majored in those subjects.
7.
Another related
issue that bothers me is that most of these English-medium trained/educated younger
relatives of mine have perhaps not read (to take just some examples) even ten
sonnets, a couple of classic plays and a few outstanding novels in English. And, if I am right, what good is their
English medium except for a narrowly utilitarian purpose? (By the way, following the lead of Sanskrit
rhetoricians, I use the word “poetry” very broadly to cover all the genres of imaginative
or creative literature).
