DHARAMPAL • COLLECTED WRITINGS

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