in the
various courses, mostly literary, which constitute higher education is
conveyed through the medium of English, a tongue still absolutely
foreign to the vast majority; and (4) education is generally confined to
the training of the intellect and divorced not only, absolutely, from
all religious teaching, but also, very largely, from all moral training
and discipline, with the result that the vital side of education which
consists in the formation of character has been almost entirely
neglected.

To make the present situation intelligible, I must recapitulate, however
briefly, the phases through which our Indian system of education has
passed. The very scanty encouragement originally given, to education by
the East India Company was confined to promoting the study of the
Oriental languages still used at that time in the Indian Courts of Law
in order to qualify young Indians for Government employment and chiefly
in the subordinate posts of the judicial service. After long and fierce
controversies on the rival merits of the vernaculars and of English as
the more suitable vehicle for the expansion of education, Macaulay's
famous Minute of March 7, 1835, determined a revolution of which only
very few at the time foresaw, however faintly, the ultimate
consequences. Lord William Bentinck's Government decided that "the
great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of
English literature and science, and that all the funds appropriated for
the purpose of education would be best employed in English education
alone."

Another influence--too often forgotten--had at least as large a share as
Macaulay's in this tremendous departure. That was the influence of the
great missionary, Dr. Alexander Duff, who inspired the prohibition of
suttee and other measures which marked the withdrawal of the countenance
originally given by the East India Company to religious practices
incompatible, in the opinion of earnest Christians, with the sovereignty
of a Christian Power. Duff had made up his mind, in direct opposition to
Carey and other earlier missionaries, that the supremacy of the English
language over the vernaculars must be established as a preliminary to
the Christianization of India. He had himself opened in 1830 an English
school in Calcutta with an immediate success which had confounded all
his opponents. His authority was great both at home and in India, and
was reflected equally in Lord Hardinge's Educational