NCERT Book Class 8 Social Science (History) Chapter 6 Civilising the “Native”, Educating the Nation

6 Civilising the “Native”,
Educating the Nation

In the earlier chapters, you have seen how British rule affected
rajas and nawabs, peasants and tribals. In this chapter, we
will try and understand what implication it had for the lives of
students. For, the British in India wanted not only territorial
conquest and control over revenues. They also felt that they had
a cultural mission: they had to “civilise the natives”, change their
customs and values.
What changes were to be introduced? How were Indians Linguist – Someone
to be educated, “civilised”, and made into what the British who knows and
believed were “good subjects”? The British could find no simple studies several
answers to these questions. They continued to be debated for languages
many decades.

How the British saw Education
Let us look at what the British thought and
did, and how some of the ideas of education
that we now take for granted evolved in the
last two hundred years. In the process of this
enquiry, we will also see how Indians reacted
to British ideas, and how they developed
their own views about how Indians were to
be educated.

The tradition of Orientalism
In 1783, a person named William Jones
arrived in Calcutta. He had an appointment
as a junior judge at the Supreme Court that
the Company had set up. In addition to being
an expert in law, Jones was a linguist. He
had studied Greek and Latin at Oxford, knew
French and English, had picked up Arabic
from a friend, and had also learnt Persian.
At Calcutta, he began spending many hours
a day with pandits who taught him the
subtleties of Sanskrit language, grammar and Fig. 1 – William Jones learning Persian

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