18.08.2013 The ‘curse’ of English
Even after more than six decades of Independence, what is real learning and knowledge, and hence education, still evades us
By Yaqoob Khan Bangash
We have all heard the oft repeated refrain against the dual system of education where some students get educated in English and others in Urdu or one of the other vernaculars, and how that spreads elitism and inequality. We have all complained that this system is the product of the Raj where English was preferred over local languages. We have also often said that if we had not inherited such a distorted system, maybe our literacy rate would have been higher and Pakistan more developed etc.
In my own teaching, I have also lamented the fact that Pakistani students never learn a language well enough to be completely proficient in it — they usually do not know how to read or write their mother tongue, only know school level Urdu, and can mostly just memorise things in English. Therefore, when they come to university, which requires a higher level of language skills, they are largely at a loss and cannot completely grasp the subject matter in any language.
Not knowing too much about the development of the education system in the Punjab (my only real experience in Pakistan), I simply blamed this complication on the inheritance of the Raj, till I actually read what they were thinking and trying to do.
A few weeks ago I began reading the official Punjab government reports on education from the Raj. Where it had the usual statistics and general comments, in the first few decades of the Raj, there was a lot of interest in education policy, not only among those in-charge, like the Director of Public Instruction or the Inspector of Schools, but also the Lieutenant Governor and other officials. Therefore, the reports gave me an insight into how the ‘modern’ system of education was created in the Punjab after British annexation in 1849. Obviously, as I am still reading the reports, these are preliminary remarks, but even so they counter several of the misconceptions we have accrued about the educational system we inherited from the Raj.
The education system adopted by the Punjab after annexation was that of the North Western Provinces (modern-day Uttar Pradesh, and erstwhile Agra and Oudh). This was primarily done because of ease — the British had ruled those territories for some time and had already established a semblance of civil government, and therefore the system was imported into the newly conquered territory. However, very soon, it was apparent that the imported system did not suit the needs of the Punjab.
In the report of 1860-1, the Lieutenant Governor deliberated “whether the prescribed course of study, borrowed as it were from the North Western Provinces, may not give an artificial prominence to Urdu, which does not naturally belong to it in these Provinces. His Honor is convinced that this is the case as respects the Mooltan, Derajat and Peshawaur Divisions; and observing that, except at Delhi, Persian is preferred in all the private schools to Urdu, he thinks that it may be so in other divisions.”
Therefore, the long presence of Urdu in the Punjab can easily be traced to its import from the North Western Provinces, where it was increasingly becoming the lingua franca. In the Punjab, as the statistics of the government show, for the first few decades after 1849, students of Persian still far outnumbered students studying Urdu. It was only towards the 1890’s and later that the study of Persian declined.
What is further interesting from the above is the fact that nowhere in the reports are the real ‘vernaculars’ — the mother tongues of the students actually discussed. It is as if the choice in the Punjab was between either Urdu or Persian, or later English — Punjabi rarely featured in the discussion even though it was the first language of a large majority of the people. The reason for this, of course, is the legacy of ‘education’ in South Asia, which was largely based on learning in the ‘classical’ languages — mother tongues, the easiest and best way of initial learning never largely featured.
Therefore, Muslims mainly studied in either Persian or Arabic and Hindus focused on Sanskrit learning, even though, except for Persian to an extent, none of the languages were widely spoken in India. Education was considered an elite preoccupation and was conducted in elite languages — the association of the masses, as it were, was considered, in some cases, even defiling. Even in the ‘Punjabi’ reign of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, even though Punjabi was widely used and garnered respect, Persian was still kept for official purposes and its elite status never declined. Therefore, when the British arrived in this part of India, they did not ‘invent’ a new style of education, but simply continued to work with the previous models (in the North Western Provinces Urdu was then becoming the elite language — the language of the ‘ashraf’).
With English becoming the new ‘elite’ language, naturally people wanted to grasp it, so that they could interact with their new masters and gain government employment. And so the tale goes that the British imposed this language on the hapless Indians and further confused them. However, while reading the reports it is clear that the British were very much aware and wary of this ‘interest’ in learning English, and reluctant to allow it to replace education in the vernacular.
The covering note from the Government of India in 1864 noted: “With the desire springing up among the people for knowledge of English, and the ample encouragement of Government, it is not to be wondered that the number of English scholars has greatly increased during the last few years. A doubt may perhaps occur, whether the Punjab government, while rightly encouraging the study of English, may not be losing sight in some degree of the necessity of guarding against the tendency which has been found so prejudicial in Bengal viz: of substituting a smattering of English, for a sound practical education conveyed through the medium of the Vernacular. This doubt may particularly arise with reference to the scheme of attaching ill-paid English Teachers to Vernacular Schools, and thereby offering and inducement to these schools to divert their attention from the more important object of a useful education, to the more attractive one of an acquaintance with English.’ It seems that something like this could have been written today, rather than over 150 years ago!
Even today, the emphasis in a number of schools throughout Pakistan is to give pupils a smattering of English by ill-equipped teachers, and no attention is given to ‘sound practical education conveyed through the medium of the Vernacular,’ as noted above. People in Pakistan still think that speaking a grammatically bad sentence in English is still better than actually knowing about, for example, the Shahnama or Gulistan. What is real learning and knowledge, and hence, education, still evades us.
The Director of Public Instruction underscored the importance of education in the vernacular in his 1867-8 report and said: “The absolute necessity of a knowledge of English to everyman, who aspires to an education of the highest order, is fully recognised, but it is thought desirable that all instruction should be conveyed as far as practicable through the Vernacular and that till the student has thoroughly mastered the English language, it should not be made the medium of instruction.” Again this is something which still evades the creators of education policy in Pakistan.
The recent revision of curriculum has made English the medium of instruction in most of Pakistan and especially in the Punjab where at least Science, Mathematics, and Social Studies are taught in English even at the primary school level. This clearly exhibits that we still have not internalised the critical importance of initial learning in the mother tongue. As far back as 1868, the British were aware that: “It must be evident that when an abstruse subject is taught and written examinations are conducted through the medium of a foreign language, which is but imperfectly understood, the difficulties of the student are greatly increased, and the natural result is a general want of accuracy not only in the subject studied, but also in English composition.” No wonder then our comprehension and attainment levels are still so low!
So what did the British think was the ultimate aim of an education where the vernaculars would have almost equal (dare I say) space with English? Referring to the proposed new university in the Punjab in the 1860’s the Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab, Sir Donald Friell McLeod, noted: “The object of the system of education is desired to establish, to facilitate and stimulate the communication of Western knowledge by raising up of a class of men at once imbued with the science and literature of the West, and at the same time commanding the respect of their fellow countrymen by their proficiency in Oriental studies...” In other words, Sir Donald wanted the educated class to be at once at ease with Western scholarship and Oriental knowledge.
In a discourse which is often dominated by Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 where he almost rubbished Oriental learning and wanted to create only ‘Brown sahibs,’ it is very interesting, and important, to note what the people on the ground — those actually implementing policy — thought. The views of McLeod were perhaps the most enlightened and sensible for its time.
I am still reading these education reports, and of course things did change in later years, but two things are clear from the above quotes. First, that there was no whole-scale imposition of English. The British obviously supported English, but they did not want it to ‘substitute’ (to use the word used by the Director of Public Instruction) the vernaculars. Hence they did not want all education in English. Secondly, and most importantly, they wanted the vernaculars and ‘Oriental learning’ to have prime place together with the learning of English and the acquisition of Western knowledge. The attainment of these twin objectives was, in their opinion, the aim of modern education in the Punjab.
It is, unfortunately, the ignorance of the above two principles which mars our educational system even today. Even after more than six decades of independence, neither is there a move to make the vernacular the medium of instruction at lower levels, nor is there any emphasis on learning the best of our own indigenous scholarship. In terms of language of instruction, our only move has been to replace English by Urdu without realising that Urdu is still not the mother tongue of more than 90 per cent of what is now Pakistan, and we only get ideology-driven Muslim (read highly Arabised) scholarship — our students have never even heard of some of the great texts written by South Asian Muslims, let alone people of other religions.
It is often claimed that the study of history is important because it helps us understand the past and plan for the future. In the case of education policy, perhaps, we need to now take lessons from over 150-year old texts written by long dead Englishmen who perhaps understood education better than our current masters.
The writer is the Chairperson of the Department of History, Forman Christian College, and tweets at @BangashYK. He can be contacted at: yaqoob.bangash@gmail.com.