Lord Macaulay

Tenure of Lord Macaulay 1834-1838

The passing of Charter Act of 1833, was led by appointment of Lord Macaulay as India’s First Law member of the Governor General in Council. He served from 1834 to 1838, and ensured that English flourishes in India.

Precursor of UPSC:

A decade before Lord Macaulay arrived in India, the General Committee of Public Instruction was formed in 1823, which was to guide the company on the matter of education.

• This was the precursor of the Union Public Service Commission.
  
• However, please note that the first Public Service Commission was set up on 1 October 1926 in response to the demands of Indian politicians that the superior Civil Services be indianized.
  

The General Committee of Public Instruction had two groups viz. Orientalists and Anglicists on the issue of the Development of Education of India. The Orientalists group was led by H T Princep, who promoted the teaching of the “Oriental Subjects” in India’s vernacular Languages.

• In 1828, English was first introduced in the college of Delhi.
  

Since, the General Committee of Public Instruction has equal number of the Orientalists as well as Anglicists the issue was taken to the Governor General in Council. This led him to refer the matter to Lord Macaulay.

• In 1835, the education policy of Lord Macaulay was published titled “Minute on Indian Education” in which he advocated educating Indians through English and also enrich Indian Languages’ so that they become the vehicles of European scientific, historical and literary expression.
  
• English was introduced as a medium of instruction from class VI onwards.
  

Lord Macaulay expressed that it was impossible for the British East India Company, through its limited means to attempt to educate masses. His idea was to form a class who may be interpreters between British and the millions whom British Ruled. It was a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. His idea was to delegate that class to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.