The Great Indian Education Debate - Documents Relating to the Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy, 1781-1843 (Hardcover)

What kind of public education should the British promote in their growing Indian empire? A bitter debate erupted in 1834 between Oriantalists, who respected Indian classical education and wished to engraft Western knowledge onto it, and Anglicists, who saw little good in traditional Indian education and wished to modernise India by introducing English-language education as widely as possible. This collection of the most important documents pertaining to the controversy has been prepared with the aimof recovering as much as possible of the major British and South Asian voices. The goal is to broaden our understanding of what is meant by imperial discourses and recognise the significant role played by the colonised in the shaping of colonial knowledge. Bringing together documents long out of print, never before published or scattered in sundry books and journals will help to judge the relative merits of various arguments. In addition, access to the ideas of Indians such as Rammohun Roy, Ram Camul Sen and thousands of anonymous petitioners will also help undermine the impression that the controversy was simply an exercis in colonial power involving only Europeans.