question_answer 4)

 Why did James Mill and Thomas Macaulay think that European education was essential in India?  

Answer:

 James Mill and Thomes Macaulay both British officials were great critic of Indian education system. They criticised the Orientalist vision of learning. They advocated knowledge of the west for all including the Indians. They said that knowledge of the East (i.e.., Indians also) was fall of errors and unscientific thoughts. They urged that eastern literature was non-serious, and light-hearted. James Mill was one of those who attacked the Orientalist. The British effort, he declared, should not be to teach what the natives wanted, or what they respected, in order to please them and 'win a place in their heart.' The aim of education ought to be to teach what was useful and practical. So, Indians should be made familiar with the scientific and technical advances that the west had made, rather than with the poetry and sacred literature of the orient. By the 1830, the attack on the Orientalist became sharper. One of the most-outspoken and influential of such critics of the time was Thomas Babington Macaulay. He saw India as an uncivilised country that needed to be civilised. No branch of Eastern knowledge, according to him could be compared to what England had produced. Who could deny, declared Macaulay, that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. Thomas Macaulay further urged that the British government in India stop wasting public money in promoting Oriental learning, for it was no practical use. With great energy and passion, Macaulay emphasised the heed to teach the English language. He felt that knowledge of English would allow Indians to read same of the finest literature the world had produced; it would make them aware of the developments in western science and philosophy. Teaching of English could thus be a way of civilising people, changing their tastes, values and culture.