9/10/2020 Bibek Debroy writes: Were Orientalists familiar with any of the scholars mentioned in the NEP quote?

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Home /  Opinion /  Columns /  The NEP reboot: Mother tongue versus English isn’t the real issue

The NEP reboot: Mother tongue

versus English isn’t the real
issue
Bibek Debroy writes: The home language/mother tongue versus English
isn’t the real issue. The real issue is the amnesia about our history, roots,
culture, legacy and language and the production of interpreters and clerks.
That is what NEP seeks to reboot.

Written by Bibek Debroy | Updated: September 10, 2020 9:59:08 am

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/mother-tongue-english-medium-regional-language-national-education-policy-6589728/ 1/13
9/10/2020 Bibek Debroy writes: Were Orientalists familiar with any of the scholars mentioned in the NEP quote?

In 1882, there was an Education Commission, better known as the Hunter Commission. It dismissed
“education in ancient India” (de ned as Pre-British) in one page.

“World-class institutions of ancient India such as Takshashila, Nalanda,

Vikramshila, Vallabhi, set the highest standards of multidisciplinary teaching and
research, and hosted scholars and students from across backgrounds and countries.
The Indian education system produced great scholars such as Charaka, Susruta,
Aryabhata, Varahamihira, Bhaskaracharya, Brahmagupta, Chanakya, Chakrapani
Datta, Madhava, Panini, Patanjali, Nagarjuna, Gautama, Pingala, Sankardev,
Maitreyi, Gargi and Thiruvalluvar, among numerous others, who made seminal
contributions to world knowledge in diverse fields such as mathematics,
astronomy, metallurgy, medical science and surgery, civil engineering, architecture,
shipbuilding and navigation, yoga, fine arts, chess, and more. Indian culture and
philosophy have had a strong influence on the world” — this is a quote from the
National Education Policy (NEP). How much do we know about Takshashila,
Nalanda, Vikramshila and Vallabhi? What were the admission processes? How
were these universities funded? What were the subjects and degrees offered? What
were the governance structures? These are relevant questions, for any university,
anywhere in the world. I suspect most educated Indians will only have a vague idea
about the answers. In 1882, there was an Education Commission, better known as
the Hunter Commission. It dismissed “education in ancient India” (defined as Pre-
British) in one page. In fairness, that wasn’t the Commission’s mandate.

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/mother-tongue-english-medium-regional-language-national-education-policy-6589728/ 2/13
9/10/2020 Bibek Debroy writes: Were Orientalists familiar with any of the scholars mentioned in the NEP quote?

However, it did say, “in the seventh century AD, the vast monastery of Nalanda
formed a seat of learning which recalls, by the numbers and the zeal of its students,
the later Universities of medieval Europe.” For the average educated Indian, the
impression about Takshashila, Nalanda, Vikramshila and Vallabhi will probably be
limited to that 1882 quote and no more, with very little known about the non-
Nalanda universities. We forgot everything about that history, spanning 600 BCE
(Takshashila) to 12th century CE (end of Nalanda and Vikramshila, not to forget
Jagaddala, Odantapura and Somapura). If I know more than most people, that’s
because I have followed Shailendra Mehta’s work. That knowledge about India’s
higher education system, as it then existed, had to be reconstructed from sources
external to India (China, Tibet, Japan, Korea). Internally, we forgot. In 1835, Thomas
Macaulay wrote a famous “Minute on Education”. Macaulay’s Minute is lambasted,
with valid reason, though policy-wise, the great Indian education debate and the
Orientalist-Anglicist controversy weren’t as sharp (eventually) as we sometimes
think.

“I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to
form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most
celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home,
with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite
ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I
have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good
European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia…It will
hardly be disputed, I suppose, that the department of literature in which the
Eastern writers stand highest is poetry… But when we pass from works of
imagination to works in which facts are recorded and general principles
investigated, the superiority of the Europeans becomes absolutely immeasurable.”
That is what Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote. Given Macaulay’s background, he
was unlikely to have known much about Sanskrit or Arabic. But were Orientalists
familiar with any of the scholars mentioned in the NEP quote?

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https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/mother-tongue-english-medium-regional-language-national-education-policy-6589728/ 3/13
9/10/2020 Bibek Debroy writes: Were Orientalists familiar with any of the scholars mentioned in the NEP quote?

Opinion: NEP will add to the existing rural-urban divide that has caused great
damage to the marginalised

Elsewhere, on Sanskrit, the NEP states, “Sanskrit, while also an important modern
language mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, possesses a
classical literature that is greater in volume than that of Latin and Greek put
together, containing vast treasures of mathematics, philosophy, grammar, music,
politics, medicine, architecture, metallurgy, drama, poetry, storytelling, and more
(known as ‘Sanskrit Knowledge Systems’), written by people of various religions as
well as non-religious people, and by people from all walks of life and a wide range
of socio-economic backgrounds over thousands of years.” In 1835, what did the
average Orientalist know about Sanskrit? Kalidasa, primarily because of
Shakuntala and Bhagavad Gita, because of the 1785 translation. In the entire corpus
of sacred books of the east series, Hinduism texts meant Upanishads or
Dharmashastras — nothing on mathematics, grammar, music, medicine,
architecture, metallurgy or governance. Hence, a perception that Sanskrit means
literature or dharma. The problem is that I don’t think the average educated India’s
perception about Sanskrit is remarkably different from that of the 1835 Orientalist.
Note that an estimated 95 per cent of manuscripts under the National Manuscript
Mission, not all of which are in Sanskrit, have not been translated and that we have
lost knowledge transmitted verbally. As an example, the Arthashastra all but
vanished, until R Shamasastry rediscovered the manuscript in 1904.

Opinion: Too soon for school

From Macaulay’s Minute again, “indeed it is unusual to find, even in the literary
circles of the Continent, any foreigner who can express himself in English with so
much facility and correctness as we find in many Hindoos…We must at present do
our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions
whom we govern, — a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in
tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” The home language/mother tongue
versus English isn’t the real issue. The real issue is the amnesia about our history,
roots, culture, legacy and language and the production of interpreters and clerks.
That is what NEP seeks to reboot.

This article first appeared in the print edition on September 10 under the title
“The NEP reboot”. The writer is chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the
PM. Views are personal.

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/mother-tongue-english-medium-regional-language-national-education-policy-6589728/ 4/13