Education is a catalyst of change and a key to progress and development in any society. It was this belief that made intellectual class in colonies to clamour for introduction of English or Western education. The scholar nationalists of India from Raja Ram Mohan Roy to Dadabhai Naoroji bought that introduction of Western education in india will liberate Indians from irrational and superstitious thoughts and will induce democratic, liberal and rational thinking among Indian. The question that immediately strikes our mind is that why the English (British) introduced Western Education in India? Was it an Institution of dominance or a liberating institution?
Colonialism can serve interests of Metropol better if colonial power succeeds in controlling the mind of subjected population or it gets its rule consented from large section of the society or atleast from different section. British introduced the western and not oriental education in India with the purpose of changing mentality among Indians in general and elite in particular, where they have all praise and passion for western values and traditions. The British knew that once this "Westernized Indian elite"
class is created, they will themselves "manufacture consent" for British rule in India. An important aspect of the British rule in India was psychological indoctrination of an elite layer within Indian society which was artfully tutored into model British subjects. In 1835 A.D, the Western education in India was only proposed for elites (Downward filtration theory) which substantiates that British aimed at psychological indoctrination of elites at first.
Thomas Babington Macaulay in 1835, articulated the colonial aims of Western education. "We must do our best to form a class, who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govem, a class of persons Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinion. words and intellect."
Rita Raley in the "History of English Studies" refers to Imperial designs of English or Western Education in colonies. According to her, the aim of educating and colonizing Indian subjects in the literature and thought of England was to strengthen British hegemony in colonies. It is worth to note that English literature appeared as a subject in the curriculum of colonies long before it was institutionalized in the home country. Gauri Viswanathan in his introduction to Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India (1989)" refers to colonial aims of English education. According to him, "Public education was not in fashion in England when it was Introduced in India. Arguing about the role of colonial education he says, "Colonial education system deployed English literary studies in its curriculum as an instrument of ensuring industriousness, efficiency, trustworthiness and compliance in native subjects."
The colonial aim of English or Western education was quite candidly expressed by Charles Trevelyan before the select Committee of the house of Lords in June 1853. He says the effect of training in
Europen learning is to give an entirely new tum to the native mind. The young men educated in dns way cease to strive after independence and aim at improving the institutions of the country according to the English model. They cease to regard us enemies and usurper, they took upon us as friends ana patrons, under whose protection the regularization of their country will gradually be worked out
Ngugi Watiango in "Decolonizing the Mind displays anger towards isolationist feelings of colonial education and asserts that the process annihilates peoples belief in their names in their languages, in their environment in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them to see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them to distance themselves from the wasteland It makes them to identify with themselves that is further removed from them.
The colonial education did succeed in colonizing minds of colonial people who had all praise for English education and became admirers of Western values and traditions. It was this Western colonized section which sustained British rule over large parts of the world
