Disciplined Subjects: Schooling in Colonial Bengal

269 Pages·2021·3.786 MB·English

by  Sutapa Dutta

DISCIPLINED SUBJECTS
This book examines interactions between Britain and India through the
analytical framework of the production and circulation of knowledge
throughout the long eighteenth century. Disciplined Subjects is one of the
first works to analyse the imperial school curriculum, and the ways in which
it shaped and influenced Indian subjectivity. The author focuses on the
endeavours of the colonial government, missionaries and native stakehold-
ers in determining the physical, material and intellectual content of institu-
tional learning in India. Further, the volume compares the changes in
pedagogical practices, and textbooks in schools in Britain and colonial
Bengal, and its subsequent repercussions on the psyche and identity of the
learners.
Drawing on a host of primary sources in the UK and India, this volume
will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern history, edu-
cation, sociology and South Asian studies.
Sutapa Dutta teaches at the Department of English at Gargi College,
University of Delhi, India. She has completed a two-year fellowship at the
Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, India and has a Ph. D in
English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Her research
interests and publications are focused on eighteenth and nineteenth-century
writings and issues relating to education, gender identity and representation
in colonial India.

DISCIPLINED SUBJECTS
Schooling in Colonial Bengal
Sutapa Dutta
First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2021 Indian Institute of Advanced Study
The right of Sutapa Dutta to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-367-41013-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-01399-0 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by SPi Global, India
To all my teachers, to whom I owe my understanding of schooling and
education

CONTENTS
List of figures viii
Preface ix
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
PART I 15
1 Historical insights of education in colonial Bengal,
1757–1911 17
2 Schooling the mind – In the metropole and the colony 45
PART II 79
3 Content and context of textbooks in Britain 81
4 Content and context of textbooks in Bengal 116
PART III 169
5 Popular representations of the educated Bengali Babu 171
Conclusion 220
Bibliography 226
Index 249
vii
FIGURES
3.1 (a and b) BFSS Manual, 1816. Appendix, Specimens of
Needlework. 93
3.2 A floral pattern in Bowles’s Drawing Book for Ladies;
Or Complete Florist (1785). 94
3.3 ‘The English Girl and her Ayah’, The Royal Readers
1872: III, 76. 111
4.1 Bengali typeface in A Grammar of the Bengal Language. 123
4.2 Wooden Block Face from Madun Mohun Turkalunkar’s
Shishu-Shiksha (1849). 141
4.3 Front cover of Barnaparichay, Part II, by Vidyasagar,
1974; author’s own copy. 150
4.4 Rabindranath Tagore’s Sahaj Path Part I, 1955. 163
5.1 Baboo Jabberjee. 186
5.2 A Bayard from Bengal. 187
5.3 English Customs and Native Comments. 188
5.4 A young man of genius. 189
5.5 ‘The Young Bengalee Baboo of the Future’. 191
5.6 ‘The British Lion and the Bengalee Ape’. 191
5.7 ‘The Same at the Zoo’. 192
5.8 ‘Our Enlightened and Educated Baboo’. 193
5.9 The ‘Modern’ Krishna. 194
5.10 Gajaner swang. 195
5.11 An educated wife. 196
5.12 ‘The effect of the Ilbert Bill’ in Panchu-Thakur. 197
5.13 Book cover of Pash kora mag (1888) by Radha
Binod Haldar. 201
5.14 A woman leading her lover as a sheep. 202
5.15 ‘Revisiting Kaliyug’. 203
5.16 Nabin about to deliver the fatal blow to Elokeshi. 203
viii
PREFACE
A one-day conference at the Royal Society Business Forum in London on 12
February 2019 saw a gathering of teachers, policymakers, scientists, and
leaders in business and industry to share their views on how the current
education system prepares students for the world of work. It was a platform
to seek the views of students, teachers and parents about the benefits and
challenges of changing the current education system. Sceptical of the inef-
ficacy of endless tinkering of the educational system, the call was for ways
to broaden the curriculum to make education interesting as well as to equip
young people entering the workforce to succeed. In a speech given at this
Forum, Paul Clarke, Chief Technology Officer at Ocado said:
If education is all about preparing the next generation for their
future life and instilling a love of learning, then I believe we are
failing in terms of the structure and curriculum of our current
educational system. The current relentless focus on exams, tests
and the regurgitation of mark schemes is consuming almost all the
educational oxygen, leaving teachers with little or no time for
spontaneity, for sharing their love of a subject and for just pursu-
ing the curiosity of their students to see where it might lead.1
It is indeed noteworthy how ‘instilling a love of learning’, ‘spontaneity’ and
‘pursuing the curiosity’ have always jostled to find place in the world of
education usually dominated by a martial regimen of ‘discipline’, ‘subjects’
and ‘lessons’. The association of modern education with market driven ‘suc-
cess’ has been so deeply ingrained in our consciousness that we seldom give
a second thought to the impact that such education has on the minds of
the learners. In the context of India these words assume larger significance.
Over the centuries we have been subjected to an assortment of methods and
modes of education, both indigenous and foreign. In the present educa-
tional system we need to question whether we are educating our children
or merely training them. Recently the Delhi state minister of education
acknowledged that students of public schools are severely deficient in
reading and writing even after six or eight years in school as there is
ix