The General Committee of Public Instruction consisted of ten members. Within the Committee there were two groups, the Orientalist led by H. T. Prinsep who advocated the policy of giving encouragement to Oriental literature and the Anglicist or the English Party which favoured the adoption of English as a medium of instruction.
The equal division of parties in the Committee made it extremely difficult for it to function effectively. Stalemates in the meetings of the Committee were frequent. Ultimately both the parties in the committee submitted their dispute to the Governor-General-in-Council for orders.
As a member of the Executive Council, Macaulay wrote his famous Minute on educational policy dated 2 February 1835 and placed it before the Council. Macaulay favoured the viewpoint of the Anglicist Party. He showed great contempt for Indian customs and literature when he said that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”
Regarding the utility, importance and claims of English language he wrote: “Whoever knows that language has ready access to all the vast intellectual wealth which all the wisest nations of the earth have created and handed in the course of ninety generations… In India, English is the language spoken by the ruling class. It is spoken by the higher class of natives at the seats of Government.
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It is likely to become the language of commerce throughout the seas of the East.” Macaulay cited the examples of European Renaissance and case of Russia and dilated upon “the great impulse given to the mind of a whole society-of prejudice overthrown, of knowledge diffused, of task purified, of arts and sciences planted in countries which had recently been ignorant and barbarous.
“Possibly, Macaulay aimed to create a class of persons who should be “Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” In other words, he sought the production of brown to fill the lower cadres in the Company’s administration.
The Government of Lord William Bentinck in the Resolution of 7 March 1835 accepted the viewpoint of Macaulay that, in future, the object of the Company’s Government should be the promotion of European literature and sciences, through the medium of English language and in future all funds were to be spent for that purpose.
The ‘Macaulayian system’ was a systematic effort on the part of the British Government to educate the upper classes of India through the medium of English language. Education of the masses was not the aim of Macaulay.
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“It is impossible for us” wrote Macaulay in 1835, “with our limited means to attempt to educate the body of the people.” He rather put implicit faith in the ‘infiltration theory’. He believed that the English educated persons would act as a ‘class of interpreters’ and in turn enrich vernacular languages and literature and thus the knowledge of Western sciences and literature would reach the masses.
Thus, a natural corollary of Macaulay’s theory was the development of vernacular languages as ancillary to the teaching of English. Hereafter the Government made half-hearted efforts to develop vernacular languages and the development of literature in these languages was left to the genius and needs of the people who spoke these languages.
In the North-West Provinces Mr. James Thomason, Lieutenant-Governor during 1843-53, made efforts to develop a comprehensive scheme of village education through the medium of vernacular languages.
The smaller English schools were abolished and English education confined to colleges. In this village school useful subjects like the menstruation, agricultural science etc. were taught through the medium of vernaculars. Above all, a Department of Education was organised for the inspection and improvement of indigenous schools. The motivating force behind Thomason’s plan was to train personnel for employment in the newly set up Revenue and Public Works Departments of the province.