NCERT Solutions Class 8 Social Science Chapter 7 Civilising the Native Educating the Nation

Let’s recall

1. Match the following:

William Jones - promotion of English education Rabindranath Tagore - respect for ancient cultures Thomas Macaulay - gurus

Mahatma Gandhi - learning in a natural environment

Pathshalas - critical of English education

Answer:

William Jones -respect for ancient cultures

Rabindranath Tagore -learning in a natural environment

Thomas Macaulay - promotion of English education

Pathshalas - gurus

2. State whether true or false:

(a) James Mill was a severe critic of the Orientalists.

(b) The 1854, Despatch on education was in favour of English being introduced as a medium of higher education in India.

(c) Mahatma Gandhi thought that promotion of literacy was the most important aim of education.

(d) Rabindranath Tagore felt that children ought to be subjected to strict discipline.

Answer:

(a) True

(b) True

(c) False

(d) False

Let’s discuss

Answer:

(i)In 1783, William Jones arrived in Calcutta; he had an appointment as a junior judge at the Supreme Court, there.

(ii) He was an expert in law as well as a linguist. He had studied Greek, Latin, French and English; he had picked up Arabic and Persian.

(iii)At Calcutta, he learnt Sanskrit language, grammar and poetry from pundits; he studied ancient Indian texts on law, philosophy, religion, politics, morality, arithmetic, medicine and sciences.

(iv)Together with Englishmen like Henry Thomas Colebrooke and Nathaniel Halhed, he set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal and started a journal called Asiatick Researches.

(v)Jones felt Indian civilisation had attained its glory in the ancient past, but had subsequently declined. In order to understand India, it was necessary to discover the ancient sacred and legal texts.

(vi)According to him, only the ancient Indian texts could reveal the real ideas and laws of the Hindus and Muslims, and only a new study of these texts could form the basis of future development in India.

(viii)In this process the British would become the guardians of Indian culture as well as its masters.

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

Answer:

James Mill:

(i)According to James Mill, the British effort 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”.

(ii)He argued that the aim of education ought to be to teach useful and practical knowledge.

(iii)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.

Thomas Babington Macaulay:

(ii) Macaulay stated that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”. He urged that the British government in India stop wasting public money in promoting Oriental learning, for it was of no practical use.

(iii) He felt that knowledge of English would allow Indians to read some of the finest literature the world had produced; it would make them aware of the developments in Western science and philosophy.

iv)Teaching of English could thus be a way of civilising people, changing their tastes, values and culture.

5. Why did Mahatma Gandhi want to teach children handicrafts?

Answer:

(i)Mahatma Gandhi argued that education ought to develop a person’s mind and soul.

(ii) He believed that literacy – or simply learning to read and write – by itself did not count as education.

(iv)This would develop their mind and their capacity to understand.

6. Why did Mahatma Gandhi think that English education had enslaved Indians?

Answer:

(i)According to Mahatma Gandhi, colonial education created a sense of inferiority in the minds of Indians.

(ii)It made them see Western civilisation as superior, and destroyed the pride they had in their own culture.

(iii) He described the colonial education as poisonous and sinful and accused it of having enslaved Indians. He also believed it cast an evil spell on them.

(iii) Ha said that charmed by the West, appreciating everything that came from the West, Indians educated in these English institutions began admiring British rule.

(iv)Gandhi wanted an education that could help Indians recover their sense of dignity and self-respect.

(v)During the national movement he appealed to students to leave educational institutions in order to show to the British  that  Indians were no longer  willing  to be enslaved.