Hi everyone, in today's video we are going to look at the influence of the Bible, in education or in the starting of education in India. This is part of a series in which we are showing the impact of the Bible. The impact of the Bible is one of the evidences that the Bible is not an ordinary book. It is a book of divine origin. So let's look and see how the Bible led to modern education in India.


Education in Ancient India
This is the ruins of Taxila which was an ancient Learning Center in India, what is now Pakistan. This was operational in the first few centuries BC, and a couple of centuries after the time of Christ, it died a natural death. It just faded away. Another very well known University in ancient India is the Nalanda University which is in modern Bihar. But this university existed during the medieval times. After around 800 AD it was in decline, and in around the year 1200 AD, it was destroyed by Islamic invaders. There was another university in Bihar called Vikramshila and this was started around the time that Nalanda was in decline, but this also was destroyed by Muslim invaders during the medieval ages. So, when we look at ancient India we see that there were certain learning centers there, they lasted for a few centuries, and then they came to an end.


First College in Allahabad
This is the point where two big rivers in India i.e., the Yamuna and the Ganga meet in a city called Allahabad or Prayagraj. And this is an important pilgrimage center in India. In fact, it is at this place that we have the Kumbh Mela, which is the largest gathering on earth of any kind. So you have millions of people who come every year to this place for a festival. So Allahabad is a holy place for Hindus. This is the emperor Ashoka and he also ruled in this area in ancient times. And he set up his pillar here, which is important for our country. This is how it looks today. So Allahabad was also important for Emperor Ashoka as we know he embraced Buddhism and he promoted Buddhism so it was an important center for him. Later on, we had the Islamic invasions in India and one of the greatest Mughal emperors i.e., Akbar built a fort in Allahabad.

So what we observed about this city is that it was important to many, many people across the centuries, there are kings who spend time in this place. There was at least one king who thought he needed to fortify the place. There was at least another king who thought that he needed to make a pillar and a monument here. The number of pilgrims who have come here is beyond counting. Perhaps the amount of money that they have donated is also beyond counting. But now for the context of this video. We have an important question. Guess who started first college here. The first college in Allahabad was started by a person called William Muir. It was called Muir Central College and now it is the University of Allahabad. Now, who was this man? He was an official in the British administration during the colonial times.

Now, what we need to understand here is that there was no rule that British officers should start a college there was no such rule that the British Empire or the East India Company was enforcing. He did it out of his own accord. Now why did he do it? Or what else do we know about him? We know that he was a devout Christian. He was a person who was keen to spread the message about Jesus Christ in India. He was also an apologist. That means a person who tries to show why the Bible can be trusted. He did a lot of study on Islam. So he was a person whose faith was very important to him, and he founded this Central College.

Now one of his biographers quotes him as saying like this, “We (the English) are here to raise and elevate the people to make them happier and better.” Now, whatever were the intentions of the other British invaders who came to India and rule this country. This man said that, you know, our intention is the welfare of the people. And the college that he founded here was part of that initiative to promote the welfare of the people. And his aim, or his motivation was the gospel of Jesus Christ, that is he was inspired by the Bible to do what he did.


India's Invaders
Now, this is one example if you look back at the history of India, you find that there are many people who invaded India. Before the time of Christ, the Greeks invaded India and they did not establish any college in India. Now, why we need to understand this is because we live in a time which is very different from ancient times. So to get a perspective of ancient times, we need to see that it was not common for people who ruled the place to start colleges or centers of education. So the Greeks did not establish any college in India. After the Greeks in the medieval times the Muslims invaded India. There were many kings who came here, they ruled, they conquered vast territories, but they did not establish any college here. And after the Muslims, the British invaded India in the 1700s. Now, along with the British soldiers and British political leaders and military generals who came here, there were also a few missionaries.


Earliest Missionary work in Education
So let's look at two of the earliest missionaries who came to India during the British times. Bartholomeus Ziegenbalg was the first Protestant missionary to come to India. And he did many things for the welfare of our country, and that's why he has been commemorated with a stamp in the context of education. It's worth mentioning that he started the first girls' school in India. Some years after Ziegenbalg, there was another missionary who came from England. His name is William Carey. Again, the fact that he is commemorated in a stamp shows that the government of India acknowledges his contribution for the progress of our country.

And when this postage stamp on William Carey was released, the government also released this image, which shows some of the things that he started, some things that he did belong to other fields, for example, you can see a burning pyre there. So that has to do with sati. You can see an image for the Savings Bank. There was the first newspaper that he started, but in the context of education. He was the one who started schools and later on a college, the Sarampur University in India, and he promoted the spread of modern science, modern humanities and education among the people of India. These were missionaries who came during the early days when the British were just consolidating their whole of India. Now, these missionaries had an opposition, they have people who oppose them. Now, who was this strong group of people who opposed these missionaries?

It probably won't guess the answer. The answer is the East India Company. The East India Company opposed the missionaries. Now, why was this? The East India Company did not want anyone interfering with the practices that were there in India. When the British came to India they observed that there was a lot of untouchability going on there were some practices such as sati, the purdah system, there was child marriage, there was female infanticide. All these things were rampant, but the East India Company couldn't care less about these things. Not only were there a lot of social evils but illiteracy was also ubiquitous in India, and the East India Company did not want Indians to get educated. Now the reason is simple. They wanted to exploit India. They wanted to plunder this country.

So they wanted to rule and they wanted to have a total monopoly over the trade. They did not want anyone to develop any one to question them as to why they were doing what they were doing. And so they were against the education of Indians, and therefore they were also against missionaries, who wanted Indians to be educated, who wanted Indians to get acquainted with modern ideas and so on. So an Indian author has summarized the situation like this, she says, the last decades of the 18th century, were years of hostility between the company and the mission. So there were two types of British people who came here. There was the company that wanted to exploit India, but there was also the mission, people who wanted to help Indians and help them to progress and come ahead and live. So there was an opposition. In fact, William Carey was not able to come to British India, he landed in a small part of the country, which at that time, was being ruled by Denmark.


Education in India at the British Invasion
Now, this is the testimony of a historian Michael Edwards about the state of education when the British invaded India. So he writes like this, “Hindu higher education was almost a Brahmin monopoly. Brahmins, the priestly caste, spent their time in schools called Tols, studying religious texts in a dead language, Sanskrit. There were a number of accounting schools called Patshallas, using living languages, but few Brahmins send their children to such schools. Muslim education was conducted in madrasahs in Arabic, which was not spoken in India; the state accepted no responsibility for education.” So at that time, before British India was ruled by many princely kingdoms, these princes or kings did not consider the education of our subjects as their responsibility. So this was the state of education. When the British invaded India and this sort of the East India Company, they just wanted it to remain just like this.


Father of Modern Education in India
Two Indian authors R.N Sharma and RK Sharma in the book which is titled The history of education in India. They refer to a person called Charles Grant as the father of modern education in India. So what did this man do for him to be called the father of modern education. He was a British officer serving with the East India Company in Bengal. And he saw the hardships and the pathetic conditions in which many Indians were living. So he was there during the famine that took place in Bengal. And he saw how the East India Company was exploiting Indians. Now, if you see people exploiting, if you see your own countrymen exploiting the people of another country, then what are you going to do about it?

You know, we can calm our conscience by saying that I'm not personally doing it. It is other people who are doing it. And if Charles Grant just sat quietly saying that because we couldn't find fault in him, but something happened in Charles Grant's life. He became a Christian. He became a Christian in India. Now, you might wonder, What's the meaning of this? An Englishman comes to India and he becomes a Christian in India. How do these kinds of things happen? What's the meaning of this?

Well, here when I use the word Christian, I mean in the biblical sense of the term. Now, normally, we would assume that anyone who has a white skin is a Christian. That is an accepted practice today, but that's not the biblical definition of what it means to be a Christian. So Charles Grant was not a Christian when he joined the East India Company and came and was posted in India. He was not a Christian in the biblical sense, but then he saw the impact that the teachings of Jesus Christ made in his boss's life. His boss was not like other English officers. His boss would treat Indians with great kindness and his boss was a person of great character, and he saw that it was the Bible that had changed his boss's life. So seeing all this, he became convinced that the message of Jesus Christ recorded in the Bible is true.

And so he became a Christian in India. Now when he became a Christian, he saw this exploitation in a new light, he now felt burdened for India. And he thought that it's not enough for me to disapprove of what my countrymen are doing in this land, but I need to do something about it. So as he saw it, he thought that India's main problems are of two types. One is oppressive religious practices, and certain customs and traditions, which cause a lot of hardship for people. The second thing which he observed was that because Indians were illiterate, because they were unexposed to the revolution, the scientific revolution and the other innovations that have happened in modern times, because Indians were unexposed to these things, they were vulnerable to exploitation.

So he asked himself, what is to be done to help Indians? So in his mind, he felt the answer is this, education and missions is the cure for both these things. So he felt that India needs modern education. It also needs to hear about Jesus Christ. And so he appealed to public figures in his home country of Britain, to get the East India Company to allow education. Uptill now the East India Company opposed the education of Indians and Charles Grant, a British Bible believing Christian looking at India and the way she was exploited thought that education is what India needs. And so he went back to his own country, asking his leaders that they should order the East India Company to allow education in India. Now, this is what he wrote to the leaders in England. “He said the true cure for darkness is the introduction of light.

The Hindus are because they are ignorant and their errors have never been fairly laid for them, but communication of our light and knowledge to them would prove the best remedy for their disorders. It is perfectly in the power or the capability of this country, that is England. My degree is to impart to the Hindus our language and afterwards through that medium to make them acquainted with our literature, arts, philosophy and religion”. So, he said that, you know, India is in a bad state and it is definitely within our capability that is British capability to teach them English and then to acquaint them with the modern ideas that have helped our country to progress, our literature, our arts of philosophy and our religion. He would have been referring to all the insights that came with the Renaissance and the Enlightenment in Europe.

And towards the end here, he makes mention of agricultural technology. He says that we British need to teach Indians modern insights about agriculture, because right now their practice is only to continue. The old customs there are no innovation in their agriculture. And we can definitely improve their food security if we teach them modern techniques of agriculture. So here is a man who is concerned about India. And my point here is that it is the Bible that has changed this man's mind and made him concerned about the welfare of India.

Now, unfortunately, the British Members of Parliament who were not at all sympathetic to Charles Grant and his request, so this is his appeal or his protest to them. So he says like this, “Teach them not a better system of morals that provide no stated means for their public or private instructions. Impart not to them our knowledge of nature, afford them no benefit, whatsoever of light and improvement. Lest our interest should in some future period suffer, keep them blind and wretched for all generations. Lest our authority should be shaken.” So he could see through the intentions of the British politicians. I mean, he is communicating here that I realized that you people don't want Indians to get educated.

You don't want them to improve, just to protect your own interests, as it is many of the members of parliament were big stakeholders in the East India Company and they were making a lot of money from the British rule in India. And Charles Grant is saying that you don't want unions to progress just because you don't want your authority over them to be shaken. And then he adds a Christian nation cannot possibly maintain or countenance such a principle. Now as I said before, Charles Grant was not a Christian when he traveled to India, but he became a Christian in India, but commonly British people would refer to themselves as Christians. And here was a man, a man who had become a Christian in the true Biblical sense of the term telling his so-called Christian country that you people claim to be Christians. And if that is the case, you cannot just keep the Indians in suppression, you cannot keep them in ignorance.

Now, just think for a moment, was there any Greek conqueror in India, who turned to his fellow Greeks and said that, you know, we are worshipers of Jupiter and Zeus so, you know, because of the religion and faith that we process, we cannot avoid doing something for the welfare of India. It would be against our principles. Did any Mughal make any statement like this, that because of what we believe we should do something for the welfare of this country. But here is a man who posted there. He's not a person who conquered India, but he came there for a job. He saw the situation and he said, you have to do something to improve the situation, if you really claim to be a Christian nation, so it was on Christian grounds that he argued for education in India.

One of the few people from the British Parliament who supported Charles Grant was William Wilberforce, and he was also a biblical Christian, which means that his Christianity was not just a matter of a family name, but he had a personal faith in the Lord Jesus and the teachings of the Bible. And this is what he said to his fellow parliamentarians. He said, “It is a shocking idea that we should leave 16 million of our fellow subjects to remain in a state of barbarism and ignorance, the slaves of the most cruel and degrading superstitions.”

Now, you might not like the language that he uses, and you might find it offensive, but you must understand that this is an Englishman speaking, and he is just hearing new news about what his fellow countrymen are finding in colonial India, they found sati. There, they found untouchability, they found child marriages, and these things were unthinkable to William Wilberforce and others. So he says, These are degrading superstitions, but it is shocking that we people, that is we British people who claim to be Christians, it is shocking that we would prefer Indians to remain in this kind of state. So he then has best to get a bill passed in the parliament to support the education or authorize the education of Indians. So he first tried unsuccessfully. But then finally in the year 1813, the bill was passed and the stage was set for education in India.


Language of Education
Now one of the important questions was what would be the medium of education? If we start modern education in India, then what medium Shall we use? So some people were in favor of English. There were other people who thought that Hindus should be educated in Sanskrit and Muslims should be Persian. Now there was one Indian reformer who gave feedback to the British about this and this is what he wrote to the British. Raja Ram Mohan Roy wrote like this, “That funding the senseless system of education would only keep this country in darkness. If such had been the policy of the British legislature. But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the government, it consequently ought to promote a more liberal and an enlightened system of English education, embracing mathematics, physics, etc.”

So here Raja Ram Mohan Roy was an Indian concerned about the welfare of India and he told the British please do not educate us in Sanskrit we would like to have an English education. And he tells them that see you people are seeking our welfare isn't it? So we need English to improve. So what I want to point out here is that Raja Ram Mohan Roy addressed the British taking them into confidence in this way saying that I know that you want to improve the native population. Now which nation who conquers another nation would want to improve the native population in fact, most British people did not want the Indian population to improve but the few who wanted to and managed to get the bill passed were people who are motivated by the Bible.


Lord Macaulay
Another English statesman was Macaulay. And this is what he said, Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that they may be submissive? Or do we think that we can give them knowledge without awakening ambition? Or do we mean to awaken ambition and provide it with no legitimate vet. The path of duty is plain before us. And then he goes on to say that, you know, it may be that as we educate Indians, they will expect a better form of government. They will expect European institutions and then he says, I will never attempt to retard or avert it, whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.

So here is an English man saying that, you know, we should educate Indians and we know that as Indians get educated, they are going to progress, their outlook is going to broaden and they will eventually ask us for independence. And so be it. That would be the proudest day in our history, that we went to a place and instead of exploiting the people, we educated them and we enabled them to form a modern state and independent state of their own. This was the outlook that Macaulay had. Of course, all British people did not have this kind of outlook. But Macaulay had this outlook and he himself was a Bible believing Christian, an evangelical Christian. Now there is this quote that we might have come across in social media, attributed to a Lord Macaulay. In fact, many of our political leaders in India have also use this quote in which Macaulay is claimed to have said that I have traveled across India and it is a country with a great spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore we should replace its old and ancient education system with a foreign one, in order to break this.

This is a quote that is attributed to him. But this quote is not authentic. Macaulay never said such a thing. In fact, the previous quote that I cited shows that Macaulay’s intentions were the opposite. He wanted to bring in education for the welfare of Indians fully knowing that when Indians get educated, they will demand independence and he was perfectly fine with that. So this is a false quote. It's attributed to Macaulay concerning India as well as Africa, and he never made any such quote. So a fact check shows that this quote is false. Although this quote is false, it is based on something else or it's a distortion of something else that Macaulay said. What he actually said was that it's impossible for us i.e. the British to attempt to educate the whole body of the people.

So he says it's not possible to educate all Indians at once because the population of India is very large. So what we need to do is to educate a small fraction of them and he called them, you know, make a class of persons Indian and blood and color, but English in taste, opinion, intellect and models. So he said that we should take a section of Indians and give them our English education and then they these educated Indians can perhaps refine the vernacular languages of the country, and enrich those languages with Western terms of science, and render those languages fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population. So he was only strategizing about how to promote the welfare of India.

He said it cannot be done in one step. But we need one class of educated Indians first, and then they can educate their further, the rest of their countrymen. So he was actually talking for the welfare of India and, his statement has been deliberately distorted as if he was trying to suppress India. So, apart from setting the record straight, my point here is that my Macaulay said the good things that he said, because he was motivated by the Bible. Apart from setting the record straight My point here is that my colleagues said the good things that he said because he was motivated by the Bible.

The historian Michael Edwards summarizes the situations like this. He says the decision to concentrate on providing Western education and the English language was made from other motives than economy. And we saw the economic motives. The East India Company of the East India Company did not want Indians to be educated. So, this historian says Macaulay and those who thought like him were following evangelical rather than utilitarian principles. The moral overtones were, of course, Christian and character. So, they were not secular people advocating education, they were Christians, and they were motivated by Christian love to provide education to Indians. And Michael Edwards acknowledges that these people knew that as Indians would get educated, they would even demand independence from Britain.


Wood's Dispatch
So when the decision was made, the bill was passed. And so Charles Wood was appointed to implement this decision. So there was a series of recommendations which is known as Wood’s dispatch, and this was the beginning of education in India. So after the orders came, of course, those of us who know our Indian history we know that in the year 1857, there was a mutiny, a struggle for a war of independence, and after that, the rule of India shifted from the East India Company, to the British government directly, and so they were the ones who implemented this education policy. So they started the first universities or rather they allowed the missionaries to start these colleges.


Establishing Universities & Colleges
Top left is Chennai University. Top right is University of Calcutta. Bottom left is the University of Bombay as it was called in those days, and bottom right is Grant Medical College in Mumbai. Robert Grant, again, was a believer in Jesus Christ. So these were the people who are responsible or responsible for starting iconic institutions in India. There was the Fort William College, started by Alexander tuff, who again was a devout Christian and a missionary. He started this famous reputed College in Calcutta. So everywhere you look, you find that well known reputable institutions in colonial times and during the early days of modern education in India, were started either by missionaries or by Christians who had their secular jobs, but they were keen to do something for the welfare of India.

The oldest engineering college in India is IIT Roorkee and it was started as Thomason College of civil engineering. So again, it was started by a person who was sympathetic to the conditions of the people around that place. And that's why he started this engineering college. Syed Mahmood, in his book, a history of English education in India, he writes like this “the missionary is a great help and energetic efforts must always be recognized as a prominent factor in the intellectual progress of India”. Two other authors, JP Naik and Syed Nurulla in their book a student's history of education in India right like this, “The missionary work has great value as the pioneer work which led to the building up of the modern educational system of India.

So in a report that was done in 1865. The report said that there were 40 high schools and 4 colleges in the Punjab province of which 17 schools and 2 colleges were run by missionaries. So Christians, both British and later on Indian Christians were at the hub of pioneering education in India. So it was motivated by the Bible, and other well known colleges, St. Stephen's college. It was also started by missionaries and a lot of the famous people that we know today are alumni of St. Stephen's College.

There is also a stamp that has been released to commemorate this college. This was founded by a mission. The aim was the proclamation of the gospel of Jesus. Now, you might wonder why is it that people who have a stated aim to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, why do they also provide secular education? There are two reasons for that. One is that from the point of view of the Bible, secular learning or the learning that is there in different fields, it makes sense in the light of the Bible, and it informs our study of the Bible.

So it is helpful for people to have a general awareness of the world when they study God's Word. So that's the philosophy of Christian education and the other reason is that the Bible says that we are supposed to love our neighbors as our own selves. So if you are educated, and you see the value of education and you find that there are people around you and they are deprived to it, then Christian love calls you to do something about it. If it is in your capacity, and that's what these Christians were doing in establishing these colleges. And I mean, as we all know, there are so many people who have studied in these colleges and they have not become Christians. They have perhaps been exposed a little bit to the message of the Bible, that they have had their secular education, and they have gone their way.

Now, this is a comment that was written in the college magazine of St. Stephen's by professors CF Andrew. So this was at the time of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre. So, this professor writes like this, these columns do not engage in political controversy, but as Christian missionaries, we cannot avoid the duty of forming and expressing a judgment on such a deed of horror as the slaughter in Jallianwala Bagh. The idea of an India held by England only by naked and ruthless pose is one that no follower of Jesus Christ can consistently tolerate for an instant. It was an idea that some British people tolerated but what I want to present before you is this, that whatever the British did in India, there was a lot of bad as well as good that they did the little good or whatever extent of good that they did had a lot to do with the biblical motivation. Now, why wasn't CF Andrew just supporting the actions of the general who shot so many Indians and killed them? It's very easy to support people of your own party, even if they do something wrong. Now, as you can see, Andrew was motivated by a conscience that had been touched by the Bible.


Female Education
One of the areas in which the Bible influenced education was that it promoted the education of women's students as well. Nirmala Mahajan, writes like this, “Missionary societies were more progressive than government institutions in the field of female education.” Now why is this? The Bible says that God has made both men and women in His image, and not only men, but women also need a chance to understand the world around them to understand the message that God has given in the Bible and to take a decision as to whether they will respond to the Lord Jesus or not. So this is the biblical message and this is what motivated missionaries to initiate education for girls as well. This is another famous College for Women. Now it's in Pakistan. It was the first college in the then Punjab, and it was established by the Zenana Bible and medical mission, which was specifically a mission targeting women.

So historians write like this, “The missionaries propagated the equality of women and their slogan was well echoed in the activities of Kinnaird College. The alumni of Kinnaird College, even from the Muslim families, were willing to drop the purdah restrictions. So colleges like this catapulted the progress of Indian and Pakistani society. So Kinnaird College is alive and well today. Also, it's fully operational and this is how it looks today.

I'll close with a mention of the Christian Medical College in Vellore. Even today, this is one of the top medical colleges in India. So it was founded by a lady called Ida Scudder. Now she was not a missionary, but she was the daughter of a missionary. And when she was a teenager, she was studying in America and she came to India in order to visit her parents who were here. And at that point of time, she had absolutely no intention of having anything to do with India. She was just here on a summer vacation to visit her parents. And then during that time, there were three people, three men who visited her father, who was also a doctor, two Hindus, and one Muslim.

All three of them said that their wives were pregnant, their wives were in labor pain, there was some complication. And so their wives' lives were in danger. And so they were asking if there was any female doctor around because they were not comfortable with a male doctor examining their wife. So her father told them that sorry, I am the only one with medical training here. My wife is not a doctor. So the man went away. The next morning Ida learned that all three women had died.

And that impacted her. And she writes in her biography this way she says that night I couldn't sleep properly, and I felt that God was putting a burden in me to do something to train Indian doctors, to educate Indians so that they could be Indian doctors, both men and women who could help Indians. And so although her original plan was just to have an American education and live the rest of her life in America, what she did was she completed her studies there, but then she came back, and then she founded a small institution to train doctors and that eventually became Christian Medical College.

Now, what was she motivated?
She was not a secular person trying to reform society. She was motivated by the love of Jesus Christ; the Jesus was mentioned in the Bible. So she is another example to show how it was the Bible that motivated the education of Indians. It was the Bible that motivated Christians and Bible believers to do something to start modern education in India. We hope that this video was informative, and we hope that you will take the time to research more on the impact of the Bible. And that leads, in fact, to an inevitable conclusion that this book is like no other. It is, The Word of God. Thank you very much.