Wednesday, January 23, 2013

English in India

"The earliest public institution for the teaching of English in India was perhaps the Hindu College of Calcutta, established in 1819.  It owed its origin to a discussion at the Atmiya Sabha of Rammohun Roy in 1815." - The Life and Letters of Raja Rammohun Roy, edited by Sophia Dobson Collet, (1914)
The college was founded by David Hare (a watchmaker in Calcutta, described by Dr. Alexander Duff to the British House of Commons in 1853 as "an ordinary illiterate man,....but...a man of great energy and strong practical sense") and Rammohun Roy.

Macaulay was a boy of 19, studying at Cambridge at the time.  His famous minute setting the course of education in India came in February 1835.