The Hindoos as They Are: A Description of the Manners, Customs and the Inner Life of Hindoo Society in BengalSivachandra Vasu
Religion
The Hindoos as They Are: A Description of the Manners, Customs and the Inner Life of Hindoo Society in Bengal
Sivachandra Vasu
Hindus; India -- Social life and customs; Women -- India
English is the adopted language of a Bengalee Baboo. It is an
instructive study to take a cursory view of the rapid progress of
English education throughout India from the day when David Hare had held
out pecuniary inducements to Hindoo youths to attend his school, and Dr.
Duff called in the aid of Rammohun Roy to found the infant General
Assembly's Institution, now developed into the largest College in India.
Fifty years ago, who dreamt or even hazarded a prediction that a Native
lad of sixteen or seventeen years of age would venture to traverse the
perilous ocean and compete for the Civil Service Examination in England,
paying no heed whatever to the manifold disadvantages arising from
social persecution, and the disruption of domestic relations of the
tenderest nature. When Bacon said that knowledge is power, he certainly
did not mean physical but intellectual power. It is the irresistible
influence of this power that has inspirited an Indian youth to appear at
the English "open competition" for the purpose of winning academic spurs
and entering a closely fenced service; it is the quickening influence of
this power, combined with an enterprising spirit, that has gradually
enabled a mere handful of English adventurers to convert a small factory
into one of the vastest empires in the East. The gigantic strides that
English education has made in India within a short time, have been the
wonder of the age, the foundation rock of her ultimate emancipation,
socially, morally and intellectually. The prison wall round the mind
which ages had reared and learning fortified has been completely
demolished, and not only men but matronly zenana females have picked up
a few crumbs of broken English words which they occasionally use in
familiar conversation, for instance, Rail, Talygraf, Guvner, Juj
Majister, High Cote, etc.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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