Simultaneous with this activity we have the development of another point of view, which eventually led to the momentous decision to place English education above education in Sanscrit [sic], Arabic or Persian: the famous (or infamous) `Minute on Education' of 1835, formulated by Thomas Babington Macaulay, according to which government funds would be used to support education in English in India, and the curriculum would be based on that prevalent in schools in England. As de Bary et al. put it,
The Committee on Public Instruction ...was hopelessly divided between the ``Anglicists" and the ``Orientalists." The former saw the need to train a host of loyal government servants able to conduct the routine clerical work of the Company. The latter feared that a Westernizing policy would offend the sensibilities of the Indian upper classes and possibly lead to their general rebellion. Seeing that a decision was needed, Macaulay ended the stalemate by supporting the Anglicists with all the weight of his influence and all the power of his pen. (de Bary et al., 1958 (2):36)
And Macaulay did not mince words:
All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are, moreover, so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them. It seems to be admitted on all sides that the intellectual improvement of those classes of the people who have the means of pursuing higher studies can at present be effected only by means of some language not vernacular among them. (Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, quoted in de Bary 1958:44).
Macaulay and the Anglicists were, of course, strengthened in their resolve by the great interest already evidenced among many educated Indians for an English education. Rammohun Roy was one of those Bengalis who had founded his own English school, and wrote to the Governor-General, Lord Amherst, to protest the use of government funds to found and support (in 1823) a college for Sanskrit studies.
We find that the government are establishing a Sanscrit school under Hindu pandits to impart such knowledge as is already current in India. This seminary ...can only be expected to load the minds of youth with grammatical niceties and metaphysical distinctions of little or no practical use to the possessors or to society. The pupils will there acquire what was known two thousand years ago with the addition of vain and empty subtleties since then produced by speculative men such as is already commonly taught in all parts of India.