Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s3.12
Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s3.12
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c6.s3.12
Given the doubts of academicians like Playfair, Laplace, Delambre, etc., as well as the supporting role of the fast multiplying tribe of ‘oriental scholars’ amongst the servants of the British authorities in India (including those amongst the missionaries), Macaulay’s verdict on Indian sciences and learning was inevitable. Only Macaulay expresses such doubts and contempt with greater drama and bombast. But what he said, in his minute of 2 February 1835, was shared fully not only by the then British Governor General of India, Bentinck (‘I give my entire concurrence to the sentiments expressed in this minute’), but practically by every other learned or powerful European. Referring to the orientalists Macaulay observed: