Alternative forms of bilingual education in colonial India – a prologue to the methods era (1811-1920)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Learning English was popular in 18th- and 19th-century colonial India because, as Chaudhary (2012) depicts, the East India company’s offer of employment for Indians who knew English made English learning and thereby bilingualism much sought after. Citing examples of bilingual grammars and textbooks from the early 18th century, Chaudhary (2012, 10) notes how, despite demand, it was difficult to obtain these books until the early 19th century. By sourcing facts from scholarly work like this and looking at some available bilingual teaching material, this paper argues that although history weaves a narrative of colonial education as a monolithic, spearheaded imperialist endeavour, colonial education, specifically BELT, was a sporadic, heterogeneous, most times inclusive rivulet of colonial pedagogy which cannot be summarised as a uniform teaching method as specified in the later methods era. Specifically, the paper looks at English-Telugu bilingual teaching/learning material used in the Madras Presidency and English-Odiya bilingual learning material used in parts of Odisha in the Bengal Presidency.