Direction: Choose the correct answer from the options given below:

During the British rule in India, who played the most significant role in making English as a medium of education?

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

HTET PRT 2014 - 2015 Official Paper

Answer 1

The correct answer is "Macaulay".

Key Points

Thomas Babington Macaulay produced his famous Memorandum on (Indian) Education which was scathing on the inferiority (as he saw it) of native (particularly Hindu) culture and learning.
He argued that Western learning was superior, and currently could only be taught through the medium of English.
There was, therefore, a need to produce—by English-language higher education—"a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect" who could in their turn develop the tools to transmit Western learning in the vernacular languages of India.
Hence, the correct answer is option 1.

Additional Information

Among Macaulay's recommendations were the immediate stopping of the printing by the East India Company of Arabic and Sanskrit books and that the Company should not continue to support traditional education beyond "the Sanskrit College at Benares and the Mahometan College at Delhi" (which he considered adequate to maintain traditional learning).