Bilingual English teaching in colonial India: the case of John Murdoch’s work in Madras Presidency, 1855–1875

ABSTRACT

There is a prevalent conception about colonial Indian education – in the absence of much empirical research into specific contexts – that it was carried out only in English with the aim of anglicising the masses. While it is true that there were colonial motives of acculturation embedded in English language teaching and English-medium instruction, the idea that English language learning was exclusively monolingual is historically inaccurate. Indeed, the survival of bilingual teaching materials prepared in the nineteenth century for use in colonial schools suggests that, outside elite English-medium instruction, the use of Indian languages was common in English teaching. To explore this possibility further, this article focuses on the work and ideas of a prominent colonial educationalist, John Murdoch (1818–1904), with a focus on the schoolbooks he was associated with and on his recommendations for bilingual English teaching in the colonial schools of Madras Presidency. Murdoch’s ideas on the use of local languages in teaching reveal complexities and intricacies which have been under-explored in previous histories of colonial Indian education.

KEYWORDS:

• Colonial bilingualism
• own-language use
• John Murdoch
• bilingual English language teaching
• Anglo-Vernacular school
• English-medium
• vernacular-medium

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Notes

¹ In order to align with current debates in the field of English language teaching (ELT) (cf. Hall and Cook 2013), in this article we sometimes use the term ‘own language’ to signify what colonial educators, historians and other researchers have tended to call ‘vernacular (language)’ and what present-day linguists may term ‘L1’ or ‘mother tongue’. In the present-day Indian context, ‘vernacular’ has a colonial connotation, implying subordination in status due to the way English has, over time, gained prestige and pre-eminence in Indian education (cf. Jain 2017). The term ‘vernacular (language)’ is therefore used in this article only to avoid anachronism, i.e. to mirror but not to condone colonialist usage. We also avoid use of the terms ‘mother tongue’, ‘native language’ and ‘first language’ due to imprecision of reference in multilingual contexts, where children often grow up as bilinguals (indeed, as Mitchell (2005) has argued, the concept of ‘mother tongue’ was itself a nineteenth-century colonial imposition in India). ‘Own language’ – a language or languages which one identifies as belonging to oneself (cf. Hall & Cook 2013) – is ideologically a relatively neutral term which shifts the agency of language choice and linguistic identity away from outside forces to language users themselves.

² Charles Wood, the president of the Board of Control of the East India Company sent a Despatch which introduced a framework for western education from primary to higher education. The Despatch favoured building on existing networks of indigenous and colonial schools for the development of mass education via an emphasis on the use of vernacular languages. The Despatch had a large impact on English language teaching in Madras Presidency by means of the setting-up of new indigenous, missionary and colonial schools across the Presidency.

³ We base our own account of Murdoch’s life and career here on these sources (particularly on Morris (1906), which is the most substantial work), making additional reference to Creegan (1903) and Savage (2004).

⁴ As we shall see, Murdoch, in fact, refers to [English] ‘Reading’, ‘Spelling and Dictation’ and ‘Grammar and Composition’ as ‘special subjects of instruction’ (Murdoch 1860, vii–viii), not to ‘English’ per se, and it is an open question (still to be researched) when ‘English’ became a recognised, internally unified subject – i.e. distinguished as ‘English’ – within school curricula in different types of school in India. Thus, our use of the umbrella phrase ‘English as a subject’ (as opposed to English as a ‘medium of instruction’ to teach other subjects) in this article is somewhat anachronistic, though useful for analytical purposes. Similarly, phrases like ‘English-medium instruction’ (‘EMI’), ‘bilingual education’ and ‘bilingual English language teaching’ are present-day ones, not employed at the time, but useful, we feel, for analytical and comparative purposes. ‘Bilingual education’, in our usage, refers broadly to the use of two languages, that is, English and an Indian language, as vehicles of instruction in different subjects. ‘Bilingual English language teaching’ (or ‘BELT’) refers specifically to teaching English bilingually, that is, using and/or referring to a language other than English when the focus is on English language development. Depending on school type, point of time in the nineteenth century, and region, the presence of bilingual education or BELT varied in colonial India.

⁵ ‘Diglott’ was a term commonly used by colonial administrators and missionaries in India to describe a bilingual document. For example: ‘a diglott register’, ‘a diglott calendar’, ‘a diglott grammar’ or simply ‘a diglott’.

⁶ The very close correspondence between this passage from the Hints (1860) and advice given to the teacher at the beginning of the English and Telugu First Book (CVES 1862a) is just one reason for us to surmise that Murdoch was the author/compiler of these and probably most of the CVES materials, even though his authorship of the latter is not explicitly indicated.

⁷ Here we adopt Murdoch’s own distinction: ‘A Reader is a book whose primary object is to teach reading’ [italics in original], whereas Reading Books are general School Books (for all subjects) (Murdoch 1872, 23).

⁸ Duplication of wording between Hints (1860, 85–6) and these forewords justifies our citing Murdoch as the author of the forewords, and is another reason for us to assume that Murdoch was the (unnamed) compiler of (many) CVES materials (see also footnote 6 above).

⁹ In relation to bilingual dictionaries in colonial Madras, James (2003, 135) defines ‘bilingualisation’ as the strategy of making a bilingual (English) dictionary from a monolingual one originally compiled for English-native speakers.

¹⁰ As indicated by, for example, Sengupta (2011) and Tschurenev (2019), whereas missionary education has tended to be conflated with the broader imperial ‘project’ in the past, missionary views on education and actual pedagogies in Mission schools should be viewed on their own terms as sometimes supportive of or dependent on but sometimes also in tension with overall government and imperial aims.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

R. Vennela

R. Vennela is an Assistant Professor in English at SRM University AP, India. She gained her PhD (University of Hyderabad) in the field of history of bilingual English language learning and teaching in India, and her research interests include translation, lexicology, and bilingual education in India. Email: [email protected]

Richard Smith

Richard Smith is a Reader in ELT and Applied Linguistics at the University of Warwick. Founder of the Warwick ELT Archive and the AILA Research Network on History of Language Learning and Teaching, he has been active in the fields of historical research and teacher-research in language education. Email: [email protected]