A bitter debate erupted in 1834 between Orientalists and Anglicists over what kind of public education the British should promote in their growing Indian empire. This collection of the main documents pertaining to the controversy (some published for the first time) aims to recover the major British and South Asian voices, broaden our understanding of imperial discourses and recognise the significant role of the colonised in the shaping of colonial knowledge. Bringing together into a single volume documents not easily obtained - long out of print, never before published, or scattered about in sundry books and journals - enables modern readers to judge the relative merits of the various arguments and undermines the common impression that the controversy was simply an exercise in colonial power involving only Europeans.

What kind of public education should the British promote in their growing Indian empire? A bitter debate erupted in 1834 between Oriantalists, who respected Indian classical education and wished to engraft Western knowledge onto it, and Anglicists, who saw little good in traditional Indian education and wished to modernise India by introducing English-language education as widely as possible. This collection of the most important documents pertaining to the controversy has been prepared with the aimof recovering as much as possible of the major British and South Asian voices. The goal is to broaden our understanding of what is meant by imperial discourses and recognise the significant role played by the colonised in the shaping of colonial knowledge. Bringing together documents long out of print, never before published or scattered in sundry books and journals will help to judge the relative merits of various arguments. In addition, access to the ideas of Indians such as Rammohun Roy, Ram Camul Sen and thousands of anonymous petitioners will also help undermine the impression that the controversy was simply an exercis in colonial power involving only Europeans.