To a great extent, the local British could lend emancipation to the local populace. For, they never strived to learn the dangerous local dialect, which was quite obviously offensive and brusque in tone, usage and meaning. Their way of improving the Indians were to this extent quite different from the ways and manners of current-day NGOs who ostensibly work for the improvement of the lower classes.
I once did ask a lady who had passed the MSW (Master in Social Welfare) about this. She was working with a very rich Indian NGO. I asked her about the issue of respect, as they went around improving the people. She very candidly told me thus: We have been very stringently instructed to keep them in the lower case. For, if we are to use respectful words to them, they would immediately understand us as lower to them. So, we forcefully keep them suppressed. However, they are more grateful, for whatever help we give them. On the other hand, had we given them the full liberation, they would never be grateful to anything that we do for them.
In many ways, this answer is indicative of the plight the White English speakers face all over the world. They give a training that more or less gives the other lower person a chance to arrive at a close proximity to their own level. They can be addressed by name, with or without a Mr., Mrs. Etc. There is only one You, He or She for both sides. The others improve drastically. Yet, at the end of the day, they bear great grudge against the White English speakers. For not allowing them to be one among them! They love to be one among the White English speakers. They do not want to be identified with their fellow beings, of same colour or language!
There was one great observation that I have made with regard to language. I have mentioned it in my book, March of the evil empires! In my later day, research work, Codes of reality! I had made a very candid study about this. It is that the quality of a language that one uses, and in which one is able to live in, more or less designs or redesigns a persons physical personality. And also mental demeanour.
I have seen the same great change that English had brought into the looks of the lower caste people of whom I have just discussed. The more they change, the more is the draconian demand to be equal to the English. To be equated to their own class of people becomes an insult, and a racial slur.
Coming back to the subject of education, I seem to have mentioned that English education was promoted by the Christian Missionaries. Well, that was not quite the truth. The British colonial government, including that by the East India Company was not on very good talking terms with the Christian Missionaries. No help other than what was statutorily available was given to them to propagate their religion.
When Macaulay tried to bring in English education to the local people of this geographical area, he had to face the opposition of the powerful Missionary class. He sought to placate them by arguing that they would find it easier to do their mission if the natives knew English. Yet, it may be mentioned that the Christian religion as such is not a liberal religion, if the Anglican version of the same is not taken into consideration. For, they all strive to promote the local languages, as a means of spreading the religion. The same feudal communication codes are very much evident in the Christian Churches, where there is no English.
However, the fact that the government made education in English statutory did the trick. The Missionary schools could give a better imparting of English, due to their overseas connections.
