(i) There was a strong streak of Benthamite radicalism in the East India Company administration. James Mill became a senior Company official in 1819 after writing a monumental history of India which showed a strong contempt for Indian institutions. From 1831 to 1836 he was the Chief Executive Officer of the East India Company and his son John Stuart Mill worked for the Company from 1823 to 1858.

(ii) Malthus was professor of economics at Haileybury, and the teaching there for future Company official was strongly influenced by utilitarianism.

(iii) The utilitarians deliberating used India to try out experiments and ideas which they would have liked to apply in England. The utilitarians were strong supporters of laissez-faire and hated any kind of state interference to promote economic development. Thus, they tended to rely on market forces to deal with famine problems, they did nothing to stimulate agriculture or protect industry.

(iv) This laissez-faire tradition was more deeply embedded in the Indian civil service than in the England itself, and persisted very strongly until the late 1920s.

(v) The administration was efficient and non- corrupt, but the state apparatus was of a watchdog character with few development spending was for the military, justice, police and jails, and less than 3 percent for agriculture.

(vi) One of the most significant things the British did to Westernise India was to introduce a modified version of English education. Macaulay's 1835 Minute on Education had a decisive impact on British educational policy and is a classic example of a Western rationalist approach to Indian civilization.

(vii) Before the British took over, the court language of the Mughals was Persian and the Muslim population used Urdu, a mixture of Persian, Arabic and Sanskrit. Higher education was largely religious and stressed knowledge of Arabic and Sanskrit. The Company had given some financial support to a Calcutta Madrasa (1718) and a Sanskrit college at Benares (1792). Warren Hastings, as Governor General from 1782 to 1795 had himself learned Sanskrit and Persian, and several other Company officials were oriental scholars. One of them, Sir William Jones, had translated a great mass of Sanskrit literature and had founded the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1785.

(viii) But Macaulay was strongly opposed to this orientalism. For various reasons he had no hesitation in deciding favour of English education, but it not to be for the masses.