ABSTRACT
Do the natives learn the goal? How do they deviate from the horizon of expectations that provided coherence to the actions of the British in the domain of education? In order to answer the question of reception, I examine the writings of Raja Rammohun Roy in order to examine the question of translation of concepts. An examination of the debate shows how the structures of thought inherited from the Orientalist frames are transmitted through modern education and social reform. In the process, changes occur in both the way the native concepts are used and in the way new concepts are made sense of. In the second half of the chapter, I examine the heightened debates around the effects of secular education that take place in the latter half of the 19th century. In the absence of necessary conditions, an acute anxiety with regard to the incomplete moral formation of the Indian student as well as moral and cognitive goals that are half-learnt, not learnt or are differently learnt comes to haunt the late 19th-century debates on education. This chapter also shows that the crisis is not new for the contours of our current crisis can already be found here.
