ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the primer-writing project in nineteenth-century Bengal, in terms of an 'anglicization-Sanskritization-vernacularization dynamic' and in terms of its 'translational politics'. 'Anglicization' implies the naturalization of English and Western learning in the wake of Anglicist positions crystallizing themselves within Indian education debates. Amritalal Basu exposes the systemic 'anglicization' and destruction of an indigenous pedagogic process at the behest of comprador high caste Hindus such as Iswarchandra Bidyasagar, Madanmohan Tarkalankar and Akshaya Kumar Dutta. The chapter examines the relational complexities of Chambers' primers (in English) and Iswarchandra Bidyasagar's primers (in Bangla). In fact, Bidyasagar's recasting of Chambers' Exemplary and Instructive Biography, and the secularist cultural assumptions that such a recasting involved, drew considerable flak from contemporary figures such as the satirist-playwright, Amritalal Basu. Bidyasagar's Bodhodaya translates Chambers' Rudiments and naturalizes thereby the principles of science as applied to the physical, material and social world.
