Certainly, and it was necessary that they did so, especially in the earlier part of the period, if they were to be able to trade, command armies made up largely of Indian troops, run households and servants, and enjoy any sort of social life. East India Company officers were supposed to arrive in the country with a working knowledge of the native languages, and tuition in Hindustani and Persian was a compulsory feature of the curriculum at Fort William College in Calcutta, where, from 1800, cadets received instruction before receiving their first posting.

Nevertheless, Fort William College was so close to the temptations of the city, so badly staffed and poorly disciplined, that it soon acquired an evil reputation. It was peopled with rambunctious cadets who, in reality, took little interest in their lessons and remained (one contemporary observed) ‘in a continual uproar, blowing coach-horns and bugles, baiting jackals with pariah-dogs, fighting cocks, and shooting kites and crows’. Students learned ‘drinking, coarse language, vulgar amusements and gaming’ rather than Indian languages, and as the 19th century wore on, an increasing number of officers made of point of remaining virtually ignorant of the local tongues, even though very few of the men they would command spoke any English. Albert Hervey, who arrived in India in1833 and was one of the more conscientious cadets in the Madras army, notes that “a young fellow is often laughed out of the good intention of studying the language, being told that it is all stuff and nonsense; that there is no necessity for it; that a man can get on well enough without putting himself to such trouble; that all he has to do is, to say ‘Achha’ (Very good) to everything that may be told or reported to him.’ He goes on to relate an anecdote of one ensign, ignorant of Hindustani, who was called on three occasions to help deal with a fire in the sepoy lines, but stayed put in his quarters, responding to each increasingly urgent report of the spreading conflagration with a nonchalant ‘Achha’. He ‘got a terrible rap over his knuckles’ for his pains.

What all this meant was that those who were serious about their languages had to take steps independently to master them, hiring specialist tutors to help. Most of the teachers used by the British were local men. Hervey’s own experience with a "moonshee" (munshi) – an Indian teacher of languages – says something about how hard the local languages were to acquire:

‘I fagged hard with the Moonshee, who used to come to me every day for four hours. I held conversations with my teacher in English; every sentence uttered was put down on paper in Hindustanee, and the next day what I had written down in Hindustanee, was brought to me fresh written by the Moonshee, and those sentences I re-translated into English, so that I not only gained a knowledge of the words, but was able to read the common writing, which was of the greatest assistance. I fagged thus hard for three months, working away without relaxation, except for meals, and a siesta in the heat of the day (a very bad habit, by the way, and one which ought never to be indulged in); and occasionally receiving a visit from one of my neighbours.’

Hervey was, however, unimpressed by the personal qualities of the men he employed, criticising them in terms that would become increasing common in British memoirs as the nineteenth century progressed and racial attitudes hardened: ‘A word or two about these moonshees… I look upon them generally as the veriest humbugs that can be met with among the natives. Habit and a wish to please make them adopt a line of conduct towards their employers quite at a variance with honesty and sincerity. They assume a style of language and manners servile in the extreme. Everything they say has something in it of compliment to the person addressed; some silvery, flowery speech calculated to disgust far more than please; and their fawning, cringing ways of saluting, acquiescing, and smiling are all very mean and deceitful.’ Hervey did concede that ‘the best and most efficient moonshees are those attached to regiments of the line’, and it would appear that his hostility towards the profession was due in part to the repeated assurances of his own teachers that he was perfectly prepared for a language examination that he in fact failed. His attitude was made worse by his belief that had he bribed his munshi in advance, he would certainly have passed.

Source

BS Cohn, ‘Recruitment and training of British civil servants in India, 1600-1860’, in Ralph Braibanti (ed), Asian Bureaucratic Systems Emergent from the British Imperial Tradition (Durham: Duke University Press, 1966) pp.102-24

Albert Hervey, Ten Years in India (London: William Shoberl, 1850) II, 198-202.

Albert Hervey, A Soldier of the Company (London: Michael Joseph, 1988) pp.23-5.