DHARAMPAL • COLLECTED WRITINGS
Volume III
THE BEAUTIFUL TREE
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DHARAMPAL • COLLECTED WRITINGS
Volume I
Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century Volume II
Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition
**Volume III **
The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century
THE BEAUTIFUL TREE
Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century by
Dharampal
The Beautiful Tree
By Dharampal
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In memory
of Shri Jayaprakash Narayan
for
his unflagging interest and guidance
in this work.
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…That does not finish the picture. We have the education of this future state. I say without fear of my figures being challenged successfully, that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished. The village schools were not good enough for the British administrator, so he came out with his programme. Every school must have so much paraphernalia, *building, and so forth. Well, there were no such schools at all. *
There are statistics left by a British administrator which show that, in places where they have carried out a survey, ancient schools have gone by the board, because there was no recognition for these schools, and the schools established after the European pattern were too expensive for the people, and therefore they could not possibly overtake the thing. I defy anybody to fulfill a programme of compulsory primary education of these masses inside of a century. This very poor country of mine is ill able to sustain such an expensive method of education. Our state would revive the old village schoolmaster and dot every village with a *school both for boys and girls. *
(MAHATMA GANDHI AT CHATHAM HOUSE, LONDON,
OCTOBER 20, 1931)
…I have not left off the pursuit of the subject of education in the villages during the pre-British period. I am in correspondence with several educationists. Those who have replied do support my view but do not produce authority that would be accepted as proof. My prejudice or presentiment still makes me cling to the statement I made at Chatham House. I don’t want to write haltingly in Harijan . You don’t want me merely to say that the proof I had in *mind has been challenged by you! *
(GANDHIJI TO SIR PHILIP HARTOG, SEGAON,
AUGUST, 1939)
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CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
DOCUMENTS:
A. Survey of Indigenous Education in the Madras Presidency 1822-26
89
B. Fra Paolino Da Bartolomeo on Education of Children in
India,
1796
256
C. Alexander Walker on Indian Education, Literature, etc., circa, 1820
262
D. Extracts from W. Adam’s State of Education in * Bengal: *
*1835-38 *
270
E. Extracts from G.W. Leitner’s History of Education in the Punjab since Annexation and in 1882 343
F. Correspondence between Sir Philip Hartog and Mahatma Gandhi on the Question of Indigenous Indian Education in the Early British Period, and other papers
348
G. List of Tanjore Temples Receiving Revenue Assignments 386
List of Individuals in Tanjore receiving Revenue Assignments 413
Index 421 * *
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