02 Introduction

Indian historical knowledge, by and large, has been derived, at least until recent decades, from the writings and accounts left by foreigners. This applies equally to our knowledge about the status of Indian education over the past five centuries. The universities of Taxila and Nalanda, and a few others until recently have been better known and written about primarily because they had been described centuries ago by some Greek or Chinese traveller, who happened to keep a journal which had survived, or had communicated such information to his compatriots who passed it down to our times.

Travellers and adventurers of a new kind began to wander around parts of India from about 1500 A.D., and more so from about the close of the 16th century. Since for centuries the areas they came from had had no direct links with India, and as they had come from wholly different climates and societies, to them most aspects of India—its manners, religions, philosophies, ancient and contemporary architecture, wealth, learning, and even its educational methods—were something quite different from their own backgrounds, assumptions and experience.

Prior to 1770, (by which time they had become actual rulers of large areas), the British, on whose writings and reports this book is primarily based,1 had rather a different set of interests. These interests, as in the subsequent period too, were largely mercantile, technological, or were concerned with comprehending, and evaluating Indian statecraft; and, thereby, extending their influence and dominion in India. Indian religions, philosophies, scholarship and the extent of education—notwithstanding what a few of them may have written on the Parsis, or the Banias of Surat—had scarcely interested them until then.

Such a lack of interest was due partly to their different expectations from India. The main reason for this, however, lay in

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the fact that the British society of this period—from the mid-sixteenth to about the later part of the eighteenth century—had few such interests. In matters like religion, philosophy, learning and education, the British were introverted by nature. It is not that Britain had no tradition of education, or scholarship, or philosophy during the 16th, 17th, or early 18th centuries. This period produced figures like Francis Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, etc. It had the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh which had their beginnings in the 13th and 14th centuries A.D. By the later part of the 18th century, Britain also had around 500 Grammar Schools.

However, this considerable learning and scholarship were limited to a very select elite. This became especially marked after the mid-sixteenth century, when the Protestant revolution led to the closing of most of the monasteries; while the state sequestered their incomes and properties.

Before the Protestant revolution, according to A.E. Dobbs,

‘the University of Oxford might be described as the “chief Charity School of the poor and the chief Grammar School in England, as well as the great place of education for students of theology, of law and medicine”’2; and ‘where instruction was not gratuitous throughout the school, some arrangement was made, by means of a graduated scale of admission fees and quarterages and a system of maintenance to bring the benefits of the institution within the reach of the poorest.’3 Further, while a very early statute of England specified: ‘No one shall put their child apprentice within any city or borough, unless they have land or rent of 20 shillings per annum: but they shall be put to such labour as their fathers or mothers use, or as their estates require;’ it nonetheless also stated that ‘any person may send their children to school to learn literature.’4

From about the mid-16th century, however, a contrary trend set in. It even led to the enactment of a law ‘that the English Bible should not be read in churches. The right of private reading was granted to nobles, gentry and merchants that were householders. It was expressly denied to artificers’

prentices, to journeymen and serving men “of the degree of yeomen or under”, to husbandmen and labourers’ so as ‘to allay certain symptoms

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of disorder occasioned by a free use of the Scriptures.’5

According to this new trend, it was ‘meet for the ploughman’s son to go to the plough, and the artificer’s son to apply the trade of his parent’s vocation: and the gentlemen’s children are meet to have the knowledge of Government and rule in the commonwealth. For we have as much need of ploughmen as any other State: and all sorts of men may not go to school.’6

A century and a half later (that is, from about the end of the 17th century), there is a slow reversal of the above trend, leading to the setting up of some Charity Schools for the common people. These schools are mainly conceived to provide

‘some leverage in the way of general education to raise the labouring class to the level of religious instruction’; and, more so in Wales, ‘with the object of preparing the poor by reading and Bible study for the Sunday worship and catechetical instruction.’7

After a short start, however, the Charity School movement became rather dormant. Around 1780, it was succeeded by the Sunday school movement.8 ‘Popular education’, even at this period, ‘was still approached as a missionary enterprise.’ The maxim was ‘that every child should learn to read the Bible.’9 ‘The hope of securing a decent observance of Sunday’10 led to a concentrated effort on the promotion of Sunday schools. After some years, this attention focussed on the necessity of day schools. From then on, school education grew apace.

Nevertheless, even

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as late as 1834, ‘the curriculum in the better class of national schools was limited in the main to religious instruction, reading, writing and arithmetic: in some country schools writing was excluded for fear of evil consequences.’11

The major impetus to the Day school movement came from what was termed the ‘Peel’s Act of 1802’. This Act required the employer of young children ‘to provide, during the first four years of the seven years of apprenticeship, competent instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic, and to secure the presence of his apprentice at religious teaching for one hour every Sunday and attendance at a place of worship on that day.’12 ‘But the Act was unpopular’, and its ‘practical effect…was not great.’13 At about the same time, however, the monitorial method of teaching used by Joseph Lancaster (and also by Andrew Bell, supposedly borrowed from India)14 came into practice and greatly helped advance the cause of popular education. The number of those attending school was estimated at around 40,000 in 1792, at 6,74,883 in 1818, and 21,44,377 in 1851. The total number of schools, public as well as private in 1801 was stated to be 3,363.

By stages, it reached a total of 46,114 in 1851.15

In the beginning, ‘the teachers were seldom competent’, and ‘Lancaster insinuates that the men were not only ignorant but drunken.’16 As regards the number of years of schooling, Dobbs writes that ‘allowing for irregularity of attendance, the average length of school life rises on a favourable estimate from about one year in 1835 to about two years in 1851.’17

The fortunes of English Public schools are said to have fallen strikingly during the eighteenth century. In January 1797, the famous school at Shrewsbury, for instance, did not have

‘above three or four boys.’ After some major reorganisation, it had about 20 pupils a year later.18 In public schools like Eton, teaching consisted of writing and arithmetic (a number of English and

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Latin books were studied); while those in the fifth form also learnt ancient Geography, or Algebra. ‘Those who stayed at Eton long enough’ also ‘went through part of Euclid.’19 However it was

‘not till 1851 that Mathematics became a part of the regular school work and even at that date those who taught the subject were not regarded as persons of full standing on the staff of masters.’20

School education, especially elementary education at the people’s level, remained an uncommon commodity till around 1800. Nonetheless, the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh were perhaps as important for Britain as Taxila and Nalanda were in ancient India; or places like Navadweep were as late as the later part of the 18th century.21 Since many of those who began to come to India from Britain especially after 1773 as travellers, scholars, or judges had had their education in one of these three universities,22 it may be relevant to provide here a brief account of the courses studied together with the number of students, in one of these universities around 1800. The university chosen here is that of Oxford, and it is assumed that this information is also fairly representative of studies at Cambridge and Edinburgh at this period.

The growth of the University of Oxford (following England’s rupture with Rome) may be indicated with the following chronological list of professorships created there from 1546

onwards:23

1546

5 Professorships founded by Henry VIII:

1. Divinity, 2. Civil Law, 3. Medicine, 4. Hebrew, 5. Greek

1619

Geometry, and Astronomy

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1621 Natural

Philosophy

1621

Moral Philosophy (but break between 1707-

1829)

1622

Ancient History (i.e. Hebrew, and Europe)

1624

Grammar, Rhetoric, Metaphysics (fell into

disuse, replaced by Logic in 1839)

1624 Anatomy

1626 Music

1636 Arabic

1669 Botany

1708 Poetry

1724

Modern History and Modern Languages

1749 Experimental

Philosophy

1758 Common

Law

1780 Clinical

Instruction

1795

Anglo-Saxon (i.e. language, literature, etc.) 1803 Chemistry

In the beginning of the nineteenth century, there were nineteen colleges and five halls in Oxford. There were about 500

fellows in the colleges, a few of whom were engaged in teaching in each college. In addition, there were nineteen professors in 1800. This total had increased to 25 by 1854.

Theology and classics were the main subjects which were studied at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Examinations were set in classics known as Literae Humaniores.

These included Greek and Latin language and literature, moral philosophy, rhetoric and logic, and the elements of the mathematical sciences and physics.

Lectures were also available on other topics, e.g. law, medicine and geology.

After 1805, there was an increase in the number of students entering the University. The number of students on the rolls rose from about 760 in the early nineteenth century to about 1300 in 1820-24.

The main sources of financial support of the colleges in Oxford were their endowments, mainly in land, and income from students. The proportion of income from each source varied from 12

college to college. Taking a wider view of all the expenses of a university course (including clothing and travelling), a parent who clothed his son and supported him at university as well as during the vacation could expect to pay from £600-800 for his four year course around 1850.24

While the British, as well as the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the French, directly or in the name of the various East India Companies they had set up in the late 16th and early 17th centuries were busy extending their bases, factories, fortifications and the like, and wherever possible occupying whole territories in the Indian Ocean area, European scholars on their part were trying to understand various aspects of the civilizations existing in this area. Prominent amongst these were members of several Christian monastic orders, the most well known being the Jesuits, who were specialising in the fields of the sciences, customs, manners, philosophies and religions.

There were some others with interests of a more political, historical or economic nature. Many of them took to narrating their own adventures, and occasionally, misfortunes in the ‘fabulous’

and ‘exotic’ East. Due to the widespread interest of the European elite, much of this writing was published in one or more European languages soon after. Accounts and discussions which happened to be of a limited, but great scholarly or religious interest, were copied by hand many times over.25

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II

This great accumulation of material, from about the mid-18th century, led to serious scholarly attention and debate on India, and areas of South East Asia, particularly with regard to their politics, laws, philosophies and sciences, especially Indian astronomy. This contemporary European interest, (especially amongst men like Voltaire, Abbe Raynal and Jean Sylvain Bailly) aroused a similar interest in Britain. This was more so amongst those connected with the University of Edinburgh, like Adam Ferguson, William Robertson, John Playfair26 and A. Maconochie. In 1775, Adam Ferguson recommended to his former student, John Macpherson (temporarily to be Governor General of Bengal during 1784-85) ‘to collect the fullest details you can of every circumstance relating to the state and operation of policy in India…That you may the better apprehend what I mean by the detail…select some town and its district. Procure if possible an account of its extent and number of people. The different classes of that people, the occupations, the resources, the way of life of each. How they are related and their mutual dependencies. What contributions Government, or subordinate masters draw from the labourer of any denomination and how it is drawn. But I beg pardon for saying so much of an object which you must know so much better than I do. The man who can bring light from India (i.e. of its material resources, etc.) into this country and who has address to make his light be followed may in a few years hence make himself of great consequence and here I shall conclude my letter…’27

A. Maconochie advocated, on the other hand (first in 178328

and then again in 1788), the taking of such measures by ‘our monarch, the sovereign of the banks of the Ganges…as may be necessary for discovering, collecting and translating whatever is extent of the ancient works of the Hindoos.’ He thought that if the British ‘procured these works to Europe, astronomy and 14

antiquities, and the sciences connected with them would be advanced in a still great proportion.’ He observed further that

‘the antiquities of the religion and Government of the Hindoos are not less interesting than those of their sciences’; and felt that

‘the history, the poems, the traditions, the very fables of the Hindoos might therefore throw light upon the history of the ancient world and in particular upon the institutions of that celebrated people from whom Moses received his learning and Greece her religion and her arts.’ Prof. Maconochie also stated that the centre of most of this learning was Benares, where ‘all the sciences are still taught’ and where ‘very ancient works in astronomy are still extant.’29

Around the same time, a similar vein of thought and some corresponding action had started amongst those who had been entrusted with the exercise of political power and the carrying out of the policies and instructions from London, within India.

The more practical and immediate purposes of governance (following Adam Ferguson) led to the writing of works on Hindu and Muslim law, investigations into the rights of property and the revenues of various areas, and to assist all this, to a cultivation of Sanskrit and Persian amongst some of the British themselves. Acquaintance with these languages was felt necessary so as to enable the British to discover better, or to discard, choose, or select what suited their purpose most. In the process some of them also developed a personal interest in Sanskrit and other Indian literature for its own sake, or for the sort of reasons which Prof. Maconochie had in view. Charles Wilkins, William Jones, F.W. Ellis in Madras, and Lt Wilford (the latter got engaged in some very exotic research at Varanasi) were amongst the more well known men of this category.

Three approaches (seemingly different but in reality complementary to one another) began to operate in the British held areas of India regarding Indian knowledge, scholarship and centres of learning from about the 1770s. The first resulted from growing British power and administrative requirements which (in addition to such undertakings that men like Adam Ferguson had recommended) also needed to provide a garb of legitimacy and a background of previous indigenous precedents (however 15

farfetched) to the new concepts, laws and procedures which were being created by the British state. It is primarily this requirement which gave birth to British Indology. The second approach was a product of the mind of the Edinburgh enlightenment (dating back to around 1750) which men like Maconochie represented. They had a fear, born out of historical experience, philosophical observation and reflection (the uprooting of entire civilizations in the Americas), that the conquest and defeat of a civilisation generally led not only to its disintegration, but the disappearance of precious knowledge associated with it. They advocated, therefore, the preparation of a written record of what existed, and what could be got from the learned in places like Varanasi. The third approach was a projection of what was then being attempted in Great Britain itself: to bring people to an institutionalised, formal, law-abiding Christianity and, for that some literacy and teaching became essential. To achieve such a purpose in India, and to assist evangelical exhortation and propaganda for extending Christian

‘light’ and ‘knowledge’ to the people, preparation of the grammars of various Indian languages became urgent. The task according to William Wilberforce, called for ‘the circulation of the holy scriptures in the native languages’ with a view to the general diffusion of Christianity, so that the Indians ‘would, in short become Christians, if I may so express myself, without knowing it.’30

All these efforts, joined together, also led to the founding of a few British sponsored Sanskrit and Persian colleges as well as to the publication of some Indian texts or selections from them which suited the purpose of governance. From now on, Christian missionaries also began to open schools. Occasionally, they wrote about the state and extent of indigenous education in the parts of India in which they functioned. However, British interest was not centered on the people, their knowledge, or education, or the lack of it. Rather, their interest in ancient texts served their purpose: that of making the people conform to what was chosen for them from such texts and their new interpretations.

Their other interest (till 1813, this was only amongst a section of the British) was in the christianisation of those who were considered ready for such conversions (or, in the British phraseology of the period, for receiving ‘the blessings of Christian light and moral improvements’). These conversions were also expected to serve a more political purpose, in as much as it was felt that it could establish some affinity of outlook and belief

16

between the rulers and the ruled. A primary consideration in all British decisions from the very beginning, continued to be the aim of maximising the revenue receipts of Government and of discovering any possible new source which had remained exempt from paying any revenue to Government.

III

Instructions regarding the collection of information about the extent and nature of indigenous Indian education (including its contemporary state) were largely the consequence of the long debate in the House of Commons in 1813. This debate focussed on the clause relating to the promotion of ‘religious and moral improvement’ in India.31 Before any new policy could be devised, the existing position needed to be better known. But the quality and coverage of these surveys varied from Presidency to Presidency, and even from district to district. (This generally happens in the gathering of any such information, and more so when such collection of data was a fairly new thing.) The information which is thus available today, whether published, or still in manuscript form in the government records—as is true of the details of the Madras Presidency indigenous education survey—largely belongs to the 1820’s and 1830’s period. An unofficial survey made by G.W. Leitner in 1882 for the Punjab compared the situation there for the years before 1850, with that in 1882.

Before highlighting the main points of information given by the surveys and then proceeding with its analysis, some preliminary observations about the data as a whole are in order.

The first observation concerns the largely quantitative nature of the data presented and the fact that it concentrates largely on the institution of the school as we know it today. This, however, may help propagate wrong impressions.

It is important to emphasize that indigenous education was carried out through pathshalas, madrassahs and gurukulas.

Education in these traditional institutions—which were actually kept alive by revenue contributions by the community including 17

illiterate peasants—was called shiksha (and included the ideas of prajna, shil and samadhi). These institutions were, in fact, the watering holes of the culture of traditional communities.

Therefore, the term ‘school’ is a weak translation of the roles these institutions really played in Indian society.

For this reason, the quantitative nature of the data presented should be read with great caution. The increase in the numbers of schools in England may not necessarily have been a good thing, as it merely signified the arrival of factory schooling.

On the other hand, the decline in the numbers of traditional educational institutions is to be intensely deplored, since this meant quality education was being replaced by a substandard substitute. These aspects must always be kept at the back of our minds when we commence analysing the data for significance.

Before we do that, the highlights first.

The most well-known and controversial point which emerged from the educational surveys lies in an observation made by William Adam. In his first report, he observed that there exist about 1,00,000 village schools in Bengal and Bihar around the 1830s.32 This statement appears to have been founded on the impressions of various high British officials and others who had known the different areas rather intimately and over long periods; it had no known backing of official records. Similar statements had been made, much before W. Adam, for areas of the Madras Presidency. Men like Thomas Munro, had observed that ‘every village had a school.’33 For areas of the newly extended Presidency of Bombay around 1820, senior officials like G.L. Prendergast noted ‘that there is hardly a village, great or small, throughout our territories, in which there is not at least one school, and in larger villages more.’34 Observations made by Dr G.W. Leitner in 1882 show that the spread of education in the Punjab around 1850 was of a similar extent.

18

Since these observations were made, they have been treated very differently: by some, with the sanctity reserved for divine utterances; and by others, as blasphemous. Naturally, the first view was linked with the growth of a vocal Indian nationalism. Its exponents, besides prominent Indians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, have also included many illustrious Englishmen, like Keir Hardie, and academics like Max Mueller. The second, the blasphemous view of them, was obviously held by those who were in the later period, in one capacity or another, concerned with the administration of India; or those who felt impelled, sometimes because of their commitment to certain theoretical formulations on the development of societies, to treat all such impressions as unreal.

Especially after 1860, it had become necessary to ensure that men who had had a long period of service in the British Indian administration or its ancillary branches and who also had the ability to write, should engage in the defence of British rule, especially its beginnings, and consequently attempt to refute any statements which implied that the British had damaged India in any significant manner.

While much ink has been spilt on such a controversy, little attempt is known to have been made for placing these statements or observations in their contextual perspective. Leaving Leitner’s work, most of these statements belong to the early decades of the nineteenth century. For the later British administrator, the difficulty of appreciating the substance of the controversy is quite understandable. For England had few schools for the children of ordinary people till about 1800. Even many of the older Grammar Schools were in poor shape at the time. Moreover, the men who wrote about India (whether concerning its education, or its industry and crafts, or the somewhat higher real wages of Indian agricultural labourers compared to such wages in England)35 belonged to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century society of Great Britain.

Naturally, when they wrote about a school in every village in India—whether that may or may not have been literally true—in contrast to the British situation, it must have appeared to them so. And though they did not much mention this contrast in so many words, it may reasonably be assumed that, as perceptive observers, it was the very contrast which led them to make such judgements.

These surveys, based not on mere impressions but on hard data, reveal a great deal: the nature of Indian education; its 19

content; the duration for which it ordinarily lasted; the numbers actually receiving institutional education in particular areas; and, most importantly, detailed information on the background of those benefiting from these institutions.

The idea of a school existing in every village, dramatic and picturesque in itself, attracted great notice and eclipsed the equally important details. The more detailed and hard facts have received hardly any notice or analysis. This is both natural and unfortunate. For these latter facts provide an insight into the nature of Indian society at that time. Deeper analysis of this data and adequate reflection on the results followed by required further research may help solve even the riddle of what has been termed ‘the legend of the 1,00,000 schools’.36

According to this hard data, in terms of the content, the and proportion of those attending institutional school education, the situation in India in 1800 is certainly not inferior to what obtained in England then; and in many respects Indian schooling seems to have been much more extensive (and, it should be remembered, that it is a greatly damaged and disorganised India that one is referring to). The content of studies was better than what was then studied in England. The duration of study was more prolonged. The method of school teaching was superior and it is this very method which is said to have greatly helped the introduction of popular education in England but which had prevailed in India for centuries. School attendance, especially in the districts of the Madras Presidency, even in the decayed state of the period 1822-25, was proportionately far higher than the numbers in all variety of schools in England in 1800. The conditions under which teaching took place in the Indian schools were less dingy and more natural;37 and, it was observed, the teachers in the Indian schools were generally more dedicated and sober than in the English versions. The only aspect, and certainly a very important one, where Indian institutional education seems to have lagged behind was with regard to the education of girls. Quite possibly, girl schooling may have been proportionately more extensive in England in 1800, and was definitely the case, a few decades later. Accounts of education in India do often state (though it is difficult to judge their substantive accuracy from the data which is so far known), that

20

the absence of girls in schools was explained, however, by the fact that most of their education took place in the home.

It is, however, the Madras Presidency and Bengal-Bihar data which presents a kind of revelation. The data reveals the background of the teachers and the taught. It presents a picture which is in sharp contrast to the various scholarly pronounce-ments of the past 100 years or more, in which it had been assumed that education of any sort in India, till very recent decades, was mostly limited to the twice-born38 amongst the Hindoos, and amongst the Muslims to those from the ruling elite. The actual situation which is revealed was different, if not quite contrary, for at least amongst the Hindoos, in the districts of the Madras Presidency (and dramatically so in the Tamil-speaking areas) as well as the two districts of Bihar. It was the groups termed Soodras, and the castes considered below them39

who predominated in the thousands of the then still-existing schools in practically each of these areas.

The last issue concerns the conditions and arrangements which alone could have made such a vast system of education feasible: the sophisticated operative fiscal arrangements of the pre-British Indian polity. Through these fiscal measures, substantial proportions of revenue had long been assigned for the performance of a multiplicity of public purposes. These seem to have stayed more or less intact through all the previous political turmoils and made such education possible. The collapse of this arrangement through a total centralisation of revenue, as well as politics led to decay in the economy, social life, education, etc. This inference, if at all valid, warrants a re-examination of the various currently held intellectual and political assumptions with regard to the nature of pre-British Indian society, and its political and state structure.

Before discussing this last issue any further, however, it is necessary first to understand the various aspects of the educational data, and the controversy it gave rise to in the 1930s.

Since the detailed data of the Madras Presidency is the least known and the most comprehensive, we shall examine it first.

21

IV

The available papers connected with this survey include the instructions of Government, the circular from the Board of Revenue to the district collectors conveying the instructions and the prescribed form according to which information had to be compiled, the replies of the collectors from all the 21 districts of the Presidency, the proceedings of the Board of Revenue on the information received while submitting it to Government, and the Madras Government’s proceedings on it. These are all reproduced as Annexure A (i)-(xxx). It would have been useful for a more thorough analysis, and for better understanding of the situation if the details from which the collectors compiled their reports could be found. A reference to the records of a few districts, preserved in the Tamilnadu State Archives does not, however, indicate any additional material having survived in them. If any Taluka records still exist for this period it is quite possible they may contain more detailed data about particular villages, towns, colleges and schools.

In addition to the instructions conveyed in the Minute of the Governor-in-Council, and the text of the letter from Government to the Board of Revenue (both of which were sent to the collectors), the prescribed form required from them details of the number of schools and colleges in the districts, and the number of male and female scholars in them. The number of scholars, male as well as female were further to be provided under the following categories: (i) Brahmin scholars, (ii) Vysee scholars, (iii) Soodra scholars, (iv) scholars of all other castes and (v) Mussalman scholars. The numbers under (i) to (iv) were to be totalled separately. To these were added those under (v), thus arriving at the total number of Hindoo and Mussalman scholars, in the district, or some part of it. The category ‘all other castes’, as mentioned earlier, evidently seems to have implied all such castes considered somewhat below the Sat-Soodra category. This included most such groupings which today are listed among the scheduled castes.

It may be noted from the documents that while a reply was received from the collector of Canara, he did not send any data about the number of schools, and colleges, or any estimation of the number of those who may have been receiving instruction in the district, through what he termed private education. Apart from the statement that ‘there are no colleges in Canara’, etc., 22

he was of the view that teaching in Canara could not be termed

‘public education’; as it was organised on a somewhat discontinuous basis by a number of parents in an area by getting together and engaging the services of a teacher(s) for the purpose of teaching their children. The major difficulty for the collector, however, seemed to be that ‘the preparation of the necessary information would take up a considerable time’; and, that even if it were collected, no ‘just criterion of the actual extent of schools as exist in this zillah could be formed upon it.’

He hoped, therefore, that his letter itself would be considered as a satisfactory reply. It may be added here that Canara (from about 1800 onwards, and till at least the 1850s), even more than the northern areas of coastal Andhra, was the scene of continual opposition and peasant resistance to British rule. Besides, it also generally happened that whenever any such data was ordered to be collected (and this happened quite often) on one topic or another, the quality and extent of the information supplied by the collectors varied a great deal. To some extent, such differences in these returns arose from the varying relevance of an enquiry from district to district. A more important reason, perhaps, was the fact that because of the frequent change of collectors and their European assistants, many of them (at the time such information was required) were not very familiar with the district under their charge. Furthermore, quite a number were for various reasons, too involved in other more pressing activities, or, mentally much less equipped to meet such continual demands for information.

The information from the districts, therefore, varies a great deal in detail as well as quality. While the data from about half the districts was organised taluka-wise, and in some even parga-na-wise, from the other half it was received for the district as a whole. Three districts—Vizagapatam, Masulipatam and Tanjore—added one further category to the prescribed form provided by Government, viz. the category of Chettris or Rajah scholars between the columns for Brahmin and Vysee scholars.

Further, while some of the collectors especially of Bellary, Cuddapah, Guntoor and Rajahmundry sent fairly detailed textual replies, some others like Tinnevelly, Vizagapatam and Tanjore left it to the data to tell the story. A few of the collectors also mentioned the books used in the schools and institutions of higher learning in their districts. The collector of Rajahmundry, being the most detailed, provided a list of 43 books used in Telugu schools. He also identified some of those used in the schools of higher learning, as well as in the schools teaching Persian and Arabic.

23

24

25

TOTAL SCHOOLS, COLLEGES AND SCHOLARS

Table 1 gives the total number of schools and institutions of higher learning, along with the number of students in them in their districts. The data is taken from the reports of the collectors. Incidentally, the collectors of Ganjam and Vizagapatam indicated that the data they were sending was somewhat incomplete. This might also have been true of some of the other districts which were wholly or partly under Zamindary tenure.

Two of the collectors also sent detailed information pertaining to those who were being educated at home, or in some other private manner. The collector of Malabar sent details of 1,594 scholars who were receiving education in Theology, Law, Astronomy, Metaphysics, Ethics and Medical Science in his district from private tutors. The collector of Madras, on the other hand, reported in his letter of February 1826 that 26,963 school-level scholars were then receiving tuition at their homes in the area under his jurisdiction. More will be said about this private education subsequently.

The reports of the collectors were ultimately reviewed by the Government of the Presidency of Madras on 10 March 1826.

The Governor, Sir Thomas Munro, was of the view that while the institutional education of females seemed negligible, that of the boys between the ages of 5 to 10 years appeared to be a ‘little more than one-fourth’ of the boys of that age in the Presidency as a whole. Taking into consideration those who were estimated as being taught at home, he was inclined ‘to estimate the portion of the male population who receive school education to be nearer to one-third than one-fourth of the whole.’

CASTE-WISE DIVISION OF MALE SCHOOL STUDENTS

The more interesting and historically more relevant information, however, is provided by the caste-wise division of students. This is true not only as regards boys, but also with respect to the rather small number of girls who, according to the survey, were receiving education in schools. Furthermore, the information becomes all the more curious and pertinent when the data is grouped into the five main language areas—Oriya, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Tamil. These constituted the Presidency of Madras at this period, and throughout the nineteenth century. Table 2 gives the caste-wise number of school-going male students in each district of the five language areas.

26

It has generally been assumed that the education of any kind in India, whether in the ancient period, or just at the beginning of British rule was mainly concerned with the higher and middle strata of society; and, in case of the Hindoos (who in the Madras Presidency accounted for over 95% of the whole population), it was more or less limited to the twice-born.

However, as

27

will be seen from Table 2, the data of 1822-25 indicate more or less an opposite position. Such an opposite view is the most pronounced in the Tamil-speaking areas where the twice-born ranged between 13% in South Arcot to some 23% in Madras, the 28

Muslims form less than 3% in South Arcot and Chingleput to 10% in Salem, while the Soodras and the other castes ranged from about 70% in Salem and Tinnevelly to over 84% in South Arcot.

To make the foregoing tabulation more easily comprehensible the caste-wise data may be converted into percentages of the whole for each district. *Table 3 * shows the result of such conversion.

In Malayalam-speaking Malabar, the proportion of the twice-born was still below 20% of the total. Because of a larger Muslim population, however, the number of Muslim school students went up to nearly 27%; while the Soodras, and the other castes accounted for some 54% of the school going students.

In the largely Kannada-speaking Bellary, the proportion of the twice-born (the Brahmins and the Vysees) went up to 33%, while the Soodras, and the other castes still accounted for some 63%.

The position in the Oriya-speaking Ganjam was similar: the twice-born accounting for some 35.6%, and the Soodras and other castes being around 63.5%.

It is only in the Telugu-speaking districts that the twice-born formed the major proportion of the school going students.

Here, the proportion of Brahmin boys varied from 24% in Cuddapah to 46% in Vizagapatam; of the Vysees from 10.5% in Vizagapatam to 29% in Cuddapah; of the Muslims from 1% in Vizagapatam to 8% in Nellore; and of the Soodras and other 29

castes from 35% in Guntoor to over 41% in Cuddapah and Vizagapatam.

SCHOOLS CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO THE LANGUAGE

OF INSTRUCTION

Some of the districts also provided information regarding the language in which education was imparted, and the number of schools where Persian or English were taught. The number of schools teaching English was only 10, the highest being 7 in the district of North Arcot. Nellore, North Arcot and Masulipatam had 50, 40 and 19 Persian schools respectively, while Coimbatore had 10, and Rajahmundry 5. North Arcot and Coimbatore had schools which taught Grantham (1 and 5 respectively) as well as teaching Hindvee [a sort of Hindustani] (16 and 14

respectively), and Bellary had 23 Marathi schools. The district of North Arcot had 365 Tamil and 201 Telugu schools, while Bellary had nearly an equal number of schools teaching Telugu and Kannada. Table 4 indicates this data more clearly.

AGE OF ENROLLMENT, DAILY TIMINGS, ETC.

As mentioned earlier, the data varies considerably from district to district. Many of the collectors provided information regarding the age at which boys (and perhaps girls too) were admitted to school, the usual age being five. According to the collector of Rajahmundry, ‘the fifth day of the fifth month of the fifth year of the boy’s age is the “lucky day” for his first entrance into school’, while according to the collector of Cuddapah, the age for admission for Brahmin boys was from the age of five to six and that for Soodras from six to eight. The collector of Cuddapah further mentioned two years as the usual period for which the boys stayed at school. Nellore and Salem mentioned 3 to 5 or 6

years, while most others stated that the duration of study varied from a minimum of five to about a maximum of 15 years. While some collectors did not think much of the then current education in the schools, or of the learning and scholarship of the teachers, some thought the education imparted useful. The collector of Madras observed: ‘It is generally admitted that before they (i.e. the students) attain their 13th year of age, their acquirements in the various branches of learning are uncommonly great.’40

30

31

From the information given, it seems that the school functioned for fairly long hours: usually starting about 6 A.M., followed by one or two short intervals for meals, etc., and finishing at about sunset, or even later. Table 5 charts out the information which was received on these points from the several collectors. The functioning of these schools, their methods of teaching, and the subjects taught are best described in the annexed accounts of Fra Paolino Da Bartolomeo (A.D. 1796) and of Alexander Walker (ca 1820).41

BOOKS USED IN SCHOOLS

The main subjects reported to be taught in these Indian schools were reading, writing and arithmetic. The following lists of books used in the schools of Bellary, as also of Rajahmundry may be worth noting, and may to some degree indicate the content of learning in these schools.

NAMES OF THE BOOKS IN USE IN THE SCHOOLS IN

BELLARY DISTRICT42

A. Most commonly used

1. Ramayanum 2. Maha Bharata 3. Bhagvata

B. Used by Children from Manufacturing Classes 1. Nagalingayna-Kutha 2. Vishvakurma-Poorana 3. Kumalesherra Kalikamahata

C. Used by Lingayat Children

1. Buwapoorana 2. Raghavan-Kunkauya

2. Geeruja Kullana 4. Unbhavamoorta

3. Chenna-Busavaswara-Poorana 6. Gurilagooloo, etc.

D. Lighter Literature Read

1. Punchatantra 2. Bhatalapunchavunsatee

2. Punklee-soopooktahuller 4. Mahantarungenee 32

E. Dictionaries and Grammars used 1. Nighantoo 2. Umara 3. Subdamumburee

4. Shubdeemunee-Durpana 5. Vyacurna 6. Andradeepeca 7. Andranamasungraha, etc.

NAMES OF THE BOOKS IN USE IN THE SCHOOLS IN

RAJAHMUNDRY43

1. Baula Ramauyanum

2. Rookmeny Culleyanum

3. Paurejantahpatraranum

4. Molly Ramauyanum

5. Raumayanum

6. Dansarady Satacum

7. Kreestna Satacum

8. Soomaty Satacum

9. Janakey Satacum

10. Prasunnaragara Satacum

11. Ramataraka Satacum

12. Bahscara Satacum

13. Beesanavecausa Satacum 14. Beemalingaswara Satacum 15. Sooreyanaraina Satacum

14. Narraina Satacum

15. Plaholanda Charatra

16. Vasoo Charatra

17. Manoo Charetra

18. Sumunga Charetra

19. Nala Charetra

20. Vamana Charetra

21. Ganintum

22. Pauvooloory Ganintum

23. Bhauratam

24. Bhaugavatum

25. Vejia Valousum

26. Kroostnaleelan Velausum

27. Rathamathava Velausum

28. Suptama Skundum

29. Astma Skundum

30. Rathamathava Sumvadum

31. Bhaunoomaly Paranayem 34. Veerabhadra Vejayem 35. Leelansoondary Paranayem 36. Amarum 37. Sooranthanaswarum

32. Voodeyagapurvem

33. Audepurvem

34. Gajandra Motchum

35. Andhranamasungraham

36. Coochalopurksyanum

37. Resekajana Manobharanum

INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING

While several of the collectors observed that no institutions of higher learning were then known to exist in their districts, the rest reported a total of 1,094 such places. These were enumerated under the term ‘colleges’ (as mentioned in the prescribed form). The largest number of these, 279, were in the district of Rajahmundry with a total of 1,454 scholars, Coimbatore came next with 173 such places (724 scholars), Guntoor had 171 (with 939 scholars), Tanjore 109 (with 769

scholars), Nellore 107, North Arcot 69 (with 418 scholars), Salem 53 (with 324 scholars), Chingleput 51 (with 398 scholars), Masulipatam 49

33

34

(with 199 scholars), Bellary 23, Trichnopoly 9 (with 131

scholars), and Malabar with one old institution maintained by the Samudrin Raja (Zamorin), with 75 scholars. In most other districts where no such institutions were known, the collectors reported that such learning—in the Vedas, Sastras, Law, Astronomy, Ganeetsastram, Ethics, etc.—was imparted in Agraharams, or usually at home. The data regarding such privately conducted learning in Malabar may be indicative of the extent of such learning in other districts also (discussed in a subsequent section). Table 6 indicates these and other details more clearly.

In most areas, the Brahmin scholars formed a very small proportion of those studying in schools. Higher learning, however, being more in the nature of professional specialisation, seems in the main to have been limited to the Brahmins. This was especially true regarding the disciplines of Theology, Metaphysics, Ethics, and to a large extent of the study of Law.

But the disciplines of Astronomy and Medical Science seem to have been studied by scholars from a variety of backgrounds and castes. This is very evident from the Malabar data: out of 808 studying Astronomy, only 78 were Brahmins; and of the 194

studying Medicine, only 31 were Brahmins. Incidentally, in Rajahmundry, five of the scholars in the institution of higher learning were Soodras. According to other Madras Presidency surveys, of those practising Medicine and Surgery, it was found that such persons belonged to a variety of castes. Amongst them, the barbers, according to British medical men, were the best in Surgery.44

Besides the account provided by the Samudrin Raja regarding the functioning of the institution supported by his family in Malabar,45 the collectors of Guntoor, Cuddapah, Masulipatam, Madura and Madras also wrote in some detail on the subject of higher learning. According to the collector of Madras: ‘Astronomy, Astrology, etc. are in some instances taught to the children of the poorer class of Brahmins gratis, and in certain few cases an allowance is given proportionate to the circumstances of the parents or guardians.’ The collector of Madura on the other hand mentioned that:

35

In agraharam villages inhabited by Brahmins, it has been usual from time immemorial to allot for the enjoyment of those who study the Vaidams and Pooranams (religion and historical traditions) an extent of maunium land yielding from 20 to 50 fanams per annum and in a few but rare instances to the extent of 100 fanams and they gratuitously and generally instruct such pupils as may voluntarily be brought to them.46

The collector of Masulipatam made a similar observation and stated:

If the boys are of Vydeea Brahmins, they are, so soon as they can read properly, removed direct from schools to college of Vadums and Sastrums.

The former is said to be the mother of all the sciences of Hindoos, and the latter is the common term for all those sciences, which are in Sanskrit, viz law, astronomy, theology, etc. These sciences are taught by Brahmins only, and more especially Brahmins holding Agraharams, Mauniums, Rozunahs, or other emoluments, whose duty it is to observe their religious obligation on all occasions.

In most of the towns, villages and hamlets of this country, the Brahmins are teaching their boys the Vadum and Sastrums, either in colleges or elsewhere in their respective houses.47

The more descriptive accounts, however, were from Cuddapah and Guntoor. The collector of Cuddapah stated: Although there are no schools or colleges supported by public contribution, I ought not to omit that amongst Brahmins, instruction is in many places gratuitously afforded and the poorer class obtain all their education in this way. At the age of from 10 to 16 years, if he has not the means of obtaining instruction otherwise, a young Brahmin leaves his home, and proceeds to the residence of a man of his own caste who is willing to afford instruction without recompense to all those resorting to him for the purpose. They do not, however, derive subsistence from him for as he is generally poor himself, his means could not of course give support to others, and even if he has the means his giving food and clothing to his pupils would attract so many as

36

to defeat that object itself which is professed. The Board would naturally enquire how these children who are so destitute as not to be able to procure instruction in their own villages, could subsist in those to which they are strangers, and to which they travel from 10 to 100 miles, with no intention of returning for several years. They are supported entirely by charity, daily repeated, not received from the instructor for the reasons above mentioned, but from the inhabitants of the villages generally. They receive some portion of alms daily at the door of every Brahmin in the village, and this is conceded to them with a cheerfulness which considering the object in view must be esteemed as a most honourable trait in the native character, and its unobtrusiveness ought to enhance the value of it. We are undoubtedly indebted to this benevolent custom for the general spread of education amongst a class of persons whose poverty would otherwise be an insurmountable obstacle to advancement in knowledge, and it will be easily inferred that it requires only the liberal and fostering care of Government to bring it to perfection.48

The collector of Guntoor was equally descriptive and observed that though there seemed to be ‘no colleges for teaching theology, law, astronomy, etc. in the district’ which are endowed by the state yet,

These sciences are privately taught to some scholars or disciples generally by the Brahmins learned in them, without payment of any fee, or reward, and that they, the Brahmins who teach are generally maintained by means of maunium land which have been granted to their ancestors by the ancient Zamindars of the Zillah, and by the former Government on different accounts, but there appears no instance in which native Governments have granted allowances in money and land merely for the maintenance of the teachers for giving instruction in the above sciences.

By the information which has been got together on the subject, it appears that there are 171 places where theology, laws and astronomy, etc. are taught privately, and the number of disciples in them is 939. The readers of these sciences cannot generally get teachers in their respective villages and are therefore obliged to go to others.

In which case if the reader belongs to a family that can afford to support him he gets

37

what is required for his expenses from his home and which is estimated at three rupees per month, but which is only sufficient to supply him with his victuals; and if on the other hand, his family is in too indigent circumstances to make such allowance, the student procures his daily subsistence from the houses in the village where taught which willingly furnish such by turns.

Should people be desirous of studying deeper in theology, etc. than is taught in these parts, they travel to Benares, Navadweepum,49 etc. where they remain for years to take instruction under the learned pundits of those places.50

SOME BOOKS USED IN HIGHER LEARNING

The books used in these institutions may be assumed to have been the Vedas, the various Sastras, the Puranas, the more well known books on Ganeeta, and Jyotish-shastras, and Epic literature. Except in the report from Rajahmundry, there is no mention of any books in the reports from other districts.

According to Rajahmundry, some of the books used there were: NAMES OF THE BOOKS IN USE IN THE COLLEGES IN

RAJAHMUNDRY51

*Vadams, etc. *

1. Roogvadum

2. Ragoovumsam

3. Yajoorvadum

4. Coomarasumbhavem

5. Samavadum

6. Moghasundasem

7. Sroudum

8. Bharavy

9. Dravedavedum or

10. Maukhum

Nunlauyanum

———

Nayeshadum

Andasastrum

Sastrums

1. Sanskrit Grammar

Siddhanda

Cowmoody

38

2. Turkum

3. Jeyoteshem

4. Durmasastrum

5. Cauveyems

Besides, as Rajahmundry had a few Persian schools,52 it also sent a list of Persian and Arabic books studied. These were: NAMES OF THE BOOKS IN USE IN THE PERSIAN

SCHOOLS IN RAJAHMUNDRY

1. Caremah Aumadunnanmah

2. Harckarum in Persian

3. Inshah Culipha and Goolstan

4. Bahurdanish and Bostan

5. Abdul Phazul Inshah

6. Calipha

7. Khoran

PRIVATE TUITION (OR EDUCATION AT HOME)

Several collectors, especially the collector of Canara, who did not send any statistical returns at all, mentioned the fact that many of the boys and especially the girls received education at home from their parents, or relatives, or from privately engaged tutors.

Many also stated that higher learning is being imparted in Agraharams, etc. However, it was only the collectors of Malabar and of the city of Madras who sent any statistical data on the subject. The collector of Malabar sent such data with regard to higher learning, while the collector of Madras about the boys and girls who were receiving education in their homes. Both the returns are reproduced in Tables 7A & B.

Regarding the data concerning higher learning from Malabar, it is reasonable to assume that though learning through private tutors did exist in most other districts, it was carried out in Malabar to a far greater extent due to its rather different historical and sociological background. As will be noted from Tables 7A & B, those studying in this fashion at this period (1823) were about twenty-one times the number of those attending the

39

40

solitary college supported by the more or less resourceless family of the Samudrin Raja. The Malabar data also shows 194 persons studying medicine. As indigenous medical practitioners existed in every other district and perhaps in every village—some of them still in receipt of revenue assignments for their services to the community—it can logically be assumed that similar teaching in Medical Science existed in most other districts too.

What number and proportions in the various disciplines were thus educated privately in the other districts, however, is a speculative question. Still, it may not be too erroneous to assume that the number of those ‘privately’ studying Theology, Law, Astronomy, Metaphysics, Ethics, Poetry and Literature, Medical Science, Music, and Dance (all of which existed in this period) was perhaps several times the number of those who were receiving such education institutionally.

The data from Madras regarding the number of boys and girls receiving tuition at their homes is equally pertinent. In comparison to those being educated in schools in Madras, this 41

number is 4.73 times. Though it is true that half of these privately tutored were from amongst the Brahmins and the Vysees, still those from the Soodras form 28.7% of this number, and from the other castes 13%. Furthermore, the Indian part of Madras city at this period was more of a shanty-town. In comparison to the older towns and cities of the Presidency, it was a relatively badly organised place, the status of its Indian inhabitants being rather lower in the social scale than their counterparts in other places like Madura, Tanjore, Trichinopoly, etc. It may be quite probable, therefore, that the number of those privately educated in other districts, if not some 4 to 5 times more than those attending school as in Madras city, was still appreciably large. The observation of Thomas Munro that there was ‘probably some error’ in the number given of 26,903 being taught at home in Madras city—a remark incidentally which has been made much of by later commentators on the subject—does not have much validity. If the number had been considered seriously erroneous, a new computation for the city of Madras, to which alone it pertained, would have been no difficult matter, especially as this return had been submitted to the Governor a whole year before this comment. It was perhaps required of Thomas Munro—as head of the executive—to express such a reservation. Undoubtedly, it was the sort of comment which the makers of policy in London wished to hear.55 This draft, however, was followed by the remark that ‘the state of education here exhibited, low as it is compared with that of our own country, is higher than it was in most European countries at no very distant period.’ As may be guessed from the data pertaining to Britain, the term ‘at no very distant period’ really meant the beginning of the nineteenth century, which had been the real start of the Day schools for most children in the British Isles.

42

EDUCATION OF GIRLS

As mentioned earlier, the number of girls attending school was very small. Leaving aside the district of Malabar and the Jeypoor division of Vizagapatam district, the girls from the Brahmin, Chettri, and Vysee castes were practically non-existent in schools. There were, however, some Muslim girls receiving school education: 56 in Trichnopoly, and 27 in Salem. The Hindoo girls who attended school, though again not in any large number, were from the Soodra and other Hindoo castes; and, according to the collectors of Masulipatam, Madura, Tinnevelly and Coimbatore, most of them were stated to be dancing girls, or girls who were presumably going to be devdasis in the temples.

Table 8 presents the district and caste-wise number of the girls attending school, or said to be receiving private tuition.

As will be noticed from Table 9, the position in Malabar, as also in Jeypoor Zamindary of Vizagapatam district, was much different. The relative numbers of girls and boys attending school in these two areas56 are presented in *Table 8 * below: In percentage terms of the total, the proportion of girls to boys in school was the highest, 29.7%, in the Jeypoor Zamindary of the Vizagapatam district. Even more surprising, the proportion of Brahmin girls to Brahmin boys in school was as high as 37%. Similarly, in Malabar the proportion of Muslim girls to Muslim

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44

45

boys in school being at 35.1% is truly astonishing.57 Even amongst the Vysees, the Soodras and the other castes in Malabar, the proportion of girls to boys was fairly high at 15.5%, 19.1% and 12.4% respectively; the proportion of the totals being 18.3%. That two such widely separated areas (Malabar on the west coast while Jeypoor Zamindary being in the hilly tracts on the southern border of Orissa) had such a sociological similarity requires deeper study.

V

The undertaking of the survey was welcomed by London in May 1825, when it wrote to Madras: ‘We think great credit is due to Sir Thomas Munro for having originated the idea of this enquiry.’

However, after receipt of the survey information and papers, the reply Madras received ridiculed and altogether dismissed what had been reported to be functioning. In the public despatch of 16 April 1828, Madras was told that ‘the information sent’, while lacking in certain respects, was ‘yet sufficiently complete to show, that in providing the means of a better education for the natives, little aid is to be expected from the instruments of education which already exist.’

ADAM’S REPORT ON INDIGENOUS EDUCATION IN

BENGAL AND BIHAR

Thirteen years after the initiation of the survey in the Madras Presidency, a more limited semi-official survey of indigenous education was taken up in the Presidency of Bengal. This was what is known as the celebrated Adam’s Reports, or to give the full title Reports on the State of Education in Bengal 1836 and 1838.58

46

It consists of three reports: the first, dated 1st July 1836, being a survey of the available existing information regarding indigenous education and its nature and facilities in the various districts of Bengal (pp.1-126); the second, dated 23 December 1835, being a survey of the prevalent situation undertaken by W. Adam in the Thana of Nattore in the district of Rajshahy (pp.127-208, pp.528-578); and the third, dated 28 April 1838, being a survey of the situation in parts of Murshedabad, and the whole of the districts of Beerbhoom, Burdwan, South Behar and Tirhoot, ending with Adam’s reflections, recommendations and conclusions (pp.209-467).

*Adam’s Phraseology and Presentation *

In spite of the controversies which Adam’s Reports have given rise to—the most notable one being his mention of there being perhaps 1,00,000 village schools still existing in Bengal and Bihar in some form till the 1830s—the total impression produced by them is one of extensive decay of these institutions.

Largely due to Adam’s evangelical, moralistic tone, reading them is a rather depressing business. Adam himself was no great admirer of the Indian teacher, or the nature and content of Indian education. However, as Adam started from the view that the British Government of the day should interest itself in the sphere of elementary and higher Indian education and also support it financially, he seemed to have thought it necessary to use all possible arguments and imagery to bring home this point. Under the circumstances, it was necessary for him to dramatise the decay as well as the relative state of ignorance of the teachers, as well as the lack of books, buildings, etc., in order to evoke the desired sympathetic response. Furthermore, it is important to note that W. Adam initially had come to Bengal in 1818 as a Baptist Missionary. Though he left missionary activity after some years, and took to journalism instead, he remained a product of his contemporary British times, a period dominated by two principal currents of opinion: one which saw the necessity of evangelising

47

India, advocated by men like William Wilberforce; the other, its westernisation, symbolised by men like T.B. Macaulay and William Bentinck. As indicated earlier, both ideas were encompassed in the Charter Act of 1813. Additionally, the reports of Adam, although not formal official documents, were nonetheless sanctioned and financed by the orders of the Governor General himself. Naturally, therefore, while they may imply many things—as do some of the reports of the Madras Presidency collectors—they were nevertheless phrased in such a way as not to lay the blame directly on past government policy and action.

*Varied and Valuable Sociological Data *

The more important point which comes through Adam’s voluminous writing, however, was his remarkable industry and the detail and variety of data which he was able to collect: first, from the post-1800 existing sources; and second, through his own investigations. While the controversy about his 1,00,000

village schools in Bengal and Bihar is finally forgotten, the material which he provided (regarding the caste composition of the pupils taught as well as the teachers, their average ages at various periods, and the books which were then in use in the districts he surveyed) will still have great relevance.

*Selections Reproduced *

Some selections from Adam’s material are reproduced in the present work (Annexure D). These include: (i) descriptions of elementary education taken from the first and second reports; (ii) description of higher learning, from the first report, (iii) a section on Medical education taken from the second report, based on investigations in Nattore, Rajshahy; and (iv), some tabulations of the basic data for the five surveyed districts contained in the third report. This latter tabulation is given under the following heads:

a. Elementary Schools and caste-wise division of students b. Elementary Schools and caste-wise division of teachers c. Books used in Elementary Schools

d. Details of institutions of Sanskritic Learning e. Books used in Sanskritic Studies

f. Details of institutions of Persian and Arabic Learning g. Books used in Persian and Arabic Studies h. Subject and districtwise duration of Study 48

The First Report: A Survey of Post-1800 Material Adam’s first report is a general statement of the situation and a presentation of the data which he could derive from post-1800

official and other sources. His conclusions: first, every village had at least one school and in all probability in Bengal and Bihar with 1,50,748 villages, ‘there will still be 1,00,000’ villages that have these schools.59 Second, on the basis of personal observation and what he had learnt from other evidence, he inferred that on an average there were around 100 institutions of higher learning in each district of Bengal. Consequently, he concluded that the 18 districts of Bengal had about 1,800 such institutions. Computing the number studying in these latter at the lowest figure of six scholars in each, he also computed that some 10,800 scholars should be studying in them. He further observed that while the elementary schools ‘are generally held in the homes of some of the most respectable native inhabitants or very near them’, the institutions of higher learning had buildings generally of clay with ‘sometimes three or five rooms’ and ‘in others nine or eleven rooms’, with a reading-room which is also of clay. These latter places were also used for the residence of the scholars; and the scholars were usually fed and clothed by the teachers, and where required, were assisted by the local people. After describing the method of teaching in both types of institutions and going into their daily routine, Adam then presented and examined the post-1800 data on the subject, district by district. Table 10 gives an abstract of this examination.

The Second Report: Survey of Nattore Thana The second report was wholly devoted to Adam’s study of the situation in the Thana of Nattore in the district of Rajshahy. It was like a modern pilot survey in which Adam developed his 49

50

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methods and fashioned his tools for the more extensive survey which was his primary aim. The results of this Nattore survey of 485 villages were tabulated, village by village, by Adam. Further details were provided for some of them in another tabulation.

The population of this Thana was 1,20,928; the number of families 30,028 (in the proportion of one Hindoo to two Muslims); the number of elementary schools 27, and of schools of learning 38 (all these latter being Hindoo). In 1,588 families (80% of these being Hindoo), children occasionally received instruction at home. The number of scholars in elementary schools was 262, and education in them was between the ages of 8-14; while the scholars in schools of learning were 397, 136 of these being local persons and 261 from distant places, the latter also receiving both food and lodging. The average period of study in these latter institutions was 16 years, from about the age of 11 to the age of 27. However, while the number in elementary schools was so low, these 485 villages nonetheless had 123

native general medical practitioners, 205 village doctors, 21

mostly Brahmin smallpox inoculators practising according to the old Indian method,60 297 women-midwives, and 722 snake conjurors.

The Third Report: Survey of Five Districts The third report of Adam has the most data. In this report, Adam gives the findings of his surveys in part of the district of Murshedabad (20 thanas with a population of 1,24,804 out of 37

thanas with a total district population of 9,69,447), and the whole of the districts of Beerbhoom and Burdwan in Bengal, and of South Behar and Tirhoot in Bihar. In one thana of each district, Adam carried out the enquiries personally and also gathered additional information. In the rest, it was done for him according to his instructions and proformas by his trained Indian assistants. Earlier, Adam’s intention was to visit every village in person; but he found that ‘the sudden appearance of a European in a village often inspired terror, which it was always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to subdue.’(p.214) He, therefore, gave up this idea of a personal visit to every village; in part to save time.

*Language-wise Division *

The total number of schools of all types in the selected districts numbered 2,566. These schools were divided into Bengali (1,098),

52

Hindi (375), Sanskrit (353), Persian (694), Arabic (31), English (8), Girls (6), and infants (1). The number of schools in the district of Midnapore was also given: 548 Bengali schools, 182

Oriya schools, 48 Persian schools, and one English school. Table 11 gives the position, district-wise: *Four Stages of School Instruction *

Adam divided the period spent in elementary schools into four stages. According to him these were: the * first * stage, seldom exceeding ten days, during which the young scholar was taught

‘to form the letters of the alphabet on the ground with a small stick or slip of bamboo’, or on a sandboard. The second stage, extending from two and a half to four years, was ‘distinguished by the use of the palm leaf as the material on which writing is performed’, and the scholar was ‘taught to write and read’, and commit ‘to memory the Cowrie Table, the Numeration Table as far as 100, the Katha Table (a land measure Table), and the Ser Table’, etc. The third stage extended ‘from two to three years, which are employed in writing on the plantain-leaf.’ Addition, subtraction, and other arithmetical rules were additionally taught during this period. In the fourth, and last stage, of up to two years, writing was done on paper. The scholar was expected to be able to read the Ramayana, Mansa Mangal, etc., at home, as well as be qualified in accounts, and the writing of letters, petitions, etc. Table 12 indicates the numbers, using the various materials on which writing was done in the surveyed areas.

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*Elementary Education for All Sections *

The first striking point from this broader survey is the wide social strata to which both the taught and the teachers in the elementary schools belonged. It is true that the greater proportion of the teachers came from the Kayasthas, Brahmins, Sadgop and Aguri castes. Yet, quite a number came from 30 other caste groups also, and even the Chandals had 6 teachers. The elementary school students present an even greater variety, and it seems as if every caste group is represented in the student population, the Brahmins and the Kayasthas nowhere forming more than 40% of the total. In the two Bihar districts, together they formed no more than 15 to 16%. The more surprising figure is of 61 Dom, and 61 Chandal school students in the district of Burdwan, nearly equal to the number of Vaidya students, 126, in that district. While Burdwan had 13 missionary schools, the number of Dom and Chandal scholars in them were only four; and, as Adam mentioned, only 86 of the ‘scholars belonging to 16 of the lowest castes’ were in these missionary schools, while 674 scholars from them were in the ‘native schools’.

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*Teaching of Accounts *

Regarding the content of elementary teaching, Adam mentioned various books which were used in teaching. These varied considerably from district to district, but all schools in the surveyed districts, except perhaps the 14 Christian schools, taught accounts. Also, most of them taught both commercial and agricultural accounts. Table 13 gives a district-wise statement: Table 13: ACCOUNTS TEACHING IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS

AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS

The age of admission in elementary schools varied from 5

to 8 years, and, that of leaving school from 13 years to 16.5

years.

*Institutions of Sanskritic Learning *

The schools of Sanskritic learning in the surveyed districts (in all 353) numbered as high as 190 in Burdwan (1,358 scholars) and as low as 27 in South Behar (437 scholars). The teachers (355 in all) were predominantly Brahmins, only 5 being from the Vaidya caste. The subjects predominantly taught were Grammar (1,424

students), Logic (378 students), Law (336 students) and Literature (120 students). Others, in order of numbers studying them, were Mythology (82 students), Astrology (78 students), Lexicology (48 students), Rhetoric (19 students), Medicine (18 students), Vedanta (13 students), Tantra (14 students), Mimansa (2

students), and Sankhya (1 student). The duration of the study and the ages when it was started and completed varied a great deal from subject to subject, and also from district to district.

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The study of Grammar started at the earliest age (9 to 12 years) and of Law, Mythology, Tantras, etc. after the age of 20. The period of study ordinarily lasted from about 7 to 15 years.

Institutions Teaching Persian and Arabic Those studying Persian (which Adam treated more as a school subject than as a matter of higher learning) numbered 3,479, the largest, 1,424, being in South Behar. The age of admission in them ranged from 6.8 years to 10.3 years, and the study seemed to have continued for some 11 to 15 years. Over half of those studying Persian were Hindoos, the Kayasthas being predominant.61

Arabic was being studied by 175 scholars, predominantly Muslims; but 14 Kayasthas, 2 Aguris, 1 Teli, and 1 Brahmin were also students of Arabic. The books used in Persian learning were numerous and an appreciable number for the study of Arabic.

Finally, as far as age was concerned, the teachers in all types of institutions were largely in their thirties.

VI

DR G.W. LEITNER ON INDIGENOUS EDUCATION IN THE

PANJAB

Some 45 years after Adam, Dr G. W. Leitner, (one time Principal of Government College, Lahore, and for sometime acting Director of Public Instruction in the Panjab) prepared an even more voluminous survey of indigenous education there.62 The survey is very similar to that of W. Adam. Leitner’s language and conclusions, however, were more direct and much less complementary to British rule. Incidentally, as time passed, the inability of the British rulers to face any criticism grew correspondingly.

56

They had really begun to believe in their ‘divinely ordained’

mission in India, and other conquered areas.63

At any rate, Leitner’s researches showed that at the time of the annexation of the Panjab, the lowest computation gave

‘3,30,000 pupils in the schools of the various denominations who were acquainted with reading, writing and some method of computation.’ This is in contrast with ‘little more than 1,90,000’

pupils in 1882. Furthermore, 35-40 years previously, ‘thousands of them belonged to Arabic and Sanskrit colleges, in which oriental Literature and systems of oriental Law, Logic, Philosophy, and Medicine were taught to the highest standards.’

Leitner went into great detail, district by district, basing himself on earlier official writings; and, then carried out a detailed survey of his own regarding the position in 1882. A few brief extracts from this work, pertaining to his general statement, the type of schools which had existed earlier, and the list of books used in the Sanskritic schools is included amongst the documents reproduced in this work (Annexure E).

In the documents reproduced in this work, or in those others of the eighteenth, or early nineteenth century on the subject of education in India, while there is much on the question of higher learning, especially of Theology, Law, Medicine, Astronomy, and Astrology, there is scarcely any reference to the teaching and training in the scores of technologies, and crafts which had then existed in India. There is also little mention of training in Music, and Dance. These latter two, it may be presumed, were largely taken care of by the complex temple organisations.

The major cause of the lack of reference about the former, however, is obviously because those who wrote on education—

whether as government administrators, travellers, Christian missionaries, or scholars—were themselves uninterested in how such crafts were taught, or passed from one generation to 57

another. Some of them were evidently interested in a particular technology, or craft: as indicated by the writings on their manufacture of iron and steel, the fashioning of agricultural tools, the cotton and silk textiles, the materials used in architecture, and buildings, the materials used in the building of ships, the manufacture of ice, paper, etc. But even in such writings, the interest lay in the particular method and technology and its technological and scientific details; and, not in how these were learnt.

Yet another cause for the lack of information on the teaching of techniques and crafts may possibly lie in the fact that ordinarily in India most crafts were basically learnt in the home. What was termed apprenticeship in Britain (one could not practise any craft, profession, etc., in England without a long and arduous period under a master craftsman, or technologist) was more informal in India, the parents usually being the teachers and the children the learners. Another reason might have been that particular technologies or crafts, even like the profession of the digging of tanks, or the transportation of commodities were the function of particular specialist groups, some of them operating in most parts of India, while others in particular regions, and therefore any formal teaching and training in them must have been a function of such groups themselves. Remarks available to the effect that, ‘it is extremely difficult to learn the arts of the Indians, for the same caste, from father to son, exercises the same trade and the punishment of being excluded from the caste on doing anything injurious to its interests is so dreadful that it is often impossible to find an inducement to make them communicate anything’,64 appear to indicate some organisation of individual technologies at group levels. However, to know anything regarding their teaching, the innovations and improvisations in them, (there must have been innumerable such instances even if these were on a decline), it is essential to have much more detailed information on such groups, the nature of these technologies, and what in essence constituted a formal, or informal apprenticeship in the different crafts. On this so far we seem to have little information.

The following indicative list of the crafts listed in some of the districts of the Madras Presidency (collected in the early 19th century records for levying tax on them) may give, however, some idea of their variety.

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*TANKS, BUILDINGS, ETC. *

Stone-cutters

Wood woopers (Wood cutters)

Marble mine workers

Bamboo cutters

Chunam makers

Wudders (Tank diggers)

Sawyers Brick-layers

METALLURGY

Iron ore collectors

Copper-smiths

Iron manufacturers

Lead washers

Iron forge operators

Gold dust collectors

Iron furnaces operators

Iron-smiths

Workers of smelted metal

Gold-smiths

into bars

Horse-shoe makers

Brass-smiths

TEXTILES

Cotton cleaners

Fine cloth weavers

Cotton beaters

Coarse cloth weavers

Cotton carders

Chintz weavers

Silk makers

Carpet weavers

Spinners

Sutrenze carpet weavers

Ladup, or Penyasees

Cot tape weavers

cotton spinners

Cumblee weavers

Chay thread makers

Thread purdah weavers

Chay root diggers (a dye)

Gunny weavers

Rungruaze, or dyers

Pariah weavers (a very large

Mudda wada, or dyers in red

number)

Indigo maker

Mussalman weavers

Barber weavers

Dyers in indigo

Boyah weavers

Loom makers

Smooth and glaze cloth men

Silk weavers

OTHER CRAFTSMEN

Preparers of earth for bangles

Salt makers

Bangle makers

Earth salt manufacturers

Paper makers

Salt-petre makers

Fire-works makers

Arrack distillers

Oilmen

Collectors of drugs and roots

Soap makers

Utar makers, druggists

MISCELLANEOUS

Boat-men Sandal

makers

Fishermen Umbrella

makers

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Rice-beaters Shoe

makers

Toddy makers

Pen painters

Preparers of earth

Mat makers

for washermen

Carpenters

Washermen Dubbee

makers

Barbers

Winding instrument makers

Tailors Seal

makers

Basket makers

Chucklers

Mat makers

There is a sense of widespread neglect and decay in the field of indigenous education within a few decades after the onset of British rule. This is the major common impression which emerges from the 1822-25 Madras Presidency data, the report of W. Adam on Bengal and Bihar 1835-38, and the later Panjab survey by G.W. Leitner. If studies of the detailed data pertaining to the innumerable crafts, technologies and manufactures of this period, or for that matter of social organisation were to be made, the conclusions in all probability will be little different. On the other hand, the descriptions of life and society provided by earlier European accounts (i.e. accounts written prior to the onset of European dominance) of different parts of India, and the data on Indian exports relating to this earlier period (notwithstanding the political turmoil in certain parts of India), on the whole leaves an impression of a society which seems relatively prosperous and lively. The conclusion that the decay noticed in the early 19th century and more so in subsequent decades originated with European supremacy in India, therefore, seems inescapable. The 1769-70 famine in Bengal (when, according to British record, one-third of the population actually perished), may be taken as a mere forerunner of what was to come.

In the context of some historical dialectic, however, such a decay might have been inevitable; perhaps, even necessary, and to be deliberately induced. For instance, Karl Marx, as such no friend of imperialism or capitalism, writing in 1853 was of the view, that, ‘England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating—the annihilation of the old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundation of Western society in Asia.’65 However, it is not India alone which 60

experienced this phenomenon of deliberate destruction. Other areas of the world, especially the Americas and Africa, seem to have experienced such destruction to an even greater extent. The nearly total annihilation of the native people of the Americas—

after their subjugation by Europe from 1500 A.D. onwards—is an occurrence of equally great import. A native population estimated by modern scholars to have been in the range of 90 to 112 million around 1500 A.D.,66 —far more numerous than the estimated total population of Europe then—had dwindled to merely a few million by the end of the 19th century. It is probable that while differing in extent and numbers, similar destruction and annihilation had occurred in different parts of the world through conquest and subjugation at various times during human history. Further, quite possibly, no people or culture in the world can altogether claim innocence for itself from any participation at one time or another in such occurrences. Nonetheless, whatever may be the case regarding the world before 1500 A.D., the point is that after this date, ancient, functioning, established cultures in most areas of the world, if not wholly eliminated, had become largely depressed due to the expansion of European dominance. This requires little proof. It is obvious.

During the latter part of the 19th century, impressions of decay, decline and deprivation began to agitate the mind of the Indian people. Such impressions no doubt resulted from concrete personal, parental and social experience of what had gone before. They were, perhaps, somewhat exaggerated at times. By 1900, it had become general Indian belief that the country had been decimated by British rule in all possible ways; that not only had it become impoverished,67 but it had been degraded to the furthest possible extent; that the people of India had been cheated of most of what they had; that their customs and manners were ridiculed, and that the infrastructure of their society mostly

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eroded. One of the statements which thus came up was that the ignorance and illiteracy in India was caused by British rule; and, conversely, that at the beginning of British political dominance, India had had extensive education, learning and literacy. By 1930, much had been written on this point in the same manner as had been written on the deliberate destruction of Indian crafts and industry, and the impoverishment of the Indian countryside.

However, to many within the expanding strata of westernised Indians—whether Marxists, Fabians, or capitalist-roaders, their views on India and their contempt for it almost equalled that of William Wilberforce, James Mill, or Karl Marx—such charges seemed farfetched, and even if true, irrelevant.

It is against this background that, during his visit in 1931

to attend the British-sponsored conference on India (known as the Round Table Conference), Mahatma Gandhi was invited to address the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. In this address Gandhiji also briefly dwelt on the causes of illiteracy in India. What he said seemed to have made sparks fly.

The meeting held on 20 October 1931, under the auspices of the Institute, is reported to have been attended by influential English men and women drawn from all parts of England, and was presided over by Lord Lothian.68 The subject on which Gandhiji spoke was ‘The Future of India’. Before describing this future, however, he dealt with several issues, like: (i) the Hindu-Muslim-Sikh problem, (ii) the problem of untouchability, and (iii)

‘the deep and ever deepening poverty’ of the 85% of the Indian people who lived in the villages. From this he moved on to the problems which required urgent attention and how ‘if the Congress had its way’ they would be dealt with. Amongst the foremost, he placed ‘the economic welfare of the masses’ as well as the provision of adequate occupations for those requiring them. He also addressed possible solutions to the problems of sanitation and hygiene, and of medical assistance which he felt not only needed packets of quinine, etc., but more so milk and fruit. Next, he turned his attention to education; and, from that, to the neglect of irrigation and the need for using long-known indigenous methods and techniques to achieve it. In conclusion, he stated that while he had told them ‘what we would do constructively’, yet ‘we should have to do something destructive also.’ As illustrative of the required destruction, he mentioned

‘the insupportable weight of military and civil expenditure’ which India

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could ill afford. Regarding the former, he stated that ‘if I could possibly have my way, we should get rid of three-quarters of the military expenditure.’ Regarding civil expenditure he gave an instance of what he meant: ‘Here the Prime Minister gets fifty times, the average income; the Viceroy in India gets five thousand times the average income.’ He went on to add: ‘From this one example you can work out for yourselves what this civil expenditure also means to India.’

Gandhiji’s observation on education emphasized two main points: (i) ‘that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago’; and (ii) that ‘the British administrators’, instead of looking after education and other matters which had existed, ‘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.’ He stated all this with conviction and a sense of authority. He said that he was ‘without fear’ of his

‘figures being challenged successfully.’

The challenge came immediately, however, from Sir Philip Hartog, a founder of the School of Oriental Studies, London,69 a former vice-chancellor of the University of Dacca and member and chairman of several educational committees on India set up by the British between 1918 and 1930. After questioning Gandhiji at the meeting, a long correspondence ensued between them during the next 5-6 weeks, ending with an hour long interview which Philip Hartog had with the Mahatma. In the interview, Philip Hartog was referred to some of the sources which Gandhiji had relied on, including two articles from Young India of December 1920 by Daulat Ram Gupta: (i) ‘The Decline of Mass Education in India,’ and (ii) ‘How Indian Education was crushed in the Panjab.’ These articles were largely based on Adam’s reports and G.W. Leitner’s book and some other officially published material from the Panjab, Bombay and Madras.

These, however, did not seem sufficient proof to Philip Hartog, and he repeatedly insisted that Gandhiji should withdraw the statement he had made at the Chatham House meeting.

Gandhiji promised that after his return to India, he would look for such material which Hartog could treat as substantiating what Gandhiji had said, adding that ‘if I find that I cannot support the statement made by me at Chatham House, I will give my retraction much wider publicity than the Chatham House speech could ever attain.’

63

Another important point which, according to Hartog, emerged during his interview was that Gandhiji ‘had not accused the British Government of having destroyed the indigenous schools, but [that] they had let them die for want of encouragement.’ To this, Hartog’s reply was that ‘they had probably let them die because they were so bad that they were not worth keeping.’

In the meantime, Hartog had been working and seeking opinion, advice and views of the historian Edward J. Thompson.

Thompson agreed with Hartog that Gandhiji could not possibly be right; and that he himself also did not ‘believe we destroyed indigenous schools and indigenous industry out of malice. It was inevitable.’ He felt nonetheless that, with regard to general education, ‘we did precious little to congratulate ourselves on until the last dozen years.’70 In a further letter, Thompson elaborated his views on the subject: on how little was done until after 1918; that the ‘very hopelessness of the huge Indian job used to oppress’ even those who had often ‘first class record of intellect’ in places like Oxford ‘before entering the ICS.’ He noted further: ‘I am reading old records by pre-mutiny residents, they teem with information that makes you hope that the Congresswallah will never get hold of it.’ Somehow the correspondence between Hartog and Edward Thompson ended on a sour note. Perhaps, it did not provide Hartog the sort of intellectual or factual support he was actually looking for. At any rate, after the interview with Gandhiji, Hartog finally despatched his rebuttal of Gandhiji’s statement (as intended from the beginning) for publication in International Affairs.71 In this he concluded that ‘the present position is that Mr Gandhi has so far been unable to substantiate

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his statement in any way’; but ‘he has undertaken to retract that statement, if he cannot support it.’

Within a few days of reaching India, Gandhiji was put in Yervada Prison. From there he wrote to Hartog on 15 February 1932 informing him of his inability at that moment to satisfy him, mentioning that he had asked Prof K.T. Shah to look into the matter. K.T. Shah’s long and detailed letter reached Hartog soon after. In it, Shah also referred to the various known writings on the subject including those of Max Mueller, Ludlow, G.L. Prendergast, and the more celebrated Thomas Munro, W.

Adam, and G.W. Leitner (already referred to in the foregoing pages). For Bombay, Shah quoted G.L. Prendergast, a member of the Council in the Bombay Presidency (briefly referred to earlier) who had stated in April 1821:

I need hardly mention what every member of the Board knows as well as I do, that there is hardly a village, great or small, throughout our territories, in which there is not at least one school, and in larger villages more; many in every town, and in large cities in every division; where young natives are taught reading, writing and arithmetic, upon a system so economical, from a handful or two of grain, to perhaps a rupee per month to the school master, according to the ability of the parents, and at the same time so simple and effectual, that there is hardly a cultivator or petty dealer who is not competent to keep his own accounts with a degree of accuracy, in my opinion, beyond what we meet with amongst the lower orders in our own country; whilst the more splendid dealers and bankers keep their books with a degree of ease, conciseness, and clearness I rather think fully equal to those of any British merchants.72

Knowing what Hartog considered as sufficient proof, Shah began his letter by saying that he ‘need hardly point out that at the time under reference, no country in the world had like definite, authoritative, statistical information of the type one would now recognise as proper proof in such discussions’; and that ‘all, therefore, that one can expect by way of proof in such matters, and at such a time, can only be in the form of impressions of people in a position to form ideas a little better and more scientific than those of less fortunately situated, or less well-endowed, observers.’ Shah finally concluded with the view that ‘the

65

closer enquiry of this type conducted by Leitner is far more reliable, and so also the obiter dicta of people in the position to have clear impressions’; and felt that ‘even those impressions must be held to give rather an underestimate than otherwise.’

But Shah’s long letter was a wasted effort as far as Hartog was concerned. It constituted merely a further provocation. In his reply, Hartog told Shah that ‘your letter does not touch the main question which I put to Mr Gandhi’; and concluded that ‘I am afraid that I am altogether unable to accept your conclusion with regard to the history of literacy in Bengal during the past 100 years, of which there remains a good deal to be said.’

Though it is not fair to compare individuals and to speculate on the motivations which move them, it does seem that at this stage Sir Philip Hartog had feelings similar to those experienced by W.H. Moreland after the latter had read Vincent Smith’s observations (in his book on Akbar the Great Mogul) that

‘the hired landless labourer in the time of Akbar and Jahangir probably had more to eat in ordinary years than he has now.’73

In reviewing the book, Moreland had then said, ‘Mr Vincent Smith’s authority in Indian History is so deservedly great that this statement, if allowed to stand unquestioned, will probably pass quickly into a dogma of the schools; before it does so, I venture to plead for further examination of the data.’74 And from then on, Moreland seems to have set himself the task of countering such a ‘heretical view, and of stopping it from becoming a dogma of the schools.’

Whatever his motivation, Philip Hartog set himself the task of proving Gandhiji wrong on this particular issue. The result was presented in three ‘Joseph Payne Lectures for 1935-36’

delivered at the University of London Institute of Education under the title, Some Aspects of Indian Education: Past and Present.75 The lectures were presented along with three Memoranda: (a) Note on the statistics of literacy and of schools in India during the last

66

hundred years. (b) The Reports of William Adam on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Bihar 1835-38, and the legend of the

‘1,00,000 schools’, and (c) Dr G.W. Leitner and Education in the Panjab 1849-82. These were published in early 1939 by the Oxford University Press under the above title. In Memorandum

‘A’, using the low figures sent by A.D. Campbell for the district of Bellary, Hartog questioned Thomas Munro’s calculation that ‘the proportion of males educated in schools was nearer one-third than one-fourth.’ He countered instead ‘that Munro’s figures may have been over-estimates based on the returns of collectors less careful and interested in education than Campbell.’ Hartog’s conclusion at the end was that ‘until the action taken by Munro, Elphinstone, and Bentinck in the three presidencies, the British Government had neglected elementary education to its detriment in India. But I have found no evidence that it tried to destroy or uproot what existed.’ In a footnote, Hartog further observed: ‘In Great Britain itself it was not until 1833 that the House of Commons made a grant of 30,000 pounds for the purposes of education.’ He also praised various Indian personalities, and more so India’s quaint mixture of ‘most ancient and most modern’.

In his Preface, after referring to ‘the imaginary basis for accusations not infrequently made in India that the British Government systematically destroyed the indigenous system of elementary schools and with it a literacy which the schools are presumed to have created’, Hartog observed: ‘When Mr Gandhi, in an address given at the Royal Institute of International Affairs on 20 October 1931, lent his powerful support to those accusations, and challenged contradiction, it was obviously necessary to re-examine the facts.’76

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It may be fair to observe that, despite his considerable learning and experience, Hartog seemed to have lacked both imagination and a sense of history. He was far too committed to the dogmas of pre-1939 Britain. His immigrant Jewish background may have accentuated such an outlook further.

Whatever the reasons, it seemed inconceivable to Hartog that late eighteenth, or early nineteenth century India could have had the education and facilities which Gandhiji and others had claimed. Similarly, it had been inconceivable to William Wilberforce, 125 years earlier, that the Hindoos could conceivably have been civilised (as was stated by many British officers and scholars who in Wilberforce’s days had had long personal experience of life in India) without the benefits of Christianity. To Hartog, as also to Edward Thompson, and before them to an extent even to W. Adam, and some of the Madras Presidency Collectors, it was axiomatic that these Indian educational institutions amounted to very little, and that the Indian system had ‘become merely self-perpetuating, and otherwise barren.’

Besides Gandhiji’s statement, two other facts seem to have had quite an upsetting effect on Philip Hartog. The first, already referred to, were the writings of G.W. Leitner. The second seems to have hurt him even more: this was a statement relating to what Hartog called ‘what of the immediate future’. In this context, Hartog noted that, ‘an earnest Quaker missionary has predicted that under the new regime [evidently meaning the post-British regime] there will be a Counter-Reformation in education, which will no longer be Western but Eastern’; and, he observed: ‘Thus India will go back a thousand years and more to the old days…to those days when she gave out a great wealth of ideas, especially to the rest of Asia, but accepted nothing in return.’ Such a prospect was galling indeed to Philip Hartog, burdened as he was—like his illustrious predecessors—with the idea of redeeming India morally as well as intellectually, by pushing it along the western road.

As Gandhiji was the prime cause of this effort, Hartog sent a copy of his lectures to him. He wrote to Gandhiji that he had

‘little doubt that you will find that a close analysis of the facts reveals no evidence to support the statement which you made at the Royal Institute of International Affairs’; adding that Gandhiji

‘will therefore feel justified now in withdrawing that statement.’

Gandhiji replied some months later. His letter had all the ingredients of a classic reply: ‘I have not left off the pursuit of the subject of education in the villages during the pre-British 68

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 had been challenged by you!’

There the matter ended as far as Gandhiji was concerned.

On 10 September 1939, however, after learning of Gandhiji’s statement regarding the War in Europe, Hartog wrote him a very grateful letter:

I cannot wait to express to you my profound gratitude, shared, I am sure by an innumerable number of my fellow countrymen, all over the world, for the attitude you have taken up in regard to the present War at your interview with the Viceroy, reported in the *Times. *

Hartog’s book of lectures led to much immediate writing in India on the subject. Even a new edition of the complete Adam’s *Reports * was published by the University of Calcutta. Yet, what was written produced the same data and analysis all over again; and, in the main, covered the same ground, and advanced more or less the same arguments as had already been advanced by K.T. Shah in his long letter to Philip Hartog in February 1932.77

VII

The significance of what Gandhiji said at Chatham House in October 1931 ought to have been understood not in the literal way in which Philip Hartog did, but within the total context of Mahatma Gandhi’s address, which attempted to reveal the overall disruption and decline of Indian society and its institutions under British rule. That a great decay had set in by the 1820s, if not a few decades earlier, in the sphere of education was admitted by the Madras Presidency survey, as well as by W. Adam with regard to Bengal and Bihar. In 1822-25, the number of those in ordinary schools was put at over 1,50,000 in the Madras Presidency. Evidently, the inference that the number was appreciably, perhaps a great deal higher some 20 or 30 years earlier, cannot

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be ruled out. At any rate, nowhere was there any suggestion made that it was much less than it had been in 1822-25. The population of the Madras Presidency in 1823 was estimated at 1,28,50,941, while the population of England in 1811 was estimated at 95,43,610. It may be noted from this that, while the differences in the population of the two regions were not that significant, the numbers of those attending the various types of schools (Charity, Sunday, Circulating) in England were in all in the neighbourhood of around 75,000 as compared to at least double this number within the Madras Presidency. Further, more than half of this number of 75,000 in English schools consisted of those who attended school at the most only for 2-3 hours on a *Sunday. *

However, after about 1803, every year a marked increase *took place in the number of those attending schools in England. *

The result: the number of 75,000 attending any sort of school around 1800 rose to 6,74,883 by 1818, and 21,44,377 in 1851, *i.e. an increase of about 29 times in a period of about fifty years. *

It is true that the content of this education in England did not improve much during this half century. Neither did the period spent in school increase: from more than an average of one year in 1835 to about two years in 1851. The real implication of Gandhiji’s observation, and of the information provided by the Madras Presidency collectors, W. Adam and G.W. Leitner, is that for the following 50-100 years, what happened in India—within the developing situation of relative collapse and stagnation—proved *the reverse of the developments taking place in England. * It is such a feeling, and the intuition of such an occurrence, that drove Gandhiji, firstly, to make his observation in London in October 1931, and secondly, disinclined to withdraw it eight years later. Gandhiji seemed to be looking at the issue from a historical, social, and a human viewpoint. In marked contrast, men like Sir Philip Hartog, as so commonly characteristic of the specialist, were largely quibbling about phrases; intent solely on picking holes in what did not fit the prevailing western theories of social and political development.

Statistical comparisons were what Sir Philip Hartog and many others in his time wanted. And these can, to a large extent, settle this debate: some comparison of the 1822-25

Madras school-attending scholars is made here with the Madras Presidency data pertaining to the 1880s and 1890s. Because of incompleteness of the earlier data available from Bengal and Bihar, and also from the Presidency of Bombay,78 such a comparison

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does not seem possible for these areas, much less for the whole of India.

According to the 1879-80 Report of the Director of Public Instruction for the Madras Presidency, the total number of educational institutions of all types (including colleges, secondary, middle and primary schools, and special, or technical institutions) then numbered 10,553. Out of these, the primary schools numbered 10,106. The total number attending them: 2,38,960 males, and 29,419 females. The total population of the Presidency at this time is stated as 3,13,08,872. While the number of females attending these institutions was evidently larger in 1879-80 compared to 1822-25, the proportionate numbers of males was clearly much reduced. Using the same computation as those applied in 1822-25 (i.e. one-ninth of the total population treated as of school-going age), those of this age amongst the male population (taking males and females as equal) would have numbered 17,39,400. The number of males in primary schools being 2,18,840, the proportion of this age group in schools thus turns out to be 12.58%. This proportion in the decayed educational situation of 1822-25 was put at one-fourth, i.e. at 25%. If one were to take even the total of all those in every type of institution, i.e. the number 2,38,960, the proportion in 1879-80 rises only to 13.74%.

From 1879-80 to 1884-85, there was some increase, however, to be found. While the population went down slightly to 3,08,68,504, the total number of male scholars went up to 3,79,932, and that of females to 50,919. Even this larger number of male scholars came up only to 22.15% of the computed school-age male population; and, of those in primary schools to 18.33%. These figures are much lower than the 1822-25 officially calculated proportion. Incidentally, while there was an overall increase in number of females in educational institutions, the number of Muslim girls in such institutions in the district of Malabar in 1884-85 was only 705. Here it may be recollected that 62 years earlier, in August 1823, the number of Muslim girls in schools in Malabar was 1,122; and, at that time, the population of Malabar would have been below half of that in 1884-85.

Eleven years later in 1895-96, the number in all types of educational institutions increased further. While the population had grown to 3,56,41,828, the number of those in educational 71

institutions had increased to 6,81,174 males, and 1,10,460 females. It is at this time then that the proportion (taking all those males attending educational institutions) rose to 34.4%: just about equal to the proportion which Thomas Munro had computed in 1826 as one-third (33.3%) of those receiving any education whether in indigenous institutions, or at home. Even at this period, i.e. 70 years after Munro’s computation, however, the number of males in primary education was just 28%.

Coming to 1899-1900, the last year of the nineteenth century, the number of males in educational institutions went up to 7,33,923 and of females to 1,29,068. At this period, the number of school-age males was calculated by the Madras Presidency Director of Public Instruction as 26,42,909, thus giving a percentage of 27.8% attending any educational institution. Even taking a sympathetic view of the later data, what clearly comes out of these comparisons is that the proportion of those in educational institutions at the end of the nineteenth century was still no larger than the proportions estimated by Thomas Munro of the number attending the institutions of the decaying indigenous system of the Madras Presidency in 1822-25.

The British authorities in the late nineteenth century must have been tempted—as we find state authorities are in our own times—to show their achievements in brighter hues and thus err on the side of inflating figures: therefore, this later data may be treated with some scepticism. This was certainly not the case with the 1822-25 data which, in the climate of that period, could not have been considered inflated in any sense of the word.

From the above, it may be inferred that the decay which is mentioned in 1822-25 proceeded to grow in strength during the next six decades. During this period, most of the indigenous institutions more or less disappeared. Any surviving remnants were absorbed by the late 19th century British system. Further, it is only after 1890 that the new system begins to equal the 1822-25 officially calculated proportions of males in schools quantitatively. Its quality, in comparison to the indigenous system, is another matter altogether.

The above comparison of the 1822-25 Madras indigenous education data with the data from the 1880s and 1890s period also seems to provide additional support—if such support were required—to the deductions which G.W. Leitner had come to in 1882. These reveal the decline of indigenous education in the Panjab in the previous 35-40 years.

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VIII

During this prolonged debate, the critical issue that was seldom touched upon and about which in their various ways, the Madras Presidency collectors, the reports of Adam, and the work of Leitner provided a variety of clues, was how all these educational institutions—the 1,00,000 schools in Bengal and Bihar, and a ‘school in every village’ according to Munro and others—were actually organised and maintained. For, it is ridiculous to suppose that any system of such wide and universal dimensions could ever have maintained itself without the necessary conceptual and infrastructural supports over any length of time.

Modern Indians tend to quote foreigners in most matters reflecting on India’s present, or its past. One school of thought uses all such foreign backing to show India’s primitiveness, the barbaric, uncouth and what is termed ‘parochial’ nature of the customs and manners of its people, and the ignorance, oppressions and poverty which Indians are said to have always suffered from. To them India for most of its past had lived at what is termed, the ‘feudal’ stage or what in more recent Marxist terminology is called the ‘system of Asiatic social organisms’. Yet, to another school, India had always been a glorious land, with minor blemishes, or accidents of history here and there; all in all remaining a land of ‘Dharmic’ and benevolent rulers. For yet others subscribing to the observations of the much-quoted Charles Metcalfe, and Henry Maine, it has mostly been a happy land of ‘village republics’.

Unfortunately, due to their British-oriented education, or because of some deeper causes (like the scholastic and hair-splitting tendency of Brahmanical learning), Indians have become since the past century, too literal, too much caught up with mere words and phrases. They have lost practically all sense of the symbolic nature of what is said, or written.79 It is not surprising,

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therefore, that when Indians think of village republics, what occurs to them is not what the word ‘republic’ implies in substance; but, instead, the visual images of its shell, the elected assembly, the system of voting, etc.

What Charles Metcalfe, and especially Henry Maine wrote on this point was primarily on the basis of the earlier British information, i.e. what had been derived from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century British travellers, administrators, etc., as well as from the writings of other Europeans before them. It implied (and, quite naturally, the British had no particular reason to spell it out for us Indians) that the ‘village’

(it is immaterial how they defined it), to an extent, had all the semblance of the State: it controlled revenue and exercised authority within its sphere. How this ‘village’ State was constituted, (whether in the manner of an oligarchy, or by the representation of the various castes, crafts, or other groups within it, or by representation of all families, or in some other manner), while important in itself as a subject for exploration, was not its basic element. The basic element of this ‘village republic’ was the authority it wielded, the resources it controlled and dispensed, and the manner of such resource utilisation.

Notwithstanding all that has been written about empires—

Ashokan, Vijayanagar, Mughal, etc., and of ‘oriental despotism’

it is beyond any doubt that throughout its history, Indian society and polity has basically been organised according to non-centralist concepts. This fact is not only brought out in recent research. The eighteenth and early nineteenth century European reports, manuscript as well as published writings also bear evidence to it. That the annual exchequer receipts of Jahangir did not amount to more than 5% of the computed revenue of his empire, and that of Aurangzeb (with all his zeal for maximising such receipts), did not ever exceed 20% is symptomatic of the concepts and arrangements which governed Indian polity.

It can be argued of course that such a non-centralist polity made India politically weak; or, rather, soft in the military sense—given that only hierarchical and centralist states are politically and militarily strong and viable. This may all be true and is worthy of serious consideration. Nonetheless, the first requisite is to understand the nature of Indian society and polity especially as it functioned two or three centuries ago. Further, its various dimensions and contours, strengths and weaknesses need to be known, and not only from European writings but much more so from Indian sources; that is from sources rooted 74

in the traditions and beliefs of various areas, communities, groups, etc.,—with special attention being paid to their own images of the society of which they were a part.

It is suggested here—and there is voluminous data scattered in the British records themselves which confirm the view—that in terms of the basic expenses, both education and medical care, like the expenses of the local police, and the maintenance of irrigation facilities, had primary claims on revenue. It was primarily this revenue which not only maintained higher education, but also—as was sometimes admitted in the British records—the system of elementary education.80 It is quite probable that, in addition to this basic provision, the parents and guardians of the scholars also contributed a little according to their varying capacities by way of presents, occasional feeding of the unprovided scholars, etc., towards the maintenance of the system. But to suppose that such a deep rooted and extensive system which really catered to all sections of society could be maintained on the basis of tuition fees, or through not only gratuitous teaching but also feeding of the pupils by the teachers, is to be grossly ignorant of the actual functioning of the Indian social arrangements of the time.

According to the Bengal-Bihar data of the 1770s and 1780s, the revenues of these areas were divided into various categories in addition to what was called the Khalsa, i.e., the sources whose revenue was received in the exchequer of the ruling authority of the province, or some larger unit. These categories together (excluding the Khalsa), seem to have been allocated or assigned the major proportion of the revenue sources (perhaps around 80% of the computed revenue of any area). Two of these categories were termed Chakeran Zemin, and Bazee Zemin in the Bengal and Bihar records of this period. The former, Chakeran Zemin, referred to recipients of revenue who were engaged in administrative, economic, accounting activities, etc., and were remunerated by assignments of revenue. The latter, Bazee Zemin, referred to those who—according to the British—were in receipt of what were termed ‘religious and charitable allowances’. A substantial portion of these religious allowances was obviously

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assigned for the maintenance of religious places: largely temples of all sizes and celebrity, but also mosques, dargahs, chatrams, maths, etc. Another part was assigned to the agraharams, or what perhaps were also termed Brahmdeya in South India as well as in Bengal. Yet, other assignments were given over to a variety of persons: to great and other pundits, to poets, to joshis, to medical practitioners, to jesters and even for such purposes as defraying the expenses of carrying Ganga water in areas of Uttar Pradesh to certain religious shrines on certain festivals.81

Regarding the extent of such assignments from Hedgelee in Bengal, it was stated in 1770 that ‘almost one-half of the province is held upon free tenure’ under the Bazee Zemin category.82 The number of these Bazee Zemin (one may reasonably assume the term included individuals, groups as well as institutions) in many districts of Bengal and Bihar was as high as 30,000 to 36,000 recipients for the district. According to H.T. Prinsep,83 in one district of Bengal around 1780, the applications for the registration of Bazee Zemin numbered 72,000.

The position in the Madras Presidency was not very different, even after all the disorganisation, dispossession and demolition of the period 1750-1800, during which the British made themselves masters of the whole area. As late as 1801, over 35% of the total cultivated land in the Ceded Districts (the present Rayalseema area and the Kannada District of Bellary) came under the category of revenue free assignments, and it was the task of Thomas Munro to somehow reduce this quantity to a mere 5% of the total cultivated land. The reduction intended in the Ceded Districts was also carried out in all other districts, earlier in some, and later in others, and in some, the dispossession of such vast numbers of assignees of revenue took a long time.

The returns from the various districts of the Madras Presidency, especially during the years 1805-1820, provide much information on the varied nature of these revenue assignments

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(or grain, or money allowances). In some measure, these had till then continued to be permitted, or disbursed to a variety of institutions and to individuals in the several districts. Such information usually got collected whenever the government was contemplating some new policy, or some further steps concerning one, or more categories of such assignees, or those to whom any sort of allowances were being paid. As illustrative of such information, a return from the district of Tanjore of April 1813, relating to the money assignments received by 1,013 big and small temples,84—which by this time were mostly minute—

and between 350-400 individuals is reproduced at the end of this book (Annexures G and H). These payments amounted at this time to a total of Star Pagodas 43,037 for the temples, and Star Pagodas 5,929 to the individuals, annually. A Star Pagoda was valued at about three and one-half rupee.

What was true of Bengal, Bihar and the Madras Presidency applied equally to other areas: whether of the Bombay Presidency, Panjab, or in the Rajasthan States. The proportions of revenue allocated to particular categories—as far as the British record indicates—also seem fairly similar. It will not be far wrong to assume that about a quarter to one-third of the revenue paying sources (not only land, but also sea ports, etc.) were, according to ancient practice, assigned for the requirements of the social and cultural infrastructure till the British overturned it all.

Further still, the rate of assessment which was paid by cultivators of the revenue assigned lands was fairly low.

According to the supervisors of the Bengal Districts in the 1770s and early 1780s, the rate of assessment charged by the Bazee Zemin revenue assignees was around one-quarter to one-third of the rate which the British had begun to demand from the lands which were treated as Khalsa,85 a category which was now just swallowing up practically all the other categories. A more or less similar phenomenon obtained in the various districts of the Madras Presidency—even as late as the 1820s.86 Moreover, though it may seem unbelievable, the area which constituted Malabar had, till

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about 1750, never been subject to a land tax.87 It had a variety of other mercantile and judicial taxes, but land in Malabar—

according to British investigators themselves—never paid revenue of any kind till the peace was wholly shattered by the Europeans, Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. Even during Tipu’s period, the actual receipts from Malabar were fairly small.

The major dispossession of the various categories of revenue assignees (starting from those who had assignment for the performance of military duties, and who formed the local militias, and going on to those who performed police duties, etc.) started as soon as the British took over de facto control of any area, (i.e. in Bengal and Bihar from 1757-58 onwards). The turn of the Chakeran Zemin and the Bazee Zemin came slightly later.

By about 1770, the latter had also begun to be seriously affected. By about 1800, through various means, a very large proportion of these had been altogether dispossessed; and, most of the remaining had their assignments greatly reduced through various devices. Among the devices used was the application of the newly established enhanced rate of assessment even to the sources from which the assignees had received the revenue. This device, to begin with, implied a reduction of the quantity of the assigned source in accordance with the increased rate of assessment. The next step was to reduce—in most cases—the money value itself. The result was that the assignee—whether an individual or an institution—even when allowed a fraction of the previous assignment, was no longer able (because of such steep reduction) to perform the accompanying functions in the manner they had been performed only some decades previously. Those whose assignments were completely abrogated were of course reduced to penury and beggary, if not to a worse fate. Naturally, many of the old functions

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dependent on such assignments (like teaching, medicine, feeding of pilgrims, etc.), had to be given up because of want of fiscal support, as also due to state ridicule and prohibitions.

There are references (see the annexed reports from some of the Madras Presidency collectors) to certain revenue assignments here and there, and to daily cash or grain allowances received by some of those who were occupied in imparting Sanskritic learning, or Persian, and in some instances even education at the elementary level. A few other collectors also made reference to certain revenue assignments which used to exist in the area (but were said to have been appropriated by Tipu, and that, when the British took over these areas, they formally added such revenue to the total State revenue). The various area reports of the period 1792 to about 1806 make much mention of dispossession of revenue assignees by orders of Tipu in the area over which he had control. But, at the same time, it is also stated that through the connivance of the revenue officers, etc., such dispossession during Tipu’s reign was, in most cases, not operative at all. What Tipu might have intended merely as a threat to opponents, became a de facto reality when these areas came under formal British administration.

But in most areas which the British had conquered (either on behalf of the Nabob of Arcot, or on behalf of the Nizam of Hyderabad, or administered in the name of the various Rajas of Tanjore), most such dispossession was pre-1800. The process started soon after 1750, when the British domination of South India began gathering momentum in the early 1780s and the revenues of the areas claimed by the British to be under the nominal rulership of the Nabob of Arcot were formally assigned over to the British. One major method used to ensure dispossession was to slash down what were termed the ‘District charges’, i.e., the amounts traditionally utilised within the districts, but which, for purposes of accounting, were shown in the records of the Nabob. The slashing down in certain districts like Trichnopoly was up to 93% of the ‘District charges’ allowed until then: a mere 19,143 Star Pagodas now allowed in place of the earlier 2,82,148 Star Pagodas.

The report of the collector of Bellary is best known and most mentioned in the published records on indigenous education.88 It is long and fairly comprehensive, though the data he 79

actually sent was much less detailed. In it, he actually—to the extent a collector could—came out with the statement that the degeneration of education ‘is ascribable to the gradual but general impoverishment of the country’; that ‘the means of the manufacturing classes have been greatly diminished by the introduction of our own European manufactures’; that ‘the transfer of the capital of the country from the native government and their officers, who liberally expanded it in India, to Europeans, restricted by law from employing it even temporarily in India, and daily draining it from the land, has likewise tended to this effect’; that ‘in many villages where formerly there were schools, there are now none’; and that ‘learning, though it may proudly decline to sell its stores, had never flourished in any country except under the encouragement of the ruling power, and the countenance and support once given to science in this part of India has long been withheld.’ In elaboration, he added that ‘of the 533 institutions for education now existing in this district, I am ashamed to say not one now derives any support from the State’; but that ‘there is no doubt, that in former times, especially under the Hindoo Governments very large grants, both in money and in land, were issued for the support of learning’; that the ‘considerable yeomiahs or grants of money, now paid to brahmins in this district…may, I think, be traced to this source’.

He concluded with the observation that:

Though it did not consist with the dignity of learning to receive from her votaries hire, it has always in India been deemed the duty of government to evince to her the highest respect, and to grant to her those emoluments which she could not, consistently with her character, receive from other sources; the grants issued by former governments, on such occasions, contained therefore no unbecoming stipulations or conditions. They all purport to flow from the free bounty of the ruling power, merely to aid the maintenance of some holy or learned man, or to secure his prayers for the State. But they were almost universally granted to learned or religious persons, who maintained a school for one or more of the sciences, and taught therein gratuitously; and though not expressed in the deed itself, the duty of continuing such gratuitous instruction was certainly implied in all such grants.89

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The Collector of Bellary, A.D. Campbell, was an experienced and perceptive officer, previously having held the post of Secretary of the Board of Revenue, and was perhaps one of Thomas Munro’s favourites. It may be said to Munro’s credit that in his review of 10 March 1826, he did admit in his oblique way that indigenous education ‘has, no doubt, been better in earlier times.’ The fact that it got disrupted, reduced and well-nigh destroyed from the time the British took over de facto control and centralised the revenue, was obviously not possible even for a Governor as powerful as Thomas Munro to state in formal government records.

Illustrations such as the above can be multiplied ad infinitum. It only requires searching the records pertaining to the early period of British rule in different areas of India. With much industry and in a fairly objective manner, Leitner tried to do this for the Panjab. For Gandhiji, an intuitive understanding of what could have happened was enough. He could, therefore, with confidence, reply to Hartog that, ‘my prejudice or presentiment still makes me cling to the statement I made at Chatham House.’

IX

This brings us finally to an assessment of the content of the indigenous system of education. The long letter of the much-quoted A.D. Campbell, collector of Bellary, had been used a century earlier by London to establish that in India reading and writing

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were acquired ‘solely with a view to the transaction of business’, that ‘nothing whatever is learnt except reading, and with the exception of writing and a little arithmetic, the education of the great majority goes no farther.’

The question of content is crucial. It is the evaluation of content which led to indigenous education being termed ‘bad’

and hence to its dismissal; and, in Gandhiji’s phrase, to its uprooting. Yet it was not ‘the mere reading and writing and a little arithmetic’ which was of any consequence in such a decision. For, school education in contemporary England, except in the sphere of religious teaching, covered the same ground, and probably, much less thoroughly. As mentioned earlier, the average period of schooling in 1835 England was just about one year, and even in 1851, only two. Further, as stated by A.E.

Dobbs, ‘in some country schools, writing was excluded for fear of evil consequences.’

While the limitless British hunger for revenue—so forcefully described by Campbell—starved the Indian system of the very resources which it required to survive, its cultural and religious content and structure provoked deliberate attempts aimed at its total extermination. It was imperative to somehow uproot the Indian indigenous system for the relatively undisturbed maintenance and continuance of British rule. It is the same imperative which decided Macaulay, Bentinck, etc., to deliberately neglect large-scale school education—proposed by men like Adam—till a viable system of Anglicised higher education had first been established in the country.

In 1813, this bold intention was publicly and powerfully expressed by William Wilberforce when he depicted Indians as being ‘deeply sunk, and by their religious superstitions fast bound, in the lowest depths of moral and social wretchedness.’90

T.B. Macaulay expressed similar views, merely using different imagery. He commented that the totality of Indian knowledge and scholarship did not even equal the contents of ‘a single shelf of a good European library’, and that all the historical information contained in books written in Sanskrit was ‘less valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridge-ment used at preparatory schools in England.’91 To Macaulay, all Indian knowledge, if not despicable, was at least absurd: absurd history, absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, absurd theology.

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A little later, Karl Marx seems to have had similar impressions of India—this, despite his great study of British state papers and other extensive material relating to India.

Writing in the New York Daily Tribune on 25 June 1853, he shared the view of the perennial nature of Indian misery, and approvingly quoted an ancient Indian text which according to him placed ‘the commencement of Indian misery in an epoch even more remote than the Christian creation of the world.’

According to him, Indian life had always been undignified, stagnatory, vegetative, and passive, given to a brutalising worship of nature instead of man being the ‘sovereign of nature’—as contemplated in contemporary European thought.

And, thus Karl Marx concluded: ‘Whatever may have been the crimes of England’ in India, ‘she was the unconscious tool of history’ in bringing about—what Marx so anxiously looked forward to—India’s westernisation.

The complete denunciation and rejection of Indian culture and civilisation was, however, left to the powerful pen of James Mill. This he did in his monumental three volume History of British India, first published in 1817. Thenceforth, Mill’s * History* became an essential reading and reference book for those entrusted with administering the British Indian Empire. From the time of its publication till recently, the History in fact provided the framework for the writing of most histories of India.

For this reason, the impact of his judgments on India and its people should never be underestimated.

According to Mill, ‘the same insincerity, mendacity, and perfidy; the same indifference to the feelings of others; the same prostitution and venality’ were the conspicuous characteristics of both the Hindoos and the Muslims. The Muslims, however, were perfuse, when possessed of wealth, and devoted to pleasure; the Hindoos almost always penurious and ascetic; and

‘in truth, the Hindoo like the eunuch, excels in the qualities of a slave.’ Furthermore, similar to the Chinese, the Hindoos were

‘dissembling, treacherous, mendacious, to an excess which surpasses even the usual measure of uncultivated society.’ Both the Chinese and the Hindoos were ‘disposed to excessive exaggeration with regard to everything relating to themselves.’

Both were ‘cowardly and unfeeling.’ Both were ‘in the highest degree conceited of themselves, and full of affected contempt for others.’ And, above all, both were ‘in physical sense, disgustingly unclean in their persons and houses.’

Compared to the people of India, according to Mill, the people of Europe even during the feudal ages, (and 83

notwithstanding the vices of the Roman Church and the defects of the schoolmen), were superior in philosophy. Further, the Europeans ‘were greatly superior, notwithstanding the defects of the feudal system, in the institutions of Government and in laws.’ Even their poetry was ‘beyond all comparison preferable to the poetry of the Hindoos.’ Mill felt that it was hardly necessary to assert that in the art of war ‘the Hindoos have always been greatly inferior to the warlike nations of Europe.’ The agriculture of the Europeans ‘surpassed exceedingly that of the Hindoos’, and in India the roads were little better than paths, and the rivers without bridges; there was not one original treatise on medicine, considered as a science, and surgery was unknown among the Hindoos. Further still, ‘compared with the slavish and dastardly spirit of the Hindoos’, the Europeans were to be placed in an elevated rank with regard to manners and character, and their manliness and courage.

Where the Hindoos surpassed the Europeans was in delicate manufactures, ‘particularly in spinning, weaving, and dyeing’; in the fabrication of trinkets; and probably in the art of polishing and setting the precious stones; and more so in effeminate gentleness, and the winning arts of address. However, in the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture the Hindoos in no way excelled Europeans. Further, ‘the Hindoo loom, with all its appurtenances, is coarse and ill-fashioned, to a degree hardly less surprising than the fineness of the commodity which it is the instrument of producing.’ The very dexterity in the use of their tools and implements became a point against the Indians. For as James Mill proclaimed: ‘A dexterity in the use of its own imperfect tools is a common attribute of rude society.’

These reflections and judgments led to the obvious conclusion, and Mill wrote:

Our ancestors, however, though rough, were sincere; but under the glossing exterior of the Hindoo lies a general disposition to deceit and perfidy. In fine, it cannot be doubted that, upon the whole, the gothic nations, as soon as they became a settled people, exhibit the marks of a superior character and civilisation to those of the Hindoos.92

As to James Mill, so also to Wilberforce, Macaulay, and Karl Marx and the thought and approaches they represented (for it is more as spokesmen of such thinking and approaches that 84

they are important in the context of India rather than as outstanding individuals), the manners, customs and civilisation of India were intrinsically barbarous. And to each of them, India could become civilised only by discarding its Indianness, and by adopting ‘utility as the object of every pursuit’93 according to Mill; by embracing his peculiar brand of Christianity for Wilberforce; by becoming anglicised, according to Macaulay; and for Marx by becoming western. Prior to them, for Henry Dundas, the man who governed India from London for twenty long years, Indians not only had to become subservient to British authority but also had to feel ‘indebted to our beneficence and wisdom for advantages they are to receive’; and, in like manner, ‘feel solely indebted to our protection for the countenance and enjoyment of them’94 before they could even qualify for being considered as civilised.

Given such complete agreement on the nature of Indian culture and institutions, it was inevitable that because of its crucial social and cultural role, Indian education fared as it did.

To speed up its demise, it not only had to be ridiculed and despised, but steps also had to be taken so that it was starved out of its resource base. True, as far as the known record can tell, no direct dismantling or shutting up of each and every institution was resorted to, or any other more drastic physical measures taken to achieve this demise. Such steps were unnecessary; the reason being that the fiscal steps together with ridicule, performed the task far more effectively.

An official indication of what was to come was conveyed by London to the Madras Presidency when it acknowledged receipt of the information that a survey of indigenous education had been initiated there, much before the papers of the survey were actually sent to London. The London authorities expressed their appreciation of this initiative. They also approved of the collectors having been cautioned against ‘exciting any fears in the people that their freedom of choice in matters of education would be interfered with.’ However, this approval was followed by the observation: ‘But it would be equally wrong to do anything to fortify them (i.e. the people of the Madras Presidency) in the absurd opinion that their own rude institutions of education are so perfect as not to admit of improvement.’ The very expression of such a view in the most diplomatically and cautiously worded of official instructions was a clear signal. Operatively, it implied 85

not only greater ridicule and denunciation of the Indian system; but further, that any residual fiscal and state support still available to the educational institutions was no longer to be tolerated. Not surprisingly, the indigenous system was doomed to stagnate and die.

The neglect and deliberate uprooting of Indian education, the measures which were employed to this end, and its replacement by an alien and rootless system—whose products were so graphically described later by Ananda Coomaraswamy—

had several consequences for India. To begin with, it led to an obliteration of literacy and knowledge of such dimensions amongst the Indian people that recent attempts at universal literacy and education have so far been unable to make an appreciable dent in it. Next, it destroyed the Indian social balance in which, traditionally, persons from all sections of society appear to have been able to receive fairly competent schooling. The pathshalas and madrassahs had enabled them to participate openly and appropriately and with dignity not only in the social and cultural life of their locality but, if they wished, ensured participation at the more extended levels. It is this destruction along with similar damage in the economic sphere which led to great deterioration in the status and socio-economic conditions and personal dignity of those who are now known as the scheduled castes; and to only a slightly lesser extent to that of the vast peasant majority encompassed by the term ‘backward castes’. The recent movements embracing these sections, to a great extent, seem to be aimed at restoring this basic Indian social balance.

And most importantly, till today it has kept most educated Indians ignorant of the society they live in, the culture which sustains this society, and their fellow beings; and more tragically, yet, for over a century it has induced a lack of confidence, and loss of bearing amongst the people of India in general.

What India possessed in the sphere of education two centuries ago and the factors which led to its decay and replacement are indeed a part of history. Even if the former could be brought back to life, in the context of today, or of the immediate future, many aspects of it would no longer be apposite. Yet what exists today has little relevance either. An understanding of what existed and of the processes which created the irrelevance India is burdened with today, in time, could help generate what best suits India’s requirements and the ethos of her people.

Notes

1. See Annexures, especially A(i)-(xxx), C, and D(i), (iii)-(iv)h.

2. A. E. Dobbs: Education and Social Movements 1700-1850, London, 1919, p.80, quoting Oxford Commission, 1852, Report, p.19.

3. Ibid, p.83.

4. Ibid, p.104, f.n.l. quoting 7 Henry IV, c.17.

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5. Ibid, p.105, quoting 34 & 35 Henry VIII, c.l. This statute dating to 1542-43 A.D., consisting of just one Article after a preamble read, ‘…The Bible shall not be read in English in any church. No women or artificers, prentices, journeymen, servingmen of the degree of yeomen or under, husbandmen, nor labourers, shall read the New Testament in English.

Nothing shall be taught or maintained contrary to the King’s instructions. And if any spiritual person preach, teach, or maintain any thing contrary to the King’s instructions or determinations, made or to be made, and shall be thereof convict, he shall for his first offence recant, for his second abjure and bear a fagot, and for his third shall be adjudged an heretic, and be burned and lose all his goods and chattels.’

The statute was entitled ‘An Act for the Advancement of True Knowledge’.

This restriction, however, may have completely been lifted by the time the ‘authorised version’ of the Bible (King James’s translation) was published in England in 1611.

6. Ibid, p.104, f.n.3, quoting Strype, Cranmer, i.127

7. Ibid, p.33, f.n.l.

8. Ibid, p.139

9. Ibid, p.139

10. Ibid, p.140

11. Ibid, p.158

12. J.W. Adamson: A Short History of Education, Cambridge, 1919, p.243.

13. Ibid, p.243

14. See Annexure C: Alexander Walker, Note on Indian Education; also Ibid, p.246

15. House of Commons Papers, 1852-53, volume 79, p.718, for the number of schools and pupils in them in 1818 and 1851.

16. Adamson: *op.cit. *, 232

17. Dobbs, op.cit., pp. 157-8 also f.n.1, p.158.

18. Adamson : op.cit., p.266

19. • Ibid*, p.226

20. Ibid, p.226

21. Writing to the second Earl Spencer on 21 August 1787 William Jones described a serpentine river ‘which meets the Ganges opposite the celebrated University of Brahmans at Navadwipa, or Nuddea, as Rennel writes it. This is the third University of which I have been a member.’ The Letters of Sir William Jones, by G. Cannon. 2 volumes, 1970, p.754.

22. The fourth British University, that of London was established in 1828.

23. The above information is abstracted from The Historical Register of the University of Oxford 1220-1888, Oxford, 1888, mostly from pp.45-65.

24. The foregoing four paragraphs are based on information supplied by the University of Oxford in November 1980 on request from the author.

25. For instance according to her doctoral thesis presented in April 1980

at the Sorbonne, Paris, Gita Dharampal: Etude sur le role des missionaries europeens dans la formation premiers des idees sur l’Inde, an early eighteenth century manuscript still has several copies extant.

The manuscript is titled Traite de la Religion des Malabars, and its first copy was completed in 1709 by Tessier de Queraly, procurator of the Paris Foreign Mission in Pondicherry from 1699 to 1720, nominated Apostolic Vicar of Siam in 1727. Copies of this Ms. are to be found in the following archives: Paris (Bibliotheque Nationale 3 copies, Bibliotheque de L’Arsenal 1 copy, Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve 1 copy, Archives 87

Nationales 1 copy); Chartres (Bibliotheque Municipale 1 copy, formerly belonging to the Governor Benoit Dumas), London (India Office Libr. 2

copies in Col Mackenzie’s and John Leyden’s collections respectively); Rome 1 copy (Biblioteca Casanatesa, containing Vatican collection).

Published as La Religion Des Malabars, Immense, 1982.

26. See the author’s Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts. Other India Press, 2000, for Prof John Playfair’s long article on Indian astronomy, pp.48-93.

27. Edinburgh University: Dc.177: letters from Adam Ferguson to John Macpherson, letter dated 9.4.1775.

28. Edinburgh: Scottish Record Office: Melville Papers: GD 51/3/617/1-2, Prof A. Maconochie to Henry Dundas.

29. Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland: Ms.546, Alex Abercomby forwarding a further memorandum from Prof Maconochie to Henry Dundas, March 1788. The memorandum was communicated to Lord Cornwallis by Henry Dundas on 7.4.1788.

30. HANSARD: June 22, 1813; columns 832, 833.

31. HANSARD: June 22 and July 1, 1813: Debate on Clause No.13 of the India Charter Bill, titled in HANSARD as ‘Propagation of Christianity in India’.

32. Report on the state of Education in Bengal, 1835. p.6.

33. House of Commons Papers, 1812-13, volume 7, evidence of Thomas Munro, p.127.

34. House of Commons Papers, 1831-32, volume 9, p.468. Prendergast’s statement may be treated with some caution as it was made in the context of his stand that any expenditure on the opening of any schools by the British was undesirable. As a general impression of a senior British official, however, corroborated by similar observations relating to other parts of India, its validity appears beyond doubt.

35. See, for instance, the discussion on relative Indian and British agricultural wages in the Edinburgh Review, volume 4, July 1804.

36. Philip Hartog, Ibid, p.74.

37. This, however, may have resulted more from a relatively easier Indian climate than from any physical and institutional arrangements.

38. That is those belonging to the Brahman, Kshetriya and Vaisya varnas, but excluding the Soodras and castes outside the four varna division.

39. It may fairly be assumed that the term ‘other castes’ used in the Madras Presidency survey in the main included those who today are categorised amongst the scheduled castes, and many of whom were better known as ‘Panchamas’ some 70-80 years ago.

40. Annexure A (viii)

41. Given at Annexures B and C. Further, in the Public Despatch to Bengal from London dated 3 June 1814, it was observed: ‘The mode of instruction that from time immemorial has been practised under these masters has received the highest tributes of praise by its adoption in this country, under the direction of the Reverend Dr. Bell, formerly chaplain at Madras; and it has now become the mode by which education is conducted in our national establishments, from a conviction of the facility it affords in the acquisition of language by simplifying the process of instruction.’

42. Annexure A (xxii)

43. Annexure A (xxiii)

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44. These surveys began to be made from 1812 onwards, and their main purpose was to find out what number of such medical men were in receipt of assignments of revenue. Some details of the castes of these practitioners may be found in Madras Board of Revenue Proceedings of 17 September 1821, and of 9 March 1837, and other proceedings referred to therein.

45. Annexure A (xx) a.

46. Annexure A (xi).

47. Annexure A (x)

48. Annexure A (xxvii).

49. This observation of the Collector of Guntoor is corroborated by W.

Adam wherein he mentions that at Nadia many scholars came from

‘remote parts of India, especially from the South’ (W. Adam, p.78, 1941

edition)

50. Annexure A (xix)

51. Annexure A (xxiii)

52. It may be mentioned that Persian schools (in all about 145 in the Presidency) were predominantly attended by Muslims, and only a few Hindoos seem to have attended them (North Arcot: Hindoos 2, Muslims 396). However, quite a number of Muslim girls were reported to be attending these schools.

53. Annexure A (xx)

54. Annexure A (xxviii)

55. As in many other instances, it was unthinkable for the British that India could have had a proportionately larger number receiving education than those in England itself. Such views and judgements in fact were applied to every sphere and even the rights of the Indian peasantry were tailored accordingly. On the rights of the cultivator of land in India, the Fifth Report of the House of Commons stated: ‘It was accordingly decided, “that the occupants of land in India could establish no more right, in respect to the soil, than tenantry upon an estate in England can establish a right to the land, by hereditary residence:” and the meerassee of a village was therefore defined to be, a preference of cultivation derived from hereditary residence, but subject to the right of government as the superior lord of the soil, in what way it chooses, for the cultivation of its own lands.’ (House of Commons Papers, 1812, Volume VII, p.105)

56. Annexures A (xx) and (xiv)

57. While the caste-wise break up of the Madras Presidency school and college scholars has hitherto not been published, the separate figures for Hindoos and Muslims and those respectively divided into males and females were published as early as 1832 in the House of Commons Papers. Since then, it may be presumed that this data regarding the number of girls and boys in Malabar schools has been seen by a large number of scholars studying the question of education in India in the early nineteenth century. Curiously, however, there does not seem to be even a passing reference to this Malabar data in any of the published works. It seems to have been overlooked by Sir Philip Hartog also.

58. Adam’s Reports were first published in 1835, 1836 and 1838. The three, together with some omissions, and a 60-page rather depressing and patronising introduction were published by Rev. J. Long from Calcutta in 1868. Still another edition of the whole (reintroducing the omissions made by Long and including Long’s own introduction) with a further new 42-page introduction by Anathnath Basu was published by the University of Calcutta, in 1941. It is this last edition which is used in 89

the present work. The reports, while never sufficiently analysed, have often been quoted in most works on the history of education in India.

59. W. Adam: Ibid, pp.6-7. Incidentally the observation that every village had a school was nothing peculiar to Adam. As mentioned earlier, many others before him had made similar observations, including Thomas Munro in his evidence to a House of Commons committee. Munro had then observed that ‘if civilization is to become an article of trade’ between England and India, the former ‘will gain by the import cargo.’ As symptomatic of this high state of Indian civilisation, he also referred to

‘schools established in every village for teaching, reading, writing and arithmetic.’ When Thomas Munro made this statement he already had had 30 years of intensive Indian experience. (House of Commons Papers: 1812-13, Vol .7, p.131).

60. See Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: some contemporary European accounts, pp.143-63, for an account of this old method.

61. This, as may be noticed, was quite at variance with the Madras Presidency districts where Persian was not only studied little, but the students of it were mainly Muslims. Interestingly, Adam mentions (p.149) that amongst the Muslims ‘when a child…is four years, four months, and four days old’, he, or she is on that day usually admitted to school.

62. History of Indigenous Education in the Panjab since Annexation and in 1882 (Published 1883, Reprinted, Patiala, 1973).

63. The idea of their being divinely ordained was really a much older English assumption. In A Brief Description of New York Formerly called New-Netherlands, published in 1670, referring to the indigenous people in that part of North America, Daniel Denton observes: ‘It is to be admired, how strangely they have decreast by the Hand of God, since the English first settling of those parts; for since my time, where there were six towns, they are reduced to two small villages, and it hath been generally observed, that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians either by wars one with the other, or by some raging mortal Disease.’ (Reprint 1902 p.45)

64. See letter of Dr H. Scott to Sir Joseph Banks, President, Royal Society, London, dated 7.1.1790 in Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century, p.265.

65. First published in New York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853; also recently quoted by Iu.I. Semenov ‘Socio-economic Formations and World History,’ in Soviet and Western Anthropology, edited by Ernest Gellner, 1980.

66. Current Anthropology, Volume 7, No. 4, October 1966, pp.395-449, Estimating Aboriginal American Population, by Henry F. Dobyns.

67. Writing as early as 1804, William Bentinck, the young Governor of the Madras Presidency, wrote to the President of the Board of Control, Lord Castlereagh, that ‘we have rode the country too hard, and the consequence is that it is in the most lamentable poverty.’ (Nottingham University: Bentinck Papers: Pw Jb 722). In 1857-58 a military officer wrote to Governor General Canning, ‘it may be truly said that the revenue of India has hitherto been levied at the point of the bayonet’ and considered this to be the major cause of the Mutiny. (Leeds: Canning Papers: Military Secretary’s Papers: Misc. No.289).

68. International Affairs, London, November 1931, pp.721-739; also Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol.48, pp.193-206.

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69. See origins of the School of Oriental Studies, London Institution, by P.J. Hartog, C.I.E., M.A., 1917.

70. A graphic image of the more privileged products of this British initiated education was given by Ananda K Coomaraswamy as early as 1908. Coomaraswamy then wrote: ‘Speak to the ordinary graduate of an Indian University, or a student from Ceylon, of the ideals of the Mahabharata—he will hasten to display his knowledge of Shakespeare; talk to him of religious philosophy—you find that he is an atheist of the crude type common in Europe a generation ago, and that not only has he no religion, but is as lacking in philosophy as the average Englishman; talk to him of Indian music—he will produce a gramophone or a harmonium and inflict upon you one or both; talk to him of Indian dress or jewellery—he will tell you that they are uncivilised and barbaric; talk to him of Indian art—it is news to him that such a thing exists; ask him to translate for you a letter written in his own mother-tongue—he does not know it. He is indeed a stranger in his own land.’ ( Modern Review, Calcutta, vol 4, Oct. 1908 p.338).

71. January 1932, pp.151-82.

72. Also in House of Commons Papers: 1831-32, vol. 9, p.468.

73. Clarendon Press, 1917, p.394.

74. In Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1917, pp.815-25.

75. Philip Hartog’s lectures were announced in the London Times, (March 1,4,6,1935) and two of them reported in it on March 2 and 5. On 2 March the *Times * reported that Sir Philip Hartog, ‘submitted that under successive Governor Generals, from Warren Hastings to Lord Chelmsford, an educational policy was evolved as part of a general policy to govern India in the interest of India, and to develop her intellectual resources to the utmost for her own benefit.’ It is interesting, however, to note that the *Times, * while it gave fairly constant though brief notices to Gandhiji’s 1931 visit to England, and some of the public meetings he addressed and the celebration of his birthday, the meeting at Chatham House did not reach its pages. It was not only not reported the next day, October 21, 1931, but was also not announced along with various other notices of various other meetings, etc., on the morning of October 20.

Possibly it was a convention not to report any meetings at Chatham House in newspapers.

76. The Book of Lectures was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement under the caption ‘Mr Gandhi Refuted’. Complimenting Hartog, the review stated: ‘There are many deserved criticisms of past British administrators in this particular field, but other charges dissolve into thin air when exposed to the searching analysis Sir Philip Hartog has applied to a statement of Mr Gandhi…Sir Philip took up the challenge at once…he shows how facts were distorted to fit an educational theory.’

77. The text of Hartog-Gandhi correspondence is given at Annexures F

(i)-(xxv).

78. The available material on the survey of indigenous education in the Presidency of Bombay has been brought out in a valuable book Survey of Indigenous Education in the Province of Bombay 1820-30 by R.V.

Parulekar in 1951. This survey, however, appears to have covered only certain parts of the Bombay Presidency.

79. Judging from their products, in a certain sense, this may apply even more to the writings on India by most non-Indians. Their writings on various aspects of Indian society and polity will obviously be influenced, if not wholly conditioned, by their respective cultural and educational ethos. Even when some of them—Alexander Walker in the early 19th century and Prof. Burton Stein today—appear to understand India 91

better, it is not really for them to map out how Indians should end up perceiving themselves or their own society. Such a task can legitimately only be undertaken by India itself.

80. Public Despatch to Bengal, 3 June 1814: ‘We refer with particular satisfaction upon this occasion to that distinguished feature of internal polity which prevails in some parts of India, and by which the instruction of the people is provided for by a certain charge upon the produce of the soil, and other endowments in favour of the village teachers, who are thereby rendered public servants of the community.’

81. The revenue records of all areas, especially of the years 1770-90 for the Bengal Presidency, and of 1801-20 for the Madras Presidency provide very extensive information regarding such assignments. The information regarding assignments for the purpose of carrying Ganga water to religious shrines is taken from Mafee Register for 1847 for the district of Hamirpur and Kalpi in the Uttar Pradesh State Archives at Allahabad.

82. I.O.R. Factory Records: G/27/1, Supervisor Houghly to Murshedabad Council, 10.10.1770, p.88.

83. In a note dated circa 1830.

84. The total number of maths and temples in Tanjore about this time was around 4,000.

85. I.O.R. Factory Records: G/6/4. Proceedings of Burdwan Council on Beerbhoom, 24.5.1775.

86. The problem of peasants deserting sirkar lands (i.e. lands paying revenue to government) because of the exhorbitant rate of government assessment even in the 1820s was of such frequency that it was deliberated upon by Thomas Munro as Governor of Madras in November 1822. At that time Munro observed that ‘it would be most satisfactory if the sirkar ryots were induced to give a voluntary preference to the sirkar land’ and felt that the rest of the village community paying revenue to government should not ‘allow a ryot to throw up sirkar land liable to adjustment merely that he may occupy Enam land which is liable to none.’ But if such ‘inducement’ did not work Munro was of the view, that

‘if necessary, measures for the protection of the rights of government may be directed more immediately to the Enamdars, either by taking their Enams or by resuming them.’ (Tamil Nadu state Archives: Board of Revenue Proceedings: volume 930, Proceedings 7.11.1822, pp.10292-96).

87. For fairly detailed information on Malabar, see the voluminous Report of Commissioner Graeme, 16.7.1822 in TNSA: Revenue Consultations, especially volume 277A.

88. Annexure A (xxi), Philip Hartog, who made much play of this reply, as mentioned earlier, used it to throw doubt on the educational data from the other districts. It is possible that because of his contrary concerns, he was not able to comprehend this report fully.

89. Bellary was part of the Ceded Districts and was administered from 1800-7 by Thomas Munro. As mentioned earlier, it was here that Munro seemed outraged by the fact that 35% of the total cultivated land was still being assigned for various local purposes, and expressed his determination to reduce it to as low as 5% of the total revenue of the Ceded Districts. Munro at that time also advocated the imposition of an income-tax of about 15% on all those (revenue assignees, as well as merchants, artisans, labourers and the rest) who did not pay land revenue. The Madras Government accepted his recommendation and this tax, under various names, ( Veesabuddy, Mohtarpha, etc.) was imposed 92

not only in the Ceded Districts but also in many other districts of the Madras Presidency.

It is this background of exhorbitant taxation and the cutting down of all expenses, even on the repair of irrigation sources that largely led to the conversion of Bellary and Cuddapah into the latter day arid and impoverished areas. Quite naturally, then, the educational returns from Bellary were low.

90. Hansard: June 22, 1813.

91. Minute on Indian Education: March 1835.

92. J.S. Mill, History of British India, 1817, vol. I, pp.344, 351-2, 466-7, 472, 646.

93. • Ibid, * p.428.

94. Revenue Despatch to Madras: 11.2.1801.

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