Correspondence between Mahatma Gandhi and Sir Philip Hartog
MAHATMA GANDHI ON INDIGENOUS EDUCATION
…That does not finish the picture. We have education of this future state. I say without fear of my figures being challenged successfully, that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished. The village schools were not good enough for the British administrator, so he came out with his programme. Every school must have so much paraphernalia, building, and so forth. Well, there were no such schools at all.
There are statistics left by a British administrator which show that, in places where they have carried out a survey, ancient schools have gone by the board, because there was no recognition for these schools, and the schools established after the European pattern were too expensive for the people, and therefore they could not possibly overtake the thing. I defy anybody to fulfill a programme of compulsory primary education of these masses inside of a century. This very poor country of mine is very ill able to sustain such an expensive method of education. Our state would revive the old village schoolmaster and dot every village with a school both for boys and girls.
Question (SIR PHILIP HARTOG): Would Mr Gandhi give his authority for the statement that literacy had diminished in India during the last fifty years?
Mr Gandhi replied that his authority was the Punjab Administration Reports, and said that he had published in Young India a study of the Punjab educational statistics.
SIR PHILIP HARTOG: Would Mr Gandhi explain why the literacy figure was fourteen percent of the men and only two percent of the women, and why illiteracy was higher in Kashmir and Hyderabad than in British India?
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Mr Gandhi replied that the women’s education had been neglected, to the shame of the men. He could only conjecture, with regard to the figures for Kashmir, that if illiteracy was greater there, it was due to the negligence of the ruler or because the population was predominantly Mohammedan, but he thought that, as a matter of fact, it was six of the one and half a dozen of the other.
—from International Affairs, London, November 1931: from a long speech by Mahatma Gandhi, on October 20, 1931
held under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, London; the meeting was attended by influential Englishmen and English-women drawn from all parts of England. Lord othian, who was one of the British chairmen at the Round Table Conference on India, presided at this meeting.
(The above text is copied from * *
Collected Works, Vol.48, pp.199-200, 201-2)
. . . ** **
5, Inverness Gardens,
W.8.
21st October, 1931
M.K. Gandhi, Esq.,
Round Table Conference,
St. James Palace,
S.W.1.
Dear Mr Gandhi,
I understood you to say last night at the Royal Institute of International Affairs that you could prove on the evidence of British officials that literacy had diminished in British India in the last fifty or hundred years. In reply to my request for the precise authority for this statement you mentioned a Punjab Administration Report, (without, however, giving the date,) and said that what had happened in the Punjab must have happened in the rest of India. You mentioned, too, an article in ‘Young India’, but also without giving its date. The subject is one in which I have taken a deep interest for some years, and I should be grateful, therefore, if you would very kindly give me precise references to the printed documents on which your statements were based, so that I may consult them.
You will, I feel sure, forgive me for pointing out that the 347
assumption that what happens in the educational world in the Punjab necessarily happens in the rest of India is a mistaken one. It is generally recognised that the Punjab has made more rapid advances in primary education in the last 10 or 15 years than any other province in India.
In reply to my question about the inferiority of the literacy in the two largest Indian States, Kashmir, (Predominantly Mohammedan with a Hindu ruler), and Hyderabad, (Predominantly Hindu with a Mohammedan ruler), you suggested that perhaps Kashmir was educationally backward because it was predominantly Mohammedan, but this left the backwardness of Hyderabad as compared with British India unexplained. Probably the facts had not been previously brought to your notice.
If you should find ultimately that the inference from your remarks that backwardness in literacy and education has been due to British administration in India was unjustified, I feel certain that you would wish to correct your statement.
I am
Yours sincerely,
Sd/-Philip Hartog
M.K. Gandhi Esq.,
Round Table Conference,
St. James’ Palace,
S.W.1
. . . ** **
88, Knightsbridge,
London, W.
23rd October, 1931
Dear Friend,
Inadvertently, I have no doubt, you have omitted to sign your letter, but as the address is fully given, I am hoping that this letter will reach you.
You will realise that I could not off-hand give you the dates, but since you would gladly study the whole question, I would find out the numbers of ‘Young India’ in which the articles appeared and send the references to you. I shall also find out what is possible to prove with reference to the other provinces, apart from the deductions that I have drawn from the Punjab.
Meanwhile, I have no difficulty in drawing the deduction from the rest
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of the Provinces from the examples of the Punjab and Burma.
Whatever may be the strides made by the Punjab during the past five or ten years, cannot affect the argument that I have advanced to you.
About Kashmir, as I said in reply, mine was merely a conjecture, but since you are so interested in the question, I shall try and find out the true state of education in Kashmir.
You are quite right in feeling certain that if there were any error in my reasoning or the facts that I stated, I should immediately correct them, and whilst I should try to verify more fully the statements that I made, you will also on your part oblige me by giving me such information as may be in your possession and as may help me to understand the truth.
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- M.K. Gandhi
P.M.C.
. . . ** **
5,Inverness Gardens,W.8.
27th October 1931
Dear Mr Gandhi,
I am much obliged by your very friendly letter of 23rd October and must apologise for having omitted to sign my own of the 22nd. I must have signed the carbon copy instead of the copy sent.
I shall be grateful for the references to the articles in
‘Young India’ which you promise me, and I will verify them and give you my opinion of them.
Table 55
349
In reply to your request for the sources of my own knowledge of the history of education in India, I would refer you to the sources quoted in the report of the Calcutta University Commission of which I was Chairman (Interim Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, H.M. Stationery Office, Cmd.
3407,1929), and especially to the literacy figures, taken from the census reports and quoted on p.382 of Vol.1 of the Simon Report, which I subjoin:—
In 1911 the figure for British India was 12%; and in 1881
8%. It has always to be remembered that these percentages are adversely affected by the existence of nearly 20,000,000
aboriginals and hill tribes, as well as by the educational backwardness of a far greater number of ‘untouchables’.
You will notice that the figure for males for British India increased from 8% in 1881 (50 years ago) to 12% in 1911 and 14.4% in 1921, not a rapid increase, but still an increase.
In Travancore and Cochin you have a large number of Indian Christians. In Baroda the system of compulsory primary education taken from Western models, began to be introduced in 1893.
The census figures, as you well see, are in complete contradiction with your assertion that literacy has diminished in British India in the last fifty years.
The figures for Hyderabad (preponderatingly Hindu with a Mohammedan ruler), and for Kashmir (preponderatingly Muslim with a Hindu ruler) seem inexplicable if you attribute illiteracy to British administration.
I would refer you also to the chapter on Education which I have contributed to ‘Modern India’ (Oxford University Press, 1931), and finally to a work by an advanced Indian political thinker, the late Lala Lajpat Rai (National Education in India, 1920), whose views, though in many ways opposed to your own, I am sure you would find interesting.
I welcome your decision, of which I felt assured beforehand, that you will immediately correct your statement, if you are convinced that it is erroneous, and I look forward to your doing so.
Believe me,
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- Philip Hartog
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5,Inverness Gardens,W.8.
13th November, 1931
M.K. Gandhi, Esq.
88, Knightsbridge, W.
Dear Mr Gandhi,
I wrote on October 27th in reply to your letter to me of October 23rd, but have not yet received from you the promised references to the documents (a Punjab Administration Report and the articles in ‘Young India’) on which your statement that literacy had diminished in British India during the last fifty years was based.
In case my letter of the 27th may have miscarried I enclose a copy of it, and am sending this to you by registered post.
I am,
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- Philip Hartog
M.K. Gandhi, Esq.
88, Knightsbridge
W.
. . .
88, Knightsbridge, S.W.1.
(Post-Mark Nov. 14, 1931)
(To Sir Philip Hartog, London)
Dear Friend,
Mr Gandhi has your letter of the 27th October. He has now been able to secure the files of ‘Young India’ for 1920 and wants me to send you the enclosed copies.
Yours sincerely,
Mahadeo Desai.
(see following page)
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*COPY OF ARTICLE TAKEN FROM ‘YOUNG INDIA’ *
8TH DECEMBER 1920
THE DECLINE OF MASS EDUCATION IN INDIA
(By Daulat Ram Gupta, M.A.)
It is generally believed that from the time the British Government have taken in their hands the duty of educating the people of India, in accordance with the Parliamentary dispatch of 1854, the country has made remarkable progress in education, in so far as the number of schools, the number of scholars, and the standard of education are concerned. It will be my business to prove, that we have made no such progress in these respects,—a fact which will be startling to some and a revelation to others—
and in so far as our mass education is concerned, we have certainly made a downward move since India has passed to the British Crown.
The advent of British Rule found in India systems, of education of great antiquity and value existing among both Hindus and Mussalmans, in each case closely bound up with their religious institutions. There was not a mosque, a temple, a Dharamsala, that had not a school attached to it. To give and receive instruction was regarded as a religious duty. Schools of learning were formed in centres containing a considerable high caste population, where Pandits gave instruction in Sanskrit, grammar, logic, philosophy and law.
For the lower classes, village schools were scattered over the country in which a good rudimentary education was given to the children of petty traders, cultivators and landlords. The very fact that every family of the DWIJA (twice-born) and every guild of the mixed castes, and every village of any importance, had its own priest, and that it was enjoined upon the priest to teach as well as to minister to religion, leads one to the belief, on strong prima facie grounds, that education was very widely diffused among the people.
The higher education of the Mussalmans was in the hands of men of learning. Schools were attached to mosques and shrines and supported by the state grant in cash or land, or by private liberality. The course of study in a Muslim Madrassa included grammar, rhetoric, logic, literature, jurisprudence, and science.
Thus, in Madras, in an inquiry conducted by Sir Thomas Munro in 1826, it is stated that in 1826 there were 11,758
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indigenous schools and 740 colleges giving instruction to 1,57,664 boys, and 4,023 girls. (Vide Education Commission Report by the Madras Provincial Committee 1884). It is therefore estimated, that considering the population in that period (123,50,941) elementary indigenous education was imparted to about one-fourth of the boys of school-going age. It was also estimated that there was at least one school to every 1,000 of the population. ‘But as only a few females were taught in schools, we may reckon one school to every 500 of the population.’
Mr Munro, (as he then was) further supplements this estimate of the spread of education with the following observation:—
I am, however, inclined to estimate the portion of the male population, who receive school education, to one-third than one-fourth of the whole, because we have no return of the numbers taught at home.
In 1826, such was the state of purely indigenous education in a province which had been under British influence for over a century and was, therefore, fast disintegrating old institutions and adopting new ones.
In Bengal, Mr W. Adam, conducted a similar inquiry and found that in 1835 ‘a network of primitive Vernacular schools existed throughout Bengal’, and he estimated their number to be about one lakh. The Sadler Commission has pointed out that ‘no attempt was made to develop these schools.’ Government preferred to devote its energies to secondary and higher schools, on the theory that, if Western education were introduced among the upper classes, it would ‘filter down’ by a natural process to the lower classes. Practically all the public funds available for education were expended on schools and colleges founded and controlled by Government, and nothing was spent upon indigenous schools, and as rent-free lands attached to these schools were resumed, the schools were left without any financial aid and naturally collapsed.
The purpose of all this was political. Sir Sankaran Nair in his masterly Minute of Dissent writes:—
Efforts were made by the government to confine higher education and secondary education, leading to higher education, to boys in affluent circumstances…Rules were made calculated to restrict the diffusion of education generally and among the poorer boys in particular.
Conditions for “recognition” for “grants”—stiff and various—were laid down and enforced, and the non-fulfillment of any one of these
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conditions was liable to be followed by serious consequences. Fees were raised to a degree, which, considering the circumstances of the classes that resort to schools, were abnormal. When it was objected that minimum fee would be a great hardship to poor students the answer was such students had no business to receive that kind of education. Managers of private schools who remitted fees in whole or in part, were penalised by reduced grants-in-aid.
Thus, by this policy, education was only confined to the well-to-do classes.
‘They it was believed would give no trouble to the Government.’ Sri Sankaran Nair, therefore, concludes that, It is the universal belief, and there is little doubt that facts unfortunately tend to prove it, that primary English Education for the masses, and higher education for the higher classes *are discouraged for political reasons. * Higher, professional, industrial and technical education is discouraged to favour English industries and recruitment in England of English officials.
In the Punjab the state of indigenous education was much better because of the special efforts made by Maharaja Ranjit Singh to promote learning. Dr Leitner, who was the Principal of the Oriental College and Government College, Lahore, and who also officiated for some time as Director of Public Instruction, Punjab, conducted a very thorough going inquiry into the state of indigenous education in the Punjab, and in his book on the
‘History of Indigenous Education’ in the Punjab, he writes:—
I am about to relate—I hope without extenuation or malice—the history of the contact of a form of European, with one of the Asiatic, civilisation; how in spite of the best intentions, the most public-spirited officers, and a generous government that had the benefit of the traditions of other provinces, the true education of the Punjab was crippled, checked and is nearly destroyed; how opportunities for its healthy revival and development were either neglected or perverted; and how, far beyond the blame attaching to individuals, our system stands convicted of worse then official failure.
He therefore writes:—
I fear that my account of the decline of indigenous education in the Punjab may offend some prejudices and oppose
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some interests. I have to appeal to rulers to put themselves in the position of the ruled, if they wish to understand them…and both the writer of these pages and the reader must endeavour to divest themselves of every preconception. Indeed, the man has so often described the struggle with the lion, that it would be well to sketch a picture which the lion might have drawn had he been a painter.
Referring to the educational glory of the Punjab before annexation he writes:
Respect for learning has always been the redeeming feature of the East. To this the Punjab formed no exception. Torn by invasion and war, it ever preserved and added to educational endowments. The most unscrupulous chief, the avaricious money lender, and even the free-booter, vied with the small land-owner in making peace with his conscience by founding schools and rewarding the learned.
There was not a mosque, a temple, a Dharamsala, that had not a school attached to it, to which the youth flocked chiefly for religious education. There were few wealthy men who did not entertain a Maulvi, Pandit, or Guru to teach their sons, and along with them the sons of friends and dependents. There were also thousands of secular schools, frequented alike by Mahomedans, Hindus and Sikhs, in which Persian or Hindi was taught. There were hundreds of learned men who gratuitously taught their co-religionists, and sometimes all comers, for the sake of God, “Lillah”.
There was not a single village who did not take a pride in devoting a portion of his produce to a respected teacher. In respectable Mahomedan families husbands taught their wives, and these their children; nor did the Sikhs prove in that respect to be unworthy of the appellation of “Learners and disciples”. In short the lowest computation gives us 3,30,000 pupils in the schools of the various denominations who were acquainted with reading, writing and some method of computation, whilst thousands of them belonged to Arabic and Sanskrit Colleges, in which oriental literature and system of oriental law, logic, philosophy and medicine were taught to the highest standards. Tens of thousand also acquired a proficiency in Persian which is now rarely reached in government and aided schools and colleges. Through all schools there breathed a spirit of devotion to education for its own sake, and for its influence on the character and on religious culture; whilst even the sons of Banias who merely 355
learnt what they absolutely required in order to gain a livelihood, looked with respect, amounting to adoration, on their humble Pandhas, who taught them the elements of two ‘Rs’.
Dr Leitner further describes the state of feeling with respect to education in the Punjab. He writes:
The Punjab is classic ground. Not merely the celebrated country between Sutlej and the Jumna, but also the whole province teems with noble recollections. The history of its culture will tell us of a simple worship………..of an ardent republicanism allied to the most chivalrous devotion to chiefs, of capacity for self-Government not equalled elsewhere, and above all, of the universal respect for learning and of the general spread of education. The priest was a professor and poet, and education was a religious, social and professional duty.
It is, therefore, our belief, founded on authentic historical data, that before annexation, every Punjab village had a school of its own.
In every Indian village which has retained anything of its form…the rudiments of knowledge are sought to be imparted; there is not a child, except those of the outcastes (who form no part of the community), who is not able to read, to write, to cypher; in the last branch of learning, they are confessedly most proficient.’ (Vide BRITISH INDIA by Ludlow).
Dr Leitner estimated that in 1854-55 there were at least 30
thousand schools, and if we count at least 13 pupils per school, the total number of pupils will amount to 4 lakhs. Dr Leitner writes:
‘The village school would contain 3,00,000 pupils, but there are reasons for estimating larger number.’
Further, in backward districts like that of Hushiarpur, the Settlement Report of 1852, shows a school to every 1,965 male inhabitants (adults and non-adults), which may be contrasted with the present proportion of one government or aided school to every 9,028 or one school to 2,818.7 inhabitants including the present number of ascertained indigenous schools throughout the province, a significant contrast to the proportion of one school to every 1,783 inhabitants in the most backward division of the Punjab in 1849 when brought under British Rule after a period of confusion following on war and annexation.
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Such was the state of affairs in 1882, but the contrast will become more startling if we look at the figures already reproduced in ‘Young India’.
A mere glance at that statement will show how the indigenous education has declined, and how stagnant the state of education has remained from 1882 to 1918-19. In a period of 37 years the government has done nothing whatsoever for mass education. In a period less than this, England was able to educate the whole of its populations; in a period considerably less than this, America could give education to a population without any records of civilisation or intellectual stamina; and in a period equal to this, Japan was able to work out its destiny.
But such is the way of doing things in India that during all this time nothing was done except to shift schools from one place to another, to shift the expenses of education from one source to another, to shift the responsibility from man to man; in fact to make shifts as best as could be done.
Such in brief is the history of the decline of indigenous education, and as to how it was crushed in the Punjab will form the subject matter of the next article.
. . . ** **
*COPY OF ARTICLE TAKEN FROM ‘YOUNG INDIA’ *
OF 29TH DECEMBER 1920
HOW INDIGENOUS EDUCATION WAS CRUSHED IN
THE PUNJAB
1849-1886
The Punjab was the last of all the Provinces of India to come under the direct influence of the English. The Honourable the East India Company had during a couple of centuries, extended their sphere of influence from the Cape to the Jamuna; but its administrators never thought it worth the trouble to go beyond the Moghul Court. The Moghul Court itself was jealous of any encroachments upon its northern province—the gateway to Kabul—which they still looked upon as their ancestral home.
When the descendants of Aurangzeb began to bungle things in this province, the invaders from the North and the people from within threw in a state of anarchy and misrule.
Under such circumstances the hardy Sikh began to realise his own importance and individuality. Ever afterwards till 1849, the Sikhs kept the
357
banks of Beas free from all diplomatic or martial overtures. They preferred their own incapacity to govern to an established order of things where their liberty would be restrained and their religion interfered with. The Sikh like the Hindu is essentially devout, and his devotion always lands him on the side of conservatism; of respect for the past, its institutions and traditions.
So that, when the reins of government and authority passed into the hands of the Sikhs, both from lack of initiative and requirements of diplomacy, they left untouched all the old village institutions. Whereas, British administrators in other provinces were changing and modifying ancient ways and manners to suit their own conceptions, the Sikh Sirdar was content to let things have their own way, so long as he got the revenue that he wanted. The result of it all was that a network of village schools which traditions of a thousand years past had spread all over India, was in its full strength here. If any change was made at all, it was to add the Granthi or Bhai, to the Maulvi and the Pandit. Instead of there being two traditional teachers of village youth, now there became three.
The village education was an essential part of the village administration and the provision for it was made in the village expenses. The ‘school-master’s field’, the ‘watchman’s field’ never disappear from the village books. There was in every village in the Punjab, a school of some sort, in which elementary education, having a direct bearing on the secular needs of the pupil, was imparted either free of cost, or at a nominal rate of monthly fee. In addition to these schools, there were spread all over the province ‘colleges’ of various grades and denominations in which the ancient ideals of the academies were kept alive and potent. There were centres of advanced studies of metaphysics, astronomy, mathematics, grammar, philosophy and other sciences.
That much good was done to all sections of the community by these indigenous schools and colleges, is beyond doubt a fact recognised even by the bitter antagonists of the indigenous system. From the advanced ‘colleges’, in which classical education (Arabic and Sanskrit) was imparted to students of mature age and thought, to the elementary Mahajani, Sharafi, and Lande Schools, there was a very large variety of quasi-classical vernacular and technical schools. The teachers always kept in view the requirements of individual students and the profession they were qualifying for.
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There was no class instruction, as in our schools reducing all intellects to the same level and retarding the industrious for the sake of the dullard. But recitations in Sanskrit and the system of repeating lessons in chorus on the dispersion of the school encouraged such emulation as may be necessary, whilst the separate instruction of the pupil and his devotion to his work during the time that he was not reading with his tutor stimulated those habits of reflection and of private study, in which the students of present day schools are sadly deficient.
Then again when the student grew older, he travelled to learn philosophy under one tutor, and law under another, much in the same way as students of German Universities visit various seats of learning in order to hear, say, international law at Heidelberg, the Pandects at Berlin.
It would not be without interest to point out that from the humblest beginnings in education up to the highest courses in Hindu metaphysics and science great wisdom was displayed.
Traces of the ‘Kindergarten system’ are still found. The simplest methods for arresting and keeping attention were resorted to and the moral and mental capacities of children, according to their spheres of life, were everywhere carefully studied and cultivated.
As for the mode of instruction, it also bore in every one of its features the emphatically practical as well as ideal aim of the Hindu legislator.
That the above statement is not an unsupported assertion, I will quote a paragraph from the first educational despatch of the Court of Directors which was issued on the 3rd June 1814.
The Directors point out that ‘the indigenous village schools are a part of the village system and that they have formed a model to schools in England.’ Again they point out ‘this venerable and benevolent institution of the Hindus is represented to have withstood the shock of revolutions, and to its operation is ascribed the general intelligence of the native.’
In 1848 the Government of the Punjab passed into the hands of the East India Company. The first Board of Administration in the Punjab recognised the full value of the rich educational legacy, which they inherited from the decaying and disintegrating Sikh constitution. Recognising the widespread character of the indigenous education, and the necessity of keeping up old educational traditions alive, Sir John and Sir Henry Lawrence defined their policy in matters of education in the following words:—
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‘We intend to set up one school, if not in every village, at least in every circle of villages, so that at least there should be something throughout the land in which the children do attend some rudimentary school.’
How far policy was actually carried out will be explained in another article.
. . . ** **
5,Inverness Gardens,W.8.
17 November 1931
Dear Mr Gandhi,
I beg to acknowledge with thanks the undated letter received on November 14th, written on your behalf by Mr M.
Desai in which were enclosed typed copies of two articles on Indian education by Mr D.R. Gupta published in Young India for 8th December 1920 and 29th December 1920.
I understand that it is on the evidence adduced in those articles and on a Punjab Administration Report to which you have not given me the reference, that you base the sweeping statement that literacy had diminished in British India during the past fifty years, and that you could prove this from official statements.
I have examined the articles and can find nothing in them to support your contention. The articles do not contain a single percentage of literacy. The chief authority quoted is the ‘History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab’ by Dr G.W. Leitner, a Punjab Official. I feel sure that when you made your assertion you cannot have been aware that that book was published nearly fifty years ago, in 1882. Mr D.R. Gupta does not mention the fact. Nor does he point out that so far from regarding the Punjab as typical, Leitner compares that Province educationally to its disadvantage with the Central Provinces and with Lower Bengal (loc. cit. p.3). It is only within the past ten or fifteen years that the Punjab has made the rapid advances in primary education to which I referred in my letter of 21st October.
I am still awaiting the reference which you promised to a Punjab Administration Report. I have consulted recent Punjab Administration Reports, but can find nothing in them relating to literacy in British India, and it is obviously unlikely that any 360
Punjab Report would deal with such a subject. If you find therefore that your reference was made in error, may I suggest that you should now withdraw your statement in accordance with the undertaking given in the last paragraph of your letter to me of October 23rd?
Yours sincerely,
Sd/-Philip Hartog
P.S.: May I ask from what Report Sir Sankaran Nair’s Note of Dissent referred to in Mr Gupta’s first article, is quoted? No reference is given in the article itself.
Sd/- P.H.
M.K. Gandhi, Esq,.
88, Knightsbridge, W.
. . . ** **
88, Knightsbridge
London, S.W. 1,
November 19, 1931
Sir Philip Hartog, K.B.E.
5 Inverness Gardens, W.8.
Dear Sir Philip,
I am much obliged to you for your letter of the 17th inst.
I do not propose just now to withdraw the statement I made at the meeting at Chatham House. At the present moment I have not got any time for searching the records to which you are making reference. I, however, promise not to forget the matter, and 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.
Meanwhile I am endeavouring to find out the references you want.
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- M.K. Gandhi
Sir Philip Hartog, K.B.E.
5 Inverness Gardens, W.8
. . . ** **
361
5,Inverness Gardens,W.8.
20 November 1931
Dear Mr Gandhi,
I am much obliged by your letter of yesterday’s date.
I think it might help matters if you could spare me a few moments of your valuable time; and I should be glad to call on you if would suggest a day and hour.
I am,
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- Philip Hartog
M.K. Gandhi, Esq,.
88, Knightsbridge, W.
. . . ** **
5, Inverness
Gardens,W.8.
22nd November 1931
Dear Mrs Naidu,
In accordance with your kind suggestion today I send you enclosed copies of my letters to Mr Gandhi of 27th October and 17th November. The other letters from me do not contain any detailed information. Would you kindly return the enclosures at your convenience?
With kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
Sd/-Philip Hartog
Mrs Sarojini Naidu,
7, Park Place,
St. James’, S.W.I.
. . . ** **
Scar Top,
Boars Hill, Oxford.
November 23, 1931
Dear Sir Philip Hartog,
I probably under-rate the indigenous system of Indian education; at any rate, I have never thought it amounted to much. My statement is not the usual extravagant claim of the Nationalist, but a pretty mild one.
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However, you will get the evidence in F.E. Keay, Ancient Indian Education, Oxford University Press 1918—esp. pp.51, 57, 107 and passim.
Dr Leitner, History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab, pp.14, 21 passim.
A Report for the Punjab Government issued in 1882.
A.P. Howell, Education in British India Prior to 1854. And Ludlow, British India.
The Madras Presidency made an enquiry, 1822-6, and calculated that rather less than one-sixth of the boys of school-going age received education of some sort. Bombay Presidency, 1823-8, estimated it as one in eight, Bengal, 13.2 percent (Adam’s enquiry 1835). William Ward supposed that about one-fifth of the male population of Bengal could read.
I know the difficulties. But I feel more and more that in this matter, of general education, we did precious little to congratulate ourselves on—until the last dozen years. Don’t you agree?
Calcutta University was damned bad. And the Middle Vernacular schools—
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- Edward Thompson
P.S. I do not believe we destroyed indigenous schools and indigenous industries out of malice (which is what is stated, in America as well as India). It was inevitable.
. . . ** **
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INTERVIEW WITH MR GANDHI ON DECEMBER 2, 1931
In my last letter to Mr G. relating to his statement at the Royal Institute of International Affairs on October 20th that literacy in India had diminished during the last 50 or 100 years (see Journal of International Affairs November 1931, pp.727, 728, 734, 735). I had asked him for an interview. I received no reply in writing, but Mrs Sarojini Naidu, to whom I had spoken on the matter, arranged for an interview today, by telephone, and I went to see Mr G. at 88, Knightsbridge at 4 p.m. and stayed till five.
He was lying on a sofa covered with his shawl in front of a big fire, obviously tired, though he insisted on rising both when I came and when I went. He told me that he had thought his strength was equal to anything but that he was now saturated. I suggested that he might be too tired to discuss matters but he said that it was a pleasure to meet me and he apologised sincerely for not having written to offer me an appointment.
He admitted at once that he had at present no facts to substantiate his statements and did not attempt to answer my argument that the articles in Young India for December 8th and 29th 1920 by Daulat Ram Gupta of which he had furnished me with typed copies, contained no literacy figures and that the most recent official report in them, Dr G.W. Leitner’s History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab was written in 1882 and could therefore furnish no evidence with regard to the progress or decline of literacy in India during the last 50 years. He told me that Mr Mahadeo Desai who was present had been investigating the matter in the British Museum. Mr Desai admitted that he had found nothing fresh up to the present. Mr G. said that he would question the writer of the articles in Young India and that on his return he would get competent friends to investigate the matter for him over there and that he would send me a cablegram with regard to the result, and that in it he would say whether he had found material that would convince me that he was right, or that he would apologise handsomely for his mistake, and would make his withdrawal in such a way as to reach a much wider audience than his original statement.
I showed him Leitner’s Book and pointed out the statement on p.3 in which Leitner had pointed out that the Punjab was not typical but far behind the Central Provinces and Lower Bengal in the proportion of pupils to population, a statement not referred to by Mr Gupta though he had quoted figures in regard to Hushiarpur from p.2. I told Mr G. that the population of British 364
India in 1882 was roughly speaking 210 millions and that it had increased in 1931 to about 270 millions, i.e. about 30 percent in round figures, and that during that period the number of pupils under instruction in British India had increased from about 2½
millions to over 11 millions, i.e. more than 4 times, and that it would be surprising therefore if literacy had diminished during these 50 years.
I also pointed out that it was impossible to draw any accurate conclusions on the other hand in regard to literacy from the numbers of pupils under instruction. Howell in his Education in British India had pointed out that for many reasons, including the early age at which the children are withdrawn it was almost worthless (loc. cit. p.7). I also mentioned that during the years 1917-1927 in Bengal with an increased enrolment of over 3,00,000 pupils (the actual figure is about 370,000) there had been a decline of about 30,000 pupils in the number that reached Class IV where under present conditions, literacy was first attained.
I also showed Mr G. certain figures of literacy for Bengal from Adam’s Report on Vernacular Education of 1835-38 and compared them with the census figures for 1921 Vol.5, p.302. I further showed him census figures for 1911 and 1901 taken from the same volume, p.285, showing considerable increases in literacy in Burma, Bengal and Madras, though the Punjab, Bihar, Bombay and United Provinces had made little or no progress during those years. Mr Gandhi said, ‘I know very little about these things’ in a tone of apology, to which I rejoined that he had no doubt many other things to occupy his attention.
Towards the end of the interview I said that I hoped that he was now on the side of peace. He replied that he had meant exactly what he had said on the previous day, that he would read the Prime Minister’s declaration over again and again, and that he felt the immense personal responsibility that rested on his shoulders in advising Congress. He said that he had postponed his departure in order to see Sir Samuel Hoare on the following Friday as Sir Samuel had said that he would have no free time during the debate in Parliament (on the Wednesday and Thursday). I said, ‘I am sure you must be convinced that Englishmen are in earnest in wishing to give India everything possible at the present moment.’ He said, ‘Yes, but there is one thing that the English sincerely believe, but which I cannot understand. They think us incapable of managing our own affairs even with the help of experts. When I was a young man and my father
365
was Prime Minister of an Indian State, I knew the Prime Minister of another Indian State (Junagarh), who could hardly sign his own name but who was a very remarkable man and managed the state wonderfully. He knew just who were the right people to advise him and took their advice. When I spoke to your own Prime Minister about the exchange value of the rupee, he said to me, that he knew nothing about exchange values, that the Prime Minister had of course to do things in his own name but had really to depend on experts. We have had experience in governing in the past and we could do equally well.’
I did not think it worthwhile to pursue the political topic or to point out the political chaos of India when the British entered on the scene, as my main object was to secure from Mr Gandhi the withdrawal of his statement about literacy. I ended up the interview by saying that I was a man of peace, and had no desire to enter on a controversy but that I must state the facts in the Journal of International Affairs, and to this I understood Mr Gandhi to assent. I wished him a pleasant journey back to India and said I hoped I had not tired him. He replied that it had been a real pleasure to see me, and that he hoped to keep in touch with me.
There were present during the conversation Mr Desai, a tall young man whose name I did not know, Miss Slade to whom I was introduced, but who was in a kind of back drawing room for most of the time, and another young Englishwoman, who brought Mr Gandhi some fruit at the end of the interview. No one intervened in the conversation, but once or twice Mr Gandhi asked Mr Desai for information. It appeared that Mr Desai had been asked by Mr Gandhi to try to get information from the British Museum, but that he had been unable to get the books he had wanted and had not been able to find any facts to support Mr Gandhi’s statements. Mr Desai accompanied me downstairs and showed me his British Museum slips for one book dated 1859, another book of 1867-8, and a book by Wilmot on “‘he Indigenous System of Education in India’, of which he had not the date.
I find I have omitted one statement of some importance. Mr Gandhi said that he had not accused the British Government of having destroyed the indigenous schools, but they had let them die for want of encouragement. I said that they had probably let them die because they were so bad that they were not worth keeping up. In the United Provinces Mahomedan witnesses had told my Committee that the Mahomedan schools not organised by Government were not an aid but a hindrance to Mahomedan progress and I knew there were many voluntary schools in other 366
parts of the country of which this might be said. I told Mr Gandhi that my interest in primary education in India was no new thing; and that when as a member of the Sadler Commission I had seen Mr Montagu and Lord Chelmsford in 1918 I had told them both that although university reform was perhaps the most urgent matter, the problem of primary education was the fundamental one for India, although I could not advise on it then. I said that India had probably not yet found the solution of the problem of giving the agricultural labourer an education that would make him a more efficient cultivator without making him want to be a clerk, but that the Punjab, under the inspiration of the late Mr Richey whose work had been carried on by Sir George Anderson, had made great strides in the last ten or fifteen years. I described the system adopted in Punjab and Mr Gandhi said he had heard of recent progress in that province. I then told him that Bombay had probably the most efficient schools in some ways under the system initiated by Dr Paranjpye, but that the complete transfer of control to local bodies by his successor had unfortunate results, as so many district boards were more interested in politics than in education of which they knew very little.
I next told Mr Gandhi that I could not accept his suggestion that universal primary education must necessarily be very remote, and that my Committee had estimated than an additional recurring expenditure of about 19 crores would bring about 80 percent of boys and girls into the primary school system. Mr Gandhi then asked me if I thought that primary education would be much use unless the children went on to middle schools. I said that was the next step that would follow, and that I regarded the encouragement of vernacular middle schools as of the greatest importance not only for the sake of the children, but because they produce the primary teachers. I said that I was sorry that Bengal despised vernacular middle schools and insisted on English teaching middle schools.
We then spoke of girls’ education and I quoted the opinion of my Committee that in all schemes of expansion priority should be given to the claims of girls. Mr Gandhi said that he entirely agreed, but he asked himself whether primary education would make girls better mothers. Mr Gandhi said that he had not read the Report of my Committee. I asked him if he would like to do so on his journey back to which he said yes and I promised to send him a copy.
( These notes were dictated on December 2nd and December 4th) 367
5,Inverness Gardens,W.8.
2 December 1931
Dear Mr Thompson,
My apologies for not having acknowledged your kind letter of November 23rd with its references earlier. I was familiar with Adam’s Reports and Leitner, and with Howell from quotations. I have looked at Keay, and I’m afraid he doesn’t impress me. I will ask F.W. Thomas what he thinks of the book, but it all seems to me second-hand.
After going through your reference I am still in doubt as to whether the statement on p.255 of the ‘Reconstruction of India’
‘Nevertheless there was more literacy if of a low kind, than until the last ten years’ is justifiable. You mention figures for Bombay schools and Bengal schools. But from my experience of Indian schools it is a far cry from attendance to literacy.
In the ten years 1917-27 with an increased enrolment of nearly 370,000 pupils in Bengal, the number in Class IV, where first you may expect permanent literacy, declined by 30,000.
(See EDn Comtee of Simon Commission Report, p.59, including Table xxxiv).
I imagine from my reading of Adam, and Howell and Leitner—all pressing the claims of indigenous education—that this kind of thing is not new.
Did you notice in Long’s edition of Adam p.268 a quotation from a report of Mountstuart Elphinstone dated 25 October 1819 in which he says:
‘There are already schools (in the Deccan) in all towns and in many villages, but reading is confined to Brahmans, Banyans, and such of the agricultural classes as have to do with accounts.’
And Howell, p.7, in referring to Adam’s estimate that there were 100,000 schools in Bengal in 1835 and similar estimates in Madras and Bombay says ‘although all authorities were agreed that the existence of these schools was a satisfactory evidence of a general desire for education, there was equal unanimity that the instruction actually imparted in them was, owing partly to the utter incompetence of the teachers, the absence of all school books and appliances, and the early age at which the children were withdrawn, almost worthless.’
All the people I have quoted wanted Government to build up a system on the basis of the village schools.
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Adam gives some literacy figures which are worth examining in detail. I will look up the Census returns for the actual districts for which Adam has given figures.
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- P.J. Hartog
. . . ** **
Scar Top,
Boars Hill, Oxford.
December 5, 1931
Dear Sir Philip Hartog,
I am really not clear as to what we are disputing about.
My statement is mild enough, moderate enough and its purpose is plain. I was obviously trying to go to the limits of concession that truth permitted, as to claims that I consider entirely wrong. That seems to me the only way to get a controversy forward. I never did believe in the method of belittling whatever case my opponent, whether British imperialist or Indian nationalist, may have. The context makes it clear that I have never thought that Indian schools amounted to much. It makes equally clear what I remember quite well was in my mind when I wrote that passage—this was that I do not agree with the steady crabbing of the last dozen years but to emphasise that on the whole they have been years far more progressive than any previous decade.
Of course—literacy and school attendance are not the same thing. They are not the same even now. But that is the realm of the imponderable and not worth arguing. If it comes to that, just now I rank mere literacy low enough. It seems to me we are in for a rotten ten years of struggle to keep any sort of decency alive. I may be overdepressed; but I saw the utter wash that the
‘literate’ populace of the United States read as their only gain from education, and I come back to this country to find that the weeklies are dying or recently dead, and that Daily Mail, Daily Express, and the infamous Sunday popular papers are about all the reading that Demos does. I believe the most popular weekly is ‘Competitions’, which guides the huge mob whose sole intellectual recreation (an absorbing and costly one) is making
‘bullets’ or cross-word puzzles (sending up six-pence a time). On the other hand, Akbar was ‘illiterate’.
There are in India poor folk who never went to any sort of school who have learnt to read. But these of course are few. They 369
pay a few pice to be coached by some student. There must be more literacy in the sense of reading the vernaculars, than the numbers in schools indicate, or else how could every Bengal bazaar swarm with these frightfully printed (but cheap) texts of Ramprasad, Chandidas, Krittibas’s Ramayana (before the War, according to Dinesh Sen, two hundred thousand sold every year), even of Bhadu songs (which are sung only in two divisions)? Sarat Chatterjee told me that in 1921 the twelve annas edition of his fiction had brought him in twelve thousand rupees in royalties, which I estimate to be a sale of two hundred thousand. But the semi-religious texts swarm and always have done, irrespectively of the number in schools.
I will go into the matter when in India next spring. But my impression has steadily deepened that the first real advance we made—in most things—began about 1917. I do not think you will believe how stagnant officialdom was before the War. When I started in educational work in Bengal, the M.V. Schools used to pour an indescribably turbid stream into the fourth class of our high school—literate, if you like, but it would have been almost better if they were not. And the Education department was shocking. The acting Lieut. Governor was the notoriously inefficient Slack, and the D.P.I. the notoriously lazy Kuchler. I do not believe that a century ago there was widespread literacy. But neither do I believe that anything we ever did for education before about 1917 made any serious difference or improvement.
We give ourselves many unjustified chits. But I will stand up for what we have done since the unfairly abused Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms.
Previous to 1917, what were the figures of literacy? Four or five per cent of the population? I believe they were higher a century ago. But the only way of proving this would be by finding out what sales in the very much smaller population of that day (though the first census was 1871, was it not?) were achieved for the popular classics.
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- Edward Thompson
(IN HAND FOLLOWING TYPED LETTER)
P.S. ‘Banyan’ is a usual way of referring to ‘Banias’, in East India Company documents.
I have again read carefully through your letter. It seems to me that we are in agreement. Obviously we both think that (a) 370
the literacy of a century ago amounted to very little to justify a song about it (b) that the average M.E. or M.C. schools of prewar days was a farce. We used to be asked continually to take over village ‘M.V.’ schools, with a failed Inter Arts or even failed Matric, as their head, and their students appalled me. Our own high school boys were bad enough but…I tell you what it is. The prewar administration of India in many ways was appalling. I know the difficulties. But tell me—what is it that has been wrong with Indian administration? I am reading old records by pre-Mutiny residents. They teem with information that makes you hope the Congresswalla will never get hold of it. Oxford swarms with ex-I.C.S. I like and respect them very much indeed. But what has happened to the often first class record of intellect they had before entering the I.C.S.? It seems to me the very hopelessness of…huge Indian job used to oppress and…us. We did not do anything like as much as Englishmen should have done.
I scandalously ran on to the back of this—which I never do hurriedly—to keep it short. You see, I sail December 24, and I am shockingly overworked until I get off.
. . . ** **
TO THE EDITOR, ‘INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS’ (Extract from
‘International Affairs’, the journal of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, for January, 1932. p. 151.) Sir,
At a very largely attended meeting at Chatham House on October 20th last, Mr Gandhi said:
‘I say without fear of my figures being challenged successfully that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out.’1
It will be seen from the report of the meeting that Mr Gandhi did not at the time quote the figures to which he referred. I therefore asked him if he would give his authority for the statement that literacy had diminished during the last fifty years and he replied:
371
‘that his authority was the Punjab Administration Reports, and said that he had published in Young India a study of the Punjab educational statistics.’2
I wrote at once to Mr Gandhi asking him for precise references. In response to my request he has been good enough to furnish me with typed copies of two articles on the ‘Decline of Mass Education’ by Mr Daulat Ram Gupta, published in ‘Young India’ for December 8th and December 29th, 1920. These articles do not, however, contain a single literacy percentage either for the Punjab or Burma or for India generally, nor do they contain any direct reference to Punjab Administration Reports.
They do, however, refer to the ‘History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab’ by Dr G.W. Leitner, an educational official in the Punjab, which refers to some of these reports. But Dr Leitner’s Report was published forty-nine years ago, in 1882, and I have been unable to discover in it any literacy percentages.
I have drawn Mr Gandhi’s attention to, these facts. The present position is that Mr Gandhi has so far been unable to substantiate his statement in any way. I have to add that in the course of a friendly correspondence, and also at an interview which 1 had with him on December 2nd, he has undertaken to retract that statement if he cannot support it. I think it best to postpone any further comment on the question until I receive his promised communication.
Yours faithfully,
Sd/- P. J. Hartog
5 Inverness Gardens,
Vicarage Gate, W. 8.
December 14, 1931
. . . ** **
372
LETTER OF MR M.K. GANDHI TO SIR PHILIP HARTOG
(COPY)
Dear Friend,
I am sorry I was unable, owing to circumstances beyond my control, to fulfill the promise I gave you about my statement on the condition of Primary education in India during the pre-British time. Immediately on my landing I entrusted the research to Advocate Munshi, a member of the Bombay University senate, and two other educationist friends. But they too like me find themselves civil resistance prisoners. I had asked Advocate Munshi to put himself in direct touch with you. But his arrest came so soon after mine that I hardly think he could have corresponded with you. As I am permitted to carry on non-political correspondence, I have now asked Prof Shah to test my statement and give you the result of his test. As I found in you a fellow seeker after truth, I was most anxious to give you satisfaction either by confirming my statement or withdrawing it as publicly as I had made it. I thought that I would tell you what I had done in pursuance of my promise.
As I have not your private address by me, I am sending this to you under care India Office.
Yours Sincerely,
Sd/-M. K. Gandhi.
Yeravda Central Prison,
Poona. 15.2.32.
. . . ** **
45, Chowpatty Road, Bombay (7)
20th February, 1932
Dear Sir Philip,
I have been informed by Mahatma Gandhi that during his stay in London recently, and while speaking at some public meeting about the state of education in British India before the advent of the British in this country, he remarked that the extent of literacy was greater in those days than at the present time. He adds that you had questioned the accuracy of that statement, and called upon Mr Gandhi to furnish proof in support of the same. Mahatmaji has, I understand, referred you to some writings in the Young India; but you do not consider 373
that sufficient proof; and so has asked me if I could find any more acceptable substantiation for that observation. I am, therefore, addressing you this letter to try and offer that substantiation, as far as the records available could permit of my doing so. If you care to acknowledge this letter to Mahatmaji, would you at the same time send me a copy of the same?
To begin with, I need hardly point out to you that, at the time under reference, no country in the world had anything like definite, authoritative, statistical information of the type one would now recognise as proper proof in such discussions. In India particularly, thanks to the distracted state of the country, it was impossible to provide any such material on a nation-wide basis, even supposing it had been customary to compile such information from time to time. The elaborate ‘directory’, if I may so describe it, of the territories under his rule, compiled by the indefatigable Minister of the great Akbar known as the Ayeen-i-Akbari, was prepared so long before the advent of the British that I feel a hesitation even in referring to it, apart from the further fact that authoritative work suffers from other blemishes in the eyes of a too critical reader. 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. Such official investigations as were ordered in connection with the periodical parliamentary enquiries before the renewal of the Company’s Charter in 1793, 1813, 1833, and 1853 also afford some data, though these have their own defect as is pointed out below. Other official enquiries, reports, or obiter dicta of qualified officers, were originally for a purpose different from the one under reference here; and, therefore, discussion or observation on educational matters therein must needs be taken as incidental rather than as the immediate subject of their concern, and consequently open to such defects as all such incidental observation suffers from.
For the immediate purpose of this letter, will you permit me to begin by referring you to the reports of certain provincial enquiries conducted about the time when the British rule first began in those provinces? Let me, however, add a remark as applied to the country, at large, on the authority of Max Mueller, and another on the authority of the historian Ludlow,—both mentioned in Keir Hardie’s work on India. ‘Max Mueller, on the strength of official documents and missionary reports, 374
concerning education in Bengal prior to the British occupation, asserts that there were then 80,000 schools in Bengal, or one for every 400 of the population. Ludlow, in his History of British India, says that “in every village, which has retained its old form, I am assured that the children generally are able to read, write and cipher; but where we have swept away the village system, there the village school has also disappeared.”’ (Cp. B.D. Basu, Education in India under the E.1. Co., p18).
In Bombay, which came under British rule after the fall of the Peshwas in 1818, a Report of the Bombay Education Society for 1819 observes:— ‘There is probably as great a proportion of persons in India who can read, write, and keep simple accounts, as are to be found in European countries.’ The same Report for the following year notes:— ‘Schools are frequent among the natives, and abound everywhere.’ In April, 1821, Mr Prendergast, member of the Executive Council of the then Government of Bombay, notes in a Minute on an application for 2 English schools in Thana or Panwell Talukas:— ‘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 schoolmaster, 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 among 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.’ (Cp. Commons Report, 1832, p.468).
I shall come to Madras in a moment, and revert to statistical proof such as I can find,—thereafter. Let me here refer you to the classic case of Dr Leitner’s Report on the system of Indigenous Education in the Punjab, based on an investigation carried out by the learned Doctor,—principal of a Government College, because of a surprising difference between his figures of the people educated in indigenous schools, and those supplied by the Director of Public Instruction for the province, to the Indian Education Committee of 1882. Dr Leitner remarks, in his 375
introduction to his Report,—‘In short the lowest computation gives us 330,000 pupils (against little more than 190,000 at present) in the schools of the various denominations, who were acquainted with reading, writing and some method of computation; whilst 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.’ I would particularly commend to your attention this classic document of 650 odd pages (folio), the more so as Dr Sir Wm. Hunter, president of the Indian Education Committee, made a special Minute to the Report of that Committee (pp.621-2) in which he found that Dr Leitner’s estimate of 120,000 pupils in the Punjab was actually an underestimate by some 15,000, while the official figure supplied by the D.P.I. of the province was below the actual figure by some 80,000 pupils. Incidentally, this will suffice to show how imperfect, inaccurate, undependable, was the official statistical information for these early days, when the people viewed with easily intelligible suspicion enquiries of this nature, and so passively refused to afford the correct information wherever and whenever they could help it. Without minimising in the least degree the value of statistical evidence, I cannot but add that such evidence is worse than useless, when we recall the conditions under which it was compiled, as also the temperament and training of the officials who helped in compiling the same in those primitive times of British rule in India.
Let me now speak of Madras, that earliest settlement of British rule in India, and even now said to be the best educated province in the Empire. Sir T. Munro, in a Minute dated 10.3.1826 (Commons Report, 1832, p.506) observes that, taking the male part of the population only, and taking children of between 5-10 years of age only, as school going population, (assumed to be one-ninth of the total population) there were 713,000 male pupils that would be at school. The actual number of pupils in recognised schools was found by him to be 184,110
which works out to be a little over a fourth of the total school-going population. Sir Thomas, however, was of opinion that the actual proportion was nearer one-third than one-fourth, owing to a large number of children receiving instruction privately, and so not included in the above calculation.
In Bengal, (Cp. Adam’s Report, 1838) the total number of children between 5-14 years of age is taken at 87,629. Of these, 6,786 were returned as receiving instruction in the recognised schools, or 7.7%. This includes both men and women, girls as 376
well as boys, while in Madras only the male population was considered. On that basis, this figure could be easily raised to at least 15% of the total. There is reason to prefer this basis for calculation, since, under the conditions and ideas of the time, women could not go for education to schools publicly recognised; and so a proper index for judging of the real state of literacy is rather the male population than the total. Again, the percentage of population receiving instruction, compared to the total of school-going age, would be still higher, if we would bear in mind the fact that the so called untouchables formed part of the total, but could not, necessarily, be included in the people receiving instruction as these were not admitted into public institutions.
In the Bombay Presidency, the total population was returned in 1829 at 4,681,735. The total number of scholars in schools was 35,153. If we take, with Sir T. Munro, one-ninth of the population to be of school-going age, the total figure of school-going age would be 520,190. This gives a percentage of 7
to the total of school-going age; while if we confine ourselves only to males, the percentage of scholars to the total population (male) of school-going age would be 14. This proportion is more than borne out by the later Report of 1841, relating to only 9
selected districts in the Presidency.
The following comparative position, between the state of things now and a hundred years ago, would be instructive, if not conclusive. Percentages of population of school-going age receiving primary education in 1921 (males only) and a 100
years ago (roughly):
Madras
42.5
33
Bombay
45.1
14 (highest 28 in some parts)
Bengal
37.2
16 (highest 32 in some parts)
I have already pointed out that these statistical data for the earlier period are undependable, because (1) the figures for privately educated children are not available; (2) the people were averse to disclosing what they thought to be unwarrantable bits of information; (3) the compilers of this information were not of requisite efficiency or intelligence; (4) certain large sections of the population were necessarily excluded, and had to be excluded from these calculations, if they were to be at all reliable; and so the mere percentages, uncorrected, are of no use. The closer enquiry of this type conducted by Leitner is far more reliable, 377
and so also the obiter dicta of people in the position to have clear impressions. These people, also, generally obtained their impressions of the state of education in the area under their charge, only incidentally, while collecting information for Land Revenue Settlement of their districts; and the primary object was not to discover the real state of education in the country, but something quite different. Hence even those impressions must be held to give rather an underestimate than otherwise of the true state of affairs in this behalf, in view of the considerations mentioned already.
Yours truly,
Sd/-K.T. Shah
. . . ** **
5 Inverness Gardens,
Vicarage Gate, London,W.8.
9 March, 1932
M.K. Gandhi, Esq.,
Yervada Central Prison,
Poona,
India.
Dear Mr Gandhi,
Many thanks for your kind letter of February 15, which reached me last night. I fully understand your difficulties in carrying out your promise. I received by the same post as your own a long letter from Professor K.T. Shah dated February 20, which he has no doubt sent to you, but the letter contains absolutely no data which would enable one to judge whether literacy had advanced or declined during the last fifty years; it contains not a single literacy percentage. I have been very much pressed by other work, but I have in a rough state material for two or three articles on the progress of literacy in Bengal during the last hundred years, of which I will send copies both to yourself and Professor Shah when they are completed. The position is still that you are unable to supply the figure to which you referred in your address at the Royal Institute of International Affairs on October 20. I feel sure that you will be convinced by the facts as stated in my articles, which are not in any way converted by the statements in Professor Shah’s letter. I enclose a copy of my reply to Professor Shah and also a copy of a letter dated
378
December 14th which appeared in the Journal of the Royal Institute for January.
With every good wish, I am,
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- Philip Hartog
. . . ** **
5 Inverness Gardens,
London, W.8.
March 10, 1932
Professor K.T. Shah
45 Chowpatty Road,
Bombay (7).
Dear Professor Shah,
I am much obliged for your letter of February 20, and for the great trouble, you have taken in this matter. I received a letter dated February 15 from Mahatma Gandhi by the same post, and am sending to him a copy of this reply to you. I enclose copies of my reply to him, and of a letter from me which appeared in ‘International Affairs’, (the Journal of the Royal Institute of International Affairs) for January, 1932.
When you have read these documents you will realise that your letter does not touch the main question which I put to Mr Gandhi, viz., what authority he had for the statement that literacy had diminished during the last 50 years in India. The latest authority that you quote is Leitner, whose History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab was published in 1882—50
years ago—and throughout your letter you do not give any literacy percentages at all.
On the other hand, you appear to think that the number of schools is a guide to literacy percentages. I agree that that would be a natural conclusion, but, on the other hand, as has been pointed out in the census, a number of Indian schools in the past did not aim at literacy, and more recently the Education Committee of the Indian Statutory Commission, of which I was Chairman, pointed out that in the ten years 1917 to 1927 the number of primary schools in Bengal was increased by nearly eleven thousand, and the number of pupils by nearly 370,000
whereas in Class IV, the lowest class in which permanent literacy is likely to be attained under existing conditions, the number of pupils had actually diminished by nearly 30,000. I am afraid
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that I am altogether unable to accept your conclusions with regard to the history of literacy in Bengal during the past 100
years, of which there remains a good deal to be said.
This is only a preliminary reply to your letter; I hope to be able to write shortly again, both to Mr Gandhi and yourself.
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- P.J. Hartog
. . . ** **
20 March 1939
Dear Mr Gandhi,
You will, I think, remember that when you were in England for the Round Table Conference, now more than seven years ago, we had a friendly discussion on the subject of literacy in India, which arose out of a statement made by yourself at the Royal Institute of International Affairs to the effect that literacy had diminished in British India in the last fifty or hundred years.
You will perhaps also remember that I had an interview with you on the subject at your rooms in Knightsbridge in December 1931, and that you willingly undertook publicly to retract your statement if you were convinced that there was no basis for it in fact; and that you very kindly wrote to me about it later when you were in Yervada Gaol. The file of correspondence of which I enclose a copy will show you exactly how the matter rested after your last letter of 15 February 1932 and my reply of 9 March following.
I had to put the subject aside, owing to other and urgent demands on my time, but I have recently concluded an investigation of the authorities to which you and Professor Shah referred me and have published the results in three memoranda included, in the book entitled Some Aspects of Indian Education, Past and Present, of which I enclose a copy for your acceptance.
You will see that in the Preface I have referred not only to our controversy but to your Wardha scheme, in which I take the deepest interest. If you will read through the Memoranda, I have 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 on October 20, 1931, and that you will therefore feel justified now in withdrawing that statement. As you implied in your letter of 15 February 1932 we are both concerned only with ascertaining the truth, and, I 380
would add, in removing obstacles to good understanding between the British and the Indian peoples.
With all good wishes,
Believe me,
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- P. Hartog
Mahatma M.K. Gandhi,
The Asram,
Wardha,
C.P., India.
P.S. I had intended sending a copy of my book to Professor K.T.
Shah, but I have been unable to find his present address from any of the books of reference. Perhaps you would kindly let me know what has become of him?
P.J.H
.
. . . ** **
2 May 1939
Professor K.T. Shah,
45 Chowpatty Road,
Bombay (7)
Dear Professor Shah,
I sent to you a few weeks ago a book of mine recently published by the Oxford University Press, called ‘Some Aspects on Indian Education, Past and Present’, which I hope you have duly received. I intended to write to you at the same time, but have been working under extreme pressure.
As you will see, the book includes three ‘Payne Lectures’
given at the Institute of Education dealing with general problems, historical and actual, of Indian education, and also three memoranda in which I have examined in detail the arguments in the letter which you wrote to me in February, 1932
at Mahatma Gandhi’s request, in support of his statement at Chatham House that literacy had diminished in India during the previous fifty or a hundred years.
You will perhaps remember that in my reply (of 10 March 1932) I pointed out that you had not touched on the question of the previous fifty years, and that I was unable to accept your conclusions in regard to the history of literacy in Bengal in the previous hundred years, of which there remained a good deal to be said.
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I promised to write to you again but did not do so because, owing to the pressure of other work, I was obliged to postpone the detailed examination of the historical facts, of which the record was much too long to be comprised in a letter and is now set out in the book.
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- Philip Hartog
. . . ** **
CONFIDENTIAL
Copy of a letter from Mr Gandhi to Sir Philip Hartog. (Sent in envelope dated 16 August 1939; the date on the letter itself is difficult to decipher.)
Segaon, Wardha.
Dear Sir Philip,
I have not left off the pursuit of the subject of education in the villages during the pre-British period. I am in correspondence with several educationists. Those who have replied do support my view but do not produce authority that would be accepted as proof. My prejudice or presentiment still makes me cling to the statement I made at Chatham House. I don’t want to write haltingly in Harijan. You don’t want me merely to say that the proof I had in mind has been challenged by you. Meanwhile I send you a copy of an article in Modern Review on the subject. I should like your reaction to it if you have the time.
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- M.K. Gandhi
(Note: The article of which a copy has been sent to me by Mr Gandhi is in my opinion of no value P.J.H.)
. . . ** **
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10 September 1939
Mahatma Gandhi,
Segaon Wardha,
Central Provinces,
India.
Dear Mr Gandhi,
Many thanks for your letter and enclosure relating to my book.
I will write to you on the subject later when I am less overwhelmed with work, but 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’.
I know how much it must have cost you to express an opinion involving any kind of approval of war; I hate war, perhaps as much as you do, but violence on the part of a policeman in trying to rescue a child from the clutches of a ruffian, is surely justifiable and it is to such action that I compare the war of Great Britain and France in support of Poland at this moment.
With every good wish,
Believe me,
Yours sincerely,
Sd/- Philip Hartog
. . . ** **
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