द ब्यूटीफुल ट्री: १८वीं सदी में भारत की स्वदेशी गुरुकुल शिक्षा (धर्मपाल)

comprehend, to the extent it is possible for this author, through
material of this kind relating to the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries, the reality of the India of this period: its
society, its infra-structure, its manners and institutions, their
strengths and weaknesses. The book touches on another aspect
of this India in more or less the same manner as the author's
two earlier books in this field, Indian Science and Technology in
the Eighteenth Century,$^{19}$ and Civil Disobedience in Indian
Tradition.$^{20}$ Furthermore, an attempt has been made in the
Introduction to situate the information on the indigenous Indian
education of the period in its temporal context and, with that in
view, brief mention is made of the state of education in England
until the beginning of the nineteenth century.
A number of friends have taken interest in this material
and offered me their valuable advice and opinion during the past
several years. I am grateful to all of them. Without their support
and encouragement, this work may never have been completed.
Even more so, I am greatly indebted to the University of Oxford
for being kind enough to consult their University archives in
order to answer some of my queries pertaining to the academic
courses, etc., at Oxford at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. Similarly, I am much obliged to the India Office Library
& Records (I.O.R.), and to Mr Martin Moir in particular, for
supplying me with copies of the Hartog-Gandhi correspondence.
I am also obliged to the A.N. Sinha Institute of Social Studies,
Patna, for offering me a senior fellowship of the institute during
1972-73 and to the Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, the
Gandhi Peace Foundation, New Delhi, the Gandhi Seva Sangh,
Sevagram, and the Association of Voluntary Agencies for Rural
Development, New Delhi, for interest in and support to this
venture, as occasion demanded.
The text of the Madras Presidency material (included in the
Annexures), though first consulted in the India Office Library, is
taken from the records in the Tamilnadu State Archives (pre-
viously the Madras Record Office). For this facility, and for much
kindness and consideration shown to me, my thanks go to the
fairly over-worked staff of the Archives. The note by Alexander
Walker, also reproduced here, is from the Walker of Bowland
5

Papers in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. My
sincere thanks go to the National Library for permission and
facilities to consult these and other papers, as also to the
Scottish Record Office, the University of Edinburgh, and the
Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Allahabad, for similar permission
and facilities.
Finally, I am honoured by the Ashram Pratishthan,
Sevagram, for extending me an invitation to write this book in
the Ashram, and for providing me the necessary facilities and for
treating me as one of their own. Completing this work living near
Gandhiji’s hut has indeed been a great privilege.

The title of this book has been taken from the speech which
Mahatma Gandhi had made at Chatham House, London, on 20
October, 1931. He had said:
...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 per-
ished.
The subtitle has also been chosen accordingly. Although
the Madras Presidency data which forms the bulk of this book
was collected during 1822-25, the educational system to which
the data pertained was much older. It was still the dominant
system during the 18th century, after which it started decaying
very rapidly. The Adam Reports reflect that decline in the fourth
decade of the 19th century.
February 19, 1981. DHARAMPAL
Ashram Pratishthan,
Sevagram.
Notes

1. A.S. Altekar: Education in Ancient India, 2nd Ed., Benares, 1944.
2. National Archives of India: Selections from the Educational Records,
   I:1781-1839, II:1840-1859 by H.Sharp and J.A. Richey 1920, 1922
   (reprinted 1965).
3. Syed Nurullah and J.P. Naik: History of Education in India during the
   British Period, Bombay, 1943.
4. Ibid, Preface.
5. Bharat mein Angreji Raj (in Hindi). While its first edition in 1929 was
   immediately banned by the British, it was again published in 1939 in
   three volumes (1780 pages), and has not only been republished again,
   but has become a classic of its kind, providing a detailed account (pri
6. S.M. Jaffar: Education in Muslim India, Peshawar, 1936.
7. History of Education in India during the British period, 1943.
8. W. Adam: Reports on the State of Education in Bengal 1835 and 1838,
   edited by Anathnath Basu and reprinted, Calcutta, 1941.
   6

9. House of Commons Papers, 1831-32, Vol.9.
10. Ibid., pp.413-417, 500-507.
11. G.W. Leitner: History of Indigenous Education in the Punjab since
    Annexation, and in 1882, 1883; (Reprint: Languages Dept., Punjab,
    Patiala, 1973).
12. See reports of Madras Collectors reproduced in Annexures A(i)-(xxx).
13. Philip Hartog: Some Aspects of Indian Education Past and Present,
    OUP, 1939. Preface, viii.
14. India Office Library: MSS EUR D 551, Hartog to Mahatma Gandhi
    21.10.1931.
15. Hartog: op. cit.
16. Hansard: June 22 and July 1, 1813.
17. V.A. Smith: Akbar: The Great Mogul, Clarendon Press, 1917, p.394.
18. London: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1917, pp.815-825.
19. Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some
    Contemporary European Accounts, Other India Press, Goa, 2000.
20. Civil Disobedience in Indian Tradition: With some Early Nineteenth
    Century Documents, Other India Press, Goa, 2000.

7

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
7

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
8

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
9

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
10

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,
2. Greek
   1619 Geometry, and Astronomy
   11

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, his-
torical 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
13

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. Maco-
nochie. 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 state-
ments 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
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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 educa-
tional 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.
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IV
The available papers connected with this survey include the
instructions of Government, the circular from the Board of Reve-
nue to the district collectors conveying the instructions and the
prescribed form according to which information had to be com-
piled, 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.,
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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 differ-
ences in these returns arose from the varying relevance of an
enquiry from district to district. A more important reason, per-
haps, was the fact that because of the frequent change of collec-
tors 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.

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