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

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
348

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 imme-
diately 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
350

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)
351

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
352

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
353

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
354

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 educa-
tional 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.
356

Such was the state of affairs in 1882, but the contrast will
become more startling if we look at the figures already repro-
duced 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.

358

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:—
359

‘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.
362

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 congratu-
late 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 indige-
nous industries out of malice (which is what is stated, in Ameri-
ca as well as India). It was inevitable.
. . .
363

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
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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
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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
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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)
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