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

Elementary Education for All Sections
The first striking point from this broader survey is the wide
social strata to which both the taught and the teachers in the
elementary schools belonged. It is true that the greater propor-
tion of the teachers came from the Kayasthas, Brahmins, Sadgop
and Aguri castes. Yet, quite a number came from 30 other caste
groups also, and even the Chandals had 6 teachers. The
elementary school students present an even greater variety, and
it seems as if every caste group is represented in the student
population, the Brahmins and the Kayasthas nowhere forming
more than 40% of the total. In the two Bihar districts, together
they formed no more than 15 to 16%. The more surprising figure
is of 61 Dom, and 61 Chandal school students in the district of
Burdwan, nearly equal to the number of Vaidya students, 126,
in that district. While Burdwan had 13 missionary schools, the
number of Dom and Chandal scholars in them were only four;
and, as Adam mentioned, only 86 of the ‘scholars belonging to
16 of the lowest castes’ were in these missionary schools, while
674 scholars from them were in the ‘native schools’.
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Teaching of Accounts
Regarding the content of elementary teaching, Adam mentioned
various books which were used in teaching. These varied consid-
erably from district to district, but all schools in the surveyed
districts, except perhaps the 14 Christian schools, taught ac-
counts. Also, most of them taught both commercial and
agricultural accounts. Table 13 gives a district-wise statement:
Table 13: ACCOUNTS TEACHING IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS
AND CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS
The age of admission in elementary schools varied from 5
to 8 years, and, that of leaving school from 13 years to 16.5
years.
Institutions of Sanskritic Learning
The schools of Sanskritic learning in the surveyed districts (in all
353) numbered as high as 190 in Burdwan (1,358 scholars) and
as low as 27 in South Behar (437 scholars). The teachers (355 in
all) were predominantly Brahmins, only 5 being from the Vaidya
caste. The subjects predominantly taught were Grammar (1,424
students), Logic (378 students), Law (336 students) and Litera-
ture (120 students). Others, in order of numbers studying them,
were Mythology (82 students), Astrology (78 students), Lexicology
(48 students), Rhetoric (19 students), Medicine (18 students),
Vedanta (13 students), Tantra (14 students), Mimansa (2
students), and Sankhya (1 student). The duration of the study
and the ages when it was started and completed varied a great
deal from subject to subject, and also from district to district.
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The study of Grammar started at the earliest age (9 to 12 years)
and of Law, Mythology, Tantras, etc. after the age of 20. The
period of study ordinarily lasted from about 7 to 15 years.
Institutions Teaching Persian and Arabic
Those studying Persian (which Adam treated more as a
school subject than as a matter of higher learning) numbered
3,479, the largest, 1,424, being in South Behar. The age of
admission in them ranged from 6.8 years to 10.3 years, and the
study seemed to have continued for some 11 to 15 years. Over
half of those studying Persian were Hindoos, the Kayasthas
being predominant.⁶¹
Arabic was being studied by 175 scholars, predominantly
Muslims; but 14 Kayasthas, 2 Aguris, 1 Teli, and 1 Brahmin
were also students of Arabic. The books used in Persian learning
were numerous and an appreciable number for the study of
Arabic.
Finally, as far as age was concerned, the teachers in all
types of institutions were largely in their thirties.
VI
DR G.W. LEITNER ON INDIGENOUS EDUCATION IN THE
PANJAB
Some 45 years after Adam, Dr G. W. Leitner, (one time Principal
of Government College, Lahore, and for sometime acting Director
of Public Instruction in the Panjab) prepared an even more
voluminous survey of indigenous education there.⁶² The survey
is very similar to that of W. Adam. Leitner’s language and
conclusions, however, were more direct and much less
complementary to British rule. Incidentally, as time passed, the
inability of the British rulers to face any criticism grew
correspondingly.
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They had really begun to believe in their ‘divinely ordained’
mission in India, and other conquered areas.⁶³
At any rate, Leitner’s researches showed that at the time of
the annexation of the Panjab, the lowest computation gave
‘3,30,000 pupils in the schools of the various denominations
who were acquainted with reading, writing and some method of
computation.’ This is in contrast with ‘little more than 1,90,000’
pupils in 1882. Furthermore, 35-40 years previously, ‘thousands
of them belonged to Arabic and Sanskrit colleges, in which
oriental Literature and systems of oriental Law, Logic,
Philosophy, and Medicine were taught to the highest standards.’
Leitner went into great detail, district by district, basing himself
on earlier official writings; and, then carried out a detailed
survey of his own regarding the position in 1882. A few brief
extracts from this work, pertaining to his general statement, the
type of schools which had existed earlier, and the list of books
used in the Sanskritic schools is included amongst the
documents reproduced in this work (Annexure E).
In the documents reproduced in this work, or in those
others of the eighteenth, or early nineteenth century on the
subject of education in India, while there is much on the
question of higher learning, especially of Theology, Law,
Medicine, Astronomy, and Astrology, there is scarcely any
reference to the teaching and training in the scores of
technologies, and crafts which had then existed in India. There
is also little mention of training in Music, and Dance. These
latter two, it may be presumed, were largely taken care of by the
complex temple organisations.
The major cause of the lack of reference about the former,
however, is obviously because those who wrote on education—
whether as government administrators, travellers, Christian
missionaries, or scholars—were themselves uninterested in how
such crafts were taught, or passed from one generation to
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another. Some of them were evidently interested in a particular
technology, or craft: as indicated by the writings on their
manufacture of iron and steel, the fashioning of agricultural
tools, the cotton and silk textiles, the materials used in
architecture, and buildings, the materials used in the building of
ships, the manufacture of ice, paper, etc. But even in such
writings, the interest lay in the particular method and
technology and its technological and scientific details; and, not
in how these were learnt.
Yet another cause for the lack of information on the
teaching of techniques and crafts may possibly lie in the fact
that ordinarily in India most crafts were basically learnt in the
home. What was termed apprenticeship in Britain (one could not
practise any craft, profession, etc., in England without a long
and arduous period under a master craftsman, or technologist)
was more informal in India, the parents usually being the
teachers and the children the learners. Another reason might
have been that particular technologies or crafts, even like the
profession of the digging of tanks, or the transportation of
commodities were the function of particular specialist groups,
some of them operating in most parts of India, while others in
particular regions, and therefore any formal teaching and
training in them must have been a function of such groups
themselves. Remarks available to the effect that, 'it is extremely
difficult to learn the arts of the Indians, for the same caste, from
father to son, exercises the same trade and the punishment of
being excluded from the caste on doing anything injurious to its
interests is so dreadful that it is often impossible to find an
inducement to make them communicate anything',⁶⁴ appear to
indicate some organisation of individual technologies at group
levels. However, to know anything regarding their teaching, the
innovations and improvisations in them, (there must have been
innumerable such instances even if these were on a decline), it is
essential to have much more detailed information on such
groups, the nature of these technologies, and what in essence
constituted a formal, or informal apprenticeship in the different
crafts. On this so far we seem to have little information.
The following indicative list of the crafts listed in some of
the districts of the Madras Presidency (collected in the early 19th
century records for levying tax on them) may give, however,
some idea of their variety.
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TANKS, BUILDINGS, ETC.
Stone-cutters Wood woopers (Wood cutters)
Marble mine workers Bamboo cutters
Chunam makers Wudders (Tank diggers)
Sawyers Brick-layers
METALLURGY
Iron ore collectors Copper-smiths
Iron manufacturers Lead washers
Iron forge operators Gold dust collectors
Iron furnaces operators Iron-smiths
Workers of smelted metal Gold-smiths
into bars Horse-shoe makers
Brass-smiths
TEXTILES
Cotton cleaners Fine cloth weavers
Cotton beaters Coarse cloth weavers
Cotton carders Chintz weavers
Silk makers Carpet weavers
Spinners Sutrenze carpet weavers
Ladup, or Penyasees Cot tape weavers
cotton spinners Cumblee weavers
Chay thread makers Thread purdah weavers
Chay root diggers (a dye) Gunny weavers
Rungruaze, or dyers Pariah weavers (a very large
Mudda wada, or dyers in red
number)
Indigo maker Mussalman weavers
Barber weavers Dyers in indigo
Boyah weavers Loom makers
Smooth and glaze cloth men Silk weavers
OTHER CRAFTSMEN
Preparers of earth for bangles Salt makers
Bangle makers Earth salt manufacturers
Paper makers Salt-petre makers
Fire-works makers Arrack distillers
Oilmen Collectors of drugs and roots
Soap makers Utar makers, druggists
MISCELLANEOUS
Boat-men Sandal makers
Fishermen Umbrella makers
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Rice-beaters Shoe makers
Toddy makers Pen painters
Preparers of earth Mat makers
for washermen Carpenters
Washermen Dubbee makers
Barbers Winding instrument makers
Tailors Seal makers
Basket makers Chucklers
Mat makers
There is a sense of widespread neglect and decay in the
field of indigenous education within a few decades after the
onset of British rule. This is the major common impression
which emerges from the 1822-25 Madras Presidency data, the
report of W. Adam on Bengal and Bihar 1835-38, and the later
Panjab survey by G.W. Leitner. If studies of the detailed data
pertaining to the innumerable crafts, technologies and
manufactures of this period, or for that matter of social
organisation were to be made, the conclusions in all probability
will be little different. On the other hand, the descriptions of life
and society provided by earlier European accounts (i.e. accounts
written prior to the onset of European dominance) of different
parts of India, and the data on Indian exports relating to this
earlier period (notwithstanding the political turmoil in certain
parts of India), on the whole leaves an impression of a society
which seems relatively prosperous and lively. The conclusion
that the decay noticed in the early 19th century and more so in
subsequent decades originated with European supremacy in
India, therefore, seems inescapable. The 1769-70 famine in
Bengal (when, according to British record, one-third of the
population actually perished), may be taken as a mere
forerunner of what was to come.
In the context of some historical dialectic, however, such a
decay might have been inevitable; perhaps, even necessary, and
to be deliberately induced. For instance, Karl Marx, as such no
friend of imperialism or capitalism, writing in 1853 was of the
view, that, ‘England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one
destructive, the other regenerating—the annihilation of the old
Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundation of
Western society in Asia.’⁶⁵ However, it is not India alone which
60

experienced this phenomenon of deliberate destruction. Other
areas of the world, especially the Americas and Africa, seem to
have experienced such destruction to an even greater extent. The
nearly total annihilation of the native people of the Americas—
after their subjugation by Europe from 1500 A.D. onwards—is
an occurrence of equally great import. A native population
estimated by modern scholars to have been in the range of 90 to
112 million around 1500 A.D.,⁶⁶—far more numerous than the
estimated total population of Europe then—had dwindled to
merely a few million by the end of the 19th century. It is
probable that while differing in extent and numbers, similar
destruction and annihilation had occurred in different parts of
the world through conquest and subjugation at various times
during human history. Further, quite possibly, no people or
culture in the world can altogether claim innocence for itself
from any participation at one time or another in such
occurrences. Nonetheless, whatever may be the case regarding
the world before 1500 A.D., the point is that after this date,
ancient, functioning, established cultures in most areas of the
world, if not wholly eliminated, had become largely depressed
due to the expansion of European dominance. This requires little
proof. It is obvious.
During the latter part of the 19th century, impressions of
decay, decline and deprivation began to agitate the mind of the
Indian people. Such impressions no doubt resulted from
concrete personal, parental and social experience of what had
gone before. They were, perhaps, somewhat exaggerated at
times. By 1900, it had become general Indian belief that the
country had been decimated by British rule in all possible ways;
that not only had it become impoverished,⁶⁷ but it had been
degraded to the furthest possible extent; that the people of India
had been cheated of most of what they had; that their customs
and manners were ridiculed, and that the infrastructure of their
society mostly
61

eroded. One of the statements which thus came up was that the
ignorance and illiteracy in India was caused by British rule; and,
conversely, that at the beginning of British political dominance,
India had had extensive education, learning and literacy. By
1930, much had been written on this point in the same manner
as had been written on the deliberate destruction of Indian crafts
and industry, and the impoverishment of the Indian countryside.
However, to many within the expanding strata of westernised
Indians—whether Marxists, Fabians, or capitalist-roaders, their
views on India and their contempt for it almost equalled that of
William Wilberforce, James Mill, or Karl Marx—such charges
seemed farfetched, and even if true, irrelevant.
It is against this background that, during his visit in 1931
to attend the British-sponsored conference on India (known as
the Round Table Conference), Mahatma Gandhi was invited to
address the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London. In
this address Gandhiji also briefly dwelt on the causes of illiteracy
in India. What he said seemed to have made sparks fly.
The meeting held on 20 October 1931, under the auspices
of the Institute, is reported to have been attended by influential
English men and women drawn from all parts of England, and
was presided over by Lord Lothian.⁶⁸ The subject on which
Gandhiji spoke was ‘The Future of India’. Before describing this
future, however, he dealt with several issues, like: (i) the Hindu-
Muslim-Sikh problem, (ii) the problem of untouchability, and (iii)
‘the deep and ever deepening poverty’ of the 85% of the Indian
people who lived in the villages. From this he moved on to the
problems which required urgent attention and how ‘if the
Congress had its way’ they would be dealt with. Amongst the
foremost, he placed ‘the economic welfare of the masses’ as well
as the provision of adequate occupations for those requiring
them. He also addressed possible solutions to the problems of
sanitation and hygiene, and of medical assistance which he felt
not only needed packets of quinine, etc., but more so milk and
fruit. Next, he turned his attention to education; and, from that,
to the neglect of irrigation and the need for using long-known
indigenous methods and techniques to achieve it. In conclusion,
he stated that while he had told them ‘what we would do
constructively’, yet ‘we should have to do something destructive
also.’ As illustrative of the required destruction, he mentioned
‘the insupportable weight of military and civil expenditure’ which
India
62

could ill afford. Regarding the former, he stated that ‘if I could
possibly have my way, we should get rid of three-quarters of the
military expenditure.’ Regarding civil expenditure he gave an
instance of what he meant: ‘Here the Prime Minister gets fifty
times, the average income; the Viceroy in India gets five
thousand times the average income.’ He went on to add: ‘From
this one example you can work out for yourselves what this civil
expenditure also means to India.’
Gandhiji’s observation on education emphasized two main
points: (i) ‘that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a
hundred years ago’; and (ii) that ‘the British administrators’,
instead of looking after education and other matters which had
existed, ‘began to root them out. They scratched the soil and
began to look at the root, and left the root like that and the
beautiful tree perished.’ He stated all this with conviction and a
sense of authority. He said that he was ‘without fear’ of his
‘figures being challenged successfully.’
The challenge came immediately, however, from Sir Philip
Hartog, a founder of the School of Oriental Studies, London,69 a
former vice-chancellor of the University of Dacca and member
and chairman of several educational committees on India set up
by the British between 1918 and 1930. After questioning
Gandhiji at the meeting, a long correspondence ensued between
them during the next 5-6 weeks, ending with an hour long
interview which Philip Hartog had with the Mahatma. In the
interview, Philip Hartog was referred to some of the sources
which Gandhiji had relied on, including two articles from Young
India of December 1920 by Daulat Ram Gupta: (i) ‘The Decline of
Mass Education in India,’ and (ii) ‘How Indian Education was
crushed in the Panjab.’ These articles were largely based on
Adam’s reports and G.W. Leitner’s book and some other officially
published material from the Panjab, Bombay and Madras.
These, however, did not seem sufficient proof to Philip Hartog,
and he repeatedly insisted that Gandhiji should withdraw the
statement he had made at the Chatham House meeting.
Gandhiji promised that after his return to India, he would look
for such material which Hartog could treat as substantiating
what Gandhiji had said, adding that ‘if I find that I cannot
support the statement made by me at Chatham House, I will give
my retraction much wider publicity than the Chatham House
speech could ever attain.’
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Another important point which, according to Hartog,
emerged during his interview was that Gandhiji ‘had not accused
the British Government of having destroyed the indigenous
schools, but [that] they had let them die for want of encour-
agement.’ To this, Hartog’s reply was that ‘they had probably let
them die because they were so bad that they were not worth
keeping.’
In the meantime, Hartog had been working and seeking
opinion, advice and views of the historian Edward J. Thompson.
Thompson agreed with Hartog that Gandhiji could not possibly
be right; and that he himself also did not ‘believe we destroyed
indigenous schools and indigenous industry out of malice. It was
inevitable.’ He felt nonetheless that, with regard to general
education, ‘we did precious little to congratulate ourselves on
until the last dozen years.’⁷⁰ In a further letter, Thompson
elaborated his views on the subject: on how little was done until
after 1918; that the ‘very hopelessness of the huge Indian job
used to oppress’ even those who had often ‘first class record of
intellect’ in places like Oxford ‘before entering the ICS.’ He noted
further: ‘I am reading old records by pre-mutiny residents, they
teem with information that makes you hope that the
Congresswallah will never get hold of it.’ Somehow the
correspondence between Hartog and Edward Thompson ended
on a sour note. Perhaps, it did not provide Hartog the sort of
intellectual or factual support he was actually looking for. At any
rate, after the interview with Gandhiji, Hartog finally despatched
his rebuttal of Gandhiji’s statement (as intended from the
beginning) for publication in International Affairs.⁷¹ In this he
concluded that ‘the present position is that Mr Gandhi has so far
been unable to substantiate
64

his statement in any way'; but ‘he has undertaken to retract that
statement, if he cannot support it.’
Within a few days of reaching India, Gandhiji was put in
Yervada Prison. From there he wrote to Hartog on 15 February
1932 informing him of his inability at that moment to satisfy
him, mentioning that he had asked Prof K.T. Shah to look into
the matter. K.T. Shah’s long and detailed letter reached Hartog
soon after. In it, Shah also referred to the various known
writings on the subject including those of Max Mueller, Ludlow,
G.L. Prendergast, and the more celebrated Thomas Munro, W.
Adam, and G.W. Leitner (already referred to in the foregoing
pages). For Bombay, Shah quoted G.L. Prendergast, a member of
the Council in the Bombay Presidency (briefly referred to earlier)
who had stated in April 1821:
I need hardly mention what every member of the Board
knows as well as I do, that there is hardly a village, great or
small, throughout our territories, in which there is not at
least one school, and in larger villages more; many in every
town, and in large cities in every division; where young
natives are taught reading, writing and arithmetic, upon a
system so economical, from a handful or two of grain, to
perhaps a rupee per month to the school master, according
to the ability of the parents, and at the same time so
simple and effectual, that there is hardly a cultivator or
petty dealer who is not competent to keep his own
accounts with a degree of accuracy, in my opinion, beyond
what we meet with amongst the lower orders in our own
country; whilst the more splendid dealers and bankers
keep their books with a degree of ease, conciseness, and
clearness I rather think fully equal to those of any British
merchants.72
Knowing what Hartog considered as sufficient proof, Shah
began his letter by saying that he ‘need hardly point out that at
the time under reference, no country in the world had like
definite, authoritative, statistical information of the type one
would now recognise as proper proof in such discussions’; and
that ‘all, therefore, that one can expect by way of proof in such
matters, and at such a time, can only be in the form of
impressions of people in a position to form ideas a little better
and more scientific than those of less fortunately situated, or
less well-endowed, observers.’ Shah finally concluded with the
view that ‘the
65

closer enquiry of this type conducted by Leitner is far more
reliable, and so also the obiter dicta of people in the position to
have clear impressions’; and felt that ‘even those impressions
must be held to give rather an underestimate than otherwise.’
But Shah’s long letter was a wasted effort as far as Hartog
was concerned. It constituted merely a further provocation. In
his reply, Hartog told Shah that ‘your letter does not touch the
main question which I put to Mr Gandhi’; and concluded that ‘I
am afraid that I am altogether unable to accept your conclusion
with regard to the history of literacy in Bengal during the past
100 years, of which there remains a good deal to be said.’
Though it is not fair to compare individuals and to
speculate on the motivations which move them, it does seem
that at this stage Sir Philip Hartog had feelings similar to those
experienced by W.H. Moreland after the latter had read Vincent
Smith’s observations (in his book on Akbar the Great Mogul) that
‘the hired landless labourer in the time of Akbar and Jahangir
probably had more to eat in ordinary years than he has now.’⁷³
In reviewing the book, Moreland had then said, ‘Mr Vincent
Smith’s authority in Indian History is so deservedly great that
this statement, if allowed to stand unquestioned, will probably
pass quickly into a dogma of the schools; before it does so, I
venture to plead for further examination of the data.’⁷⁴ And from
then on, Moreland seems to have set himself the task of
countering such a ‘heretical view, and of stopping it from
becoming a dogma of the schools.’
Whatever his motivation, Philip Hartog set himself the task
of proving Gandhiji wrong on this particular issue. The result
was presented in three ‘Joseph Payne Lectures for 1935-36’
delivered at the University of London Institute of Education
under the title, Some Aspects of Indian Education: Past and
Present.⁷⁵ The lectures were presented along with three
Memoranda: (a) Note on the statistics of literacy and of schools
in India during the last
66

hundred years. (b) The Reports of William Adam on Vernacular
Education in Bengal and Bihar 1835-38, and the legend of the
‘1,00,000 schools’, and (c) Dr G.W. Leitner and Education in the
Panjab 1849-82. These were published in early 1939 by the
Oxford University Press under the above title. In Memorandum
‘A’, using the low figures sent by A.D. Campbell for the district of
Bellary, Hartog questioned Thomas Munro’s calculation that ‘the
proportion of males educated in schools was nearer one-third
than one-fourth.’ He countered instead ‘that Munro’s figures
may have been over-estimates based on the returns of collectors
less careful and interested in education than Campbell.’ Hartog’s
conclusion at the end was that ‘until the action taken by Munro,
Elphinstone, and Bentinck in the three presidencies, the British
Government had neglected elementary education to its detriment
in India. But I have found no evidence that it tried to destroy or
uproot what existed.’ In a footnote, Hartog further observed: ‘In
Great Britain itself it was not until 1833 that the House of
Commons made a grant of 30,000 pounds for the purposes of
education.’ He also praised various Indian personalities, and
more so India’s quaint mixture of ‘most ancient and most
modern’.
In his Preface, after referring to ‘the imaginary basis for
accusations not infrequently made in India that the British
Government systematically destroyed the indigenous system of
elementary schools and with it a literacy which the schools are
presumed to have created’, Hartog observed: ‘When Mr Gandhi,
in an address given at the Royal Institute of International Affairs
on 20 October 1931, lent his powerful support to those
accusations, and challenged contradiction, it was obviously
necessary to re-examine the facts.’⁷⁶
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It may be fair to observe that, despite his considerable
learning and experience, Hartog seemed to have lacked both
imagination and a sense of history. He was far too committed to
the dogmas of pre-1939 Britain. His immigrant Jewish
background may have accentuated such an outlook further.
Whatever the reasons, it seemed inconceivable to Hartog that
late eighteenth, or early nineteenth century India could have had
the education and facilities which Gandhiji and others had
claimed. Similarly, it had been inconceivable to William
Wilberforce, 125 years earlier, that the Hindoos could
conceivably have been civilised (as was stated by many British
officers and scholars who in Wilberforce’s days had had long
personal experience of life in India) without the benefits of
Christianity. To Hartog, as also to Edward Thompson, and before
them to an extent even to W. Adam, and some of the Madras
Presidency Collectors, it was axiomatic that these Indian
educational institutions amounted to very little, and that the
Indian system had ‘become merely self-perpetuating, and
otherwise barren.’
Besides Gandhiji’s statement, two other facts seem to have
had quite an upsetting effect on Philip Hartog. The first, already
referred to, were the writings of G.W. Leitner. The second seems
to have hurt him even more: this was a statement relating to
what Hartog called ‘what of the immediate future’. In this
context, Hartog noted that, ‘an earnest Quaker missionary has
predicted that under the new regime [evidently meaning the
post-British regime] there will be a Counter-Reformation in
education, which will no longer be Western but Eastern’; and, he
observed: ‘Thus India will go back a thousand years and more to
the old days...to those days when she gave out a great wealth of
ideas, especially to the rest of Asia, but accepted nothing in
return.’ Such a prospect was galling indeed to Philip Hartog,
burdened as he was—like his illustrious predecessors—with the
idea of redeeming India morally as well as intellectually, by
pushing it along the western road.
As Gandhiji was the prime cause of this effort, Hartog sent
a copy of his lectures to him. He wrote to Gandhiji that he had
‘little doubt that you will find that a close analysis of the facts
reveals no evidence to support the statement which you made at
the Royal Institute of International Affairs’; adding that Gandhiji
‘will therefore feel justified now in withdrawing that statement.’
Gandhiji replied some months later. His letter had all the
ingredients of a classic reply: ‘I have not left off the pursuit of the
subject of education in the villages during the pre-British
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period. I am in correspondence with several educationists. Those
who have replied do support my view but do not produce
authority that would be accepted as proof. My prejudice or
presentiment still makes me cling to the statement I made at
Chatham House. I don’t want to write haltingly in Harijan. You
don’t want me merely to say that the proof I had in mind had
been challenged by you!’
There the matter ended as far as Gandhiji was concerned.
On 10 September 1939, however, after learning of Gandhiji’s
statement regarding the War in Europe, Hartog wrote him a very
grateful letter:
I cannot wait to express to you my profound gratitude,
shared, I am sure by an innumerable number of my fellow
countrymen, all over the world, for the attitude you have
taken up in regard to the present War at your interview
with the Viceroy, reported in the Times.
Hartog’s book of lectures led to much immediate writing in
India on the subject. Even a new edition of the complete Adam’s
Reports was published by the University of Calcutta. Yet, what
was written produced the same data and analysis all over again;
and, in the main, covered the same ground, and advanced more
or less the same arguments as had already been advanced by
K.T. Shah in his long letter to Philip Hartog in February 1932.⁷⁷
VII
The significance of what Gandhiji said at Chatham House in
October 1931 ought to have been understood not in the literal
way in which Philip Hartog did, but within the total context of
Mahatma Gandhi’s address, which attempted to reveal the
overall disruption and decline of Indian society and its
institutions under British rule. That a great decay had set in by
the 1820s, if not a few decades earlier, in the sphere of
education was admitted by the Madras Presidency survey, as
well as by W. Adam with regard to Bengal and Bihar. In 1822-
25, the number of those in ordinary schools was put at over
1,50,000 in the Madras Presidency. Evidently, the inference that
the number was appreciably, perhaps a great deal higher some
20 or 30 years earlier, cannot
69

be ruled out. At any rate, nowhere was there any suggestion
made that it was much less than it had been in 1822-25. The
population of the Madras Presidency in 1823 was estimated at
1,28,50,941, while the population of England in 1811 was
estimated at 95,43,610. It may be noted from this that, while the
differences in the population of the two regions were not that
significant, the numbers of those attending the various types of
schools (Charity, Sunday, Circulating) in England were in all in
the neighbourhood of around 75,000 as compared to at least
double this number within the Madras Presidency. Further, more
than half of this number of 75,000 in English schools consisted of
those who attended school at the most only for 2-3 hours on a
Sunday.
However, after about 1803, every year a marked increase
took place in the number of those attending schools in England.
The result: the number of 75,000 attending any sort of school
around 1800 rose to 6,74,883 by 1818, and 21,44,377 in 1851,
i.e. an increase of about 29 times in a period of about fifty years.
It is true that the content of this education in England did not
improve much during this half century. Neither did the period
spent in school increase: from more than an average of one year in
1835 to about two years in 1851. The real implication of Gandhi-
ji’s observation, and of the information provided by the Madras
Presidency collectors, W. Adam and G.W. Leitner, is that for the
following 50-100 years, what happened in India—within the
developing situation of relative collapse and stagnation—proved
the reverse of the developments taking place in England. It is
such a feeling, and the intuition of such an occurrence, that
drove Gandhiji, firstly, to make his observation in London in
October 1931, and secondly, disinclined to withdraw it eight
years later. Gandhiji seemed to be looking at the issue from a
historical, social, and a human viewpoint. In marked contrast,
men like Sir Philip Hartog, as so commonly characteristic of the
specialist, were largely quibbling about phrases; intent solely on
picking holes in what did not fit the prevailing western theories
of social and political development.
Statistical comparisons were what Sir Philip Hartog and
many others in his time wanted. And these can, to a large
extent, settle this debate: some comparison of the 1822-25
Madras school-attending scholars is made here with the Madras
Presidency data pertaining to the 1880s and 1890s. Because of
incompleteness of the earlier data available from Bengal and
Bihar, and also from the Presidency of Bombay,⁷⁸ such a
comparison

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does not seem possible for these areas, much less for the whole
of India.
According to the 1879-80 Report of the Director of Public
Instruction for the Madras Presidency, the total number of
educational institutions of all types (including colleges,
secondary, middle and primary schools, and special, or technical
institutions) then numbered 10,553. Out of these, the primary
schools numbered 10,106. The total number attending them:
2,38,960 males, and 29,419 females. The total population of the
Presidency at this time is stated as 3,13,08,872. While the
number of females attending these institutions was evidently
larger in 1879-80 compared to 1822-25, the proportionate
numbers of males was clearly much reduced. Using the same
computation as those applied in 1822-25 (i.e. one-ninth of the
total population treated as of school-going age), those of this age
amongst the male population (taking males and females as
equal) would have numbered 17,39,400. The number of males in
primary schools being 2,18,840, the proportion of this age group
in schools thus turns out to be 12.58%. This proportion in the
decayed educational situation of 1822-25 was put at one-fourth,
i.e. at 25%. If one were to take even the total of all those in every
type of institution, i.e. the number 2,38,960, the proportion in
1879-80 rises only to 13.74%.
From 1879-80 to 1884-85, there was some increase,
however, to be found. While the population went down slightly to
3,08,68,504, the total number of male scholars went up to
3,79,932, and that of females to 50,919. Even this larger
number of male scholars came up only to 22.15% of the
computed school-age male population; and, of those in primary
schools to 18.33%. These figures are much lower than the 1822-
25 officially calculated proportion. Incidentally, while there was
an overall increase in number of females in educational institu-
tions, the number of Muslim girls in such institutions in the
district of Malabar in 1884-85 was only 705. Here it may be
recollected that 62 years earlier, in August 1823, the number of
Muslim girls in schools in Malabar was 1,122; and, at that time,
the population of Malabar would have been below half of that in
1884-85.
Eleven years later in 1895-96, the number in all types of
educational institutions increased further. While the population
had grown to 3,56,41,828, the number of those in educational

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institutions had increased to 6,81,174 males, and 1,10,460 fe-
males. It is at this time then that the proportion (taking all those
males attending educational institutions) rose to 34.4%: just
about equal to the proportion which Thomas Munro had
computed in 1826 as one-third (33.3%) of those receiving any
education whether in indigenous institutions, or at home. Even
at this period, i.e. 70 years after Munro’s computation, however,
the number of males in primary education was just 28%.
Coming to 1899-1900, the last year of the nineteenth
century, the number of males in educational institutions went
up to 7,33,923 and of females to 1,29,068. At this period, the
number of school-age males was calculated by the Madras
Presidency Director of Public Instruction as 26,42,909, thus
giving a percentage of 27.8% attending any educational
institution. Even taking a sympathetic view of the later data,
what clearly comes out of these comparisons is that the
proportion of those in educational institutions at the end of the
nineteenth century was still no larger than the proportions
estimated by Thomas Munro of the number attending the
institutions of the decaying indigenous system of the Madras
Presidency in 1822-25.
The British authorities in the late nineteenth century must
have been tempted—as we find state authorities are in our own
times—to show their achievements in brighter hues and thus err
on the side of inflating figures: therefore, this later data may be
treated with some scepticism. This was certainly not the case
with the 1822-25 data which, in the climate of that period, could
not have been considered inflated in any sense of the word.
From the above, it may be inferred that the decay which is
mentioned in 1822-25 proceeded to grow in strength during the
next six decades. During this period, most of the indigenous
institutions more or less disappeared. Any surviving remnants
were absorbed by the late 19th century British system. Further,
it is only after 1890 that the new system begins to equal the
1822-25 officially calculated proportions of males in schools
quantitatively. Its quality, in comparison to the indigenous
system, is another matter altogether.
The above comparison of the 1822-25 Madras indigenous
education data with the data from the 1880s and 1890s period
also seems to provide additional support—if such support were
required—to the deductions which G.W. Leitner had come to in
1882. These reveal the decline of indigenous education in the
Panjab in the previous 35-40 years.
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VIII
During this prolonged debate, the critical issue that was seldom
touched upon and about which in their various ways, the
Madras Presidency collectors, the reports of Adam, and the work
of Leitner provided a variety of clues, was how all these
educational institutions—the 1,00,000 schools in Bengal and
Bihar, and a ‘school in every village’ according to Munro and
others—were actually organised and maintained. For, it is
ridiculous to suppose that any system of such wide and
universal dimensions could ever have maintained itself without
the necessary conceptual and infrastructural supports over any
length of time.
Modern Indians tend to quote foreigners in most matters
reflecting on India’s present, or its past. One school of thought
uses all such foreign backing to show India’s primitiveness, the
barbaric, uncouth and what is termed ‘parochial’ nature of the
customs and manners of its people, and the ignorance,
oppressions and poverty which Indians are said to have always
suffered from. To them India for most of its past had lived at
what is termed, the ‘feudal’ stage or what in more recent Marxist
terminology is called the ‘system of Asiatic social organisms’. Yet,
to another school, India had always been a glorious land, with
minor blemishes, or accidents of history here and there; all in all
remaining a land of ‘Dharmic’ and benevolent rulers. For yet
others subscribing to the observations of the much-quoted
Charles Metcalfe, and Henry Maine, it has mostly been a happy
land of ‘village republics’.
Unfortunately, due to their British-oriented education, or
because of some deeper causes (like the scholastic and hair-
splitting tendency of Brahmanical learning), Indians have
become since the past century, too literal, too much caught up
with mere words and phrases. They have lost practically all
sense of the symbolic nature of what is said, or written.⁷⁹ It is
not surprising,
73