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

VIII
During this prolonged debate, the critical issue that was seldom
touched upon and about which in their various ways, the
Madras Presidency collectors, the reports of Adam, and the work
of Leitner provided a variety of clues, was how all these
educational institutions—the 1,00,000 schools in Bengal and
Bihar, and a ‘school in every village’ according to Munro and
others—were actually organised and maintained. For, it is
ridiculous to suppose that any system of such wide and
universal dimensions could ever have maintained itself without
the necessary conceptual and infrastructural supports over any
length of time.
Modern Indians tend to quote foreigners in most matters
reflecting on India’s present, or its past. One school of thought
uses all such foreign backing to show India’s primitiveness, the
barbaric, uncouth and what is termed ‘parochial’ nature of the
customs and manners of its people, and the ignorance,
oppressions and poverty which Indians are said to have always
suffered from. To them India for most of its past had lived at
what is termed, the ‘feudal’ stage or what in more recent Marxist
terminology is called the ‘system of Asiatic social organisms’. Yet,
to another school, India had always been a glorious land, with
minor blemishes, or accidents of history here and there; all in all
remaining a land of ‘Dharmic’ and benevolent rulers. For yet
others subscribing to the observations of the much-quoted
Charles Metcalfe, and Henry Maine, it has mostly been a happy
land of ‘village republics’.
Unfortunately, due to their British-oriented education, or
because of some deeper causes (like the scholastic and hair-
splitting tendency of Brahmanical learning), Indians have
become since the past century, too literal, too much caught up
with mere words and phrases. They have lost practically all
sense of the symbolic nature of what is said, or written.⁷⁹ It is
not surprising,
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therefore, that when Indians think of village republics, what
occurs to them is not what the word ‘republic’ implies in
substance; but, instead, the visual images of its shell, the
elected assembly, the system of voting, etc.
What Charles Metcalfe, and especially Henry Maine wrote
on this point was primarily on the basis of the earlier British
information, i.e. what had been derived from the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth century British travellers, administrators,
etc., as well as from the writings of other Europeans before
them. It implied (and, quite naturally, the British had no
particular reason to spell it out for us Indians) that the ‘village’
(it is immaterial how they defined it), to an extent, had all the
semblance of the State: it controlled revenue and exercised
authority within its sphere. How this ‘village’ State was
constituted, (whether in the manner of an oligarchy, or by the
representation of the various castes, crafts, or other groups
within it, or by representation of all families, or in some other
manner), while important in itself as a subject for exploration,
was not its basic element. The basic element of this ‘village
republic’ was the authority it wielded, the resources it controlled
and dispensed, and the manner of such resource utilisation.
Notwithstanding all that has been written about empires—
Ashokan, Vijayanagar, Mughal, etc., and of ‘oriental despotism’
it is beyond any doubt that throughout its history, Indian society
and polity has basically been organised according to non-
centralist concepts. This fact is not only brought out in recent
research. The eighteenth and early nineteenth century European
reports, manuscript as well as published writings also bear
evidence to it. That the annual exchequer receipts of Jahangir
did not amount to more than 5% of the computed revenue of his
empire, and that of Aurangzeb (with all his zeal for maximising
such receipts), did not ever exceed 20% is symptomatic of the
concepts and arrangements which governed Indian polity.
It can be argued of course that such a non-centralist polity
made India politically weak; or, rather, soft in the military
sense—given that only hierarchical and centralist states are
politically and militarily strong and viable. This may all be true
and is worthy of serious consideration. Nonetheless, the first
requisite is to understand the nature of Indian society and polity
especially as it functioned two or three centuries ago. Further,
its various dimensions and contours, strengths and weaknesses
need to be known, and not only from European writings but
much more so from Indian sources; that is from sources rooted
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in the traditions and beliefs of various areas, communities,
groups, etc.,—with special attention being paid to their own
images of the society of which they were a part.
It is suggested here—and there is voluminous data
scattered in the British records themselves which confirm the
view—that in terms of the basic expenses, both education and
medical care, like the expenses of the local police, and the
maintenance of irrigation facilities, had primary claims on
revenue. It was primarily this revenue which not only
maintained higher education, but also—as was sometimes
admitted in the British records—the system of elementary
education.⁸⁰ It is quite probable that, in addition to this basic
provision, the parents and guardians of the scholars also
contributed a little according to their varying capacities by way
of presents, occasional feeding of the unprovided scholars, etc.,
towards the maintenance of the system. But to suppose that
such a deep rooted and extensive system which really catered to
all sections of society could be maintained on the basis of tuition
fees, or through not only gratuitous teaching but also feeding of
the pupils by the teachers, is to be grossly ignorant of the actual
functioning of the Indian social arrangements of the time.
According to the Bengal-Bihar data of the 1770s and
1780s, the revenues of these areas were divided into various
categories in addition to what was called the Khalsa, i.e., the
sources whose revenue was received in the exchequer of the
ruling authority of the province, or some larger unit. These
categories together (excluding the Khalsa), seem to have been
allocated or assigned the major proportion of the revenue
sources (perhaps around 80% of the computed revenue of any
area). Two of these categories were termed Chakeran Zemin, and
Bazee Zemin in the Bengal and Bihar records of this period. The
former, Chakeran Zemin, referred to recipients of revenue who
were engaged in administrative, economic, accounting activities,
etc., and were remunerated by assignments of revenue. The
latter, Bazee Zemin, referred to those who—according to the
British—were in receipt of what were termed ‘religious and
charitable allowances’. A substantial portion of these religious
allowances was obviously
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assigned for the maintenance of religious places: largely temples
of all sizes and celebrity, but also mosques, dargahs, chatrams,
maths, etc. Another part was assigned to the agraharams, or
what perhaps were also termed Brahmdeya in South India as
well as in Bengal. Yet, other assignments were given over to a
variety of persons: to great and other pundits, to poets, to joshis,
to medical practitioners, to jesters and even for such purposes
as defraying the expenses of carrying Ganga water in areas of
Uttar Pradesh to certain religious shrines on certain festivals.⁸¹
Regarding the extent of such assignments from Hedgelee in
Bengal, it was stated in 1770 that ‘almost one-half of the
province is held upon free tenure’ under the Bazee Zemin
category.⁸² The number of these Bazee Zemin (one may
reasonably assume the term included individuals, groups as well
as institutions) in many districts of Bengal and Bihar was as
high as 30,000 to 36,000 recipients for the district. According to
H.T. Prinsep,⁸³ in one district of Bengal around 1780, the
applications for the registration of Bazee Zemin numbered
72,000.
The position in the Madras Presidency was not very
different, even after all the disorganisation, dispossession and
demolition of the period 1750-1800, during which the British
made themselves masters of the whole area. As late as 1801,
over 35% of the total cultivated land in the Ceded Districts (the
present Rayalseema area and the Kannada District of Bellary)
came under the category of revenue free assignments, and it was
the task of Thomas Munro to somehow reduce this quantity to a
mere 5% of the total cultivated land. The reduction intended in
the Ceded Districts was also carried out in all other districts,
earlier in some, and later in others, and in some, the
dispossession of such vast numbers of assignees of revenue took
a long time.
The returns from the various districts of the Madras
Presidency, especially during the years 1805-1820, provide
much information on the varied nature of these revenue
assignments
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(or grain, or money allowances). In some measure, these had till
then continued to be permitted, or disbursed to a variety of
institutions and to individuals in the several districts. Such
information usually got collected whenever the government was
contemplating some new policy, or some further steps
concerning one, or more categories of such assignees, or those to
whom any sort of allowances were being paid. As illustrative of
such information, a return from the district of Tanjore of April
1813, relating to the money assignments received by 1,013 big
and small temples,⁸⁴—which by this time were mostly minute—
and between 350-400 individuals is reproduced at the end of
this book (Annexures G and H). These payments amounted at
this time to a total of Star Pagodas 43,037 for the temples, and
Star Pagodas 5,929 to the individuals, annually. A Star Pagoda
was valued at about three and one-half rupee.
What was true of Bengal, Bihar and the Madras Presidency
applied equally to other areas: whether of the Bombay
Presidency, Panjab, or in the Rajasthan States. The proportions
of revenue allocated to particular categories—as far as the
British record indicates—also seem fairly similar. It will not be
far wrong to assume that about a quarter to one-third of the
revenue paying sources (not only land, but also sea ports, etc.)
were, according to ancient practice, assigned for the
requirements of the social and cultural infrastructure till the
British overturned it all.
Further still, the rate of assessment which was paid by
cultivators of the revenue assigned lands was fairly low.
According to the supervisors of the Bengal Districts in the 1770s
and early 1780s, the rate of assessment charged by the Bazee
Zemin revenue assignees was around one-quarter to one-third of
the rate which the British had begun to demand from the lands
which were treated as Khalsa,⁸⁵ a category which was now just
swallowing up practically all the other categories. A more or less
similar phenomenon obtained in the various districts of the
Madras Presidency—even as late as the 1820s.⁸⁶ Moreover,
though it may seem unbelievable, the area which constituted
Malabar had, till
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about 1750, never been subject to a land tax.⁸⁷ It had a variety of
other mercantile and judicial taxes, but land in Malabar—
according to British investigators themselves—never paid
revenue of any kind till the peace was wholly shattered by the
Europeans, Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan. Even during Tipu's
period, the actual receipts from Malabar were fairly small.
The major dispossession of the various categories of
revenue assignees (starting from those who had assignment for
the performance of military duties, and who formed the local
militias, and going on to those who performed police duties, etc.)
started as soon as the British took over de facto control of any
area, (i.e. in Bengal and Bihar from 1757-58 onwards). The turn
of the Chakeran Zemin and the Bazee Zemin came slightly later.
By about 1770, the latter had also begun to be seriously
affected. By about 1800, through various means, a very large
proportion of these had been altogether dispossessed; and, most
of the remaining had their assignments greatly reduced through
various devices. Among the devices used was the application of
the newly established enhanced rate of assessment even to the
sources from which the assignees had received the revenue. This
device, to begin with, implied a reduction of the quantity of the
assigned source in accordance with the increased rate of
assessment. The next step was to reduce—in most cases—the
money value itself. The result was that the assignee—whether an
individual or an institution—even when allowed a fraction of the
previous assignment, was no longer able (because of such steep
reduction) to perform the accompanying functions in the manner
they had been performed only some decades previously. Those
whose assignments were completely abrogated were of course
reduced to penury and beggary, if not to a worse fate. Naturally,
many of the old functions
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dependent on such assignments (like teaching, medicine, feeding
of pilgrims, etc.), had to be given up because of want of fiscal
support, as also due to state ridicule and prohibitions.
There are references (see the annexed reports from some of
the Madras Presidency collectors) to certain revenue
assignments here and there, and to daily cash or grain
allowances received by some of those who were occupied in
imparting Sanskritic learning, or Persian, and in some instances
even education at the elementary level. A few other collectors
also made reference to certain revenue assignments which used
to exist in the area (but were said to have been appropriated by
Tipu, and that, when the British took over these areas, they
formally added such revenue to the total State revenue). The
various area reports of the period 1792 to about 1806 make
much mention of dispossession of revenue assignees by orders of
Tipu in the area over which he had control. But, at the same
time, it is also stated that through the connivance of the revenue
officers, etc., such dispossession during Tipu’s reign was, in
most cases, not operative at all. What Tipu might have intended
merely as a threat to opponents, became a de facto reality when
these areas came under formal British administration.
But in most areas which the British had conquered (either
on behalf of the Nabob of Arcot, or on behalf of the Nizam of
Hyderabad, or administered in the name of the various Rajas of
Tanjore), most such dispossession was pre-1800. The process
started soon after 1750, when the British domination of South
India began gathering momentum in the early 1780s and the
revenues of the areas claimed by the British to be under the
nominal rulership of the Nabob of Arcot were formally assigned
over to the British. One major method used to ensure
dispossession was to slash down what were termed the ‘District
charges’, i.e., the amounts traditionally utilised within the
districts, but which, for purposes of accounting, were shown in
the records of the Nabob. The slashing down in certain districts
like Trichnopoly was up to 93% of the ‘District charges’ allowed
until then: a mere 19,143 Star Pagodas now allowed in place of
the earlier 2,82,148 Star Pagodas.
The report of the collector of Bellary is best known and
most mentioned in the published records on indigenous educa-
tion.⁸⁸ It is long and fairly comprehensive, though the data he
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actually sent was much less detailed. In it, he actually—to the
extent a collector could—came out with the statement that the
degeneration of education ‘is ascribable to the gradual but
general impoverishment of the country’; that ‘the means of the
manufacturing classes have been greatly diminished by the
introduction of our own European manufactures’; that ‘the
transfer of the capital of the country from the native government
and their officers, who liberally expanded it in India, to
Europeans, restricted by law from employing it even temporarily
in India, and daily draining it from the land, has likewise tended
to this effect’; that ‘in many villages where formerly there were
schools, there are now none; and that ‘learning, though it may
proudly decline to sell its stores, had never flourished in any
country except under the encouragement of the ruling power,
and the countenance and support once given to science in this
part of India has long been withheld.’ In elaboration, he added
that ‘of the 533 institutions for education now existing in this
district, I am ashamed to say not one now derives any support
from the State’; but that ‘there is no doubt, that in former times,
especially under the Hindoo Governments very large grants, both
in money and in land, were issued for the support of learning’;
that the ‘considerable yeomiahs or grants of money, now paid to
brahmins in this district...may, I think, be traced to this source’.
He concluded with the observation that:
Though it did not consist with the dignity of learning to re-
ceive from her votaries hire, it has always in India been
deemed the duty of government to evince to her the highest
respect, and to grant to her those emoluments which she
could not, consistently with her character, receive from
other sources; the grants issued by former governments,
on such occasions, contained therefore no unbecoming
stipulations or conditions. They all purport to flow from the
free bounty of the ruling power, merely to aid the
maintenance of some holy or learned man, or to secure his
prayers for the State. But they were almost universally
granted to learned or religious persons, who maintained a
school for one or more of the sciences, and taught therein
gratuitously; and though not expressed in the deed itself,
the duty of continuing such gratuitous instruction was
certainly implied in all such grants.⁸⁹
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The Collector of Bellary, A.D. Campbell, was an
experienced and perceptive officer, previously having held the
post of Secretary of the Board of Revenue, and was perhaps one
of Thomas Munro’s favourites. It may be said to Munro’s credit
that in his review of 10 March 1826, he did admit in his oblique
way that indigenous education ‘has, no doubt, been better in
earlier times.’ The fact that it got disrupted, reduced and well-
nigh destroyed from the time the British took over de facto
control and centralised the revenue, was obviously not possible
even for a Governor as powerful as Thomas Munro to state in
formal government records.
Illustrations such as the above can be multiplied ad
infinitum. It only requires searching the records pertaining to the
early period of British rule in different areas of India. With much
industry and in a fairly objective manner, Leitner tried to do this
for the Panjab. For Gandhiji, an intuitive understanding of what
could have happened was enough. He could, therefore, with
confidence, reply to Hartog that, ‘my prejudice or presentiment
still makes me cling to the statement I made at Chatham House.’
IX
This brings us finally to an assessment of the content of the
indigenous system of education. The long letter of the much-
quoted A.D. Campbell, collector of Bellary, had been used a
century earlier by London to establish that in India reading and
writing
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were acquired ‘solely with a view to the transaction of business’,
that ‘nothing whatever is learnt except reading, and with the
exception of writing and a little arithmetic, the education of the
great majority goes no farther.’
The question of content is crucial. It is the evaluation of
content which led to indigenous education being termed ‘bad’
and hence to its dismissal; and, in Gandhiji's phrase, to its
uprooting. Yet it was not ‘the mere reading and writing and a
little arithmetic’ which was of any consequence in such a
decision. For, school education in contemporary England, except
in the sphere of religious teaching, covered the same ground,
and probably, much less thoroughly. As mentioned earlier, the
average period of schooling in 1835 England was just about one
year, and even in 1851, only two. Further, as stated by A.E.
Dobbs, ‘in some country schools, writing was excluded for fear of
evil consequences.’
While the limitless British hunger for revenue—so forcefully
described by Campbell—starved the Indian system of the very re-
sources which it required to survive, its cultural and religious
content and structure provoked deliberate attempts aimed at its
total extermination. It was imperative to somehow uproot the
Indian indigenous system for the relatively undisturbed
maintenance and continuance of British rule. It is the same
imperative which decided Macaulay, Bentinck, etc., to
deliberately neglect large-scale school education—proposed by
men like Adam—till a viable system of Anglicised higher
education had first been established in the country.
In 1813, this bold intention was publicly and powerfully
expressed by William Wilberforce when he depicted Indians as
being ‘deeply sunk, and by their religious superstitions fast
bound, in the lowest depths of moral and social wretchedness.’⁹⁰
T.B. Macaulay expressed similar views, merely using different
imagery. He commented that the totality of Indian knowledge
and scholarship did not even equal the contents of ‘a single shelf
of a good European library’, and that all the historical
information contained in books written in Sanskrit was ‘less
valuable than what may be found in the most paltry abridge-
ment used at preparatory schools in England.’⁹¹ To Macaulay, all
Indian knowledge, if not despicable, was at least absurd: absurd
history, absurd metaphysics, absurd physics, absurd theology.
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A little later, Karl Marx seems to have had similar
impressions of India—this, despite his great study of British
state papers and other extensive material relating to India.
Writing in the New York Daily Tribune on 25 June 1853, he
shared the view of the perennial nature of Indian misery, and
approvingly quoted an ancient Indian text which according to
him placed ‘the commencement of Indian misery in an epoch
even more remote than the Christian creation of the world.’
According to him, Indian life had always been undignified,
stagnatory, vegetative, and passive, given to a brutalising
worship of nature instead of man being the ‘sovereign of
nature’—as contemplated in contemporary European thought.
And, thus Karl Marx concluded: ‘Whatever may have been the
crimes of England’ in India, ‘she was the unconscious tool of
history’ in bringing about—what Marx so anxiously looked
forward to—India’s westernisation.
The complete denunciation and rejection of Indian culture
and civilisation was, however, left to the powerful pen of James
Mill. This he did in his monumental three volume History of
British India, first published in 1817. Thenceforth, Mill’s History
became an essential reading and reference book for those
entrusted with administering the British Indian Empire. From
the time of its publication till recently, the History in fact
provided the framework for the writing of most histories of India.
For this reason, the impact of his judgments on India and its
people should never be underestimated.
According to Mill, ‘the same insincerity, mendacity, and
perfidy; the same indifference to the feelings of others; the same
prostitution and venality’ were the conspicuous characteristics
of both the Hindoos and the Muslims. The Muslims, however,
were perfuse, when possessed of wealth, and devoted to
pleasure; the Hindoos almost always penurious and ascetic; and
‘in truth, the Hindoo like the eunuch, excels in the qualities of a
slave.’ Furthermore, similar to the Chinese, the Hindoos were
‘dissembling, treacherous, mendacious, to an excess which
surpasses even the usual measure of uncultivated society.’ Both
the Chinese and the Hindoos were ‘disposed to excessive
exaggeration with regard to everything relating to themselves.’
Both were ‘cowardly and unfeeling.’ Both were ‘in the highest
degree conceited of themselves, and full of affected contempt for
others.’ And, above all, both were ‘in physical sense, disgustingly
unclean in their persons and houses.’
Compared to the people of India, according to Mill, the
people of Europe even during the feudal ages, (and
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notwithstanding the vices of the Roman Church and the defects
of the schoolmen), were superior in philosophy. Further, the
Europeans ‘were greatly superior, notwithstanding the defects of
the feudal system, in the institutions of Government and in
laws.’ Even their poetry was ‘beyond all comparison preferable to
the poetry of the Hindoos.’ Mill felt that it was hardly necessary
to assert that in the art of war ‘the Hindoos have always been
greatly inferior to the warlike nations of Europe.’ The agriculture
of the Europeans ‘surpassed exceedingly that of the Hindoos’,
and in India the roads were little better than paths, and the
rivers without bridges; there was not one original treatise on
medicine, considered as a science, and surgery was unknown
among the Hindoos. Further still, ‘compared with the slavish and
dastardly spirit of the Hindoos’, the Europeans were to be placed
in an elevated rank with regard to manners and character, and
their manliness and courage.
Where the Hindoos surpassed the Europeans was in
delicate manufactures, ‘particularly in spinning, weaving, and
dyeing’; in the fabrication of trinkets; and probably in the art of
polishing and setting the precious stones; and more so in
effeminate gentleness, and the winning arts of address. However,
in the arts of painting, sculpture, and architecture the Hindoos
in no way excelled Europeans. Further, ‘the Hindoo loom, with
all its appurtenances, is coarse and ill-fashioned, to a degree
hardly less surprising than the fineness of the commodity which
it is the instrument of producing.’ The very dexterity in the use
of their tools and implements became a point against the
Indians. For as James Mill proclaimed: ‘A dexterity in the use of
its own imperfect tools is a common attribute of rude society.’
These reflections and judgments led to the obvious
conclusion, and Mill wrote:
Our ancestors, however, though rough, were sincere; but
under the glossing exterior of the Hindoo lies a general
disposition to deceit and perfidy. In fine, it cannot be
doubted that, upon the whole, the gothic nations, as soon
as they became a settled people, exhibit the marks of a
superior character and civilisation to those of the
Hindoos.92
As to James Mill, so also to Wilberforce, Macaulay, and
Karl Marx and the thought and approaches they represented (for
it is more as spokesmen of such thinking and approaches that
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they are important in the context of India rather than as
outstanding individuals), the manners, customs and civilisation
of India were intrinsically barbarous. And to each of them, India
could become civilised only by discarding its Indianness, and by
adopting ‘utility as the object of every pursuit’⁹³ according to Mill;
by embracing his peculiar brand of Christianity for Wilberforce;
by becoming anglicised, according to Macaulay; and for Marx by
becoming western. Prior to them, for Henry Dundas, the man
who governed India from London for twenty long years, Indians
not only had to become subservient to British authority but also
had to feel ‘indebted to our beneficence and wisdom for
advantages they are to receive’; and, in like manner, ‘feel solely
indebted to our protection for the countenance and enjoyment of
them’⁹⁴ before they could even qualify for being considered as
civilised.
Given such complete agreement on the nature of Indian
culture and institutions, it was inevitable that because of its
crucial social and cultural role, Indian education fared as it did.
To speed up its demise, it not only had to be ridiculed and
despised, but steps also had to be taken so that it was starved
out of its resource base. True, as far as the known record can
tell, no direct dismantling or shutting up of each and every
institution was resorted to, or any other more drastic physical
measures taken to achieve this demise. Such steps were
unnecessary; the reason being that the fiscal steps together with
ridicule, performed the task far more effectively.
An official indication of what was to come was conveyed by
London to the Madras Presidency when it acknowledged receipt
of the information that a survey of indigenous education had
been initiated there, much before the papers of the survey were
actually sent to London. The London authorities expressed their
appreciation of this initiative. They also approved of the
collectors having been cautioned against ‘exciting any fears in
the people that their freedom of choice in matters of education
would be interfered with.’ However, this approval was followed by
the observation: ‘But it would be equally wrong to do anything to
fortify them (i.e. the people of the Madras Presidency) in the
absurd opinion that their own rude institutions of education are
so perfect as not to admit of improvement.’ The very expression
of such a view in the most diplomatically and cautiously worded
of official instructions was a clear signal. Operatively, it implied
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not only greater ridicule and denunciation of the Indian system;
but further, that any residual fiscal and state support still
available to the educational institutions was no longer to be
tolerated. Not surprisingly, the indigenous system was doomed
to stagnate and die.
The neglect and deliberate uprooting of Indian education,
the measures which were employed to this end, and its
replacement by an alien and rootless system—whose products
were so graphically described later by Ananda Coomaraswamy—
had several consequences for India. To begin with, it led to an
obliteration of literacy and knowledge of such dimensions
amongst the Indian people that recent attempts at universal
literacy and education have so far been unable to make an
appreciable dent in it. Next, it destroyed the Indian social
balance in which, traditionally, persons from all sections of
society appear to have been able to receive fairly competent
schooling. The pathshalas and madrassahs had enabled them to
participate openly and appropriately and with dignity not only in
the social and cultural life of their locality but, if they wished,
ensured participation at the more extended levels. It is this
destruction along with similar damage in the economic sphere
which led to great deterioration in the status and socio-economic
conditions and personal dignity of those who are now known as
the scheduled castes; and to only a slightly lesser extent to that
of the vast peasant majority encompassed by the term ‘backward
castes’. The recent movements embracing these sections, to a
great extent, seem to be aimed at restoring this basic Indian
social balance.
And most importantly, till today it has kept most educated
Indians ignorant of the society they live in, the culture which
sustains this society, and their fellow beings; and more
tragically, yet, for over a century it has induced a lack of con-
fidence, and loss of bearing amongst the people of India in
general.
What India possessed in the sphere of education two
centuries ago and the factors which led to its decay and
replacement are indeed a part of history. Even if the former
could be brought back to life, in the context of today, or of the
immediate future, many aspects of it would no longer be
apposite. Yet what exists today has little relevance either. An
understanding of what existed and of the processes which
created the irrelevance India is burdened with today, in time,
could help generate what best suits India’s requirements and the
ethos of her people.

Notes

1. See Annexures, especially A(i)-(xxx), C, and D(i), (iii)-(iv)h.
2. A. E. Dobbs: Education and Social Movements 1700-1850, London,
   1919, p.80, quoting Oxford Commission, 1852, Report, p.19.
3. Ibid, p.83.
4. Ibid, p.104, f.n.l. quoting 7 Henry IV, c.17.

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5. Ibid, p.105, quoting 34 & 35 Henry VIII, c.l. This statute dating to
   1542-43 A.D., consisting of just one Article after a preamble read, ‘...The
   Bible shall not be read in English in any church. No women or artificers,
   prentices, journeymen, servingmen of the degree of yeomen or under,
   husbandmen, nor labourers, shall read the New Testament in English.
   Nothing shall be taught or maintained contrary to the King’s
   instructions. And if any spiritual person preach, teach, or maintain any
   thing contrary to the King’s instructions or determinations, made or to
   be made, and shall be thereof convict, he shall for his first offence
   recant, for his second abjure and bear a fagot, and for his third shall be
   adjudged an heretic, and be burned and lose all his goods and chattels.’
   The statute was entitled ‘An Act for the Advancement of True Knowledge’.
   This restriction, however, may have completely been lifted by the time
   the ‘authorised version’ of the Bible (King James’s translation) was
   published in England in 1611.
6. Ibid, p.104, f.n.3, quoting Strype, Cranmer, i.127
7. Ibid, p.33, f.n.l.
8. Ibid, p.139
9. Ibid, p.139
10. Ibid, p.140
11. Ibid, p.158
12. J.W. Adamson: A Short History of Education, Cambridge, 1919,
    p.243.
13. Ibid, p.243
14. See Annexure C: Alexander Walker, Note on Indian Education; also
    Ibid, p.246
15. House of Commons Papers, 1852-53, volume 79, p.718, for the
    number of schools and pupils in them in 1818 and 1851.
16. Adamson: op.cit., 232
17. Dobbs, op.cit., pp. 157-8 also f.n.1, p.158.
18. Adamson : op.cit., p.266
19. Ibid, p.226
20. Ibid, p.226
21. Writing to the second Earl Spencer on 21 August 1787 William Jones
    described a serpentine river ‘which meets the Ganges opposite the
    celebrated University of Brahmans at Navadwipa, or Nuddea, as Rennel
    writes it. This is the third University of which I have been a member.’ The
    Letters of Sir William Jones, by G. Cannon. 2 volumes, 1970, p.754.
22. The fourth British University, that of London was established in
24. The above information is abstracted from The Historical Register of
    the University of Oxford 1220-1888, Oxford, 1888, mostly from pp.45-65.
25. The foregoing four paragraphs are based on information supplied by
    the University of Oxford in November 1980 on request from the author.
26. For instance according to her doctoral thesis presented in April 1980
    at the Sorbonne, Paris, Gita Dharampal: Etude sur le role des
    missionaries europeens dans la formation premiers des idees sur l’Inde,
    an early eighteenth century manuscript still has several copies extant.
    The manuscript is titled Traite de la Religion des Malabars, and its first
    copy was completed in 1709 by Tessier de Queraly, procurator of the
    Paris Foreign Mission in Pondicherry from 1699 to 1720, nominated
    Apostolic Vicar of Siam in 1727. Copies of this Ms. are to be found in the
    following archives: Paris (Bibliotheque Nationale 3 copies, Bibliotheque
    de L’Arsenal 1 copy, Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve 1 copy, Archives
    87

Nationales 1 copy); Chartres (Bibliotheque Municipale 1 copy, formerly
belonging to the Governor Benoit Dumas), London (India Office Libr. 2
copies in Col Mackenzie’s and John Leyden’s collections respectively);
Rome 1 copy (Biblioteca Casanatesa, containing Vatican collection).
Published as La Religion Des Malabars, Immense, 1982.
26. See the author’s Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth
Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts. Other India Press,
2000, for Prof John Playfair’s long article on Indian astronomy, pp.48-93.
27. Edinburgh University: Dc.177: letters from Adam Ferguson to John
Macpherson, letter dated 9.4.1775.
28. Edinburgh: Scottish Record Office: Melville Papers: GD 51/3/617/1-
2, Prof A. Maconochie to Henry Dundas.
29. Edinburgh: National Library of Scotland: Ms.546, Alex Abercomby
forwarding a further memorandum from Prof Maconochie to Henry
Dundas, March 1788. The memorandum was communicated to Lord
Cornwallis by Henry Dundas on 7.4.1788.
30. HANSARD: June 22, 1813; columns 832, 833.
31. HANSARD: June 22 and July 1, 1813: Debate on Clause No.13 of the
India Charter Bill, titled in HANSARD as ‘Propagation of Christianity in
India’.
32. Report on the state of Education in Bengal, 1835. p.6.
33. House of Commons Papers, 1812-13, volume 7, evidence of Thomas
Munro, p.127.
34. House of Commons Papers, 1831-32, volume 9, p.468. Prendergast’s
statement may be treated with some caution as it was made in the
context of his stand that any expenditure on the opening of any schools
by the British was undesirable. As a general impression of a senior
British official, however, corroborated by similar observations relating to
other parts of India, its validity appears beyond doubt.
35. See, for instance, the discussion on relative Indian and British
agricultural wages in the Edinburgh Review, volume 4, July 1804.
36. Philip Hartog, Ibid, p.74.
37. This, however, may have resulted more from a relatively easier Indian
climate than from any physical and institutional arrangements.
38. That is those belonging to the Brahman, Kshetriya and Vaisya
varnas, but excluding the Soodras and castes outside the four varna
division.
39. It may fairly be assumed that the term ‘other castes’ used in the
Madras Presidency survey in the main included those who today are
categorised amongst the scheduled castes, and many of whom were
better known as ‘Panchamas’ some 70-80 years ago.
40. Annexure A (viii)
41. Given at Annexures B and C. Further, in the Public Despatch to
Bengal from London dated 3 June 1814, it was observed: ‘The mode of
instruction that from time immemorial has been practised under these
masters has received the highest tributes of praise by its adoption in this
country, under the direction of the Reverend Dr. Bell, formerly chaplain
at Madras; and it has now become the mode by which education is
conducted in our national establishments, from a conviction of the
facility it affords in the acquisition of language by simplifying the process
of instruction.’
42. Annexure A (xxii)
43. Annexure A (xxiii)
88

44. These surveys began to be made from 1812 onwards, and their main
    purpose was to find out what number of such medical men were in
    receipt of assignments of revenue. Some details of the castes of these
    practitioners may be found in Madras Board of Revenue Proceedings of
    17 September 1821, and of 9 March 1837, and other proceedings
    referred to therein.
45. Annexure A (xx) a.
46. Annexure A (xi).
47. Annexure A (x)
48. Annexure A (xxvii).
49. This observation of the Collector of Guntoor is corroborated by W.
    Adam wherein he mentions that at Nadia many scholars came from
    ‘remote parts of India, especially from the South’ (W. Adam, p.78, 1941
    edition)
50. Annexure A (xix)
51. Annexure A (xxiii)
52. It may be mentioned that Persian schools (in all about 145 in the
    Presidency) were predominantly attended by Muslims, and only a few
    Hindoos seem to have attended them (North Arcot: Hindoos 2, Muslims
    396). However, quite a number of Muslim girls were reported to be
    attending these schools.
53. Annexure A (xx)
54. Annexure A (xxviii)
55. As in many other instances, it was unthinkable for the British that
    India could have had a proportionately larger number receiving
    education than those in England itself. Such views and judgements in
    fact were applied to every sphere and even the rights of the Indian
    peasantry were tailored accordingly. On the rights of the cultivator of
    land in India, the Fifth Report of the House of Commons stated: ‘It was
    accordingly decided, “that the occupants of land in India could establish
    no more right, in respect to the soil, than tenantry upon an estate in
    England can establish a right to the land, by hereditary residence:” and
    the meerassee of a village was therefore defined to be, a preference of
    cultivation derived from hereditary residence, but subject to the right of
    government as the superior lord of the soil, in what way it chooses, for
    the cultivation of its own lands.’ (House of Commons Papers, 1812,
    Volume VII, p.105)
56. Annexures A (xx) and (xiv)
57. While the caste-wise break up of the Madras Presidency school and
    college scholars has hitherto not been published, the separate figures for
    Hindoos and Muslims and those respectively divided into males and
    females were published as early as 1832 in the House of Commons
    Papers. Since then, it may be presumed that this data regarding the
    number of girls and boys in Malabar schools has been seen by a large
    number of scholars studying the question of education in India in the
    early nineteenth century. Curiously, however, there does not seem to be
    even a passing reference to this Malabar data in any of the published
    works. It seems to have been overlooked by Sir Philip Hartog also.
58. Adam’s Reports were first published in 1835, 1836 and 1838. The
    three, together with some omissions, and a 60-page rather depressing
    and patronising introduction were published by Rev. J. Long from
    Calcutta in 1868. Still another edition of the whole (reintroducing the
    omissions made by Long and including Long’s own introduction) with a
    further new 42-page introduction by Anathnath Basu was published by
    the University of Calcutta, in 1941. It is this last edition which is used in
    89

the present work. The reports, while never sufficiently analysed, have
often been quoted in most works on the history of education in India.
59. W. Adam: Ibid, pp.6-7. Incidentally the observation that every village
had a school was nothing peculiar to Adam. As mentioned earlier, many
others before him had made similar observations, including Thomas
Munro in his evidence to a House of Commons committee. Munro had
then observed that 'if civilization is to become an article of trade' between
England and India, the former 'will gain by the import cargo.' As
symptomatic of this high state of Indian civilisation, he also referred to
'schools established in every village for teaching, reading, writing and
arithmetic.' When Thomas Munro made this statement he already had
had 30 years of intensive Indian experience. (House of Commons Papers:
1812-13, Vol .7, p.131).
60. See Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: some
contemporary European accounts, pp.143-63, for an account of this old
method.
61. This, as may be noticed, was quite at variance with the Madras
Presidency districts where Persian was not only studied little, but the
students of it were mainly Muslims. Interestingly, Adam mentions
(p.149) that amongst the Muslims 'when a child...is four years, four
months, and four days old', he, or she is on that day usually admitted to
school.
62. History of Indigenous Education in the Panjab since Annexation and in
1882 (Published 1883, Reprinted, Patiala, 1973).
63. The idea of their being divinely ordained was really a much older
English assumption. In A Brief Description of New York Formerly called
New-Netherlands, published in 1670, referring to the indigenous people
in that part of North America, Daniel Denton observes: 'It is to be
admired, how strangely they have decreast by the Hand of God, since the
English first settling of those parts; for since my time, where there were
six towns, they are reduced to two small villages, and it hath been
generally observed, that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand
makes way for them, by removing or cutting off the Indians either by
wars one with the other, or by some raging mortal Disease.' (Reprint
1902 p.45)
64. See letter of Dr H. Scott to Sir Joseph Banks, President, Royal
Society, London, dated 7.1.1790 in Indian Science and Technology in the
Eighteenth Century, p.265.
65. First published in New York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853; also
recently quoted by Iu.I. Semenov 'Socio-economic Formations and World
History,' in Soviet and Western Anthropology, edited by Ernest Gellner,
1980.
66. Current Anthropology, Volume 7, No. 4, October 1966, pp.395-449,
Estimating Aboriginal American Population, by Henry F. Dobyns.
67. Writing as early as 1804, William Bentinck, the young Governor of
the Madras Presidency, wrote to the President of the Board of Control,
Lord Castlereagh, that 'we have rode the country too hard, and the
consequence is that it is in the most lamentable poverty.' (Nottingham
University: Bentinck Papers: Pw Jb 722). In 1857-58 a military officer
wrote to Governor General Canning, 'it may be truly said that the
revenue of India has hitherto been levied at the point of the bayonet' and
considered this to be the major cause of the Mutiny. (Leeds: Canning
Papers: Military Secretary's Papers: Misc. No.289).
68. International Affairs, London, November 1931, pp.721-739; also
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol.48, pp.193-206.
90

69. See origins of the School of Oriental Studies, London Institution, by
    P.J. Hartog, C.I.E., M.A., 1917.
70. A graphic image of the more privileged products of this British
    initiated education was given by Ananda K Coomaraswamy as early as
71. Coomaraswamy then wrote: ‘Speak to the ordinary graduate of an
    Indian University, or a student from Ceylon, of the ideals of the
    Mahabharata—he will hasten to display his knowledge of Shakespeare;
    talk to him of religious philosophy—you find that he is an atheist of the
    crude type common in Europe a generation ago, and that not only has he
    no religion, but is as lacking in philosophy as the average Englishman;
    talk to him of Indian music—he will produce a gramophone or a
    harmonium and inflict upon you one or both; talk to him of Indian dress
    or jewellery—he will tell you that they are uncivilised and barbaric; talk
    to him of Indian art—it is news to him that such a thing exists; ask him
    to translate for you a letter written in his own mother-tongue—he does
    not know it. He is indeed a stranger in his own land.’ (Modern Review,
    Calcutta, vol 4, Oct. 1908 p.338).
72. January 1932, pp.151-82.
73. Also in House of Commons Papers: 1831-32, vol. 9, p.468.
74. Clarendon Press, 1917, p.394.
75. In Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, 1917, pp.815-25.
76. Philip Hartog’s lectures were announced in the London Times,
    (March 1,4,6,1935) and two of them reported in it on March 2 and 5. On
    2 March the Times reported that Sir Philip Hartog, ‘submitted that under
    successive Governor Generals, from Warren Hastings to Lord
    Chelmsford, an educational policy was evolved as part of a general policy
    to govern India in the interest of India, and to develop her intellectual
    resources to the utmost for her own benefit.’ It is interesting, however, to
    note that the Times, while it gave fairly constant though brief notices to
    Gandhiji’s 1931 visit to England, and some of the public meetings he
    addressed and the celebration of his birthday, the meeting at Chatham
    House did not reach its pages. It was not only not reported the next day,
    October 21, 1931, but was also not announced along with various other
    notices of various other meetings, etc., on the morning of October 20.
    Possibly it was a convention not to report any meetings at Chatham
    House in newspapers.
77. The Book of Lectures was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement
    under the caption ‘Mr Gandhi Refuted’. Complimenting Hartog, the
    review stated: ‘There are many deserved criticisms of past British
    administrators in this particular field, but other charges dissolve into
    thin air when exposed to the searching analysis Sir Philip Hartog has
    applied to a statement of Mr Gandhi...Sir Philip took up the challenge at
    once...he shows how facts were distorted to fit an educational theory.’
78. The text of Hartog-Gandhi correspondence is given at Annexures F
    (i)-(xxv).
79. The available material on the survey of indigenous education in the
    Presidency of Bombay has been brought out in a valuable book Survey of
    Indigenous Education in the Province of Bombay 1820-30 by R.V.
    Parulekar in 1951. This survey, however, appears to have covered only
    certain parts of the Bombay Presidency.
80. Judging from their products, in a certain sense, this may apply even
    more to the writings on India by most non-Indians. Their writings on
    various aspects of Indian society and polity will obviously be influenced,
    if not wholly conditioned, by their respective cultural and educational
    ethos. Even when some of them—Alexander Walker in the early 19th
    century and Prof. Burton Stein today—appear to understand India
    91

better, it is not really for them to map out how Indians should end up
perceiving themselves or their own society. Such a task can legitimately
only be undertaken by India itself.
80. Public Despatch to Bengal, 3 June 1814: ‘We refer with particular
satisfaction upon this occasion to that distinguished feature of internal
polity which prevails in some parts of India, and by which the instruction
of the people is provided for by a certain charge upon the produce of the
soil, and other endowments in favour of the village teachers, who are
thereby rendered public servants of the community.’
81. The revenue records of all areas, especially of the years 1770-90 for
the Bengal Presidency, and of 1801-20 for the Madras Presidency
provide very extensive information regarding such assignments. The
information regarding assignments for the purpose of carrying Ganga
water to religious shrines is taken from Mafee Register for 1847 for the
district of Hamirpur and Kalpi in the Uttar Pradesh State Archives at
Allahabad.
82. I.O.R. Factory Records: G/27/1, Supervisor Houghly to Murshe-
dabad Council, 10.10.1770, p.88.
83. In a note dated circa 1830.
84. The total number of maths and temples in Tanjore about this time
was around 4,000.
85. I.O.R. Factory Records: G/6/4. Proceedings of Burdwan Council on
Beerbhoom, 24.5.1775.
86. The problem of peasants deserting sirkar lands (i.e. lands paying
revenue to government) because of the exhorbitant rate of government
assessment even in the 1820s was of such frequency that it was
deliberated upon by Thomas Munro as Governor of Madras in November
1822. At that time Munro observed that ‘it would be most satisfactory if
the sirkar ryots were induced to give a voluntary preference to the sirkar
land’ and felt that the rest of the village community paying revenue to
government should not ‘allow a ryot to throw up sirkar land liable to
adjustment merely that he may occupy Enam land which is liable to
none.’ But if such ‘inducement’ did not work Munro was of the view, that
‘if necessary, measures for the protection of the rights of government
may be directed more immediately to the Enamdars, either by taking
their Enams or by resuming them.’ (Tamil Nadu state Archives: Board of
Revenue Proceedings: volume 930, Proceedings 7.11.1822, pp.10292-
96).
87. For fairly detailed information on Malabar, see the voluminous
Report of Commissioner Graeme, 16.7.1822 in TNSA: Revenue
Consultations, especially volume 277A.
88. Annexure A (xxi), Philip Hartog, who made much play of this reply,
as mentioned earlier, used it to throw doubt on the educational data
from the other districts. It is possible that because of his contrary
concerns, he was not able to comprehend this report fully.
89. Bellary was part of the Ceded Districts and was administered from
1800-7 by Thomas Munro. As mentioned earlier, it was here that Munro
seemed outraged by the fact that 35% of the total cultivated land was
still being assigned for various local purposes, and expressed his
determination to reduce it to as low as 5% of the total revenue of the
Ceded Districts. Munro at that time also advocated the imposition of an
income-tax of about 15% on all those (revenue assignees, as well as
merchants, artisans, labourers and the rest) who did not pay land
revenue. The Madras Government accepted his recommendation and this
tax, under various names, (Veesabuddy, Mohtarpha, etc.) was imposed
92