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

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
84

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.

86

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)
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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

not only in the Ceded Districts but also in many other districts of the
Madras Presidency.
It is this background of exhorbitant taxation and the cutting down of all
expenses, even on the repair of irrigation sources that largely led to the
conversion of Bellary and Cuddapah into the latter day arid and
impoverished areas. Quite naturally, then, the educational returns from
Bellary were low.
90. Hansard: June 22, 1813.
91. Minute on Indian Education: March 1835.
92. J.S. Mill, History of British India, 1817, vol. I, pp.344, 351-2, 466-7,
472, 646.
93. Ibid, p.428.
94. Revenue Despatch to Madras: 11.2.1801.
93

DOCUMENTS
87

88

Annexure A
I
MINUTE OF GOVERNOR SIR THOMAS MUNRO
ORDERING THE COLLECTION OF DETAILED INFORMATION
ON INDIGENOUS EDUCATION:
25.6.1822*
(TNSA: Revenue Consultations: Vol.920: dated 2.7.1822)

1. Much has been written both in England and in this
   country about the ignorance of the people of India and the
   means of disseminating knowledge among them. But the
   opinions upon this subject are the mere conjectures of
   individuals unsupported by any authentic documents and
   differing so widely from each other as to be entitled to very little
   attention. Our power in this country and the nature of its own
   municipal institutions have certainly rendered it practicable to
   collect material from which a judgment might be formed of the
   state of the mental cultivation of the people. We have made
   geographical and agricultural surveys of our provinces. We have
   investigated their resources and endeavoured to ascertain their
   population, but little or nothing has been done to learn the state
   of education. We have no record to show the actual state of
   education throughout the country. Partial inquiries have been
   made by individuals, but those have taken place at distant
   periods—and on a small scale and no inference can be drawn
   from them with regard to the country in general. There may be
   some difficulty in obtaining such a record as we want. Some
   Districts will not—but others probably will furnish it—and if we
   get it only from two or three it will answer in some degree for all
   the rest. It cannot be expected to be very accurate, but it will at
   least enable us to form an estimate of the state of instructions
   among the people. The only record which can furnish the
   information required is a list of the schools in which reading and
   writing are taught in
   89

each district showing the number of scholars in each and the
caste to which they belong. The Collectors should be directed to
prepare this document according to the form which accompanies
this paper. They should be desired to state the names of the
book generally read at the schools. The time which scholars
usually continue, at such schools. The monthly or yearly charge
to the scholars and whether any of the schools are endowed by
the public and if so the nature and amount of the fund. When
there are colleges or other institutions for teaching Theology,
Law, Astronomy, etc. an account should be given of them. These
sciences are usually taught privately without fee or reward by
individuals to a few scholars or disciples, but there are also
some instances in which the native governments have granted
allowances in money and land for the maintenance of the
teachers.
2. In some districts, reading and writing are confined
almost entirely to Bramins and the mercantile class. In some
they extend to other classes and are pretty general among the
Patails of villages and principal Royets. To the women of
Bramins and of Hindoos in general they are unknown because
the knowledge of them is prohibited and regarded as
unbecoming of the modesty of the sex and fit only for public
dancers. But among the women of the Rujbundah and some
other tribes of Hindoos who seem to have no prejudice of this
kind, they are generally taught. The prohibition against women
learning to read is probably from various causes, much less
attended to in some districts than in others and as it is possible
that in every district a few females may be found in the reading
schools, a column has been entered for them in the Form
proposed to be sent to the Collector. The mixed and impure
castes seldom learn to read, but as a few of them do, columns
are left for them in the Form.
3. It is not my intention to recommend any interface
whatever in the native schools. Everything of this kind ought to
be carefully avoided, and the people should be left to manage
their schools in their own way. All that we ought to do is to
facilitate the operations of these schools by restoring any funds
that may have been diverted from them and perhaps granting
additional ones, where it may appear advisable. But on this
point we shall be better able to judge when we receive the
information now proposed to be called for.
25th June 1822. (Signed)
Thomas Munro
90

II
Ordered in consequence that the
following letter be despatched:
No.459
Revenue Department
To,
The President and Members of the Board of Revenue
Gentlemen,
I am directed to state that it is considered by the
Honourable the Governor-in-Council to be an object of interest
and of importance to obtain as accurate information as may be
procurable with regard to the actual state of education
throughout the country, and to desire that the several Collectors
may be required to furnish such information according to the
accompanying Form. Besides reporting the number of schools in
which reading and writing are taught, the number of scholars in
each and the castes to which they belong, the Collectors should
state the time which scholars usually continue at school, the
monthly or yearly charge to the scholars, whether any of the
schools are endowed by the public and in such cases the nature
and amount of the fund. When there are colleges or other
institutions for teaching Theology, Law, Astronomy, etc., an
account of them should be given. These sciences are usually
taught privately to a few scholars or disciples by individuals
without any fee or reward, but there are also some instances in
which the native government has granted allowances in money
and land for the maintenance of the teachers.
Although generally education is confined to particular
castes and is not extended to females, yet as there are
exceptions, which in certain districts may be numerous, the
accompanying Form is adopted to include them.
It is to be clearly understood by the Collectors that no
interference whatever with the native school is intended.
Everything of that kind should be carefully avoided and the
people should be left to manage their schools in their own way.
All that ought to be done is to facilitate the operation of the
schools, by restoring any funds that may have been diverted
from them and perhaps granting additional funds where it may
appear advisable.
Fort St. George, D. Hill,
2nd July 1822. Secretary to Government
91

III
CIRCULAR—FORT ST. GEORGE—25TH JULY 1822
(TNSA: BRP—Vol.920, Pro. 25.7.1822, pp.6971-72 No.7)

1. I am directed by the Board of Revenue to transmit to you
   the accompanying copy of a letter with its enclosure from the
   Secretary to Government in the Revenue Department, and to
   desire that you will submit the required information together
   with a statement in the prescribed Form at your earliest
   convenience.
2. In calling for the information from the different parts of
   your Collectorate, you will cause your public servants clearly to
   understand, and to make known to the people that no
   interference with the schools is intended, though every
   assistance will be given to facilitate their operations and to
   restore any funds which may appear to have been diverted from
   their original purposes.
   Fort St. George, R. Clarke,
   25th July 1822. Secretary
   (Statement on following page)
   92

93