In effect it
recommended
that system of cheap, un-
controlled venture schools, which has done so much to lower the
standard of education in Bengal.
controlled venture schools, which has done so much to lower the
standard of education in Bengal.
Cambridge History of India - v4 - Indian Empire
341 (#379) ############################################
WESTERN INFLUENCES
341
1
tions for government and other employ. This desire was everywhere
the powerful influence which, more rapidly in some provinces than
in others, was moulding the future. Education was in demand mainly
as a channel for employment, and a knowledge of English was the
royal road which led to the most lucrative positions and professions.
The total cost of education in 1865-6 was estimated at Rs. 8,217,669,
but of this sum Rs. 4,529,580 only came from imperial funds. The
rest was supplied by local sources "such as education cesses, school
fees, private endowments, subscriptions". But information regarding
expenditure on private institutions was neither exhaustive nor re-
liable. Special rules had been framed to regulate grants-in-aid to
schools designed for the instruction of European and Eurasian
children.
In this connection we may just now particularly recall Lord
Canning's words:
The Eurasian class have a special claim upon us. The presence of a British
government has called them into being;. . . and they are a class which, while it
draws little or no support from its connection with England, is without that deep
root in and hold of the soil of India from which our native public servants, through
their families and relatives, derive advantage. "
The state educational system was only one side of a process which
was rapidly spreading abroad Western culture and ideas. The scene
had indeed changed since the days when crowds assembled, with
the law's permission, to see widows burnt alive, and missionaries
sought refuge in Danish territory, when dacoits exercised a “horrid
ascendancy” over large tracts of country, and “thags” were able to
"glory in their achievements as acts pleasing to a deity”. 2 Elaborate
and carefully considered codes of substantive law and procedure,
criminal and civil, were coming gradually into force and were begin-
ning to exercise a powerful influence over thought. In the seaports,
in the provincial capitals, in the historic cities inland, a new India
was growing up, an India of railways and telegraphs, of law courts
and lawyers, of newspapers and examinations. Extending communi-
cations, widening commerce, developing industries were increasing
the European population. The railways were mainly manned by
European officials; road-surveyors, contractors, tradesmen, custom-
house officers were multiplying. Assam and the slopes of the Hima-
layas abounded with tea-planters, Tirhut and Lower Bengal with
indigo-planters. The Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Irawadi, the
Ganges to some extent, and the whole coast from Calcutta to Persia
on the one side, and to the Straits on the other, were navigated by
steamers under British commanders. The seaports and large cities
contained many families of mixed race, many European and Eurasian
>
· Quoted ap. Croft, Review of Education in India, p. 294. Cf. Calcutta Review, xLU, 57-93.
• Cf. chaps. ii and vii, supra.
## p. 342 (#380) ############################################
342
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
children whose minds needed rescue from the perils of unrelieved
materialism. 1
The new times were better than the old; but they had brought many
problems of their own. While the demand for Western education was
widening rapidly among the Hindu professional classes, it continued
to run almost invariably into literary courses, particularly in Bengal;
and the avenues to government service, the bar, teaching and jour-
nalism were gradually becoming thronged. The land-holders, on the
other hand, who had hitherto been the natural leaders of the people,
were slow to grasp new opportunities; the martial classes, who had
always been held in high social estimation, were equally indifferent;
and the masses themselves, in spite of much earnest effort on the part
of educational officers, up to the very end of our period, remained
chiefly and persistently illiterate. Even in 1919, although no longer
hostile to primary education, they were “lukewarm in its support and
seldom pressed for its extension". 3 Only 2. 4 per cent. were enrolled
in primary schools, and only 2. 8 were undergoing elementary educa-
tion of any kind. Even when allowance is made for the great increase
of population between 1860 and 1918 these figures are impressive.
Mass education was and is mainly a rural problem. - À villager
who sought the law courts hired a petition-writer and a pleader; if he
visited a shop he ascertained prices by enquiry. On the very rare
occasions on which he wished to send or decipher a letter, he obtained
the assistance of his village accountant or a professional scribe. “The
uselessness of education to such people”, wrote a school inspector
from the province of Oudh in 1883,
is proved by the fact, of which there is overwhelming evidence in every town or
village where a school has been established, that the great majority of o'ır ex-
students, in less than 10 years after leaving school, can neither read, nor write, nor
cipher, and that the sharpest among them are not able to do more than compose
a very simple letter, or decipher some 50 words out of 100 in a few lines of print.
From having nothing to read, having no occasion to write, and no accounts to
keep, they gradually forget whatever they learn, and are as ignorant as if they had
never been at school. There is no hope that knowledge will grow from more to more
so long as the daily life of the masses remains destitute of everything which can
afford scope to the utilisation of knowledge or engage the attention of an educated
man. 5
T'he writer based these observations on the assumption that the
agriculturist ex-student remained in his village and followed the
calling of his fathers.
If he goes elsewhere and enters into service or obtains clerical employment he
will find a use for his education. But government primary schools were not started
with the idea of seducing boys from their hereditary callings.
i Calcutta Review, XLII, 49. Cf. Strachey, India, pp. 10–11.
2 Cf. Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, 1, 341.
• Statement of Moral and Material Progress, 1917-18, p. 110.
• See Burn, Census Report on N. W. P. and Oudh, 1901, p. 160.
6 Nesfield, Calcutta Review, LXXVI, 356. Cf. Statement of Moral and Material Progress,
1925-6, p. 166.
## p. 343 (#381) ############################################
PRIMARY EDUCATION
343
It is certain that, while the cultivators often required cow and goat
herds in their open unfenced fields, they had solid reason for sup-
posing that, unless some particular opening presented itself, schooling
would prove an infructuous investment. If a parent embarked on it,
he did so in the hope that the boy would make education a stepping-
stone to service of some kind. To this expectation the new village
schools owed such vitality as they possessed. The old indigenous
elementary schools had been established by particular classes for
particular purposes in response to religious or business needs. Their
studies were of the humblest and most conservative character. They
were not looked on as paths to any particularly desirable employment.
The new schools offered fresh possibilities but. frequently led to dis-
appointment. A report by J. C. Nesfield, inspector of schools in the
North-Western Provinces, quoted in Croft's Review for the year 1886,2
illustrates this aspect of affairs.
"In one school", he writes, “there was a boy of the Kurmi caste, which is one of
the most industrious agricultural castes in Upper India. He had passed a very good
examination in the highest standard of village schools; after telling him that he had
now completed all that a village school could give him, I enquired what occupation
he intended to follow. His answer at once was—'Service; what else? ' I advised
him to revert to agriculture, as there was scarcely any chance of his getting literary
employment; but at this piece of advice he seemed to be surprised and even angry.
At another school I met a Pasi, a semi-hunting caste, much lower in every respect
than that of the Kurmi. He was a boy of quick understanding and had completed
the village school course in Nagari as well as Urdu, and could read and write both
characters with equal facility. He asked me what he was to do next. I could hardly
tell him to go back to pig-rearing, trapping birds, and digging vermin out of the
earth ! or food; and yet I scarcely saw what other opening was in store for him.
At another school there was the son of a chuhar, or village sweeper, a caste the
lowest of all the castes properly so called. He was asked with others to write an
original composition on the comparative advantages of trade and service as a
career. He expressed a decided preference for trade. Yet who would enter into
mercantile transactions with a sweeper even if a man of that caste could be started
in such a calling? Everything that he touches would be considered as polluted;
and no one would buy grain or cloth from his shop, if he could buy them from any
other. There seems to be no opening in store for this very intelligent youth but that
of scavengering, mat-making, trapping, etc. , all of which are far below the more
cultivated tastes he has acquired by attending school. And in such pursuits he is
not likely to evince the same degree of skill or enjoy the same contentment as one
who has grown up wholly illiterate. In these and such like ways the attempts made
by the government to raise the condition of the masses and place new facilities of
self-advancement within their reach, are thwarted by the absence of opportunities
and by the caste prejudices of the country. ”
In all provinces too the admission of low-caste boys into schools
attended by the sons of higher-caste Hindus was strongly resented.
So powerful was the feeling aroused that the commission of 1882,
whose labours will be noticed further on, holding that “no principle,
however sound, could be forced on an unwilling society in defiance
of their social and religious sentiments", recommended that separate
Chailley, Administrative Problems of British India, p. 491; Interim Report of the Indian
Statutory Commission, p. 37.
* Croft, op. cit. p. 231.
>
## p. 344 (#382) ############################################
344
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
schools should be opened for low-caste boys wherever they could be
induced to attend in sufficient number. The education of the children,
of the six millions of aborigines who were to be found in Bengal,
Bombay and the Central Provinces was left to the missionaries. No
one else was inclined to prepare grammars or dictionaries of the
non-Aryan languages.
The workers in the great field of public instruction might well ask
for time, might well beg that their efforts should not be hag-ridden
by impetuosity and constant demands for numerical results. In fact,
too, despite all obstacles, education in its broadest sense did progress
among the masses as English influences rolled on over the surface of
India. The most powerful teacher was the railway which, despite
some gloomy prophecies, had attained immediate popularity and
necessarily tended to break down the barriers of ages, to stimulate
movement, and exchange of thought. In railway carriages Brahmans
and Sudras, Muslims and Sikhs, peasants and townsmen sat side by
side. As early even as 1867–8 the total number of railway passengers
was 13,746,000, of whom 95 per cent. travelled third class. Reflection,
observation, interest in the outside world were stimulated; journeys
from villages to towns, emigration from India itself became more
common; life and property grew more secure; new impulses were
given to commerce, to industry and to agriculture. It should not be
forgotten that to English capital India owes the sinews of her railway
development.
English education advanced rapidly among the literary and pro-
fessional castes of Hindus. Voyages to England were cheaper and
easier, and venturesome youths began to finish their studies in that
country. The pioneers of this remarkable movement which has ex-
tended rapidly in our own time were four Hindu students of the
Calcutta Medical College who, braving social obstacles, embarked
for England in March, 1845, under the charge of one of their pro-
fessors, Dr H. H. Goodeve, were entered as pupils at University
College, London, and achieved distinguished success. Thirty years
later, recognising the trend of events, a few prominent Muhammadans
in the North-Western Provinces under the leadership of Maulvi
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, afterwards Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, banded
themselves together for the purpose of breaking down Muhammadan
aversion to Western learning. In 1871 the government of Lord Mayo
had initiated measures for this purpose; 4 and now the cause was taken
up in earnest by Muslims themselves under the inspiring influence of
a vigorous and outstanding personality. In 1871 they began to collect
funds; and in 1875 Sayyid Ahmad opened a high school for Muham-
1 Cf. Hansard, 8 July, 1927, pp. 1638-9.
2 Marshman, "Indian Railways" (Quarterly Review, cxxv, 60).
• Calcutta Review, XLII, 120; also Banerjee, A Nation in the Making, p. 10.
• Mahmud, English Education in India, chaps. xxiv, xxvii.
## p. 345 (#383) ############################################
ALIGARH
345
madans at Aligarh. In 1878 the school was raised to a second-grade
college and affiliated to the Calcutta University. At first Sayyid
Ahmad was fiercely opposed by conservative Muhammadans. But,
strongly encouraged by the government, he triumphed over all
obstacles. Princes and nobles, Muslim and Hindu, offered munificent
endowments. Viceroys and lieutenant-governors came forward as
benefactors.
While primarily intended for Muhammadans, and insisting on
religious instruction for its Muslim students, the Muhammadan
Anglo-Oriental College admitted pupils of all faiths, and after ten
years of struggle became a highly esteemed seat of education. It
started with an English and an Oriental department. In the former
all subjects were taught in English, and Arabic, Persian or Sanskrit
was taken up as a second language; in the latter either Arabic or
Persian literature was studied; history, geography, mathematics, etc.
were taught in Urdu, while English was a second language. The
commission of 1882 reported that the Oriental department attracted
hardly any students. The principal of the college and the headmaster
of the school were both Europeans. "
The obstacles to the spread of female education have been described
in a previous chapter. These had hardly lessened with time and are
strong even now. In 1882 it was ascertained that the percentage of
girls at school to girls of a school-going age was •85 for all India,
1. 59 for Bombay, 1•50 for Madras, •80 for Bengal, . 72 for the Panjab
and •28 for the North-Western Provinces. From 1823 to 1851 female
education in Bombay had engaged the attention of the missionaries.
Then the Parsi and the Hindu merchants of Gujarat had taken the
matter up, and their example had been followed by certain Maratha
chiefs. Since 1871 the Bombay Government had been endeavouring
to collect an efficient staff of female teachers. In Madras, too,
missionaries had led the way. Indian societies had followed. In
Northern as well as in Southern India, missionary societies were the
pioneers and in 1882 were still foremost. But progress was very slow.
There was a great dearth of female teachers due to an impression that
such a calling could not be pursued by a modest woman. *
As the aristocracy and titled classes were disinclined to allow their
sons to associate with the scholars and students of government schools,
regarding them as their social inferiors, Lord Mayo initiated the
establishment of chiefs' colleges, making known to the Rajput nobles
in durbar at Ajmer his strong desire to establish in that city a college
“for the sons and relatives of the chiefs, nobles, and principal thakurs
of Rajputana”,5 A liberal endowment fund was subscribed; the
1 Mahmud, op. cit. pp. 163-4 n.
: Cf. The Statutory Commission's Interim Report, pp. 150-83.
• Report of 1882 Commission, PP. 525, 5357 Report of 1882 Commission, p. 487.
• Burn, op. cil. p. 160.
## p. 346 (#384) ############################################
346
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
1
government gave an equivalent sum, and the Mayo College at Ajmer
under carefully selected British principals proved a remarkable
success. Similar in character though smaller in scale was the Rajaram
College at Kathiawar. Other colleges started special classes for the
sons of native chiefs and large landed proprietors. All these innova-
tions were designed to encourage good education, “a healthy tone
and manly habits” among the sons of chiefs and nobles. But even so
the cadets of aristocratic or opulent families were frequently brought
up to lead idle lives.
In struggling to carry out the policy laid down in 1854, the govern-
ment found it necessary more than once to pause and take stock of
conditions and tendencies. This was done by means of commissions
appointed with the concurrence of the secretary of state. The first
education commission was charged by Lord Ripon's government in
1882 with the duty of enquiring into “the manner in which effect had
been given to the principles of the dispatch of 1854, and of suggesting
such measures as might seem desirable. in order to further carrying
out of the policy laid down therein”. The principal object of enquiry
was to be the present state of elementary education and the means
by which this can everywhere be extended and improved". 1 The
general operation of the universities was withdrawn from the field of
investigation, but the work carried on in the colleges was to be
reviewed. The commission, which was highly officialised, consisted of
twenty-two members (British and Indian) under the late Sir William
Hunter as president. Nearly 200 witnesses were examined: over 300
memorials were presented: 222 resolutions were passed, 180 unani-
mously. The main conclusions of the commission were that while
higher and secondary education was popular and successful among
the middle classes, particularly in Bengal, primary education needed
the strongest encouragement and should be declared "that part of the
system of public instruction which possesses an almost exclusive claim
on provincial revenues”. It might well be provided, irrespective of
private co-operation, by the state or by the local self-government
boards, district and municipal, which were then taking more definite
shape and assuming new responsibilities. The means of secondary
education, on the other hand, should ordinarily be provided only
where local or private co-operation was forthcoming.
The commission was favourably impressed by the results of grants-
in-aid in Bengal where for one high school maintained by government
there were three, two aided and one unaided, established by private
effort, and only a few English middle schools supported wholly by
the state. In the hope that, as had happened in England, Western
education in India would lead to increased industrialism and there-
fore to fresh opportunities of employment, it recommended the in-
1 Resolution of the Government of India, Home Dept. (Education), Nos. 1-60,
3 February, 1882, para. 8.
.
$
## p. 347 (#385) ############################################
THE HUNTER COMMISSION
347
stitution of school-courses alternative to the established “entrance"
course, and including subjects chosen with a view to the requirements
of commercial and industrial pursuits. Anxious to de-officialise higher
education as far as possible and to render it self-dependent, it advised
that all secondary schools should be made over to private manage-
ment whenever this could be done without lowering the standard or
diminishing the supply of instruction, and that the managers of aided
schools and colleges should be allowed to charge fees lower than those
payable at state schools of the same class. At the same time it urged
that, whatever withdrawal there might be from direct supervision of
education, there should be none from indirect but efficient control.
But “only in cases of extreme necessity" should private schools be
interfered with.
In effect it recommended that system of cheap, un-
controlled venture schools, which has done so much to lower the
standard of education in Bengal.
The commission proposed special measures for encouraging educa-
tion among Muhammadans. It considered that all elementary schools
should be subject to the inspection and supervision of the govern-
ment's educational officers, but should be made over to the care of
district and municipal boards, whose educational responsibilities
should be defined by legislation. It pointed out the importance of
physical education as well as mental, and considered that although
religious teaching must be excluded from the government schools,
something should be done, in response to a widespread feeling, to
develop the sense of right and wrong in the minds of scholars of all
grades. After long debate, it resolved by a narrow majority, (a) that
an attempt should be made to prepare a moral textbook based upon
“the fundamental principles of natural religion” and suitable for use
by teachers in all government and other colleges; (b) that the principal
or one of the professors in each government or aided college should
deliver to each college class in every session a series of lectures “on the
duties of a man and a citizen”. But these suggestions were severely
criticised by the various local governments and were rejected by the
Government of India and by Lord Kimberley, secretary of state. The
general trend of criticism is indicated by the words of Sir Alfred Lyall,
lieutenant-governor of the North-Western Provinces. It was, he wrote,
no part of the functions of the Government of India to draw up a code
or morality, and issue it officially for the instruction of students, since
these could hardly be charged with ignorance of the commonly
accepted code of civilised communities, or with an acceptance of
principles contrary to that code. The objcction to instituting courses
of lectures on the duties of a man and citizen was that possibly no two
professors would agree as to what these duties were; and it was clearly
undesirable to introduce into schools and colleges discussions on
subjects that opened qut a very wide field of debate. 2
· Cf. Croft, op. cit. p. 330; Mahmud, op. cit. chap. xxii. • Croft, op. cit. p. 332.
a
.
## p. 348 (#386) ############################################
348
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
The majority of the commission's recommendations were accepted
by the Government of India. In 1886 a Public Services Commission
was appointed which divided the educational department into three
branches-imperial, provincial and subordinate. The first of these
would be recruited in England and called the Indian Educational
Service;' the second and third would be recruited in India. In effect,
while stimulating a devolution of control to local boards and school
committees, the government in spite of criticism” reduced the British
element in both its inspecting and its teaching agencies. The process
was carried far in Bengal. In Madras, under the able twelve-years'
direction of the late H. B. Grigg, devolution to local bodies worked
well. But nowhere else were municipal and district boards disposed
to spend much money on elementary education. 3
The labours of the over-burdened Calcutta University were lightened
by the formation of the Panjab University in 1882 and the Allahabad
University in 1887. Both were examining bodies. The former differed
from its elder sisters in possessing a faculty of Oriental learning and
in conducting proficiency and high proficiency examinations in
vernacular languages. It owed its origin to a college established at
Lahore in 1869 in part fulfilment of the wishes of chiefs, nobles and
prominent men of the Panjab and with the aid of their contributions.
The Allahabad University developed from a college opened originally
in a hired building by Sir William Muir, lieutenant-governor of the
North-Western Provinces, in 1872. It awarded degrees to students in
affiliated colleges and possessed no faculty of Oriental languages,
although Sir William Muir had asked for one. But these provinces
already possessed the famous Queen's College at Benares, where
Sanskrit was regularly taught by a staff of learned Brahmans; and
examinations were held to which students were admitted who came
from affiliated institutions situate within and without the provincial
boundaries.
Between 1886 and 1901 college students throughout India increased
from 11,501 to 23,009, and pupils in secondary schools from 429,093
to 633,728. English games had reached Indian schools and soon
achieved popularity. But English professors and inspectors became
fewer although Anglo-vernacular schools multiplied in Bengal and
increased elsewhere. English was thus more and more taught by men
to whom it was a foreign tongue, with results which were highly
creditable to the ability and industry of the learners, but unsatisfactory
in various respects. In the private venture schools of Bengal teachers
were underpaid and teaching suffered. Everywhere education was
largely memorisation of textbooks. A century earlier Charles Grant
1 Seton, India Office, p. 144.
2 Chirol, Indian Unrest, p. xiv.
: Cf. Report of Calcutia University Commission, 1, 54.
• See Satthianadhan, op. cit. pp. 284, 289.
5 Ronaldshay, Heart of Aryavarta, chap. i; Sayyid Amir Ali Bilgrami, English Education in
India, p. 35.
## p. 349 (#387) ############################################
CURZON'S POLICY
349
had wisely urged the importance of teaching the principles of me-
chanics and their application to "agriculture and the useful arts”.
The authors of the 1854 dispatch had not forgotten this counsel. But
the passion for literary courses of study had even then acquired a
strong momentum which gathered force as time went on. 1 Outlay
on education by the government and local boards rose from 132. 82
lakhs of rupees in 1885 to 177. 04 lakhs in 1901; but the general
tendency to regard schooling simply as a means of qualifying for
clerical or professional employment retarded primary instruction
among the masses. At this juncture a governor-general arrived who
combined enthusiastic idealism with abounding energy and great
insight into the details of administration. Fearing no problem, how-
ever thorny, he gradually set himself to grapple with the thorniest
problem of all.
Toward the close of his third year of office, after examining the
whole educational field with elaborate care, Lord Curzon summoned
the principal officers of the educational department to meet him at
Simla in September, 1901. There he reviewed the situation with
characteristic thoroughness and trenchancy, claiming that the suc-
cesses of imparting English education to India had been immeasurably
greater than the mistakes and blunders. 2 Moral and intellectual
standards had been raised, and might be raised still higher. But we
had started by too slavish an imitation of English models, and had
never purged ourselves of that taint. Examinations too had been
pushed to an unhealthy excess. Students were being crammed with
undigested knowledge. Teachers were obsessed with percentages,
passes and tabulated results. The various provincial systems of public
instruction were not inspired by unity of aim, and showed misdirection
and wastage of force which must be laid to the charge of the central
government.
The universities were merely examining bodies. The colleges were
for the most part collections of lecture-rooms, class-rooms and
laboratories flung far and wide over great provinces, bound to each
other by no tie of common feeling and to the university by no tie of
filial reverence. Greater unity should be infused into these jarring
atoms and higher education should be inspired by nobler ideals.
Hostels or boarding-houses should be adequately provided for colleges
in large towns and should be subject to systematic inspection. Senates
and syndicates should be reformed and converted into business-like
bodies containing a sufficiently strong element of experts. Academic
standards needed to be raised. Yet he had been invited after Queen
Victoria's death to celebrate her memory by lowering examination
standards all round. Secondary education presented more encouraging
features than university education. The demand for English teaching
· Cf. Report of the Education Commission, 1882, p. 281.
· Cf. Raleigh, Lord Curzon in India, pp. 313-39.
## p. 350 (#388) ############################################
350
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
was increasing; schools were being started to meet it, and the income
from fees therein obtained was rising. On the other hand the middle-
class public still attached a superior commercial value to literary
courses, which often led to nothing because they had not been
sufficiently practical or co-ordinated with technical or commercial
instruction in an advanced stage.
Primary education, the teaching of the masses in the vernacular
had shrivelled and pined since the cold breath of Macaulay's
rhetoric
passed over the field of the Indian languages and textbooks. This was
a mistake. Not only did the vernaculars in no way deserve such
neglect, for they contained literary treasures; but the greatest of all
dangers in India was ignorance. As the masses gained knowledge, so
would they be happier and become more useful members of the body
politic. Yet we had rushed ahead with English education and left the
vernaculars standing at the post. Both were equally the duty and
the care of the government; but it must be admitted that the main
obstacles to a spread of primary education sprang from the people
themselves.
In this part of his speech Lord Curzon hardly did justice to his
predecessors. From 1854 onwards the government had endeavoureo
to encourage the diffusion of knowledge through the vernaculars
This aim had been thwarted by the stolid conservatism of the masses
by the limitations imposed by the caste-system, and by the zeal of the
Indian, and especially of the Bengali, middle classes for a Western
education that offered new interests, new hopes, and more ambitious
prospects. The vernaculars too had not remained stagnant. On the
contrary, vernacular prose had profited by English influences. 1
For technical education, that practical instruction which qualifies
a man for the practice of some handicraft or industry or profession,
Lord Curzon considered that much more might be done on more
business-like principles. Female education, too, was extremely back-
ward. Moderate as was the attendance of boys at school, only one
girl attended for every ten boys, and only 2 ) per cent. of girls of a
school-going age. As regards moral teaching for the young generally,
books could do something but teachers could do more. Competent
teachers, selected for character and ability, able to maintain discipline
and devoted to their work, were the main essential. Religious in-
struction must be carried on in private institutions only, Christian,
Hindu or Muhammadan, which could all be assisted by state grants.
The various provincial governments had in respect of education
become "a sort of heptarchy in the land”. They needed inspiration
by a common principle and direction to a common aim. A measure
of the inadequate consideration which had been given to education
at headquarters was the fact that it was merely a sub-heading of the
work of the home department. Expert advice was needed to prevent
1 Cf. Ronaldshay, op. cit. chap. iii, and Times Literary Supplement, 11 February, 1932.
## p. 351 (#389) ############################################
THE UNIVERSITIES ACT OF 1904
351
the central government from “drifting about like a deserted hulk on
chopping seas”. He besought his hearers to realise that they were
“handling the life-blood of future generations”.
Action followed quickly on speech. The central government de-
clared that education must be a leading charge on the public funds,
and began a series of liberal grants to local governments on its behalf.
Private generosity and enterprise, the efforts of directors, inspectors
and teachers, were strongly stimulated. An inspector-general of
education was brought out from England and posted to headquarters.
A Universities Commission was appointed; and after much enquiry
and deliberation a Universities Bill was framed which became law in
1904 after acute controversy. It was a cautious measure, introducing
no radical change, but converting senates and syndicates into more
business-like bodies which contained majorities of educational experts,
leaving the training of undergraduate students mainly to the colleges,
but providing that the universities should themselves conduct post-
graduate courses of study. The senates were to tighten up conditions
for affiliation of colleges. They were to be responsible for courses,
textbooks and standards of examination. They were to propose to the
government regulations for the recognition of high schools and were
to pay attention to the conditions under which students and school-
boys were working. Vice-chancellors would be appointed by the
government; senates were to include directors of public instruction;
and in Calcutta the director would be a permanent member of the
syndicate. All affiliations and disaffiliations of colleges were to be
finally determined by the government; all professors, readers and
lecturers must be approved by it; and many details of university
policy were made subject to its supervision.
The commission was anxious that minimum fee rates should be
fixed for all colleges. This would have done something to restrict the
cut-throat competition which was going on in Bengal among managers
of private institutions with results disastrous to the youths concerned.
But the proposal excited so much clamour that (after Lord Curzon's
departure) it was dropped. The commission noted that the universities
possessed no machinery for inspecting high schools, and that at
Calcutta the syndicate had sometimes insisted on recognising new
venture schools "without due regard to the interests of sound
education and discipline”. It urged that the university should
recognise only schools recommended by the department of public
instruction, and this advice was in principle adopted in all provinces
but Bengal, where it was rejected, after Lord Curzon's departure,
because the managers of a large number of unaided schools declined
to admit departmental inspectors.
The commission regarded with apprehension the growing neglect
of the vernaculars and of Oriental classical languages, for a moral
danger was involved. It announced the rather tardy discovery that
## p. 352 (#390) ############################################
352
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
1
I
.
the literature of the West had its roots in a past in which Oriental
students had no part and was based upon beliefs and ideas which were
meaningless to them. It was desirable to promote diversified types of
secondary education corresponding with the varying needs of after-
life. The government considered that this object would best be attained
by instituting a school-leaving certificate based on class-work as well
as on a final examination, which would be alternative to the entrance
and would be recognised not only by private employers, who were
increasingly discounting the value of an entrance pass, but by the
government and the universities. It should afford evidence of char-
acter and of the general and practical capacity of a candidate.
Lord Curzon did much to broaden the whole basis of higher educa-
tion, and to initiate technical, industrial and commercial courses.
With the assistance of a donation of £30,000 from Mr H. Phipps, an
American gentleman, he established an agricultural college at Pusa,
in Bihar, which became the parent of similar institutions in other
provinces. He improved the chiefs' colleges; he inspired the depart-
ments of public instruction with fresh vitality and stimulated private
benevolence. But with all his splendid energy, he came twenty years
too lateus In the 'eighties he would have exercised a far more fruitful
and permanent influence on the subsequent course of education. As
things were, his very zeal inspired a belief that his real purpose was
to curb the increase of the restless English-educated. The cry went
forth that reaction was intended. Vested interests in private schools
and colleges bitterly protested. The partition of Bengal inflamed the
angry suspicion with which his university legislation was viewed in
that province and elsewhere.
He left India in November, 1905; and then followed years of
political and racial agitation due to various causes. The effect of the
Russo-Japanese War on Indian political thought, the gathering-in of
some of the harvest of the study of English history and literature, in-
creasing contact with an increasingly democratic Britain, combined
with the congested state of the bar, with rising prices which pressed
hardly on clerical and professional incomes, with a n st-growing
disproportion between applicants for and openings in government
service, with ill-disciplined schools and boycott propaganda, to
produce in Bengal an unprecedented ferment, which in a minor
degree affected the educated classes all over India. Senates, syndi-
cates, colleges, high schools, felt the contagion. Revolutionary litera-
ture and teaching were introduced into many of the far-flung, ill-
controlled colleges and schools of Bengal with marked effect; racial
animosity was constantly preached by press and platform. But while
the tide of impatience of British rule was rising among the English-
educated, the appetite for Western knowledge rapidly intensified.
There was a loud call for more expenditure not only on higher,
but also on technical and vocational education. To this demand
## p. 353 (#391) ############################################
LATER TROUBLES
353
a
.
the government made strenuous endeavours to respond. In 1910
education was transferred from the supervision of the home depart-
ment of the central government to a new and separate department.
In 1913 Sir Harcourt Butler, the first education member of the
governor-general's council, published a resolution laying down care-
fully considered lines for advance and expansion. Money was to be
freely forthcoming; and although the war intervened, expenditure in
1916–17 from imperial, provincial and local funds rose to 614·10 lakhs,
more than double the figure of 1906–7. Private enterprise on the part
of missionary and other societies, of school and college committees,
and of benevolent individuals, swelled the total outlay of 1916–17 to
1128-83 lakhs. Numerical progress was marked in many directions. .
Sir Henry Sharp's quinquennial review for 1912–17 brings out in no
uncertain fashion the persevering efforts of the government to guide
and stimulate genuine advance, to broaden the whole basis of public
instruction by establishing agricultural colleges, engineering, com-
mercial, weaving, mining, carpentry and leather-work schools. The
obstacles, however, were real. Sir Henry Sharp insists strongly on the
fact that quality in industrial education must depend upon quality
in school-work. 1 And here it is that all the old difficulties were and
still are rampant.
Nowhere have these been more clearly or authoritatively defined
than in the Interim (Education) Report of the Statutory Commission recently
published. As the commission points out, it is comparatively easy to
vote money and to secure plausible figures of numerical progress in
attendance at primary classes. But to spend that money to solid
practical advantage in pursuance of a well-directed policy carried out
by efficient agencies is not so easy. And to secure that a large increase
in numbers of pupils attending primary schools produces a com-
mensurate increase in literacy is harder still, for at present compara-
tively few of these pupils stay long enough at school to reach a stage
in which the attainment of literacy may be expected.
Under present conditions of rural life, and with the lack of suitable vernacular
literature, a child has very little chance of attaining literacy after leaving school;
and indeed, evca for the literate, there are many chances of relapse into illiteracy:
The wastage in the case of girls is even more serious than in the case of boys. ?
The whole system of secondary education, although in some respects
improved, is still dominated by the ideal that every boy who enters a
secondary school should prepare himself for the university; "and the
immense numbers of failures at matriculation and in the university
examinations indicate a great waste of effort”. After noticing im-
provements in the universities, the commission observes :
But the theory that a university exists mainly, if not solely, to pass students
through examinations still finds too large acceptance in India; and we wish that
there were more signs that the universities regarded the training of broad-minded,
1 Sharp, Review, p. 155.
· Interim Report, p. 345. Cf. also pp. 150–83.
23
CHIVI
## p. 354 (#392) ############################################
354
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
tolerant and self-reliant citizens as one of their primary functions. They have been
hampered in their work by being over-crowded with students who are not fitted
by capacity for university education and of whom many would be far more likely
to succeed in other careers.
These words were written ten years after the close of our period.
Since January, 1921, education has been entrusted to the charge of
ministers in the major provinces. The central government has stood
aside. But the old problems are as formidable as ever. As regards
financial obstacles, there is no reason to suppose that any parlia-
mentary government in India, government in which one group would
compete for popularity with another group, would care to raise money
by fresh taxation. But the difficulties are not only financial. On
28 January, 1926, a debate took place in the Legislative Assembly at
Delhi on a resolution moved by a private member requesting the
central government to investigate unemployment among the middle
classes and suggest remedies. The government was told that its duty
was “to remove the causes of this discontent and grapple with this
evil”; but the most notable contribution to the discussion was the
speech of Mr Bipin Chandra Pal, a Bengal nationalist leader, who
frankly said that the mentality of the middle classes was very largely
the cause of middle-class unemployment. “We must change our social
system, we must change our system of education, and we must induce
our young men not to avoid, even if they do detest, manual labour.
That is the real difficulty. ” Truer words were never spoken; but the
assimilation of such ideas must be a slow and arduous process. The
solution of such problems rests with Indians themselves.
A feature of our own times has been the considerable growth in the
number of Indian students who finish their education abroad and
particularly in Britain.
WESTERN INFLUENCES
341
1
tions for government and other employ. This desire was everywhere
the powerful influence which, more rapidly in some provinces than
in others, was moulding the future. Education was in demand mainly
as a channel for employment, and a knowledge of English was the
royal road which led to the most lucrative positions and professions.
The total cost of education in 1865-6 was estimated at Rs. 8,217,669,
but of this sum Rs. 4,529,580 only came from imperial funds. The
rest was supplied by local sources "such as education cesses, school
fees, private endowments, subscriptions". But information regarding
expenditure on private institutions was neither exhaustive nor re-
liable. Special rules had been framed to regulate grants-in-aid to
schools designed for the instruction of European and Eurasian
children.
In this connection we may just now particularly recall Lord
Canning's words:
The Eurasian class have a special claim upon us. The presence of a British
government has called them into being;. . . and they are a class which, while it
draws little or no support from its connection with England, is without that deep
root in and hold of the soil of India from which our native public servants, through
their families and relatives, derive advantage. "
The state educational system was only one side of a process which
was rapidly spreading abroad Western culture and ideas. The scene
had indeed changed since the days when crowds assembled, with
the law's permission, to see widows burnt alive, and missionaries
sought refuge in Danish territory, when dacoits exercised a “horrid
ascendancy” over large tracts of country, and “thags” were able to
"glory in their achievements as acts pleasing to a deity”. 2 Elaborate
and carefully considered codes of substantive law and procedure,
criminal and civil, were coming gradually into force and were begin-
ning to exercise a powerful influence over thought. In the seaports,
in the provincial capitals, in the historic cities inland, a new India
was growing up, an India of railways and telegraphs, of law courts
and lawyers, of newspapers and examinations. Extending communi-
cations, widening commerce, developing industries were increasing
the European population. The railways were mainly manned by
European officials; road-surveyors, contractors, tradesmen, custom-
house officers were multiplying. Assam and the slopes of the Hima-
layas abounded with tea-planters, Tirhut and Lower Bengal with
indigo-planters. The Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Irawadi, the
Ganges to some extent, and the whole coast from Calcutta to Persia
on the one side, and to the Straits on the other, were navigated by
steamers under British commanders. The seaports and large cities
contained many families of mixed race, many European and Eurasian
>
· Quoted ap. Croft, Review of Education in India, p. 294. Cf. Calcutta Review, xLU, 57-93.
• Cf. chaps. ii and vii, supra.
## p. 342 (#380) ############################################
342
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
children whose minds needed rescue from the perils of unrelieved
materialism. 1
The new times were better than the old; but they had brought many
problems of their own. While the demand for Western education was
widening rapidly among the Hindu professional classes, it continued
to run almost invariably into literary courses, particularly in Bengal;
and the avenues to government service, the bar, teaching and jour-
nalism were gradually becoming thronged. The land-holders, on the
other hand, who had hitherto been the natural leaders of the people,
were slow to grasp new opportunities; the martial classes, who had
always been held in high social estimation, were equally indifferent;
and the masses themselves, in spite of much earnest effort on the part
of educational officers, up to the very end of our period, remained
chiefly and persistently illiterate. Even in 1919, although no longer
hostile to primary education, they were “lukewarm in its support and
seldom pressed for its extension". 3 Only 2. 4 per cent. were enrolled
in primary schools, and only 2. 8 were undergoing elementary educa-
tion of any kind. Even when allowance is made for the great increase
of population between 1860 and 1918 these figures are impressive.
Mass education was and is mainly a rural problem. - À villager
who sought the law courts hired a petition-writer and a pleader; if he
visited a shop he ascertained prices by enquiry. On the very rare
occasions on which he wished to send or decipher a letter, he obtained
the assistance of his village accountant or a professional scribe. “The
uselessness of education to such people”, wrote a school inspector
from the province of Oudh in 1883,
is proved by the fact, of which there is overwhelming evidence in every town or
village where a school has been established, that the great majority of o'ır ex-
students, in less than 10 years after leaving school, can neither read, nor write, nor
cipher, and that the sharpest among them are not able to do more than compose
a very simple letter, or decipher some 50 words out of 100 in a few lines of print.
From having nothing to read, having no occasion to write, and no accounts to
keep, they gradually forget whatever they learn, and are as ignorant as if they had
never been at school. There is no hope that knowledge will grow from more to more
so long as the daily life of the masses remains destitute of everything which can
afford scope to the utilisation of knowledge or engage the attention of an educated
man. 5
T'he writer based these observations on the assumption that the
agriculturist ex-student remained in his village and followed the
calling of his fathers.
If he goes elsewhere and enters into service or obtains clerical employment he
will find a use for his education. But government primary schools were not started
with the idea of seducing boys from their hereditary callings.
i Calcutta Review, XLII, 49. Cf. Strachey, India, pp. 10–11.
2 Cf. Forbes, Oriental Memoirs, 1, 341.
• Statement of Moral and Material Progress, 1917-18, p. 110.
• See Burn, Census Report on N. W. P. and Oudh, 1901, p. 160.
6 Nesfield, Calcutta Review, LXXVI, 356. Cf. Statement of Moral and Material Progress,
1925-6, p. 166.
## p. 343 (#381) ############################################
PRIMARY EDUCATION
343
It is certain that, while the cultivators often required cow and goat
herds in their open unfenced fields, they had solid reason for sup-
posing that, unless some particular opening presented itself, schooling
would prove an infructuous investment. If a parent embarked on it,
he did so in the hope that the boy would make education a stepping-
stone to service of some kind. To this expectation the new village
schools owed such vitality as they possessed. The old indigenous
elementary schools had been established by particular classes for
particular purposes in response to religious or business needs. Their
studies were of the humblest and most conservative character. They
were not looked on as paths to any particularly desirable employment.
The new schools offered fresh possibilities but. frequently led to dis-
appointment. A report by J. C. Nesfield, inspector of schools in the
North-Western Provinces, quoted in Croft's Review for the year 1886,2
illustrates this aspect of affairs.
"In one school", he writes, “there was a boy of the Kurmi caste, which is one of
the most industrious agricultural castes in Upper India. He had passed a very good
examination in the highest standard of village schools; after telling him that he had
now completed all that a village school could give him, I enquired what occupation
he intended to follow. His answer at once was—'Service; what else? ' I advised
him to revert to agriculture, as there was scarcely any chance of his getting literary
employment; but at this piece of advice he seemed to be surprised and even angry.
At another school I met a Pasi, a semi-hunting caste, much lower in every respect
than that of the Kurmi. He was a boy of quick understanding and had completed
the village school course in Nagari as well as Urdu, and could read and write both
characters with equal facility. He asked me what he was to do next. I could hardly
tell him to go back to pig-rearing, trapping birds, and digging vermin out of the
earth ! or food; and yet I scarcely saw what other opening was in store for him.
At another school there was the son of a chuhar, or village sweeper, a caste the
lowest of all the castes properly so called. He was asked with others to write an
original composition on the comparative advantages of trade and service as a
career. He expressed a decided preference for trade. Yet who would enter into
mercantile transactions with a sweeper even if a man of that caste could be started
in such a calling? Everything that he touches would be considered as polluted;
and no one would buy grain or cloth from his shop, if he could buy them from any
other. There seems to be no opening in store for this very intelligent youth but that
of scavengering, mat-making, trapping, etc. , all of which are far below the more
cultivated tastes he has acquired by attending school. And in such pursuits he is
not likely to evince the same degree of skill or enjoy the same contentment as one
who has grown up wholly illiterate. In these and such like ways the attempts made
by the government to raise the condition of the masses and place new facilities of
self-advancement within their reach, are thwarted by the absence of opportunities
and by the caste prejudices of the country. ”
In all provinces too the admission of low-caste boys into schools
attended by the sons of higher-caste Hindus was strongly resented.
So powerful was the feeling aroused that the commission of 1882,
whose labours will be noticed further on, holding that “no principle,
however sound, could be forced on an unwilling society in defiance
of their social and religious sentiments", recommended that separate
Chailley, Administrative Problems of British India, p. 491; Interim Report of the Indian
Statutory Commission, p. 37.
* Croft, op. cit. p. 231.
>
## p. 344 (#382) ############################################
344
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
schools should be opened for low-caste boys wherever they could be
induced to attend in sufficient number. The education of the children,
of the six millions of aborigines who were to be found in Bengal,
Bombay and the Central Provinces was left to the missionaries. No
one else was inclined to prepare grammars or dictionaries of the
non-Aryan languages.
The workers in the great field of public instruction might well ask
for time, might well beg that their efforts should not be hag-ridden
by impetuosity and constant demands for numerical results. In fact,
too, despite all obstacles, education in its broadest sense did progress
among the masses as English influences rolled on over the surface of
India. The most powerful teacher was the railway which, despite
some gloomy prophecies, had attained immediate popularity and
necessarily tended to break down the barriers of ages, to stimulate
movement, and exchange of thought. In railway carriages Brahmans
and Sudras, Muslims and Sikhs, peasants and townsmen sat side by
side. As early even as 1867–8 the total number of railway passengers
was 13,746,000, of whom 95 per cent. travelled third class. Reflection,
observation, interest in the outside world were stimulated; journeys
from villages to towns, emigration from India itself became more
common; life and property grew more secure; new impulses were
given to commerce, to industry and to agriculture. It should not be
forgotten that to English capital India owes the sinews of her railway
development.
English education advanced rapidly among the literary and pro-
fessional castes of Hindus. Voyages to England were cheaper and
easier, and venturesome youths began to finish their studies in that
country. The pioneers of this remarkable movement which has ex-
tended rapidly in our own time were four Hindu students of the
Calcutta Medical College who, braving social obstacles, embarked
for England in March, 1845, under the charge of one of their pro-
fessors, Dr H. H. Goodeve, were entered as pupils at University
College, London, and achieved distinguished success. Thirty years
later, recognising the trend of events, a few prominent Muhammadans
in the North-Western Provinces under the leadership of Maulvi
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, afterwards Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, banded
themselves together for the purpose of breaking down Muhammadan
aversion to Western learning. In 1871 the government of Lord Mayo
had initiated measures for this purpose; 4 and now the cause was taken
up in earnest by Muslims themselves under the inspiring influence of
a vigorous and outstanding personality. In 1871 they began to collect
funds; and in 1875 Sayyid Ahmad opened a high school for Muham-
1 Cf. Hansard, 8 July, 1927, pp. 1638-9.
2 Marshman, "Indian Railways" (Quarterly Review, cxxv, 60).
• Calcutta Review, XLII, 120; also Banerjee, A Nation in the Making, p. 10.
• Mahmud, English Education in India, chaps. xxiv, xxvii.
## p. 345 (#383) ############################################
ALIGARH
345
madans at Aligarh. In 1878 the school was raised to a second-grade
college and affiliated to the Calcutta University. At first Sayyid
Ahmad was fiercely opposed by conservative Muhammadans. But,
strongly encouraged by the government, he triumphed over all
obstacles. Princes and nobles, Muslim and Hindu, offered munificent
endowments. Viceroys and lieutenant-governors came forward as
benefactors.
While primarily intended for Muhammadans, and insisting on
religious instruction for its Muslim students, the Muhammadan
Anglo-Oriental College admitted pupils of all faiths, and after ten
years of struggle became a highly esteemed seat of education. It
started with an English and an Oriental department. In the former
all subjects were taught in English, and Arabic, Persian or Sanskrit
was taken up as a second language; in the latter either Arabic or
Persian literature was studied; history, geography, mathematics, etc.
were taught in Urdu, while English was a second language. The
commission of 1882 reported that the Oriental department attracted
hardly any students. The principal of the college and the headmaster
of the school were both Europeans. "
The obstacles to the spread of female education have been described
in a previous chapter. These had hardly lessened with time and are
strong even now. In 1882 it was ascertained that the percentage of
girls at school to girls of a school-going age was •85 for all India,
1. 59 for Bombay, 1•50 for Madras, •80 for Bengal, . 72 for the Panjab
and •28 for the North-Western Provinces. From 1823 to 1851 female
education in Bombay had engaged the attention of the missionaries.
Then the Parsi and the Hindu merchants of Gujarat had taken the
matter up, and their example had been followed by certain Maratha
chiefs. Since 1871 the Bombay Government had been endeavouring
to collect an efficient staff of female teachers. In Madras, too,
missionaries had led the way. Indian societies had followed. In
Northern as well as in Southern India, missionary societies were the
pioneers and in 1882 were still foremost. But progress was very slow.
There was a great dearth of female teachers due to an impression that
such a calling could not be pursued by a modest woman. *
As the aristocracy and titled classes were disinclined to allow their
sons to associate with the scholars and students of government schools,
regarding them as their social inferiors, Lord Mayo initiated the
establishment of chiefs' colleges, making known to the Rajput nobles
in durbar at Ajmer his strong desire to establish in that city a college
“for the sons and relatives of the chiefs, nobles, and principal thakurs
of Rajputana”,5 A liberal endowment fund was subscribed; the
1 Mahmud, op. cit. pp. 163-4 n.
: Cf. The Statutory Commission's Interim Report, pp. 150-83.
• Report of 1882 Commission, PP. 525, 5357 Report of 1882 Commission, p. 487.
• Burn, op. cil. p. 160.
## p. 346 (#384) ############################################
346
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
1
government gave an equivalent sum, and the Mayo College at Ajmer
under carefully selected British principals proved a remarkable
success. Similar in character though smaller in scale was the Rajaram
College at Kathiawar. Other colleges started special classes for the
sons of native chiefs and large landed proprietors. All these innova-
tions were designed to encourage good education, “a healthy tone
and manly habits” among the sons of chiefs and nobles. But even so
the cadets of aristocratic or opulent families were frequently brought
up to lead idle lives.
In struggling to carry out the policy laid down in 1854, the govern-
ment found it necessary more than once to pause and take stock of
conditions and tendencies. This was done by means of commissions
appointed with the concurrence of the secretary of state. The first
education commission was charged by Lord Ripon's government in
1882 with the duty of enquiring into “the manner in which effect had
been given to the principles of the dispatch of 1854, and of suggesting
such measures as might seem desirable. in order to further carrying
out of the policy laid down therein”. The principal object of enquiry
was to be the present state of elementary education and the means
by which this can everywhere be extended and improved". 1 The
general operation of the universities was withdrawn from the field of
investigation, but the work carried on in the colleges was to be
reviewed. The commission, which was highly officialised, consisted of
twenty-two members (British and Indian) under the late Sir William
Hunter as president. Nearly 200 witnesses were examined: over 300
memorials were presented: 222 resolutions were passed, 180 unani-
mously. The main conclusions of the commission were that while
higher and secondary education was popular and successful among
the middle classes, particularly in Bengal, primary education needed
the strongest encouragement and should be declared "that part of the
system of public instruction which possesses an almost exclusive claim
on provincial revenues”. It might well be provided, irrespective of
private co-operation, by the state or by the local self-government
boards, district and municipal, which were then taking more definite
shape and assuming new responsibilities. The means of secondary
education, on the other hand, should ordinarily be provided only
where local or private co-operation was forthcoming.
The commission was favourably impressed by the results of grants-
in-aid in Bengal where for one high school maintained by government
there were three, two aided and one unaided, established by private
effort, and only a few English middle schools supported wholly by
the state. In the hope that, as had happened in England, Western
education in India would lead to increased industrialism and there-
fore to fresh opportunities of employment, it recommended the in-
1 Resolution of the Government of India, Home Dept. (Education), Nos. 1-60,
3 February, 1882, para. 8.
.
$
## p. 347 (#385) ############################################
THE HUNTER COMMISSION
347
stitution of school-courses alternative to the established “entrance"
course, and including subjects chosen with a view to the requirements
of commercial and industrial pursuits. Anxious to de-officialise higher
education as far as possible and to render it self-dependent, it advised
that all secondary schools should be made over to private manage-
ment whenever this could be done without lowering the standard or
diminishing the supply of instruction, and that the managers of aided
schools and colleges should be allowed to charge fees lower than those
payable at state schools of the same class. At the same time it urged
that, whatever withdrawal there might be from direct supervision of
education, there should be none from indirect but efficient control.
But “only in cases of extreme necessity" should private schools be
interfered with.
In effect it recommended that system of cheap, un-
controlled venture schools, which has done so much to lower the
standard of education in Bengal.
The commission proposed special measures for encouraging educa-
tion among Muhammadans. It considered that all elementary schools
should be subject to the inspection and supervision of the govern-
ment's educational officers, but should be made over to the care of
district and municipal boards, whose educational responsibilities
should be defined by legislation. It pointed out the importance of
physical education as well as mental, and considered that although
religious teaching must be excluded from the government schools,
something should be done, in response to a widespread feeling, to
develop the sense of right and wrong in the minds of scholars of all
grades. After long debate, it resolved by a narrow majority, (a) that
an attempt should be made to prepare a moral textbook based upon
“the fundamental principles of natural religion” and suitable for use
by teachers in all government and other colleges; (b) that the principal
or one of the professors in each government or aided college should
deliver to each college class in every session a series of lectures “on the
duties of a man and a citizen”. But these suggestions were severely
criticised by the various local governments and were rejected by the
Government of India and by Lord Kimberley, secretary of state. The
general trend of criticism is indicated by the words of Sir Alfred Lyall,
lieutenant-governor of the North-Western Provinces. It was, he wrote,
no part of the functions of the Government of India to draw up a code
or morality, and issue it officially for the instruction of students, since
these could hardly be charged with ignorance of the commonly
accepted code of civilised communities, or with an acceptance of
principles contrary to that code. The objcction to instituting courses
of lectures on the duties of a man and citizen was that possibly no two
professors would agree as to what these duties were; and it was clearly
undesirable to introduce into schools and colleges discussions on
subjects that opened qut a very wide field of debate. 2
· Cf. Croft, op. cit. p. 330; Mahmud, op. cit. chap. xxii. • Croft, op. cit. p. 332.
a
.
## p. 348 (#386) ############################################
348
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
The majority of the commission's recommendations were accepted
by the Government of India. In 1886 a Public Services Commission
was appointed which divided the educational department into three
branches-imperial, provincial and subordinate. The first of these
would be recruited in England and called the Indian Educational
Service;' the second and third would be recruited in India. In effect,
while stimulating a devolution of control to local boards and school
committees, the government in spite of criticism” reduced the British
element in both its inspecting and its teaching agencies. The process
was carried far in Bengal. In Madras, under the able twelve-years'
direction of the late H. B. Grigg, devolution to local bodies worked
well. But nowhere else were municipal and district boards disposed
to spend much money on elementary education. 3
The labours of the over-burdened Calcutta University were lightened
by the formation of the Panjab University in 1882 and the Allahabad
University in 1887. Both were examining bodies. The former differed
from its elder sisters in possessing a faculty of Oriental learning and
in conducting proficiency and high proficiency examinations in
vernacular languages. It owed its origin to a college established at
Lahore in 1869 in part fulfilment of the wishes of chiefs, nobles and
prominent men of the Panjab and with the aid of their contributions.
The Allahabad University developed from a college opened originally
in a hired building by Sir William Muir, lieutenant-governor of the
North-Western Provinces, in 1872. It awarded degrees to students in
affiliated colleges and possessed no faculty of Oriental languages,
although Sir William Muir had asked for one. But these provinces
already possessed the famous Queen's College at Benares, where
Sanskrit was regularly taught by a staff of learned Brahmans; and
examinations were held to which students were admitted who came
from affiliated institutions situate within and without the provincial
boundaries.
Between 1886 and 1901 college students throughout India increased
from 11,501 to 23,009, and pupils in secondary schools from 429,093
to 633,728. English games had reached Indian schools and soon
achieved popularity. But English professors and inspectors became
fewer although Anglo-vernacular schools multiplied in Bengal and
increased elsewhere. English was thus more and more taught by men
to whom it was a foreign tongue, with results which were highly
creditable to the ability and industry of the learners, but unsatisfactory
in various respects. In the private venture schools of Bengal teachers
were underpaid and teaching suffered. Everywhere education was
largely memorisation of textbooks. A century earlier Charles Grant
1 Seton, India Office, p. 144.
2 Chirol, Indian Unrest, p. xiv.
: Cf. Report of Calcutia University Commission, 1, 54.
• See Satthianadhan, op. cit. pp. 284, 289.
5 Ronaldshay, Heart of Aryavarta, chap. i; Sayyid Amir Ali Bilgrami, English Education in
India, p. 35.
## p. 349 (#387) ############################################
CURZON'S POLICY
349
had wisely urged the importance of teaching the principles of me-
chanics and their application to "agriculture and the useful arts”.
The authors of the 1854 dispatch had not forgotten this counsel. But
the passion for literary courses of study had even then acquired a
strong momentum which gathered force as time went on. 1 Outlay
on education by the government and local boards rose from 132. 82
lakhs of rupees in 1885 to 177. 04 lakhs in 1901; but the general
tendency to regard schooling simply as a means of qualifying for
clerical or professional employment retarded primary instruction
among the masses. At this juncture a governor-general arrived who
combined enthusiastic idealism with abounding energy and great
insight into the details of administration. Fearing no problem, how-
ever thorny, he gradually set himself to grapple with the thorniest
problem of all.
Toward the close of his third year of office, after examining the
whole educational field with elaborate care, Lord Curzon summoned
the principal officers of the educational department to meet him at
Simla in September, 1901. There he reviewed the situation with
characteristic thoroughness and trenchancy, claiming that the suc-
cesses of imparting English education to India had been immeasurably
greater than the mistakes and blunders. 2 Moral and intellectual
standards had been raised, and might be raised still higher. But we
had started by too slavish an imitation of English models, and had
never purged ourselves of that taint. Examinations too had been
pushed to an unhealthy excess. Students were being crammed with
undigested knowledge. Teachers were obsessed with percentages,
passes and tabulated results. The various provincial systems of public
instruction were not inspired by unity of aim, and showed misdirection
and wastage of force which must be laid to the charge of the central
government.
The universities were merely examining bodies. The colleges were
for the most part collections of lecture-rooms, class-rooms and
laboratories flung far and wide over great provinces, bound to each
other by no tie of common feeling and to the university by no tie of
filial reverence. Greater unity should be infused into these jarring
atoms and higher education should be inspired by nobler ideals.
Hostels or boarding-houses should be adequately provided for colleges
in large towns and should be subject to systematic inspection. Senates
and syndicates should be reformed and converted into business-like
bodies containing a sufficiently strong element of experts. Academic
standards needed to be raised. Yet he had been invited after Queen
Victoria's death to celebrate her memory by lowering examination
standards all round. Secondary education presented more encouraging
features than university education. The demand for English teaching
· Cf. Report of the Education Commission, 1882, p. 281.
· Cf. Raleigh, Lord Curzon in India, pp. 313-39.
## p. 350 (#388) ############################################
350
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
was increasing; schools were being started to meet it, and the income
from fees therein obtained was rising. On the other hand the middle-
class public still attached a superior commercial value to literary
courses, which often led to nothing because they had not been
sufficiently practical or co-ordinated with technical or commercial
instruction in an advanced stage.
Primary education, the teaching of the masses in the vernacular
had shrivelled and pined since the cold breath of Macaulay's
rhetoric
passed over the field of the Indian languages and textbooks. This was
a mistake. Not only did the vernaculars in no way deserve such
neglect, for they contained literary treasures; but the greatest of all
dangers in India was ignorance. As the masses gained knowledge, so
would they be happier and become more useful members of the body
politic. Yet we had rushed ahead with English education and left the
vernaculars standing at the post. Both were equally the duty and
the care of the government; but it must be admitted that the main
obstacles to a spread of primary education sprang from the people
themselves.
In this part of his speech Lord Curzon hardly did justice to his
predecessors. From 1854 onwards the government had endeavoureo
to encourage the diffusion of knowledge through the vernaculars
This aim had been thwarted by the stolid conservatism of the masses
by the limitations imposed by the caste-system, and by the zeal of the
Indian, and especially of the Bengali, middle classes for a Western
education that offered new interests, new hopes, and more ambitious
prospects. The vernaculars too had not remained stagnant. On the
contrary, vernacular prose had profited by English influences. 1
For technical education, that practical instruction which qualifies
a man for the practice of some handicraft or industry or profession,
Lord Curzon considered that much more might be done on more
business-like principles. Female education, too, was extremely back-
ward. Moderate as was the attendance of boys at school, only one
girl attended for every ten boys, and only 2 ) per cent. of girls of a
school-going age. As regards moral teaching for the young generally,
books could do something but teachers could do more. Competent
teachers, selected for character and ability, able to maintain discipline
and devoted to their work, were the main essential. Religious in-
struction must be carried on in private institutions only, Christian,
Hindu or Muhammadan, which could all be assisted by state grants.
The various provincial governments had in respect of education
become "a sort of heptarchy in the land”. They needed inspiration
by a common principle and direction to a common aim. A measure
of the inadequate consideration which had been given to education
at headquarters was the fact that it was merely a sub-heading of the
work of the home department. Expert advice was needed to prevent
1 Cf. Ronaldshay, op. cit. chap. iii, and Times Literary Supplement, 11 February, 1932.
## p. 351 (#389) ############################################
THE UNIVERSITIES ACT OF 1904
351
the central government from “drifting about like a deserted hulk on
chopping seas”. He besought his hearers to realise that they were
“handling the life-blood of future generations”.
Action followed quickly on speech. The central government de-
clared that education must be a leading charge on the public funds,
and began a series of liberal grants to local governments on its behalf.
Private generosity and enterprise, the efforts of directors, inspectors
and teachers, were strongly stimulated. An inspector-general of
education was brought out from England and posted to headquarters.
A Universities Commission was appointed; and after much enquiry
and deliberation a Universities Bill was framed which became law in
1904 after acute controversy. It was a cautious measure, introducing
no radical change, but converting senates and syndicates into more
business-like bodies which contained majorities of educational experts,
leaving the training of undergraduate students mainly to the colleges,
but providing that the universities should themselves conduct post-
graduate courses of study. The senates were to tighten up conditions
for affiliation of colleges. They were to be responsible for courses,
textbooks and standards of examination. They were to propose to the
government regulations for the recognition of high schools and were
to pay attention to the conditions under which students and school-
boys were working. Vice-chancellors would be appointed by the
government; senates were to include directors of public instruction;
and in Calcutta the director would be a permanent member of the
syndicate. All affiliations and disaffiliations of colleges were to be
finally determined by the government; all professors, readers and
lecturers must be approved by it; and many details of university
policy were made subject to its supervision.
The commission was anxious that minimum fee rates should be
fixed for all colleges. This would have done something to restrict the
cut-throat competition which was going on in Bengal among managers
of private institutions with results disastrous to the youths concerned.
But the proposal excited so much clamour that (after Lord Curzon's
departure) it was dropped. The commission noted that the universities
possessed no machinery for inspecting high schools, and that at
Calcutta the syndicate had sometimes insisted on recognising new
venture schools "without due regard to the interests of sound
education and discipline”. It urged that the university should
recognise only schools recommended by the department of public
instruction, and this advice was in principle adopted in all provinces
but Bengal, where it was rejected, after Lord Curzon's departure,
because the managers of a large number of unaided schools declined
to admit departmental inspectors.
The commission regarded with apprehension the growing neglect
of the vernaculars and of Oriental classical languages, for a moral
danger was involved. It announced the rather tardy discovery that
## p. 352 (#390) ############################################
352
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
1
I
.
the literature of the West had its roots in a past in which Oriental
students had no part and was based upon beliefs and ideas which were
meaningless to them. It was desirable to promote diversified types of
secondary education corresponding with the varying needs of after-
life. The government considered that this object would best be attained
by instituting a school-leaving certificate based on class-work as well
as on a final examination, which would be alternative to the entrance
and would be recognised not only by private employers, who were
increasingly discounting the value of an entrance pass, but by the
government and the universities. It should afford evidence of char-
acter and of the general and practical capacity of a candidate.
Lord Curzon did much to broaden the whole basis of higher educa-
tion, and to initiate technical, industrial and commercial courses.
With the assistance of a donation of £30,000 from Mr H. Phipps, an
American gentleman, he established an agricultural college at Pusa,
in Bihar, which became the parent of similar institutions in other
provinces. He improved the chiefs' colleges; he inspired the depart-
ments of public instruction with fresh vitality and stimulated private
benevolence. But with all his splendid energy, he came twenty years
too lateus In the 'eighties he would have exercised a far more fruitful
and permanent influence on the subsequent course of education. As
things were, his very zeal inspired a belief that his real purpose was
to curb the increase of the restless English-educated. The cry went
forth that reaction was intended. Vested interests in private schools
and colleges bitterly protested. The partition of Bengal inflamed the
angry suspicion with which his university legislation was viewed in
that province and elsewhere.
He left India in November, 1905; and then followed years of
political and racial agitation due to various causes. The effect of the
Russo-Japanese War on Indian political thought, the gathering-in of
some of the harvest of the study of English history and literature, in-
creasing contact with an increasingly democratic Britain, combined
with the congested state of the bar, with rising prices which pressed
hardly on clerical and professional incomes, with a n st-growing
disproportion between applicants for and openings in government
service, with ill-disciplined schools and boycott propaganda, to
produce in Bengal an unprecedented ferment, which in a minor
degree affected the educated classes all over India. Senates, syndi-
cates, colleges, high schools, felt the contagion. Revolutionary litera-
ture and teaching were introduced into many of the far-flung, ill-
controlled colleges and schools of Bengal with marked effect; racial
animosity was constantly preached by press and platform. But while
the tide of impatience of British rule was rising among the English-
educated, the appetite for Western knowledge rapidly intensified.
There was a loud call for more expenditure not only on higher,
but also on technical and vocational education. To this demand
## p. 353 (#391) ############################################
LATER TROUBLES
353
a
.
the government made strenuous endeavours to respond. In 1910
education was transferred from the supervision of the home depart-
ment of the central government to a new and separate department.
In 1913 Sir Harcourt Butler, the first education member of the
governor-general's council, published a resolution laying down care-
fully considered lines for advance and expansion. Money was to be
freely forthcoming; and although the war intervened, expenditure in
1916–17 from imperial, provincial and local funds rose to 614·10 lakhs,
more than double the figure of 1906–7. Private enterprise on the part
of missionary and other societies, of school and college committees,
and of benevolent individuals, swelled the total outlay of 1916–17 to
1128-83 lakhs. Numerical progress was marked in many directions. .
Sir Henry Sharp's quinquennial review for 1912–17 brings out in no
uncertain fashion the persevering efforts of the government to guide
and stimulate genuine advance, to broaden the whole basis of public
instruction by establishing agricultural colleges, engineering, com-
mercial, weaving, mining, carpentry and leather-work schools. The
obstacles, however, were real. Sir Henry Sharp insists strongly on the
fact that quality in industrial education must depend upon quality
in school-work. 1 And here it is that all the old difficulties were and
still are rampant.
Nowhere have these been more clearly or authoritatively defined
than in the Interim (Education) Report of the Statutory Commission recently
published. As the commission points out, it is comparatively easy to
vote money and to secure plausible figures of numerical progress in
attendance at primary classes. But to spend that money to solid
practical advantage in pursuance of a well-directed policy carried out
by efficient agencies is not so easy. And to secure that a large increase
in numbers of pupils attending primary schools produces a com-
mensurate increase in literacy is harder still, for at present compara-
tively few of these pupils stay long enough at school to reach a stage
in which the attainment of literacy may be expected.
Under present conditions of rural life, and with the lack of suitable vernacular
literature, a child has very little chance of attaining literacy after leaving school;
and indeed, evca for the literate, there are many chances of relapse into illiteracy:
The wastage in the case of girls is even more serious than in the case of boys. ?
The whole system of secondary education, although in some respects
improved, is still dominated by the ideal that every boy who enters a
secondary school should prepare himself for the university; "and the
immense numbers of failures at matriculation and in the university
examinations indicate a great waste of effort”. After noticing im-
provements in the universities, the commission observes :
But the theory that a university exists mainly, if not solely, to pass students
through examinations still finds too large acceptance in India; and we wish that
there were more signs that the universities regarded the training of broad-minded,
1 Sharp, Review, p. 155.
· Interim Report, p. 345. Cf. also pp. 150–83.
23
CHIVI
## p. 354 (#392) ############################################
354
THE GROWTH OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY
tolerant and self-reliant citizens as one of their primary functions. They have been
hampered in their work by being over-crowded with students who are not fitted
by capacity for university education and of whom many would be far more likely
to succeed in other careers.
These words were written ten years after the close of our period.
Since January, 1921, education has been entrusted to the charge of
ministers in the major provinces. The central government has stood
aside. But the old problems are as formidable as ever. As regards
financial obstacles, there is no reason to suppose that any parlia-
mentary government in India, government in which one group would
compete for popularity with another group, would care to raise money
by fresh taxation. But the difficulties are not only financial. On
28 January, 1926, a debate took place in the Legislative Assembly at
Delhi on a resolution moved by a private member requesting the
central government to investigate unemployment among the middle
classes and suggest remedies. The government was told that its duty
was “to remove the causes of this discontent and grapple with this
evil”; but the most notable contribution to the discussion was the
speech of Mr Bipin Chandra Pal, a Bengal nationalist leader, who
frankly said that the mentality of the middle classes was very largely
the cause of middle-class unemployment. “We must change our social
system, we must change our system of education, and we must induce
our young men not to avoid, even if they do detest, manual labour.
That is the real difficulty. ” Truer words were never spoken; but the
assimilation of such ideas must be a slow and arduous process. The
solution of such problems rests with Indians themselves.
A feature of our own times has been the considerable growth in the
number of Indian students who finish their education abroad and
particularly in Britain.
