COLONIAL EDUCATION

AND INDIA 1781–1945

COLONIAL EDUCATION
AND INDIA 1781–1945

Edited by
Pramod K. Nayar

Volume III
Commentaries, Reports, Policy Documents
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 CONTENTS

VOLUME III COMMENTARIES, REPORTS, POLICY

DOCUMENTS

1 H.R. James, extracts from Education and Statesmanship

in India (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911),
74–91, 118–132 1

2 Indian Educational Policy, Being a Resolution Issued by

the Governor General in Council on the 21st February 1913
(Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1915), 1–47 19

3 A. H. Benton, extracts from Indian Moral Instruction and

Caste Problems (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1917),
1–10, 31–32, 92–112 43

4 Extracts from The Calcutta University Commission [Sadler]

Report (1919), Vol. 1: 19–30, 143–194, 318–326; Vol. 6: 2–6,
132–135, 169–171 67

5 Extracts from Village Education in India: The Report of a

Commission of Inquiry (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1920), 15–23, 66–74, 129–137 135

6 F. F. Monk, extracts from A History of Stephen’s College

(Delhi, Calcutta: YMCA, 1935), 3–15, 111–131, 188–199 150

v
 CONTENTS

7 Extracts from Progress of Education in India, 1937–1947:

Decennial Review [Sargent Report], Vol. I (Central Bureau
of Education-Ministry of Education, 1948), 155–160, 165–170,
231–240, 295–308 178

8 Sister Nivedita, extracts from Hints on National Education

in India (Calcutta: Brahmachari Ganendranath, 1923, 3rd edn),
6–65, 95–110 216

vi
 1
H.R. JAMES, EXTRACTS FROM
EDUCATION AND STATESMANSHIP
IN INDIA (LONDON: LONGMANS,
GREEN AND CO., 1911),
74–91, 118–132

XI

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

THE critics of State education in India are never weary of pointing out that its fatal
defect is the absence of any moral and religious basis. Among those who say this
are many whose attitude to educational effort in India is unquestionably friendly.
Thus the Times correspondent, though guarded and moderate in finding fault,
speaks of “the careless diffusion of an artificial system of education based none
too firmly on mere intellectualism, and bereft of all moral and religious sanction.”1
Mr. S. M. Mitra, another discerning critic of its weak points, says: “Knowledge has
been pursued without any regard for training in the moral virtues or in the devel-
opment of character.”2 Now these and all similar criticisms, friendly or otherwise,
must be admitted to have this much justification that all of us are agreed that the
strengthening of character is the most important side of education, and that as yet
we are far from satisfied with the degree of certainty we can feel that the education
being given in India is effective in shaping character rightly. Yet these criticisms,
like all the wise things that have been said about the moral and religious side of
education since education was spoken of at all in India, remain mere words, until it
has been shown practically how effect is to be given to this desire to give education
in India a stronger moral foundation. For, in point of fact, admirable things have
been reiterated about the importance of this side of education since quite the early
days. Even when Charles Grant in 1797, before ever there was any State educa-
tion at all, put forward his scheme for spreading the light of knowledge through
India by means of English, the aim which he put first was moral improvement on
the most comprehensive scale. “We now proceed,” he writes, “to the main object
of this work—for the sake of which all the preceding topics and discussions have
been brought forward—an inquiry into the means of remedying disorders which
have become inveterate in the state of society among our Asiatic subjects, which

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destroy their happiness and obstruct every species of improvement among them.”
He lays stress in particular on the effects of seeing “a pure, complete, and perfect
system of morals and of duty enforced by the most awful sanctions and recom-
mended by the most interesting motives.” Moral improvement is equally suggested
by Lord Minto in 1811 as a reason for the restoration of Oriental learning. “Little
doubt can be entertained,” says the resolution, “that the prevalence of the crimes
of perjury and forgery so frequently noticed in the official records, is in great mea-
sure ascribable, both in Mahomedans and Hindus, to the want of instruction in the
moral and religious tenets of their respective faiths. It has been even suggested, and
apparently not without foundation, that to this uncultivated state of the minds of
the natives is in a great degree to be ascribed the prevalence of those crimes which
were recently a scourge to the country.”
The primary object of the foundation of the Hindu College was no doubt to
impart knowledge, the new knowledge of the West, which gave to Western nations
their extraordinary superiority in the practical concerns of life. But David Hare
was one of its first founders, and his connection with the college was undoubtedly
moral in its nature. The close personal influence of such a man while he lived (he
died in 1842) could not be without its effects. Indeed, its effects are living and
visible to the present day in that cult of his memory which leads Hindus, alien in
race and religion, to meet together on the anniversary of his death to do honour
to his virtues and keep green the remembrance of his benefactions. Gratitude is a
moral quality, and in this instance it has survived death.
No doubt also Macaulay’s enthusiasm is for “intellectual improvement;” and
his faith is that the way of improvement lies through the learning of English and
the study of European literature. But it would be unfair to suppose that this zeal
for pure knowledge and the impetus to educational effort which followed it are
divorced from moral ideas. They were, on the contrary, inspired by an essentially
moral idea, the idea of a general elevation in civilization. All that may fairly be
said in criticism of Macaulay’s standpoint is that it was too easily assumed that
more accurate knowledge would necessarily bring with it moral improvement and
happiness. Yet there was definite moral instruction in Government institutions
under the auspices of the General Committee after 1840. In that year Mr. Cam-
eron, then a member of the committee, and from 1842 to 1847 its President, wrote
in a Minute on the importance of moral training: “In most countries morality
is taught as part of religion. Here we are prevented by the circumstances of the
country from teaching morality in that manner. It is, therefore, more incumbent
than upon other ministries of public instruction to teach morality in the form of
Moral Philosophy.” In 1851 Mr. J. F. Thomas, one of the members of the Madras
Council of education in a Minute criticizing sharply on many points the exist-
ing system, drew special attention to the very want of effective moral education
which is fastened upon to-day. “Education without moral culture,” he wrote, “is
probably as often injurious as beneficial to society; and at all events a system
like that at present in force, which to a great degree overlooks this point, and
which makes little or no provision for this most essential part of education, is so

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radically defective that I feel satisfied that although it may be upheld for a time
under special and peculiar circumstances, it must in the end fail, and I hold that
unless it can be shown that the people of this Presidency are opposed to receiving
moral instruction, combined with intellectual, there is no ground for this palpable
practical omission in the existing system.”
There is no paragraph of the Despatch of 1854 directly bearing on the subject
of moral education, but an earlier letter is quoted in support of the encouragement
of education as calculated “not only to produce a higher degree of intellectual fit-
ness, but to raise the moral character of those who partake of its advantages;” and
a valuable testimony is later given to the actual efficacy of education in producing
such effects. The Directors say: “We are sanguine enough to believe that some
effect has already been produced by the improved education of the public service
in India. The ability and integrity of a large and increasing number of the native
judges, to whom the greater part of the civil jurisdiction in India is now commit-
ted, and the high estimation in which many among them are held by their fellow-
countrymen is, in our opinion, much to be attributed, to the progress of education
among these officers, and to their adoption along with it of that high moral tone
which pervades the general literature of Europe.”
The preamble to the Act constituting the universities in January, 1857, says noth-
ing of moral education. The model of the Universities of Calcutta, Madras, and
Bombay was the London University, their declared aim was the test of proficiency
in study and the affiliated colleges were non-residential. The method of education
in the colleges, however, was what it had been before the establishment of univer-
sities, and what had been said in 1851 about moral education by the first historian
of education in Bengal, Mr. J. Kerr, held good: “Whatever enlarges the mind or
refines the taste, tends to improve character. All the studies of our colleges have
thus, in a greater or less degree, the effect that is aimed at in a systematic treatise on
moral science. If our students remain stunted in moral growth, it is not for want of
instruction, which is imparted largely and in most attractive and impressive forms.
The Education Commission of 1882 devoted separate sections to moral and
religious training. Their preliminary remarks on the former settle once for all the
limits of discussion: “The subject of moral training in colleges is replete with
difficulties—difficulties, however, that are mainly practical. For there is no differ-
ence of opinion as to moral training being as necessary as intellectual or physical
training, and no dissent from the principle that a system in which moral training
was wholly neglected would be unworthy of the name of education. Nor, again,
is there any difference of opinion as to the moral value of the love of law and
order, of the respect for superiors, of the obedience, regularity, and attendance to
duty which every well-conducted college is calculated to promote. All these have,
by the nearly universal consent of the witnesses, done a great deal to elevate the
moral tone and improve the daily practice of the great bulk of those who have
been trained in the colleges of India. The degree in which different colleges have
exerted a moral influence of this kind is probably as various as the degree of suc-
cess that has attended the intellectual training given in them and has doubtless

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been different in all colleges at different times, depending as it does on the char-
acter and personal influence of the Principal and Professors who may form the
staff at any given period. So far all the witnesses, and probably all intelligent men,
are substantially agreed. Difficulties begin when the question is raised whether
good can be done by distinct moral teaching over and above the moral supervi-
sion which all admit to be good and useful, and which all desire to see made more
thorough than it is at present.” After a careful review of the conflicting opinions
and practice, the Commission made two recommendations on the subject of direct
moral instruction: (1) That an attempt be made to prepare a moral textbook based
upon the fundamental principles of natural religion, such as may be taught in all
Government and non-Government Colleges. (2) That the Principal or one of the
Professors in each Government or Aided College deliver to each of the College
classes in every session a series of lectures on the duties of a man and a citizen.
These recommendations did not win the acceptance either of the Local or of
the Supreme Government and have remained a dead letter. Some arguments used
by the Commission in their report go far to remove any regret that might be felt
on this account. They say: “In all colleges and under all courses of instruction the
most effective moral training consists in inculcating habits of order, diligence,
truthfulness, and due self-respect combined with submission to authority, all of
which lessons a good teacher finds useful opportunities of imparting. The forma-
tion of such habits is promoted by the study of the lives and actions of great men,
such as the student finds in the course of his English reading; and it may be hoped,
by the silent influence upon his character of constant intercourse with teachers,
whom he is able to regard with respect and affection. Nor, again, is there reason
to believe that collegiate education of the present type has any injurious effect
upon the life and character of students. On the contrary, the nearly unanimous
testimony of those who have had the best opportunities of observing goes to show
that in integrity, in self-respect, in stability of purpose, and generally in those
solid qualities which constitute an honourable and useful character, the Univer-
sity graduate is generally superior to those who have not enjoyed the advantages
which college training confers.”
As regards direct religious teaching the Commission of 1882 report with no
uncertain voice its impracticability. Government institutions cannot undertake
such teaching owing to Government’s declared policy of religious neutrality. The
Commission weigh carefully the complaints that have been made of the demoral-
izing influence of the exclusion of religion. They consider the remedy proposed
“that Government should employ teachers of all prevalent forms of religion to
give instruction in its colleges, or should at least give such teachers admission to
its colleges if their services are provided by outside bodies.” They conclude: “We
are unable to recommend any plan of this kind.” However praiseworthy the feel-
ings that underlie such a proposal, “we are satisfied that no such scheme can be
reduced to practice in the present state of Indian society.”
It cannot be said that the subject of moral education has been neglected. If any-
thing is wanting it is supplied by a resolution of the Government of India in 1887

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directed wholly to enforcing the necessity of careful attention to school and col-
lege discipline. “The question of discipline in schools and colleges,” it premises,
“does not seem to have hitherto received any comprehensive consideration apart
from the discussion of the subject by the Education Commission;” and it acknowl-
edges that “the growth of tendencies unfavourable to discipline and favourable to
irreverence has accompanied the general extension of education.” It advocates the
firm maintenance of discipline in Indian schools and colleges, based on the stan-
dard recognized in the highest schools and colleges in England which nowadays
does not err on the “side of severity. It then deals at length with the problem of dis-
cipline in schools, discerningly pointing out that, if right habits of discipline are
formed in schools, the problem of collegiate discipline is materially simplified.
Among the suggestions for schools are the introduction of the monitorial system,
the building of boarding-houses, well-defined rules; and the value of training for
teachers is especially insisted on. For colleges the suggestions are of weekly col-
lege meetings and recognized disciplinary powers (fines, suspension, rustication,
expulsion) for both Principals and Professors. The value of the encouragement
of physical exercise is emphasized, and teaching having a direct bearing upon
conduct is recommended. The resolution concludes with an emphatic affirmation
of the importance of the subject. “In conclusion I am to commend the whole sub-
ject to early and careful attention, for the importance of the considerations thus
brought to notice cannot be exaggerated. The true interests of education are bound
up with the solution of the problems now touched upon.”
It would appear from all this that the importance of the moral side of education
has by no means been overlooked in the sixty years that have passed since the
despatch of 1854 formally adopted English education. If, as we have seen, there
has been a steadily deepening sense of responsibility for the moral side of educa-
tion in the policy of the Government of India, as evidenced by authoritative docu-
ments, and yet well-meant criticism continues to show that we have little ground
to congratulate ourselves on the success achieved, the cause of failure must be
sought otherwhere than in want of attention to the subject. A suspicion may take
shape that the impediment lies in the nature of the task attempted. The education
of character, which is presumably what is meant by moral education, is something
very deep-lying, and depends on a number of factors of which school life is only
one. Now it is not very difficult to put together a number of common-places on
the importance of moral education. It may in some circumstances be exceedingly
difficult to turn precept into practice. The thing to be done is so to train boys that
they may grow up to be manly, truth-loving, courageous, law-abiding, with just
notions of self-respect and of what is due to others. It is by no means easy any-
where to bring this to pass through the daily routine work of school and college,
and in India there are hindrances of a very baffling nature. In any case the burden
is laid upon the professed teacher in school and college. He it is who must bear the
responsibility and do the work, if it can be done. It may be well then to listen to
the comments of one whose profession is education on the last and most pointed
government utterance on the subject, the very judicious circular of 1887.

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“I would respectfully beg leave to say a word or two with respect to the causal
connection assumed in the letter of the Government of India to exist between the
education imparted in our schools and colleges, and ‘the growth of tendencies
unfavourable to discipline and favourable to irreverence in the rising generation.’
No one could be more sensible than I am of the imperfections of our educational
system, but I cannot believe that schools and colleges have been largely instru-
mental in bringing about the state of things complained of. I consider, on the
contrary, that we teachers have cause to complain that the tone of our schools has
been prejudicially affected by the tendencies unfavourable to authority invading
them from without . . . Indian society is breathing the same social and political
atmosphere as all other civilized communities—an atmosphere which happens at
present to be deficient in reverence for authority and in willingness to submit to it.
Are the seeds of these tendencies sown in our schools and colleges and fostered
and made to fructify there? I think not. Beyond what naturally follows from that
emancipation of thought which is one of the first-fruits of a liberal education
everywhere, I do not believe that the system of education pursued in India has
had any hand in fostering ‘the growth of tendencies unfavourable to discipline
and favourable to irreverence.’ My contentions that these tendencies belong to
the world that lies outside our schools and colleges, that they colour the thoughts
and feelings and aspirations of the grown-up generation, and that from this out-
side world they invade our schools and infect our pupils—these contentions are
borne out by the two following considerations: first, that it was not till after the
political and racial excitement of recent years had spread throughout India that
the youth attending schools and colleges showed signs of turbulence and insub-
ordination; and secondly, that these tendencies were practically confined to those
provinces in the north of India where political and racial feelings were most bitter.
In the Madras Presidency, where the feelings never ran very high, our educational
institutions have hitherto enjoyed an almost absolute immunity from such dis-
turbances; and to the honour of the students of this college, be it said, there has
not, during the eighteen years I have been connected with them, been any other
disposition manifested than that of cheerful and loyal obedience to the rules of
the institution.”
This commentary shows the whole question of the relation of the political and
educational movements in a new aspect. Is it possible that cause and effect are
being confused, when education is blamed, and that it is not the educational sys-
tem which has produced political disaffection, but disaffection towards the exist-
ing order, otherwise generated, has first produced its effects in society at large,
then invaded and injuriously affected the educational system. The relations of
cause and effect are in a complicated material hard to disentangle, and where
interaction is a necessary factor in the problem, mistake as to the ultimate causa-
tion is easily made. But the question here is not of the causes of “unrest,” but
of the means of improving the moral influence of education. The writer of the
memorandum from which the above quotation is made was Dr. Duncan, at the
time Principal of the Presidency College, Madras, and afterwards for many years

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Director of Public Instruction in the Madras Presidency. His opinion in the matter
is entitled to great weight, and what he further says on the subject may help to
determine just conclusions on the difficult question of moral and religious educa-
tion in Indian colleges and schools. Judgment of what has been done in the past
and of what may be better done in the future depends closely on just conclusions
as to what is possible.
I will take first the question of religious education. When I see religious educa-
tion seriously advocated as the basis of morality in Indian schools and colleges, I
wonder if those who advocate it have any clear ideas as to what they mean. Which
religion? In India there are many religions. “Have there not been, are there not
religious beliefs utterly antagonistic to genuine morality? In spite of this people
speak and write as if the problem of moral education would be solved were reli-
gious instruction provided for the young! It surely ought to be recognized that
everything will depend on the moral character of the religious beliefs inculcated.
No one would recommend the teaching of any and every religious dogma in Indian
schools; and until such beliefs as may on moral grounds be taught, are separated
from such as may not be taught, the question of religious instruction must remain
one on which no practical policy can be adopted.” Dr. Duncan wrote thus in 1888.
Now twenty years later the voices protesting the inadequacy of secular education
and the indispensable necessity of religious education are many and powerful. Sir
Andrew Fraser writes in October last in the Nineteenth Century “we want a higher
type of education, a system that recognizes the moral and religious side of a man’s
training as well as the intellectual and physical.” “The genius of Indian thought,
the demands of Indian parents, the strong representation of Indian chiefs are all in
favour of religious education.”3 Bishop Welldon, who knows a little of India and
much of education, is reported a few weeks ago as declaring that he held with an
intensity of conviction which it was difficult to express “that secular education,
wherever it was given, and by whomsoever it was given, was a lamentable fail-
ure.” If one is seriously desirous of amending what is amiss with the educational
system in India such utterances as these must give him pause. There is also some-
thing plausible and persuasive in the argument, especially when it follows on the
failure, or assumed failure, of moral education without religion. Still one does not
readily, perhaps, shake oneself free of the old prepossession that religious teach-
ing is impossible in conjunction with modern education in India, which seemed
so short a while ago a maxim universally accepted. At any rate we are entitled
to inquire by what particular instrumentality it is to be done; done rightly; and
done safely. For we have been apt to look upon religion in India as somewhat
like a powder magazine, to be approached cautiously. Certainly there are difficul-
ties. Illustrations quite remote from India will help to their clearer apprehension.
Could we be content to found our school morality on the worship of Thor and
Odin, of Hela and the Valkyries? Could we cheerfully revive in our colleges the
many coloured polytheism of Greece and Rome? We should acknowledge there
were elements of good in the religion of Hellas. There were also evil elements
against which Plato and the philosophers inveighed before ever the zeal of the

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early Christians turned the gods of Greece into demons. There was the worship of
Dionysus and Aphrodite as well as of Apollo and of Pallas Athene. In some cults
human sacrifice survived. The thief, the murderer, and the adulterer all found their
patron deity to pray to. In India, too, there are many and divers cults, and there is
at all events danger of reviving religious cults in favour of evil morals rather than
good. The problem is too hard for us. We take refuge in toleration. We tolerate all
religions in colleges, so long as they do not actively propagate crime: we give free
opportunity to religious teachers outside the guarded sphere of scholastic training.
We do not actively assist religious teaching within it, because we are debarred
from exercising any discrimination as to what we judge good or ill. We cannot
secure that only the good shall come in: so we think it safer to admit none at all.
There is a practical difficulty remaining also, if we should determine to make
the experiment of aiding and abetting direct religious instruction. So far as col-
leges were intended to represent one religion only, like the Sanskrit College or
Alighar, there would not be (as there is not now) any difficulty. But it is not prac-
ticable, even were it desirable, to make all schools and colleges sectarian. How
can religious teaching be introduced, if the school or college authorities do not
themselves take the responsibility for it? Only by admitting teachers from outside.
This, however, gives rise to an objection which to the man who works in school or
college is probably decisive: it would be to introduce rival authorities into college
and school, the educational and the religious. There would be too great apprehen-
sion that this rival authority might undermine discipline for the teacher ever to
acquiesce in it with an easy mind.
It is not possible to discuss the subject exhaustively, and more might doubtless
be said on both sides. The balance appears to the present writer to be decisively
against the expediency of making a radical change in the policy hitherto followed
by the Government of India in regard to religious education.
It remains, then, that our education of character, so far as schools and col-
leges are concerned, must be independent of a specially religious basis. This does
not, however, at all necessarily mean that it is cut off from all appeal to what is
most morally persuasive in religion. The true essence of belief, as far as morals
are concerned, is that God is on the side of righteousness. This it is which gives
effective power to religion as a motive to morality. The appeal to this fundamen-
tal faith is not denied to the teacher on a purely secular basis of education. This
belief involves no theological dogma and offends no religious susceptibilities.
The appeal is, therefore, always within the secular teacher’s discretion.
For the rest our task must be to make the best of the ordinary means of moral
education: and the only practical question here is whether any means have been
overlooked which might be employed; is there anything more which might be
done now? “Morality,” Dr. Duncan well says, “must be taught in schools in the
way in which it is taught at home, and in the social life of the young. Morality
cannot be taught as a branch of knowledge forming part of the school curricu-
lum, nor is a special text-book the best means of inculcating it. That danger of
neglecting the spirit for the letter, which has to be particularly guarded against,

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when text-books are used in teaching the ordinary branches of knowledge, would
be much more menacing were the attempt made to teach morality through a spe-
cially prepared. textbook.” This is well said and decisive against one of the two
practical suggestions of the Commission of 1882. The second was for series of
lectures on the duties of a man and a citizen. Now it is very certain that college
addresses by the principal of a college to the college as a whole are very neces-
sary as an incentive and support of the corporate life of a college. They should,
however, deal with the duties of the members of a collegiate society rather than
duties of members of the community in a wider sense. Such addresses should be
made to students as students of the college (and of that college in particular), and
should bear closely on the particular and present circumstances of life in the col-
lege. They should, in a broad sense, be lay sermons. A principal who is not full
to overflowing with thoughts for such addresses can have very imperfectly real-
ized the obligations and privileges of his position. If in particular cases, and for
exceptional reasons, a principal feels unable to take on himself this responsibility,
he may delegate the function to such members of the college staff as are fitted to
discharge it. There is some loss of efficacy if the head of the college speaks by
deputy, but the essential point is that there should be regular addresses, and that
these addresses should concern themselves with the students’ present surround-
ings and responsibilities. If the student learns aright the lesson of his duties as a
student, there will be no question later on as to his recognition of what is due from
him as a man and a citizen. Addresses need not be very frequent, better not. Once
or twice in a year should suffice; but there can be no hard-and-fast line drawn in
the matter. Along with such direct and solemn incentives to right doing, the most
potent instrument of moral education is, undoubtedly, good rules of discipline,
considerately imposed and firmly enforced. The habit of obedience to rule has
formal value in itself; willing obedience to good rules with a recognition that
they are good is moral education of the most effective kind. In the main character
must be formed by action; right actions from right motives trained into virtuous
habits. As Dr. Duncan writes:—“Practical morality is an art which is learnt like
every other art, solely by doing moral actions.” Hence the preponderant value of
well-regulated school and college discipline. Yet even that cannot be fully effica-
cious of itself. So much depends also on the nature which the pupil brings for
school discipline to mould and on the influences of his other surroundings, his
earliest associations, his out-of-school companions, his home. These things can-
not be regulated by the teacher: they lie almost absolutely outside the reach of his
influence; and these outside influences are by no means always favourable. All
the more pressing is his responsibility and the need for increasing the efficacy of
moral teaching in the school.
Undoubtedly the most important factor of all is the character of the teacher
himself. And here again Government policy has not failed, but is on the right
lines. “The Government of India,” says Dr. Duncan, “have rightly given the fore-
most place among their recommendations to the employment of trained teach-
ers and the provision of efficient training schools”; and he is able to point with

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satisfaction to the attention which had already at that date been paid to the subject
in Madras. Bengal, on the other hand, has lagged behind and is endeavouring
with the happiest promise to make up ground now. The extreme importance of
right selection of teachers in every grade, and especially in the highest, is not
yet sufficiently recognized, at any rate not sufficiently provided for. In the matter
of discipline also the support the teacher may count on getting might be made
more assured. The enforcement of judicious rules is, as has been said, the chief
educational instrument. There must be no doubt that the fearless enforcement of
discipline by the teacher will receive support, if support is needed. This has not
always been sufficiently well assured in the past. If these two things are better
done: (1) unsparing effort made to secure that teachers shall be men of high char-
acter; (2) due provision made for establishing and maintaining sound discipline,
Government will have done all that is at present possible for moral education. No
radical change of policy is called for; only the better and more efficient carrying
out of the policy long since adopted.

XV

THE POLITICAL MOVEMENT IN ITS RELATION

TO EDUCATION
THE life of a community cannot be separated into unrelated compartments any
more than the life of an individual. Each part affects the rest. The development of
one faculty, or side of character, produces effects on other faculties, and influences
the organism as a whole. And so the educational movement has, in a certain sense,
been political from the outset. That is to say, in the very nature of things, and by
reason of the essential constitution of the mind, it was impossible to educate a
single native of India without thereby affecting his relation to British rule. Educa-
tion enables a man to understand better society, government, and his own relation
to both. An educated man is able to place himself in the universe; to realize better
his true relation to what has gone before, and what will come after. If political ideas
are in the air, the educated man will make acquaintance with them, and they will
alter his mental outlook. So it might have been predicted, and so it was.
Raja Ram Mohan Roy was, I suppose, the first English educated native of India.
He reached man’s estate about the year 1802; and there was nothing that could
be called English education publicly begun till 1817. He owed his education and
his knowledge of English to his own genius and exertions. He was no enemy to
British rule, though he relates in his brief autobiography that he began “with a
great aversion to the establishment of the British power in India.” It was after he
was twenty years of age that he first “saw and began to associate with Europeans,”
and soon after, he says, “made myself tolerably acquainted with their laws and
form of government!” He continues: “Finding them generally more intelligent,
more steady and moderate in their conduct, I gave up my prejudice against them,
and became inclined in their favour, feeling persuaded that their rule, though

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a foreign yoke, would lead more speedily and surely to the amelioration of the
native inhabitants; and I enjoyed the confidence of several of them, even in their
public capacity.” This, on a fair view, is typical of the normal effects of educa-
tion in the general. That the natives of India, Hindu or Mahomedan, Mahratta or
Madrasi, should naturally and spontaneously prefer a foreign government and
admire manners and customs so unlike their own is altogether against nature. To
suppose that antipathy to European ways, and criticism of European manners are
new, and the pernicious effects of “English education,” is to be ignorant alike of
the laws of human nature and the plain facts of history. The natural and “unen-
lightened” view of English manners and customs has been vividly drawn by Trev-
elyan in his “Competition Wallah”:—“But, on the other hand, many of our usages
must, in their eyes, appear most debased and revolting. Imagine the horror with
which a punctilious and devout Brahmin cannot but regard a people who eat the
flesh of cows and pigs, and drink various sorts of strong liquor from morning till
night. It is at least as hard for such a man to look up to us as his betters, morally
and socially, as it would be for us to place amongst the most civilized nations
of the world a population which was in the habit of dining on human flesh, and
intoxicating itself daily with laudanum and sal-volatile.”4 This is from the natural
standpoint of Hindu orthodoxy, and the effect of education could hardly be to
deepen such aversion. It might do something to temper it.
Neither is criticism of the British Government really anything new. Before the
close of the eighteenth century, when the British administration of Bengal was
still a novelty not twenty years old, Syed Gholam Hossein Khan, in the four-
teenth section of his Seir Mutakherin, or “Review of Modern Times,” is at pains
to set forth at length twelve causes of the decrease of population and revenue
which he laments. The first is “that these new rulers are quite alien to this coun-
try both in customs and manners”; the second “their differing in language, as
well as in almost every action and every custom in life.” And yet the Syed is
in many respects an admirer and shows readiness to accord praise to the force-
ful foreigners, when in his judgment it is due. Some of his “causes,” curiously
enough, such as inaccessibility to interviewers, frequent changes of appointments,
excessive regard for promotion by seniority, are the commonplaces of criticism
of the Anglo-Indian bureaucracy to this day. He even gives a large place in his
sixth cause to the “drain.” “The sixth cause is that the English have deprived the
inhabitants of these countries of various branches of commerce and benefit, which
they had ever enjoyed heretofore.” Similarly, Ram Mohan Roy, in his evidence
to the Select Committee of the House of Commons, which was considering the,
renewal of the Company’s charter in 1831, refers to the “large sum of money now
annually drawn from India by Europeans retiring from it with the fortunes real-
ized there.” There is really not very much difference in the point of view of Syed
Gholam Hossein Khan writing about 1780, Ram Mohan Roy writing in 1831,
and Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt writing in 1901, though the first knew little or no
English, the second was educated before Government introduced any system of
education, and the third is the fine flower of English education. The truth is that

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the criticism, sound or unsound, arises out of the circumstances,5 and would be
in the minds of the peoples of India, altogether independently of their power of
expressing it in English. All three may be said to be well affected towards British
rule in the sense of willing it to continue.
If we inquire into the causes of disaffection, it may plausibly be suggested that
we shall find them to depend little on education, at least directly; indirectly they
may depend a good deal. Disaffection is the contrary of affection. In the mildest
degree it connotes merely the absence of affection, and passes from this through
every degree of dislike up to settled hatred. Education has certainly not “produced
in India hatred of all things English; not obviously of English literature, English
games, English standards of conduct, English institutions: because the political
party which voices the aspirations of the educated classes in India, and is charged
with being disaffected, or allied with disaffection, is founded on an almost servile
imitation of English standards and methods. As regards forms of government,
it probably holds that men everywhere are well affected towards a government
which they clearly see secures their welfare. Habit and sentiment are powerful
adjuncts. A government is strong when it appeals to the national sentiment, and
suits the traditional habits of the people who dwell under it. These latter supports
have, from the circumstances, been almost wholly denied to the British Govern-
ment in India. It was certainly so a hundred years ago, and it is doubtful whether
these forces have as yet been very successfully rallied to it. That they might con-
ceivably be rallied to it has not been beyond the pitch of a few daring speculators
like Sir Theodore Mosison.6 The support of the interest of the people at large it has
had, and the clearest thinkers believe it has now in an even greater degree. It may
be asked whether education is or is not likely to produce in men’s minds a percep-
tion of their true interests. If, as must almost certainly be answered, it does tend to
produce such a perception, the Government of India may be reasonably assured
(superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding) of gaining strength from
the spread of education, so long as it does really what it claims to do, secure the
best interests of the Indian peoples. This, it may still be believed, has on the whole
been the effect of the spread of education in British India.
One of the questions answered by Raja Ram Mohan Roy in 1831 was, “What
is the prevailing opinion of the native inhabitants regarding the existing form of
government and its administrators, native and European?” His answer has interest,
and even some relevance, to-day: “The peasantry and villagers in the interior,” he
wrote, “are quite ignorant of, and indifferent about, either the former or present
government, and attribute the protection they may enjoy, or oppression they may
suffer, to the conduct of the public officers immediately presiding over them. But
men of aspiring character, and members of such families as are very much reduced
by the present system, consider it derogatory to accept of the trifling public situ-
ations which natives are allowed to hold under the British Government, and are
decidedly disaffected to it. Many of those, however, who engage prosperously in
commerce, and of those who are secured in the peaceful possession of their estates
by the permanent settlement, and such as have sufficient intelligence to foresee the

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probability of future improvement, which presents itself under the British rulers,
are not only reconciled to it, but really view it as a blessing to the country.” And
then he concludes: “But I have no hesitation in stating, with reference to the general
feeling of the more intelligent part of the native community, that the only course of
policy which can ensure their attachment to any form of Government would be that
of making them eligible to gradual promotion according to their respective abili-
ties and merits, to situations of trust and respectability in the State.” Now these
concluding words express with very fair exactness what has actually been both the
aim and the outcome of the whole movement for education, seen on its political
side. We may make again, now, the claim which the Commission of 1882 made
in reporting on the effects of higher education, “An estimate of the effect which
collegiate instruction has had upon the general education and enlightenment of the
people must in fairness be accompanied by a reference to the objects which it sets
before itself.” Now, what were these objects? They reached, no doubt, to general
moral and intellectual enlightenment; but they were also expressly directed to the
well-defined and limited object of fitting men by education for the public service.
Thus, a letter from the Court of Directors, dated September 5th, 1827 (eight years,
be it noticed, before Macaulay’s Minute), has these words: “In conclusion it is
proper to remark to you, though we have no doubt that the same reflection has
already occurred to you, that, adverting to the daily increasing demand for the
employment of natives in the business of the country, and in important departments
of the Government, the first object of improved education should be to prepare a
body of individuals for discharging public duties. It may, we trust, be expected
that the intended course of education will not only produce a higher degree of
intellectual fitness, but that it will contribute to raise the moral character of those
who partake of its advantages, and supply you with servants to whose probity
you may; with increased confidence, commit offices of trust. To this, the last and
highest object of education, we expect that a large share of your attention will be
applied.” Sir Charles Trevelyan, writing in 1838, says: “Another great change has
of late years been made in our Indian administration, which ought alone to excite
us to corresponding exertions for the education of the natives. The system estab-
lished by Lord Cornwallis was based upon the principle of doing everything by
European agency. . . . The plan which Lord William Bentinck substituted for it was
to transact the public business by native agency, under European superintendence,
and this change is now in progress in all the different branches of administration.
We have already native judges, collectors, and opium and salt agents; and it is
now proposed to have native magistrates. . . . The success of this great measure
depends entirely on the fitness of the natives for the exercise of the new functions
to which they have been called.”7 In 1844 came Lord Hardinge’s resolution, raising
selection for employment under Government on educational grounds into a recog-
nized principle. The Despatch of 1854, besides referring back in one of its opening
paragraphs to the letter of September, 1827, and later on to the resolution of 1844,
definitely puts increased fitness for employment in the public services as one of
the chief aims of the educational system to be inaugurated: “We have always been

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of opinion that the spread of education in India will produce a greater efficiency
in all branches of administration, by enabling you to obtain the services of intel-
ligent and trustworthy persons in every department of Government, and, on the
other hand, we believe that the numerous vacancies of different kinds, which have
constantly to be filled up, may afford a great stimulus to education.” Further, the
Despatch claims that a measure of success has already been won: “We are sanguine
enough to believe that some effect has already been produced by the improved
education of the public service of India. The ability and integrity of a large and
increasing number of the native judges, to whom the greater part of the civil juris-
diction in India is now committed, and the high estimation in which many among
them are hold by their fellow-countrymen, is, in our opinion, much to be attributed
to the progress of education among these officers, and to their adoption, along with
it, of that high moral tone which pervades the general literature of Europe.” This
judgment is re-affirmed by the Commission of 1882, with stronger assurance. After
the words already quoted, the report continues: “The reformers of 1835, to whom
the system is due, claimed that only by an education in English and after European
methods could we hope to raise the moral and intellectual tone of Indian society,
and supply the administration with a competent body of public servants. To what
degree, then, have these objects been attained? Our answer is in the testimony of
witnesses before this Commission, in the thoughtful opinion delivered from time
to time by men whose position has given them ample opportunities of judging, and
the facts obvious to all eyes throughout the country and that answer is conclusive;
if not that collegiate education has fulfilled all the expectations entertained of it, at
least that it has not disappointed the hopes of a sober judgment.” This was in 1883.
It remains to consider whether, on a careful balance, the same verdict may not be
pronounced in 1911.
The process so well known to us all, to which the quotations above refer,
namely, the substitution of Indian for European agency in higher and ever higher
positions of responsibility, has gone on continuously since 1883, sometimes with
increasing momentum, and so far the favourable verdict has not been reversed.
The consummation, the legitimate consummation, the consummation which was
deliberately aimed at from the beginning, is the reformed Councils and the elo-
quent speeches of the leaders of Indian opinion, which we read daily when the
Imperial and Provincial Councils are in session. The aims which are now being
realized are, perhaps, even better expressed by statesmen of the type of Mount-
stuart Elphinstone and Sir Thomas Munro than by the public documents which
have been quoted. In 1826 Elphinstone wrote in a private letter: “It has always
been a favourite notion of mine that our object ought to be to place ourselves in
the same relation to the natives as the Tartars are in to the Chinese; retaining the
government and military power, but gradually relinquishing all share in the civil
administration, except that degree of control which is necessary to give the whole an
impulse and direction. This operation must be so gradual that it need not even
alarm the directors for their civil patronage; but it ought to be kept in mind, and
all our measures ought to tend to that object. The first steps are to commence a

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systematic education of the natives for civil offices, to make over to them at once
a larger share of judicial business, to increase their emoluments generally, and to
open a few high prizes for the most able and honest among them. The period when
they may be admitted into Council (as you propose) seems to be distant. . . .”8 To
Sir Thomas Munro he had written in 1822: “Besides the necessity for having good
native advisers in governing natives, it is necessary that we should pave the way
for the introduction of the natives to some share in the government of their own
country. It may be half a century before we are obliged to do so; but the system of
Government and of education which we have already established must some time
or other work such a change on the people of this country, that it will be impos-
sible to confine them to subordinate employments. . . .”9 Of Sir Thomas Munro
his biographer, Sir Alexander Arbuthnot, writes: “Munro attached little value to
Schemes for improving the education of natives unless pari passu steps were taken
for extending to them a greater share in the honours and emoluments of office.
His view was that the two things, education and higher employment, should go
together.”10 The inner significance of the whole process was expressed in 1821 by
Sir Thomas Munro himself with a force and truth which could not be surpassed;
“Our present system of Government by excluding all natives from power and
trust and emolument is much more efficacious in depressing than all our laws
and school-books can do in elevating their character. We are working against our
own designs, and we can expect to make no progress while we work with a feeble
instrument to improve and a powerful one to deteriorate. The improvement of
the character of a people and the keeping them at the same time in the lowest
state of dependency on foreign rulers to which they can be reduced by conquest,
are matters quite incompatible with each other.”11 Again he wrote in 1824: “No
conceit more wild and absurd than this was ever engendered in the darkest ages;
for what is in every age. and every country the great stimulus to the pursuit of
knowledge, but the prospect of fame, or wealth, or power? Or what is even the
use of great attainments, if they are not to be devoted to their noblest purpose,
the service of the community, by employing those who possess them, according
to their respective qualifications, in the various duties of the public administra-
tion of the country.”12 The very oddity and irrelevance of these quotations now
is a measure of the distance travelled since 1820. It is not amiss that these earlier
forms of thought should be called to mind for those, on the one hand, who are apt
to ignore what advance has been made in admitting educated Indians to posts of
high responsibility and for those on the other who are ignorant of the great results
which higher education has actually achieved. Even Lord Morley himself misses
this, when the best he can find to say for higher education in India is that it has not
wholly failed.13 Not only has higher education not failed to achieve what in 1835
it set out to do, but it has triumphantly succeeded; perhaps it has even succeeded
too well. For though its success in training well-qualified candidates for public
service is the most direct fulfillment of the original aim and purpose, it is by no
means the whole achievement, or even the greatest part of it. Trevelyan writes in
the monograph: “On the education of the People of India,” from which quotation

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has already been made: “The same means which will secure for the Government
a body of intelligent and upright native servants will stimulate the mental activ-
ity and improve the morals of the people at large. The Government cannot make
public employment the reward of distinguished merit without encouraging merit
in all who look forward to public employ; it cannot open schools for educat-
ing its servants, without diffusing knowledge among all classes of its subjects.”14
These predictions also have been abundantly fulfilled. The renewed productivity
of half a dozen literatures, the revival of art and letters, alert and critical interest
in the past history and literature of Indian races (voiced as it was, for instance,
eloquently but with unflinching recognition of present “shortcomings,” by Dr.
Ashutosh Mukhopadhyaya, Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, at this year’s
Convocation) bear witness to the stimulation of mental activity. The capacity for
combination shown by numerous associations for social, literary and recreative
purposes is a moral endowment. All these new capacities and powers education
has conferred on the classes who have been able to profit by it. The bounds of
legitimate aspiration are also herein clearly settled. This education was instituted
by the British Government to enable the peoples of India to take a larger and more
important share in the work of administration. This larger share of responsibility
and employment has been accorded to them. The process is in mid-career. That
there should be differences of opinion as to the ultimate limits of the process and
as to the extent which is the due limit at any given time, is only natural. The aspi-
ration for a larger share than that already gained is perfectly legitimate, and Indi-
ans may combine to secure this larger share by constitutional means: it is equally
legitimate to hold the contrary view and oppose further extension. The bounds
of legitimate aspiration are the limits consistent with the stability of British rule.
But what then of the bugbear of anarchism and unrest? Measured by this stan-
dard it shrinks marvelously. These intellectual and moral results are the direct
product of higher education; discontent and conspiracy, if to be called products
of education at all, are indirect products, like some harmful bi-product of a useful
chemical process. The causes of unrest in the sinister sense are foreign domina-
tion, racial prejudice, ignorance, misunderstanding, narrowness, want of educa-
tion, lack of sympathy. Education is not directly a cause at all: indirectly it may,
perhaps, be called a cause as putting these latent forces into activity. Education
could never in any sound sense of the term lead to anarchist crime. A depraved
and perverted nature may use the powers that education gives to evil purpose. A
radically unsound education might help to produce criminals, but even so it must
rather be from failure to supply deterrents than from positively supplying incen-
tives. The education being given in Indian schools and colleges only contributes
to the morbid condition of things that has produced political conspiracy and crime
by its defects, by its unwholesome surroundings, by its failure to educate in any
true sense at all. For want of foresight in allowing education to spread beyond the
limits of effective control those in various degrees responsible for its organization
must bear the blame. But the education itself must not be blamed: only the failure
to make it effective. For the direct purpose of education in primary schools, in

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secondary schools, and in colleges alike, has been to train the will in obedience
and in good habits, as well as to train the intellect. So far as the schools and col-
leges have failed in this, the purpose of education has been missed. All violence
and breach of law are contrary to the very idea of education. The higher the educa-
tion the greater the incompatibility of its influences with cruelty, treachery, physi-
cal violence and secret murder. Enlightenment must and does hate these things,
and must still do so, even if it proclaimed the ultimate right of insurrection for
national freedom. But in India enlightenment cannot proclaim the right of insur-
rection at all. For that enlightenment itself comes from the central power which
holds together the congeries of races and creeds and peoples which make up mod-
ern India and alone gives unity alike to education and to political aspiration. The
aim to destroy that central power would be not murder only but suicide as well.
Success in that aim would inevitably throw back all the advance towards liberty
made in the last hundred years, in which even the revolutionary aim itself owes
such life and power as it has. It is just because all hopes of peaceful development
and prosperity really are bound up with the maintenance of the one strong and
stable government, that education must in proportion as it is true and thorough
strengthen the forces that make for cohesion, not for disruption. The greater the
independence of judgment, the deeper the insight that education gives, the clearer
must be the perception of these truths.
It is not meant in anything that has been said to question that the political devel-
opments of the last twenty years have given grave cause for anxiety and that their
association with higher education in any sense is deeply to be regretted. We can
no longer speak with the confidence of Sir Roper Lethbridge in defending “High
Education in India” in 1882, when he wrote: “And for contradiction of the vague
and unauthenticated aspersions on the character of the highly-educated section
of the Indian community for loyalty, for morality, for religion generally, we need
only look to the tone and character of that portion of the periodical press that
is conducted and written by such men.” This we certainly can no longer say:
but here in the rapid depravation of an uncontrolled press, we have (as I think
Mr. Chirol himself shows) the real propagating agency of the gathering mischief,
and not in education: and the regulation of the press, now that it has been firmly
taken in hand, is already working a remedy.

Notes
1 Chirol, “Indian Unrest,” p. 322.
2 S. C. Mitra, “Indian Problems,” with an Introduction by Sir George Birdwood (Murray,
1908), p. 29.
3 “Indian Unrest,” by Sir Andrew Fraser. Nineteenth Century for October, 1910, p. 753.
4 Trevelyan (Sir George Otto), “The Competition Wallah” (Macmillan), 2nd ed., p. 346.
5 On the vexed question of “the drain,” the fair-minded inquirer should read chaps. viii.
and ix. of Sir Theodore Morison’s recently-published book “The Economic Transi-
tion in India.” See especially p. 241: “The answer, then, which I give to the question,
‘What economic equivalent does India get for foreign payments?’ is this: India gets the

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equipment of modern industry, and she gets an administration favourable to economic

evolution cheaper than she could provide it herself.”
6 “Imperial Rule in India,” chap. x., cf. chap. iv.
7 Trevelyan (Sir Charles), “On the Education of the People in India,” p. 156.
8 Colebrooke: “Life of Mountstuart Elphinstone, vol. ii., p. 186.
9 Ib., vol. ii., p. 143.
10 Arbuthnot, “Major General Sir Thomas Munro,” p. 154.
11 Ib., p. 148.
12 Ib., p. 150.
13 “British Democracy and Indian Government,” by the Right Hon. Viscount Morley,
O.M. Nineteenth Century for February, 1911, p. 209.
14 “On the Education of the People of India,” p. 159.

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 2
INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY,
BEING A RESOLUTION ISSUED BY THE
GOVERNOR GENERAL IN COUNCIL ON
THE 21 ST FEBRUARY 1913 (CALCUTTA:
SUPERINTENDENT GOVERNMENT
PRINTING, 1915), 1–47

HIS Most Gracious Imperial Majesty the King-Emperor, in replying to the

Comprehensive systems address of the Calcutta University on the 6th Janu-
of education. ary 1912, said:—
“It is my wish that there may be spread over the land a network of schools
and colleges, from which will go forth loyal and manly and useful citi-
zens, able to hold their own in industries and agriculture and all the voca-
tions in life. And it is my wish, too, that the homes of my Indian subjects
may be brightened and their labour sweetened by the spread of knowl-
edge with all that follows in its train, a higher level of thought, of comfort
and a health. It is through education that my wish will be fulfilled, and the
cause of education in India will ever be very close to my heart.”
2. The Government of India have decided, with the approval of the Secretary of
State, to assist Local Governments, by means of large grants from imperial rev-
enues as funds become available, to extend comprehensive systems of education
in the several provinces. Each province has its own educational system, which
has grown up under local conditions, and become familiar to the people as a part
of their general well-being. In view of the diverse social conditions in India there
cannot in practice be one set of regulations and one rate of progress for the whole
of India. Even within provinces there is scope for greater variety in types of insti-
tutions than exists to-day. The Government of India have no desire to centralise
provincial systems or to attempt to introduce a superficial uniformity. Still less do
they desire to deprive Local Governments of interest and initiative in education.
But it is important at intervals to review educational policy in India as a whole.
Principles, bearing on education in its wider aspects and under modern condi-
tions and conceptions, on orientalia and on the special needs of the domiciled

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community, were discussed at three important conferences of experts and rep-

resentative non-officials held within the last two years. These principles are the
basis of accepted policy. How far they can at any time find local application must
be determined with reference to local conditions.
3. The defects of educational systems in India are well known and need not be
re-stated. They have been largely due to want of funds. Of late years there has been
real progress in removing them. In the last decade1 the total
The need of true
perspective. expenditure from all sources on education has risen from 4
crores to nearly 7¼ crores. The progress has been especially
great since Lord Curzon’s government introduced large measures of educational
reform. In the last four years the number of those under instruction has increased
from about 5⅓ to 6⅓ millions. Again, the formerly crushing weight of exami-
nations has been appreciably lightened; a commencement has been made in the
reform of university and college organisation; and the grants from public funds to
private institutions have almost doubled in the past nine years. These facts speak
for themselves. Nor must the great benefits, which education has conferred on
India, be ignored or minimised. Criticism based on imperfect analogies is often
unjust. It is not just, for instance, to compare Indian systems still for the most
part in their infancy with the matured systems of the modern western world, or to
disregard the influences of social organization and mentality. Again the common
charge that the higher education of India has been built up on a slender foundation
of popular education and that its teaching agency is inefficient, is one that might
have been levelled against every country in Europe at some period of its history.
India is now passing through stages taken by other countries in their time.
4. In the forefront of their policy the Government of India desire to place the
formation of the character of the scholars and under-graduates under tuition. In
the formation of character the influence of home and
Formation of character
the main objective. the personality of the teacher play the larger part. There
is reason to hope—in the light of acquired experience—
that increased educational facilities under better educational conditions will accel-
erate social reform, spread female education and secure better teachers. Already
much attention is being given to religious and moral education in the widest sense
of the term, comprising, that is, direct religious and moral instruction, and indi-
rect agencies such as monitorial or similar systems, tone, social life, traditions,
discipline, the betterment of environment, hygiene, and that most important side
of education, physical culture and organised recreation.
5. The question of religious and moral instruction was discussed at a local con-
ference held in Bombay and subsequently at the imperial conference held in Alla-
habad in February 1911. Grave differences of opinion
Direct religious and
moral instruction. emerged as to the possibility or advantage of introduc-
ing direct religious instruction into schools generally,
and apprehensions of difficulty in the working of any definite system were put for-
ward. Doubts were also expressed as to the efficacy of direct moral instruction when
divorced from religious sanctions. In the, matter of moral teaching, however, the

20
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

difficulties are undoubtedly less than in the case of religious teaching. The papers
laid before the conference indicate that not a little moral instruction is already given
in the ordinary text-books and in other ways. The Government of Bombay are
engaged upon the preparation of a book containing moral illustrations, which will
be placed in the hands of teachers in order to assist them in imparting moral instruc-
tion. Excellent materials for ethical teaching are available in the Mahabharata, the
Ramayana, portions of Hafiz, Sadi, Maulana Rumi and other classics in Sanskrit,
Arabic, Persian and Pali. The Government of India while bound to maintain a posi-
tion of complete neutrality in matters of religion observe that the most thoughtful
minds in India lament the tendency of existing systems of education to develop the
intellectual at the expense of the moral and religious faculties. In September 1911
they invited Local Governments other than the Bombay Government to assemble
local committees in order to consider the whole question. Such committees are still
at work in some provinces. For the present the Government of India must be content
to watch experiments and keep the matter prominently in view. Enlightened opinion
and accumulated experience will, it is hoped, provide a practical solution to what is
unquestionably the most important educational problem of the time.
6. There has been real progress of late years in the provision of hostels. In the
last decade the numbers both of hostels and of resident male students have nearly
doubled, and now stand at over 2,200 and over 78,000 respectively. The Gov-
ernment of India desire to see the hostel system
Indirect agencies, e.g., hostels,
develop until there is adequate residential accom-
school buildings, traditions, etc.
modation attached to every college and secondary
school in India. But a hostel of itself will not achieve the desired end unless effec-
tive means are adopted for guiding students and assisting them in their work and
in their recreation. Already in some first-class institutions in the country admirable
arrangements have been made on European lines to secure the full benefits of the
residential system. Again it is reassuring that traditions are growing up, that meet-
ings of old boys are held, that debating and literary societies are becoming more
common. All these require help which will in many cases best be organised in
connection with the hostel system. Much has also been done of late to improve
school buildings; but a large number of thoroughly unsuitable, not to say mean,
squalid and insanitary buildings still exist in India. These will be replaced, as funds
permit, by modern buildings designed upon sanitary lines and with a view to avoid
overcrowding and to facilitate the maintenance of discipline. The Government of
India hope that the time is not far distant when educational buildings will be distin-
guished as the most modern and commodious buildings in the locality, and schol-
ars in India will have the advantages in this respect of scholars in the west. The
influence for good of clean, well-arranged buildings with the concomitant domes-
tic discipline can scarcely be exaggerated.
7. The claims of hygiene are paramount not only in the interests of the children
themselves, though these are all-important, but also as an object-lesson to the ris-
ing generation. Hitherto want of funds and the apathy of the peo-
Hygiene.
ple have been responsible for the comparatively small attention

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 C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5

paid to hygiene. In some provinces a simple course of instruction in hygiene is

prescribed, at some period of the school course, but the lessons are often of too
formal a type, are not connected with the life of the pupil, and fail to form his hab-
its or to enlist his intelligence in after-life in the struggle against disease. In some
areas there is a general inspection of school premises by a medical authority; but
it is believed that little is done for the individual inspection of school children and
that medical advice has not always been enlisted in regard to the length of the
school day, the framing of curricula, and such matters. The Government of India
commend to Local Governments a thorough enquiry, by a small committee of
experts, medical and educational, into school and college hygiene. The scope of
the enquiry will no doubt vary in different parts of India, but the following seem
to be important matters for investigation:—

(i) The condition of school houses, hostels and other places where pupils
reside, from the point of view of sanitation.
(ii) The professional examination of building plans from the hygienic point of
view.
(iii) The introduction of a simple and more practical course of hygiene;
whether it should be a compulsory subject in the various schemes of
school-leaving certificates, and whether it should be recommended to
universities as part of their matriculation examination.
(iv) The inspection, where possible, of male scholars, with special refer-
ence to infectious diseases, eyesight and malaria.
(v) The length of the school-day, home-studies, and the effect upon health
of the present system of working for formal examinations.
(vi) The requirements in the way of recreation grounds, gardens, gymnasia,
reading rooms, common-rooms, etc.
(vii) The inspecting and administrating agency required, the possibility of
co-operation with existing organisations and the provision of funds.

Other cardinal principles 8. Other cardinal principles of policy may here be

of policy. stated—

(1) The steady raising of the standard of existing institutions should not be
postponed to increasing their number when the new institutions cannot
be efficient without a better-trained and better-paid teaching staff.
(2) The scheme of primary and secondary education for the average scholar
should steadily, as trained teachers become available, be diverted to
more practical ends, e.g., by means of manual training, gardening, out-
door observation, practical teaching of geography, school excursions,
organised tours of instruction, etc.
(3) Provision should be made for higher studies and research in India, so that
Indian students may have every facility for higher work without having
to go abroad.

22
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

9. The provision of facilities for research cannot be postponed. In almost every

branch of science and the arts, in philosophy, history, geography, language, litera-
ture, economics, sociology, medicine, public health, agricul-
Research.
ture, biology, geology, botany and in all the sciences applied
to industry, not to particularise more closely, there is a wide untrodden field await-
ing research. Among the essentials are good libraries, laboratories and collections,
ample leisure and freedom in study, systematic collaboration of professors and stu-
dents, an atmosphere engendered by the simultaneous working of many minds on
numerous but interdependent branches of research. Only when they know the meth-
ods of research by which the knowledge they are to impart is secured and tested are
teachers fully equipped for their work in the more advanced stages of education.
10. The propositions that illiteracy must be broken down and that primary edu-
cation has in the present circumstances of India, a predominant claim upon the
public funds, represent accepted policy no longer
Primary Education, Com-
open to discussion. For financial and administra-
pulsory and free education not
practicable. tive reasons of decisive weight the Government
of India have refused to recognise the principle of
compulsory education; but they desire the widest possible extension of primary
education on a voluntary basis. As regards free elementary education the time has
not yet arrived when it is practicable to dispense wholly with fees without injus-
tice to the many villages, which are waiting for the provision of schools. The fees
derived from those pupils who can pay them are now devoted to the maintenance
and expansion of primary education, and a total remission of fees would involve
to a certain extent a more prolonged postponement of the provision of schools in
villages without them. In some provinces elementary education is already free
and in the majority of provinces liberal provision is already made for giving free
elementary instruction to those boys whose parents cannot afford to pay fees.
Local Governments have been requested to extend the application of the principle
of free elementary education amongst the poorer and more backward sections of
the population. Further than this it is not possible at present to go.
11. For guidance in the immediate future, with the necessary modifications due
to local conditions, the Government of India desire
Primary Education. General to lay down the following principles in regard to
principles.
primary education:—

(i) Subject to the principle stated in paragraph 8 (1) supra, there should
be a large expansion of lower primary schools teaching the three R’s
with drawing, knowledge of the village map, nature-study and physical
exercises.
(ii) Simultaneously upper primary schools should be established at suitable
centres and lower primary schools should where necessary be devel-
oped into upper primary schools.
(iii) Expansion should be secured by means of board schools, except where
this is financially impossible, when aided schools under recognised

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 C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5

management should be encouraged. In certain tracts liberal subsidies

may advantageously be given to maktabs, patshalas and the like which
are ready to undertake simple vernacular teaching of general knowl-
edge. Reliance should not be placed upon “venture schools,” unless by
subjecting themselves to suitable management and to inspection they
earn recognition.
(iv) It is not practicable at present in most parts of India to draw any great dis-
tinction between the curricula of rural and of urban primary schools. But
in the latter class of schools there is special scope for practical teaching
of geography, school excursions, etc., and the nature-study should vary
with the environment, and some other form of simple knowledge of the
locality might advantageously be substituted for the study of the village
map. As competent teachers become available a greater differentiation in
the courses will be possible.
(v) Teachers should be drawn from the class of the boys whom they will
teach; they should have passed the middle vernacular examination, or
been through a corresponding course, and should have undergone a
year’s training. Where they have passed through only the upper pri-
mary course and have not already had sufficient experience in a school,
a two years’ course of training is generally desirable. This training may
in the first instance be given in small local institutions, but preferably,
as funds permit, in larger and more efficient central normal schools. In
both kinds of institutions adequate practising schools are a necessary
adjunct, and the size of the practising school will generally determine
the size of the normal school. As teachers left to themselves in villages
are liable to deteriorate there are great advantages in periodical repeti-
tion and improvement courses for primary school teachers during the
school vacations.
(vi) Trained teachers should receive not less than Rs. 12 per month (special
rates being given in certain areas); they should be placed in a graded
service; and they should either be eligible for a pension or admitted to
a provident fund.
(vii) No teacher should be called on to instruct more than 50 pupils; prefer-
ably the number should be 30 or 40; and it is desirable to have a sepa-
rate teacher for each class or standard.
(viii) The continuation schools known as middle or secondary vernacular
schools should be improved and multiplied.
(ix) Schools should be housed in sanitary and commodious but inexpensive
buildings.

12. While laying down these general principles the Government of India recog-
nise that in regard to primary education conditions vary greatly in different prov-
inces. In the old province of Bengal, for instance, where there is already some sort
of primary school for a little over every three square miles of the total area of the

24
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

province, the multiplication of schools may very well not be so urgent a problem as
an increase in the attendance and an improvement in the qualifications of the teach-
ers. In some parts of India at the present time no teacher in a primary school gets less
than 12 rupees a month. In Burma all conditions are different and monastic schools
are an important feature of the organisation. Different problems, again, present
themselves where board schools and aided schools respectively are the basis of the
system of primary education. Nor must it be supposed that the policy laid down in
these general terms for the immediate future limits the aspirations of the Govern-
ment of India or the Local Governments. Indeed the Government of India hope that
the day is not far distant when teachers in primary schools will receive considerably
higher remuneration, when all teachers will be trained, and when it will be possible
to introduce more modern and elastic methods in primary schools.
13. Vernacular continuation schools are the only entrance to more advanced
study which does not demand acquaintance with a foreign language; and it is in
them that competent teachers for primary schools will be prepared. Technical and
industrial progress also is likely to create numerous openings for men with a good
vernacular education. In certain provinces owing to the popularity and cheapness
of English education these institutions have declined.
Vernacular continuation
schools. But in the whole of India in the last decade the number
of schools has increased from 2,135 to 2,666 and that
of their scholars from over 177,000 to close on 257,000. The Government of India
believe that these schools will become much more popular and useful when they
are placed on a sound footing; they also think that it would be an advantage if an
advanced vernacular course could be provided at selected centres for students
desirous of becoming teachers in these continuation schools.
14. In some provinces special classes have been opened in secondary English
schools for scholars who have been through the whole course at a vernacular
continuation school in order to enable them to make up ground in English. There
is much experience to the effect that scholars who have been through a complete
vernacular course are exceptionally efficient mentally.
Proposed expansion.
The Government of India recommend arrangements on
the above lines to all Local Governments and Administrations which have not
already introduced them.
15. It is the desire and hope of the Government of India to see in the not distant
future some 91,000 primary public schools added to the 100,000 which already
exist for boys and to double the 4¼ millions of pupils who now receive instruc-
tion in them. For purposes of present calculation a sum of Rs. 375 per annum may
be taken as a rough approximation of the probable average cost of maintenance
of a primary board school. This figure provides for two teachers, one on Rs. 15
and one on Rs. 12 per month and Rs. 4 per month for the purchase of books and
stationery, petty repairs, prizes and for necessary contingencies. This is, however,
only an average figure for the whole of India. In India as a whole the average cost
of a board or municipal school is at present Rs. 315 per annum. In Bombay the
average cost of a primary school under any kind of management is now about Rs.

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 C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5

437, but this figure includes the cost of the higher classes, which in some other
provinces are classed as middle or secondary vernacular classes.
16. The education of girls remains to be organized. In 1904 the Government of
Education of girls. India remarked that peculiar difficulties were encountered
in this branch of education owing to the social customs
of the people, but that as a far greater proportional impulse is imparted to the
educational and moral tone of the people by the education of women than by the
education of men, liberal treatment had been accorded for girls in respect of schol-
arships and fees. This policy has been continued. Efforts have been also made, not
without success, to bring education, through the agency of governesses, within
the reach of purda ladies, to increase the number of ladies on the inspecting staff
and to replace male by female teachers in government and aided schools. The
number of girls under instruction has risen from 444,470 in 1901–02 to 864,363
in 1910–11. But the total number still remains insignificant in proportion to the
female population. The Government of India believe, however, that in certain
areas there are indications of a swiftly growing demand for a more extensive
education of girls.
17. The immediate problem in the education of girls is one of social devel-
opment. The existing customs and ideas opposed to the education of girls will
require different handling in different parts of India. The Governor General in
Council accordingly hesitates to lay down general lines of policy which might
hamper Local Governments and Administrations, and has preferred to call for
schemes from each province; but he commends the following principles for gen-
eral consideration:—
(a) The education of girls should be practical with reference to the position
which they will fill in social life;
(b) It should not seek to imitate the education suitable for boys nor should it
be dominated by examinations;
(c) Special attention should be paid to hygiene and the surroundings of school
life;
(d) The services of women should be more freely enlisted for instruction and
inspection; and
(e) Continuity in inspection and control should be specially aimed at.
18. The difficulty of obtaining competent schoolmistresses is felt acutely in
many parts of the country. In this connection it has been suggested that there is a
large opening for women of the domiciled community, who have a knowledge of
the vernacular and who might be specially trained for the purpose.
19. The importance of secondary English and in particular of high school educa-
tion is far-reaching. Secondary education of one grade or another is the basis of
all professional or industrial training in India. The inferior
Secondary English output of secondary schools invades colleges and technical
Education.
institutions and hinders the development of higher educa-
tion. At the Allahabad conference the directors of public instruction unanimously

26
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

regarded the reform of secondary English schools as the most urgent of educational
problems. The improvement of secondary English education has for some time
occupied the attention of the Government of India and the Local Governments and
it is hoped in the near future to remedy many defects of the present system.
20. In the last nine years the number of secondary schools has increased from
nearly 5,500 to over 6,500 and the number of scholars from 622,000 to 900,000.
The policy of Government is to rely so far as possible on private enterprise in
secondary education. This policy, laid down in the despatch of 1854, was restated
and amplified by the Education Commission of 1882, which, while doubtful as to
how far the process of withdrawal on the part of Government should be carried,
agreed that, whatever degree of withdrawal from the direct provision of education
might be found advisable, there should be no relaxation of indirect but efficient
control by the state. The admixture of private management and state control was
again emphasised in the resolution of 1904. To this policy the Government of
India adhere. It is dictated not by any belief in the inherent superiority of private
over state management but by preference for an established system and, above all,
by the necessity of concentrating the direct energies of the state and the bulk of
its available resources upon the improvement and expansion of elementary educa-
tion. The policy may be summarised as the encouragement of privately managed
schools under suitable bodies, maintained in efficiency by government inspection,
recognition and control, and by the aid of government funds.
21. Some idea of the extension of private enterprise may be gained by the reflec-
tion that, of 3,852 high and middle English schools, only 286 are government
institutions. These figures, however, cover many types of schools, from the most
efficient to the least efficient. Admirable schools have been and are maintained by
missionaries and other bodies. But the underlying idea of the grant-system, the
subvention of local organised effort, has not always been maintained. Schools of a
money-making type, ill-housed, ill-equipped, and run on the cheapest lines, have in
certain cases gained recognition and eluded the control of inspection. Schools have
sprung into existence in destructive competition with neighbouring institutions.
Physical health has been neglected and no provision has been made for suitable
residential arrangements and play-fields. Fee-rates have been lowered; competition
and laxity in transfer have destroyed discipline; teachers have been employed on
rates of pay insufficient to attract men capable of instructing or controlling their
pupils. Above all, the grants-in-aid have from want of funds often been inadequate.
No fewer than 360 high schools with 80,247 pupils are in receipt of no grant at
all, and are maintained at an average cost of less than half that of a government
school, mainly by fee-collections. Especially do these conditions prevail in the area
covered by the old provinces of Bengal and Eastern Bengal and Assam; a result
due, no doubt, to the rapid extension of English education beyond the ability of the
Local Governments to finance it. In Bengal and Eastern Bengal the number of high
schools is greater than in the rest of British India put together, and the cost of their
maintenance to public funds is proportionately less than a third of the cost prevail-
ing in other provinces. A special inquiry showed that out of some 4,700 teachers in

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 C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5

privately managed high schools in these areas about 4,200 were in receipt of less
than Rs. 50 a month, some 3,300 of less than Rs. 30 a month, while many teach-
ers of English and classical languages drew salaries that would not attract men to
superior domestic service. The great variations in conditions in different parts of
India point to the difficulty of making any but the most general statements about
the results of private enterprise and the special measures that are needed to assist it
to perform efficiently its work in the educational system.
22. Subject to the necessities of variation in deference to local conditions the
Secondary English Schools. policy of the Government of India in regard to sec-
General principles. ondary English schools is—
(1) To improve the few existing government schools, by—
(a) Employing only graduates or trained teachers;
(b) Introducing a graded service for teachers of English with a mini-
mum salary of Rs. 40 per month and a maximum salary of Rs. 400
per month;
(c) Providing proper hostel accommodation;
(d) Introducing a school course complete in itself with a staff suffi-
cient to teach what may be called the modern side with special
attention to the development of an historical and a geographical
sense;
(e) Introducing manual training and improving science teaching.
(2) To increase largely the grants-in-aid, in order that aided institutions may
keep pace with the improvements in government schools on the above-
mentioned lines, and to encourage the establishment of new aided insti-
tutions where necessary.
(3) To multiply and improve training colleges so that trained teachers may
be available for public and private institutions.
(4) To found government schools in such localities as may, on a survey of
local conditions and with due regard to economy of educational effort
and expense, be proved to require them.
23. The Government of India also desire that the grant-in-aid rules should
be made more elastic so as to enable each school, which is recognised as nec-
essary and conforms to the prescribed standards of manage-
Grants-in-aid.
ment and efficiency, to obtain the special assistance which
it requires in order to attain the fullest measure of utility. As larger grants
become available and as the pay and the personnel of the teaching staff are
improved, it will be possible for the inspecting officer to concentrate his atten-
tion more and more upon the general quality of instruction. Full encourage-
ment can then be given to improved and original methods of teaching and
courses; and gradually the grant-earning capacity of an institution will come
to be judged on grounds of general efficiency and desert rather than by rigid
rules of calculation.

28
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

24. The introduction of a school course complete in itself and of a modern and
practical character, freed from the domination of the matricula-
Modern side.
tion examination, was recommended in the first instance by the
Education Commission of 1882. In some provinces and particularly in Madras
real progress has been made towards the accomplishment of this reform. The fig-
ures for 1901–02 and 1910–11 are:—

1901–02. 1910–11.

School Final Matriculation School Final Matriculation

(candidates). (candidates). (candidates). (candidates).
Madras and Coorg . . 194 7,682 7,317* 782
Bombay . . . . . . . . . 1,162 3,731 1,360 3,766
United Provinces . .
Central Provinces . .
{ 452 { 1,704
473
946
538
2,206
702

* School-leaving certificate.

In other provinces the school final examination has not yet been established
except for special purposes. The total number of candidates in 1910–11 for the
school final examination or leaving certificate in all British provinces was 10,161;
that of candidates for matriculation was 16,952.
25. The principal objects of the school final examination are adaptability to
the course of study and avoidance of cram. In those provinces in which a school
final examination or school-leaving certificate has
Secondary English School-
not been introduced the Government of India desire
leaving Certificate.
that it, should be instituted as soon as practicable.
They suggest for the consideration of Local Governments and Administrations
further developments of the system in regard to the character of the tests by which
certificates are granted at the end of the school course. Before proceeding further,
however, they restate and emphasise the three principles laid down by the Indian
Universities Commission in paragraph 170 of their report.
“(1) The conduct of a school final or other school examination should be
regarded as altogether outside the functions of a University.
(2) It would be of great benefit to the Universities if the Government would
direct that the matriculation examination should not be accepted as a preliminary
or full test for any post in Government service. In cases where the matriculation
examination qualifies for admission to a professional examination the school final
examination should be substituted for it.
(3) It would be advantageous if the school final examination could, in the case
of those boys who propose to follow a University career, be made a sufficient test
of fitness to enter the University. Failing this, the best arrangement would appear
to be that the matriculation candidate should pass in certain subjects in the school
final examination, and be examined by the University with regard to any further
requirements that may be deemed necessary.”

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26. The value of external examination cannot be overlooked. It sets before the
teacher a definite aim and it maintains a standard; but the definite aim often unduly
overshadows instruction, and the standard is necessarily narrow and in view of the
large numbers that have to be examined must confine itself to mere examination
achievement, without regard to mental development or general growth of charac-
ter. On the other hand the drawbacks of external examinations are becoming more
generally apparent, and attention was prominently drawn to them in the Report of
the Consultative Committee on Examinations in Secondary Schools in England.
They fail, especially in India, in that they eliminate the inspecting and teaching
staff as factors in the system, that they impose all responsibility upon a body
acquainted but little (if at all) with the, schools examined, that they rely upon writ-
ten papers, which afford no searching test of intellect, no test at all of character or
general ability, and that they encourage cram.
27. A combination of external and internal examinations is required. The Gov-
ernment of India consider that, in the case of a school recognised as qualified to
present candidates for a school-leaving certificate, a record should be kept of the
progress and conduct of each pupil in the highest classes of the school, and that the
inspector should enter his remarks upon these records at his visits and thus obtain
some acquaintance with the career of each candidate during the two or three years
before examination. These records, together with the marks obtained by pupils
at school tests, would be valuable and would supplement a test conducted partly
through written papers on the more important subjects of instruction, but also orally
and with regard to the pupil’s past career. The oral examination would be con-
ducted by the inspector in consultation with members of the staff. A large increase
in the superior inspecting staff would be required to work a system of this kind
and safeguards would be necessary to protect teachers from undue influences; the
Government of India are prepared to assist, with such grants as they may be able to
afford, the introduction of any such system which may be locally practicable. The
school-leaving certificate systems of Madras and the United Provinces fulfil many
of the requirements of the reform in view, but their precise characteristics may not
be found altogether suitable in other areas. Some such system, however, as has
been sketched above, adapted to local conditions, would, it is believed, be most
beneficial and do more than anything else to foster a system under which scholars
would be taught to think for themselves instead of being made to memorize for
examination purposes. Next to the improvement of the pay and prospects of teach-
ers, which must accompany and even precede its introduction, this is perhaps the
most important reform required in secondary English education.
28. No branch of education at present evokes greater public interest than techni-
cal and industrial instruction. Considerable progress has been made since 1904.
Existing educational institutions have been overhauled
Technical and Industrial
Education. and equipped for new courses. Scholarships tenable in
Europe and America have been established. Thanks to
the generosity of the Tata family, seconded by liberal financial aid from the Gov-
ernment of India and His Highness the Maharaja of Mysore, an Indian Institute

30
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

of Science, designed upon a large scale, has been established at Bangalore; it was
thrown open to pupils in 1911. The establishment of a Technological Institute at
Cawnpore for the chemistry of sugar manufacture and leather, for textiles and for
acids and alkalis, has been sanctioned. Industrial schools have been opened in sev-
eral provinces. Altogether the number of technical and industrial schools has risen
since 1904 from 88 to 218, and the number of pupils from 5,072 to 10,535.
29. The system of technical scholarships tenable abroad is still on trial, and
a committee is examining the whole question in England. It is not always easy
to arrange suitable courses of study; and study abroad
Technical Scholarships.
puts the pupils at a disadvantage in removing them
from the environment of Indian trade conditions. From the information available
it appears that, of 73 scholars sent abroad, 36 have not returned to India while 18
are at present industrially employed in India.
30. The policy to be pursued in regard to technical and industrial education
was discussed at the Allahabad conference. The Government of India accept the
conclusions of that conference that progress should
Co-ordination in Tech-
nical Education. continue along the lines generally followed hitherto,
viz., that—
(1) The Indian Institute of Science, which provides for research, the application
of new processes and the production of thoroughly trained managers, should be
developed, as opportunity offers, and become eventually a complete faculty of
pure and applied science;
(2) The larger provincial institutions, which attract students from different
parts of India, and afford instruction in practical methods of management and
supervision, should in the first instance specialise along lines converging on local
industries—a plan which will prevent overlapping and make for economy. Subse-
quently, as industries arise and the demand for managers and foremen increases,
other and more varied courses may be found necessary;
(3) The lesser industrial schools, minor weaving institutions, such of the schools
of art as have an industrial bent, the artisan classes in Bengal, and trade schools
generally, should be permanently directed toward such industries as exist in the
localities where the institutions are situated.
31. The question has arisen as to how far educational institutions should
develop on commercial lines. It has been decided that while educational institu-
tions should in no case trade on commercial lines, in
Technical education on
certain cases instruction in industrial schools may be
commercial lines.
supplemented by practical training in workshops where
the application of new processes needs to be demonstrated. In certain cases, also,
it will be necessary to purchase and maintain experimental plant for demonstrat-
ing the advantages of new machinery or new processes, and for ascertaining the
data of production.
32. Quite recently Lieutenant-Colonel E. H. deV. Atkinson, R.E., principal of
Industrial openings for Indians.
the Thomason College, Roorkee, and Mr. T. S.
Dawson, principal of the Victoria Jubilee

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 C O L O N I A L E D U C AT I O N A N D I N D I A 1 7 8 1 – 1 9 4 5

Technical Institute, Bombay, were deputed to enquire how technical institutions

can be brought into closer touch and more practical relations with the employ-
ers of labour in India. Their report contains many suggestions which are under
consideration, and emphasises the necessity of studying the demand for techni-
cally-trained men, of attracting Indian capital to industrial enterprise and of sup-
plementing tuition at college by a period of apprenticeship. It also indicates that,
while the field of employment or occupation in the highest grades is at present
limited, the outlook for Indians is generally hopeful, provided the necessity for
preliminary practical training is fully realised.
33. There are four government schools of art in India with some 1,300 pupils,
of which two are mainly industrial schools or schools of design. Interesting
Schools of art.
developments are the rise at the Calcutta institution
of a new school of Indian painting, which combines
Indian treatment of subjects with western technique, and the foundation of an
architectural branch in the institution at Bombay. But much remains to be done
in connection with the indigenous art industries. This matter requires careful
expert consideration. The Government of India will address Local Govern-
ments on the subject and for the present content themselves with advocating the
importance and urgency of preserving for, and in, India scientifically arranged
collections of the products of its ancient and modern arts and crafts. The under-
standing and appreciation of eastern art-work in Europe and America is drain-
ing good specimens in increasing volume into the public collections of those
continents.
34. The relation of museums to the educational systems of India was dis-
cussed at the conference held at Simla in July 1911. Much valuable work has
Museums. been done by the zoological and geological sections
of the Indian Museum at Calcutta, which are now
equipped on modern lines. The archaeological section of the same museum has
recently been reorganised under the direction of Dr. Marshall, Director-General
of Archæology. In provinces outside Bengal also there has been good progress
in the right direction, but in the case of most local museums there is need of
better equipment and a stronger staff. One of the most urgent needs in India
is an ethnographic museum under scientific management designed to illustrate
Indian civilisation in its varied phases. Otherwise students in the future will be
compelled to visit the museums of Paris, Berlin, Munich and other places in
order to study subjects, which should clearly be studied best on Indian soil. The
Government of India will consult expert opinion on the subject; as at present
advised they are inclined to favour the formation of a museum of Indian arts
and ethnography at Delhi. Their accepted policy, though some overlapping is
inevitable, is to develop local museums with special regard to local interest and
to concentrate on matters of general interest in imperial museums. How to make
museums more useful educationally and secure greater co-operation between
museum authorities and educational authorities is a matter on which they have
addressed Local Governments.

32
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

35. The present scheme of agricultural education originated under Lord Cur-
zon’s government and is, in fact, only seven years old. Previous to the year 1905,
there was no central institution for research or teaching
Agricultural Education.
and such education as was then imparted in agriculture
was represented by two colleges and three schools, in a more or less decadent
condition. Very few Indians then had any knowledge of science in its application
to agriculture and still fewer were capable of imparting such knowledge to others.
In the year 1905 a comprehensive scheme was evolved under which arrangements
were made both for the practical development of agriculture by government assis-
tance and also for teaching and research in agriculture by subjects connected with
it. A central institution for research and higher education was established at Pusa.
The existing schools and colleges were reconstituted, improved and added to.
Farms for experiments and demonstration were started, and as time went on, a
change was effected in regard to agricultural education in its earlier stages. As
now constituted the scheme of agricultural education has three main features,
viz., (a) the provision of first class opportunities for the higher forms of teaching
and research, (b) collegiate education and (c) the improvement of secondary and
primary education.
36. The institute at Pusa, maintained at a cost of four lakhs a year, has 37 Euro-
peans and Indians on its staff, engaged partly in research, partly in postgraduate
education and the instruction, through short courses, of students or agriculturists
in subjects which are not regularly treated in provincial institutions. There are
now six provincial institutions, containing over 300 students and costing annually
between five and six lakhs of rupees. Practical classes for agriculturists have also
been established at various centres in several provinces. In the ordinary elemen-
tary schools, formal agriculture is not taught; but in some provinces a markedly
agricultural colour is given to the general scheme of education.
37. Veterinary research is carried on at the Bacteriological Laboratory at Muk-
tesar. The scheme of veterinary colleges has been thoroughly reorganised since
1904. There are now four such institutions, with 511
Veterinary Education.
students, as well as a school at Rangoon. These institu-
tions meet fairly well the growing demand for trained men.
38. The College at Dehra Dun has recently been improved; and a research insti-
tution has been established in connection with it. Indians can here obtain an edu-
Forestry Education. cation in forestry which approximates to that ordinarily
obtainable in Europe.
39. Instruction in the western system of medicine is imparted in five recognised
colleges and fifteen recognised schools in British India. These now annually pro-
duce between six and seven hundred qualified medical
Medical Education.
practitioners. A Medical Registration Act has recently
been passed for the presidency of Bombay, under which passed students of such
schools are entitled to become registered; and a similar Act is now under con-
sideration in the presidency of Bengal. In Calcutta there are four self-constituted
medical schools, the diplomas of which are not recognised by the Government

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of India. Among recent developments may be mentioned the establishment of an

X-ray institute at Dehra Dun, and the formation of postgraduate classes in con-
nexion with the Central Research Institute at Kasauli. These latter include train-
ing in bacteriology and technique and preparation for special research; classes of
practical instruction in malarial technique are also held twice a year at Amritsar
under the officer in charge of the malarial bureau.
40. Other projects are engaging the attention of the Government of India,
including the institution of a post-graduate course of tropical medicine. The prac-
tical want of such a course has long been felt; and the Government of India are
now in communication with the Secretary of State regarding its establishment in
the Medical College at Calcutta. The Calcutta University have expressed their
willingness to co-operate by instituting a diploma to be open to graduates who
have taken the course in tropical medicine. A scheme for a similar course in Bom-
bay is also under consideration. The Government of Madras have submitted a
scheme for the construction of a pathological institute and the appointment of a
whole-time professor of pathology with a view to improve the teaching of that
subject at the Madras Medical College. Other matters which are likely to come to
the front at no distant date are the improvement of the Medical College at Lahore
and its separation from the school, the improvement of the Dacca Medical School
and the provision of facilities for medical training in the Central Provinces.
41. The subject of medical education is one in which the Government of India
are deeply interested. It is also one that may be expected to appeal with special
force to private generosity. A problem of particular importance is the inducement
of ladies of the better classes to take employment in the medical profession and
thus minister to the needs of the women, whom the purda system still deters from
seeking timely medical assistance. One of the hindrances hitherto has been that
Indian ladies are able to obtain instruction only in men’s colleges or in mixed
classes. With a view to remedying this defect and commemorating the visit of the
Queen-Empress to Delhi, certain of the princes and wealthy landowners in India
have now come forward with generous subscriptions in response to an appeal
by Her Excellency Lady Hardinge, who has decided to merge in this project her
scheme for a school for training Indian nurses and midwives. The Government of
India are considering proposals to found a women’s medical college and nurses’
training school at Delhi with the help of a subvention from government. Proposals
are also under consideration for assisting the National Association for supplying
female medical aid to the women of India (the Countess of Dufferin’s Fund) to
improve the position of their staff.
42. There has been a marked development of legal education in the last decade.
First it has been concentrated. In 1901 there were 35 institutions, colleges, classes
and schools, containing 2,800 students. At the pres-
Legal Education.
ent time there are 27 institutions with a slightly larger
number of students. The Madras and Bombay presidencies, Burma and the Cen-
tral Provinces each possess a single institution; and in Bengal the instruction for
the degree of bachelor of law has been restricted to certain colleges, although

34
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

other institutions are still recognised for the pleadership examination. A law col-
lege has been established on a liberal scale under the University of Calcutta. This
concentration has resulted in greater efficiency and greater expenditure. In 1901,
the cost to government was a little over Rs. 7,000 and the total cost was 1¼ lakhs.
At present the cost to government is over Rs. 45,000 and the total cost over Rs.
2,83,000. Secondly the courses have been remodelled and in some cases length-
ened. The Government of India will be glad to see an extension of the policy of
concentration and improvement. They also desire to see suitable arrangements
made for the residence and guidance of law students.
43. There has recently been a considerable expansion in commercial education.
Nine years ago there were ten colleges with less than 600 students, and gov-
ernment spent less than Rs. 4,000 upon these institu-
Commercial Education.
tions. At the present time there are 26 institutions, three
of which are under the management of government, the enrolment is now over
1,500 and the expenditure from provincial funds is over Rs. 22,000. The standard
attained in the majority of these institutions is not, however, high, and the instruc-
tion given in them prepares for clerical duties in government and business offices
rather than for the conduct of business itself. A project for a commercial college
of a more advanced type in Bombay has been sanctioned and the Government of
India are considering the question of making arrangements for organised study of
the economic and allied sociological problems in India.
44. Good work, which the Government of India desire to acknowledge, has
been done under conditions of difficulty by the Indian universities; and by com-
mon consent the Universities Act of 1904 has had ben-
University Education.
eficial results; but the condition of university education
is still far from satisfactory, in regard to residential arrangements, control, the
courses of study and the system of examination. The Government of India have
accordingly again reviewed the whole question of university education.
45. It is important to distinguish clearly on the one hand the federal univer-
sity, in the strict sense, in which several colleges of approximately equal stand-
ing separated by no excessive distance or marked local
Affiliating and teaching
Universities.
individuality are grouped together as a university—and
on the other hand the affiliating university of the Indian
type, which in its inception was merely an examining body, and, although limited
as regards the area of its operations by the Act of 1904, has not been able to insist
upon an identity of standard in the various institutions conjoined to it. The former
of these types has in the past enjoyed some popularity in the United Kingdom, but
after experience it has been largely abandoned there; and the constituent colleges
which were grouped together have for the most part become separate teaching
universities. without power of combination with other institutions at a distance.
At present there are only five Indian universities for 185 arts and professional
colleges in British India besides several institutions in Native States. The day is
probably far distant when India will be able to dispense altogether with the affili-
ating university. But it is necessary to restrict the area over which the affiliating

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universities have control by securing, in the first instance, a separate university for
each of the leading provinces in India, and secondly, to create new local teaching
and residential universities within each of the provinces in harmony with the best
modern opinion as to the right road to educational efficiency. The Government
of India have decided to found a teaching and residential university at Dacca and
they are prepared to sanction under certain conditions the establishment of simi-
lar universities at Aligarh and Benares and elsewhere as occasion may demand.
They also contemplate the establishment of universities at Rangoon, Patna and
Nagpur. It may be possible hereafter to sanction the conversion into local teaching
universities, with power to confer degrees upon their own students, of those col-
leges which have shown the capacity to attract students from a distance and have
attained the requisite standard of efficiency. Only by experiment will it be found
out what type or types of universities are best suited to the different parts of India.
46. Simultaneously the Government of India desire to see teaching faculties
developed at the seats of the existing universities and corporate life encouraged,
in order to promote higher study and create an atmo-
Higher studies.
sphere from which students will imbibe good social,
moral and intellectual influences. They have already given grants and hope to
give further grants hereafter to these ends. They trust that each university will
soon build up a worthy university library, suitably housed, and that higher studies
in India will soon enjoy all the external conveniences of such work in the west.
47. In order to free the universities for higher work and more efficient control
of colleges, the Government of India are disposed to think it desirable (in prov-
inces where this is not already the case) to place the preliminary recognition of
schools for purposes of presenting candidates for matriculation in the hands of the
Local Governments and in case of Native States of the durbars concerned, while
leaving to the universities the power of selection from schools so recognised. The
university has no machinery for carrying out this work and in most provinces
already relies entirely on the departments of public instruction, which alone have
the agency competent to inspect schools. As teaching and residential universities
are developed the problem will become even more complex than it is at present.
The question of amending the Universities Act will be separately considered.
48. The Government of India hope that by these developments a great impetus
will be given to higher studies throughout India and that Indian students of the
future will be better equipped for the battle of life than the students of the present
generation.
49. The chiefs’ colleges advance in popularity. In developing character and
imparting ideas of corporate life they are serving well the purpose for which they
were founded. They are also attaining steadily increasing intellectual efficiency,
but the Committee of the Mayo College, Ajmere, have
Chiefs’ Colleges.
decided that it is necessary to increase the European
staff. The post-diploma course has on the whole worked satisfactorily and there is
now a movement on foot to found a separate college for the students taking this

36
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

course. Such a college may in the future become the nucleus of a university for
those who now attend the chiefs’ colleges.
50. The grave disadvantages of sending their children to England to be edu-
cated away from home influences at the most impressionable time of life are being
realised by Indian parents. The Government of India have been approached unof-
ficially from more than one quarter in connection with a proposal to establish in
India a thoroughly efficient school staffed entirely by Europeans and conducted
on the most modern European lines for the sons of those parents who can afford
to pay high fees. No project is yet before them, but the Government of India take
this opportunity to express their sympathy with the proposal and, should sufficient
funds be forthcoming, will be glad to assist in working out a practical scheme.
51. Few reforms are more urgently needed than the extension and improve-
ment of the training of teachers, for both primary and secondary schools in all
subjects including, in the case of the latter schools, sci-
Training of teachers.
ence and oriental studies. The object must steadily be
kept in view that eventually under modern systems of education no teacher should
be allowed to teach without a certificate that he is qualified to do so. There are
at present 15 colleges and other institutions for the instruction of those who will
teach through the medium of English; these contain nearly 1,400 students under
training. There are 550 schools or classes for the training of vernacular (mainly
primary) teachers; and their students number over 11,000. The courses vary in
length from one to two years. The number of teachers turned out from these insti-
tutions does not meet the existing demand and is altogether inadequate in view of
the prospects of a rapid expansion of education in the near future. The Govern-
ment of India desire Local Governments to examine their schemes for training
teachers of all grades and to enlarge them so as to provide for the great expansion
which may be expected, especially in primary education.
52. As regards training colleges for secondary schools some experience has
been gained. But the Government of India are conscious that the subject is one in
which a free interchange of ideas based on the success or failure of experiment is
desirable. The best size for a practising school and the relations between it and the
college; the number of students in the college for which the practising school can
afford facilities of demonstration without losing its character as a model institu-
tion; the nature of, and the most suitable methods of procedure in, practical work;
the relative importance of methodology and of psychological study; the best treat-
ment of educational history; the extent to which it is desirable and practicable to
include courses in subject matter in the scheme of training, especially courses
in new subjects such as manual training and experimental science; the points in
which a course of training for graduates should differ from one for non-graduates;
the degree to which the body awarding a diploma in teaching should base its
award on the college records of the student’s work—these and other unsolved
questions indicate that the instructors in training colleges in different parts of
India should keep in touch with each other and constantly scrutinize the most
modern developments in the west. Visits made by selected members of the staff

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of one college to other institutions and the pursuit of furlough studies would seem
especially likely to lead to useful results in this branch of education.
53. The Government of India have for some time had under consideration the
improvement of the pay and prospects of the educational services, Indian, Pro-
vincial and Subordinate. They had drawn up propos-
Pay and prospects of the
services. als in regard to the first two services and approved
some schemes forwarded by Local Governments in
regard to the third, when it was decided to appoint a Royal Commission on the
Public Services of India. The Government of India recognise that improvement
in the position of all the educational services is required, so as to attract first-class
men in increasing numbers, and, while leaving questions of reorganisation for
the consideration of the Commission, are considering minor proposals for the
improvement of the position of these services. They attach the greatest impor-
tance to the provision for the old age of teachers, either by pension or provident
fund. Teachers in government institutions and, in some areas, teachers in schools
managed by local bodies are eligible for these privileges. But it is necessary to
extend the provision in the case of board and municipal servants and still more in
the cases of teachers of privately managed schools, for the great majority of whom
no such system exists. It is not possible to have a healthy moral atmosphere in any
schools, primary or secondary, or at any college when the teacher is discontented
and anxious about the future. The Governor General in Council desires that due
provision for teachers in their old age should be made with the least possible
delay. Local Governments have already been addressed upon this subject.
54. The defective state of the education of the domiciled community has
long been remarked. Many suggestions have from time to time been made for
its improvement. An influential committee, presided
Education of the domi-
ciled community. over by Sir Robert Laidlaw, is now collecting funds
for the schools of all denominations except Roman
Catholic schools. As in the case of secondary English education and for simi-
lar reasons the policy has been, and is, to rely on private enterprise guided by
inspection and aided by grants from public funds. The Government of India have
never had any intention of changing their policy. But in order to discuss the whole
question and to obtain definite practical suggestions of reform they assembled an
influential conference at Simla last July.
55. The recommendations of the conference were numerous and far-reaching.
The Government of India are prepared to accept at once the view that the most
urgent needs are the education of those children who do not at present attend
school and the improvement of the pay and prospects of teachers. They are also
disposed to regard favourably the proposal to erect a training college at Bangalore
with arts and science classes for graduate courses attached to it. They recognise
that grants-in-aid must be given in future on a more liberal scale and under a
more elastic system. They will recommend to Local Governments the grant of
a greater number of scholarships to study abroad. The proposals to re-classify
the schools, to introduce leaving certificates, to include in courses of instruction

38
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

general hygiene and physiology, special instruction in temperance and the effects
of alcohol on the human body, and the several other detailed proposals of the con-
ference will be carefully considered in the light of the opinions of Local Govern-
ments when they have been received.
56. The suggestion was put forward and largely supported at the conference
that European education should be centralised under the Government of India.
This suggestion cannot be accepted. Apart from the fact that decentralisation is
the accepted policy of government, the course of the discussion at the confer-
ence showed how different were the conditions of life of members of the domi-
ciled community In different parts of India, and how these differences necessarily
reacted on their educational arrangements. The Government of India are con-
vinced that although some difficulties might be removed, more would be created
by centralisation.
57. The figures and general remarks contained in this resolution are general and
applicable to all races and religions in India, but the special needs of the Muham-
madans and the manner in which they have been
Education of Muhammadans.
met demand some mention. The last nine years
have witnessed a remarkable awakening on the part of this community to the
advantages of modern education. Within this period the number of Muhammadan
pupils has increased by approximately 50 per cent. and now stands at nearly a
million and a half. The total Muhammadan population of India is now 57,423,866
souls. The number at school accordingly represents over 16·7 per cent. of those of
a school-going age. Still more remarkable has been the increase of Muhammadan
pupils in higher institutions, the outturn of Muhammadan graduates having in the
same period increased by nearly 80 per cent. But while in primary institutions
the number of Muhammadans has actually raised the proportion at schools of all
grades among the children of that community to a figure slightly in excess of the
average proportion for children of all races and creeds in India, in the matter of
higher education their numbers remain well below that proportion notwithstand-
ing the large relative increase. The facilities offered to Muhammadans vary in
different provinces, but generally take the form of special institutions, such as
madrassas, hostels, scholarships and special inspectors. The introduction of sim-
ple vernacular courses into maktabs has gone far to spread elementary education
amongst Muhammadans in certain parts of India. The whole question of Muham-
madan education, which was specially treated by the Commission of 1882, is
receiving the attention of the Government of India.
58. The Government of India attach great importance to the cultivation and
improvement of oriental studies. There is increasing interest throughout India in
her ancient civilisation, and it is necessary to investigate
Oriental studies.
that civilisation with the help of the medium of western
methods of research and in relation to modern ideas. A conference of distinguished
orientalists held at Simla in July 1911 recommended the establishment of a cen-
tral research institute on lines somewhat similar to those of L’Ecole Française
d’Extrême Orient at Hanoi. The question was discussed whether research could

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efficiently be carried on at the existing universities; and the opinion predominated

that it would be difficult to create the appropriate atmosphere of oriental study
in those universities as at present constituted, that it was desirable to have in one
institution scholars working on different branches of the kindred subjects which
comprise orientalia and that for reasons of economy it was preferable to start with
one institute well equipped and possessing a first-class library. The Government
of India are inclined to adopt this view and to agree with the conference that the
central institute should not be isolated, that it should be open to students from all
parts of India and that it should as far as possible combine its activities with those
of the universities of India and different seats of learning. The object of the insti-
tute as apart from research is to provide Indians highly trained in original work
who will enable schools of Indian history and archæology to be founded hereaf-
ter, prepare catalogues raisonnés of manuscripts, develop museums and build up
research in universities and colleges of the different provinces. Another object is
to attract in the course of time pandits and maulvis of eminence to the institute and
so to promote an interchange of the higher scholarship of both the old and the new
school of orientalists throughout India. But before formulating a definite scheme
the Governor General in Council desires to consult Local Governments.
59. While making provision for scholarship on modern lines, the conference
drew attention to the necessity of retaining separately the ancient and indigenous
systems of instruction. The world of scholarship,
Preservation of the ancient
learning.
they thought, would suffer irreparable loss if the
old type of pandit and maulvi were to die out before
their profound knowledge of their subjects had been made available to the world;
and encouragement rather than reform was needed to prevent such an unfortunate
result. Certain proposals for encouragement were made at the conference, viz.,—
(a) Grants to Sanskrit colleges, madrassas, tols, patshalas, maktabs, pongyi
kyaungs and other indigenous institutions in order to secure better sala-
ries for teachers and to enable students by fellowships or scholarships to
carry their education to the highest point possible;
(b) The appointment of specially qualified inspectors in orientalia;
(c) The provision of posts for highly trained pandits and maulvis;
(d) The grant of money rewards for oriental work.
The Government of India hope to see the adoption of measures that are
practicable for the maintenance and furtherance of the ancient indigenous sys-
tems of learning and have called for proposals from the Local Governments
to this end.
60. The functions of local bodies in regard to education generally and their
relations with the departments of public instruction are under the consideration of
the Government of India. But it is clear that if compre-
Experts required.
hensive systems are to be introduced expert advice and
control will be needed at every turn. The Government of India propose to exam-
ine in communication with Local Governments the organisation for education in

40
 INDIAN EDUCATIONAL POLICY

each province and its readiness for expansion. A suggestion has been made that
the director of public instruction should be ex officio secretary to government.
The Government of India agreeing with the great majority of the Local Govern-
ments are unable to accept this view, which confuses the position of administra-
tive and secretariat officers; but they consider it necessary that the director of
public instruction should have regular access to the head of the administration
or the member in charge of the portfolio of education. The Government of India
wish generally to utilise to the full the support and enthusiasm of district officers
and local bodies in the expansion and improvement of primary education; but
the large schemes, which are now in contemplation, must be prepared with the
cooperation and under the advice of experts. A considerable strengthening of the
superior inspecting staff, including the appointment of specialists in science, ori-
entalia, etc., may be found necessary in most provinces. In Madras an experienced
officer in the education department has been placed on special duty for two years
to assist the director of public instruction to prepare the scheme of expansion and
improvement in that province, and the Government of India would be glad to see
a similar arrangement in all the major provinces should the Local Governments
desire it.
61. In the resolution of 1904 it was stated that arrangements would be made
for periodical meetings of the directors of public instruction in order that they
might compare their experience of the results of
Interchange of views.
different methods of work and discuss matters of
special interest. The Government of India have already held general conferences
at which the directors attended and they are convinced that periodical meetings
of directors will be of great value. While each province has its own system it has
much to learn from other provinces, and, when they meet, directors get into touch
with new ideas and gain the benefit of experience obtained in other provinces.
The Government of India are impressed with the necessity not only of exchange
of views amongst experts, but also of the advantages of studying experiments all
over India on the spot; and in a letter of the 7th July 1911, they invited Local Gov-
ernments to arrange that professors of arts and technical colleges and inspectors of
schools should visit institutions outside the province where they are posted, with
a view to enlarging their experience.
62. Such in broad outline are the present outlook and the general policy for
the near future of the Government of India. The main principles of this policy
Conclusion. were forwarded to His Majesty’s Secretary of
State on the 28th September 1911, and parts of
it have already been announced. It was, however, deemed convenient to defer the
publication of a resolution until the whole field could be surveyed. This has now
been done. The Governor General in Council trusts that the growing section of
the Indian public which is interested in education will join in establishing, under
the guidance and with the help of government, those quickening systems of edu-
cation on which the best minds in India are now converging and on which the
prospects of the rising generation depend. He appeals with confidence to wealthy

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citizens throughout India to give of their abundance to the cause of education. In

the foundation of scholarships; the building of hostels, schools, colleges, labo-
ratories, gymnasia, swimming baths; the provision of playgrounds and other
structural improvements; in furthering the cause of modern scientific studies and
specially of technical education; in gifts of prizes and equipment; the endowment
of chairs and fellowships; and the provision for research of every kind there is a
wide field and a noble opportunity for the exercise on modern lines of that charity
and benevolence for which India has been renowned from ancient times.

Note
1 i.e., 1901 to 1911.

42
 3
A. H. BENTON, EXTRACTS FROM
INDIAN MORAL INSTRUCTION AND
CASTE PROBLEMS (LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN & CO., 1917),
1–10, 31–32, 92–112

INTRODUCTION
THE subject of this short treatise points to a political, administrative and moral
problem of immense importance. Its right solution is of the deepest interest not
only to India and its peoples, but also to the British Empire with all its Oversea
Dominions. In short, it may even be maintained that the question is one of world-
wide concern.
About a fifth of the whole human race dwell within the Indian territories. Their
extent and their well-defined natural features are calculated to form a possible
sphere of immense political power, when the inhabitants have been moulded by
sufficient civil and political experience, and have learned to keep their ranks and
to march in step with their fellow-subjects elsewhere. India lies geographically in
the centre of the self-governing British Dominions, each of them in all probability
destined to attain an equal rank with the Great Powers of the planet. The Overseas
Dominions’ ideal is that they shall remain united to the mother country “if not by
constitutional arrangements at any rate by mutual service, mutual interests, and
mutual devotion” (Mr. Balfour’s tribute to Mr. Chamberlain, Commons, 7th July,
1914). The Indian ideal should be at some distant date the attainment of a similar
position. The tide of human affairs is working steadily and powerfully in this
direction. Indian troops have been employed, fighting with the utmost gallantry
the battles of the Empire at the same time in five different quarters. The Indian
populations under British guidance may look forward to being bound together by
a common language, a common law and a common interest in each other. Thus
India should firmly hope to become in the course of centuries, a mighty, self-
possessed, self-governed, all but independent Power, only like the Dominions
bound to a benignant Patron by devoted loyalty, hallowed in the lapse of ages.
The progress of events and of the opinions and tendencies developed by the war,
moreover, seems to indicate that, in order to settle the world’s peace on a sure
foundation, a complete federation of the Mother country, of the Dominions and

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of all governments under British auspices, must be attempted and strenuously

striven for without loss of time.
If the prospect just suggested is to be realised, and India is ever to have a
recognised place in the comity of nations, her people as a whole must acquire a
character for patience, persistence, steadfastness and moderation in the conduct
of public affairs, approaching those of the peoples, with which she desires to be
associated in the administration of their share of the world. It must be remem-
bered that for well-nigh a millennium the latter have been leading all mankind
in teaching themselves and others the principles of government by the people for
the people, while the task is still far from complete. India’s latest conquerors have
been highly successful in advancing her material prosperity. No enemy has in
their time ventured to assail her from the outside. Within her bounds life and prop-
erty have always remained secure save for one limited period in a single province
and its neighbourhood, when the Pax Britannica was interrupted. The successful
administration of justice has ever been a strong feature of British rule, in glaring
contrast with the times that preceded it. In fact, Indians have been furnished not
only with great facilities for obtaining justice, but they have at the same time
earned for themselves a great reputation for abusing them, in order to indulge their
litigious instincts, and thereby wreak vengeance on their enemies. This indicates,
it may be observed, not any defect of the Courts of Justice, but rather an urgent
need for improving and strengthening the general conscience, so as to curb eristic
propensities, nowhere so extravagantly displayed as in the highest philosophies
dealing with the problems of the Universe, God and Soul, spirit and matter, reality
and illusion.
Following the example of the Roman conquerors of old in their dominions, the
British were almost the first to introduce into the country grand highway com-
munications, solidly constructed. In a modern State, however, in competition with
all the countries of the world, in the age of scientific inventions, besides good
roads, scores of other conveniences and appliances are demanded to meet human
requirements. Without the conquest, it is hard to see how India could have secured
the postal and telegraph services or the railway system extending to over 30,000
miles. She has an English and vernacular press, so vigorous as to require a certain
amount of restraint and guidance. She has a complete system of agricultural land
registration in connection with the land revenue administration. Municipalities
and district boards have been instituted throughout the land; they render valu-
able service to their communities and serve to call out the leaders of the people
and to initiate them in the work of local administration. The limit has almost
been reached in applying the waters of all her magnificent rivers, to increase by
irrigation agricultural produce and to bring under cultivation wide tracts, which
otherwise must have remained barren waste. Much attention has been given to
sanitation: much thought and money have been devoted to the prevention and
extirpation of many diseases, which carried off or debilitated large masses of the
population. Many other material boons might be indicated, for which India is
indebted to her present rulers.

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In short, in developing the resources of the Indian Continent, in furthering

trade, commerce and industry, in promoting the material comfort and welfare of
its immense population, the Indian Government has a record which falls little
short of any ideal that could have been anticipated.
That is, it is admitted, a British way of looking at the material aspect of recent
advancement; if an Indian were sketching the picture, it would doubtless be of
a much more sombre character; Indians have but scant esteem for ideals of that
nature; they would be much more readily gratified by a lively interest in their
spiritual possessions and a similar strenuous effort to make the best of them.
Turning then to the spiritual sphere of development, we find ourselves in a
much less comfortable region. This cannot be attributed to any lack of amenabil-
ity to mental culture on the part of the people, for they are on the whole kindly,
docile, alert, keen-spirited, high and low one of the best-mannered peoples in the
world, and they would appear to offer a very promising field for right spiritual
treatment. There does not appear to be much to quarrel with for the present, all
things considered, as to the extent of educational facilities. Leaving female educa-
tion out of account, not as unimportant, but for the sake of simplicity merely, we
find that elementary education already covers something short of one-third of the
ground it occupies in more advanced communities.
There is no doubt but that ethical training ought to be coextensive with secular
education. The proverb, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he
is old he will not depart from it,” contains the soundest wisdom. In India we have
to a very large extent neglected it. The Court of Directors’ Despatch of 1854,
the Magna Charta of Indian Education, not only prohibits religious instruction in
government (including municipal and board) schools and colleges, but also makes
no provision for ethical training anywhere; it relies entirely for moral progress
on improvement of the intellect. We have greatly enhanced this sad defect by
imposing universally a system of examination for advancement in life through the
public services and for preparation for the universities. This system leaves outside
its scope both religion and morals, and so effectually discourages all voluntary
attention to proficiency therein. The result is a plague spot among those who have
received the higher education. The Indian education problem has been pressed on
public attention by the operations of anarchists, which were constantly in evidence
throughout the period covered by the last Quinquennial Report (1908–1912 inclu-
sive). The agents for perpetrating the many hideous and menacing outrages of the
last seven or eight years have been chiefly, if not entirely, either Hindu students
or Hindus fresh from school or college. This feature is important; an explanation
will be offered, why no Muslims appear amongst the offenders. The most notable
was the deplorable outrage on His Excellency the Viceroy on the 23rd December,
1912, at Delhi, on his formal entry into the new capital; when a bomb was thrown
which severely wounded his Excellency and killed an attendant. The years 1913
and 1914 up to the outbreak of war showed no improvement, a distressingly large
portion of an Indian weekly paper being constantly devoted to anarchist crimes
and trials in various places. Every week chronicled the occurrence of murderous

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attacks on distinguished persons and zealous public servants. The patriotic dem-
onstrations throughout India, which the war evoked, appeared to allay the anar-
chic spirit for a number of months, but then there seemed to follow a vigorous
recrudescence of the evil. During the year 1915 special tribunals presided over
by three judges sat for long periods, if not continuously, occupied with the trial of
cases described in the newspaper headings as “Political Conspiracies,” in which
large gangs were accused of robberies (dacoities) accompanied with murder with
a view to secure funds for the overthrow of the British Government. It is not pos-
sible to ascertain from the reports that the accused had all of them been students,
but the fact that some were, appears incidentally. The Lahore case, the most nota-
ble of these State trials, with sixty-three accused, was traced to a student who held
a scholarship at Oxford, awarded by the Panjab Government (Times, 17th Novem-
ber, 1915). In February, 1916, there were three Special Tribunals sitting in three
provinces. That at Lahore was occupied with a supplement to the Lahore State
Trial in which there were seventy-one accused and one thousand witnesses to be
examined for the defence alone (Pioneer Mail of 12th February, 1916). The press-
ing need for effectual action, whether in or outside the Education Department, to
put an end to the source of disorders, is more than ever clearly demonstrated.
The urgency of the situation has been admitted by the government over and
over again. At the opening of the Indian Imperial Council, on the 25th January,
1910, the Viceroy, Lord Minto, referred to the subject in these words: “The pres-
ent dangers we are prepared to meet; the moral training of the rising generation
our duty will no longer allow us to neglect.”
More than three years after we have a full deliverance of the Government of India
on the subject of education reform in the Government resolution in the Department
of Education, dated Delhi, 21st February, 1913. I think it worth while to transfer
the whole passage, although of considerable length, to these pages, because it will
serve for easy reference and because it enables us to understand exactly where we
are, so far as the Government is concerned, where there is no enigma involved.

“DIRECT RELIGIOUS AND MORAL INSTRUCTION.

“5. The question of religious and moral instruction was discussed at a local
conference held in Bombay and subsequently at the Imperial Conference held
in Allahabad in February, 1911. Grave differences of opinion emerged as to the
possibility or advantage of introducing direct religious instruction into schools
generally, and apprehensions of difficulty in the working of any definite system
were put forward. Doubts were also expressed as to the efficacy of direct moral
instruction, when divorced from religious sanctions. In the matter of moral teach-
ing, however, the difficulties are undoubtedly less than in the case of religious
teaching. The papers laid before the conference indicate that not a little moral
instruction is already given in the ordinary text-books and in other ways. The
Government of Bombay are engaged upon the preparation of a book containing
‘moral illustrations,’ which will be placed in the hands of teachers, in order to

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assist them in imparting moral instruction. Excellent materials for ethical teaching
are available in the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, portions of Hafiz, Sadi, Maulana
Rumi and other classics in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, and Pali. The Government
of India, while bound to maintain a position of complete neutrality in matters of
religion, observe that the most thoughtful minds in India lament the tendency to
develop the intellectual at the expense of the moral and religious faculties. In Sep-
tember, 1911, they invited Local Governments, other than the Bombay Govern-
ment, to assemble local committees in order to consider the whole question. Such
committees are still at work in some provinces. For the present the Government
of India must be content to watch experiments and keep the matter prominently
in view. Enlightened opinion and accumulated experience will, it is hoped, pro-
vide a practical solution to what is unquestionably the most important educational
problem of the time.”
This extract will afford a convenient text wherewith to summarise the chief
points at issue and thereby give the reader a bird’s-eye view of the discussions that
shall occupy our attention in the sequel.
It appears a good omen, a sign of grace, that the Government bound by neutral-
ity was able to countenance the discussion of religious and moral instruction at
two conferences held at Bombay and Allahabad in 1911. The aloofness of neutral-
ity might well have been expected to ban all reference to religion. Another good
omen is that Government is watching experiments, that it sees clearly that the edu-
cation problem to be solved is “unquestionably the most important educational
problem of the time” and that it is hopeful of a practical solution. This sums up,
it seems, the whole matter of a favourable nature to be found in the pronounce-
ment. It betokens a benevolent neutrality. The neutrality would become still more
benevolent, if it were only observed in practice or if it would only take itself away
to limbo and resign the place it should never have occupied to something more
English, more rational. If the business in hand had any concern with war or diplo-
macy there might be much to be said for it; for internal civil administration, where
the business in hand is not to worst opponents by diplomatic art or somehow,
where earnestness and sincerity should be the keynote, its introduction appears
a sad mistake. It means literally, siding with neither of two parties. Who the two
parties intended are, perhaps hardly any one knows. There are many parties and
there should be kindness and goodwill to all. The most illustrious and the most
talented advocate of Indian education at an important crisis, as will appear, failed
to comprehend it. What can be hoped of people less capable? What of the ignorant
masses? It originated with the Court of Directors in the Napoleonic era (Despatch,
dated 7th September, 1808. Howell, p. 9). That is some excuse for its authors.
Yet it is hard to understand how even they overlooked the principle of toleration
expounded by English philosophy, first won for mankind after many persecutions,
after a very troubled history and great expenditure of English tears and bloodshed.
The Government of India does not appear to be bound by the principle of neu-
trality save by its own choice as to its expediency and by long use. Brought to a
standstill, we may say, by pursuing it, it will have a fresh opportunity of considering

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its future adherence to it. In this connection some remarks of His Excellency the
Viceroy, Lord Hardinge, at laying the foundation of the Hindu University at Bena-
res are well worth pondering. “But I am not terrified,” said His Excellency, “by the
bogey of religious intolerance; rather do I think that a deep belief in and reverence
for one’s own religion ought to foster a spirit of respect for the religious convic-
tions of others and signs are not wanting that the day is dawning, when tolerance
and mutual good-will shall take the place of fanaticism and hatred.”
These words, it may be observed, are a worthy echo of the Royal Proclamation
of 1858.
The following brief notes touch on other leading features of our text to be
discussed hereafter:—
No common sense could advocate the teaching of religion in mixed schools.
Both teacher and pupils would be a laughing-stock to the other spectators. Such
unfortunately is human nature!
There should be no doubt as to the efficacy of moral teaching divorced from
religious sanctions, in India at least. The experiment of the Buddha, which lasted
for about 1500 years and failed, appears to prove quite clearly that Indians attach
the highest importance to the influence of spiritual religion on human conduct and
have very little reliance on the teaching of morals which lacks this support. This
has a very important bearing on the value to be assigned to the direct moral teach-
ing imparted to pupils in Government schools and colleges.
As little doubt should there be, that a teacher, not qualified to teach religion to
any particular class of pupils, is not in a position to give them the special moral
instruction required in accordance therewith.
The quantity of materials for ethical instruction to be found in this or that quar-
ter is, it is most humbly and respectfully submitted, a very secondary consider-
ation; the special quality, having regard to the pupils concerned, is the first and
most important point.
These views will be advocated in the sequel by the writer to the best of his abil-
ity; he proposes to recommend a scheme of moral instruction in accordance with
the various religions of the pupils, after it has been tested by an experiment in the
Secondary Schools, where the need is most urgent, or in a portion of them.
The sphere to which the experiment would be applied, its extent and the conse-
quent cost would be left to the discretion of the authorities concerned.
The resolution of the Government of India may fairly be regarded as contain-
ing a clear invitation to the outside public to render it assistance in solving a most
baffling problem. Three years have passed, and, so far as I am aware, there has
been no response whatever on the part of men of light and leading in the fields of
religion, philosophy, literature, and politics, who might here find a subject worthy
of elucidation by their best efforts. Is it not, I must ask myself with my compara-
tively slender resources, great rashness and presumption on my part, to dream
of dealing with such a task? The only excuse I can offer, is that I am attempting
it, faute de mieux; that this effort of mine may at least tempt those with the best
qualifications to come to the rescue.

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Living at a distance from India I could scarcely have ventured to publish my

notions without some more intimate acquaintance with what had been recently
said and done on the spot, than is to be obtained by reading Indian newspapers.
I am very grateful to the Indian Department of Education, which at the request
of my old friend, the Honourable Sir Michael O’Dwyer, Lieut.-Governor of the
Panjab has favoured me with the official documents noted below,1 concerning
educational doings. So I have been relieved of anxiety on this score.
With a view to the effective disentanglement of our theme it appears neces-
sary to discuss first, certain common features, pervading Indian existence, of a
special character; and thereafter in succession a series of questions bearing on
religion, state interference, morals, philosophy and history. The reader may not
feel convinced at each stage of our progress that the ground we are treading is
strictly relevant. He ought to bear in mind that we are dealing with ancient reli-
gions, strange to most of us, also with ancient communities the great masses of
which are living in social conditions, which we have left long behind us. For the
successful handling of such topics, it appears desirable that we should in some
measure endeavour to create for ourselves a certain antique atmosphere, to which
we are strangers. This may most easily be effected, it seems, by several historic
sketches, which will serve to explain how the present position has been reached
and to determine what modification of the same may be desirable and practicable.
The first of these subjects to be dealt with is the curious union of singular, unique
conditions of unknown antiquity, prevailing almost throughout the wide extent of
the Indian territories.
The two proposals, set out in the title page, may at first sight appear to have no
intimate connection with each other or even to be antagonistic. As to antagonism,
it may be observed, that in India, where caste is generally prevalent, the utterance
of the word evokes no sentiment of moral disparagement, as it does in the West.
The relation between the two, will, it is trusted, clearly appear from the following
explanation.
The moral instruction of the children of a community, with only one religion
prevalent, is doubtless a very exalted and a very exacting theme. The Founder of
Christianity thought proper to bestow special attention on children and to treat
them with a distinction, which did not commend itself to the bystanders. A close
imitation of His attitude and of His methods of teaching morality will be earnestly
enjoined, because it appears to afford the best promise of success in the general
treatment of the subject.
A plurality of religions, even if they are not very numerous, greatly enhances
the difficulty of the moral training of the young. A very considerable part of all the
energies of all the churches in these islands, we can see, is devoted to the religious
and moral instruction of young people. When the number of religions, cults, sects
and castes is, as in India, without any limit (over 2000 we are told), the work of
moral upbringing assumes an aspect of overwhelming magnitude and difficulty.
The only hope of dealing with it successfully appears to lie in the possibility of
utilising the agencies of the social framework, which causes the overpowering

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complexity, to provide also the means of coping with and overcoming it. Hence
arises the urgent need for a rational explanation of the nature and origin of Indian
caste, based on facts of no recondite character, which all can appreciate. Govern-
ment and its supporters, the general body politic, we may say, cannot be expected
to be content with accounts, based on mythology, tradition or the revelation of any
particular religion, when it devolves on caste authorities most important public
duties. The Indian Census Commissioner has pronounced the origin of caste to
be an “insoluble conundrum.” Nevertheless a simple theory of the subject will
be propounded in the next chapter and supported by all available argument. The
writer hopes it may obtain acceptance, achieve at least a modicum of success. If
he fail to make such headway in respect to both problems, he must resign himself
to accept a verdict of failure, more or less complete, as regards the work in hand.
Meanwhile he will confidently indulge the hope of a favourable issue. Should
the notions he propounds be found anywhere near the mark, he is fully aware
that much pioneer work will still remain for men on the spot, who alone can deal
effectually with details in all their diversity.
Before parting with the subject of religion we may profitably inquire, why the
susceptibility to evil effects for religion is confined to Hindu students and does
not affect Muhammadans. What I have to say on this topic is not addressed to any
save those who, like myself, accept with fullest conviction that ancient precept,
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God,” which was later on confirmed by its adoption by the Founder of
Christianity on a memorable occasion. Notwithstanding, I do not say that public
secular instruction may not in some cases prove adequate. Religious instruction,
like secular, may be imparted either publicly or privately. It appears an abso-
lute essential, however it may be got, and that is well illustrated by the two very
interesting cases we are considering. The Muslims have a religion, which they
sincerely believe and steadily practise; which they cannot cease to practise with
impunity at the hands of their co-religionists. They have been very chary of sub-
jecting their children to the risk of contagion in our schools, and they often delay
their public secular education for years, in order that their religious instruction
may be first attended to by private tuition or in their own maktabs (schools), thus
handicapping them to some extent in the battle of life. In a community of this
character public instruction may be secular without pernicious consequences.
This is how Muhammadan students maintain, their moral balance and continue
loyal and well behaved.
It is altogether different with the Hindu. His peculiarities are extreme receptiv-
ity and toleration of dogmas and extreme religious sensibility. If any people may
live without God in the world, it certainly is not the Hindus. The Hindu Pantheon
contains divinities innumerable. Every object in Heaven or on earth, “everything
good or evil, great or useful, strange or monstrous,” has divine significance attrib-
uted to it and moves to awe and reverence the ordinary Hindu. All rivers are more
or less sacred, the most sacred being the Ganges and six others, and a favourite
pilgrimage is the perambulation of their sources. There are endless holy places,

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and pilgrimages to them are one of the settled occupations as well as one of the
usual diversions of Hindu existence. Again, as to toleration, a Hindu, we are
informed, is not a man who believes Brahmanical or any other doctrine. In fact
a Hindu may even adopt Muhammadan or Christian doctrines, like Rammohan
Roy, and still remain a Hindu. A Hindu is a man who belongs to hirarchy of caste,
headed by Brahmans, and who yields obedience to the rules of his own caste.
These rules, any rate in the case of the higher castes, involve an interminable array
of prescribed rites and ordinances for every day of his life, and still more injunc-
tions for special days and special occasions, too tedious to contemplate. In the
ordinary course the whole life of a Hindu is regulated by tradition, understood to
have been received from inspired sages. The Higher Education, which directs his
attention to a foreign literature and a history, of anything but a sedative character;
to Science, which proceeds by observation and experiment and reasoning thereon
grounded, and which can show wonderful results; to Philosophy, by which every-
thing in heaven and earth is open to doubt and question, is the very antithesis2 of
his former habits. The student naturally applies the new method to these traditions
and to the ways and habits of his environment. He may find that they rest on no
sound foundation and he is liable to despise and reject them. He may thus, los-
ing his moral balance, be cut adrift from his moorings and be launched without
compass or pilot on the ocean of life and so incur shipwreck; in fact he too often
becomes an anarchist.

CHAPTER VI

MORAL IMPROVEMENT AND REFORMATION

WE announced at the outset that one of the objects aimed at was to make the
Indian peoples attain a political apprenticeship and ethos, approaching those of
the best elements, with which they were associated.
Now India is a very wide country, containing many nations differing in his-
tory, race, character, and religion. Moral training adapted to all these diversities
must include very many varieties, widely apart, and must begin in each case with
the present conditions of the particular unit under instruction. How is it possible,
it may be asked, to unite and combine all these different features so as to reach a
tolerably approximate character? Has this been considered; has any arrangement
been provided, calculated to secure this desirable object? The candid admission
is, that no such provision has been made, but it is maintained that nothing of the
sort is needed, because every improvement in morals has a convergent effect,
and will of itself tend to cause characters to approximate. All men are pretty near
agreement about what conduct is good or bad, right or wrong. Good men, wher-
ever they have come from or however diverse their up-bringing, it is the general
experience, have no difficulty in getting on with each other, when they meet. If it
were otherwise, the idea of a Heavenly Paradise, common to so many religions,
would obviously be absurd. There are certain characters in history whom all

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men, in all ages, of all religions, have admired, for example Pericles, Epaminon-
das, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Sadi. The behaviour of the whole of vocal India
at the outbreak of this war is a good illustration of the view contended for. Vocal
India may be regarded as representing the small advanced sections in the local
communities, into which the population would be divided from a religious stand-
point for administrative purposes. A great moral problem, seriously affecting
every one, was suddenly presented and it was answered with a unanimity which
must have charmed the dwellers in all the lands of the Empire. The following is
a good sample of what was common throughout the Indian Press at the time:—
“India’s duty is clear to-day. She has never forgotten a benefit and never
wavered, when the call of friendship demanded great sacrifices. Our great men
have given their lives, their homes and their all for their friends. We are faced
to-day by a common danger. The fate of India is interlinked with the future of
England. Our duty is to stand as men so that the memory of our deeds may nerve
the forces of coming generations.
“Let us fight shoulder to shoulder in this great cause as a band of brothers. It is
not always that the faith of a nation is put to trial. We have got a rare opportunity.
Let us keep our faith in the wisdom of the Government. Let us nerve our hearts
with the justice of our cause. There can be no question as to the issue. We must
win.”3
In the next place it appears desirable that the principle of the specific to be
recommended for our ailment, should be explained in advance. It depends, it will
appear, on the power of habit and of mental adjustment to suit confirmed habit.
Our complaint doubtless has its root in religion. Religions have a common
feature; they are all framed in terms of the eternal: “One day is as a thousand
years,” in each case. Yet religions, it must be admitted, have a beginning; they
develop; their existence falls short of eternity; they disappear. The Polytheisms
of the Mediterranean basin are gone; so also the Teutonic. Buddhism has mostly
vanished from the Indian Continent, which it at one time pervaded. We know
something of the history of Christianity. I pointed out what appeared to me a
development as regards the recognition of conscience, as a guide for human con-
duct. At the Christian era slavery was universally prevalent, the slave population
being perhaps in excess of the free (Gibbon, Cap. II.). Slaves were recommended
to be obedient even to bad masters for conscience’ sake (1 Pet. ii. 18). The insti-
tution, thus recognised in the sphere of conscience, has disappeared among
Christians in our time, as the result of a tremendous war. All the great religions
took their rise prior to the discovery of the correct mechanism of the Universe
and the phenomenal advance of Science, which has ensued. Science is a human
possession of a different character from religion; ever under repair, it waxeth
not old, so far as we know or can calculate. It proceeds on the principle of the
Continuity and Uniformity of Nature, which is flagrantly at variance with many
religious traditions. This clash of principle does not disturb many of the greatest
intellects but it unsettles some, resulting in scepticism, unbelief, and rebellion
against social usages and duties.

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In such a predicament what is the best remedy or palliative which can be sug-
gested and how does it operate? The mischief to be overcome in India, like the
advent of Science in the East, is a comparatively recent thing, but the West has
had centuries of experience of the complaint. The result is, that the West would
appear to be thoroughly convinced that the best plan is to give good heed to the
old proverb: “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old he will
not depart from it.” This means that every child, in the course prescribed for him,
will have full instruction according to his years both in religious and moral prin-
ciples, and all the time he will be required to live in accordance therewith; if he
come short in any respect, he will find his life anything but a bed of roses. When
religious truths are imparted to him, as he matures in years, he will be furnished
with reasons for accepting them, sufficiently powerful to make him think once,
twice, and again, before he thinks of parting with the beliefs to which he has been
inured. After protracted consideration he may come to the conclusion, that what
he was taught in his childhood is unsound, and that he must find something more
reasonable and more reliable to replace it. He thus becomes converted, we shall
say, to a new set of beliefs and he may have to modify his conduct accordingly.
All the time this religious debate has been going on internally, he has been tread-
ing in the old paths, indulging in old habits, which have become a second nature
to him; he will not dispense with any of them save with the utmost regret. He
will maintain his confirmed attitude to relations, old friends, acquaintances and
the society of which he was a member in all respects, so far as this is possible.
A pathetic instance on record will serve to illustrate the position. I am to quote a
few sentences from Sterling’s last letter to his friend Carlyle. Sterling had been an
English clergyman, and in the course of time had found himself compelled to part
with some Christian beliefs, among them, it would appear, the cardinal belief in a
future life. The letter begins—

“MY DEAR CARLYLE,

“For the first time for many months it seems possible to send you a few
words; merely, however, for remembrance and Farewell. On higher matters
there is nothing to say. I tread the common road into the great darkness with-
out any thought of fear and with very much of hope. Certainty indeed I have
none. . . . Heaven bless you! If I can lend you a hand when there that will not
be wanting.”

We see that the effect of an important change of belief was to produce a men-
tal adjustment; to. replace certainty by hope. Similar changes of belief might
have the effect of expunging many pages of religious traditionary records,
as altogether incredible. Similar mental readjustments would replace them,
if necessary with the best available substitutes without any anarchy or social
disturbance.
Something of this sort is what occurs in the green tree in the West under most
favourable conditions. We are now witnessing what occurs in the dry tree in India,

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where youths are crammed by the Higher Education with anything that will win
marks in examinations for advancement in life. Conduct and character are taken
no account of. The acquisition of any knowledge of religion and morals is of no
avail whatever, however essential it may be to a well-ordered and useful life. Hot-
headed youths, who have failed in examinations, on reaching manhood, lose their
bearings and find no career so attractive as forming large bands to commit raids
and robberies. The specious pretext is, that they wish to secure resources in order
to liberate India from an alien Government, whose hands are full with a great war
elsewhere. In the Panjab alone in the first half of May, 1915, two Special Tribu-
nals were sitting for the trial of 2121 of such misguided would-be rebels and other
malcontents, who have adopted their weapon of organised robberies in order to
redress their grievances.
We shall now proceed to explain proposals for calling to our assistance the wise
men of the East, in order to extract from their stores of wisdom, the requisite materi-
als for teaching the young to love good habits and ever to choose the path of virtue.

CHAPTER VII

REMEDIAL MEASURES

So far no reference has been made to the reports of the Bombay and Allahabad
Conferences on Moral Education, referred to in the Introduction. I am not con-
scious that I have been influenced by them in the foregoing discussions, which
were for the most part complete before receipt of the reports. The great value, I
attach to them, is due to their use for verification.
The gist of these pages is contained in this sentence of the address of the Lord
Bishop of Bombay:—“For I should have thought that at least one possible solu-
tion of this problem is, that at school the children of each religion should receive
teaching in the morality inculcated by that religion.” I have been busy so far in
supporting this thesis and what remains to be done is, to supply one working plan
for putting it in execution. I am quite ready to believe that much better schemes
could be furnished. The Bishop was strongly supported by two other speakers;
one of them a Roman Catholic clergyman. Of two other speakers one placed his
chief reliance on the inspiring influence of the teacher, expounding and practis-
ing sound morality, and the other on the excellent advantages of a good home.
We may adhere to our own conclusions with fullest confidence without calling in
question the enormous advantages of first-rate teachers and admirable homes, if
they were only procurable.
The Allahabad Conference might be said to be all but unanimous as to the
desirability of moral and religious instruction proceeding hand in hand. There
was not a single suggestion pointing to any means of obtaining this inestimable
boon in Government schools, while the unalterable policy of the Government
was adhered to. The method of moral instruction without religious instruction,
with accounts of the attitudes of parents and others towards it, had been fully laid

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before the Conference in careful reports of the Directors of Public Instruction,

expressly prepared for the Conference. A Muhammadan member of the Confer-
ence did not mince matters in giving his opinion as to the value of the method; he
pronounced it a farce. This pis aller of so-called Direct Moral Instruction must be
regarded as having the verdict of the Conference in its favour, seeing that its mem-
bers were unable to propound anything to replace it. It may be as well to explain
the nature of the tuition. Books have been provided for class lessons of a liter-
ary, historical, geographical or other nature with a moral tendency. The teacher is
expected not only to give the particular lesson effectively, but also to enforce with
power and enthusiasm any morals that may be extracted from it by the way; even
by personal example “to illustrate and sanctify the efficacy of their precepts to
young minds.” I am quoting the words of a Deputy Inspector. If the teacher fails
to accomplish all this, it is not because the scheme is not a sound one, but because
he should be regarded as a failure. I have commented on Direct Moral Instruction
unfavourably on two previous occasions, and any number of objections could be
urged against it, if the task were not too ungrateful. Enough has been said, I trust,
to enable readers to judge for themselves. The best that could be said of it was,
that it was a courageous effort to find a way out of the impossible impasse, caused
by the necessary embargo on religion for moral teaching, due to the Govern-
ment policy. The Government must be disappointed by the outcome; for it is not
prepared to go boldly forward but prefers to wait and see what further light may
be shed on the problem. The position is doubtless an awkward one but under the
circumstances the decision seems to me a right and proper one. I will explain why.
India may well be regarded as the most difficult country in the world to deal
with as regardas moral teaching. Owing to its history, to the various origins of
its races, to the various conquests that have occurred within historical times and
before them, to the devices adopted by the conquerors to maintain their superiority
to their predecessors and to the aborigines, and owing also to the various religions
of the inhabitants, due to all these causes, it may safely be maintained that there
are not merely one, two, or three systems of morality current but an indefinite
and unknown number, corresponding to the various religions which have grown
up with and dominated them. From a material point of view all the conquests
save the latest have only been partial. From the religious and spiritual standpoint
there has never been any conquest at all. My meaning will be apparent from a
comparison with Europe. The Christian religion has pervaded all Europe and in
consequence there is there practically only one religion and one moral system,
because the religious divisions do not affect morals. Europeans, when they go to
India, take their morals with them, and naturally proceed to apply everywhere the
notion of the single system. There are exceptions; the Lord Bishop of Bombay
for instance takes full cognisance of the fact to which I am endeavouring to draw
attention. Other people have glimmerings of it one moment and forget it the next.
This may be illustrated from the quoted paragraph of the Resolution. Reference is
made first to what we may call the Cosmopolitan morality to be found in the class
text-books, gathered we may say from promiscuous sources and distributed to all

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pupils indiscriminately. A little further on we find reference to the ethical teach-

ings to be found in the classical writers of various Eastern Countries. One might
be excused for inquiring why, if moral materials gathered from anywhere were
suitable for Indian pupils, there was any need to rummage for them in ancient
classics, was this not great waste of labour and effort? The truth is that there is in
many minds a notion half alive, that material from these ancient books might be
very congenial and suitable to Indians, but there is not in the same minds even
a suspicion that the former materials ought prima facie to be regarded as quite
unsuitable. This is my contention, which I laboured to establish when I proposed
a definition of morality suitable to Indian conditions and especially to the business
of the Indian Education Department.
We must, I say, recognise numerous moralities in India in consequence of the
present condition of its peoples, all divided into distinct social communities, sepa-
rated from each other by rifts and fissures or by vast ravines. This recognition is
the only means of advancement, the only resource, which affords a hope that they
may in time be brought into a state of approximate continuous homogeneousness.
Meanwhile each community, each moral4 unit must have its own approximate
moral treatment, if there is to be peace in the land. The Directors’ reports seem
to confirm these views. The people they consulted seemed hardly to understand
what is meant by morals; some say they do not wish moral teaching, but they are
all keen for having religion taught, the real fact being that religion according to
their conception includes morals. They are, as already remarked, so far as the
domination of religion is concerned, where our ancestors were some centuries
back. It seems a piece of good fortune accordingly that the Government thought
proper to call a halt.
Having read so much in the various Reports about school discipline, obedience,
respect for superiors and so on, I am led to suggest that a great moral improve-
ment might be effected by slight physical training calculated to produce correct
bearing and deportment. Village louts and yokels should not appear as such in the
schools but be smartened up into the beginnings of men. I am induced to give this
advice in consequence of what I see of our “Boy Scouts.”
In perusing the evidence with regard to Direct Moral Instruction, our attention
is constantly called to the existence of a sinister phenomenon, pervading Indian
school life. It distresses alike all pupils and teachers, who admire honest work
and fair play. In consequence of it neither pupils nor teachers have any time to
bestow on either religion or morals. The sole cause of the trouble is the Examina-
tion Fiend, who, like the Government, is precluded from interfering with religion,
but is entitled to do his Devil’s work in every other sphere. An unfair handicap is
thus imposed on all who give fair attention to religion and morals, and a premium
is bestowed on those who do not scruple to neglect them. There ought to be no
hesitation about penalising the latter. The examination for Matriculation and all
such like avenues for advancement in life ought to be duly guarded by a pass-
examination in religion and morals, as matters of the first importance, and by an
ample deduction of marks in cases where the test is not fully satisfied. We are

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assured by J. S. Mill (“Liberty,” p. 193), who should be a good authority on such

a subject, that there is no reasonable objection to examining an atheist in the evi-
dences of Christianity, provided he is not required to profess a belief in them. Still
less ought there to be any objection to examining pupils in morals and the religion
they profess. It would be a fine feat indeed to make this fiend exorcise himself.
I would not have it supposed that I attach any very serious importance to the
suggestions offered in the two preceding paragraphs, as contributions to the solu-
tion of our problem. They may be regarded as mere obiter dicta arising out of the
discussion. The solution to which I attach high importance is based on the fact that
it has been proved, we may say twice over, that the task of teaching morals, to be
efficiently performed, must be handed over to independent authorities who are not
prohibited from invoking the aid of religion for the purpose.
It is proposed accordingly that independent committees be constituted in each
district, to give moral instruction to the pupils of all Government and Grant-in-aid
Primary Schools in accordance with the religion of the pupil, not in the schools
but in separate buildings specially adapted for the purpose. It is quite well under-
stood that independence is a virtue, which cannot be conferred on a small body
of men in an ordinary Indian District by a simple fiat. It will have to be cherished
and built up in process of time by measures, sedulously contrived to attain that
object. It should be understood, that the primary qualification for any gentleman’s
being appointed to serve on such a committee would be a religious one. In India
all religious organisations, such as there are, are merely local. The authorities
in one place have no control over authorities elsewhere. Gentlemen would be
appointed to the committees merely as individuals. In short there is no spiritual
authority of the nature of a Church, and it would be a great mistake to do anything
to create one.
Let us suppose for the present, that suitable authorities of the right sort, open
to no objection, have been properly constituted. The next thing to be settled is
the method of instruction. It must be remembered that we are not dealing with
advanced students of morals, capable of understanding definitions and reason-
ing based thereon, but with children who must be supplied with matter suitable
to their intelligence and who must take what they are told for the most part on
trust. It is submitted that the matter taught must be couched in the form of a pre-
cept, felicitously expressed in simple terms, which even a child can understand, in
terms calculated, however, by their force and charm to produce a lasting impres-
sion on the youthful mind. Moral maxims of this high character can only be the
product of moral discernment of no mean order, and in some cases it may be no
easy task to discover and arrange them. There is a profuse abundance of the trea-
sure demanded in Christian ethics; there must also, it is believed, be very ample
store in the text-books of the Buddhist tenets.
In support of my contention as to the method of teaching I would ask Chris-
tian readers to look within their own breasts, and to ask themselves with respect
to their moral notions, on which they set the highest value, from what source
they have obtained them? Is it not directly from the Gospel precepts or indirectly

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through the society imbued with these precepts, in which they have spent their
lives? I should be immensely surprised to hear from them, that they were to
any sensible extent indebted for the moral thoughts they treasure most either
to the treatises of moral philosophers or to catechisms. To illustrate this mat-
ter reference may be made to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, a subject of
arduous study in the Scotch schools, which were established in every parish in
consequence of the proposals of the Reformer John Knox, and which continued
in existence down to the seventies of last century. The Catechism dealt at length
with Effectual Calling, Justification, Adoption, and Sanctification. Neverthe-
less, in after life, when the Catechism was once got rid of, who ever gave a
thought to these terms, which puzzled childhood, or heard of them in private
conversation, or saw any allusion to them in the newspaper press or in any non-
theological work? I entertain the sincere hope that both Hindus and Muham-
madans may, if called on, have similar accounts to give regarding their religious
possessions. The method of teaching may of course have to be varied, to adapt
it to the means available and to the customs and usages of the localities and of
the races concerned.
Our next task is to settle how the Committees above proposed for presiding
over religious and moral instruction should be constituted. We must remember
that throughout British India the unit of Local administration is the district. Each
district is in charge of the Collector and Magistrate or of the Deputy Commis-
sioner; it has its District Board of which the Collector or Deputy Commissioner
is Chairman. The Collector would be required to determine how the population
should be divided from a religious standpoint into communities for religious and
moral instruction, so that a committee might be appointed to represent each, to
arrange its business with the District and Municipal Boards to draw up a religious
and moral syllabus and to provide suitable buildings and establishment. Each
committee’s scheme would have to be approved by the District and Municipal
Boards, which would have to defray the cost.
In preparing the syllabus the present religious and moral condition of the com-
munity would be the starting point as already indicated in Chapters II., IV., and
V. (pp. 29, 71, 85). The committee’s business would be to maintain and improve
the present status. In some cases the preparation of the syllabus would be easy, in
some it might no doubt be a formidable business. The Muhammadans might be
expected to be sticklers for the directions of the Euran and the Hadis, and might
not care to admit much from extraneous sources; this would save the trouble of
choosing. It would be for the Boards to decide whether the matter submitted was
easily intelligible, sufficient and worth its cost. In the case of some of the com-
mittees there may not be available the learning in their own religious lore or the
talent to manipulate it. Many of the committees would possess, it is presumed,
exactly the same features and the less learned and clever committees might be
advised and induced to copy the work of abler committees with like characteris-
tics in other districts. Outside assistance might perhaps be obtained from the cen-
tral Hindu College, Benares, and like bodies. All the difficulties in the way will

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only be discovered when an effort is made to surmount them. The first attempts
should be regarded as a voyage of discovery in a new country. In selecting the first
committee the Collector would of course consider, who among the leaders of the
community seemed best qualified to deal with this important business and with
the starting-off the committee on its career.
It is suggested that in every case a section of the syllabus should be devoted to
special local matter, moral proverbs, hymns and folk songs; also that each item of
the collection should, if possible, have a marginal catchword.
Vacancies in the committees might be filled by co-optation.
It strikes me, that both to the District Boards and to the Committees it would be
a great boon to have a pattern syllabus provided for them, even if it were for a dif-
ferent religion, say the Christian. The former would be able to decide by reference
to the pattern, what was worthy of approval; the latter would understand what sort
of product it was necessary for them to work up to, in order to obtain due sanction
for their expenditure. I would suggest that it would be worth while for the Govern-
ment to offer several handsome prizes for good specimens of a syllabus in the best
literary style, drawn up according to directions supplied. With a view to the issue
of such directions I will offer such ideas as occur to me.
It would be necessary to restrict the pattern, to a convenient size, say 50 to 100
pages or so many words. It would contain a narrative of the barest facts of Christ’s
life, simply told, with the most important Gospel precepts embodied. The precepts
would be selected and simply copied. The selection would extend to other books
of the New Testament and contain two or three texts regarding conscience. It
would also extend to the Old Testament and to secular literature, both ancient and
modern. I have not given much consideration to the secular side of the business;
I will merely give a few specimens that occur to me at the moment, which might
possibly find a place in the collection:—
From Homer:
“Aye to be first; fore all the rest.”

From Aristotle’s Ethics:

“As it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a summer, so it is not one day
or a short time, that makes a man blessed or happy.”

From Terence:
“Being a man, nothing concerning man is outside my concern.”

From Kant, the declaration about the two infinities:

“The starry heavens above and the moral law within.”

From Milton, the last two lines of the VIIth Sonnet:

“All is, if I have grace to use it so,
As ever in my great Taskmaster’s eye.”

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From Carlyle:
“Do the duty which lies nearest.”
—“Sartor Resartus,” Bk. 2. 9.

I ought not to part with this proposal of a model without stating that I am in this
matter suggesting imitation, as exactly as possible, of the procedure of the great-
est Moralist of Humanity. His followers now number in all the continents about
one-third of mankind. They are progressive and powerful and may be regarded
as controlling the affairs of the world; the destinies of India are committed to one
of their nations.
The attention of each committee should be specially directed to the character
of the precepts, so that they may be stimulated to ransack their great resources,
in order to make a selection to match them, as nearly as possible. They were
not arrived at by any reasoning, which common people could not be expected to
appropriate and digest. They were propounded in plain terms, which the mean-
est could understand. They were characterised by charming simplicity, by artistic
point and vigour, also by sweet and winning reasonableness, which commended
them to the people at large. They were astonished, we are told, at His doctrine;
great popular commotions were the result. There was, moreover, always a reli-
gious spirit enforcing the ethical doctrine; there were constant allusions to the
Father Almighty. In the first address, of which we have any account, we find the
words: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works
and glorify your Father, which is in heaven.”
It may be noted with regret that Animists and Primitive Tribes are outside our
purview. The writer does not see how any recommendation can be made to the
Government to go so low down as to have dealings of the nature suggested with
believers in magic, sorcery, witchcraft, and such-like superstitions. I may be
doing these classes injustice through unacquaintance with their character. I will
therefore leave their case in the hands of persons who are able to profess that they
do not lie under any such incapacity for handling it. It is to be hoped that the ten
millions of Indian peoples in the condition supposed may in the process of civili-
sation, whether by conversion or otherwise, attain a higher status, which would
permit of their case being dealt with on the ordinary lines.
I have begun by explaining my proposals with regard to the pupils of elemen-
tary schools, because I wish to propound a complete scheme. So far, however,
there is little harm being done in respect of pupils whose education stops at the
elementary stage as has been noted (pp. 52–4). Their case is not urgent and the
cost of dealing with them as a whole would be considerable, perhaps as much
as an increase of 25 per cent, on the whole cost of education. The plague spot
is in the Higher Schools and Colleges. It appears expedient to begin with them
or better still with a convenient portion of them. If the plan succeeded with this
portion, the experiment could be extended to the whole and afterwards, when
there was no fear of failure, to the whole Indian system, primary as well as
secondary.

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Suppose that it were decided to make the proposed experiment in any portion of
a Province, private schools, receiving no support from Government, would have
to be excluded from the operation. Without some legislation of a trivial character,
it might not be possible to obtain from them the necessary facilities with regard to
the adjustment of their time-tables, so as to enable the pupils at certain times to be
absent for moral instruction. In no secondary schools or colleges of any descrip-
tion would there be any change in the programme of their studies or their arrange-
ments save the proposed alteration of the time-tables. The buildings necessary for
the new instruction would have to be found in the immediate neighbourhood or
almost next door, so to speak, in order that as little time as possible might be lost
in moving from the place of secular instruction to the other and vice versâ. The
moral instruction would be quite independent of the secular, subject to a differ-
ent authority and a different inspection; it would constitute a new department in
the administration. Ethics would be treated as an entirely separate study, just like
music, dancing, gymnastics, carpentry or the like. There would be a variety of
ethical studies, to meet the wants of pupils of different religions and of different
sects of the same religion. The pupils in each case would obtain their instruction
by themselves; at the time of teaching there would be no intermingling and no
contact with pupils of a different section. The buildings would have to be suf-
ficiently extensive to permit of teaching being conducted according to the method
suggested. It would be necessary that the authorities controlling both departments
of education should be mutually obliging and accommodating for other reasons,
but especially for the adjustment of the time-tables, so as, so far as possible, to
secure economy in building.
The arrangements for securing suitable text-books would be the same as sug-
gested in the case of the elementary schools. The head of the District, or some
authority independent of the Department of Education, would take the place of
the District or Municipal Board in dealing with the committees charged with ethi-
cal education. These committees would require to be sufficiently numerous to
meet the wants of the pupils attending the secular school. If there were very few
pupils of any particular class, special provision would have to be made for them,
unless the number was deemed negligible. Exemption from attendance at ethical
instruction would be obtainable by parents from the head of the district or some
one appointed by him for the purpose. It seems unnecessary to attempt further to
elaborate details; difficulties will no doubt present themselves, but they will have
to be disposed of, when they make their appearance.
The Government would have to meet the whole cost of the experiment, what-
ever other arrangement might be found possible and fair, after it had succeeded.
If the remedies suggested were found to answer, after being duly tested, and if
they were extended accordingly, any adjustments shown by experience to be desir-
able being from time to time adopted, it might well be calculated that, instead of
a few anarchists continuing to cause quite a disproportionate amount of commo-
tion and unrest, there would be a great increase in the spirit of loyalty. The proper
respect shown on all hands to the various Indian religions by the Government and

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by its officials and, mutually, by force of example by the various communities

themselves should serve to increase the bonds of social union and to dispel causes
of strife and illwill. Each individual affected by these measures should be enabled
to feel some inches taller; he would be more determined than ever to support the
authority, which not only protected the frontiers and maintained internal peace,
but by arduous efforts in conjunction with the various communities sought by
their moral improvement in accordance with their religious beliefs to minimise
their ancient and outstanding differences, so as thereby to promote cohesion and
to make them fairly homogeneous citizens, worthy of a great Empire.

We have dealt with a great variety of subjects. Our discussions have travelled
over extensive fields in Time, in the East and in the West. Considering their varied
and discursive character it appears highly advantageous that here in conclusion I
should attempt to gather together and briefly to set out the results we have arrived
at as follows:—
1. At the outset I explained the high importance of the problem to be solved,
for India, for the British Empire, even for the world at large. The clear invitation
to render assistance in dealing with it was noted. The diversified nature of the
discussion to be pursued in the fields of religion, morals, state action, philosophy,
and history, as applied to a country with a number of special features pervading
it, was outlined.
2. These special features included geological formation and boundaries, uni-
formities in respect of land settlement, administration, mode of human habita-
tion and a peculiar social frame-work—caste to wit, corresponding to the prior
conditions. The conclusion after examination of each prevalent uniformity was
that they all held together, that each was part and parcel of the total complexus
of conditions. The high antiquity and importance of the social framework was
insisted on. The view of the caste system propounded was, that it was in origin a
mere institution of matrimonial associations, gradually and spontaneously devel-
oped by the people themselves, in order to provide a supply of brides by ways
and means more civilised and satisfactory than the old methods of raiding and
kidnapping, recognised even by Manu. The Government experiment of Buddhism
in establishing a system of morality in India without spiritual assistance and its
ultimate failure was described. The numerous religions prevailing were adverted
to; the difficulty in dealing with the Hindu religion, that of the great mass of the
population, was considered and held not to be insurmountable.
3. The action of the Indian Government in education from the outset is curious.
The business undertaken at the start was trivial; it was the useful expenditure of
some small sums of money, especially one granted by Parliament in 1813. The
Government was perpetually engaged while the conquest of India was in prog-
ress, in wars and conquests of immensely vaster importance at the time than the
work undertaken in the interests of education, which was handed over to subor-
dinate authorities and under the circumstances received little consideration. So
far as appears from the evidence, mere bad luck had much to do with the policy

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actually adopted. The great English system of mutual toleration in religion, the
very ideal of a policy for a country with more religions than any other, was appar-
ently never thought of. Its place was taken by an obscure half-and-half arrange-
ment of a plausible character, called neutrality in matters of religion, which has
never been explained, perhaps never effectually thought out; it has been shown to
be very distracting and misleading, even when handled by the highest talent. It is
incompatible with, and of quite a different spirit from, the system of toleration. It
appears to fix its attention on that part of the field of toleration which restricts the
open action of the State in matters of religion and forbids proselytism and interfer-
ence with religious observances. In practice it at the same time leaves room for
unlimited interference with religions by indirect action, by the teaching of foreign
sciences and literatures without any precautions taken, which has proved and is
proving very deleterious.
The Despatch of 1854, called the Magna Charta of Indian Education, in most
respects an admirable State-paper ignored religion and morality. It made no pro-
vision for teaching either; it depended for maintaining and improving morality
altogether on the culture of the intellect.
A Commission was issued in India in 1882 to many experts of high distinction
to inquire and report, how the provisions of this Despatch had been carried out.
It made elaborate inquiries and it appears to have performed its task very satis-
factorily in other respects, but unfortunately it gave no finding as to how far the
so-called neutrality in matters of religion had been observed. There are indications
that, if it had, a very serious and disappointing state of affairs would have been
disclosed. The blame for this failure is to be ascribed both to oversight on the part
of the Commission, which disregarded the general directions, and to the special
instructions given it, in which the words “morals” and “religion” do not appear.
The occurrence of these oversights is all the more surprising, seeing that prominent
attention had been directed to the fact that the policy of neutrality was destroy-
ing religious belief by Howell’s Note, pp. 34, 35 (Appendix I.). The Commission
proposed for colleges a moral text-book based on natural religion. The proposal
was opposed to the system of toleration; very properly it has received no attention.
4. It was shown that in the West for the last 3000 years, where Polytheisms
of a kindred character had prevailed, religion had been dominated by the State,
until this system was changed at the time of the English Revolution. Then the first
step was taken in the system of Toleration, which has since been completed and
should be held applicable to all Governments under British auspices. The system
is political and philosophic; it is not in origin a Christian principle; it is equally
applicable to other religions, including the Muhammadan, for instance, in times
of settled peace when no religious war (Jihad) is on foot. We went through the
philosophy of the subject and we noted, so far as necessary, the legislation, by
which it was applicable to the Government of India, but for the policy of so-called
neutrality, adopted by Government on the executive side. That policy was shown
to be at variance with the practice of the Government of India on various impor-
tant occasions, also to be destructive of Indian religions and to allow no sufficient

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elbow room in dealing with morality and religion. It ought to be abandoned, and
some such policy adopted instead as the following:—
“The Government will regard all religions with impartial favour and respect;
it will repress all acts which violate law, humanity, justice, or decency and all
infringements of the rights of property, notwithstanding any plea of justification
on religious grounds.”
Or, to put it briefly, “Impartial favour for all religions with maintenance of
the Law.” This is a condition precedent to the provision of effective remedies:
its adoption would immensely improve the political situation and facilitate well-
considered administration.
5. By philosophical discourse, based on the nature of religion and moral-
ity, and also on the experience of history, I sought to prove that instruction in
morals must go hand in hand with instruction in religion. Religion, swaying
human feeling through the imagination, I found to be the living motive power in
operation, essential to producing and maintaining the required impression of the
moral teaching imparted on the youthful mind. I felt assured, as we proceeded,
that the arguments were sound. Assurance was rendered doubly sure, when it
appeared that practically the whole weight of the opinions of the best experts
in India enforced this view; also that the Government, in dealing with its most
urgent educational problem, has thereby been driven to inaction and delibera-
tion for a number of years, we may say, ever since the Allahabad Conference of
February, 1911.
We searched through history, ancient and modern, in order to acquire an
acquaintance with the dealings of Governments with religion at various eras,
and to ascertain what power the individual conscience was able to exercise at
different stages. In ancient times religion controlled by the State dominated con-
duct; conscience had no weight of any consequence in comparison; it was not
appealed to as an authority by Aristotle throughout the Ethics. In Rome, on the
other hand, before the beginning of our era, in a community, in this and in many
other respects unique, conscience had already obtained full stature. In the first
century (60 A.D.) St. Paul, addressing converts in Borne, indicated it as a guide
for human conduct, on a level with the Jewish Law. He and his fellow-workers
regarded it as of equal authority with the Gospel they were preaching. Their
example was followed down through the ages not only by Christian divines, but
also by philosophers. Bishop Butler was the first who put the two authorities in
competition, and he decided in favour of conscience. Recent philosophy gives
conscience the paramount place in regulating human conduct. Mankind at the
present hour may be divided into two sections: first, those whose conduct is
dominated by their religion; secondly, those who can say their conduct is regu-
lated by their conscience. Putting a large section of the European population into
the more advanced category, we must declare that the Indian masses, all save a
small portion of the educated fraction, who are on the same footing as most of the
ruling race, belong to the first section; they are dominated by their religion and
must be treated accordingly. Religion controls their manners and morals, as it did

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those of our ancestors who lived in the period prior to the initiation of toleration
by the Toleration Act. So it follows, that if Government cannot interfere with the
religions of its Indian subjects, as admittedly it cannot, so neither can it interfere
with teaching them morals. In accord with this result, the people themselves, as
was observed, quite generally conceive religion as including morals. The result
arrived at is, that for the teaching of morals independent bodies, subject to no
disabilities, must be created and cherished.
6. The most important point of all to remember in discussing morals for youth-
ful Indians is, that India is not Europe but quite a place by itself with numerous
unique features. In Europe there is practically only one religion and one moral
system. I have maintained that owing to the events of history, immigrations, con-
quests, divisive policies, there are, so far as teaching the young is concerned,
an unknown number of moral systems in India. I do not mean to say that they
are essentially different—quite the reverse. The differences will be found in the
form of expression, in the incidents chosen to express ideas, in the religious con-
ceptions by which conduct is to be guided. I have also contended that the high-
est morality under all systems when perfected, is as nearly as possible identical.
Many persons, I admit, show some signs of knowing how the case stands, but it
seems only a glimmering notion they have: the next moment it is forgotten. The
Government of India, for instance, seems to treat morality as if it were a drug or
a chemical of uniform quality. It draws attention to the quantities of the article
available in this, that, and the other quarter; it treats, the special qualities of moral-
ity as of no consequence whatever, as if they had no existence.
Well, it is maintained in the sense just indicated that there are in India many
moralities. If children are to be taught morals, they must be dealt with as they
are received from the bosom of their families; the ways and manners, the reli-
gious and moral notions of the particular home must be suitably continued and,
if possible, improved; all arrangements must be made on this basis. There must
be authorities independent of Government, representing the various commu-
nities, regarded from religious standpoints, authorities who are not precluded
from teaching religion and the teaching must be imparted in ways and forms
adapted to the intelligence of the child. The Committees representing the vari-
ous communities would in the first instance be appointed by the Head of the
District; they might be maintained by co-optation. It would be their duty to
draw up a suitable syllabus for religious and moral teaching, to appoint teachers,
to arrange with the District and Municipal Boards for the times and places of
teaching. Everything would have to be sanctioned by the District Boards, which
would bear the cost.
The introduction of a system of moral instruction is not so urgent in the elemen-
tary schools as in the higher schools and colleges, where the plague spot is to be
found. Any scheme propounded had better form the subject of an experiment, on
any scale deemed expedient, in the higher schools, before its general application
to them, in case of success, and then to the elementary schools. All risk of failure
would by this procedure be avoided.

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The scheme, it is hoped, sets forth one practical method of laying the moral
foundation of that great destiny which India and its peoples may in the course of
ages, by the favour of Providence, hope to attain. I shall be delighted if some bet-
ter way be discovered. I shall be abundantly rewarded if this effort of mine should
in any measure contribute to an object which I desire with all my heart to further.

Notes
1 (1) Report of the proceedings of a conference in Bombay on Moral, Civic and Sanitary
Instruction, 1910.
(2) Papers regarding the Educational Conference, Allahabad, February, 1911.
(3) Three other series of documents of which no use has been made.
2 “Now,” says Sir H. S. Maine, “not only is all Oriental thought and literature embarrassed
in all its walks by a weight of false physics, which at once gives a great advantage to all
competing forms of knowledge, but it has a special difficulty in retaining its old interest.
It is elaborately inaccurate, it is supremely and deliberately careless of all precision in
magnitude, number and time. But to a very quick and subtle-minded people, which has
hitherto been denied any mental food but this, mere accuracy of thought is by itself an
intellectual luxury of the very highest order.” Maine’s “Village Communities,” p. 26.
3 Pamphlet, “The Great War,” by Jogendra Singh.
4 Nevertheless, we have here (in Berar) on the whole a fair average sample of Hindu-
ism, as it exists at this time throughout the greater part of India; for we know that the
religion varies in different parts of this vast country with endless diversities of detail.
Berar Gazetteer, by Sir. A. Lyall.
Of course if there be many varieties of religion, there must be as many of morality.—
A. H. B.

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 4
EXTRACTS FROM THE CALCUTTA
UNIVERSITY COMMISSION [SADLER]
REPORT (1919), VOL. 1: 19–30, 143–194,
318–326; VOL. 6: 2–6, 132–135, 169–171

CHAPTER II.
PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
I.
One of the most remarkable features in the recent history of Bengal, and,
indeed, of India, has been the very rapid increase in the number of university
students which has taken place during the last two decades, and more especially
since the Universities Act of 1904. In 1904, 2,430 candidates presented them-
selves for the intermediate examination1 of the University of Madras, 457 for that
of Bombay, and 3,832 for that of Calcutta These numbers in themselves were
striking enough, considering that the universities were in 1904 less than fifty years
old. But the numbers in 1917 were 5,424 for Madras, 1,281 for Bombay, and no
less than 8,020 for Calcutta. This means that while the increase in numbers has.
everywhere been striking, it has been much greater in Bengal than in any other
part of India; nor is it easy to find any parallel to it in any part of the world. The
flood of candidates for university training has put so heavy a strain upon the Uni-
versity and its colleges as to lead almost to a breakdown. It has brought out in
high relief every deficiency of the system. And if justice is to. be done to a great
opportunity, and the eagerness of young Bengalis for academic training is to be
made as advantageous to their country as it ought to be, it has become manifest
that bold and drastic changes and improvements in the system are necessary.
2. The full significance of these facts can perhaps be most clearly brought out
by a comparison between Bengal and the United Kingdom The populations of
the two countries are almost the same—about 45,000,000. By a curious coinci-
dence the number of students preparing for university degrees is also almost the
same—about 26,000.2 But since in Bengal only about one in ten of the popula-
tion can read and write, the proportion of the educated classes of Bengal who
are taking full-time university courses is almost ten times as great as in the
United Kingdom.

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3. Nor is this the most striking part of the contrast. The figures for the United
Kingdom include students drawn from all parts of the British Empire, including
Bengal itself; those of Bengal are purely Indian. Again, in the United Kingdom a
substantial proportion of the student-population consists of women; in Bengal the
number of women-students is—and in view of existing social conditions is likely
long to remain—very small indeed. Still more important, in the United King-
dom a very large proportion of the student-population are following professional
courses, in medicine, law, theology, teaching, engineering or technical science. In
Bengal, though the number of students of law is very great, the number of medical
students is much smaller than in the United Kingdom; there are very few students
of engineering; students of theology, whether Hindu or Islamic, do not study for
university degrees; students of teaching are extraordinarily few; and there are, as
yet, practically no students of technical science, because the scientific industries
of Bengal are in their infancy, and draw their experts mainly from England.
4. It appears, therefore, that while an enormously higher proportion of the edu-
cated male population of Bengal proceeds to university studies than is the case
in the United Kingdom, a very much smaller proportion goes to the University
for what is ordinarily described as vocational training. The great majority—over
22,000 out of 26,000—pursue purely literary courses which do not fit them for
any but administrative, clerical, teaching and (indirectly) legal careers. In the
United Kingdom (if the training of teachers be regarded as vocational training)
it is possible that these proportions would be nearly reversed. A comparison with
any other large and populous state would yield similar results. Bengal is unlike
any other civilised country in that so high a proportion of its educated classes
set before them a university degree as the natural goal of ambition, and seek this
goal by means of studies which are almost purely literary in character, and which
therefore provide scarcely any direct professional training.
5. Yet another feature of the contrast, not only between Bengal and the United
Kingdom, but between Bengal and all other countries with a student-population
of comparable size, is the fact that while other countries have many universities,
Bengal has only one. The 26,000 students of the United Kingdom are divided
among eighteen universities, which vary widely in type; the 26,000 students
of Bengal are all brought under the control of a single vast university mecha-
nism, follow in each subject the same courses of study, read the same books, and
undergo the same examinations. The University of Calcutta is, in respect of the
number of its students, the largest university in the world. But it is a common-
place that a university, just because it is concerned with so individual a business
as the training of the mind, can easily become too large When the students of
Berlin approached five figures, it was felt that their numbers were becoming too
great to be effectively dealt with by a single organisation, even though they were
all gathered in a single city. The University of Calcutta has to deal with 26,000
students scattered over an immense province wherein communications are very
difficult; it is responsible also for the educational control of more than eight hun-
dred schools, a function such as no university outside of India is called upon to

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perform; and under these conditions it is unreasonable to expect that its governing
bodies should be able to deal with their immense and complex task in a wholly
satisfactory way.
6. The striking facts which we have attempted to set forth briefly above can
only be understood in the light of the social conditions of the country, and of the
historical development of its educational system. On these subjects we shall have
something to say in the following pages. But in the meanwhile there is one part of
the explanation which ought to be noted at once, since it may help to correct some
false judgments formed on a superficial consideration of the figures. As we shall
demonstrate later, the secondary school system of Bengal as a whole is extremely
inefficient. It is impossible for the vast majority of Bengali boys to obtain from
their schools a really sound general education, such as the schools of many other
countries provide. For that purpose—and especially in order to obtain a good
working knowledge of English, which is necessary for all important avocations—
the young Bengali must go on to the university course; and having once begun it,
he is naturally ambitious to pursue it to the end. As a very large number of our wit-
nesses and correspondents have urged, the first two years of the present university
course are occupied with what is really school work. The students in these two
years form about 15,000 out of the total of 26,000. Only the remaining 11,000 are
many strict sense to be described as university students, except by the accident of
organisation which places them under university control.
7. But even if we consider only this reduced number, it is difficult to resist
the conclusion that an unduly large proportion of the able young men of Bengal
are being trained in a manner too purely literary. Evidence from all sides, from
Indians and Englishmen alike, shows that though some few have found the full-
est scope for their abilities, and are occupying with distinction positions of the
highest importance, and though practically all the graduates of the University do
find employment of one sort or another, there is in Bengal a large number of men
who after having either obtained university degrees, or reached an earlier stage
in the university course, find that there are no outlets available for them such as
their academic standing justifies them in expecting. At first they not unnaturally
“decline to take any post which they consider an inadequate recognition of the
credential which has rewarded their laborious efforts. They thus lose chances, and
sometimes spend months or years loitering about some district headquarters, and
living on the joint family to which they belong. As a general rule, they sooner or
later accommodate themselves to circumstances, but often with an exceedingly
bad grace, and with a strong sense of injury.”3 When we consider the humble
status and low pay of many of the posts with which university graduates are com-
pelled to be content, it is impossible not to recognise that there is some justifica-
tion for this sense of injury. It is impossible, also, not to recognise that a system
which leads to such results must be economically wasteful and socially danger-
ous, and must in the end lead to the intellectual impoverishment of the country.
8. It is inevitable that men of ability who, after an arduous training, find them-
selves in such a situation should be deeply discontented, and should be inclined

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to lay the blame—as is the natural temptation of the dissatisfied in all lands, and
above all in India—upon the Government of their country. The anarchist move-
ment which has been so distressing a feature of recent years in Bengal has, by
some, been attributed largely to the influence of these discontented classes; and
undoubtedly it has drawn from among them many of its recruits This does not
mean that the colleges of the University have been, as has sometimes been alleged,
in any large degree centres of revolutionary activity. Naturally the wave of unrest
which has passed over Bengal has found a readier welcome among students than
in other classes of the population; the ferment of new political ideas, drawn from
the West, has of course “worked most strongly among the students of western
politics and thought But, according to the Bengal District Administration Com-
mittee, whose opinion in this matter is confirmed by that of the Sedition Commit-
tee of 1918,4 it has been in some of the high schools, rather than in the colleges,
that the more reckless agitators have found their most fruitful fields. The reasoned
discipline of scholarship is hostile to the madness of anarchy; and the better that
discipline is made, the more sane and healthy must be its influence.
9. Nevertheless it must be admitted that the existence, and the steady increase, of
a sort of intellectual proletariat not without reasonable grievances, forms a menace
to good government, especially in a country where, as in Bengal, the small edu-
cated class is alone vocal It must be an equal menace whatever form the Govern-
ment may assume So long as the great mass of the nation’s intelligent manhood
is driven, in ever increasing numbers, along the same, often unfruitful, course of
study, which creates expectations that cannot be fulfilled, and actually unfits those
who pursue it from undertaking many useful occupations necessary for, the welfare
of the community, any Government, however it may be constituted, whether it be
bureaucratic or popular, must find its work hampered by an unceasing stream of
criticism, and of natural demands for relief which cannot possibly be met.
10. The growing demand of the people of Bengal for educational facilities is
one of the most impressive features of our age. It is in itself altogether healthy and
admirable. It is increasing in strength and volume every year. But, owing in part
to social conditions, and in part to the educational methods which the traditions
of the last half-century have established, this powerful movement is following
unhealthy and unprofitable channels; and unless new courses can be cut for it,
the flood may devastate instead of fertilising the country. Thus the problem with
which we have to deal is by no means purely an academic or intellectual problem.
It is a social, political and economic problem of the most complex and difficult
character; and the longer the solution is postponed, the more difficult it will be
Its very elements cannot be understood without some understanding of the social
conditions from which it has arisen.

II.
11. The rapid growth in the number of university students which has taken place
during the last two generations in western countries has been due very largely to the

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growth of industrial and commercial enterprise, which demanded, in the first place,
an army of scientific experts and of administrators with wide outlook and trained
imagination, and in the second place, an army of teachers able to create educated
managers, clerks and workpeople. Until these demands became urgent, a quite mod-
est number of graduates met all the needs of the old learned professions in all the
western countries. But the yet more rapid increase of university students in Bengal
has not been due to any such cause. It must be attributed in a large degree to social
usages and traditions which are peculiar to India, and specially strong in Bengal.
12. In spite of their marked intellectual gifts, the Bengalis have not, especially
since the Industrial Revolution, shown much capacity or inclination for com-
merce or industry. They have allowed even the retail trade of their own country
to be captured, in a remarkable degree, by the Marwaris of Rajputana. The export
trade of the country is mainly in the hands of Europeans, Armenians and Japa-
nese. Since the days when the old hand-loom weaving industry was beaten by the
products of machinery, the Bengali has taken very little part in the development
of those large-scale industries to which, the soil and climate of his country lend
themselves.5 With a few conspicuous exceptions, the coal-mines, the jute-mills
and the great engineering enterprises of the Presidency are mainly controlled and
directed by immigrants. Even the labour employed in mine and mill is almost
wholly drawn from other provinces,6 so that in the great industrial city of Calcutta
only 49 per cent, of the population is Bengali-speaking.7 Alike in industry and in
commerce the main function performed by Bengalis is that of clerical labour
13. It is a complaint frequently heard among Bengalis that they are excluded
from the most lucrative activities in their own country, and that this exclusion is
due to prejudice. But there seems to be no tangible justification for this view. No
disabilities are imposed upon Bengalis that do not equally weigh upon Marwaris,
Parsis, Armenians or Japanese. The real obstacle is to be found in the strength of
the tradition among the educated classes of Bengal which excludes them from
practical pursuits. Hitherto tradition has forbidden men of the literate classes to
take part in these occupations; and long abstention has perhaps bred among them
a certain incapacity for practical callings. Fortunately there is evidence that this
attitude of aloofness is breaking down.8 The very complaints of exclusion are in
themselves a good sign. Still more promising are the wide-spread demands that
the educational system should be given a more practical turn. Educational reforms
alone will not suffice to bring about the needed change. But at least it is well that
the people of Bengal should be beginning to realise that the system as it stands,
into which they have thrown themselves with so much ardour, is doing nothing
to help or to hasten the change, because its whole bias is still in favour of purely
literary forms of training.
14. Since industry and commerce, playing, as they do, but a small part in the real
life of Bengal, have hitherto contributed nothing to the development of the edu-
cational system, we must look to the other sections of the population for the ele-
ments of this remarkable movement These other sections are two: the agricultural
population, and the professional classes.

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15. It is from agriculture that almost the whole Bengali people has always
derived, and still derives, its livelihood, directly or indirectly, and the conditions
of soil and climate decree that this must continue to be so, however great the com-
mercial expansion of the future. But the agricultural needs of the country are not
such as to demand or stimulate any marked educational development. The great
landlords of the country—the zamindars—who were once mainly collectors of
land-revenue for the State, and were turned into hereditary landowners by the Per-
manent Settlement, have never played in Bengal anything like the part played by
the landowners of England, who filled the public schools and universities in order
that they might be trained for the political leadership of the nation Nor have the
zamindars been tempted to develope their estates by the application of scientific
methods of agriculture. Legislation for the protection of tenant-rights has in some
degree tied their hands. But in truth the rich alluvial soil of Bengal is singularly
well suited to the methods of culture by the hand-labour of small-holders which
have been gradually developed through centuries, and the mechanical, scientific,
large-scale methods of the West are difficult to adapt to the economic and social
conditions of Bengal, and perhaps also to some of its crops. Hence agriculture,
equally with industry and commerce, has hitherto made no direct demand upon
the educational system.
16. The great majority of the population of Bengal consists of the actual cul-
tivators of the soil. Many of them belong to the lower castes of Hinduism, or are
outside the pale of orthodox Hindu society, and these are generally illiterate. But
more than half of the cultivators, especially in the prosperous regions of Eastern
Bengal, are Musalmans. The Musalmans form 52.7 per cent, of the total popula-
tion of the Presidency;9 in some districts of Eastern Bengal they number as much
as 90 or 95 per cent.; and overwhelmingly the greater part of the Musalmans are
cultivators. They also are, for the most part, illiterate; such rudiments of educa-
tion as they obtain are valued mainly for religious purposes, and are commonly
limited to the memorising of parts of the Quran, taught in the maktabs attached
to the mosques. Hitherto the western educational movement has scarcely touched
the cultivator, except through a primary school system which is, and always has
been, largely out of touch with some of the economic needs of the community
which it ought to serve. The cultivator has not yet learnt to value education as an
equipment for his life he often fears, not without reason, that his children may be
tempted away from the land by a system of training which has no bearing upon
the work of the fields.
17. Yet in recent years recruits have begun to come to the University in increas-
ing numbers even from the cultivating classes. The jute-growing lands of Eastern
Bengal in particular enjoyed until the period of the war great prosperity; and this
has enabled many cultivators to send those of their sons who are not needed on
the land through the normal routine of high school and college leading to the
degree. This is the recognised pathway to respectability and social advancement,
the course that leads to Government employment, or to success in the legal pro-
fession, wherein the most respected names of Bengal are enrolled. It is the one

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channel of escape from the rigid social barriers imposed by the, system of caste.
The adoption of academic ambitions by even a small proportion of the cultivat-
ing class is an event of great moment in the social history of Bengal. It may be
the herald of a social revolution. But its immediate result, so long as the present
system remains unchanged, must be to enlarge indefinitely the already swollen
mass of aspirants after a purely literary training, and to increase that discontented
intellectual proletariat whose rise has, been so disturbing a feature of recent years;
it threatens also to drain away much of the best talent from the villages, to the
detriment of the country’s supreme economic interest. The movement is but just
beginning, it is not too late to transform its character and consequences by giving
a more practical bent, and a more varied character, to the educational system.
18. But it is not from the agricultural classes, any more than from the com-
mercial or industrial classes, that the eager demand for educational opportunities
has come, which has led to the remarkable results described above. The classes
whose sons have filled the colleges to overflowing are the middle or professional
classes, commonly known as the bhadralok; and it is their needs, and their tradi-
tions, which have, more than any other cause, dictated the character of university
development in Bengal. Many of the bhadralok are zammdars, great or small, or
hold land on permanent tenure under zamindars; but they seldom or never cul-
tivate their own lands, being content to draw an income from subletting. Many,
again, make a livelihood by lending money to the cultivators; and the high rate of
interest which they are thus able to obtain is often adduced as a reason why they
have abstained from the more precarious adventures of commerce. They are thus
closely connected with the agricultural community, over which they have always
held a real leadership; and they are distributed in large numbers over every part
of the country.
19. Relatively few of the Musalmans are counted among the professional
classes. The great majority of these classes belong to the three great Hindu literary
castes, the Brahmins, the Vaidyas (doctors), and the Kayasthas (writers), who are
relatively more numerous in Bengal than are the corresponding castes in any other
part of India. For untold centuries they have been the administrators, the priests,
the teachers, the lawyers, the doctors, the writers, the clerks of the community.
Every successive Government in Bengal has drawn its corps of minor officials,
and often also many of its major officials, from among them, the British equally
with their Muslim predecessors. They have therefore always formed an educated
class, and it may safely be said that there is no class of corresponding magnitude
and importance in any other country which has so continuous a tradition of lit-
eracy, extending over so many centuries. It has always been the first duty of every
father in these castes, however poor he might be, to see that his sons obtained the
kind of education dictated by the tradition of their caste.
20. But this traditional system of education, which has lasted for untold cen-
turies, has always been predominantly, and in most cases exclusively, literary in
character: even the Vaidyas learnt their medical science mainly from books and
from oral tradition. When the British administrators began, in the early nineteenth

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century, to investigate the existing educational system, they found a network of

elementary schools spread over every part of the country, supplemented by groups
of tôls, or institutions of higher learning, where Brahmin gurus taught the tradi-
tional learning of the Sanskrit classics without fee. These institutions still exist,
though in diminished numbers; there are still, for example, a number of tôls at the
once famous Nawadip in the district of Nadia. They existed, of course, purely for
the use of the learned castes. The Musalmans developed a similar system, though
on a less elaborate scale; their maktabs for the elementary religious education of
the many, and their madrassahs for the more advanced instruction of maulvis,
confined themselves to the sacred learning in the Arabic tongue, and to the court
language of Persian, which the Muslim conquerors had established in India; and
so long as Persian remained the language of the courts, as it did until 1837, these
schools were to some extent used also by Hindus, anxious to qualify for Govern-
ment employment.
21. Thus both among the literate Hindu castes and among the Musalmans, the
traditional systems of learning were almost exclusively literary and religious in
character. They consisted in the memorising of vast masses of ancient writings,
and commentaries thereon, handed down from generation to generation. They
cultivated, in an extraordinary degree, the memory-power of the classes which
had pursued these studies for centuries; and the influence of these methods was
necessarily deeply felt when these classes began to devote their attention to west-
ern learning. Both in their concentration upon purely literary studies, and in their
reliance upon memory-work, the indigenous systems of education helped to fix
the character which was to be assumed by western education in India.
22. It was a great epoch in the history of India when the intellectual powers
trained by so many centuries of culture began to be turned from the ancient learn-
ing of the East to the new learning of the West. The habits and traditions of the
bhadralok made it natural that, when they seized upon the western system, they
should mould it to suit their needs, emphasise its purely literary side, and leave
undeveloped its more practical sides. But the transition could not be made in a
moment. For half a century the new system competed with the old, and the alle-
giance of the bhadralok was divided between them, probably not without misgiv-
ings. What we have witnessed during the more recent years has been, in effect,
the adoption by the Hindu bhadralok of the new western system as, in practice,
a substitute for the old, and as the necessary training which all their sons must
undergo. Meanwhile the Musalmans of the bhadralok class, for the most part,
stood aside from the new system. Long accustomed to regard themselves as the
ruling race, they retained their devotion to the traditional Islamic studies in Arabic
and Persian, which they had hitherto found not merely culturally valuable, but
also practically useful. In recent years they have increasingly demanded a fuller
share of the new learning. And beyond them we see the mass of the cultivators,
stirring at last from their age-long acquiescence in unchanging modes of life.
23. Such, in broad outline, is the explanation of the remarkable movement with
which we have to deal. The problem before us is as inspiring as it is complex and

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difficult. We have to consider whether the system now existing in Bengal is capa-
ble of meeting the demand, which, has developed so rapidly in recent years, and
will certainly develope yet more rapidly in the future, and, if it is not so capable,
how it can best be modified. But these are questions which cannot be intelligently
answered unless we first gain a clear idea of the stages through which the exist-
ing system has passed, and the ideals at which it has aimed; and unless we also
analyse carefully its actual working.

CHAPTER VI.
THE MUSALMANS AND THEIR EDUCATIONAL NEEDS.
I—The problem.
1. Musalmans have their own traditions and ideals—traditions and ideals
which are the common property of Islam but which cannot be wholly identical
with those of any other community. Prominent among the ideals which sway the
ordinary Musalman is the conviction that nothing would compensate him for the
loss of conscious membership of the great Muslim community of the world. So,
while the Bengali Musalman is genuinely anxious that his community should
reap the full benefits of secular education., he is not prepared to take those bene-
fits at the price of any real sacrifice of Islamic tradition or custom. Certain things
he has with reluctance foregone; others he may concede; but reluctance there
will always be, and that reluctance will be all the more real, because it is not so
much individual as corporate, communal rather than personal in its instincts and
unity. The feeling of the Musalman is tinged with a not unnatural pride. His tra-
ditional culture is the culture which was evolved during the great days of Islam.
It recalls the University of Baghdad and Haroun-al-Raschid. It is something for
a boy in a remote village in Eastern Bengal to find that he is following the same
line of study as that taught in the Azhar Mosque at Cairo. “It has to be borne in
mind,” writes Maulvi Abdul Karim, an ex-Inspector of Schools and a protagonist
of English education, “that in Islamic countries the education that makes great
statesmen and administrators is similar to that imparted in the madrassahs in this
country.”10 To-day the Hindu, like the Musalman, looks out on the world which
lies outside India and feels the impulse of a more than national life. But his ide-
als spring from the soil of India. To him India is the abiding background of his
thoughts and hopes. The Indian Musalman, like the Hindu, is an Indian patriot
and feels towards India as towards his motherland. But rooted in his heart are
other ideals also, the ideals of Islam, the conception of a society at once cos-
mopolitan and exclusive, traditions which carry his imagination back to a past
which holds, not only Indian history but much beside.
“We beg to point out”, wrote the Musalmans of Calcutta in a petition which, they
brought to us, “that no scheme of reconstruction can be useful or beneficial, unless it recog-
nises the existence of conflicting ideals and conflicting interests in almost every sphere of
life—social, political, and religious’—among the different sections of the population The

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principle and practice of education which might have proved beneficial in a country with
uniform people, uniform interests and uniform ideals, must necessarily be modified to suit
the special circumstances that exist in this country.”11

2. The chapter on the education of Musalmans in the Quinquennial Review of

Education in Bengal, 1912–17, begins as follows:—12
“The Moslem population of Bengal is 23,989,719 out of a total of 45,483,077, that is
to say, 52 7 per cent, of the total population of Bengalis Moslem Of the total Moslem
population 22,988,168 are illiterate, while 62,301 only are literate in English This review
records a certain amount of progress, but the figures are not reassuring It is impossible to
lay too much stress on the urgency of raising the standard of literacy in the Moslem com-
munity of Bengal. The ideals of this community differ to some extent from those of the
other inhabitants of the Presidency Their history and traditions are stored away in Arabic
and Persian manuscripts They are followers of Islam and the illiterate are readily swayed
by maulvis, who profess to be learned in Moslem law and to speak as its interpreters
The largest Moslem population in Bengal is in the northern and eastern districts of the
Presidency. The people of these parts are generally conservative, and their only concern
outside their own immediate personal interests is the propagation of Islam The successful
Moslem cultivator of these parts who desires to educate his son will send him to a madras-
sah to learn Moslem law, literature, logic, rhetoric and philosophy and to study Hadís and
Tafsír.13 He is not interested in the study of Arabic for its literature, but only because it is
the language of the Koran If a Moslem in Eastern Bengal wants to endow an educational
institution, he founds a madrassah and puts it under the charge of maulvis, who claim to
be versed in Islamic lore.
One thing which it is necessary to emphasise is that the backwardness of this commu-
nity is primarily due to the apathy of the people in the matter of education, and until this
indifference is removed progress is impossible. Moslems represent more than half the total
population of Bengal and until they are educated sufficiently to be able to take an interest
in the affairs of public life, it is difficult to conceive of Bengal as a part of a self-governing
dominion within the British Empire. Indeed it seems that; the only possible way in which
these people can be made to realise their privileges and responsibilities as subjects of the
British Empire is by giving them every facility for English education”

3. The great disparity between the educational progress of the Hindus and the
Musalmans attracted the attention of the Indian Education Commission of 1882.
They pointed out that, whereas 32.3 per cent of the population of the provinces
of Bengal and Assam, as they were then constituted, was Muslim, the percentage
of Musahnans under instruction in all schools of which the Provincial Education
Department had cognisance was 14.4 only They quoted the Bengal Director of
Public Instruction as having reported to them that—
“During the last five years, out of 3,499 candidates who passed the entrance examina-
tion from these provinces, 132 or 3 8 per cent, only were Musalmans They ought to have
been ten-fold more numerous Out of 900 passed for the first arts in the same period,
Musalmans gamed only 11 passes or 1–2 percent., and out of 429 passes for the B.A.,
they gamed only 5 or 11 per cent. Hence, not only the number of Musalmans who pass the
entrance is less than one-tenth of what it ought to be, but this painful inferiority steadily
increases in the higher examinations”14

4. During the 35 years which have passed since the Indian Education Commis-
sion wrote their report, there have been many and great changes in India. While

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the Commissioners were still deliberating, Mr. Ameer Ali published an article in
the Nineteenth Century in which he expressed the conviction that “unless effec-
tive measures of reform are adopted, and that without delay, the unsatisfactory
condition of the Muhammadans threatens to become a source of anxiety and dan-
ger to British administration in India.”15 About this time Sir Syed Ahmad entered
the lists against the general opinion of his co-religionists. By popular lectures
and in the columns of his “two journals he fought the view which advocated an
almost exclusive devotion on the part of Musalnans to an oriental education of
a traditional type. He founded several associations and ultimately organised the
All India Muhammadan Educational Conference. His greatest achievement was
the establishment of the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh. But he
was not alone in his work. Writing in the Fifth Quinquennial Review of Educa-
tion in India (1902–1907), Mr H. W. Orange, who was then Director General of
Education in India, recorded the view that among the causes contributory to the
improvements which were then taking place in the education of Musalmans “a
high place must be assigned to the propaganda carried on by public-spirited lead-
ers such as the late Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk and to the Muhammadan educational
conferences annually organised by them.” All this has not been without effect. The
Musalmans throughout the length and breadth of India have been deeply stirred.
But the difficulties are deep-seated. The following passage in which the Indian
Education Commission discussed the backwardness of the Bengali Musalmans
might almost have been written yesterday:—
“Various causes, some general and some particular, were assigned by the officers con-
sulted as the obstacles which had barred the progress of education, both higher and lower.
Among the general causes assigned by them were the apathy of the Musalman race; their
pride, their religious exclusiveness; the love of their own literature among those of them
who cared for any education at all; the idea so persistently held that education ought to be
a free gift. Among the particular causes, a want of sympathy between Hindu teachers and
Musalman pupils; a want of consideration in the arrangements of the Education Depart-
ment and, perhaps above all, the depressed condition of the bulk of Bengali Musalmans,”16

5. If an Education Commission, with the whole of India as its scope, were now
to investigate the reason why in the matter of education the Muslim community
is still lagging behind the Hindu, we doubt whether they would get much nearer
the truth than the Commission of 1882. After discussing the deterrent causes—a
subject of debate, the report explains, even among the Musalmans themselves—it
suggested that a candid Musalman would probably admit, that the most powerful
factors are to be found in pride of race, a memory of bygone superiority, religious
fears, and a not unnatural attachment to the learning of Islam.17
6. The recommendations recorded by the Indian Education Commission in
connexion with the education of Musalmans were concerned mainly with sec-
ondary and primary education. The Commission proposed that Muslim educa-
tion should be helped by special grants, scholarships and free studentships, by
encouraging the addition of secular subjects to the curricula of Muslim schools;
by prescribing special standards for Muslim primary schools; by the use of

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Hindustani as the principal medium of instruction in many primary and middle

Muslim schools; by better provision for instruction in Hindustani and Persian;
by the encouragement of higher education among Musalmans; by the training of
Muslim teachers; by the appointment of Muslim school inspectors; by devoting
special attention to Muslim education in the annual report of the Department
of Public Instruction; by the encouragement of associations for the prosecution
of Muslim education; and by the distribution to Musalmans of a larger share of
Government patronage.
7. In 1871 Dr. W. W. (later Sir William) Hunter had published a book on the
Musalmans of India, in which he attributed the general indifference towards west-
ern education evinced by the Bengali Muslim community to three main causes:
(a) the want of Muslim teachers, (b) the absence of the provision of Muslim lan-
guages, and (c) the absence of religious education.
“The truth, is”, he wrote, “that our system of public instruction ignores the three most
powerful instincts of the Musalman heart. In the first place, it conducts education in the
vernacular of Bengal, a language which the educated Muhammadans despise, and by
means of Hindu teachers, whom the whole Muhammadan community hates The Ben-
gali school master talks his own dialect and a vile Urdu, the latter of which is to him an
acquired language almost as much as it is to ourselves. Moreover, his gentle and timid
character unfits him to maintain order among Musalman boys, ‘Nothing on earth’, said a
Muhammadan husbandman recently to an English official, ‘would induce me to send my
boy to a Bengali teacher.’ In the second place, our rural schools seldom enable a Muham-
madan to learn the tongues necessary for his holding a respectable position in life, and for
the performance of his religious duties. Every Muhammadan gentleman must have some
knowledge of Persian, and Persian is a language unknown even in our higher class district
schools Every Musalman, from the peasant to the prince, ought to say his prayers in one
of the sacred languages, Persian or Arabic, and this our schools have never recognized. . . .
In the third place, our system of public instruction makes no provision for the religious
education of the Muhammadan youth. It overlooks the fact that among the Hindus a large
and powerful caste has come down from time’ immemorial for supplying this part of a
boy’s training, while among the Muhammadans no separate body of clergy exists Every
head of a Musalman household is supposed to know the duties of his religion, and to be
his own family priest Public ministrations are indeed conducted at the mosques, but it is
the glory of Islam that its temples are not made with, hands, and that its ceremonies can be
performed anywhere upon God’s earth or under His heavens. A system of purely secular
education is adapted to very few nations In the opinion of many deeply thinking men,
it has signally failed in Ireland, and it is certainly altogether unsuited to the alliterate and
fanatical peasantry of Muhammadan Bengal.”18

8. During the Muslim rule in Bengal there were madrassahs all over the coun-
try, and, as Maulvi Abdul Karim says, “every mosque was a madrassah in min-
iature.”19 Arabic scholars taught the theology, the law and the literature of Islam,
and asked for no remuneration from their pupils. With the break up of the Muslim
power most of these institutions collapsed But in the time of Warren Hastings and
until 1837 Persian still continued to be the language of the law courts, and when
Warren Hastings established the Calcutta Madrassah in 1782, he did so mainly
for the purpose of training Musalmans to be officers in the East India Company’s

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service. When in 1837 Persian was discontinued as the language of the courts,
the Calcutta Madrassah and other institutions which had been founded on similar
lines ceased to be of value as training grounds for the public service. Other schools
and colleges were open to them, but the Musalmans held aloof from English edu-
cation, which they regarded with suspicion not unmixed with contempt, as being
secular not religious, technical rather than liberal—not in fact, in their opinion,
the education of a gentleman. The feeling of the community has been modified.
During the last few years the Musalmans of Bengal have taken more and more
advantage of the ordinary courses of instruction. Their enrolment in secondary
schools and colleges has considerably increased. It has been suggested to us that
this development is due to economic pressure as well as to an increased regard
for the education which secondary schools and colleges impart. We have referred
elsewhere to the pressure on the soil, which forces the cultivator to look for the
support of some of his sons to callings which take them away from the land.20 The
small landholder moreover finds that his rents do not go so far as they went once,
and that more of his dependents are compelled to earn something for themselves.
In spite of this a considerable proportion, of the Musalmans under instruction are
still pupils in maktabs and madrassahs. Whenever private Muslim educational
enterprise is concerned, it tends to develope purely Islamic institutions. Muslim
associations often ask Government to increase the facilities for Muslim boys, but
they plead at the same time for special Muslim institutions, special text-books,
special inspecting officers. This means that the community is anxious for a system
of education which will enable it to preserve its social and religious personality
and its communal traditions.
9. The position was described by the Committee which was appointed by the
Government of Bengal in 1914, and to which reference is made in the next section
of this chapter.
“Although there has been a tendency during the past few years for Moslems to take more
advantage of the ordinary courses of instruction, and although the number of Moslems in
various kinds of schools has increased, yet wherever private Moslem enterprise is con-
cerned, it tends to develope purely Islamic institutions The reason is that there is still a
strong feeling in the community that a separate system of education will preserve the social
and religious independence of Moslems.
We fully realise this tendency and at the same time we feel that, with the limited funds
which are at the disposal of the Government for the encouragement of education, it is
impracticable to insist that a Moslem boy shall, throughout his educational career, be edu-
cated in schools intended exclusively for Moslems. At the same time we cannot ignore the
fact that a large section of the community regards general educational institutions with
suspicion and we therefore think that it is still necessary for Government to aid and in some
cases to maintain a number of separate institutions for Moslems In this connexion we
record the following recommendation:—
That, while it is necessary to maintain special institutions for Moslems, it is undesir-
able to develope further a system of education for this community separate from that of
other communities The existing systems should be carefully examined to see where
they fail to satisfy members of the community, and necessary modifications should be
introduced.”21

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This general statement of policy, which should be read in connexion with the
specific recommendations which followed it, applied to the education of boys and
men and not to the education of girls and women.

II.—The Progress of Muslim Education in Bengal

from 1905 to 1917.
10. In 1905 the Province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, was constituted This
province ceased to exist on the 1st April 1912. During this period she educa-
tional progress made by the Musalmans of Eastern Bengal was marked Among
the measures adopted by the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam for the
encouragement of the education of Musalmans, the following were the most
important22—
(1) the introduction of Urdu teaching into selected primary schools;
(2) the provision of liberal grants-in-aid;
(3) the reservation of special scholarships and free studentships;
(4) the provision of extended hostel accommodation; and
(5) the appointment of a larger proportion of Musalmans to the educational
services.
11. As regards hostels the following extract from the resolution of the Govern-
ment of Bengal on the Quinquennial Review of Education in Eastern Bengal for
the period 1908–1913 is of interest—
“The question of hostel accommodation is of urgent importance. The great majority of
Muhammadans live in the villages, and they experience great difficulty in finding homes
for their boys who attend school in the towns. Suitable accommodation amidst desirable
surroundings is expensive or not available, and parents are naturally reluctant to send that
boys away to live in conditions which may be harmful to them. Many, it is believed, are
prevented from educating their sons by these obstacles. The remedy lies in providing ade-
quate hostel accommodation for Muhammadan boys in connexion with the schools
Special efforts have been made during the quinquennium to effect an improvement in
this direction, with the result that every college and nearly every Government high school
has now a Muhammadan hostel. Private schools have been encouraged to follow suit. It is
satisfactory to note a readiness among the Muhammadans themselves to provide funds for
the establishment of hostels in towns where there are large aided schools.”23

12. Shortly after the territorial readjustment had been announced Lord Hardinge
visited Dacca. On his return from there lie received in Calcutta on the 16th Feb-
ruary 1912 a deputation, headed by Dr. (now Sir) Rash Behary Ghose. In reply to
this deputation His Excellency said:—
“When I visited Dacca I found a widespread apprehension, particularly among the
Muhammadans, who form the majority of the population, lest the attention which the parti-
tion of Bengal secured for the eastern provinces should be relaxed, and that there might be
a set-back in educational progress It was to allay this not unreasonable apprehension that
I stated to a deputation of Muhammadan gentlemen that the Government of India were so
much, impressed with the necessity of promoting education in a province which had made

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such good progress during the past few years that we have decided to recommend to the
Secretary of State the constitution of a university at Dacca and the appointment of a special
officer for education in Eastern Bengal.”24

The whole question of the proposed Dacca University is discussed in Chapter

XXXIII of this report.
13. In 1913 the Government of India asked the various local Governments
to consider and report on certain general questions affecting the education of
Musalmans. The Bengal Government appointed a committee to consider the sug-
gestions made by the Government of India Mr. W. W. Hornell presided over this
committee as Director of Public Instruction.
14. We quote below what the Secretary to the Government of India in the
Education Department said in his letter with regard to secondary and collegiate
education (the italics are in the original):—
“The reasons which have retarded the spread of secondary education among the Muham-
madans are the poverty of the community, the linguistic difficulty, the demand for religious
instruction and want of Muhammadan representation on the Governing Bodies of educa-
tional institutions The first has been to a large extent met by special Government scholar-
ships and by endowments. This is essentially a matter for the local Governments and the
community themselves I am merely to observe that in part of the country where Muham-
madans are slow to enter institutions for technical and industrial timing (and it has been
noticed that very few Muhammadans have been selected for the State Technical Scholar-
ships) it may be found desirable to offer some special facilities by way of stipends or schol-
arships. As to the second, it is alleged that Muhammadans suffer when they have to study
English through the medium of a prak**tic vernacular with which they are little acquainted.
Special schools or classes may go far to meet this difficulty. The demand for religious
instruction can be arranged for in privately-managed hostels attached to Government insti-
tutions. It is represented that, in certain parts of the country, the great majority of secondary
schools are managed by Hindu bodies, and it was recently observed that, among the 100
ordinary members of the Calcutta Senate, only six were Muhammadans The establish-
ment of special Muhammadan schools and colleges would simplify these matters But this
is an expedient which for financial reasons cannot be adopted generally. And, where it is not
feasible, a good deal may be done by reserving a certain number of vacancies for Muham-
madan pupils in institutions which, by reason of their reputation, draw many applicants for
admission and by safeguarding the interests of the community in other ways. A subsidiary
difficulty which may sometimes present itself is that of advance from a semi-secular muktab
to an institution of higher grade This, however, is a matter of arrangement in the codes
of the various provinces. The suggestions which the Government of India think may be of
practical utility in the matter of secondary and collegiate education are—
(i) The improvement of existing institutions for Muhammadans, such as the Cal-
cutta Madrassah, the Islamia College, Lahore, and Islamia schools
(ii) The establishment of separate Muhammadan institutions in places where this
can be done without detriment to efficiency or discipline and without unrea-
sonable expense
(iii) When this is not possible (and it is apprehended it will but seldom be possible)
the addition to the staff of a school of a teacher or teachers who will be able
either to teach classes in English through the medium of Urdu, or to give spe-
cial help to Muhammadan boys where a knowledge of some other vernacular
is desirable either for the study of English or for general reasons

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(iv) The maintenance of hostels for Muhammadans under private management

with religious teaching
(v) The appointment of a reasonable number of Muhammadans to the committees
(where such exist) of Government institutions and to the governing bodies of
aided institutions
(vi) The provision of Muhammadan teachers and inspectors”25

15. The Committee examined the working of the secondary-school system

in close detail and recorded in their report no less than sixty-seven resolutions
embodying the requirements of the Musalnians with regard to it. The chief
demands were (1) that there should be more schools in centres convenient to
Musalmans and an easier access for Muslim pupils to schools already in existence;
(2) that Musalmans should be more adequately represented on the governing bod-
ies of schools; (3) that there should be more Muslim head masters and assistant
masters; (4) that there should be more adequate and effective provision for the
teaching of Arabic, Persian and Urdu, (5) that there should be more scholarships
and free-studentships; (6) that there should be more hostels and that these should
be under the supervision of properly qualified Musalmans; (7) that there should
be an increase in the number of the special officers of the Education Department
charged with the special task of fostering the education of Musalmans (such offi-
cers are at present the Assistant Director of Public Instruction for Muhammadan
Education and the special Muslim inspecting officers), and that the work of these
officers should be so arranged as to make their influence most widely and expedi-
tiously effective.
16. On one matter the Committee laid special emphasis. It pointed out that the
secondary school system comprised (a) Government schools, (b) schools man-
aged by local bodies, (c) aided schools and (d) unaided schools, and observed that
whereas the Department of Public Instruction had some control over Government
schools and schools managed by local bodies and could impose on aided schools
certain regulations by way of conditions involved in the acceptance of grants, the
authority of the Department over unaided schools was slight; and that the real
control over high schools generally rested with the University of Calcutta. In the
face of this situation the Committee found it necessary to record in their report
that “even unaided schools recognised by the University are public institutions
and as such the University should insist on their being made acceptable to all
classes and communities of His Majesty’s subjects in Bengal.”26
17. This suggests a general consideration which is of importance We have referred
elsewhere to a certain popular suspicion of Government control over education.27
The Muslim community does not appear to share in this suspicion; on the contrary
it still looks with confidence to Government and appears reluctant to entrust its
destinies to any popularly constituted body. A note submitted to the Commission by
Nawab Syed Nawabaly Chaudhury contains the following passage—
“The appointment of a board for secondary education in order to advise Government
about the distribution of grants and other matters of policy, was first proposed in 1914

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during the lifetime of the late Nawab of Dacca. He considered the scheme detrimental
to the interests of Muhammadans and, on account of his opposition, the proposal was
dropped. Last year again a resolution for creating an advisory board for secondary educa-
tion was moved in the Bengal Legislative Council and all Muhammadan members and
the member in charge of the Education portfolio opposed it and, consequently, the resolu-
tion fell through. The Muhammadans of Bengal consider it a question of vital importance
in their own interest that the distribution of grants and the control of educational policy
should rest with Government The creation of a large secondary education board, with
powers to distribute grants and to advise Government on questions of policy, will be det-
rimental to the interests of Muhammadans Muhammadans will never be able to derive
their full share from the institutions maintained or started by public funds, until a special
treatment, similar to that accorded by Lord Hardinge and Lord Carmichael, be reserved
to them. Muhammadans are afraid that the special facilities which now exist in secondary
education will no longer exist, if secondary education be entrusted to a board. . . . From the
experience of the University of Calcutta Muhammadans will be afraid that the advantages
and special facilities which they now enjoy, and which they expect to get in future, will all
be set aside by the board should it unfortunately be created.”28

18. As regards the language problem, the Committee pointed out that, while a
Bengali Hindu who takes a high school course has only to read three languages,
English, Sanskrit and Bengali, a Bengali Muslim boy who takes the same course
has to read as many as five languages, viz., English, Arabic, Persian, Urdu and
Bengali, and that this burden of language has told seriously upon, the general edu-
cational progress of the Musalmans of Bengal. To lighten the burden, the Commit-
tee recommended that Urdu should be recognised by the University of Calcutta
as a second language fox those whose vernacular is not Urdu.29 The deputation of
the Musalmans of Calcutta which appeared before us made on this question the
following statement:—
“The Muhammadan leaders have come to the conclusion that though we cannot drop
the study of any one of the five languages it is not necessary for every individual boy to
study all of them The Muhammadan boy whose mother tongue is Bengali should receive
his primary education in Bengali and should study a classical language, Arabic, Persian or
Urdu . . . . . We can confidently assert that Urdu for a Bengali-speaking boy is even more
difficult than Persian is for an Urdu-speaking boy.”30

19. The present regulations for the matriculation examination of the University
of Calcutta prescribe that male candidates (some exceptions are made for women
and girls) (a) should be examined in other subjects of which English is one, and
in one of the following languages:—Sanskrit, Pali, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew,
Classical Armenian, Classical Tibetan, Greek, Latin, and (b) that they should be
required to write a composition in one of the following vernacular languages:—
Bengali, Hindi, Uriya, Assamese, Urdu, Burmese, Modern Armenian, Modern
Tibetan, Khasi. If the vernacular of a candidate is a language not included in the
above list he has to take an alternative paper, either (i) in English composition, or
(ii) in French, or (iii) in German. The proposal is that Urdu should be added to the
languages under (a) above for those boys whose vernacular is not Urdu and who
therefore do not offer it under (b).

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20. The Committee passed twenty-six resolutions on collegiate education and

described the general position of the Musalmans in this regard in the following
words:—
“We notice with regret that, out of 14 746 students studying in arts colleges in Calcutta,
only 1,154 are Moslems, and we appeal to Government to take such action as will enable
Moslems to have a greater share in the facilities which are offered for college education.
We consider the poverty of the community, its inadequate representation on the Senate,
Syndicate and boards of studies of the University, as also on the governing bodies of col-
leges, the non-affiliation of colleges in Arabic and Persian, and the lack of hostel accom-
modation for Moslem college students are the chief reasons why Moslems do not take
greater advantage of the collegiate system”31

21. The Committee recommended that no college should be given a grant-in-

aid unless there are professors of Arabic and Persian and Urdu on its staff, and
that in order to enable the aided colleges to make this provision increased grants
should be given where necessary.
22. In Chapter X of their report, which deals with religious and moral instruc-
tion, the Committee insisted that moral education for Musalmans cannot be sepa-
rated from religious education. They desired to enforce religious observances in
Muslim hostels and they urged the importance of Muslim pupils in all schools and
colleges wearing their distinctive dress, including a cap.32
The question of religious instruction in hostels is discussed in Chapters XIX
and XXXIX of this report.
23. The Governor of Bengal in Council dealt with the Committee’s report in
his resolution No 1227-Edn, dated 3rd August 1916. On the general question
of the educational progress of the Musalmans of the Presidency, the resolution
said:—
“The inequality of the progress in education made by the Hindu and Muhammadan
communities is patent. The comparatively slow advance made by the Muhammad-
ans more especially in the higher branches of education, has prevented them taking
as full a part in the political, professional and industrial life of the province as the
Hindus; and many of the present administrative difficulties in Bengal are due to the
educational inequality between the two communities Comparatively few Muham-
madans are engaged in professional pursuits They are largely outnumbered by the
Hindus in industries and commerce The deficiency of Muhammadans qualified for
appointment to administrative posts is a not infrequent source of embarrassment to
Government Their disabilities are largely due to their having failed to keep pace with
the Hindus in the matter of education The development of the country, in political as
well as in other directions, is dependent on the uniform educational progress of the two
mam constituents of the population and on their equal capacity to take advantage both
of the opportunities now open to them and of the fuller opportunities which may be
available hereafter The Government of India are anxious that all reasonable facilities
should be provided for the education of Muhammadans, and the Governor in Council is
convinced that it is in the interests both of the Government and the people as a whole
that the Muhammadans who, in spite of recent efforts, have still much lost ground to
make up, should receive such special facilities as may be necessary to enable them to
benefit as fully as the Hindus from the educational institutions which are maintained,
wholly or partially, out of public funds”

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24. As regards religious instruction, the Governor in Council expressed his

sympathy with the desire of the Committee, but pointed out that the whole
question of religious and moral instruction in schools was then (as it still is)
under the consideration of the Government of India, and that, pending the
issue of orders by that Government, the local Government were unable to take
any action.
25. The Muslim deputations and representations which Ave have received
(see Section VII below) laid stress on the subject of religious instruction and
observances. The general contentions were (a) that religious instruction should
be included in the courses of the University; (b) that provision should be made
for religious instruction in all hostels in which Muslim students reside and that
in all such hostels and in all colleges a room should be set apart for the prayers
of the Musalmans; (c) that provision should be made for the religious instruc-
tion of Musalmans according to the tenets and practices of Islam in all those
high English schools in which the students are wholly or mainly Muslim.33
26. The Governor in Council agreed to the introduction of the teaching of ele-
mentary Urdu in schools in order to facilitate the study of the Quran; the introduc-
tion of books, written in current Bengali, dealing with subjects of interest to the
Muslim community; the direct appointment of a certain number of specially qual-
ified Muslim head masters to Government high schools; the reservation of seats
for Muslim boys in high schools and certain relaxations, in favour of Musalmans,
in the rules regarding free studentships.
27. On the language difficulty the resolution said:—
“His Excellency in Council has read with interest the remarks of the Committee on the
difficulties which the Moslem community experience in connexion with the languages
which its members desire to study owing to then association with Muhaminadan religion
and history. He will forward to the University for their consideration the recommendation
that Urdu should be included among the second languages which can be taken for the
matriculation examination.”

The University has not as yet seen its way to make any change in the matricula-
tion conditions referred to in paragraph 19 above.
28. Other demands put forward in this connexion are that Arabic should be
excluded from all the Persian courses prescribed for examinations of the Uni-
versity; that Sanskrit quotations should be excluded from Bengali text-books;34
that a separate board should be established in connexion with the study of Ben-
gali and that Musalmans should be adequately represented on it35 (the basis
of this demand is the alleged rejection of books written in Bengali by Muslim
authors as also of books which deal with Muslim traditions and heroes); that the
study of the vernacular as a distinct subject should be excluded from the courses
of the University.36
29. In the matter of hostel accommodation the Governor in Council desired that
the Musalmans should be in as favourable a position and have the same facilities
as Hindus. He accepted the principle that Government should establish hostels for
Muslim, students in connexion with Government high schools, where the number

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of such pupils is sufficient to justify separate accommodation. He pointed out,

however, that this was entirely a question of the funds at the disposal of the Gov-
ernment. Some of the representations which have been made to us contain com-
plaints about the inadequacy of the hostel accommodation available for Muslim
students in connexion with colleges not only in Calcutta but in the mufassal also.
This point is dealt with in paragraph 48 below.
30. As regards collegiate education the Governor in Council said:—
“The recommendations of the Committee on the subject of collegiate education mostly
concern matters on which the Governor in Council is not competent to pass orders The con-
tention of the Committee that in spite of the growing recognition of the value of hostels, the
accommodation for Muhanmmadan students is inadequate is unfortunately only too true.”
So far as Government colleges were concerned the Governor in Council
accepted the suggestion that a certain number of seats should be reserved for
Muslim students.
“The Governor in Council,” the resolution runs, “is prepared to reserve a definite pro-
portion of places in Government colleges for Muhammadan students, and he accepts the
suggestion that the ratio should be 25 per cent, which will for the present be regarded as
the minimum and be liable to modification from time to time He will further consider
whether similar action can be taken to ensure that Muhammadan students will be regarded
as having a preferential claim to vacancies in aided colleges up to the same limit.”
The reservation for Muslim students of a certain number of vacancies in aided
‘arts colleges’ has since been ordered.
31. Some of the Muslim deputations which waited upon us complained that this
order of the Government of Bengal which reserved for Musalmans 25 per cent, of
the vacancies in colleges is not observed37 The number and percentage of Mus-
lim students in the various types of university colleges in Bengal will be found in
paragraph 45 below. Demands are put forward that the minimum of 25 per cent
of vacancies should be raised. The percentages suggested are 30, 33, 40 and 50
according to the proportion of the Muslim population to the total population, of the
area concerned.38
32. In order to increase the number of Muslim teachers, the Governor in Council
agreed that the adequate representation of Musalmans on the managing commit-
tees and on the teaching staffs of schools should be a condition of grant-in-aid.39
33. It “is convenient at this point to sum up the more important arrangements
which have been made by the Government of Bengal to facilitate and encourage
the education of the Musalmans of the Presidency. The summary which follows
is taken almost word for word from the Fifth Quinquennial Review of Education
in Bengal.—
(a) Twenty-five per cent, of the vacancies each year in all Government and aided col-
leges must be reserved for Musalmans.
(b) In all Government schools a certain percentage of the vacancies each year in each
class must be reserved for Musalmans. This percentage is fixed by the head masters in
consultation with the divisional inspectors of schools and has reference not only to the
Musalmans in the school, but also to the Muslim population of the locality

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(c) In order to provide funds for special scholarships in colleges and high schools, Gov-
ernment undertook the entire responsibility for the support of the madrassahs at Dacca,
Chittagong, Hooghly and Rajshahi, thus setting free from the Mohsin fund40 a certain
amount of money belonging to the fund. This amount has been utilised to establish a num-
ber of stipends tenable by Musahnans in arts and professional colleges and in madrassahs.
(d) In order to remove, as far as possible, the disabilities of Muslim pupils in ordinary
schools and colleges, the Government of Bengal have tried to insist on there being a Mus-
lim element on the staff of every school, in addition to the teachers of Arabic and Persian.
Annual reports have now to be submitted by the appointing authorities to the Director of
Public Instruction, showing how vacancies during the year have been filled. A similar pro-
cedure is prescribed in respect to the appointment of clerks in offices
(e) An Assistant Director of Public Instruction and five special assistant inspectors for
Muslim education were appointed. Such appointments are not found outside Bengal
(f ) In order to allow Muslim boys in colleges and schools to perform their jumma
prayers, orders have been issued (1) that in all Government colleges work should be sus-
pended for an hour about midday on Fridays, (2) that in Government schools the managing
committees shall decide whether (a) the school shall be closed for a half-day on Fridays
instead of on Saturdays (in this case schools would close on Fridays at 12-30 P.M.) or (6)
work should be suspended for one hour on Fridays
(g) Orders have been issued to divisional inspectors of schools to insist on the appoint-
ment of maulvis (viz, Muslim teachers of Arabic and Persian) where, in view of the Muslim
population of the locality, a large number of Muslim pupils might be expected in the school
(h) In order to mitigate the difficulties of Muslim students in Calcutta, a non-collegiate
hostel with accommodation for 73 boarders was opened by the Bengal Government in Wel-
lington Street, Calcutta, in July 1915. At the request of the Muslim community this hostel
has been called the Taylor Hostel after Mr. J. A. Taylor, the Assistant Director of Public
Instruction for Muhammadan Education; Government has also provided additional accom-
modation for 70 boarders in two wings which were added to the Baker Madrassah Hostel
(the hostel for college students attached to the Calcutta Madrassah)
(i) During the quinquennium a sum of Rs 84,000 a year was earmarked from 1914–15
from one of the recuring Imperial grants for the improvement of the education of Musalmans
with special reference to what is known as the reformed madrassah scheme (see paragraph
60 of this chapter and Chapter XVI) This allotment has enabled the Education Department
to increase the grants of all the six aided senior madrassahs and seven aided junior madras-
saha and also to aid 55 junior madrassahs which had previously not been aided.
( j) During the quinquennium a scheme was worked out for establishing a Government
‘arts college’ in Calcutta for Musalmans. This scheme has been held up mainly on financial
grounds The original Dacca University scheme included a college for Musalmans (see
Chapter XXXIII of this report);
(k) Facilities have been provided for Muslim students in connexion with professional
colleges—

(i) The Civil Engineering College, Sibpur—The dearth of Muslim students

in the various departments of this college was said to be chiefly due to the
heavy charges that the students had to bear on account of messing. In order to
remove this disability the Governing Body of the College proposed in 1914
that the charges on account of establishment, lighting, and superintendence
of the Muslim hostel should be defrayed by Government, and that stipends
should be paid to Muslim students according to a sliding scale These pro-
posals were sanctioned by the Bengal Government who, in terms of then
resolution no. 4147, dated the 16th November 1915, created four Mohsin

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stipends [see under (c) above] of Rs. 10 each tenable for two years in the civil
engineering department of the College.
(ii) The Medical College, Calcutta—The Government Resolution just referred to cre-
ated six Mohsin stipends of Rs 15 a month and made them tenable in the Medical
College [see under (c) above].41

III.—The present position.

34. The following table, which is based on the census of 1911, compares for
each division of the Bengal Presidency, the number of Hindu and Muslim males
and females (a) who are literate and (b) who are literate in English.42—
Number of literate per 1,000

HINDUS MUSALMANS
Division
Males Females Males Females
Dacca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 8 28 5 60 1 15
Presidency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 8 35 5 96 1 32
Burdwan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 4 11 6 150 4 70
Chittagong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262 7 20 1 80 3 22
Rajshahi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 5 94 76 7 17

Number of literate in English per 1,000

HINDUS MUSALMANS
Division
Males Females Males Females
Dacca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 0 6 37 03
Presidency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62 5 18 79 1
Burdwan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 5 6 12 4 4
Chittagong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 3 5 46 04
Rajshahi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 4 2 34 02

It will be noticed that in the Eastern Bengal divisions, where the Muslim popu-
lation is much the largest, the proportion of Muslim literates is much smaller than
in the Presidency and Burdwan divisions.
35. According to the recently issued Quinquennial Review of Education in Ben-
gal the total number of Musalmans under instruction on the 31st March 1917 in all
classes of institutions both public and private was 864,195 Of these 817,105 are
returned as in colleges and schools of public instruction, viz., institutions working
in accordance with courses and standards recognised, or prescribed, either by the
Education Department or by the University.
36. The number of Muslim students in ‘arts colleges’ (i.e., institutions teach-
ing for the ordinary university degrees in arts and science) was 1,639 or 8.8 per
cent, of the total number of students of all creeds, as against 810 or 7.3 per cent.
in 1912. In professional colleges the number was 303 or 6.8 per cent. of the total

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number of students, as against 94 or 4.2 per cent. in 1912. In high schools the
number was 45,179 or 20 5 per cent. of the total number, as against 26,629 or
18.3 per cent. in 1912. In middle English schools the number was 54,039 or 33.2
per cent. of the total, as against 43,238 or 34.1 per cent., and in middle vernacular
schools 8,258 or 34.1 per cent., as against 10,598 or 29.7 per cent. in 1912.43
In primary schools Musalmans almost hold their own. Their number was
680,273 or 49.5 per cent. of the total of pupils under instruction, as against
525,980 or 42.8 per cent. of the total in 1912.
37. To sum up the position as regards schools of public instruction, on the 31st
March 1917 the Musalmans represented less than one-fifth of the total number of
pupils in the high stage, less than a quarter of the pupils in the middle stage and
just over a fifth of the pupils in the high and middle stages of school education
taken together. In other words, though, the Musalmans represent 52.7 per cent.
of the population of the Bengal Presidency, their children constitute only about a
fifth of the boys and girls who are receiving a secondary school education. On the
other hand 56.6 per cent. of the children receiving primary education including
the primary grade in secondary schools are Musalmans.
38. Of the total 817,105, which represents Muslim pupils in colleges and schools
of public instruction, no less than 228,438 or 27.9 per cent. were in those Muslim
primary schools (maktabs) which give some secular instruction according to recog-
nised departmental curricula, or in madrassahs which teach the courses prescribed
by the Education Department (viz., 2,07,495 in maktabs and 20,945 in madrassahs).
39. The ‘private’ institutions which are included in the official statistics are
institutions which do not work in accordance with courses or standards pre-
scribed, or recognised, either by the Education Department or by the University
The statistics for 1916–17 show 62,920 pupils as being in those institutions in
Bengal Of these students 47,183 or 75 per cent. were Musalmans, these figures
include 25,458 boys and 7,393 girls, who were pupils of schools which teach
nothing beyond the chanting of the Quran.
40. The following table indicates the educational progress of Bengali Musalmans
during the last 35 years, i.e., since the Education Commission of 1882. The figures are
all the more striking, because the figures in the first column include Bihar and Orissa,
while those in the last column refer to the existing Presidency of Bengal only.—

Number of pupils in
Number of pupils in
Institution 1881–82 in Bengal,
1916–17 in Bengal.
Bihar and Orissa

Colleges—General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 1,639

Colleges—Professional . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
High English Schools. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,831 45,179
Middle English Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5,036 54,061
Middle Vernacular Schools . . . . . . . . . . 7,741 8,258
Primary Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218,786 680,273

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41. In 1917 the number of Musalmans who were Fellows of the Calcutta Uni-
versity was 7 out of a total of 110. No Musalman has been elected a member
of the Syndicate since its reconstruction in 1904. In 1917 there was no Muslim
member of the Students’ Committee of Residence nor was the Muslim community
represented on any of the other administrative bodies of the University. But some
representation of the Muslim community has since been arranged.
42. The number of Musalmans in the governing bodies of the colleges is inad-
equate. The Mymensingh College is the only one which has two Musalmans on its
governing body. Eight Government and aided colleges have one Muslim member
each, the remaining 23 colleges have no Musalmans on their governing bodies.
43. The table below shows how few Musalmans were employed in 1917 on the
staffs of the various colleges. This is a serious difficulty arising largely from the
small number of Musalmans available for appointment. An adequate number of
Muslim teachers is necessary not only to secure confidence among the Muslim,
students but also for the organisation of Muslim hostels for the provision of social
life and tutorial guidance for the students of that community.

TEACHERS OF TEACHERS OF
ORIENTAL SUBJECTS. OTHER SUBJECTS.

Colleges Hindus Total.

Musalmans
(Sanskrit,
(Arabic and Europeans Hindus Musalmans
Bengali
Persian).
and Pali)
11 Government Colleges 30 15 28 213 17 258
9 Aided Colleges1 . . . . . . 20 8 120 8 128
8 Mission Colleges1 . . . . 18 1 47 78 ... 125
11 Unaided Colleges . . . 33 4 4 231 4 239
University Staff (Arts 25 5 11 125 6 142
and Science).
6 Professional Colleges2 ... ... 24 69 2 95
(except law)
University Law, Ripon, ... ... 2 76 ... 78
Earle, and Dacca
Law Colleges.
TOTAL 137 33 116 912 37 1,065
1 Some of the mission colleges are aided, but no mission colleges are included under the head aided
colleges’ as used in this table.
2 The teaching departments of the Diocesan College for Girls and Loreto House are not included.

44. The deputation of the Musalmans of Calcutta referred to the fact that there was
no Musalman on the staff of the University Law College. They stated that competent
Musalmans were available44 Three Musalmans have been appointed since then.
45. The following table shows the number and percentage of Muslim students
in 1917 in the various types of colleges:—

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Total number Total number Percentage of

Colleges
of students of Musalmans. Musalmans
11 Government Colleges . . . . . . . . . 5,323 811 15·2
9 Aided Colleges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4,343 589 13·5
8 Mission Colleges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,916 180 6·1
11 Unaided Colleges . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,001 765 7·6
University Post-Graduate Classes Arts 1,583 66 4·2
and Science
8 Professional Colleges (except Law) 1,420 74 5·2
University Law, Ripon, Earle and 2,824 198 7·0
Dacca Law Colleges
TOTAL 28,410 2,683 9·5

46. There is no Muslim college in Bengal but proposals for the establishment
of an Islamia college in Calcutta are now under consideration. We have referred
to this in Section V below.45 There are three Muslim high schools maintained
by the Government of Bengal. The Anglo-Persian Department of the Calcutta
Madrassah is a high school. The Anglo-Persian departments of the Government
madrassahs in Dacca and Chittagong were recently transferred to the divisional
inspectors as Muslim high schools Besides these high schools Government also
maintains madrassahs teaching the reformed madrassah course.46
47. We have already shewn47 that in 1916–17 the Muslim pupils in the high
schools of Bengal represented 20.5 per cent. only of the total number of students
The percentage of the Musalmans who appeared at the matriculation examination
of 1918 was 17.3 only
48. As regards residential accommodation, the following table shows the total
number of Muslim students against the places available for them in. recognised
hostels, i.e., college and non-collegiate hostels (for university students):—

Total number of The percentage of

Muslim students Muslim students
Total number of
Places. for whom hostel for whom hostel
Muslim students
accommodation is accommodation
available exists.
Calcutta . . . . . . . . . 1,241 515 41·4
Dacca . . . . . . . . . . . 250 180 72·0
Mufassal . . . . . . . . . 1,192 335 29·8

TOTAL 2,683 1,050 39·6

IV.—The education of women and girls48

49. We have already stated (see paragraph 1 above) that according to the figures
of the last census, the Muslim population of Bengal was 23,989,719. This figure

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includes women and girls, of whom 131,380 are in recognised colleges or schools.
In 1916–17 there were two Muslim, girls only in colleges, 36 in high schools, 205
in middle schools, 129,341 in primary schools including maktabs, and 1,796 in
special schools.49 No Muslim girl passed the Calcutta University matriculation
examination in 1918. The recent Quinquennial Review of the Progress of Educa-
tion in Bengal says that the demand for women’s education is steadily rising.
“The advance of education among Moslem women of the upper classes ‘depends
almost entirely upon the establishment and maintenance of strictly purdah schools which
should he staffed by Muhammadan women and confined exclusively to Muhammadan
girls There are a certain number of such schools already, and if any real progress is to be
made the number of these schools must be increased. The difficulty in the way of increas-
ing these schools is the dearth of teachers. If these schools are really to appeal to Muham-
madans they must be staffed by qualified Moslem women and such women are almost
unobtainable in Bengal.”50

50. Some of our witnesses advocated the house-to-house teaching of Muslim

girls. Miss Bose, one of the Bengal inspectresses, wrote recently.—
“The system of education by means of house-to-house visitation and in central gath-
erings is a great boon to purdah women, both. Hindu and Muhammnadan, and is very
highly appreciated by people of both communities. . . . . I am sorry to say that some of
these teachers are not competent to carry on the work. The women now employed with
the exception of one or two have the most meagre education . . . . . The Muhammadans
are still in their infancy, as far as female education is concerned, and need encourage-
ment and help no doubt, but it is impossible to open new schools and zananas [centres]
until we can secure the services of trained qualified teachers. A Muhammadan training
institution—the scheme of which has had to wait for financial stringency owing to the
war—is essentially needed for the purpose We shall never get qualified teachers until
this is done.”51

51. The Muslim Education Committee52 recorded the opinion that a separate
system of schools would have to be established and maintained for Muslim girls.
It stated that the atmosphere of the existing schools was not congenial to Muslim
girls and that it was therefore necessary to establish and maintain schools which
would admit none but the daughters of Musalmans. The Committee did not, how-
ever, think it would be distasteful to the community if Muslim girls, where neces-
sary, continued to attend the ordinary primary schools53
52. The Committee also recommended that provision should be made for the
religious instruction of Muslim, girls in primary schools, the establishment in
Calcutta and Dacca of model girl schools for Musalmans; the employment of
Muslim women as assistant inspectresses; the endowment of liberal stipends
for Muslim girl pupils; and the employment of more peripatetic women teach-
ers for Muslim girls and women.54
53. On the question of the training of Muslim women teachers Begum Khajesta
Bano Suhrawardy, in the course of a written statement forwarded to us, said:—
“Indeed it is now difficult even to get non-Muslim Indian Urdu speaking trained teach-
ers, having sufficient knowledge and capabilities of being useful in a secondary school.
The teachers from Bankipore school appear fit only for primary education. Therefore

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unless a training school for Muslim teachers is established at Calcutta, on the lines of the
one for Hindus of which Mrs. Mitter is the principal, the education of Muslim girls will
remain seriously handicapped55

54. The Muslim Education Committee recommended56 that the University of

Calcutta should be asked, where necessary, to make special arrangements for
the examination under strictly purdah conditions of Muslim ladies. No applica-
tion has ever been made to the University, but we understand that, if there was a
demand, there would be no difficulty in meeting it.

V—The proposed Calcutta ‘arts college’ for Musalmans.

55. We have already referred57 to the scheme for the establishment in Calcutta
of a Government ‘arts college’ for Musalmans. At one time there were intermedi-
ate classes attached to the Calcutta Madrassah. In 1887 a question arose as to the
raising of the status of the Madrassah to that of a first grade college and on the
recommendation of the Principal of the Madrassah, Dr. Hoernle, and Sir Alfred
Croft, who was then Director of Public Instruction, the Madrassah as an ‘arts
college’ was amalgamated in 188858 with the Presidency College. The students,
however, continued to appear at the university examinations as the students of
the Calcutta Madrassah and to pay fees at the same rate of Rs. 2 a month. No
restriction was imposed as to the number of the Muslim students who could be
admitted to the Presidency College classes under these conditions. This arrange-
ment continued till 1908 when the University disaffiliated the Madrassah. On the
recommendation of Mr. (later Sir Archdale) Earle, Director of Public Instruction,
and Dr. (now Sir) E. Denison Ross, the Principal of the Calcutta Madrassah,
orders were issued by the Government of Bengal that 35 Muslim students should
be admitted to each of the first and second year classes of the Presidency College
at a fee of Rs. 2 a month. The number 35 was calculated on the average number
of Muslim students who had during the immediately preceding years been under
instruction in the first and second year classes of the Presidency College, as
students of the Madrassah. We understand that in 1909 certain proposals which
had been put forward in connexion with the Presidency College included the
establishment of a Muslim arts college in Bengal, preferably in Calcutta. The
suggestion was offered that such a college might be provided by removing the
Calcutta Madrassah to a more suitable site and reorganising it on the model of
the Aligarh College.
56. The gradual increase in the number of Musalmans passing the matricula-
tion and intermediate examinations suggested to the Government of Bengal the
desirability of reopening the question of a Muslim college; a scheme was worked
out and in 1914 land was purchased in Wellesley Street, Calcutta, at a cost of Rs.
1,23,000.
57. The scheme is awaiting the issue of our report. We consider it desirable that
a college for Musalmans should be established in Calcutta. This matter is dealt
with in Chapter XXXIV.

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VI.—Madrassahs.
58. Maulvi Abdul Karim has informed us in his “Short Note on the Education
imparted in Madrassahs” that during Muslim rule in Bengal there were madras-
sahs all over the country. He continues:—
“Besides the well organised institutions of the kind every mosque was a madrassah
in miniature Distinguished Arabic scholars, who devoted their lives to advancing Islamic
learning, taught their co-religionists, without any remuneration from their pupils, theology,
law and literature of Islam. Many of these institutions collapsed when the Musalmans lost
their wealth and influence on account of the loss of sovereignty As in the beginning of
British rule in India Persian was retained as the court language, it was necessary to have
an institution, well-equipped and well-staffed, for the training of officers. Warren Hast-
ings established the Calcutta Madrassah in order to meet this requirement. Its course of
studies was so framed as to give Government servants a good training Some of the private
madrassahs also adopted this course As long as a knowledge of Persian was a passport to
posts of honour and emoluments, the education given in the madrassahs was very useful.
When Persian was replaced by English and the provincial vernaculars, the madrassahs lost
their utility and consequently also their popularity. But still a large number of orthodox
Musalmans, who cared more for religious than for secular education, continued to send
their children to the madrassahs instead of to the schools and colleges.59

59. Mr. Harley, the Principal of the Calcutta Madrassah, does not think that
it is fair to treat madrassahs as mere theological departments, to provide special
degrees and stipends for their students, and after that to leave them with no better
prospects than they have at present. He reminds the Commission that students
of madrassahs would in an Islamic country be qualified for Government posts.60
60. In the early part of the last century the madrassahs of Bengal (including
those located in the present provinces of Bihar and Orissa and of Assam) were
organised round the Calcutta Madrassah, the Principal of which held regular pub-
lic tests for madrassah students, called the central madrassah examinations. Fre-
quent efforts have been made to bring the Calcutta Madrassah and the madrassahs
associated with it more into line with ordinary colleges and schools and more
into touch with the requirements of modern life In 1903 the Government of Ben-
gal had before them a proposal that from a certain stage in the course upwards
two different courses should be taught in the Arabic Department of the Calcutta
Madrassah—one partly English and partly oriental, the other wholly oriental.
This proposal was rejected, mainly because it was felt that while a knowledge of
English was to be acquired at the expense of oriental studies, the standard attained
in that language would not be sufficiently high to justify the experiment. In a reso-
lution issued by the Government of Bengal on the 24th February 1903 the view
was expressed that, if a Musalman wished to learn English thoroughly, he should
enter the Anglo-Persian Department of the Calcutta Madrassah, in which Arabic
and Persian were taught as optional subjects for the matriculation examination.
In 1906 Mr. (now Sir Archdale) Earle, as Director of Public Instruction, Bengal,
reopened the general question of the education of the Musalmans of the Provinces
of Bengal and of Eastern Bengal and Assam. A series of conferences were held
in 1907 and 1908, and at these conferences the discussion centred mainly round

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two questions, (1) the institution of a title examination for madrassah students
in literature, law and theology, similar to the Sanskrit title examination and (2)
the revision of the course to enable madrassah students to acquire such a knowl-
edge of English as would fit them for Government service and other profitable
employment. There was considerable diversity of opinion on the question whether
English should be made a compulsory subject in madrassahs The proposal that
English should be made a compulsory subject was ultimately negatived, but the
Muslim representatives of Eastern Bengal were unanimous in supporting it. In
1909–10 a conference representative of Muslim opinion in Eastern Bengal was
summoned by the Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam to meet in Dacca.
This conference drew up a revised syllabus, but Mr. Sharp, the present Educa-
tional Commissioner, who was then Director of Public Instruction in Eastern Ben-
gal and Assam, pointed out, in submitting the revised curriculum to Government,
that it attempted too much and comprised a heterogeneous mixture of subjects. He
was unable to recommend its general adoption. At this point Mr. Nathan took up
the case. The position which he assumed was that the revised curriculum should
be as simple as possible and should be introduced into as many madrassahs as
financial considerations would permit. A second conference was held in Dacca in
March 1912, when the proposals of the 1910 conference were taken as the basis
of discussion, and modifications were suggested with the object of making the
course simpler and more practicable. These revised proposals were before the
Government of Eastern Bengal and Assam when the territorial readjustment took
place which resulted in the Presidency of Bengal; and, before any further progress
had been made, the question of establishing a university at Dacca had been taken
up. The committee appointed by the Government of Bengal to frame a scheme for
the new University decided to adopt the suggestion of the Government of India
that a department of Islamic studies should be included in the new University and
appointed a sub-committee to work out the details. As the university course must
necessarily be an extension of the course followed in the madrassahs, the subcom-
mittee had to take into consideration the madrassah curriculum. The proposals
made by the Dacca conference of 1912 were taken as a starting point and in 1913
after an informal conference, over which Mr. Nathan presided, a scheme known
popularly as the reformed madrassab scheme was evolved, the adoption of which
in all Government and aided madrassahs (except the Calcutta madrassah) was
ordered by the Government of Bengal in their Resolution of the 31st July 1914.61
The proposals for the Dacca University Department of Islamic studies are dealt
with in Chapter XXXIII of our report. The whole question of the courses of study
followed in madrassahs is dealt with in detail in Chapter XVI.
61. In our opinion there can be no solution of the problem involved in the
educational backwardness of the Muslim community, which does not include a
persistent attempt not only to make madrassahs places of real intellectual culture
and training but also to bring them into touch with the needs of modern life. The
Government of Bengal resolution62 to which we have just referred prefaces its
announcement by stating that the private madrassahs of the Presidency, though

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numerous, are, as a rule, small understaffed institutions in which a mere smatter-

ing of Arabic and Persian is taught, but practically nothing else.
“Such an education is ill suited for the requirements of the present day. The students find
themselves unable to earn a living and, for the most part, degenerate into useless members
of society63 The leading Muhammadans of Bengal are fully alive to this evil and have
repeatedly expressed their desire for a general reform of madrassahs. They hold that the
course of study pursued therein, whilst not being exclusively secular, should be such as is
likely to produce cultured Muhammadans fit to enter one or other of the careers open to
educated men, and to play their part in, the various activities which go to make up the pub-
lic life of modern India. They are alive to the need for scholars versed in the lore of Islam,
but, while they recognise that scholars of this type will necessarily be few in number, they
realise that, unless the community is to suffer, these exceptional persons must be genuine
savants and real enthusiasts for religion and learning.”64

VII.—Muslim deputations and representations.

62. One of the striking indications of the interest which, the Musalmans now
take in education was the number of Muslim deputations which waited upon us.
We received deputations at Calcutta, Chittagong, Comilla, Dacca, Gauhati, Mid-
napore, Murshidabad Rajshahi and Rangpur.65 The resolutions of the All-India
Muhammadan Conference and of the Bengal Presidency Muhammadan Educa-
tional Association were also submitted to us.66 These documents are printed in the
volume of General Memoranda, and all the points raised therein are dealt with
either in this chapter or in other parts of our report.
63. Among the points on which the deputations were emphatic was the desir-
ability of providing increased pecuniary aid for Muslim students in the shape of
stipends, scholarships and free studentships. They also urged that a certain pro-
portion of Muslim students should be accommodated in hostels rent free.

VIII.—Musalmans and, the problem of communal representation.

64. Practically all the Musalmans who have appeared before us or have
favoured us with written statements are agreed in representing the present state
of affairs in the University of Calcutta as unfavourable to the interests of their
community. When, in 1912, the Government of India announced their intention of
establishing a University of Dacca, they expressed the view that there seemed but
little chance of a large increase in the number of Muslim university students until
the Musalmans of Eastern Bengal had a university nearer to their doors, in the
guidance of which they could have a voice (there were then only six Musalmans
in the Calcutta University Senate) and in which there might perhaps be a Faculty
of Islamic Studies. The question of the Pacca University is dealt with in Chap-
ter XXXIII of our report.
65. A number of Muslim witnesses complain that neither the registered gradu-
ates nor the faculties of the Calcutta University have ever yet elected a Musalman
to be a Fellow. Others, while not exonerating these electorates from blame for the

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way in which they have exercised their suffrages, recognise the fact that 80 per
cent of the Ordinary Fellows of the University are nominated by the Chancellor
and therefore complain that this right of nomination has not been fairly exercised.
Maulvi Abdul Karirn, for example, writes:—
“The reservation by the Chancellor of the power of nominating so many as four-fifths
of the fellows, perhaps with a view to preserve the necessary equilibrium between the dif-
ferent communities interested in the University, should have secured the representation of
the different communities on the different bodies of the University in proportion to their
numerical strength and communal importance. Even if allowance were made for differ-
ence in educational advancement, their (i.e., the Musalmans) representation should, on no
account, have been so absurdly disproportionate, as it is at present. That an overwhelming
majority of even the nominated fellows should have come from one particular community
is regarded as a grievance that calls for immediate redress There is no fixed principle
according to which selection is made by Government It does not seem to have been
always based on academic attainments.”67

The Maulvi, who contends that one-third of the Senate at least should be
Muslim, will not hear of the suggestion that suitable Musalmans are not easy
to find:—
“If any one thinks that such a number of competent Musalmans in Bengal and Assam
would not be forthcoming, he is not I am afraid, fully aware of the progress the community
has lately made in education.”

66. The majority of our Muslim witnesses do not hesitate to attribute to this
lack of Muslim representation in the University (and on the governing bodies
of the several colleges) not only the inadequate proportion of the Musalmans
among students of the University but also the continuance of conditions which are
alleged by Musalmans to be prejudicial to the interests of Muslim students Most
of these grievances are referred to in the course of this chapter; we summarise
them below—
(a) the lack of adequate provision for instruction in Persian and Arabic,
(b) the difficulty experienced by Muslim students in obtaining admission
into colleges,
(c) the lack of hostel accommodation for Muslim students,
(d) the encouragement by the University of a Sanskiitised Bengali, which is
difficult for Musalmans to acquire,
(e) the use by the University of books which are either uncongenial to
Musalmans as being steeped in Hindu religion and tradition, or even
positively objectionable to them, because they contain statements offen-
sive to Muslim sentiment. Elphinstone’s History of India is cited as a
case in point,
(f ) the requirement that each candidate should write his name instead of giv-
ing a number, on the answer books shown up at university examinations.
(It is suggested that this practice operates to the prejudice of Muslim
candidates),68 and

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(g) the delay in the issue by the University of certain Arabic and Persian text-
books.
Stress is also laid on the necessity for securing for the Muslim community
‘its fair share’ in the appointment of university examiners. We were informed by
Nawab Syed Nawabaly Chaudhury that out of 895 examiners appointed by the
Calcutta University in 1917 in subjects other than Urdu, Persian or Arabic, nine
only were Musalmans. There were 44 examiners in that year in Urdu, Persian and
Arabic.69
67. Some of the witnesses go so far as to charge the Calcutta University with
indifference to Muslim representations. This view is emphasised in a note70 sub-
mitted to the Commission by Nawab Syed Nawabaly Chaudhury—a note giving
expression to the views of those Muslim leaders of Bengal whom the Nawab had
sounded.
68. Some of the leading Musalmans contend that the jurisdiction of the Calcutta
University should be curtailed.
The most carefully elaborated view on the subject from the Muslim stand point
is to be found in the note from the Musalmans of Calcutta:—
“Apart from any consideration of sectarian and separate interests, it is obvious that a
university, such as we have in Calcutta, cannot possibly meet the educational requirements
of 45½ millions of people. It is not possible for a single university to exercise efficient
control over 62 colleges and about 800 high schools scattered all over the Presidency and
to satisfactorily discharge the duties and responsibilities of maintaining discipline among
more than 20,000 students in colleges and about 2 lakhs and 20,000 students in schools.
Nor is it possible for a single university to satisfy the legitimate needs and aspirations of
such a large number of people, considering the fact that centralisation of authority, as we
have in Calcutta, means the over-concentration of the educational efforts of the Presidency
at a single place and the under-estimation of the value and possibilities of the development
of other places as centres of education”71

69. The questions raised in this note are fully discussed in Chapter XXXV of
our report Here it is only necessary to say that we hope to see a general develop-
ment of stronger centres of intellectual life in the various parts of the mufassal,
Dacca being from the first chosen as the seat of a university. But Calcutta must
always enjoy prominence in the educational life of the Presidency, because it is
the focus of railway and other cornmunications, the headquarters of Government,
the centre of intellectual activity in Bengal. Any board or public authority deal-
ing with, education in the Presidency would find Calcutta the most convenient
place for its regular meetings. There is no other place in Bengal so convenient for
the purpose. What has to be devised therefore for higher education in the mufas-
sal is a method of administration, which, without giving Calcutta a monopoly
of influence in its direction, will avail itself of the intellectual resources of the
metropolis, and take advantage of its experience. The central geographical posi-
tion of Calcutta must be recognised and put to advantageous use. What has to be
avoided is on the one hand over-concentration and disregard on the other hand

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of the local views and needs of the various Muslim and Hindu communities of
the mufassal.
70. We addressed the following question72 to our correspondents:—
“To what extent do you consider that the needs and interests of particular communities
should be specially considered:—

(a) in the government of the University,

(b) in its courses of study,
(c) in its residential and other arrangements?”

71. With few exceptions all our correspondents agree that in the matter
of residential arrangements for students, the special needs of the various
communities should be considered. Mr. Sharp says that “it is important that
Musalmans should have their own hostels (to a considerable extent they now
possess them) supervised by Muhammadan professors, and with arrange-
ments for religious observance, which is much prized by this community.”
Rai Brojendra Kishore Roy Chaudhury writes that “the Hindu and Muham-
madan students ought to be placed in separate hostels built in entirely separate
compounds with entirely separate arrangements regarding religious educa-
tion”72 The staff of the Murarichand College, Sylhet, also recommend separate
residential and messing arrangements for separate religious. denominations.72
Khan Bahadur Ammul Islam and Mr. Harley in their joint memorandum rec-
ommend that—
“as far as possible separate hostels for Musalmans and Hindus should be constructed
and, where this is not feasible owing to the small number of members of either community,
they should have separate accommodation in the same house, with independent messing
arrangements Seats should be reserved for Muhammadan students in colleges and hostels
according to the population of the division. Hostel accommodation should be provided for
Muhammadan M. A. and law students.”73

72. Some of our correspondents, Hindus, Muslims and British alike recognize
the exigencies of the present situation but feel that an attempt should be made to
provide mixed hostels for Hindus and Musalmans with separate feeding arrange-
ments only. Maulvi Ahsanullah’s view is that—
“Hindu and Muhammadan boarders should, as far as possible, be accommodated in the
same place, separate arrangements bemg made for cooking and other purposes Combined
hostels will be welcomed both from the scholastic and the economic point of view. They
will greatly facilitate the growth of an intimate brotherhood among the students of different
creeds and will permit of an organised tutorial system.”73

The Rev. W. B. S. Holland thinks that “students of all castes and religions can
reside together in adjacent rooms and all that is needed is separate arrangements
for food.” No reference is made by these witnesses to the difficulty of religious
instruction. It is suggested on the other hand that the provision of common hostels
for students of different faiths is only feasible if religious instruction, and possibly

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religious observances, are excluded from hostels. This question is discussed in

Chapters XIX and XXXIX.
73. None of our correspondents have advocated any distinction being made
as between community and community in the matter of purely secular instruc-
tion but some are of opinion that subjects representing communal traditions and
scriptural languages should be included as alternative subjects in the university
courses of study. Sir. Panchanandas Mukherji, Professor of Political Economy
and Political Philosophy, Presidency College and a lecturer of Calcutta Univer-
sity, says that “as regards courses of study, the needs and interests of particular
communities should be consulted with, reference to the study of the second lan-
guages and the vernacular.”73 Dr. Pramathanath Banerjea, Lecturer in Economics
and Political Philosophy, Calcutta University, while disagreeing with communal
representation in the government of universities favours the idea of the adjust-
ment of the courses of study to the needs of particular communities.73 Mr. Lang-
ley of Dacca says that “courses of studies should be designed to meet the needs
of the various communities, but narrow sectarianism in the selection of subjects
should be discouraged,”74
74. Khan Sahib Mohammad Yusuf, Head Master Calcutta Madrassah, says “it
is a universal complaint among Muhammadans that religious instruction has not
been recognised as part of the curriculum”74 Shams-ul-Ulama Abu Nasr Waheed
says “an Islamic course of studies, under a faculty of Islamic studies, combined
with English, leading to the university degrees, should be provided. Every col-
lege should make provision for the teaching of Arabic, Persian and Urdu. The
University should make provision for the study of the history of Islamic civilisa-
tion beginning from the intermediate stage”74 This question will be discussed in
Chapter XVI Mr. M. A. N. Hydari thinks that “such subjects as Islamic history
and such languages as Persian, Arabic and. Urdu should have a due place in the
training of the university courses of study.”74
75. The witnesses who do not think that the needs of particular communities
should be specially considered are either opposed to this consideration on prin-
ciple or because they hold that any further special consideration is unnecessary.
Mr. Surendra Nath Roy does not think that “particular communities have any real
grievance either in the courses of studies or in the residential and other arrange-
ments of the Calcutta University.”
76. The difference of opinion among our witnesses is more marked in the mat-
ter of communal representation in the government of universities. About 55 of our
Hindu witnesses object to such communal representation, while 33 are in favour.
77. Sir Gooroo Dass Banerjee’s view is—
“within the sacred precincts of the temple of learning all votaries should receive equal
treatment, and none should claim any special favour”74

Mr P. Basu, Professor of Economics, Holkar College, Indore, says:—

“As a general principle I consider special representation of any community as highly
mischievous In university matters this is more so But as the needs of different communities

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differ much with regard to certain aspects of university life, to that extent specially compe-
tent persons for that purpose should be asked to give advice”74

78. Mr. Sasi Sekhar Banerjee, the Officiating Principal of the Krishnath Col-
lege, Berhampur, says:—
“The University being the centre of learning should be free from party considerations.
There should not be any party government or communal representation in the University,
but on its government only the best and most capable men should be enlisted, without any
reference to nationality, so long as they will be able to serve the best interests of Govern-
ment, of colleges and of learning”75

79. Dr. M. N. Banerjee, the Principal of the Belgachia Medical College, states
unhesitatingly that the less we hear of communal interests in the University, the
better. “The University is the only place where all races, creeds, and nationalities
meet on common ground.”75 The Bengal Landholders Association have expressed
themselves as being decidedly against the introduction of the ‘communal’ question
in matters of university government and university education75 Sir E. G. Bhan-
darkar does not think that the centrifugal forces, which are so powerful in Indian
society notwithstanding the contact of India with western civilisation for nearly
two hundred years, should be further strengthened by the University, and in his
judgment therefore “the needs and interests of particular communities should not
be taken into consideration in the government of the University and in its courses
of study. These should be arranged to meet the needs and interests of Indians, and
Indians only.”75
80. Rai Yatindra Nath Choudhury of Barnagore would oppose any commu-
nal representation in the governing body of the University. In his view “what
is wanted is good men, and not men selected in a haphazard way from any
community, because they belong to it.” He admits, however, that in the depart-
ment of oriental studies of the University and in the department of Indian
history and antiquity there should be a certain percentage of men from the
different communities, so that adequate consideration may be given to the
needs and interests of each.75 Dr. Nares Chandra Sen Gupta, Vice-Principal of
the Dacca Law College, records the view that “to look upon education from
the point of view of sectional interests is a pernicious habit and should not be
encouraged.” He suggests that questions in which the interests of Musalmans
go against those of others “arise in the Senate once in fifty years or more” “For
the sake of these rare occasions, it would be absurd permanently to weaken the
Senate, by bringing in members who are there, not by virtue of their academic
qualifications, but because they are supposed to look after the interests of a
community.”76
81. The view of the Indian Association is that in the government of the Uni-
versity and in its courses of study the needs and interests of particular communi-
ties should not be considered76 This is also the view of Maharajah Sir Manindra
Chandra Nandy of Kasimbazar, of Dr. Tej Bahadur Sapru, of Sir Nilratan Sircar
and of the Rev. Garfield Williams Mr. R. P. Paranjpye of the Fergusson College,

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Poona, deprecates the introduction of any communal considerations whatever into

a university. He writes—
“I am strongly of opinion that no communal considerations should be introduced in the
government of the University The Senate and Syndicate should consist of the best men
As regards courses of study, it is natural that some subjects may specially appeal to some
special community, e.g., Persian and Arabic to Muhammadans, Sanskrit to Hindus, Avesta
and Pahlavi to Parsis, Pali to Buddhists, etc The Senate, or at least the boards of study,
should contain representatives of all the subjects which the University offers to teach and
the University should aim at teaching all the subjects for which there is a demand It
should so arrange its courses that they are not too narrowly sectarian. Thus I would dep-
recate a course of Sanskrit for Jains in which no books but those by Jain authors are pre-
scribed. Every student of Sanskrit should have some knowledge of the literature contained
in Sanskrit as a whole before specialising in one particular branch.
In the matter of separate institutions for different communities I deprecate the founda-
tion of communal universities or even colleges I am willing to allow only separate hostels
at the most, but I would prefer a hostel for all classes, the messes only being distinct for
different classes. In this way all classes of young men will have ample opportunities of
coming together and will begin to feel unconsciously that they are Indians first and fore-
most and not members of their separate little communities only. This is the impression that
I want them to take from their education and not merely the prescubed amount of book-
learning in various subjects”76

82. Mr. K. Zachariah, Professor of History at the Presidency College, Calcutta,

is himself a member of a small community, the Syrian Christian commumty of
the Malabar Coast His view is that communal representation tends “to create fac-
tions and cause questions to be decided not on their intrinsic merit, but on party
grounds;” that it also inclines to keeping the communities so represented “in a
continued state of tutelage.” “There is nothing,” he observes, “so invigorating and
healthy as having to stand up and fight without special favour.”77
83. Mr. Saratlal Biswas, Assistant Professor of Geology, Calcutta University,
holds an intermediate position. He is in favour of Indian and provincial represen-
tation but not in favour of communal representation. He says:—“The government
of the University, as well as its teaching departments, should be composed, as far
as possible, of Indians, and preference should always be given to the people of
Bengal.”77
84. Turning to the representative views of those Hindu witnesses who are in
favour of communal representation, Kumar Manindra Chandra Sinha of the Pai-
kpara Raj writes—
“every effort should be given to secure adequate representation for the interests of par-
ticular communities, such as the Muhammadan and the domiciled Anglo-Indian, and every
attempt should be made to include representatives of such communities in the deliberations
of the University. This will help a cosmopolitan view being taken of problems affecting
the University”77

Mr. P. N. Nag, the Head Master of the United Free Church Mission School,
Chinsurah, says that “the needs and interests of particular communities should be
specially considered according to their educational and numerical strength (a) in
the government of the University and (b) in its courses of study.”77

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85. Rai Mahendra Chandra Mitra Bahadur would, in arranging for communal
representation, not fix the proportion according to numerical strength but accord-
ing to the number of students who receive education.77 Mr. Jogendra Nath Hazra,
the Principal of the Midnapore College, is not in favour of fixing any proportion.
His view is that “the Muhammadans and the depressed classes should have their
representatives in sufficient numbers on the governing bodies of the University to
look after their interests.”77
86. Rai Sahib Nritya Gopal Chaki, a pleader of Pabna, recommends separate
electorates of Musalmans and of pandits from recognised tôls for the purpose
of electing members to the Senate.77 Mr. N. C. Bardaloi of Gauhati thinks that
“the needs and interests of particular communities should be specially considered
regarding the control and management of the University. There should be enough
non-official members representing different communities and people”78
87. The opinions of our British witnesses on communal representation are
practically balanced, nine on either side The majority of those who oppose com-
munal representation are in favour of communal colleges and even of commu-
nal universities. Mr. Archbold sees “great danger of weakening communities
by giving them privileges”78 The Rev. Garfield Williams is in favour of com-
munal representation in the government of colleges but not in the government
of universities.78
88. The view of Mr E. N Gilchrist, Principal of the Krishnagar College, is that it
is impossible to secure the fair representation of sectarian interests in a centralised
university like Calcutta. He continues:—
‘On general principles I object to the representation of interests of this kind, as such,
in a university The present Government policy regarding Moslems is an example in
point In the Education Department the favouring of sections means the acceptance of
lower qualifications than competition in the open market would give. Political reasons,
however, may demand such a procedure, and they will demand separate representation. A
glance at the many memorials on university representation from Muhammadans in Bengal
will show how far the demands made are incapable of fulfilment simply because of a lack
of qualified men By local universities, however, fair representation of sectional interests
is far more possible”78

89. Mr S. G. Dunn of the Murr College, Allahabad, considers that the needs
of particular communities should be met by the establishment of special univer-
sities, such as the Hindu University at Benares, or the proposed University of
Islam at Ahgarh. He considers that such universities should be financed and in
every way controlled by the communities which demand their establishment,
and that public funds should not be used for them at all. His view is that, apart
from these communal or sectarian universities, the needs and interests of par-
ticular communities should not be specially considered in the government or
academic organisation of the universities—“a university in which such needs
and interests are considered is a contradiction in terms.”78 Mr. Mark Hunter,
formerly Professor of English in the Presidency College, Madras, and now the
Director of Public Instruction in Burma, regards it as desirable that the special

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needs and interests of particular communities should not be lost sight of, but he
holds that—
“it is not to the interests of the University as a whole that persons academically con-
sidered of little or no significance should be given place and influence in the University
simply as representing this or that community, to the exclusion of men of high academic
qualification who are likely to be of real service in university work”79

90. Turning to those who are in favour of communal representation, Mr H.

Sharp writes:—
“The consideration of the needs and interests of particular classes is of great importance.
Among such communities in Bengal would be reckoned the Musalmans (who though
numerically just over half the population, form a minority among those who seek higher
education), the Buddhists and the depressed classes The Musalmans require larger repre-
sentation on the governing bodies This can best be arranged by the establishment of local
universities at centres of Muhammadan population like Dacca and Chittagong and by the
devolution of examinations”79

91. Mr. W. C. Wordsworth, Officiating Director of Public Instruction, Bengal,

writes:—
“I consider that (a) the Muhammadan community, (b) those engaged in European edu-
cation, (c) those engaged or interested in women’s education, should have their needs and
interests specially considered in the government of the University, in its courses of study,
in its residential and other arrangements It is advisable that efforts should be made to
interest the non-official and non-educational community, both Indian and European, in
the affairs of the University. Of recent years the University’s interpretation of the needs
of the public it serves has been mainly inspired by one dominant personality, with much
resultant unrest. A more catholic Government would give wider satisfaction and disarm
much hostility A more catholic constitution of the Senate might be accompanied by the
reservation to Government of the right of nominating two members of the Syndicate, this
could be used to nominate, e.g., a Muhammadan, when, as is usual, neither tie Faculties
nor the Senate elect one”79

92. Mr. J. R. Cunningham, the Director of Public Instruction, Assam, thinks

that Musalmans and others should be adequately represented in the government
of the University.79 Mr. Langley says that “each community should be fairly rep-
resented, because each subscribes to the funds whereby the University is sup-
ported. By fair representation also the interests of various communities will be
maintained.”
93. Out of 38 Muslim witnesses who answered Question 22, Sir Ali Imam
is definitely opposed to communal representation; Mr Altaf Ali while agree-
ing with, the views expressed by the deputation of Musalmans of Calcutta,
does not favour special Muslim representation in connexion with the Calcutta
University because of the benefits which the Dacca University is expected to
confer on his community; all the other Muslim correspondents, besides the oral
witnesses and Muslim deputations, to whom reference has already been made,
urge the desirability of Muslim representation on the governing bodies of the
University.

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94. Sir Ali Imam’s view is:—

“Except in residential arrangements, and in matters of food and religious discipline, no
special arrangement is needed for any particular community The highest branch of educa-
tion should be open to all communities alike, and in my opinion the endeavour of the Uni-
versity should be to discourage sectarianism and not to emphasise them. In matters of study
the needs of all the communities are very much alike, and the universities cannot regulate
them with a view to the encouragement of the education of any particular community”80

95. Turning to Muslim correspondents in favour of Muslim representation,

Mr Z. R. Zahid Suhrawardy says:—
“The Muhammadan community, backward as it is in education, should receive special
consideration, and for this purpose the representatives in the Senate should be increased
so as to secure at least one-third of the number of Senators from the members of that com-
munity On the Syndicate there should be the same proportion. Besides, every institution
should have a few Muhammadan professors in the general line and not for Arabic and
Persian only as at present”80

Maulvi Mohomed Habibur Rahman Khan, the Secretary of the All-India Muham-
madan Educational Conference, writes that “the various communities should be
adequately represented on the various executive and academic committees of the
University. The proportion of the representatives of the Muslim community, con-
sidering its number and existing educational condition, should be 40 per cent.”80
96. Khan Bahadur Mohammad Ismail, Vice-Chairman, District Board,
Mymensingh, would divide the seats on the university bodies which are to be held
by Indians equally between the Hindus and Musalmans.
“The needs and interests of the Muslim community should be safeguarded by adequate
representation in the Senate as well as in the Syndicate In the Senate besides the Euro-
pean members of the teaching profession, the number of seats should be equally divided
between the Hindus and Muhammadans The tame proportion should be observed in the
Syndicate also The office of the Vice-Chancellor should be filled by a Hindu, European
and Muhammadan in rotation”81

97. Mr. M. A. N. Hydari writes:—

“I am strongly of opinion that in the highest interests of university life, even from its
purely academic side, it is necessary that the needs and interests of particular communities
like the Muhammadan community should be specially considered in the government of the
University, its courses of study and its residential and other arrangements”81

Mr. Wahed Hossam, the Secretary of the Bengal Provincial Educational Con-
ference, says.—
“The Indian universities are intended for all races and communities inhabiting India,
and they preside over the higher education of the children of all classes and denomina-
tions Among the Indian races, the Hindu and the Muslim form an important section of the
educated class as a whole Naturally, the educated men who form these two communities
are taking a keen interest in, and desire to associate themselves with, the affairs of the uni-
versities But as a matter of fact, the Muslim element has hardly been represented in the
several bodies which preside over the destiny of the Indian universities They are almost
entirely in the hands of one community only”81

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98. Maulvi Abdullah Abu Sayied writes:—

“Rightly or wrongly there is a strong feeling amongst Muhammadans that though
they are numerically superior to other communities in Bengal, and are making every
effort to advance in education, very little regard is paid to their requirements in the
University”81

99. Mr. Justice Abdur Rahim writes:—

“Speaking for the Muhammadans it is extremely important that they should be ade-
quately represented in the government of the University, including the Senate, the Syn-
dicate, the Board of Studies and the examining board, and also on the governing bodies
of hostels, messes and lodgmgs. . . . As for the courses of study, I would recommend that
Islamic history be recognised at least as an optional subject”81

100. Taking the whole range of the recorded opinions it appears that of our
correspondents of all nationalities who sent written answers to the question, 65
are against and 78 are in favour of communal representation in the government
of the University.

IX.—Some remarks in conclusion.

101. We have thought it wise to set out the problem involved in the education
of the Musalmans of Bengal, neither depreciating its difficulties nor seeking to
conceal the existence of interests and views which are on the surface contending
102. We desire at this point to draw a distinction in regard to the question of
communal representation. In matters of educational administration, as in other
branches of administration, communal representation may in the present condi-
tions of India be necessary and for certain purposes we have advocated it. But
we are convinced that in making appointments to the principal teaching posts of
a university it would be fatal to depart from the principle that the best qualified
man should be appointed without reference to his race or religion. The university
which departs from this principle will not make the contribution which it could
and should make towards the solution of those vexed and perplexing problems of
national life of which the subject matter of this chapter is one.
103. The recommendations which we have decided to make will be found in
the later chapters of our report We think that a satisfactory solution of the diffi-
culties is not unattainable It may be found—we hope it will be found—partly in
the establishment of Muslim colleges, halls of residence and hostels in which the
tone of thought will be congenial to Musalmans and their way of life and worship
observed; partly by endeavouring to ensure that, where there are considerable
groups of Muslim students in any college, their tutorial and social needs should
be provided for, partly through a reconstruction of the university which should
welcome the erudition of Muslim teachers and other Islamic scholars, chosen for
their eminent learning not from Bengal only but out of the whole Islamic world,
and should furnish them with opportunities of teaching and research; but chiefly
through the growth of a conviction that in the highest education of the Presidency

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Musalmans and Hindus should co-operate, each considerately respectful of the

other’s convictions and ready to preserve communal traditions within the wider
framework of the university’s corporate life.

CHAPTER VII.
THE EDUCATION OF BACKWARD CLASSES.
1. The Education Commission of 1882 devoted special attention to the edu-
cation of certain special classes of the Indian community. Among those special
classes the Commission included aboriginal tubes and low castes Their reason
was “the wide sympathy which their backward condition and slender opportuni-
ties had excited.”82 To-day the problem is one of vital importance. The aboriginal
tribes and low castes still send very few students to the University, but ambition is
beginning to stir this long-voiceless mass to a definite and persistent effort to edu-
cate its children to rise in the world. Conversely there are signs of an awakening of
the more advanced sections of Bengali society to the claims of the depressed and
the more primitive classes. The Bengal official educational reports testify to the
gradual disappearance of the prejudice, once universal among the higher Hindu
castes, to their children sitting in school side by side, with, low caste pupils. We
read in the recent Quinquennial Review of Education in Bengal of a Bengal Social
Service League and of a society for the improvement of the backward classes
of Bengal and Assam83 and we have referred elsewhere to the work done by the
students of St. Paul’s Cathedral Mission College, Calcutta, among the low caste
inhabitants of a neighbouring busti.84
2. We cannot do more than allude in passing to this aspect of the problem of
the future of Bengal, and indeed of India, but for the better understanding of
this phase of that momentous question, we reproduce below from the Fifth Quin-
quennial Review of the Progress of Education in Bengal to which we have just
referred, a list of depressed classes of the Presidency with an estimate, based on
the figures collected for the 1911 census, of the numerical strength of each. The
Educational Commissioner with the Government of India has lately attempted to
define three classes of people as falling within the category of depressed classes,
viz.:—(a) the depressed classes proper, i.e., untouchables, (b) aboriginal and hill
tribes, and (c) criminal tribes.
(a) Depressed classes proper:—

Caste or tribe— Number

Bagdi ................................................................. 1,015,738
Baun .................................................................. 313,654
Bhuinmah .......................................................... 91,973
Bhuiya ............................................................... 69,044
Bhumij ............................................................... 90,282

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Caste or tribe— Number

Chamai .............................................................. 136,533
Dhoba ................................................................ 228,052
Dom ................................................................... 173,991
Dosadh .............................................................. 45,863
Han .................................................................... 173,706
Kaora ................................................................. 112,281
Kora ................................................................... 46,497
Mai .................................................................... 108,163
Muchi ................................................................ 455,236
Munda ............................................................... 67,252
Namasudias ....................................................... 1,908,728
Oraon ................................................................. 165,337
Pod .................................................................... 536,568
Santhal ............................................................... 669,420
Sunn .................................................................. 119,325
Tiyar .................................................................. 215,270

(b) Aboriginal and hill tribes:—

Chakmas ............................................................ 54,362
Ganos ................................................................ 42,728
Hadis ................................................................. 26,212
Hajangs ............................................................. 25,016
Koches ............................................................... 46,619
Tipaias ............................................................... 35,950

(c) Criminal tribes:—

Bediyas .............................................................. 8,503
Gains ................................................................. 380
Kaoias (24-Paraganas) ...................................... 64,483
Lodhas ............................................................... 7,4031
1 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912–13 to 1916–17 Fifth Quinquennial
Review by W. W. Horaell (Calcutta, 1918), Chapter XI, para 608

The list above is arranged in accordance with the classification of the Educa-
tional Commissioner and it excludes certain peoples who, though they cannot
be classed as depressed classes, are not Bengali Hindus or Bengali Musalmans,
e.g., Nepalees, the Bhutias and the Lepchas of the Darjeeling hills, the Meches of
the Duars, and the Maghs, etc. The education of these peoples presents a special
problem which is not altogether dissimilar from the problem of the education of
the depressed classes proper, though it is not by any means identical with it. These

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peoples are not taken into account in the figures which are quoted in paragraph 4
below.85
3. The principal home of the Namasudras is in the Dacca, Mymensingh and
Faridpur districts of the Dacca division. Santhals live in considerable numbers
in the Bankura, Birbhum and Midnapore districts of the Burdwan division. They
are also found in the Dinajpur district of the Rajshahi division. The Garos, Hadis,
Hajangs and Koches, who belong to the Bengal Presidency, inhabit the foot of
the Garo Hills in the Mymensigh district. Chakmas, Tiparas and Maghs are to be
found mainly in the Chittagong hill tracts and in the Cox’s Bazar sub-division of
the Chittagong district. The Darjeeling hills are peopled by Nepalees, Bhutias,
Lepchas and Tibetans, while the tea gardens of the Duars in the Kajshahi district
are worked by coolies of many different races, chief among which are the Oraons,
the Kols and the Mundas, whose home is in Chota Nagpur.
4. According to the latest official returns there were, on the 31st March 1917,
actually under instruction in Bengal 77,054 boys and 8,973 girls of the depressed
and other backward classes. Of these 194 boys were in university colleges: 2,022
boys were in the high stage of instruction, 2,684 boys and 23 girls were in the
middle stage; and 70,861 boys and 8,908 girls were in the primary stage. The
remainder, viz., 1,293 boys and 42 girls were in special and indigenous schools.86
One point is immediately suggested by these figures, namely, the small proportion
of pupils in special and indigenous schools. The Indian Education Commission
of 1882 recommended that the principle laid down by the Court of Directors of
the East India Company in their despatch of 1854 and again in their letter to the
Government of India of the 20th May, 1857, and repeated by the Secretary of
State in 1863, viz., “that no boy be refused admission to a Government college
or school on the ground of caste” be reaffirmed, and be applied “with caution to
every institution, not reserved for special races, which is wholly maintained at the
cost of public funds, whether provincial, municipal or local.” At the same time the
Commission recommended “that the establishment of special schools or classes
for children of low castes be liberally encouraged in places where there are a suf-
ficient number of such children to form separate schools or classes, and where the
schools already maintained from public funds do not sufficiently provide for their
education.”87
5. One of the most remarkable features of the social life of Bengal during the
last 50 years has been the sustained effort made by certain sections of the lower
castes, and, particularly the Namasudras, to rise in the social scale Towards the
total 86,027, which represents the pupils of the depressed classes under instruc-
tion, the Namasudra community contributed no less than 41,105—35,932 boys
and 5,173 girls. One hundred Namasudra boys were reading in university col-
leges; 1,489 boys were in the high stage of school instruction, and 1,690 boys in
the middle stage. In the course of the last few years special hostels for Namasu-
dra students have been established at Dacca, Faridpur and Barisal, Dr. Mead of
the Australian Baptist Mission has organised a high school for Namasudras at
Orakandi in the bhil tract of the Faridpur district. The Namasudras themselves

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have started associations in various centres and are making strenuous efforts to
spread education among their community. They have recently protested to Gov-
ernment against being classified with the depressed classes. They consider that
this classification is a serious set-back to their social advancement.
6. There has been a remarkable increase in the demand for English education
among the peoples of the Darjeeling hills. The Nepalees are taking the lead, but
the Bhutias and Lepchas are not lagging far behind. This is largely due to the
admirable educational work which is being done by the Church of Scotland Mis-
sion from its centre at Kalimpong. The present Deputy Inspector of Schools in the
Darjeeling district is a Lepcha, and Kumar Tobgye of Bhutan, who was himself
educated at St Paul’s School, Darjeeling, has a flourshing school at his Jong at Ha
in Bhutan. The Maharaja of Bhutan has a similar school at Pumthang in Bhutan.
The Ha School is moved every winter to Kalimpong, so that the boys may come
under the influence of Dr. Sutherland and the other missionaries of the Church of
Scotland Mission and see how a sub-division of British India is worked. We make
suggestions elsewhere for the teaching of the language and literature of Tibet at
the Calcutta University
7. The Rev. Hedley Sutton of the Australian Baptist Mission at Mymensingh
told us that the Garos were beginning to come forward for secondary education
and that a few of their most promising boys were looking forward to a university
course. The Fifth Quinquennial Review of the Progress of Education in Bengal
states that, on the 31st March, 1917, 1,780 pupils of the Garos and other primitive
races, which inhabit the foot of the Garo Hills, were under instruction and that of
these 134 were in secondary schools.88
8. Government maintains a high school at Rangamati in the Chittagong Hill
Tracts, and attached to this high school there is a special teachers’ training class
for Chakmas and Tiparas. Free education is provided for the hill boys and girls
of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and for the Arakanese Maghs of the Cox’s Bazar
subdivision. There is a hostel attached to the Rangamati High School at which 50
hill boys are boarded free. Government has also recently provided a special hostel
in connexion with the Rangpur Zilla School for boys of the Rajbanshi community.
Special scholarships are also provided by Government for children of backward
classes.
9. But the way has not yet become altogether smooth for the aspiring stu-
dent who comes from the backward classes. Students of such communities as
the Namasudra find it difficult to get accommodation in Calcutta. The late Vice-
Chancellor of the University of Calcutta recently brought a resolution before the
Bengal Council the object of which was to obtain a grant from Government for
the construction of a special hostel for the students of these classes. In the course
of the debate Dr. (now Sir) Deva Prasad Sarbadhikari told the Council that, in
order to obtain admission to a hostel, a Namasudra had been known to assume a
Kayastha name and to pose as a member of that caste. We hear that the Govern-
ment of Bengal has recently made a special grant to the Calcutta University, on
the strength of which some special messes are now being provided in Calcutta for

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students belonging to the Namasudra and other communities who are outside the
Hindu caste system.
10. The Dacca University Committee remarked that convenient arrangements
could not be made to receive Namasudras and others of lower castes in the gen-
eral hostels and that it was to be feared that this general difficulty sometimes
stood in the way of their receiving university education. The Committee therefore
proposed that an extra hostel should be attached to the Dacca College and that
it should be used for the accommodation of a special caste or castes such as the
Namasudras.89
11. It is important that the new university and other educational authorities
should give careful consideration to the needs and interests of the now backward
classes, under which term we include the aboriginal peoples. We shall therefore
suggest in later chapters of this report that:—
(i) the proposed new central authority for secondary and intermediate edu-
cation should appoint a standing committee to advise it on questions
affecting the educational welfare of these sections of the community.90
(ii) in the future developments of secondary and intermediate education91
contemplated in this report, the needs of the now backward classes for
hostel accommodation should be met,92
(iii) in Calcutta, and so far as may be found necessary elsewhere, intercol-
legrate hostels should be established in order to meet their requirements,93
(iv) in the University of Dacca a hostel should be provided for special castes
such as the Namasudras who might otherwise find a difficulty in obtain-
ing university education.94
We desire that the new opportunities, including those of secondary and univer-
sity education and of preparation for the medical and teaching professions and for
industrial and commercial careers, should be open effectively to all students of
ability and promise.

CHAPTER XI.
THE EDUCATION OF EUROPEANS AND ANGLO-INDIANS.
I
1. There is throughout India and Burma a separate school system for Europe-
ans and Anglo-Indians, who constitute what is known officially as the Domiciled
Community in India. There is also a separate code of regulations for European
schools, and this code starts by defining the term ‘European’ as signifying “any
person of European descent, pure or mixed, who retains European habits and
modes of life.”
2. We recognise the social and political importance of this section of the popu-
lation of the Bengal Presidency and realise that any system of university or sec-
ondary education which ignores its peculiar needs could not be regarded as in

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any sense complete. We have not visited the representative European secondary
schools, but have availed ourselves of the experience of one of our members and
we print elsewhere a memorandum by Mr. Hornell entitled “The education of
Europeans and Anglo-Indians”.95
3. In the Bengal Presidency there were on the 31st March 1917, in 79 recog-
nised institutions for the education of Europeans and Anglo-Indians, 9,634 pupils
of whom 8,959 were Europeans and Anglo-Indians and 675 were Indians. These
institutions included some special schools, viz.:—
(a) An apprentice night school in Calcutta.
(b) A night school for the Bengal Nagpur Railway European and Anglo-
Indian apprentices at Khargpur.
(c) The Young Women’s Christian Association Technical and Commercial
Classes, Calcutta.
(d) The Government Training Class for women teachers at Kurseong.
(e) 16 technical or commercial classes attached to schools.
The remaining 59 institutions were secondary and elementary schools. The sec-
ondary schools are divided into two categories: (i) higher secondary, and (ii) sec-
ondary, while elementary schools are graded either as (iii) higher elementary or (iv)
elementary. The origin and significance of these grades are fully explained in Mr.
Hornell’s memorandum. All we need state here is that on the 31st March 1917 the
number of pupils in higher secondary, secondary, higher elementary and elementary
schools were 3,363, 1,032, 3,109 and 1,728 respectively. There were also 94 boys
and girls taking supplementary courses in higher elementary schools. The elemen-
tary school course comprises an infant stage and six standards. The complete second-
ary school (the higher secondary school as it is called) is organised in three sections:
(a) the preparatory school,
(b) the general school,
(c) the upper school.
The curriculum followed in the preparatory section of a secondary school is
identical with that followed in the infant section and the first four standards of an
elementary school. The arrangement of the pupils of European schools, according
to grades of instruction, was on the 31st March 1917 as follows:—

Grades of instruction. Boys Girls. TOTAL

Supplementary courses in higher elementary schools . . . . . . 45 49 94
Infant classes of elementary and higher elementary schools 2,334 2,429 4,763
and standards I to VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The preparatory section of secondary and higher secondary 1,537 1,095 2,632
schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The general section of secondary and higher secondary schools 989 599 1,588
The upper section of higher secondary schools . . . . . . . . . . . 161 88 249
TOTAL 5,066 4,260 9,326

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This total (9,326) is exclusive of 308 pupils in special schools.96

4. The European school system is essentially a denominational one, as the table
below will show97:—

Percentage of total
No. of No. of number of pupils in
Institution1
institutions. pupils. secondary, primary,
and special schools
Government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 302 3 13
Jewish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 131 1 36
Non-Conformist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 581 6 03
Church of Scotland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 490 5 09
Roman Catholic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 5,360 55 64
Church of England . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 1,645 17 07
Undenominational (including Y.M.C.A.) . . 15 1,123 11 68
TOTAL 79 9,634 100 00
1 Ibid, para. 29

5. The European schools are mainly located in Calcutta and Howrah and in
the hill stations of Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong. The 9,232 pupils who
were on the 31st March 1917 in the secondary and elementary schools for Euro-
peans and Anglo-Indians of the Bengal Presidency were distributed locally as
follows:—Calcutta and Howrah 6,159; Darjeeling, Kurseong and Kalimpong
1,955; Asansol 329; Dacca 174; Chittagong 176; along the East Indian Railway
line 187; along the Eastern Bengal Railway line 75; along the Bengal Nagpur
Railway line 177.98
6. The cost of the European school system of Bengal for the year 1916–17 was
calculated to be Rs. 27,49,996. Towards this amount Provincial revenues contrib-
uted Rs. 8,32,150, while municipal grants amounted to Rs. 19,235. The balance
was met as follows:—Rs. 10,55,427 from fees, Rs. 1,22,323 from endowments
and Rs. 7,20,861 from subscriptions, donations and other sources. There are two
general endowments, viz., the Bruce Institution—a fund left by the Misses Bruce,
the daughters of an indigo planter, for the education and maintenance of Anglo-
Indian girls, and the Doveton Trust, formed from the sale of the property of the
Doveton College, the annual income of which amounts to about Rs. 5,500 and
is spent on scholarships. The capital of the Bruce Institution is about 10½ lakhs
and its annual income amounts to about Rs. 37,000.99 An anonymous donor has
recently placed a capital grant of Rs. 10 lakhs at the disposal of the Government
of Bengal to be spent mainly on the European schools of the Presidency. Some
ten years ago the late Mr. Robert Laidlaw of Messrs. Whiteaway Laidlaw and
Co., Ltd., placed certain funds at the disposal of trustees to be spent on European
schools. These funds which have been added to by subscriptions are administered,
by an organisation which makes occasional grants to the European schools of
Bengal. The Roman Catholic schools do not participate these grants.

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7. Mr. W. H. H. Arden Wood, Principal, La Martiniere, Calcutta, writes as below

on the general question of the education of Europeans and Anglo-Indians100:—
“Europeans that are only temporarily resident in India usually send their children to
England at an early age, some few may send their children to local schools in India for
a few years. Of late years there has been a steady increase in the number of Europeans
coming out to India to occupy comparatively subordinate positions in trade and commerce
and in industries. Europeans of this class tend to become domiciled and in most cases are
compelled by circumstances to educate their children in India.
On the other hand, a small proportion of the more well-to-do domiciled. Europeans
and Anglo-Indians send their children at a comparatively early age to England for educa-
tion, and a larger proportion send their children to England at an age, say, from 14 years
onwards, to complete their school education, and to receive technical or professional, or
university education. Since the war began many children who would ordinarily have gone
to England are being educated at hill schools and other schools in India.
But the great majority of the children of the domiciled European and Anglo-Indian com-
munity receive the whole of their education in India. They are born, brought up, and, with
the exception of the few who, by sheer ability and force of character, do exceptionally well,
live and die in India.
They are, in fact, natives of India and it seems to me to be in the interests of India to
make the best of them that can be made”
8. Mr. Arden Wood deplores the fact that the number of European and Anglo-
Indian boys who proceed to a university education from secondary schools in
India is not as large as it should be. The Rev. Father F. Crohan of St. Xavier’s
College, Calcutta, pleads that the needs of the Anglo-Indian community should
be studied and their higher education more powerfully encouraged. In spite of
the fact that there is attached to St. Xavier’s College an important and efficient
school, designed to meet the needs of the Domiciled Community, ex-pupils of the
school are conspicuous by their absence from the rolls of the college.
“As it is,” writes the Rector, “the university courses do not fit in with their second-
ary education. The I.A. and I Sc. courses overlap with those of Senior Cambridge and
the new course of study proposed by Cambridge for the last school class will even
overlap the syllabus of the B.A. and B Sc. This is a cause of much disappointment to
many.”101
9. Mr. Hornell has described at length in his memorandum the history of the
curriculum and examinations taken in European schools. He has also mentioned
certain institutions affiliated to the Calcutta University, as occasionally preparing
European and Anglo-Indian students for the examinations of that University; but
he has endorsed the statement repeatedly made in official reports, that collegiate
education for Europeans, as a thing apart from the collegiate education of Indians,
is practically non-existent. The memorandum discusses the question why Europe-
ans and Anglo-Indians so rarely attempt university courses; and among the causes
mentioned is the want of adjustment between the European secondary school
courses, which are directed towards the Cambridge local examinations, and the
requirements of the University. We may cite the following figures. During 1917
the successful candidates at the examinations of the Calcutta University included

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only thirty-three European and Anglo-Indian students (20 men and 13 women);
only nineteen candidates, thirteen boys and six girls, passed the Calcutta matricu-
lation examination during the quinquennium (1913–17) and in the course of this
period 73 European or Anglo-Indian students were successful at the Cambridge
higher local examinations.102
10. The rules for the final examination of European secondary schools are pecu-
liar to Bengal, where the Cambridge local examinations—which are accepted by
Calcutta University as an equivalent for its matriculation and to some extent for
its intermediate examination—are the prescribed tests. Class promotion is decided
in European schools in Bengal by the school authorities, subject to the control of
the Inspector; it is so decided in all schools for Indians, except that the control
of the Inspector does not apply to the very large number of high schools, which
are neither Government institutions nor aided. The Bengal Code for European
schools prescribes an elementary school certificate examination and the present
practice of the Education Department is to make obligatory the appearance at this
examination of every pupil in the sixth standard of European elementary schools.
No such test is imposed in Indian schools.
11. In July 1912 the Government of India held an important conference in
Simla on the education of the Domiciled Community. The conference generally
deplored the absence of Europeans and Anglo-Indians from university colleges
and some of the members advocated separate arrangements being made for the
university education of the Domiciled Community. Other members, conspicuous
among whom was Mr. Kuchler, then Director of Public Instruction in Bengal, held
that the provision of separate arrangements was impracticable. The conference
finally recommended to Government:—
(a) That a separate university arts college should be instituted, either affili-
ated, if possible, to a western university or self-contained, conferring its
own degrees.
(b) That, if this be found to be impracticable, there may be added, in connex-
ion with at least one of the training colleges for teachers, arts and science
graduate courses both for the advantage of the candidates for the teach-
ing diplomas and also for such other Anglo-Indian students as desire to
take advantage of them; and that the college be affiliated to a recognised
university.103
12. The discussions which have followed the conference have made it clear that
a system of university education for Europeans and Anglo-Indians, divorced on
its instructional side from the ordinary university system, is something which is
neither desirable nor practicable. If, as our witnesses hope, the University of Cal-
cutta is so developed and strengthened as to take its place among the great centres
of learning and higher education in the world, other residents of Bengal, besides
those of Indian descent, will wish to avail themselves of its advantages. We hope
that this will be equally true of the University of Dacca.

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II.
13. The education of the European and Anglo-Indian community is a matter of
great social and political importance. It is natural and right that those Europeans
in India who have always kept in close touch with, their native land should, if they
can afford to do so, send their children to Europe for secondary and university or
technological training. But there is a large and increasing number of families in
the Domiciled Community who cannot afford the expense of educating their chil-
dren in Europe. Their needs should be carefully borne in mind when the system
of university and technological education in Bengal is reorganised and improved.
14. The European secondary school system will best be continued upon present
lines of organisation; partly with a view to climatic conditions, because boarding
schools in the hills are best adapted to the needs of European children in India;
partly, because, as some of the younger Europeans leave India before their school
education is completed, their secondary education should be more assimilated to
English methods than is desirable or possible in high schools for Indian boys and
girls; partly also, because European children derive benefit from the corporate
life, which the best of the existing schools afford, and from the care which reli-
gious bodies devote to this branch of educational work. But the examination tests
applied to the European secondary schools of Bengal should be adjusted to the
university system of the Presidency and the Universities of Calcutta and Dacca
should accord due recognition to the results of these tests. The authority which
we shall propose for secondary and intermediate education should take European
schools into account, and should accord them appropriate treatment in view of
their exceptional position. We shall recommend in a later chapter that one of its
members should be chosen with. a view to the representation of the educational
interests of the Domiciled Community.104
15. In the industrial and commercial development of Bengal young men and
women of the European Domiciled Commnunity should bear an important part.
They should therefore have access to and be encouraged to avail themselves of,
facilities for university and technological education of the best type.105 Separate
institutions for university and technological training should not be provided for
Europeans and Anglo-Indians, because the expense of such provision would be
prohibitive, and because it is desirable that, intending as they do to earn their
livelihood in India, these younger members of the European Domiciled Commu-
nity should be brought into association, during the years of their university and
technological training, with the young Indians with whom they will afterwards be
brought into association in business or in other ways. We believe that the univer-
sities and technological institutions, developed on the lines recommended in this
report, will meet effectively the needs of the Domiciled Community.105
16. But, with this end in view, it is necessary that the European secondary
school system in Bengal should be more closely coordinated with the university
system. The new authority which we shall propose for secondary and intermedi-
ate education106 will be in a position to review the needs of the European schools

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and to provide for the more advanced stages of their teaching being equated with
that done in the intermediate colleges the establishment of which we shall recom-
mend.107 We desire to emphasise the importance of making adequate provision
in European schools for the teaching of the principal Indian vernaculars in order
that the members of the Domiciled Community may take their due share in the
future administration of India and in its industrial and commercial development.
And, further, though care should be taken not to overload the curriculum or to
jeopardise the claims of other studies, the teaching of Sanskrit, Arabic and Per-
sian should not be ignored in European schools. The openings for administrative
and commercial careers which are likely to offer themselves in the Middle East
make it desriable that the young men of the Domiciled Community should have
increased facilities for learning modern oriental languages.
17. The Domiciled European Community should have effective representation
upon the governing body of the University of Calcutta and we shall recommend
that the Court of that University should include representatives of the Bengal
Chamber of Commerce and other important public bodies, as well as of associa-
tions which may contribute a substantial sum annually to the University or one
of its colleges.108 The experience of the community should also be represented in
the Court of the University of Dacca, and for this our recommendations will pro-
vide.109 Suitable residential accommodation should be provided in the university
towns for students belonging to the Domiciled Community in order that the new
opportunities for university education may be effectively opened to them.
18. Our attention has been drawn to the great work which European and Anglo-
Indian women teachers might do in connexion with the education of girls and
women in India. Women qualified by training and entering upon the work with
sympathy and enthusiasm will find in it careers of great usefulness and of absorb-
ing interest. The example of an increasing number of women of the Domiciled
European Community making the teaching of their Indian sisters their lives’ work
would do much to promote social unity and to further the welfare of India.110

MEMORANDUM SUBMITTED BY THE COMMISSION TO THE SUBJECTS

COMMITTEE (APPOINTED IN CONNEXION WITH THE REFORMS.)
RELATIONS OF GOVERNMENT TO HIGHER EDUCATION.
Introductory
1. The Calcutta University Commission find that the present system of univer-
sity education in Bengal is wholly inadequate to the modern needs of the Presi-
dency. They have ascertained that experienced opinion, both Indian and European,
is almost unanimous in criticising unfavourably the quality of the trailing which is
usually given, and in deploring its failure adequately to develope the intelligence
and practical capacity of the students. The constitution of the University is obso-
lete. It hampers academic freedom and impedes reform. At the same time, it is
not sufficiently representative of the interests involved. The financial resources of

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the University and the colleges are insufficient; the courses of study are uninspir-
ing; the conditions under which many thousands of the students live in Calcutta
and the mufassal are injurious to their health and character. If the present state of
things is allowed to continue, the results will be unhappy for the social welfare,
the political development and the material interests of Bengal.
2. The Commission have therefore reached the conclusion that a drastic recon-
struction of the present university system should be undertaken without delay.
This reconstruction will involve a reform of higher secondary education, includ-
ing the intermediate classes and the high English schools, upon which the work
of the University and its colleges depends. The character of the changes which
the Commission propose, and the grounds upon which they are based, cannot
be fully set forth in a short memorandum. But, as some of the most important of
their recommendations deal with the relations of the Government of India and the
Government of Bengal to the future Universities of Calcutta and Dacca and have
a direct bearing upon the question of what part of public education, if any, should
be transferred to popular control, the Commission think that it will be convenient
if they communicate at once to His Excellency the Viceroy for the information of
the Reform Scheme Committees those salient features of their plan which touch
upon matters now under consideration by those Committees.

Proposed teaching universities in Calcutta and Dacca.

3. The Commission propose the establishment of a teaching university in Cal-
cutta, based upon a new and closer association between the University and those
Calcutta colleges which can be so organised as to take part in this co-operative
work, provisional arrangements being made for those other Calcutta colleges
which may not at first be able to fulfil the conditions imposed. The Commission
also recommend that the new University of Dacca should be a teaching university,
largely of a residential type. They recommend that in both universities the direction
of academic policy connected with teaching and courses of study should be chiefly
in the hands of the teaching body. Further, they propose that those of the Moffusil
colleges which may provide courses leading up to a university degree should con-
tinue for the present to be in association with the University of Calcutta and remain
under its aegis, though with more adequate representation than at present; subject
however to conditions which will confer upon those stronger colleges which may
show potentiality of growth the opportunity of rising stage by stage to academic
independence.
4. In the constitutions proposed for the Universities of Calcutta and Dacca
the Commission recommend a wide departure from the form of government and
administration now characteristic of almost all Indian universities. Close contact
between the University and all kinds of experienced public opinion in Bengal is
secured by the establishment of a large and representative Court, whose sanction
will be required for any change in the University Statutes, and, either directly
or through a committee, for any substantial expenditure. The co-ordination of

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the business of the University as a whole is provided for by a strong Executive

Council. Within the University, financial and administrative business is in the
main assigned to one organ, educational business to another. The Government of
Bengal will have representation upon all the chief Boards of the two universities;
and the Governor of Bengal, as the Chancellor of both, will be in intimate relation
to all the more important sides of academic policy and business.

Future relations of the universities with Government.

5. These proposals, which the Commission regard as indispensable to the
welfare of the universities, involve a great change in the present connexion
between them and Government. They would sweep away the detailed control
now exercised by the Government of India over the regulations of the Univer-
sity of Calcutta and would involve the repeal of the Indian Universities Act,
1904, so far as Calcutta is concerned. They would establish a new and organic
connexion between the University of Calcutta and the provincial Government,
while giving to the University responsibility for its own educational affairs and
freedom in adapting its work to the needs of the community; in the University
of Dacca also, they would make the Government of Bengal the ultimate author-
ity in all matters affecting public policy and public finance. But they propose to
throw upon each university greater responsibility for the conduct of its educa-
tional affairs.
6. Under these conditions, an entirely new form of Governmental supervi-
sion will be required. The Universities both of Calcutta and of Dacca should be
protected against interference by any other public body or by any department
of Government in those matters of educational administration and policy which
are assigned to their responsible care. The Commission would therefore strongly
deprecate the transfer of the present kind of control over university education to
the provincial Government however constituted. For the exercise of control over
the details of the internal educational work of a university the Commission feel
that Government, whether in its present form or in that which it may assume under
new conditions is not the appropriate body.

Relation of the universities with the Government of India.

7. There are clear indications that in future the university problem will become
in an increasing degree an all India problem. Each university, as it wins reputa-
tion for special excellence in some branch of learning, will attract a larger num-
ber of students from other provinces. Developments of technological instruction
in the universities will entail some specialisation of work, not only on grounds
of economy but because of the special facilities for practical training offered by
the industries of different districts. And, as the Indian universities extend their
work of scholarly research, aid will be required not only from the Government
of the province but from the Government of India, which alone can survey the

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whole field of India’s needs. Moreover, the new universities will require some
central authority which will assure public opinion in India and the learned world
in other countries that a high standard of excellence is upheld in the award of
their degrees and which may serve as a channel of communication between
them and the governments of other countries, and be ready to assist them in
the very difficult task of recruiting such members of their staffs as it may be
necessary to draw from other parts of India and from Europe and America. And
the Commission think it highly desirable that the power of establishing new
universities in British India or of modifying the fundamental Acts or Charters
which govern their work, and of making changes in the Acts governing existing
universities, should lie with the Government of India and not with any provin-
cial Government.
8. However far therefore the process of devolution to provincial Governments
may be carried in the sphere of education, there will remain many functions in
connection with university affairs which the Central Government can alone per-
form. These functions are (a) University legislation; (b) visitation, in order to
ascertain continued efficiency of the several universities; (c) co-ordination, in
order to secure the most economical co-operation among the universities in the
advancement of knowledge and in the provision of special types of instruction;
(d) the encouragement of research, in order that the Indian universities may have
the means of rendering greater service to knowledge; and (e) assistance in recruit-
ment, so that each university may have access to every source from which is can
draw the best available scholars and teachers to its staff. The Commission propose
therefore that the Viceroy should be the Visitor of the two universities in Bengal,
and are further of opinion that these and other Indian universities will require the
aid of the Government of India through a special organisation, associating with
itself from time to time expert knowledge from all parts of India and from the
West. The Cominission would therefore strongly deprecate any form of transfer-
ence to provincial Governments which would wholly divest the Government of
India of responsibilities in regard to university education. They observe that it is
not thought desirable by the Imahn Industrial Commission that the Government
of India should devolve upon provincial Governments all its responsibilities in
regard to scientific and technological education.

Proposed reconstruction of higher secondary education.

9. The Commission are of opinion that university studies should begin at the
level of the present intermediate examination, and that the training now given in
the colleges during the two years of the intermediate course should be wholly
remodelled and entrusted to distinct and separate institutions to which they sug-
gest that the name of intermediate colleges should be given. This change, in sup-
port of which they have received evidence from experienced witnesses in all parts
of Bengal and of India, they regard as essential. It is the pivot of their scheme

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and a most urgently needed reform. Many of the intermediate colleges ought, in
the judgment of the Commission, to be attached to the best of the high English
schools. Both on educational and economic grounds it is important that the link
between the intermediate colleges and the high English school system should be
close. The Commission are of opinion that the administration of the intermediate
stage and of the high English schools should be unified.

Proposed Board of Secondary and Intermediate Education.

10. For the control both of the intermediate colleges and of the high English
schools the Commission are of opinion that a special organisation is necessary.
In view of the deep concern of the University in this grade of education and of
the fact that the University has hitherto conducted the intermediate work and has
largely controlled the work of high English schools, the Commission hold it to
be essential that the universities should be strongly represented on the proposed
new authority for secondary and intermediate education. They also desire to see
an adequate representation of the interests of the Hindu and Muslim communi-
ties; and, as it is their hope that the new system will render some of its chief
services in preparing boys for agriculture, and for industrial and commercial call-
ings as well as for the lower grades of Government service, they think the Board
should include representatives of agriculture, commerce and industry. It should
also include representatives of medicine (including public health) and secondary
education. They believe that these functions can be fulfilled with a Board of work-
able size, by the use of consultative committees.
11. The Commission therefore recommend that a Board of Secondary and
Intermediate Education be established, with functions which would be partly
executive and partly advisory. In regard to its executive functions the Board
would act under the supervision and financial control of Government, and in its
name. It should exercise a general supervision over all the institutions (i.e., inter-
mediate colleges and high English schools) within its sphere and should grant
recognition to high English schools and intermediate colleges, should plan their
various courses of study, and should conduct the examinations corresponding to
the present matriculation and intermediate. It should inspect all the intermediate
colleges and high English schools and report upon their work. It should pre-
pare estimates and should expend, under such conditions as Government might
define, the funds allotted by Government in each year’s budget for the provision,
maintenance, inspection and examination of the intermediate colleges and high
English schools.
12. The part of education which would thus be dealt with by a Board under
the Minister or Member is conveniently separable from the other parts of public
instruction. While forming part of a great whole, it has a distinct character and
lends itself to special administrative treatment. It may be designated as higher
secondary education.

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Summary.
13. The recommendations of the Calcutta University Commission, so far as
they bear upon the future relations between Government and the Universities of
Calcutta and Dacca and upon the administration of the proposed intermediate col-
leges and of the high English schools in Bengal, may be summed up as follows:—
(a) The Commission recommend that the Viceroy should be the Visitor of
the Universities of Calcutta and Dacca, and the Governor of Bengal their
Chancellor. In order that there may be a link between all Indian universi-
ties and due connexion between them and the supreme Government, the
Commission suggest that in future the Viceroy should be the Visitor of
all reconstituted universities in British India.
(b) The fundamental points of university legislation described in paragraph 7
above should remain with the Government of India.
(c) There should be an organisation in connexion with the Government of
India for the assistance of the Viceroy in the discharge of his duties as
Visitor of the universities. This organisation should be supplied with
information by all Indian universities; should conduct at intervals of,
say, five years general surveys of their work; should advise the Viceroy
with regard to any appeals which may reach him as Visitor; should be
ready to assist the universities in recruiting their staffs; and should be
a connecting link between the Indian universities and a means of keep-
ing them in touch with the university work of other countries. In the
opinion of the Commission it is important that the Government of India
should have funds out of which they may make supplementary grants
to the universities in aid of special studies and research which are
required in the general interest of India and for which provincial subsi-
dies or private benefactions may not be forthcoming or are insufficient.
(g) The reconstituted University of Calcutta and the new University of
Dacca will be closely associated with the provincial Government but
should not be subjected, to detailed control in their educational affairs.
While the question of other Indian universities does not fall directly
within the reference of the Commission, the latter would contemplate
similar relations being established between Government and other uni-
versities which may hereafter be reconstituted or founded upon a plan of
supervised responsibility.
(e) The intermediate grade of instruction, now part of the university course,
should be completely remodelled and be given in distinct institutions,
many of which would necessarily for reasons of economy and educa-
tional unity be associated with high English schools. The Commission
recommend that [Illegible Text] Bengal the recognition and supervi-
sion of the intermediate colleges and of high English schools, together
with the conduct of examinations in both, should be entrusted to a
small Board of Secondary and Intermediate Education, acting under the

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superintendence and financial control of Government and representative

of the two universities, of Hindu and Muslim opinion and of experience
in agriculture, industry, commerce, medicine (including public health)
and secondary education.
14. The Commission consider that it is not within their province to express an
opinion as to whether education in Bengal in whole or in part should be reserved
or transferred. But they recommend that, whether university and higher secondary
education (the latter comprising the proposed intermediate colleges and the high
English schools) are treated as transferred or as reserved subjects, it should be
stipulated (i) that the internal educational affairs of the universities, when the lat-
ter are reconstituted or established upon the plan proposed, should not be subject
to detailed control by external authority, and (ii) that the intermediate colleges
and high English schools should be administered by a small Board of Secondary
and Intermediate Education, representative of the kinds of experience required
for the reorganisation and superintendence of this grade of education, assisted by
such Consultative Committees as may be found necessary, and acting as an organ
of the provincial Government, to which it should annually submit estimates and
under whose financial control and general supervision it should carry on its work.

M. E. SADLER, President.
ASUTOSH MOOKERJEE.
W. W. HORNELL.
ZIA-UD-DIN AHMAD.*
P. J. HARTOG.
J. W. GREGORY.*
RAMSAY MUIR.
G. ANDERSON, Secretary.
CALCUTTA.
The 21st November 1918.

APPENDIX XIV.

SUMMARY OF THE REPORT OF A CONFERENCE HELD AT SIMLA ON 20TH

AND 21ST AUGUST 1917 TO CONSIDER THE QUESTION OF ENGLISH AND
VERNACULAR TEACHING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS.

The members of the Conference were as follows:—

The Hon’ble Sir Sankaran Nair, KT., C.I.E., B.A., B.L., Member of the Viceroy’s
Executive Council.
The Hon’ble Mr. H. Sharp, M.A., C.S.I., C.I.E., Officiating Secretary to the Gov-
ernment of India.
G. Anderson, Esq., M.A., Assistant Secretary to the Government of India.

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PROVINCIAL DELEGATES.

Madras.
1. The Hon’ble Mr. J. H. Stone, M.A., C.I.E., Director of Public Instruction.
2. T. V. Sivakumara Sastriyar, Esq., B.A., L.T., Lecturer, Teachers’ College,
Saidapet.
3. The Revd. W. Meston, M.A., B.D., Bursar and Professor of English, Madras
Christian College.
4. Rao Bahadur K. Sesha Ayyar, Head Master, Municipal High School,
Mayavaram.

Bombay.
5. The Hon’ble Mr. J. G. Covernton, M.A., C.I.E., Director of Public Instruction.
6. V. B. Naik, Esq., M.A., Superintendent, New English School, Poona.
7. G. K. Devadhar, Esq., M.A., Servants of India Society, Poona.
8. K. Natarajan, Esq., B.A., Editor, Indian Social Reformer, Bombay.

Bengal.
9. The Hon’ble Mr. W. W. Hornell, M.A., M.R.A.S., Director of Public
Instruction.
10. Rai Bahadur Dr. Purnananda Chatterji, B.A., B.SC., Inspector of Schools,
Rajshahi Division.
11. Khan Bahadur Maulvi Ahsanullah, M.A., M.R.A.S., Inspector of Schools,
Presidency Division.

United Provinces.
12. The Hon’ble Mr. C. F. de la Fosse, M.A., Director of Public Instruction.
13. The Hon’ble Sir Sundar Lai, Kt., C.I.E.
14. Rai Bahadur G. N. Chakravarti, M.A., LL.B., Inspector of Schools.
15. Khan Bahadur Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof, Bar-at-Law, Allahabad.

Punjab.
16. The Hon’ble Mr. J. A. Richey, M.A., Director of Public Instruction.
17. The Hon’ble Khan Bahadur M. Fazl-i-Husain, M.A., Bar-at-Law.
18. Bakshi Ram Rattan, B.A., B.T., Head Master, Dayanand Anglo-Vedic
High School, Lahore.

Bihar and Orissa.

19. The Hon’ble Rai Bahadur Dvarika Nath, B.A., LL.B.

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Central Provinces.
20. Pandit Kanhayalal Guru, M.A., Inspector of Schools, Chattisgarh Division.
21. Pandit Sitacharan Dube, M.A., B.L., Pleader and Chairman of the District
Council, Hoshangabad.

His Excellency the Viceroy delivered a speech at the opening of the Confer-
ence, in which he drew attention to the past policy of the Government of India
in this matter; and to the importance both of encouraging and developing the
vernaculars and of improving the teaching of English; and to the desirability of
determining the relative position of the English and vernacular media, having in
view the one object, viz., that the pupil should derive the greatest possible benefit
from his schooling.
Sir Sankaran Nair in opening the formal proceedings, of which he acted as
chairman, said that that the intention was to see how far modifications in the pres-
ent system might be effected so that pupils might (a) obtain a better grasp of the
subjects which they are taught, and (b) complete their course with a more compe-
tent knowledge of English than at present.
The printed record of the proceedings contains a full report of the speech of His
Excellency the Viceroy and summaries of the discussions which followed. Those
portions of the proceedings which record formal questions on the agenda paper and
which relate to the adoption of resolutions are reprinted in the following sections:—
“3. The Chairman. . . . . invited opinions on the teaching of English and drew
attention to the following questions on the agenda paper:—
(a) “At what period in a pupil’s career should English be taught as a lan-
guage? Is it better for him, from the point of view of his ultimate mastery
over the language, to start its study at an early age or only to receive such
instruction after he has been well grounded in a vernacular?”
(b) “Do the younger pupils gain a satisfactory knowledge of English by their
instruction through the medium of that language or do they merely gain
a smattering of incorrect and unidiomatic English?”
(c) “What is the general experience of those boys who have passed through
the vernacular middle course and then studied English at a high school?
How have such boys distinguished themselves in the matter of English in
comparison with those who have studied from an earlier period through
the medium of English?”
(d) “By what methods should the teaching of English be conducted? Does
the present system attach too much importance to a knowledge of
English literature as against the necessity of learning to speak and write
the English language correctly? Should the teaching in the early stages
be entirely oral or not?”
(e) “Do the pupils in a vernacular middle school, as a rule, acquire a bet-
ter knowledge and grasp of the ordinary school subjects than those

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of a similar age who have been instructed through the medium of

English?”
8. The following resolutions were then put to the meeting:—
(1) “Those pupils who come to the English schools, after some years
of study in the vernacular ordinarily do better in subjects other than
English than those who have begun the earlier study of the English
language.”
Messrs. Richey, Fazl-i-Husain, Kanhayalal Guru, Sitacharan Dube, Bakshi
Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof, Dvarika Nath, Devadhar, Naik,
Covernton, and Sir Sundar Lal voted for the proposal.
(2) “Those pupils who come to the English schools after some years of
study in the vernacular ordinarily are and continue to be generally
weaker in English than those who began their English studies at an
earlier stage.”
Messrs. Sivakumara Sastriyar, Sesha Ayyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah, Chakravarti,
Bakhshi Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdul Raoof, Dvarika Nath, Chatterji,
Natarajan, and Sir Sundar Lal voted for the proposal.
Messrs. de la Fosse, Richey, Hornell, Fazl-i-Husain, Meston, Stone and
Covernton accepted the proposal with the deletion of the words “and continue
to be.”
13. The following resolutions were. . . . . . put to the vote:—
(3) “From the point of view of proficiency in English, pupils should begin
their study of the language as early in the school course as possible.”
Messrs. de la Fosse, Sivakumara Sastriyar, Sesha Ayyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah,
Richey, Hornell, Chakravarti, Bakhshi Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur
Raoof, Meston, Stone, Dvarika Nath, Chatterji, Natarajan and Sir Sundar Lal
voted for the proposal,
(4) “In existing conditions pupils should ordinarily begin their studies in
English between the ages of 9 and 11, and after three years of study
through their own vernacular.”
Messrs. de la Fosse, Sivakumara Sastriyar, Sesha Ayyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah,
Hornell, Chakravarti, Bakhshi Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof,
Meston, Stone, and Sir Sundar Lal voted for the proposal.
(a) Messrs Sesha Ayyar and Dvarika Nath preferred to substitute ‘two’ for
‘three’ years.
(b) Messrs. Richey, Fazl-i-Husain, Sitacharan Dube, Kanhayalal Guru,
Devadhar, Naik, and Covernton accepted the proposal with the substitu-
tion of ‘four’ for ‘three’ years.

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19. The Chairman . . . . . . referred to another group of questions on the agenda

paper which dealt with the medium of instruction in secondary schools. The ques-
tions were as follows:—
(a) “To what extent does instruction through the medium of a foreign lan-
guage (i) hamper the pupils in the acquisition of knowledge, crushing
their independence and originality of thought and instilling in them the
necessity of cram as the only means of learning, (ii) impose a burden on
the teachers, and (iii) tend to the impoverishment of the vernaculars?
(b) “Are the comparative paucity of suitable text-books in the vernacular,
the deficiency, of the vernaculars in technical nomenclature and the mul-
tiplicity of the vernaculars insuperable objections to extending the use of
the vernaculars as a medium of instruction?”
(c) “Should English be introduced as a medium of instruction gradually or
not? If so, at what period and in what degree should it be introduced?”
(d) “To what extent is it advisable to examine students in certain subjects at
the end of their school career in the vernaculars?”

25. The following resolutions were . . . . . . put to the meeting:—

(5) “The vernacular should be the medium of instruction in all the classes of
a high school.”

Messrs. Fazl-i-Husain, Sitacharan Dube and Naik voted for the proposal.
Messrs. Sesha Ayyar, Richey, Kanhayalal Guru and Devadhar accepted the pro-
posal with the addition of the words ‘as far as possible in subjects other than English.’
(6) “English should be the principal medium of instruction in the two higher
classes of a high school.”
Messrs. de la Fosse, Sivakumara Sastriyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah, Hornell,
Chakravarti, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur Raoof, Meston, Stone, Dvarika Nath,
Chatterji, Natarajan, Devadhar, Covernton, and Sir Sundar Lai voted for the
proposal.
(a) Mr. Sesha Ayyar accepted the proposal with the substitution of ‘the high-
est class’ for ‘two higher classes.’
(b) Messrs. Sivakumara Sastriyar, Maulvi Ahsanullah, Hornell, Chakravarti,
Meston, Stone, Dvarika Nath, Chatterji, Natarajan, Covernton and Sir
Sundar Lal would accept the substitution of ‘three’ for ‘two’ classes.
(c) Maulvi Ahsanullah, Messrs. Hornell, Chakravarti, Dvarika Nath, Chat-
terji, Natarajan and Covernton would accept the substitution of ‘four’ for
‘two’ classes.
26. The Conference was generally agreed that the introduction of English as the
medium of instruction should be effected gradually.

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28. The following resolutions were put before the Conference:—

7. “Examinations at the end of the high school course should be in the ver-
nacular in all subjects except English.”
Messrs. Fazl-i-Husain and Sitacharan Dube for the proposal.
8. “Candidates should have the option of answering the examinations at the
end of the high school course in English or the vernacular in all subjects
except English.”
Messrs. de la Fosse, Sesha Ayar, Richey, Fazl-i-Husain, Sitacharan Dube,
Kanhayalal Guru, Chakravarti, Bakhshi Ram Rattan, Saiyid Muhammad Abdur
Raoof, Chatterji, Devadhar, Naik and Covernton voted for the proposal.”

APPENDIX XXI.

UNIVERSITY DIPLOMA IN SPOKEN ENGLISH.

A.—Draft Regulations of the Calcutta University.

I. An examination for a Diploma in Spoken English shall be held annually in
Calcutta and shall commence at such time as the Syndicate shall determine, the
approximate date to be notified in the Calendar.
II. Every candidate for the Diploma must have passed one of the following
examinations in this University:—
Master of Arts.
Master of Science.
Bachelor of Arts.
Bachelor of Science.
Bachelor of Teaching.
Licentiate in Teaching.
III. Every candidate for the Diploma shall produce a certificate to show
that he has received training in elocution for a period of not less than one year
under a teacher, recognised for this purpose by the Board of Higher Studies
in English.
IV. Every candidate for admission to the examination shall send his application
to the Registrar with a certificate in the form prescribed by the Board of Higher
Studies in English, and a fee of Rs. 50, not less than three months before the date
fixed for the commencement of the examination.
V. A candidate who fails to pass or present himself for examination, shall not be
entitled to claim a refund of the fee. A candidate may be admitted to one or more
subsequent examinations on payment of a like fee of Rs. 50 on each occasion.
VI. The examination shall be written and oral, and shall be conducted on the
lines of a syllabus to be drawn up from time to time by the Board of Higher

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Studies in English and Board of Studies in English jointly. The examiners shall be
appointed by the Syndicate on the joint recommendation of the Boards.
VII. The written examination will consist of one paper and will be held with
a view to test a candidate’s knowledge of the elements of phonetics with special
reference to the pronunciation of English words.
VIII. The oral examination will be held mainly with a view to test a candidate’s
power of elocution and his ability to carry on an ordinary conversation in English.
IX. As soon as possible after the examination, the Syndicate shall publish a
list of successful candidates, arranged in order of merit in two classes. Candi-
dates shall be bracketted together unless the examiners are of opinion that there
is clearly a difference in their merits. The candidate who is placed first in the first
class shall receive a gold medal and a prize of books to the value of Rs. 200, the
candidate who is placed second in the first class shall receive a silver medal and a
prize of books to the value of Rs. 100.

B.—Memorandum submitted by the Commission

on these Regulations.
1. We have considered the communication of the Government of India, No. 752,
dated the 2nd September, 1918, enclosing draft regulations submitted by the Uni-
versity of Calcutta for a university diploma in spoken English.
2. We cordially approve the purpose of the University to encourage the improve-
ment of spoken English, and believe that the institution of the university diploma
would materially assist that purpose. We trust, therefore, that the Government of
India will sanction the regulations communicated to us.
3. But while we recommend that the scheme should be brought into operation
without delay, we believe that more comprehensive measures might perhaps be
taken for promoting the object which the University has in view. The general
questions involved will be more fittingly dealt with elsewhere; but we submit
below certain suggestions in regard to the scheme as it stands.
4. It appears to us that examinations might be conducted, and certificates or diplo-
mas awarded, by the University in spoken English for two allied but distinct objects,
and that the present scheme suffers by attempting to combine these two objects.
5. The first kind of diploma would certify the power to pronounce English words
correctly, and to read and speak the language with the right cadence and expres-
sion. A power of this kind is valuable not only for the ordinary purposes of life, but
especially valuable for the teachers of all subjects in schools and colleges in which
English is used as the medium of instruction. But for such persons, unless they are
about to become teachers of English, an expert knowledge of phonetics appears to
be unnecessary, and we see no reason why it should form a subject of the examina-
tion. We also see no reason why the University should compel its graduates to follow
any prescribed course before being admitted to an examination of this kind. Without
entering generally into the theory of examinations we may say that we regard the
prescription of a course of study as desirable in the great majority of cases, in which

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the examination test must necessarily be an incomplete test, covering only a por-
tion of the field of study. But one or two competent and experienced examiners, in
half an hour or less, could completely test the capacity of a candidate to pronounce
English well and to read and speak with the proper cadence and expression, without
requiring any information as to the way in which he had acquired that capacity.
6. The second kind of diploma would be a teacher’s diploma. The examina-
tion for it would not only cover the same ground as. the first examination but
would test the power of the candidate to teach others how to speak English well.
For such a purpose the present scheme appears to us to err not by excess but by
Defect. A person might be perfectly capable of obtaining the diploma of spoken
English proposed by the University and yet be incapable of teaching others, and
especially of teaching a class, to speak English well For a teacher’s diploma
in spoken English there should, in our judgment, be a course of study, and one
which would not only include training in phonetics, as proposed in the present
scheme, but training in teaching; and the examination itself should include, in
addition to the tests proposed in the scheme, a practical test with a class.
7. We desire to comment on one further point in the scheme. It proposes to
arrange the candidates in ‘order of merit.’ We fear that this might, in existing
circumstances, give rise to some difficulties. It must be admitted that while pho-
netic authorities may recognise a ‘standard’ pronunciation of English, there are
a number of local varieties of pronunciation which are regarded in England as
equally admissible in public life: Scotchmen and Irishmen suffer from no disabil-
ity because their pronunciation differs in certain respects from that of well edu-
cated Englishmen. It seems probable that Indians may learn their spoken English
from capable Scotch and Irish teachers and catch up their distinguishing char-
acteristics. It would not be right to let any candidate suffer on this account, but
nevertheless examiners in deciding between the claims of candidates otherwise
equal would probably tend to deduct marks for such characteristics. We suggest
that special proficiency in this subject might be more conveniently recognised by
returning the somewhat heavy fee specified to those students who were judged
worthy of distinction, than in the manner proposed in the draft regulations.
8. We do not wish to discourage in any way this experiment of the University in a
new and important field of education. But we cannot help thinking that the diploma
proposed may be unduly onerous for the very numerous class of persons other than
teachers of English for whom a university diploma in spoken English would be of use;
and, on the other hand, that such a diploma may be interpreted as implying a power of
teaching good spoken English which those on whom it was conferred will not neces-
sarily possess. We hope, therefore, that the University may be able at a convenient
opportunity to modify the scheme on some such lines as those indicated above.

CALCUTTA,
The 9th November 1919. }
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Notes
1 The number of candidates for the intermediate examination is chosen in preference to
the number of matriculates because Madras has abandoned the matriculation in favour
of a school-leaving examinaton; and also because the intermediate figure shows the
number of persons who have not merely passed the matriculation, but proceeded to a
university course.
2 The number of students in Bengal was in 1917-18 Just under 26,000; the number of ‘full-
time’ students in the United Kingdom in the year before the War was 26,710 (see tables
published in Nature, August 15th, 1918, page 474). The ‘full-time’ students included many
who were not preparing for degrees. In Bengal all students are preparing for degrees. In the
United Kingdom there were also a number of students taking one or two courses, but not
giving their whole time to university work. There is no parallel to this class in Bengal.
3 Bengal District Administration Committee Report, 1914, pages 13-14.
4 See the figures given in the appendix to their report.
5 See the Report of the Indian Industrial Commission, 1918, para 16, where an instruc-
tive comparison is drawn between Bengal and Bombay.
6 See the remarkable figures quoted by the Indian Industrial Commission, in para. 15 of
their report.
7 Census Report, 1911
8 Thus the Indian Industrial Commission (para. 16) notes that while “Bengali capitalists
have taken little part, otherwise than as mere investors, in the starting, and none at all in
the management, of jute mills,” a feature of industrial life in recent years “is the number
of small organised industries recently taken up by Indians, such as tanning, pottery and
pencil-making.”
9 Census Report, 1911
10 General Memoranda, page 172
11 General Memoranda, page 209
12 Progress of Education in Bengal 1912-13 to 1916-17 Fifth Quinquennial Review by W.
W Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), paras. 593-595.
13 Tafsír is Quranic exegesis and Hadis, the science of Apostolic tradition.
14 Report of the Indian Education Commission, Chapter IX, para. 663, (Calcutta, 1883).
15 Nineteenth Century, August 1882, pages 193-215.
16 Report of the Indian Education Commission, Chapter IX, para. 563, page 489.
17 Ibid., para. 556, page 483.
18 The Indian Musalmans by Dr. W. W. Hunter, pages 181 and 182, (Second Edition,
London, Trubner & Co., 1872.)
19 Para. 58, infra.
20 Chapter VIII para. 11.
21 Report of the Committee appointed by the Government of Bengal to consider questions
connected with Muhammadan education, page 16 (Calcutta, 1915.)
22 Review of the Progress and Education in Eastern Bengal and Assam, 1907-08 to 1911-
12, Volume I, para. 262.
23 Ibid, para. 267.
24 The outcome of the latter part of this proposal was not the appointment of a special
officer for education in Eastern Bengal, but the appointment of an Assistant Director of
Public Instruction for Muhammadan Education throughout the Bengal Presidency.
25 Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider questions
connected with Muhammadan Education, page 111 (Calcutta 1915).
26 The Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider ques-
tions connected with Muhammadan education, Chapter VI, page 24 (Calcutta 1915).
27 Chapter X, Section IV.

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28 Question 4.
29 Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider questions
connected with Muhammadan education, paras. 94-95 (Calcutta 1915).
30 General Memoranda, page 212.
31 Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider questions
connected with Muhammadan education, paras. 114-139.
32 Ibid, para 145. The wearing of a cap by Muslim-students was also urged by the Muslim
deputation which waited on the Commission at Rangpur.
33 The memorial of the Musalmans of Chittagong, para. 10—General Memoranda,
page 215
34 Memorial of the Musalmans of Rajshahi, para. 14—General Memoranda, page 218
35 Memorial of the Musalmans of Calcutta, page. 15 (d)—General Memoianda, page 213
36 Muhammadan Deputation, Dacca—Question 4.
37 Nawab Syed Nawbaly Chaudhury—Question 4.
38 The memorial of the Musalmans of Rajshahi, para. 2, 40 per cent—General Memo-
randa, page 217; and memorial of the Musalmans of Assam, para. 5, 30 to 50 per
cent.—General Memoranda, page 207.
39 See Resolution No. 1227-Edn., dated the 3rd August 1916, of the Government of Ben-
gal, General Department, Education, Calcutta, Gazette, the 9th August 1916.
40 An endowment fund left by Haji Muhammad Mohsin of Hooghly, part of which is
devoted to the education of Musalmans, see the volume of appendices to this report.
41 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17, Fifth Quinquennial Review by
W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), para 598
42 The test of literacy for the purposes of the census is that the individual should be able
to write a letter to a friend and read the answer to it. The ordinary literate is one who
can do this in the vernacular; a literate in English is one who can do it in English.
43 Progress, of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17. Fifth Quinquennial Review by
W W Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), para. 599, and General Tables III A and III B The slight
discrepancies between the figures given in para, 599 and the General Tables is due to the
fact that Musalmans in European schools are included in the tables, but omitted from the
totals in the test. There were 864,195 Musalmans in colleges and schools not specifically
designed for Europeans and 64 in European schools. Thus the total number of Muslim
students in public and private institutions including European schools was 864,259.
44 General Memoranda, page 210.
45 See also para. 33( j) above, and Chapter XXXIV.
46 See also Chapter XVI
47 Para 36 above
48 The education of Muslim women and girls is also dealt with in general in Chapter XIV.
49 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17. Fifth Quinquennial Review by
W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), para. 506
50 Ibid., para, 510.
51 Progress of Education in Bengal. Fifth Quinquennial Review by W. W Hornell, para. 513
52 Para, 13 above.
53 The Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Government to consider ques-
tions connected with Muhammadan education, para. 135 (Calcutta, 1915).
54 Ibid.
55 Question 23.
56 Report of the Committee appointed by the Bengal Govornment to consider questions
connected with Muhammadan education (Calcutta, 1916). Resolution 168, page 54.
57 Paras. 33( j) and 46 above.
58 Resolution of the Government of Bengal, General Department, Education, dated the
31st July 1888.
59 General Memoranda, page 171.

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60 Ibid., page 164.

61 Resolution no 450-T-G., dated the 31st July 1914, by the Government of Bengal, Gen-
eral (Education) Department
62 Ibid., para 10.
63 This is curiously reminiscent of what Sir Richard Burton wrote in 1853 of the students of
the Azhar at Cairo in his Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Mecca
(by Col. Sir Richard F Burton edited by Lady Burton with an introduction by Stanley
Lane-Poole: London. G. Bell and Sons, Ltd 1915, Vol I), pp. 103-109—“The following
is the course of study in the Azhar The school-boy of four or five years standing has been
taught by a liberal application of the maxim ‘the Green Rod is of the Trees of Paradise’ to
chant the Koran without understanding it, the elementary rules of arithmetic, and, if he is
destined to be a learned man, the art of writing. He then registers his name in Al-Azhar,
and applies himself to the branches of study most cultivated in Al-Islam, namely Nahw
(syntax), Will (the law), Hadis (the traditions of the Prophet) and Tatsir, or exposition of
the Koran. The young Egyptian reads at the same time Sarf, or inflexion, and Nahw (Syn-
tax). But as Arabic is his mother tongue, he is not required to study the former so deeply
as are the Turks, the Persians and the Indians. If he desires, however, to he proficient he
must carefully peruse five books in Sarf, and six in Nahw Master of grammar, our student
now applies himself to its proper am and purpose, Divinity. Of the four schools those of
Abu Hanifah and Al Shafe’i are most common in Cairo, etc. . . . In order to become a
Fakih, or divine of distinguished fame, the follower of Abu Hanifah must peruse about ten
volumes, some of large size, written in a diffuse style; the Shafe’i’s reading is not quite
so extensive. Theology is much studied, because it leads directly to the gaming of daily
bread, as priest or tutor; and other scientific pursuits are neglected for the opposite reason.
The theologian in Egypt, as in other parts of Al-Islam, must have a superficial know ledge
of the Prophet’s traditions. Of these there are eight well-known collections, but only the
first three are generally read School boys are instructed, almost when in their infancy,
to intone the Koran . . . And after learning to read the whole volume, some savants are
ambitious enough to wish to understand it; under these circumstances they must dive into
“Ilm al Tafsir, or the exegesis of the Koran. Our student is now a perfect Fakah or Mullá.
But the poor fellow has no scholarship or fellowship—no easy tutorship—no fat living
to look forward to. After wasting seven years, or twice seven years, over his studies, and
reading till his brain is dizzy, his digestion gone and his eyes half blind, he must either
starve upon college alms, or squat like my old Shaykh Mohammed, in a druggist’s shop,
or become pedagogue and preacher in some country place, on the pay of £8 per annum.
With such prospects it is wonderful how the Azhar can present any attractions, but the
southern man is essentially an idler, and many become Olemá, like Capuchins, in order to
do nothing. A favoured few rise to the degree of Mudrriss (professors) and thence emerge
Kazis and Muftis. This is another inducement to matriculate, every undergraduate having
an eye upon the Kaziship with as much chance of obtaining it as the country parocco has
of becoming a cardinal. Others again devote themselves to laical pursuits, degenerate into
Wakils (lawyers) or seek their fortunes as Kátibs—public or private accountants.”
64 Resolution no. 450-T.G., dated the 31st July 1914 by the Government of Bengal,
General (Education) Department, paras. 2 and 3.
65 General Memoranda, pages 207-218
66 Ibid., pages 201-206
67 Question 22.
68 Chapters XVII and XL.
69 Chapters XVII and XL.
70 Question 4.
71 General Memoranda, page 209.
72 Question 22.
73 Question 22.

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74 Question 22.
75 Question 22.
76 Question 22.
77 Question 22.
78 Question 22.
79 Question 22.
80 Question 22.
81 Question 22.
82 Report of the Indian Education Commission of 1882, Chapter IX, para 553
83 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1012-13 to 1016-17, Fifth Quinquennial Review by
W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), Chapter XI, para 610.
84 The term busti signifies a collection of huts
85 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17. Fifth Quinquennial Review by
W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), Chapter XI, para. 608
86 Ibid., para. 611.
87 Report of the Indian Education Commission of 1882, Chapter IX, para. 591
88 Progress of Education in Bengal, 1912-13 to 1916-17, Fifth Quinquennial Review by
W. W. Hornell (Calcutta, 1918), Chapter XI, para. 614
89 Dacca University Committee’s Report, Chapter XIII, page 72, para. 6 (Calcutta, 1912)
90 Chapter XXXI, para. 27.
91 Chapter XXXI, paras. 31-47, also Chapter XXXII
92 Chapter XXXIX, paras. 24 and 26
93 Ibid, para. 12.
94 Chapter XXXIII, para. 158.
95 See the volume of appendices to this report.
96 Mr. Hornell’s memorandum paras. 8 and 17-21
97 Mr. Hornell’s memorandum, para. 27
98 Ibid, para. 29
99 Mr. Hornell’s memorandum, para. 8
100 General Memoranda, page 108
101 Question 22.
102 Mr. Hornell’s memorandum, paras. 39-45.
103 Report of the Conference on the Education of the Domiciled Community in India,
Simla, July 1912 (Calcutta, 1912), pages 18-21.
104 Chapter XXXI, para. 25.
105 On the 31st March 1917 there were only 506 Europeans and Anglo-Indians in all the
professional and technical colleges and schools of the Bengal Presidency. Of these
147 were girls in commercial schools and 129 boys in engineering schools
106 Chapter XXXI.
107 Chapter XXXII.
108 Chapter XXXVI, paras. 27-29.
109 Chapter XXXIII, para. 184.
110 For Calcutta, see Chapter XXXIX, para 12: for Dacca, Chapter XXXIII, para 150.

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EXTRACTS FROM VILLAGE EDUCATION
IN INDIA: THE REPORT OF A
COMMISSION OF INQUIRY (OXFORD:
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS,
1920), 15–23, 66–74, 129–137

CHAPTER III
THE PROBLEM OF LITERACY
ACCORDING to the Census of 1911 the percentage of literacy among Indian
Christians was only 16.3, and in some provinces the percentage showed a decline
compared with that of 1901. The situation thus disclosed is
The Facts.
very serious. Yet, lest an exaggerated emphasis should be laid
on the figures, we desire to make the following statement regarding them.
The standard required by the enumerators was a fairly high one—ability to read
an ordinary letter and reply to it. Further, the percentage is of course on the basis of
the entire Indian Christian community, including infants. If we deduct those under
the age of seven and a half—about 21 per cent, according to the Census Report—the
percentage of literacy would be raised to 20.6, still leaving 79.4 per cent. illiterate.
Christians compare well with other religious communities. Taking the com-
munity as a whole,1 we find that they are surpassed only by the Parsees (71.1
per cent.), the Jains (27.5 per cent.), and the Buddhists (22.9 per cent.), and are
far above the Sikhs (6.7 per cent.), the Hindus (5.5 per cent.), the Mohammed-
ans (3.8 per cent.), and the animistic tribes (.6 per cent.). The Parsees as is well
known, are a small and wealthy community. Among the Jains the percentage is
brought up by the men—in the case of the women it is only 4 per cent.—whose
position as traders makes literacy essential. The Buddhists of Burma have for long
had an educational system connected with the monasteries, but even among them
the standard of female literacy is low (5·8). In fact, the Christian community in
the matter of the education of girls comes next to the Parsees, and is distinguished
from all the others by having a percentage of literacy for women more than half
that for men. The superiority of the Christian community, especially in the mat-
ter of female education, is commented on again and again in the Census Report.2

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With regard to the alleged decrease in the percentage of liter-

The Alleged
Decline. acy, we find it impossible to make an exact statement, for in 1901
Indian Christians were not distinguished in some provinces from
Christians of other nationalities. Taking the entire Christian community, we find a
slight increase from 21·1 in 1901 (males 29·1, females 12·5) to 21·7 (males 29·3,
females 13·5); this means that the literates of this community have increased 2·8
per cent., 1·6 per cent, for males and 8 per cent. for females. If we assume that the
literacy of the European and Anglo-Indian community is stationary we may credit
the Indian Community with the entire increase. Here, however, we turn from the
encouraging to the discouraging side, for every other community save one shows
a much larger increase.3 The reason, however, becomes apparent when the provin-
cial returns are studied, for it is found that, in areas where large mass movements
have recently taken place, the percentage has declined. In the United Provinces, for
instance, the Christian population increased in the decade from ·22 per cent. of the
population to ·38 per cent., while the percentage of literacy fell from 48·1 to 34·6
for males, and 31·8 to 23·2 for females.4 On the other hand, the literacy of the Chris-
tians has increased where the community has been established for a generation or
more, or where it is still small. The decrease is thus largely accounted for by the fact
that large numbers of illiterates were gathered in during the decade. For such people
the missionaries do their best through oral instruction, so native to the genius of the
country; and, while our aim must be nothing short of a literate Church, it should be
remembered that some who cannot sign their names are yet possessed of consider-
able intelligence and power of judgment, and may show such spiritual maturity and
strength of character as to be of real service to the Church.
If, then, we could be assured that the children of converts were being taught,
the situation would be much less alarming than appears at first sight. The disap-
pointing thing is, that large numbers of them are not. The infor-
Percentage of
mation regarding this matter with which we started has been
Children at
School. confirmed in the course of our tour. In each area we have made
careful inquiries regarding the proportion of the children of
Christian people attending school. In western countries the children of school-
going age are usually reckoned at about 17 per cent. of the entire population. In
India, however, the percentage of children between the ages of five and fifteen is
much higher (24·6 according to the Census of 1911), and it is higher still among
the Christians (25·5). There is evidence that it is even higher among the humble
classes from which most of the Christians spring. To expect poor village children
to remain at school until they are fifteen is, of course, out of the question; but
if they leave before the age of ten they are not likely to retain such literacy as
they have acquired. In our view any percentage under fifteen is unsatisfactory.
From the figures supplied to us in a number of different areas, we find that in
many cases—usually in older Christian communities, or where the numbers are
small—this figure is passed, and in a good many it is reached, but there are many
in which the shortage is deplorable, some returns showing only about 3 per cent. A
specially disappointing thing is that even in some of the older Churches less than
half the available children are at school.
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Causes of Of the causes of this unsatisfactory condition several are referred

Illiteracy. to in sundry parts of this Report. Here an attempt may be made to
set them forth in order.
(a) Shortage of Workers.—The tendency of mass movements has been to
advance so rapidly that missions are unable to keep pace with them. Even if funds
are available—which is not usually the case—teachers cannot be produced with-
out years of work. Special courses are arranged and workers sent out to do their
best. But many of them have no instruction in the art of teaching, and if, as often
happens, they have to minister to as many as ten village churches, the holding of
regular schools is impossible. In such cases children remain illiterate for lack of
opportunity. Speaking generally, we may say that the degree of literacy is roughly
in proportion to the adequacy of the staff.
The following statistics for a mass movement district, kindly supplied by the
missionary in charge, give some idea of the inadequacy of the staff:

Number of Christians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . about 18,000

” ” villages with Christians . . . . . . . . . . . ” 1,409
” ” ordained preachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ” 12
” ” primary schools (excluding
boarding schools) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ” 22
Number of Christian pupils (excluding
boarding pupils) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ” 264
Number of pupils in Sunday schools . . . . . . . . . ” 4,029
Number of pupils in Sunday schools who
can read the Gospels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ” 601

(b) Indifference of Parents.—That people who are just emerging from the
blindness and degradation of the life to which the outcastes have been condemned
should have a keen sense of what their children really need is hardly to be expected.
The disappointing thing is that the indifference to their highest welfare should be
so persistent as it often is. We have sometimes found Christians even of the third
generation not only illiterate, but requiring something approaching compulsion to
secure the attendance of their children at school for an adequate time. Sometimes,
but not always, there is every appearance of keenness at the beginning. Indeed, a
desire to have their children rise in the world through education is undoubtedly a
common reason for the demand for Christian instruction. But the desire is usually
too weak to stimulate the parent to persevere in face of difficulties. The child is
taken away after a year or two. The ostensible reason is that he must bring grist
to the family mill; but if the parent were convinced that education was something
worth having he would in many cases find means of overcoming the economic
difficulty. Regarding this, however, there is a good deal of misunderstanding. It is
often assumed that the education given in the village school is despised because
it is not practical enough. In many cases, however, the parent’s objection is just
the opposite. He has no desire to have his son taught agriculture, partly because
he thinks he knows far more about that than the teacher, but still more because his
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ambition is that his boy should become a teacher or a clerk. If he finds that such
a rise in the scale is improbable, his enthusiasm for education vanishes. Of the
mental and spiritual value of education, even if it never leads beyond the outcaste
mohulla, he is ignorant.
(c) Economic Conditions.—That the parent has considerable reason for with-
drawing his children from school before they have become literate must be frankly
admitted. Again and again we have been told that the root of the difficulty is eco-
nomic. As this is dealt with in other chapters, it need not be elaborated.
(d ) Absence of Public Opinion.—The outcastes, including those who become
Christian, naturally tend to follow those above them in the scale. If these lack
public opinion for education, this makes it all the harder to create such an opinion
among the outcastes.
(e) Oppression.—A more serious hindrance is the active opposition of the caste
Hindus and other employers to anything which makes for the elevation of their
labourers. In this matter we were glad to find that the case was not wholly bad in
all areas, and still more that, on the whole, an improvement was taking place. But,
speaking generally, it is still the case that the caste man not only does nothing for
the enlightenment of the outcaste, but puts positive obstacles in the way, knowing
that if he is enlightened he can no longer be exploited. Outcastes who have the
temerity to send their children to school—even if the school be in their quarter, so
that there can be no complaint of defiling caste children by contact—find them-
selves subject to such violence and threatening that they yield and withdraw their
children. If the outcastes want, not mere education, but Christian teaching, the
persecution, for a time, is all the fiercer, for the caste people are afraid that if the
outcastes become Christians they will no longer be available for menial service.
( f ) Faulty Educational Methods are responsible for a considerable failure to
attain literacy on the part of those who actually begin their schooling.
In the following chapters we shall state our views regarding the different kinds
of school required for the education and elevation of the Christian community.
Here we must touch on the initial difficulties of getting
How to rouse Interest. a school at all. The problem with which we are here
concerned is the development of the life of the Chris-
tian community scattered throughout the villages. How are workers to arouse such
interest that schools with this object will be welcomed, and the children sent to
them regularly enough and long enough to secure literacy?
Remembering the level from which the people start, missionaries and their
fellow-workers usually begin by showing the people that it is to their interest to
have their children educated, not merely because a few may rise in the world,
but because all who can read have certain advantages over others. The unedu-
cated labourer is at the mercy of his employer. He cannot read the document he
is asked to sign—by touching the pen of one who writes his name for him—and
finds too late that he has signed away his property or his liberty. Being unable to
count, he cannot refute his master’s statement that the debt which has brought
him to serfdom has not been worked off. Through ignorance he is at the mercy of

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blackmailing constables and village officials. When he goes to a distant place as

a sepoy or a coolie he has to pay some one to write a letter to his father. In other
words, he has no real independence. The missionary worker tries to show him
how different all this would be if his children could read, write, and count—how
they might cease to be chattels and become men. He may also try to show him
that education might in the course of time help him to do his ordinary work better,
and perhaps supplement his livelihood through a subsidiary industry. And, while
the great majority of his children will remain in their village, the mission should
provide suitable outlets, to which the workers can point, for those who show fit-
ness for higher education or industrial training.
Such considerations apply to the outcastes as such, whether they have come
under Christian instruction or not; and of course the schools intended specially for
the Christians will aim as far as possible at benefiting the others also. For Chris-
tians arguments of a higher order can be pressed home. If they are to be delivered
from the animism which peoples the world with evil spirits, they must advance in
knowledge of the truth. They can be shown how greatly the opportunity of gain-
ing this knowledge is increased if the worshipper can read the Bible and helpful
literature for himself, and take an intelligent part in Christian worship. If, as is
too often the case, the convert is too old to learn, there is all the more reason for
appealing to him on behalf of his children. ‘You cannot make much of us,’ people
often say, ‘but we want our children to be better than we have been.’
Once the school has been started, the teacher and those who supervise his work
must do their utmost to make it so interesting that even the
Maintaining the
Interest. poorest will feel that it is worth while to make a big sacrifice
to keep his children long enough at it.5
Those concerned must be prepared for disappointment, and not allow failure to
put a stop to their endeavours. In a mission which has been successful beyond the
average of its province in producing a literate

[[**MISSING PAGES**]]

CHAPTER VII
THE EDUCATION OF GIRLS
MANY documents of great interest issued recently have dealt with the problem
of female education in India. In England in 1915 a memorial on this subject was
The Present Condition
presented to His Majesty’s Secretary of State for India
of Girls’ Education. by an influential deputation. The memorial emphasized
points which have long caused anxiety—the insignifi-
cant number of girls under instruction, the disparity in this respect of the condition
of the male and female portions of the population, and the consequent danger to
the social well-being of the Indian community. This memorial was forwarded to
the Government of India, which invited local Governments to obtain the opinions

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of competent persons, local bodies, existing committees, and other authorities.

These replies, when received, furnished a mass of valuable evidence which has
not yet been published in full, but which was condensed in an important resolution
issued by the Government of India in October 1919.6
The Calcutta University Commission7 have also emphasized the difficulties
arising from early marriage, purdah, and the distrust of western education. Not
all the difficulties are found, or at least found in an equal degree, in all parts of
India, in some of which, for instance, the institution of purdah is for the most
part unknown. But the extent to which obstacles arising from these causes, from
conservatism, from ideas of caste, from the general want of desire for woman’s
education, have interfered with progress is evident from the fact that only 1·6 per
cent. of the Hindu female population, and 1·03 per cent. of the Mohammedan,
are under instruction; while among Europeans (with Anglo-Indians), Parsees,
and Indian Christians, the percentages are 22·5, 14·8 and 8 respectively; while
if we look at the matter territorially we find the greatest percentage of girls under
instruction is only 1·5 in Bombay and Madras, while the lowest is ·3 in the United
Provinces. Again, if we look at the grade of this instruction, we get further light
upon the backwardness of the situation, for over 90 per cent of the girls under
instruction are in the primary grade, and very largely in the two lowest classes.
Coming to our own particular problem, there is no doubt that the percentage in the
villages is much lower than in the towns.
Now, grave as the situation is, that it would have been very much worse without
the work of the Christian missionaries is not seriously disputed. And while it is
the case that in recent years the number of girls under instruction has been con-
siderably increased, there is very little evidence, even now when so much is heard
of the desire of the Indian for education, that either the Hindu or Mohammedan
community as a whole is really awake or in earnest with regard to the education
of girls.
This absence of public opinion in favour of girls’ education must be empha-
sized because of its importance in any consideration of the relation of a mission-
ary educational system to a government educational system. If the missionary
effort is to be strongest where the government effort is weakest, then it is probable
that for many years to come girls’ education will be a greater factor in the mission-
ary system than in the other.
Any scheme of education for the Indian girl should be based on a wise under-
standing of the tradition of womanhood into which she is born, of the place she
occupies in the life of her own community, of the char-
The Village Girl.
acteristics which her own people deem in her noblest
and most admirable, and of the functions which she is or may be allowed to
perform.
The girl is a very busy member of the Indian village home. She draws the
water from the well, pounds and winnows the rice or other cereal for food,
gathers firewood, cleans the house, and in every interval of freedom from these
duties carries on her hip the inevitable baby of whose care she is almost entirely

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ignorant. Besides being maid-of-all-work, she is, as she grows up, a great cause
of anxiety or at least solicitude to her parents, who must arrange for her mar-
riage (not always an easy matter) while she is still a child. These two causes, her
home duties and her early marriage, make it very difficult to secure her regular
attendance at the village day school. Her attendance at the boarding school is
generally more easily secured. This is not surprising when we consider that
sometimes the total cost, and almost always the greater part of the cost, not only
of instruction but of maintenance, is defrayed by the missionaries, who also
undertake responsibility for the girl’s personal safety, thus relieving the parents
of a double anxiety.
The village day school will generally be co-educational. The bright intelligence
of many of these little girls in the village schools is most marked, and full of
promise if the proper teacher can be secured. The general
Village Primary curriculum has already been discussed in Chapter IV, and
Schools.
little differentiation seems to be necessary for girls in the
proposed four or five years’ course. Specialization on her home duties so early
seems undesirable, while she shows herself quite as fit as the boy to meet the
requirements with regard to the three R’s. Here again it must be urged, as in the
chapter already referred to, that the school day, more especially for the girl, should
be short. The five-hour day now quite common should be reduced to four hours,
if not even less. The girl returns daily to the home, where many duties await her,
and, while these rightly constitute a valuable part of her education, they also tax
her energies. The problem of the education of the girl in the village school, then, is
not especially one of curriculum. The most urgent matters are its wider extension,
and the securing of a better type of teacher.
When the girl completes the four years of the village school, she should be
encouraged to continue her education further. As the number of girls going on
is small, and efficient women teachers cannot be secured
Vocational Middle
Schools.
in sufficient numbers, and further, the social conditions of
the village still make unprotected women’s work there dif-
ficult and even dangerous, there seems, at least in this transition period, to be no
alternative to the central boarding school of the middle grade.
It is encouraging to note how clearly the missionaries have seen the strategic
importance of such schools, so that now a girls’ boarding school is an almost
constant feature in their educational system, and very often one of the strongest
branches of the work. It is generally in charge of a trained experienced teacher
from the home country, who is assisted by an Indian staff, often of her own train-
ing. One longs for the assistance in this work of more educated Indian women of
good social standing.
It would be well if, in recruiting for the mission field, the scope and opportu-
nity of the teacher in these rural boarding schools was more clearly put before the
students of our teachers’ training colleges both in India and at home. The work
being done in them is invaluable; whatever agencies financial exigencies may
cripple, full support should be secured for these. The work in these rural schools

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seems much more practical and nearer the life of the people than that of some of
the urban boarding schools.
The curriculum of these vocational middle schools has been discussed in Chap-
ter VI, but something may be added on industries specially suited for girls. One
good household craft such as cooking, plain-sewing, embroidery, lace-making,
spinning, weaving or basket-making is now quite general. To this may be added
the making of jellies, jams, chutneys, curry-powder, and oil. It should be noted
that gardening and field work are much more suitable than needlework for some
of the rough and sometimes unhealthy village girls who are admitted to these
schools. It is in many cases a better training for life, for many of them come from
the day labourer class, and in their own homes would be sent out into the fields.
As wives for village labourers, too, they will be required to grind, milk, fetch
fodder for the animals, or do a day’s weeding. Suggestions for other industries
should be got from such a survey by the Department of Industries as is proposed
in Chapter VI.
In the hostels very simple conditions are wisely maintained, the girls generally
taking part in, if not entirely managing, the housekeeping, cleaning, and cooking,
as well as their personal needlework. In some places the ‘cot-
Hostels.
tage system’ has been introduced, allowing the girls to live in
small separate groups to their great advantage. The more recent boarding-school
buildings are of this type, generally affording accommodation for twelve to fif-
teen, or even fewer, in the separate houses built around a quadrangle. We have
also seen the long dormitory of the old type divided cubicle-fashion to allow of
the same arrangement. In the allocation of the girls to the household, two plans are
followed. Either the children of the same age are placed in each, with older girls
as house-mother and assistant, or else the occupants of each are of various ages,
approximating in this respect to the diversity and number of an ordinary family.
In either case stores for the whole week are given to the house-mother, who uses
her own discretion as to how they can best be ‘made do,’ and sees to the cooking
and serving. The care of the persons and clothing of the household is also hers. In
some places it has been found possible to allow the girls to do the marketing. All
this is very important, as the charge is often brought against the boarding school
that the girls live so cloistered a life that they are unfitted to face the world at the
end of their school course.
While there is obvious inability on the part of many of those girls (who are still
in a very primitive state) themselves to contrive occupation for much of their own
time, there seems to be a tendency on the part of those in charge so to fill every
working hour with prescribed duties that it is hard to see how the pupil is to acquire
the very valuable power of occupying herself profitably. Of the same nature is
the disinclination of those in charge in many schools to throw responsibility—
responsibility for younger children, stores, etc.—on to the girls without too obvi-
ous supervision, although in a few schools this very educative factor is well used.
Such a community offers an excellent sphere for the intelligent introduction of a
certain amount of self-government. It is of the greatest importance that the girls

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should be made self-reliant and independent, and that their powers of initiative
should be strengthened by an appeal to them to make suggestions as how best to
meet the emergencies which daily arise.
Drawing, music, and dancing are generally not strong. We would like to have seen
more of the use of Indian musical instruments for purposes of accompaniment—
Music and Art. what we did see was excellent—and a wider encouragement
of Indian dances and games. In this connection we would
urge that a strong effort should be made by missionaries to appreciate what is best in
Indian music and art. Of the evil that attaches to much of it, especially in relation to
folk-lore and mythology, missionaries are keenly conscious; but, after careful con-
sideration, we are seriously of opinion that there is much that with suitable adaptation
may be used for lofty ends. In other lands also a process of selection and sublima-
tion has been necessary before what was objectionable—whether through primitive
crudeness or through degeneration—could be redeemed so as to become the expres-
sion of what is lovely and of good report, and we urge that further efforts in this be
made in India. In the matter of art, if few of the older mythological Indian pictures
are appropriate to the walls of our girls’ schools, surely no objection could be taken
to the pictures of the newer Indian school of oriental art of which many examples are
quite cheaply reproduced.8
Those interested in girls’ training have in certain districts a new problem to
consider. In the past, teachers and missionaries have been glad if they could
retain the girl in school until such time as her marriage was
Education for the
Town.
arranged, or, in the case of child marriage until she went to
her husband’s home. Now, however, there is in some large
towns a growing demand for the services of girls of a certain amount of education,
as well as for skilled and unskilled labour. To the constant demand for nurses and
teachers is now added the demand in manufacturing towns for girls for the facto-
ries (as for example the demand for leather workers for Cawnpore). This demand
is affecting even the girls of little or no education in rural areas. The problem has
been carefully considered by missionary committees in Madras and elsewhere,
but as yet with little definite action. The matter is pressing. The needlework, cro-
chet, embroidery and lace work, which so far have been almost exclusively the
industries of the girls’ schools, cannot remain the sole opportunities of economic
development. Indeed, it is a question if these can be relied on as stable, so long as
they depend on sales in foreign countries, and exchange is volatile, except where
the output is large, as in the case where there is a well-established village industry.
We earnestly hope that those in charge of girls’ schools in areas affected by the
new demand for labour will carefully consider the educational, moral, and eco-
nomic value of direct vocational training to meet these demands, and take steps to
secure the best training for the girls.
Such economic development, inevitable as it is, will most fundamentally affect
the life of Indian girls, and it is of the greatest importance that workers should pre-
pare beforehand for the social changes involved. The establishment, for example,
of girls’ hostels in the towns under Christian auspices is called for. It will be

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largely for the Christian body to see that this incursion of girl-labour to the towns
takes place under much better conditions than have pertained in the West, and
that the protective agency of social welfare work is well-established in the factory
before the girl has come to grief there.
Two important considerations remain—the need of more adequate medical
supervision, and the great value of these schools as a recruiting ground for teach-
ers, but these matters are so important that they must be fully treated in other
chapters of this Report.

CHAPTER XII
THE NEED FOR CHRISTIAN LITERATURE
OF the need of a great forward movement for the production and distribution of
Christian literature in general it is unnecessary to speak in this Report. At confer-
ence after conference the need has been acknowledged, and much has been done
in recent years to increase and unify the forces at work, and concentrate their
energies on the attainment of the object.9 Here we are concerned with the subject
only in so far as it is part of our special problem.
If the village community is to become literate and remain literate, if it is to have
at its disposal what will help it to live its true life—spiritually, intellectually, eco-
nomically—if its leaders are to be provided with the books
Need of Special
and magazines that will equip them for their task and keep
Literature.
them efficient, it is obvious that a great amount of suitable
literature must be provided. That literature for this purpose is deplorably scanty
is generally admitted. In no language of India is the amount of literature suitable
for the Christian community sufficient, and in most it is quite inadequate; but
when we remember that what is suited for people of ordinary education is likely
to be quite unsuited for those recently brought in through a mass movement, we
find that, even in the languages best provided for generally, the greatness of this
special need is only beginning to be realized.
We have seen in other chapters that one great cause of illiteracy is stagnation
in the lowest class, due largely to the lack of facilities for the rapid teaching of
the alphabet. That better methods can be adopted is known to
Primers.
many of those in charge. In some provinces only prescribed
text-books can be used in schools recognized by Government, but in others any
books may be used which have been approved of by the Department of Education,
on the recommendation of a text-book committee. This liberty gives a splendid
opportunity to the Christian Literature Society and other agencies. It lies with
them to enter the open door, and see that books on the best lines are produced. In
one province the best vernacular primer we have seen is published by the C.L.S.
We recommend that the Literature Committees of the Provincial Missionary
Councils look into the matter in their respective areas. Even in provinces where
no choice is given it remains to be seen whether the authorities, if a better primer
can be produced, will not adopt it instead of those now in use.10

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When pupils pass beyond the initial stage what they need is books which will
not only enlarge their vocabulary but quicken their intelligence, widen their out-
Reading-books. look, and help to prepare them for life. We have, as shown
in other chapters, found ourselves unable to approve of the
common idea that primary education should be vocational. But while we do not
think that agriculture or industry can be rightly taught in the primary grade—the
very vocabulary needed belongs to a more advanced stage—we strongly urge
that in matter and style the Readers should be as closely related as possible to the
surroundings of the pupils. This does not mean that they will not contain lessons
calculated to enlarge the pupils’ horizon, leading them to have some elementary
knowledge of other lands and races, as well as of the great fundamental truths
which will lead them to a right attitude to God and their [Illegible Text]. But in
everything the environment of the pupils, and their present limitations, should be
kept in view, and much of the teaching should be such as will help them to observe
and understand the phenomena of the world around them, and to prepare them for
doing the ordinary work of the village and the home with new intelligence and
new zest. In so far as the existing textbooks are defective in this way it lies with
the C.L.S. and other societies to remedy the defect.
The question whether anything further is required for the mass movement is one
deserving serious consideration. It has been suggested that the ordinary reading-
books are unsuitable for children of outcaste origin, because
Special Readers.
‘they assume a knowledge which these children do not pos-
sess and proceed at a rate of which such children are incapable.’ We incline to
think, however, that a case for the preparation of easier books has not been made
out. Even if teaching children to read the Bible were the main object of education
it must be remembered that, if the Bible as a whole is to be an open book, facil-
ity in reading books as difficult as an ordinary fourth-class Reader is essential.
Further, since our aim is to make children fit for life all round, it does not seem
desirable to deprive them of the wider outlook that comes through a well-planned
reading-book, or to simplify the course at the cost of ability in after-life to read
a simple book or newspaper. Nor are we convinced that the outcaste children are
naturally less intelligent than others. As to the difficulties arising from irregular
attendance and shortness of school life, we hold that the effort to overcome them
should be made rather by better teaching and organization11 than by the lowering
of the standard, more especially as the latter would make it more difficult for the
brighter pupils to go on to higher schools. We hold, accordingly, that while the
reading-books should have a rural colour, the standard should not be appreciably
lowered.
Whatever be the view taken regarding the question of the simplification of
reading-books, when we pass to the requirements of those who have left school
the need for the utmost possible simplicity is appar-
Literature for the
Maintenance of Literacy.
ent. We have seen in Chapter V that one great cause
of illiteracy is the fact that so many never acquire the
habit of reading, and that this is largely due to the fact that nothing that they

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care to read is provided. Literature of sorts exists in many of the vernaculars,

but it is either not available at a cheap enough rate, or is not adapted to the
needs of people whose literacy is precarious. If they are to be induced to battle
with the difficulties in their way something must be provided which is at once
suitable and interesting. To some of the attempts to meet the need reference has
already been made (Chapter V), and we urge that the example set in the Central
Provinces be widely followed. How to make a paper interesting to those whose
outlook is so limited is a problem. In several provinces war journals had a wide
circulation, and any one who could read the latest news would get a crowd
of eager listeners. ‘I have found,’ writes a missionary regarding one of these,
‘village school boys reading it out aloud to an interested group of grown-ups.
And the father of the boy was more than proud of his son’s attainments.’12 The
notable success of the illustrated war journal published for the benefit of the
Indian troops in France confirms this statement. To try to provide something
which will be equally interesting in ordinary times is a task of great urgency.
It is desirable that to news of the wider field be added matters of local inter-
est, which might perhaps be done by having local supplements to a general
paper. Along with the news would come simple articles on social and religious
matters. Since very few village people could take more than one paper—even
if the price be a single pie—the one would be required to serve a variety of
interests. The paper, in short, should be one whose circulation would assist the
village teacher in the varied efforts he makes to promote the people’s welfare—
intellectual, economic, moral, spiritual. The paper should, if at all possible, be
illustrated, and illustrations, even if they add to the cost, will greatly increase
its circulation and usefulness.
Here we pass from the value of reading matter as a means of maintaining liter-
acy to its value for life. Our efforts to produce a literate community will fail unless
we raise up a considerable number of people who are no longer
Literature for Life.
dependent on a teacher or a literate neighbour for instruction
and information, but can obtain it for themselves and hand it on
to others. The need becomes even greater in the case of Christians who migrate—
the coolie who goes to work in a distant place, or the girl whose marriage takes
her to a village which has no teacher. For such it is of the utmost importance that
they are not only taught to read, but also provided with books they can take with
them, written in a simple style.
First, and beyond all comparison foremost, is the Bible. Through the efforts of
the Bible societies the whole Bible is available in all the leading vernaculars of
India, and portions—especially the Gospels and the Psalms—
The Bible.
in many of the less widely spoken languages and dialects. The
style to be adopted for Bible translation has often been keenly discussed. With-
out pronouncing any opinion on existing versions, we suggest that the time
has come for additional versions of portions of Scripture which will do for the
Indian vernaculars what Dr. Weymouth and others have done for English, and
we are glad to note that in several vernaculars a beginning has been made.

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Next to the Bible comes the hymn-book. In other chapters (IV and VII) we have
urged the larger use of Indian music. There is an urgent need for the production of
Hymnbooks. something in Indian metres simpler than is usually found—
something which will take such hold of the people that they
will sing it in their homes and in the distant places to which some of them go.
Various translations suggest the existence of Indian devotional literature which
appears to be suitable for adaptation to Christian worship.13 To familiarize the
people with suitable lyrics the gramophone is sometimes used with good results.
Nor is it merely for purposes of worship that Indian verse should be used. In one
place we were deeply interested in the effort to train illiterate women to tell the
gospel stories in verse, composed in an exceedingly simple style. For the produc-
tion of such literature great skill and care are needed, and constant intercourse
with illiterate people.
Of the need for other books it is unnecessary to speak in detail. The literature
societies have in mind the needs of the Christian community, and are produc-
ing books which throw light on the Bible—commentaries,
Other Books.
dictionaries, histories, etc.—and books of general interest—
stories, biographies, simple statements on such subjects as hygiene, sanitation, the
care of children, and many other topics. Care should be taken that some of these
are so easy in style as to suit those whose school-days were short, and we are glad
to learn that this is being done in some areas. Among other desiderata are books
which will help people in the conduct of family worship, and literature that will be
of service in evangelistic effort. The needs of the young should not be forgotten.
It will be impossible to carry out the programme recommended in this Report
unless the village teacher is better supplied than at present with suitable books.
In addition to books of an exegetical or devotional char-
Books for Teachers.
acter, and helps to the teaching of nature study and other
subjects included in the primary course, he will need, if his work is to be wide
in range, books which will guide his efforts to uplift the community. We are glad
to note that the Mass Movement Committee of the United Provinces has in view
the publication of books on such subjects as co-operative credit, poultry-rearing,
tanning, basket-making, Weaving, and rope-making. Full use should be made of
the publications of Government Publicity Bureaus. A book showing the kind of
social service that is possible for village people is a desideratum. Text-books for
the boarding-school course on its industrial side will probably be found necessary
in some vernaculars. We suggest that this Report be carefully studied by literature
societies, and that they take counsel with mass movement committees regarding
the most urgent needs.
Our attention has been called to the need of illustrations—for none greater than
for the villager whose mental appetite needs a stimulant. Textbooks of all sorts
should be illustrated, and if some of the illustrations can
Illustrations.
be coloured so much the better. For Scripture teaching the
excellent coloured pictures of Hole and Copping are available at cheap rates. So
are others which may be crude, but are not on that account less acceptable to the

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villagers. It would be well to make coloured pictures available at still cheaper

rates, and pictures of general interest should be more widely produced.
Second only in importance to production comes distribution. The task of induc-
ing the people who have learned to read to purchase books and subscribe to the
newspapers and magazines will fall largely to the teacher. But,
Distribution. since the vast majority of the people are in dire poverty, the
question of cost must be considered. That the people should pay as much as they
can is highly desirable, and some will doubtless hold that, rather than pauperize
them, we should wait till they can pay the full price. To others the urgency of get-
ting something into their hands seems so great that they regard it as worth while to
sell at less than cost price. The extent to which the sale of literature should be thus
subsidized is a matter on which those who are in charge of the work must judge
according to circumstances. Opportunities will sometimes be found of getting
Bibles and other books into people’s hands by giving them as prizes.
All this requires money. Hitherto some publishing societies have depended
almost for their existence on the profits realized on school-books. Other publica-
tions involve risk, and often actual loss. The enormous rise in the
Financial cost of production since 1917 leaves little likelihood of profit, even
Demands.
on school-books, if they are to be sold at rates which people can
afford to pay. If special school-books are produced the cost will be greater and the
proceeds of sale considerably less—unless the missions will make up the differ-
ence. Illustrations, too, must be subsidized. We accordingly suggest that, in the
appeal it is now making to home boards, the Literature Committee of the National
Missionary Council lay special stress on the needs arising from the mass move-
ments, and we urge the home boards to do their utmost to meet the demand. They
should also be ready to set apart for literary production people with special gifts
and experience.

Notes
1 Including Europeans and Anglo-Indians.
2 With regard to different Christian communities, so far as can be gathered from the Cen-
sus Report for 1911, where figures are given only for certain areas—the Bombay and
Madras Presidencies, with the associated States—Syrian Christians come first, with
percentages of 31 for males and 8·6 for females; Protestants have 21·2 for males and
12 for females; Roman Catholics have 23·3 for males and 7·3 for females. Thus, it is
only in the matter of female education that Protestants come first. As a whole they come
second, the percentages being: Syrians, 20; Protestants 16·6; Roman Catholics, 15·4
(Census Report, India, vol i, pt. ii, p. 69.)
3 Had the standard of literacy required in 1901 in most provinces been as high as that
adopted for all in 1911, the increase would have been greater.
4 In the Punjab the proportionate increase in the Christian population is much greater,
and there is a similar decline in the percentage of literacy; but it is difficult to get the
exact figures, as in 1901 the North-west Frontier Province is included with the Punjab.
There is good reason to believe that in the nine years that have passed since the Census
the decline in literacy in mass movement areas is still more marked.
5 For subsidiary means of maintaining and increasing interest see Chapter IX.

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6 Resolution on Female Education, issued at Simla, October 1919.

7 Calcutta University Commission Report, 1917-19, vol. ii, chap. xiv.
8 These can be studied at the rooms of the Indian Society of Oriental Art, Hogg Street,
Calcutta, where also information with regard to reproductions can be bad.
9 See Christian Literature in India, and The Programme of Advance in Christian Litera-
ture in India and Ceylon (Christian Literature Society, Madras).
10 See further, Appendix: ‘Note on Vernacular and Script.’
11 See Chapter IV.
12 F. M. Perrill, ‘Literature for Mass Movement Work,’ in the Harvest Field, April 1920.
13 E.g., Nicol Macnicol, Psalms of Maratha Saints. (Calcutta: Association Press; London:
Oxford University Press.)

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 6
F. F. MONK, EXTRACTS FROM
A HISTORY OF STEPHEN’S COLLEGE
(DELHI, CALCUTTA: YMCA, 1935),
3–15, 111–131, 188–199

CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNINGS
THE first mention of a ‘St. Stephen’s College’ in Delhi occurs in the Report of
the Delhi Mission of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 1864. This
branch of the Society’s work had been opened in 1854, at the instance of the Rev.
M. J. Jennings, Chaplain of Delhi; it had been completely swept away by the
storm of the Mutiny, but had been promptly refounded in 1859.1 In the Report
referred to, the following entry occurs under ‘Schools’:
St. Stephen’s College. In 1863 some candidates passed the Entrance examina-
tion of the University of Calcutta; it was therefore thought well to have our Col-
lege affiliated to enable the students to read for the B.A. degree.
By 1868, however, the title had reverted to ‘St. Stephen’s School,’ and the entry
for 1873–74 indicates the reason why. Alluding to the High School as preparing
boys for the Matriculation of the Calcutta University the Report continues:
Here our direct connection with the lads, now become young men, ceases; they
then pass on to the Government College, where our especial thanks are due to the
principal for aiding our students to obtain scholarships.
Then follows a very significant comment:
Here particularly would come in the work of another missionary from one of
the universities, who would continue privately to help his old pupils in the really
hard course of a letter addressed to the Cambridge Mission, which he also pub-
lished in The Mission Field for February, 1878:
I should like to say much, but the time perhaps is hardly yet come, about the
great and urgent importance, as it seems to me, of their being a college as com-
plete as possible in its proportions, religious, scientific, philosophic, at Delhi,
and in connection with your Mission there, which should (by God’s help) rally
round it the more highly educated natives, and Hindoos trained at the primary

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and middle Government schools; training them, indeed, for M.A. degrees both at
Lahore and Calcutta, but with the loftier and purer aims which Christian teaching
communicates to other studies, when that teaching is seen to be not merely a by-
end of an institution, but its quickening, informing and binding principle. . . . This
is the very crisis at which it is required: Delhi is the very place: the Cambridge
movement is in several respects, to say the least, the very instrument which seems
to be needed.
Curiously enough a Sirdar (native aristocrat) came upon me three weeks ago
at a little durbar of native nobility or gentry, and said, ‘I hear that many mis-
sionaries are coming out to Delhi, and at this time the Government of India have
just stopped their high class college at Delhi; why do not the Delhi missionaries
undertake it?’ This was a very remarkable coincidence, I think. Of course he knew
that Christianity would form the corner-stone and top-stone of the institute if it
ever took shape and form.
The external demand on the Mission to found a college, then, was definite
enough. Internally the question was naturally approached with some hesitation. In
May, 1879, the committee in Cambridge had invited Winter ‘to admit the Cam-
bridge missionaries to a share in the work of St. Stephen’s High School,’ and in
response Winter had agreed, on behalf of the S.P.G., that the Brotherhood should
undertake the management not only of the High School but also of its branches.
Again in October, 1879, the Cambridge Committee recorded in their minutes that,
The St. Stephen’s High School was so powerful a means of reaching the higher
classes as to form a most important part of the work of the Mission. It was also
felt that the influence of the missionaries would be greatly increased if they held
classes in some secular subjects and did not confine their teaching to direct reli-
gious instruction. Should a college be re-established at Delhi, the committee
would view with favour all attempts by the missionaries to gain influence among
the students at the college, as well by assisting them in their studies as by holding
classes for direct religious instruction.
Commenting on all this in a letter of February, 1880, to the Cambridge Commit-
tee, Bickersteth remarks that though this educational work among non-Christians,
who of course formed the vast majority among the school pupils, was not men-
tioned among the original objects of the Mission, he believed it to be in accor-
dance with the present wishes of the committee, and that, as the work had been
undertaken, it was likely to form the principal effort of the Mission for many years.
But he adds, ‘We have deferred for the present the question of the advisability of
adding the higher college classes to the existing school.’
With Cambridge and Delhi thus committed not only to a concurrence of gen-
eral outlook but also to an actual responsibility in the High School, it was really a
foregone conclusion that this next step would sooner or later be forced on them by
circumstances. In view, however, of the doubts current in some quarters even to
this day regarding the legitimacy of missionary educational institutions for non-
Christians, it must be emphasised that the necessity for the step was eventually
admitted only after the most careful consideration both of the implications and of

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the risks involved. Bickersteth’s report to the S.P.G. for 1879 for instance, gives
some of the pros and cons:
The question of starting college classes still remains in abeyance. The Bishop
has again strongly urged their establishment in a better which he has addressed
to the S.P.G., but we have as yet heard of no qualified laymen willing to devote
themselves to this special work, and without two such at least the scheme would
be at present, at all events, impracticable. No doubt the fact that in a city of the
size and fame of Delhi, there are no Government classes which teach up to the
standard of degrees is greatly in favour of Missions undertaking the work, as
pupils might be counted on from the Government as well as from the Mission
schools. Mr. Kirkpatrick, the experienced master of the Government school,
tells me he believes a class could be collected without difficulty. Regarded as
a missionary agency, the danger of this as of all other schemes which are con-
nected with Government examinations would seem to be that the religious ele-
ment should be swamped and overwhelmed by the secular. Still there would
be gained the opportunity of personal influence at the most critical period of
the young Hindu’s life, when he first opens his eyes to the conflict of religions
around him.
Again in a letter of May, 1880, to his family, Lefroy writes:
The Bishop has been strongly urging us to open a university college here to
train men up to the degree standard. It is an immensely large and difficult subject.
Once again, pray for us. If we do open, we must strain every nerve to make it the
best in this part of India. There is no reason ultimately why it should not be the
best in India.

In July of the same year, he indicates a further complication:

Difficult questions are pressing on us for solution. The last is the relation
which we are to assume towards the old Delhi College which was shut up some
four years ago by Government orders, chiefly for lack of funds, and is now
being opened again by a sort of joint movement of chief Indians, chief English-
men, privately, and Government. They would be glad enough to get a hold of
one or two of us as lecturers, partly perhaps because they are not very flush of
money, partly because the name of the thing would help them, at least at start-
ing. It’s hard to see what to do. On the one hand we are distinctly pledged by
our position to influence in any way we can the highest education of the Indian
boys, and so if we don’t throw ourselves into this movement we seem to be
pledged to open another college of our own for the boys of our own school. On
the other hand neither of these courses is free from serious objection. In a native
college our position as missionaries must be more or less anomalous, and might
become untenable if (as is too often the case out here) the European at its head
were a professed sceptic. On the other hand a College of our own would be a
formidable undertaking, involving some expense, much trouble and responsibil-
ity, and possibly a decided severance of those chiefly engaged in it from other
work because of the extreme difficulty of mastering the Urdu language if con-
stantly teaching in English.

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By August, 1880, however, it had become clear that at least the first step must
be taken, and the meeting of the Mission Council of that month resolved that,
subject to the consent of the Cambridge Committee, and provision from England
of the necessary funds, classes should be opened in connection with St. Stephen’s
School in January, 1881, to carry on instruction up to the standard required for
the B.A. degree, but that they should be limited to the scholars of St. Stephen’s
and other Mission schools, the right being retained, however, to open the classes
to students from other schools should it seem desirable to do so. The Cambridge
Committee, sanctioning this resolution in October, added that they wished to
‘press upon the Council the consideration of the expediency of extending the
college classes to students of non-Mission schools with as little delay as pos-
sible,’ and embodied their reasons in a memorandum which will be found at the
end of this chapter. The Mission Council, however, considering the memoran-
dum in December, directed Bickersteth to inform Dr. Westcott, the Chairman
of the Cambridge Committee, that ‘the Council does not feel in a position for
the present to undertake the wider work pressed upon it, specially owing to the
diminished number of missionaries and the necessity of devoting considerable
time to the study of Indian languages.’ Two other important reasons for taking
only the more limited step are mentioned in Bickersteth’s annual report for 1881,
the one a reminder that the original educational proposals of the Cambridge Mis-
sion extended only to establishing a hostel for Christian students attending the
Government College; the other, that in view of the local efforts then current
to revive that institution, the Brotherood ‘were anxious that if possible noth-
ing should be done by them which might prejudice an independent and public-
spirited movement.’
Such then were the events and discussions which led up to the actual birth of
the new St. Stephen’s College on February 1st, 1881. It had fallen to Allnutt’s
lot to take charge of the educational activities of the Brotherhood, and he thus
describes, in a letter to his father dated February 2nd, 1881, his assumption of
those responsibilities in the discharge of which he so justly earned the title later
accorded to him of Founder of the College:
Yesterday saw the opening of our College, about which you have read a good
deal, I think, especially in my letters to Cambridge. We have five boys, or young
men perhaps I should say, and might of course have many more but that we decline
to open our ranks to outsiders for the present. Next year perhaps we may see our
way to do so. Lefroy and myself will do the chief part of the English, indeed all,
as Mathematics, which Carlyon undertakes, hardly ranks as an English subject.
The chief subjects are Logic, Psychology (Abercrombie’s Intellectual Powers, a
thoroughly good Christian treatise) and various selections from English literature.
Logic and Literature fall to my share; History and Psychology to Lefroy’s. . . .
Every day we commence with Scripture teaching. My subject is a continuation of
a former one. Briefly, it is Man’s need of Revelation. . . . Since Bickersteth has
returned from his wanderings he has handed over to me definitely the principal-
ship of the School (and thereby of the College). It is indeed a responsible charge,

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but I think it is better that I should take it as I am fonder of dealing with boys than
he is, and have always expected that education would occupy a large part of my
time.
Meanwhile, the local efforts to revive the Delhi College, with which the
Brotherhood had been careful to give practical proof of their sympathy by their
‘self-denying ordinance,’ though unwilling to take the risks involved in actual
cooperation, were not faring well. Bickersteth had reported to the Mission Coun-
cil in July, 1880, that ‘unofficial overtures had been made to ascertain whether
an offer of professorships in the Native College would be accepted’ (which,
as Lefroy comments in a letter home, is ‘a big word for taking a class in some
English subject and getting no pay’) and these had been followed up by an official
enquiry from the Inspector, Mr. Cooke, regarding the intentions of the Mission.
He had been informed of the proposal to open classes for Mission schoolboys
only, and that no decision as to extending their operation had been taken. Next, in
December, ‘the Secretary having reported to the Mission Council a verbal propo-
sition made by Mr. Parker, presumably the Headmaster of the Government High
School, to the effect that the Native and the Mission College should be started
simultaneously and an amalgamated scheme of lectures be arranged, the Council
agreed that the proposal was inconsistent with the special missionary aim of its
educational efforts.’
Lefroy’s more informal account of things in a letter home dated, January 25th,
1881, reveals something more of the actual situation:
We met the Lieut.-Governor (Sir Charles Aitchison) once or twice. . . . He defi-
nitely set his foot on a scheme for the establishment of a college here from native
and Government funds. It was, you know, to prevent the opening of this that the
Bishop of Lahore urged us so strongly to undertake the work of college classes.
We, however, took an opposite view and although we did settle to open, we lim-
ited our College to students in our own or other mission schools, thus leaving the
Native College to be fed by the Government School. On the other hand we would
not close with any of the numerous offers which they made us to take profes-
sorships in their College. If they could do the thing genuinely out of their own
resources, well and good, but we were determined to make our own start quite
independently. Finding we were not amenable, one or two of the promoters of
the scheme went off to Lahore to try to fix the matter somehow, and they did in a
way we did not at all approve of by some slipshod arrangement that the Master of
the Government School should be Principal of the College too. . . . But the Lieut-
Governor entirely refused his consent, in full durbar at Delhi, so we take the field
alone on the 1st of February. Of course if the other scheme ultimately collapses
we shall have eventually to admit all comers, but this we won’t do this year any-
how. When we do, the good old Bishop will have made his point in spite of us.
The Bishop did make his point, within a very few months, and the influences
which eventually induced the Cambridge Mission to open its College classes
to the general public are of very great importance in appreciating the status of
St. Stephen’s in the public system of higher education for North India. Allnutt’s

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report to the S.P.G. in 1882 sets out the development of events sufficiently clearly
and concisely:
In the course of the year it became quite evident that the scheme for resuscitat-
ing the old Delhi College, as an independent native effort, was certain to collapse,
and that the higher education of the whole district would thus fall into our hands.
About April, the Punjab Government made overtures to us on the subject, and
we expressed our willingness to undertake the work, provided that a sufficient
grant should be made and that we should be left wholly unfettered in the mat-
ter of religious education. The result of the negotiations was that our conditions
were accepted, and early in the present year we received the promise of a liberal
grant from Government. The College has now been thrown open to all students,
whether private or from Government schools, as well as to those from Mission
schools.
In effect, the Mission had consented to undertake, on behalf of Government, the
responsibility which the latter recognised towards the provision of college educa-
tion for Delhi and the surrounding districts.
Allnutt then proceeds to explain the academic implications:
At present we retain our connection with the Calcutta University; but in the
event of the Lahore University College being raised to the status of a University
(a Bill for this purpose is to be introduced this year into the Legislative Council)
we shall transfer our allegiance to it. In that case, so far as is at present known, we
shall be the only college in the Punjab sending students up for these examinations,
besides the Government College at Lahore. This fact is mentioned to show the
great importance of the work which has been undertaken by us.
Allnutt also stresses the significance of the situation from the Christian point
of view:
In view of the, in many ways disastrous, results that have followed from
the spread of higher education in Bengal on a purely secular basis, the estab-
lishment of a College for the Punjab on the basis of religious and Christian
teaching will, we think, be recognised as a matter claiming the interest and
prayers of the friends of Christian education in India. At present we have not
heard of any Christian students wishing to enter the College, but we hope to
make special arrangements for such men when they come under our immediate
supervision.
The University of the Punjab2 duly received its charter in October, 1882, and
for its first few years St. Stephen’s was the only college affiliated to it besides the
Anglo-Vernacular and Oriental Colleges at Lahore. ‘So we are fairly in for it now,’
comments Lefroy in a letter home. It appears, however, from another letter of his
of January, 1883, that local opinion was not altogether sympathetic:
The L.-G. has been here. . . . He came to inspect our School and College. He
expressed himself much pleased with what he saw, especially in the latter, and after-
wards made a very nice allusion to us in a speech before the Delhi Municipality,
though whether it was much relished by that august body or not may, I think, be

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doubted, considering how much opposition we are just now encountering in the
town.

The question of a Native College was indeed being raised again by many lead-
ing people.
‘I do not think,’ comments Allnutt in his official report, ‘it is at all likely that
they will succeed in their endeavours; for though our College may not be popular,
and many wish they had a purely secular college of their own, yet there is a vis
inertiæ which operates very strongly, and probably more than counter-balances
the positive force of their inclination, especially when the latter can only be
realised by prolonged effort and self-denial. But meanwhile there is reason to fear
that these efforts may tend to affect prejudicially the development of our College,
as it will incline many to hold aloof who would otherwise have accepted things as
they are, while students may be induced to go to Lahore rather than to the Mission
College, thus making it appear that we have no chance of attracting students, and
justifying the appeal for a Native College.’
These fears, however, were not realised, and till 1899, when the Hindu College
appeared on the scene, St. Stephen’s shouldered alone the responsibility of pro-
viding, on behalf of both the Delhi public and the Government, the only facilities
for college education between Agra and Lahore.

NOTE A
THE DELHI COLLEGE
IN 1792 certain leading Mohammadans of Delhi established an Arabic School
in the sarai attached to the tomb of Ghaziad-din outside the Ajmir Gate. In 1824,
Government associated themselves with the School and made it an enlarged
‘Institution’ with an English department, calling the whole ‘The Delhi Institu-
tion,’ of which the original Arabic College came to be classed as the Oriental
department. In 1829, Nawab Fazl Ali Khan, Ihtima-ad-daula, Prime Minister of
Oudh (who was a native of Delhi), put into the hands of Government Rs. 1,70,000
for the promotion of education at Delhi. This endowment yielded about Rs. 700
per mensem, and no doubt accelerated the creation of a more ambitious establish-
ment than ‘The Delhi Institution’; for in 1846 the institution was transferred from
its accommodation in the sarai and under the name of ‘The Delhi College’ was
accommodated in the mansion (now used for the Government High School) built
by Nawab Abdul Ahmad Khan (one of the ministers of Shah Jahan) which had at
times after 1803 been used as the Residency, but which was no longer so used in
1846.
The Delhi College had a career in this building up to 1857, supported by
Government and the proceeds of the ‘Nawab Fund,’ the latter being devoted
chiefly to the Oriental Branch (which itself had absorbed the original Arabic

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School of 1792). There were two branches, the Modern and the Oriental. After
1857–58, the College was re-founded, and the Nawab Fund came to be admin-
istered and expended by the educational department without distinction from
the ordinary departmental grants. Meanwhile the sarai had become police
barracks.
The extinction of any trace of the Arabic School of 1829 was not pleasing to
the leading Mohammadans of Delhi, who in 1870, revived the idea of a separate
Arabic branch, and successfully moved Government to allot the proceeds of the
Nawab Fund for its maintenance. In 1886, the Delhi College having meanwhile
collapsed and having been replaced by St. Stephen’s College, the police were
removed from the sarai and the Oriental Branch of the Delhi College, saved from
the wreck, re-entered, under the name of the Anglo-Arabic School, its original
house, first entered 94 years before.
In 1924 the School, having opened Intermediate classes, was recognised as a
constituent College of the University of Delhi, the recognition being extended to
the degree classes in 1929.
To the Anglo-Arabic College therefore must be conceded the claim of being, on
a somewhat disconnected record, the oldest collegiate foundation in the present
Imperial capital, while it shares with St. Stephen’s College that of being a direct
successor to the Delhi College.

NOTE B

MEMORANDUM OF THE CAMBRIDGE COMMITTEE OF THE DELHI MISSION

MISSION SHOULD UNDERTAKE THE
IN REGARD TO THE PROPOSAL THAT THE
WORK OF PREPARING FOR THE HIGHER UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS.

As Amended by the Committee on October 27th, 1880.

The question whether the Cambridge Mission at Delhi should carry on a sys-
tem of classes to prepare for the higher university examinations, to which not
only students from mission schools but also others should be admitted, having
been referred to the committee at Cambridge, they are of opinion that unless
the circumstances have greatly altered since the date of Mr. Bickersteth’s let-
ter (August 11), the work should be undertaken. The following considerations
weighed with the committee in coming to this decision:
1. Such work is, in their opinion, entirely in accordance with the original design
of the Mission. For although special prominence was given in its first papers to
the higher education of native Christians and candidates for the ministry, educa-
tional efforts of a wider character were also hinted at; while ‘literary and other
labours’ were spoken of through which it might be possible ‘to reach the more
thoughtful heathen.’ Moreover, one reason for the selection of Delhi as the scene
of the Mission was that ‘the students of the Government College have been found
specially accessible to Christian influence.’ And apart from any express language

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in the description of the objects of the Mission, the proposed work is certainly not
foreign to its general idea, as a Mission proceeding from an English university,
from which no kind of labours calculated to introduce Christian influences into
the education of natives would naturally be excluded.
2. When such an unhesitating and reiterated call to this special work is given
by the Bishop of Lahore, whose words carry so much weight, owing both to his
position in the Church and his long experience, to decline without clearly suffi-
cient reasons would be to incur a heavy responsibility.
3. Independently of the Bishop’s appeal, the present crisis of educational
matters in Delhi seems to offer peculiarly great opportunities which may
never occur again. So far as it is possible to judge from a distance, the plan
of taking students from mission schools, but not others, would be wanting in
consideration to those interested in the Native College. It would be very dif-
ficult for them to carry on an independent College, if a considerable number of
possible students were thus otherwise provided for. It would obviously show
greater fairness for the Mission to begin with the larger scheme than to make
the extension of the Mission classes contingent upon the failure of the Native
College. Moreover if a native college were not established, parts of the work
of higher education would remain unsupplied till the classes in connection
with the Mission were thrown open to all.
Unless the whole number of students brought in by the wider scheme were
very large, much larger than there is reason to anticipate, the additional expen-
diture of labour and money would probably be comparatively small.
4. The committee attach weight to the account they have received of the
favourable attitude of the Government Inspector.
5. While it would be an intelligible, if a narrow, policy to confine the efforts of
the Cambridge Mission to the higher education of native Christians, there seems
no sufficient reason for making a distinction in favour of heathens educated in
mission schools, as compared with other heathens. Experience, there is reason
to think, shows that the latter are often the more accessible, as young men, to
Christian influence.
The foregoing memorandum is sent on the assumption that the scheme for a
native college has not come into operation. If it has, further consideration will be
necessary.

CHAPTER IX
AN INDIAN PRINCIPAL
WHEN Hibbert-Ware went to England on furlough in the spring of 1906, it had
been agreed ‘almost unanimously’ by the Brotherhood that Rudra should act as
principal in his absence. His selection by Wright and continuance by Hibbert-Ware
as Vice-Principal, his immensely successful superintendentship of the hostel, the
increasing degree to which his counsel was relied on by his senior colleagues, and

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the experience he had gained by his recent visit to England, made it practically a
foregone conclusion that he should be given the temporary charge.
It was another matter, however, that he should be made the permanent head.
A visitor to the Mission in 1907 (Rev. J. Carter, of Pusey House, Oxford),
recorded in the Delhi Mission News that he would ‘say without any tinge of
doubt or hesitation that the most valuable part of the work of the Cambridge
Mission is centred in St. Stephen’s College.’ It would have been but human,
therefore, if the Brotherhood had felt some disinclination to commit the con-
trol of this great enterprise of theirs to one who was not of their own number;
though, as Day’s remark quoted in the preceding chapter shows, there was no
hesitation about submitting themselves, individually, to Indian direction. On,
that issue their outlook had been steadily developing since the day when Wright,
constraining the unwilling Rudra to accept the Vice-Principalship by a final and
irresistible appeal to his patriotism, had declared ‘You are to be Vice-Principal;
and one day you will be Principal’: so that any element of racial consciousness,
in the personal aspect, at the time of the appointment was contributed almost
entirely by outsiders. To them indeed the step now taken by the Cambridge Mis-
sion was epoch-making, marking for the British Christian an objective which,
once proved practicable (as it promptly was), he could never in future dare
to disown, and for the Indian providing a demonstration of bona fides on the
part of the ‘trustee’ nation that was an asset of incalculable value, far beyond
merely missionary or educational circles, in the subsequent years of stress. To
the Brotherhood, however, the only serious difficulty was one of constitutional
procedure, and on June 3rd, 1907, the Chairman was able to announce to the
Mission Council that ‘the Cambridge Committee had accepted in this case,
pending final settlement of the question, the proposal of the Cambridge Brother-
hood that they should appoint3 to the principalship of the College on occasions
when it was not desired that a member of the Brotherhood should be appointed;
and that in consequence Mr. Rudra’s acting appointment as Principal had now
been confirmed by the Brotherhood.’
The previous day, directly he had received the assent of the Cambridge Com-
mittee, Allnutt had written as follows to Rudra:
I wish to lose no time in announcing to you on behalf of the Brotherhood that
you are confirmed in your appointment of Principal. If I could order a salute to be
fired on the occasion to certify the pleasure it gives me to make the announcement,
I would do so! It will be announced in the Council to-morrow. The pleasure is
twofold—(1) personal, that a very dearly valued friend is so deservedly promoted
to hold this high and responsible post permanently in our Mission; (2) derived
from the sense that it is, if tardy, a step forward in the policy we all recognise as
the one called for by the growth of the Indian Church and the duty that developes
on us who have been permitted to aid in the early stages of its development, to
seek every opportunity of effacing ourselves and giving more and more scope to
our Indian brethren for the exercise of their powers and graces.4 I wish you every
blessing in the work you have so devotedly and wholeheartedly taken up. I need

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hardly say I am and shall be always ready to aid you in every way that lies in my
power, so far as my leisure and experience enable me to do so.
Such direct evidence disposes finally of impressions that have occasionally
gained currency, that the step of ‘appointing an Indian’ was rather forced on a
more or less unwilling body of English missionaries. Some natural doubts there
may have been in some minds, as there are at the time of any promotion; and to
some of the older missionaries, both within and without the Cambridge Mission,
such an unprecedented step was felt to involve too great a risk. But to the major-
ity of the Brotherhood there was no doubt that it was right to take it, and they
carried with them the full consent of the Home Committee. Without anticipating,
therefore, any detailed estimate of Rudra’s long principalship, it may be well to
quote, as that of one who was most immediately and personally concerned, Day’s
summary of the way in which expectations were justified:
At that time no Indian had ever been appointed Principal of an Indian Mission
college, and there were considerable searchings of heart as to whether it would
be wise to take this step now. But the European members of the staff were per-
suaded that Rudra was the right man, and they were determined that he should be
appointed, and no other. So Rudra was appointed, and what a triumphant success
his principalship was! All the qualities which in those days Indians were not sup-
posed to possess—firmness, strength of purpose, organizing ability, the power of
leadership, Rudra possessed in abundance. And added to these was a loftiness of
character, a humility, a devotion to his Lord, a love for his fellow-men, which won
the respect and affection of all who knew him.
Allusion has already been made to the appeal which, on Allnutt’s suggestion,
Rudra had written to Dr. Stanton, as Chairman of the Cambridge Committee,
when at Wright’s death the staffing of the College had all but broken down. He
had then expressed one of his most fundamental convictions regarding the Col-
lege, namely the need for constant and loyal co-operation between Cambridge
and India in the supply not merely of funds but of men, the best available. One
of the chief handicaps of missionary educational institutions, then as now, was
the fewness, and too frequent removal for one reason or another, of those whose
religious vocation, added to their educational qualifications, made their personal
influence of predominant importance. Even before he took over charge, therefore,
Rudra had set himself to obtain a sufficient and continuous supply of missionary
staff for the College, and, as will be seen, he had, (some twelve months before the
outbreak of the war destroyed so many hopes) good grounds for believing that he
had permanently secured this.
For practically the whole of the intervening period, however, this part of the
staffing was intensely precarious, and Rudra’s annual reports are full of urgent
appeals that Cambridge should recognize its responsibilities and opportunities. A
series of makeshifts provided for the teaching in the ‘English’ subjects. The Col-
lege soon suffered a very heavy loss in Day: he broke down in October, 1906, and
had to be invalided for eighteen months the following March. Purton’s partial help

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on the staff which ended in 1908, was replaced by that of another member of the
Brotherhood, the Rev. B. P. W. French: but Western had to be withdrawn almost
entirely from College teaching at the end of 1908 for work in the High School,
of which he had to take over full charge in 1909, during the furlough of the Rev.
N. C. Marsh, the member of the Brotherhood who was by then its Principal. The
College therefore fell deeply in the debt of successive chaplains of Delhi, first
the Rev. A. P. G. Maunsell, and then the Rev. A. L. H. Selwyn, without whose
generous aid as Honorary Lecturers it would have been impossible to provide the
necessary English teaching. The uncertainty of Andrews’ health, and of his ability
to stand the strain, added to the anxiety of the Principal, who writes of 1908 ‘but
for the arrival of Mr. C. H. C. Sharp, who came to us from Corpus Christi College,
Oxford, to study Indian religious problems and assist in teaching, we should have
been left in an almost desperate condition.’
Sharp was a forerunner of that short service scheme, which was just then being
taken up by the Student Christian Movement, and which by opening up a fresh
source of recruitment for this form of missionary service eventually solved the
staffing problem. Meanwhile Rudra could do no more than reiterate three or four
times in a single report how seriously under-staffed the College was on its Euro-
pean side, while emphasising how loyally old students were rallying round him
to help him tide over the crisis. At one time no less than five old students, two of
them honorary, were engaged in the teaching. But more significant still, Delhi city
itself was contributing assistance. One leading citizen, Shams-ul Ulema Maulana
Nazir Ahmad Khan Sahib, Hon. LL.D. of Edinburgh, a scholar and author of
repute and one of the founders of the Aligarh College, had gratuitously given his
services (in 1908) as tutor in Arabic for a particularly brilliant candidate for the
degree of Master of Oriental Learning. This was the Rev. Joel Waiz Lal of the
Baptist Mission, the holder of no less than six University gold medals, and later
well-known as one of the chief translators of the Urdu New Testament: Students
of Islam will appreciate the implications of a leading Muslim doctor being ready
to train a Christian clergyman in Arabic itself and to rejoice whole-heartedly in his
success. ‘An equally happy feature,’ continues Rudra in his report for 1908, ‘has
been the invaluable services of Rai Bahadur Babu Mal Sahib, a leading orthodox
Hindu, who has been honorary Architect and Engineer of our new Mission build-
ings, which were finished this year.’ No wonder that he is constrained to exclaim,
‘A Christian College, which is thus helped by leading non-Christians, and has
won such a signal place in the respect and esteem of the city of Delhi, is surely
worth every help that can be given by Christians in England. Yet year after year
Cambridge has sent us no recruit to work in our College!’
Allnutt, as head of the Mission, added his voice to cry shame on Cambridge
if it should prove content to let the general short service scheme save what was
so essentially a Cambridge enterprise, but as will be seen it was actually only a
considerable contribution of men from the sister University that got the College
through the next few critical years. Day had, unfortunately, proved a total loss. On
his return to the Mission in October, 1908, he was posted at first to district work

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with Carlyon at Rohtak, as likely to be less strain than the varied and ceaseless
activities of college; but the shortage of staff in the College claimed him after a
few weeks, his old malaria got a fresh grip on him the following summer, and he
was ordered home for good by the doctors before the year was out. No one, Rudra
wrote, had won the sympathy and devotion of the students as he had: the deep
personal friendship he had with all his colleagues had made the College work go
forward under almost ideally happy conditions. He left an abiding mark on the
athletic life and sportsmanship of the College, and his geniality is still vividly
remembered by old pupils. Yet, as Hibbert-Ware testifies, he won this affection
without ever letting go discipline, and as a steadying influence on young ardent
minds in those very difficult days of earliest national consciousness, he had been
an immeasurable asset to the College. Happily, he was able in time to throw off
the effects of the malaria and since 1920 has been the Bishop of Ossory and Ferns
in his own country of Ireland.
To offset the loss of Day and the complete withdrawal of Western (on his joining
the short lived ‘Brotherhood of the Imitation’ founded by S. E. Stokes), a new lay
recruit to the Cambridge Brotherhood, N. G. Leather (Trinity), arrived in October,
1909, specially for College work. At the same time, Sharp, who had found himself
able to prolong his stay till 1911, was joined by another short service layman from
Oxford, A. C. Judd (Exeter), whose services, however, had almost immediately
to be lent for a few months to the Edwards’ College of the C.M.S. at Peshawar,
and thereafter, from the spring of 1910 to the summer of 1911, to be shared with
the High School. In May, 1910, Bishop Lefroy, at some inconvenience, lent his
private secretary, F. F. Monk, another young Oxford layman (Lincoln), for ten
months’ teaching in the College; and Rudra was able to report for 1910 that it was
the first time since he took charge of the College that he had not been seriously
burdened by anxiety about sufficient staff. The relief, however, was all too short,
and by the summer of 1911 it was only an opportune change in the University
year, whereby the new classes were formed in October instead of, as hitherto, in
May, that saved the College from having to close temporarily for lack of staff.
Andrews and Leather both were ill for many months and absent till well on into
the autumn term: Sharp had gone home, Monk too: and Judd, the sole survivor of
the English staff and he only part-time because of school claims, was only kept
going by the assistance of C. B. Young of the Baptist Mission, yet another Oxford
(Lincoln) man. Monk was back with them on a permanent footing by October, but
till Andrews and Leather were fit for duty again, the ‘partial disorganisation of
work’ admitted in Rudra’s report only faintly indicates what was involved in car-
rying on full classes, to say nothing of the games and other essential activities, not
only with such shortage of staff, but also in the turmoil of the public preparations
for the King’s Durbar of December, 1911, which were then in full swing.
By the next year, 1912, however, things really had begun to move. The proc-
lamation of Delhi as the Imperial Capital at the Durbar had fired the imagina-
tions and hopes of all who knew something of the possibilities of the College.
The new constitution already being drafted for it under University requirements

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was shaped to even wider ambitions and ideals. And Rudra and Andrews got to
England together for a brief but effective campaign at the home base. The consti-
tutional effects are dealt with in the next chapter; the results on staffing may be
noted as both immediate and progressive. For the moment, Sharp responded to the
call and returned in October, 1912, for another ‘short term,’ and with him came
out another Oxford man, also on ‘short service,’ F. A. Cockin, (University). A per-
manent recruit arrived in January, 1913, in the person of S. N. Mukarji (Queens’)
secured by Rudra and Andrews, while still engaged in his Cambridge course, as
one of the definitely ‘missionary’ staff,5 and Cambridge provided a second perma-
nent recruit in the autumn, Rev. P. N. F. Young, who had resigned the chaplaincy
of St. John’s College, Cambridge, in order to join the Brotherhood for College
work. With him came two more short service men, C.O. F. Jenkin (King’s) from
Cambridge and W. G. Lawrence (St. John’s) from Oxford.
Thus the undertakings, to be explained more fully in the next chapter, for the
maintenance on the staff of at least eight Honours Graduates of Cambridge or
Oxford, had been more than fulfilled.6 The War was still unthought of and Rudra
might well flatter himself that he had at last made sure of the English section of
his team.
Meanwhile he had simultaneously to work for security on the Indian side. It is,
unfortunately, notorious in Mission history that employment in Mission institu-
tions, whatever other advantages it gave, was seldom paid for at market rates;
while non-Christians, however long their service, were liable to be displaced at
short notice by any Christian candidate for the post. (A specific entry to this effect
may be found in the Cambridge Mission Council Minutes of those days.) But
Rudra had had a strong lead in the ‘demonstrations’ made by his old chief, Wright,
both on the issue of fair dealing with employees, irrespective of their religion, and
on the question of rates of pay. Within a month or two of assuming acting charge,
he found himself compelled to follow up this lead with representations on behalf
of several of his Indian colleagues, whose support he was likely to lose just at the
outset of his responsibilities, unless the Mission could give them more satisfac-
tory economic conditions.
In putting up their case he pointed out that the College had ‘not been altogether
successful in combating prevalent ideas of cheapness’ as regards the Indian por-
tion of the staff, and that as a result it was ‘hardly in any sense of the term a
body of serious students of the subjects which in Indian parlance its members
are supposed to profess’—in fact that its main character was that of ‘a body of
tolerable coaches.’ Pointing out that the comparatively impecunious condition of
these teachers was mainly responsible for the small share they had taken in the
recent efforts to enlarge the scope of student life in the College, and was prevent-
ing them from buying books and developing fresh intellectual interests of their
own, he boldly declared that ‘to make the College a real centre of intellectual
activity the character of the teaching staff must be changed from that of examina-
tion coaches to that of students and enthusiasts; and this cannot be done without
offering the teachers such pay and prospects that they may be able to look upon

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the work they engage in as their life work.’ Alluding to the recent great expansion
in residential accommodation he admits,’ I know that it is asking a great deal to
attempt a double line of advance’ but nevertheless ‘it is imperative that the per-
sonal staff should be strengthened at the same time, otherwise our progress will be
one-sided and ineffective.’ While coherence and co-ordination of developments
were thus recognised as fundamental conditions of success, the emphasis was
really being laid on an even more vital principle, namely that the status of a true
colleague, and not a mere employee, should be accorded to every teacher in the
College. The policy proposed was all the more readily responded to inasmuch as a
considerable proportion of those affected were, as already mentioned, themselves
old students of the College. Although, therefore, the actual rises in pay for which
the Principal felt able to ask for sanction at the moment fell considerably short
of what might justifiably have been proposed, they were accepted ungrudgingly
as the best adjustment possible to the current financial resources of the College.
The complementary step of bringing locally appointed Christian members of
the staff under the general rates, was next proposed in the Mission Council by
Rudra, Andrews and Western. This involved the sacrifice by those concerned of
their privileged position, and there were those who held that it would result in no
Christian Indians being ready to join the staff. Happily a better faith in the spirit
of the Indian Church prevailed, and though the High School, for sufficient, but
none the less regrettable, reasons, was expressly excluded from the reform, the
principle of equality of status among all locally recruited members of the staff was
formally accepted in March, 1909.
There remained the discrepancy between these rates of pay and those of the
‘European’ staff (actually a misnomer after the appointment of S. N. Mukarji on
the missionary cadre by the Home Committees). The latter were sensitive both of the
personal embarrassments and of the inconsistency with the principle of fellowship
in vocation caused by the differentiation; and themselves took the initiative more
than once in exploring means for either its elimination or its better justification. As
the fee-income increased in succeeding years with the admission of more students,
and Government grants advanced proportionately, both this problem and the general
question of rates of pay was brought up again and again by Rudra for reconsidera-
tion, on the unassailable basis that the discovery of a proper economic minimum
salary is as much the duty of a Christian institution as any other of its functions. It
would be tedious and unnecessary to trace the successive developments of the prin-
ciple, so it is enough to record that before his retirement Rudra had the satisfaction
of seeing the whole question of staff salaries placed on a basis as satisfactory as it
was secure for all concerned, whether recruited in India or in England.
The fluctuations in English personnel during these years have already been
recorded. On the Indian side the instability was fortunately not so marked. Two
important accessions occurred in May, 1906, M. Abdur Rahman as Professor of
Arabic succeeding Jamil-ur-Rahman, resigned (he went into retirement and died
in 1924): and N. K. Sen, as Professor of Philosophy, replacing in that subject
Western, who was needed for the English teaching. Martyn retired that same

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summer in order to complete his medical course at Edinburgh and devote him-
self to Medical Mission work among his own people in Madras. For thirteen
years a devoted worker in the Mission, his ‘kindliness of nature, simplicity of
life, integrity of purpose and devotion to duty’ were suitably recognised in the
farewell party and presentation organised by members of the College on his
departure. He died in 1912. His resignation led to Khub Ram’s promotion as
Senior Professor of Science in July, 1906, and the appointment in November of
Baikanath Chandra Roy as Professor of Mathematics. On Roy’s resignation in
1908 the gap was filled for some months by one of the M.A. students, Munshi
Ram, later a prominent member of the Punjab Provincial Civil Service, till K.
B. Basu was appointed in March, 1909, he again being succeeded in May, 1910
by D. N. Bhattacharya, who in his quiet and unobtrusive way quickly identified
himself with the life and spirit of the College, served it loyally till 1920, and
died in 1926.
On January 17th, 1907, Maulvi Shah Jahan, the last survivor, on the rolls, of
the original staff, ‘a finished scholar of the old type, highly venerated and loved,’
passed away after a brief illness of three days. The Mission Council recorded
their ‘deep sense of his long and faithful services,’ and Rudra reported that he had
accepted a generous offer of temporary help in the Persian teaching from Khwaja
Abdul Majid till the appointment of Ghulam Yazdani took effect in May. Both of
these were old students of the College. The latter, now Director of Archæology in
the Nizam’s Dominions, left in 1908, and ‘the Khwaja Sahib’ became Professor
of Persian till his retirement in 1916.
In 1910, Ghose, the oldest old student member of the staff, who had been on
it since 1898, left on a visit to England, and on his return was transferred to par-
ish work in the city; by 1913, however, he had been requisitioned again for part
time teaching. Two other old students were appointed temporarily during the cold
weather of 1912–13, S. C. Chatterji as Assistant in Philosophy, and Mahdi Hasan
to replace Khwaja Abdul Majid, absent on sick-leave. Early in 1913 a very well-
known figure in College life passed off the active list when B. Sri Kishen Das, the
College clerk, went on pension after twenty-six years of loyal service. He died in
1930. Later in the same year, P. C. Mukerji retired after serving the College for
twenty-eight years in most varied and valuable ways, in addition to his functions
as Professor of Science, for the last seven years or so of them in the capacity of
Vice-Principal and Bursar. Also in 1913, Khub Ram went to England to take a
degree at Leeds University. The double vacancy thus caused on the science staff
was filled by Jenkin and D. K. Roy, a Bengali Christian with an Edinburgh Sci-
ence degree; the latter being replaced a year later by J. N. Mitra, an M.Sc. of
Calcutta. P. C. Mukerji’s functions as Bursar were taken over by Raghubar Dayal,
while the Vice-Principalship, which under the terms of the new Constitution had
henceforth to be held by a member of the Church of England, was undertaken by
Andrews.
In less than a year, however, Andrews found himself compelled to respond
to the wider claims to which from the first he had shown himself so sensitive.

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At the request of Mr. Gokhale and other national leaders he took leave from the
College in the autumn of 1913 to go to South Africa as a mediator in the struggle
then going on between Gandhi and the Natal Government over the condition of
the indentured Indian labourers there. He has told the story himself (What I Owe
to Christ, ch. xii) and the future historian of social emancipation may be left to
pay adequate tribute to what he has since helped to accomplish, not only in South
Africa but in other parts of the Empire also, in remedying the evils of the inden-
tured labour system. His colleagues’ feelings are sufficiently expressed in a few
sentences from the College Magazine:
One thing stands out pre-eminently in the history of the College during the
last two months, our Vice-Principal’s triumphant mission to South Africa. All
parties there have publicly acknowledged the value of his help and presence.
Let us not fail of grateful acknowledgement to Him from whom all good things
come.
It was with more mixed feelings, however, that the College learnt, on his return
to India in the spring of 1914, after a brief visit home, that he had decided to leave
it forthwith and throw in his lot with his friend the poet Rabindranath Tagore at
the latter’s educational Asram, Santiniketan, in Bengal. But the loss to the Col-
lege, which was to be lessened by an annual return to Delhi for two months (quite
impracticable as events proved) was offset by the gain to Indian nationhood in a
man of his spiritual and intellectual calibre thus identifying himself wholly and
unreservedly with India. So the tributes to what he had been to, and done for,
the Cambridge Mission during the nine years he had been with it were coloured
by the satisfaction of regarding him as a gift to India from the Church in Delhi.
This is confirmed, if confirmation were needed, in the characteristically generous
tribute which Allnutt paid to Andrews in the Delhi Mission News of July, 1914.
He acknowledged in some detail the debt which the Brotherhood owed him both
in its devotional life and in the practical administration of the Mission, and, while
frankly admitting some sense of relief that the Brotherhood would no longer be
embarrassed, as on occasion it had been, by his diversity from its general stand-
point, declared:
If men like Andrews seem precipitate and inclined to break too hastily with the
old traditions, I am inclined to say that, rather than condemn them, while we pray
they may not by any rashness or ill-balanced judgment injure the cause we all
have at heart, we have come to the time when we need bold ventures and experi-
ments in the Mission field. It may be that some day we shall have reason to be
thankful for what such men have been able to achieve as pioneers in a new era of
missionary enterprise.
From the College standpoint, Rudra’s farewell appreciation will not appear
excessive to those who know anything of what the friendship of the two men
meant both to themselves and to the College which they served in such close
partnership:

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It is right and proper that I should record that no single personality has had so
great an influence in the development of the College as Charles Freer Andrews.
His advent in our midst was a gift from above.
His scholarship and genius for teaching left a permanent mark both on class-
work and on the courses of the Punjab University, of which for many years he
was a very active Fellow. In practical questions, of administration or of build-
ing, his ability and advice were invaluable. And his versatility was exhibited in
almost every other aspect of College life. But it was chiefly in the warm personal
friendships formed not only with all colleagues, Indian and English equally, but
also with a wide circle of leading men alike in the city of Delhi and in the official
world, that his most lasting effect on the College is observable, both in internal
and outward relationships. Apart from the estimate that still waits to be assessed
of the part he has played in the making of modern India, he stands out in the his-
tory of the College as undoubtedly the greatest link on the British side, as Rudra
was on the Indian, in that close personal association of the two races which St.
Stephen’s has so long cherished as one of its outstanding features.
Two other missionary members of the staff left that same spring of 1914. Cock-
in’s spell of short service had come to an end, and though the many services he
was able to render the College as an officer of the Student Christian Movement
have lately been crowned by his undertaking the Chairmanship of the London
Committee of the Mission, the hopes of his eventual return to Delhi were unfor-
tunately never fulfilled. Sharp too went home once more with the intention of
returning after ordination. But the War intervened to prevent both intentions and
it was six years before the College recovered him. The Vice-Principalship vacated
by Andrews was filled by Monk.
One element in the staffing, already alluded to, requires particular notice owing
to its significance in the promotion of Christian unity. On more than one occasion,
it will have been observed, it was the assistance given by the Baptist Mission, in
the person of C. B. Young, an Oxford graduate and scholar who had been on their
staff in Delhi since 1908, which saved the teaching arrangements from complete
collapse. The Baptist Missionary Society had been working in Delhi even before
the S.P.G., since 1818 in fact, but relations between the two Missions had been
far from happy in the early days. At the time of Lefroy’s consecration as Bishop
of Lahore in 1899, however, Allnutt had noted with great satisfaction not only the
expressions of regard and congratulations received from the Baptist Mission, but
also the increasing instances of mutual esteem and co-operation between the two
bodies. All too much, however, still survived of the old attitude of aloofness and
mistrust, perhaps more in official than in personal relations; and it was therefore,
relatively, a signal advance towards true Christian relationships that was secured
by the gradual inclusion of Young on the College staff. In 1909, with his Baptist
colleague, the Rev. Joel Waiz Lal (who had already rendered valuable help in
the teaching, the previous year, directly he had finished his examination for the
M.O.L.), he helped to save the College from closing early for lack of teachers:

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in the summer of 1910, he was rendering the same service (this time in company
with Dr. Garfield Williams from the C.M.S. at Agra), and early in 1911, on Sharp’s
departure, he took over from him the superintendence of a small overflow hostel
in a hired building. At this point his society showed a very notable spirit of co-
operation by requesting to be allowed in future to make itself responsible for the
provision of the accommodation thus needed and thereby to make a definite con-
tribution to the education work of the Anglican Mission. It should be noted, too,
that the hostellers concerned were not Christians and there was therefore no hint
of sectarianism in the proposal. The College warmly welcomed it and when the
apprehensions of the higher authorities had been satisfactorily allayed, the Baptist
Mission Hostel became a permanent and integral part of the institution. Simulta-
neously, with the entire concurrence of his society, Young’s occasional teaching
in the College was put on a more and more regular footing till by 1914 he was a
full-time member of the staff. Part of his salary was provided by the Baptist Mis-
sion for his functions as hostel superintendent of their hostel (its own building was
erected a mile or so from the College in 1916), and the remainder was carefully
charged to College local revenues and not to the special ‘European Staff Fund’
from which missionary salaries are met mainly by grants from Anglican sources,
viz. the Cambridge Committee and the S.P.G. Some ten years later it became con-
venient for his entire salary to be paid by the College, still, however, from local
funds, but the Baptist Mission was loth to abandon the privilege of sharing in the
work of the College and continued to provide the hostel and his residence as its
superintendent. Needless to say, throughout these successive developments scru-
pulous care was taken by the authorities concerned to safeguard any questions of
ecclesiastical principle, so that the most sensitive conscience could find no ground
for complaining of compromise; and it was largely as a result of this successful
demonstration of what was already practicable in the direction of Christian unity
that the S.P.G. and the Baptist Missionary Society found themselves able in more
recent years to combine in a joint enterprise, the Delhi United Christian School.
Another venture of faith in the direction of co-operation was made in these days
which has had a lasting effect, perhaps not so much on the students directly, as on
the esprit de corps of the staff and its consequent influence over them. It arose out
of Sharp’s introduction into his daily religious class of a course on comparative
religion. His students complained that they found themselves at a disadvantage
in subsequent discussions owing to their lack of knowledge of their own creeds.
Voluntary classes were therefore arranged for the imparting of such information
under the control of selected and loyal Hindu and Muslim members of the staff,
these classes being later recognised formally as the Hindu and Muslim Religious
Associations. It must be regretfully confessed that their original and ostensible pur-
pose has exercised strangely little appeal among even the most religious-minded
Hindu and Muslim students, but these associations at least stand witness to the
bona fides of the Mission College in insisting that its rigid adherence to daily
Christian instruction is not mere ‘proselytising,’ but the assertion of a fundamental
and universal principle of education, namely, that it must be rooted in religion,

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which other creeds should also have the freedom to exemplify if they desire to do
so. Consequent on this partial admission of the non-Christian staff to a share in
the most vital function of the College, a further step was taken in 1910. Addresses
were already being given by the Christian members of the staff on one day in the
week to the whole College in place of the teaching in classes: another day was now
set aside on which one or two of the Hindu and Muslim professors, whose loyalty
to the spirit of the College could be relied on, were invited in turn to address the
whole College on some religious or moral topic, the only proviso being that noth-
ing should be said in disparagement of or hostility to the Christian Faith. As a result
Rudra could claim, when reporting on the innovation in 1911; ‘The non-Christian
staff is no longer a merely paid agency for secular teaching, but responsible with
us for the whole moral life and tone of the College. The supremely strong Christian
position of equity and truth that we occupy enables us to do this. The whole moral
weight and influence of the staff as a body is brought to bear on the pupils in one
direction, and the Christian position is maintained intact.’ Though the regularity
of these elements in the weekly timetable has been modified in recent years in the
interests of greater continuity and system in religious class-teaching, the practice
still remains of this deliberate association of the non-Christian members of the staff
from time to time with the moral and spiritual purpose of the College.

[[**MISSING PAGES**]]

CHAPTER XIV
THE UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
THE conception of a University of Delhi was probably first formed in the swift
imaginations of St. Stephen’s College staff, when at the Durbar of 1911, they
heard the Royal announcement of Delhi’s new status. That the Imperial Capital
should ultimately have a university of its own seemed inevitable, and the position
which St. Stephen’s would hold in it was one of unlimited possibilities. As has
been seen, plans were immediately formed for removing the College to the new
city, and equipping it to meet in any case its vastly increased opportunities, and
the application for a site and grants was met by the Government in the generous
way already recorded. Official designs took longer to formulate, owing to natural
delays and preoccupation with more urgent questions; but by January, 1915, All-
nutt, in writing of hopes that the site to be given to the College would be an ideal
one for its purpose, was able to add:
A large block of the new city is set apart for higher educational purposes, and
eventually it is the intention of the Government of India to found a Delhi Univer-
sity. As its buildings will be on the ground adjacent to our own buildings, we shall
be, as first in the field, in a very favourable position.
The idea at first entertained was the establishment of a Government college
for some 500 students on one side of a triangular block bisected by what is now

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Curzon Road, but which was actually named Great College Street in the first
layout; a site for St. Stephen’s was allotted on the opposite side; and in some
indeterminate future a university building was contemplated at the base of the
triangle. It was on this general basis that plans were first drawn up, progressing in
the case of St. Stephen’s as far as detailed drawings for a most impressive group
of buildings. As the war dragged on, however, all such projects were definitely
held up, and by the time that peace was declared the defects and disadvantages
of that particular scheme had become sufficiently obvious to call for a complete
reconsideration of the proposals. In the first place the original site and plans
allowed insufficiently for the inclusion of other colleges or for natural expansion;
it was also now realised that it would not be of any great educational advantage
to place a large body of students in such close proximity to the distractions of the
capital; but the chief deterrent was the enormous rise in the cost of material and
building in the new city. These considerations caused the recommendations of a
special official committee, which reported in 1919, to be practically still-born, by
no means to the regret of the existing local colleges, who would have found in the
new Government College, which was the central proposal, such competition as
would have seriously limited their development and usefulness.
Meantime two other influences of even greater weight were affecting the gen-
eral question. In the first place the Punjab University, for good reasons of its own,
was endeavouring to counteract the more obvious defects of the affiliating system
on which it was founded by requiring all M.A. and Honours B.A. work to be
concentrated in Lahore. The effect of such a policy on the Delhi colleges, more
particularly on one with such a staff as St. Stephen’s, would have been intolerable.
Simultaneously, the report of the Calcutta University Commission issued in 1919
had crystallised the general dissatisfaction with merely affiliating and examining
universities and promoted a movement for a new type of unitary and teaching
university, such as rapidly came into being in the United Provinces and elsewhere.
From the first of the above considerations therefore there arose an urgent local
demand for the realisation of a Delhi University: and on the strength of the lat-
ter an explicit proposal was made in September, 1919, by Mr. (later Sir Henry)
Sharp, then Secretary for Education in the Government of India. Sir Henry from
the beginning had very clear ideas as to what he wanted, namely a unitary uni-
versity of the type of the recently constituted University of Dacca, one in which
the University would take up all post-Intermediate work, while the Intermedi-
ate students and their tuition would be left in the hands of the existing colleges.
The implications of this scheme, especially as it would affect the colleges, were
not fully perceived at the time, and at a committee consisting of certain officials
and representatives of the three Delhi colleges, held in December, Sir Henry’s
proposal was welcomed and it was still confidently expected that the University
buildings would be erected in New Delhi. The educational authorities of the Mis-
sion turned to a consideration of this programme and during 1920, a scheme was
worked out for a post-Intermediate college of 120 students, with four hostels and
a staff of eight lecturers.

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Then came a long pause and for about a year nothing was done. This was per-
haps just as well, as it gave time for consideration. It even produced a proposal
from Lahore to confer a limited autonomy on the Delhi colleges. This, however,
produced a reply in May, 1921 that the proposal had elicited no enthusiasm.
Meanwhile, though as late at June, 1921, Rudra was writing quite cheerfully that
the Hindu College and St. Stephen’s would, under the new University, cease as
such to exist, at the end of that month a warning note is struck. It had begun to
be perceived that it would be disastrous if the University were to have the effect
of breaking up the corporate life of the College so carefully cherished for years.
Further, various suspicions were beginning to show their heads. On the one hand
was the feeling, shared by the leaders of the Hindu College, that undue official
influence was a danger that would dominate the University and stereotype edu-
cation. On the other hand the Hindu College was beginning to fear that it would
have insufficient weight in the counsels of the University. There was tension and
distrust. To meet these two dangers Monk, as Acting Principal, proposed that an
effort should be made to bring together the various college authorities with the
purpose of formulating an agreed scheme as a basis of negotiation with Govern-
ment. After several abortive attempts and some misunderstanding a meeting of the
representatives of the three colleges was held at the end of June, and at this meet-
ing the crucial demand was made that ‘at least two-thirds of the controlling body
of the University should be representatives of the existing colleges’; and further
that it should be this controlling body that should decide the times of the move to
the new city and of the separation of Intermediate and Degree classes. The col-
leges were beginning to assert themselves. Indeed by the autumn of this year a
great step towards their protection was taken when, in response to a memorandum
drawn up by representatives of the colleges, the Government agreed to take them
into its confidence before producing the draft of the University Bill. Nevertheless,
by the end of November, when the Bill was in the drafting stage, it had become
clear that if the colleges were to preserve their privileges, their corporate life and
character, in the new University, a very definite and firm stand would have to be
taken. Sir H. Sharp quite definitely wanted a unitary scheme; St. Stephen’s was
equally clear that unless the colleges, as such, formed constituent units of the
University, all that it had stood for in the past would be lost. Consequently, repre-
sentatives of the colleges met Sir H. Sharp, and after considerable discussion he
gave verbal assurance that the principles pressed for would be safe-guarded. This
did not give a sufficient sense of security and a meeting of the Governing Body
of the College was held which drew up resolutions stating the conditions under
which, with the expected concurrence of the Mission authorities in England, the
College was prepared to co-operate. These conditions summarily stated were
that the College should form a constituent part of the University; that its identity
should not be merged in that of the University but that it should preserve its indi-
vidual and corporate character; and in particular that its religious teaching and
character should be preserved. Further, that the academic policy of the University
should be mainly controlled by its teaching staff, and that members of the College

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staff should be eligible for all University appointments. These resolutions were
forwarded to Mr. Sharp, and appear to have had a considerable influence on the
drafting. On 2nd January, 1922, a meeting of the University Committee was held
with Sir Muhammad Shafi, the Member for Education, in the chair, at which the
colleges were assured that every effort had been made to draft the Bill in confor-
mity with their views. Nevertheless, they were on tenterhooks until the Bill was
passed by both houses of the Legislature by the end of February, and it was seen
that in all essentials the end had been achieved and that the cherished corporate
life of the College would go on under new conditions which seemed full of hope
for educational progress and improvement.
The main reason which had thus caused the Government, rather surprisingly
perhaps, to concede the demands of the local colleges, was the all too familiar one
of financial stringency. The desirability of a University of Delhi had been accepted,
but its establishment in the form favoured officially was outside the range of prac-
tical finance: there were no funds available either for central buildings or for a
University teaching staff. The Government was therefore glad to acknowledge
the colleges, at least for the time being, as teaching units, and to accept their
offer to bring the University into being as they stood, on their existing sites: it
being understood that Government accepted for its part the obligation to proceed
with the provision of sites, grants, and maintenance of supplementary University
teaching staff, as soon as the financial situation allowed. Unfortunately the Inch-
cape Retrenchment Committee, in the course of its investigations the next year,
expressed such drastic views on the question whether a university was needed in
Delhi at all, that the cogent educational arguments which had justified its creation
were apparently driven out of the official mind and the understanding with the
colleges forgotten. The subsequent march of events is rather for the future histo-
rian of the Delhi University to trace: in brief, in place of the sites and grants which
the colleges had been led to expect in order to enable the University to make good,
there followed a succession of annual allotments of inadequate maintenance funds
and a constant complaint that the colleges and the city of Delhi were not doing
what they had, in fact, never undertaken to do, their resources being strained to
the utmost by the effort to keep the constituent colleges up to the mark. Protests
and reminders proved of no avail till eventually, in 1927, the University declared
its inability to balance its budget and so forced the Government to give it the
attention of a special Enquiry Committee. The findings of this Committee were, at
any rate in principle as distinct from immediate practical application, satisfactory
to the College authorities regarding the issues that had been exercising them. In
the first place the tendency that still lingered in the official mind towards an ulti-
mate merging of the colleges in the University was finally repudiated. Not only
was their position as teaching units clearly recognised, but their staffs were also
conceded the right of full association in even the highest grades of instruction.
The crucial importance of this last admission for ensuring a supply of first-class
recruits for college teaching is obvious. Secondly, the finding of a university site
among the disused buildings of the ‘Temporary Capital’ to the north of Old Delhi,

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instead of in the prohibitively expensive area of New Delhi (an alternative which
had been mooted as early as 1923 to facilitate Government’s discharge of its obli-
gations), was at last agreed to after years of inter-departmental procrastination,
and Old Viceregal Lodge indicated as the eventual location. At last, therefore, the
College knew definitely where its future home was ultimately to be.
On the third issue before the Enquiry Committee, namely the inclusion of the
Intermediate classes for an indefinite period in the University, the decision so to
retain them, though perhaps unavoidable under the actual circumstances, ought
nevertheless to be regarded, educationally, as a confession of failure. One of
the strongest points made by the Calcutta University Commission had been the
need to relegate the Intermediate classes to their proper place in the secondary
stage of education, both in the interests of the virtual schoolboys who comprised
them and of the University classes on whom their presence acted as a drag.
In the Delhi University Act therefore it had been expressly provided that after
a certain term of years the Intermediate classes should be dropped. Strongly
endorsing this outlook, both Rudra and Monk had stressed, with all the empha-
sis they could command, the consequent obligation laid upon the Mission. In his
farewell report to Cambridge for 1922 Rudra puts forward the two main reasons
for this view:
Firstly, a strong Intermediate College will strengthen the University section
of St. Stephen’s College; and secondly, for sound missionary work and influenc-
ing the life and character of the students for good and laying those foundations
securely, we need to get hold of the young between the ages of 14 and 18, the time
when they will be at an Intermediate College.

He even goes so far as to add:

This is even of greater importance in some ways than our contribution to Uni-
versity life.

Monk, whose work had lain practically throughout his service with the Inter-
mediate classes, developed the implications in a comprehensive scheme for the
re-organisation of the whole ‘lay-out’ of education in the Mission, which he took
with him to England on his furlough in 1924, to lay before the Home Commit-
tees. Unfortunately, he miscalculated the conditional character of the approval
given by the Mission Council and by the Governing Body. The separation of the
Intermediate classes had always been put forward along with an assumed exten-
sion of the Degree course from two years to three. The College now decided that,
given the degree students for three years as suggested, it was prepared to forgo
its influence over them at the earlier stage; otherwise not. Public disinclination
to incur another year’s fees in the attainment of the degree, it was held, made the
three-year course an impracticable proposition to put before the University bod-
ies; and it was also only too clear that the authorities of some colleges would not
be able to contemplate lightly the prospect of losing the fee-income from their
large Intermediate classes. The application of the original provision of the Act

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was therefore deferred and deferred, till the Enquiry Committee at last tacitly
accepted the situation and the Intermediate boy retains his status as a student of
the Delhi University. This is not the place to discuss the bearing of that fact on
national education: but two comments might be made in passing. It is quite a
possibility, now that a minimum age for matriculation has been dropped, that the
‘child-matriculate’ will soon supersede the ‘child-bride’ as one of India’s major
social problems; on the other hand the anomaly has had to be accepted for some
years now of ‘undergraduates’ in St. Stephen’s College, if in the Intermediate
classes and resident in one of the hostels, being required to attend a compulsory
daily period of ‘supervised prep’!
To revert to the immediate effects on St. Stephen’s, personal and institutional,
of the passing of the Delhi University Act. For the transitional period that had to
intervene before the authorities of the University could be constituted, powers
were vested in the Vice-Chancellor and Provisional Executive Council, on which
latter the College was represented by Monk, Sen and P. N. F. Young, with Western
also by virtue of his position as Chairman of the Governing Body. The Vice-
Chancellor appointed to direct the fortunes of the infant University was Dr. Hari
Singh Gour, D.C.L., LL.D., an old Downing man, a member of the Legislative
Assembly, and a jurist of more than Indian repute. A very vigorous personality,
it was unfortunate that he was not a resident of Delhi and only able to be pres-
ent for a small portion of the year. However, the Act permitted the appointment
of a Rector to carry out most of the functions of the Vice-Chancellor in the lat-
ter’s absence, and the Chancellor (the Viceroy) was happily advised to select for
this office Western, who had succeeded to the headship of the Mission on All-
nutt’s death. It would be impossible to calculate all that the University owes to his
immense ability and indefatigable industry during the early formative months of
its existence, both in the Executive and in the Academic Councils, over each of
which he presided.
To constitute an Academic Council it was necessary not merely to ‘recognise’
the staffs of the colleges as teachers, but also to provide for University, as dis-
tinct from College, teaching by the appointment of professors and readers. It was
agreed that none of the existing staffs were academically of sufficient repute to
take the rank of Professor, but that several might without impropriety become
readers. Accordingly fifteen readers in all were appointed from the three colleges.
This was a larger number than for some reasons was desirable, but on the other
hand it was felt to be unwise for St. Stephen’s to appear unduly dominant. Out
of the fifteen, eight fell to the Mission College, as follows: English, C. B. Young;
Philosophy, N. K. Sen; Economics, K. C. Nag; History, P. N. F. Young; Math-
ematics, S. N. Mukarji; Sanskrit, Lachhmi-Dhar; Arabic, Abdur Rahman; Phys-
ics, Khub Ram. With these appointments, and with the co-option of Sharp, the
College held a majority on the Academic Council, which put it for the moment in
a strong position. This was increased in the course of the next year, 1923, by the
appointment of P. N. F. Young as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and of Khub Ram as
Dean of the Faculty of Science. As a matter of fact Khub Ram was relinquished

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to the University as one of its scanty whole-time staff, at the same time that all
post-intermediate science teaching was, by general agreement, devolved by the
colleges on to the University, to be centralised, for the sake of economy, in the
university laboratories.7 But by a happy provision of the Act, all university teach-
ers had to be attached to some college, so Khub Ram retained his membership on
the St. Stephen’s staff.
In his farewell report to Cambridge for 1922, Rudra had welcomed the forma-
tion of the University on the ground that the Delhi colleges had hitherto worked in
comparative isolation, involving wasteful duplication of machinery and equipment
and some unhealthy rivalry, but would now enter into a scheme of co-operation
under unified control in which their own staff members would have a consulta-
tive share. Everything, he observed, pointed to the timeliness of the new policy
for concentrating and pooling the resources of educational institutions in the new
type of University: and ‘if the Delhi experiment is successful,’ he declares, ‘it
will be an object lesson to the country for the betterment of higher education.’
But that success would depend in the first place on the strength of the constitu-
ent colleges, and in the second on the spirit of mutual confidence and friendship
among them. Unfortunately the first condition, as it worked out in actual fact,
militated seriously for a time against the second. The Mission College was, in a
way, too strong, and though its authorities took every occasion to repudiate any
suggestion of a desire to dominate the University, in which it would only confess
to the pardonable ambition, justified alike by its history and its personnel, of being
primus inter pares, yet the very strength of its contribution, more particularly in
men, inevitably gave rise to heart-burnings and tension with other colleges, which
for a time created a rather unhappy atmosphere. The situation was unfortunately
not alleviated by the course which the Vice-Chancellor pursued, and when on the
conclusion of his original term of two years he was re-appointed, Western found
himself unable to continue the moderating influence which as Rector he had been
able to contribute. The influence of the College was therefore in some degree
reduced, a fact which it welcomed on the whole as a practical proof of its disinter-
estedness in University politics; while increasing personal contacts and practical
expressions of goodwill steadily improved the general inter-college relations. In
University business, however, a situation arose in connection with certain Univer-
sity appointments which eventually ended in something like a crisis. In March,
1925, Monk found himself compelled to propose, and the Governing Body after
the most careful and prolonged deliberation approved, the abstention of the Prin-
cipal and members of the staff from all participation, ex-officio or elective, in the
executive and administrative functions of the University. The grounds for this
drastic action were formulated as ‘the deep divergence between the standards of
the University as at present administered, and those which the Governing Body
and those who work under it feel themselves bound to maintain.’ The decisions of
the Arbitration tribunals, which considered the cases that had thus brought previ-
ous criticisms to a head, effectively reinforced the protest. It also acquired addi-
tional moral weight from the fact that this abstention from the Executive Council

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left the field absolutely free to the opposing elements in that body, and disproved
conclusively the charge of seeking for undue power which had been persistently
imputed to the College. At the same time any accusation of blind and harmful
non-co-operation was precluded by the Governing Body’s explicit direction that
members of the staff should continue their academic services to the University in
readerships or on the Academic Council.
This ‘demonstration’ had the effect which was hoped for, and by the next Janu-
ary the Governing Body, reviewing the position, felt justified in directing a return
to full participation in all University affairs, in view of the indications of a better
spirit and of the probability of an early change in the actual régime. This took
place a few months later, and since then St. Stephen’s College has been proud
to contribute its full weight and service, in all departments and activities, as an
integral part of the University of Delhi.

Notes
1 Fuller details will be found in the Society’s publication, The Story of the Delhi Mission.
2 It should be noted that the Indian universities of those days were purely examining
bodies based on the model of the London University. The defects recognised later to be
inherent in the system are discussed in chapter viii.
3 i.e. make appointments of non-Brotherhood men to [Illegible text]
4 That this was no mere compliment but the acknowledged ideal of the Cambridge Mis-
sion as a whole, is shown by the following passages from Allnutt’s official reports as
head of the Mission:
REPORT OF THE S.P.G. AND CAMBRIDGE MISSION FOR 1906–7
Head of the Mission’s letter dated 31st January, 1907, Page 16
‘Hibbert-Ware’s departure on furlough was made memorable both by the very re-
markable demonstration of regard and affection towards him on the part of the students
and many others when he left, and still more perhaps by the decision we almost unani-
mously came to, to appoint Mr. Rudra as his locum tenens. Whatever may be held and
ultimately decided as to the principle that, cæteris paribus, a member of the Cambridge
Mission ought to be Principal of the College, not one of us feels anything but pride
and satisfaction that when the opportunity did, for the first time in the history of the
Cambridge Mission, occur of appointing an Indian Christian to the post, so thoroughly
eligible a member of the College staff was, so to say, ready at hand for it, and that the
testimony of all concerned is so emphatically that of ‘the right man in the right post.’
But besides its justification per se, the appointment has been an important step in our
Mission towards the assertion of the principle which I hope will more and more animate
our policy, that whenever an Indian Christian is found both worthy and capable of rising
to the charge of the higher posts in the Mission, no racial consideration shall bar the way
to his selection for them, even when, as in the present case, the promotion involves the
subordination of our own men to him.’
S. S. ALLNUTT.
REPORT OF THE S.P.G. AND CAMBRIDGE MISSION FOR 1907
Head of the Mission’s letter dated 30th January, 1908, Page 17
‘In one way (Hibbert-Ware’s) loss has, as he himself rejoiced to feel, been a blessing
in disguise, for it has enabled us to confirm Rudra, our Indian Principal in his acting

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appointment; and I think that no one now doubts that our action two years ago in putting
an Indian Christian in charge of this, the most honourable office in the Mission, has not
only justified itself, but was a most important step in advance; the precursor, as I trust,
of many similar advances in years to come. It enables me to judge what an immense and,
if it be thoughtfully diagnosed, healthy development in public opinion has taken place
during the last ten years, that an appointment such as this which would, when I left the
College, have been deplored as retrograde by Indians themselves, should have now been
welcomed with acclamation by all. It is certainly a great cause for satisfaction to have
been able to help forward by one conspicuous success the assertion of the principle that
in appointments the best man for the post is the one to find and place in it, irrespective
altogether of race and nationality.
S. S. ALLNUTT.
5 Allnutt’s comment on this appointment is a fine example of the old man’s spiritual alert-
ness regarding the racial ideals of the Mission, which his letter to Rudra on his appoint-
ment will have already revealed. According ‘a tribute to the self-denying and devoted
efforts of our Indian Principal, to whom this (general) accession to the strength of the
College cadre is mainly due,’ he specially expresses his thankfulness for the accession
of an Indian graduate of Cambridge to the staff. ‘The one set-back to the introduction of
so large a staff of Europeans, from the point of view of the development of the Indian
Church, is that it must tend to overshadow and, despite efforts to the contrary, to domi-
nate the Indian element of college life. The chairs occupied by Europeans being those in
some cases which Indian Christians are best able at present to fill, increase in the former
seemed likely to reduce the openings for the latter, and it is on this account that the ac-
cession of Mr. Mukarji is specially to be welcomed.’
6 The staff list for November, 1913, carried the names of Andrews, Sharp, Leather, Monk,
Mukarji, P. N. F. Young, Cockin, Jenkin, and Lawrence with C. B. Young doing part-
time teaching. Judd had gone home in 1912, and after trying College work in China, and
looking up old friends in Delhi on his way home in 1914, was killed in Prance in 1918
while serving as a chaplain. The memory of his most lovable character and readiness to
serve in any way, and at any time, is still preserved by old colleagues and pupils.
7 Some Rs. 5,000 worth of apparatus was also contributed by the College to help launch
the University Physics Department.

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 7
EXTRACTS FROM PROGRESS OF
EDUCATION IN INDIA, 1937–1947:
DECENNIAL REVIEW [SARGENT
REPORT], VOL. I (CENTRAL BUREAU
OF EDUCATION-MINISTRY OF
EDUCATION, 1948), 155–160, 165–170,
231–240, 295–308

CHAPTER VIII
THE EDUCATION OF THE HANDICAPPED
Schools for the Blind
IN Assam, there is no school for blind children. The blind children of this Prov-
ince have, therefore, to go to the Blind School at Calcutta. Though scholarships of
Rs. 15 per month are offered and 24 seats are reserved for children from Assam,
very few of them avail of these facilities.
In Bengal, there are two important institutions, both situated in Calcutta, viz.,
The Calcutta Blind School at Behala (24 Parganas) and the Lighthouse for the
Blind, Calcutta. The institution for the vocational rehabilitation of blind children
of age-groups 5 to 18 years, belonging mostly to families of ex-soldiers and hill-
men at Kalimpong, run by Dr. Mary Scott, also deserves special mention. The
Calcutta University had a department for training teachers for the blind, but it
has now been closed. The Lighthouse for the Blind is a co-educational institution
started specially to provide facilities for the education and training of the adult
blind. The Calcutta Blind School at Behala provides instruction from Primary to
High School stage and prepares students for the Matriculation examination. It is
a residential school providing separate hostels for boys and girls. In 1945–46 it
had an enrolment of 67 pupils of which 19 were girls. This school has a teachers’
training department. Vocational training in Carpentry, Weaving, Basket-making.
Spinning and Knitting as well as in Music is provided in these schools.
In Bihar, there are two schools for the blind, viz., the S. P. G. Mission School at
Ranchi and the Patna Blind School. The former teaches up to the middle vernacular

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course in addition to vocational subjects like Weaving, Knitting and Cane-work,

and the latter teaches up to Matriculation standard and subjects like Typewrit-
ing, Music, Cane-work, Rope-making, Gardening and Cooking, etc. This school
admits only boys, while the one at Ranchi admits girls also. The enrolment in
these schools on the 31st March, 1947, were 33 at Patna and 57 at Ranchi. Special
scholarships are awarded to students by Government and local bodies. The S. P. G.
Mission Blind School at Ranchi is managed by the Missionaries. The Patna School
is run by a managing committee representing the public. Provision has been made
in the post-war scheme for opening two more special schools for the blind in Bihar.
In Bombay, there are four schools for the blind, viz., The Victoria Memorial
School and the Dadar School at Bombay, the School and Home for the Blind
at Poona and the School for the Blind at Ahmedabad. Mention may also be
made in this connection of the Narsingrao Shivaji Dharmaji’s Industrial Home
for the Blind and the Haji Allarakhia Sonavala Andhakshi Ashram, Andheri,
Bombay, which are doing good work. The schools for the defective are gener-
ally maintained by private bodies or individuals and are aided by Government
or by local bodies. A majority of the schools provide for board and lodging for
their pupils.
The blind receive instruction in the 3 R’s in regional languages through Braille.
English is also taught to some of the pupils. Various useful crafts are taught to
enable the pupils eventually to earn a living. Provision has also been made for
vocal and instrumental music.
In the Central Provinces, there is one school for the blind—the Blind Boys’
Institute at Nagpur. It is a residential school and pupils are mostly destitutes. The
instruction here is free. The subjects taught are the 3 R’s, Elementary Geography,
Music and Craft. The total number of students receiving education and training in
the school was 38 during 1946.
In Madras, there are five schools in all for the blind, one of them being a part
of the Deaf and Dumb School at Teynampet. There are in addition two schools at
Palamcottah, one at Poonamalle and one at Rentachintala. The school formerly at
Teynampet in Madras was moved to Srivilliputtur in 1942 due to the war but has
again been moved back to Madras during 1946–47.
Excepting the Tinnevelly Diocesan Trust Association’s School for Blind Girls
at Palamcottah, all the schools are mixed schools. They provide general education
for their pupils at least up to Standard V and lay emphasis on teaching several
small cottage industries and music. The Victory Memorial Blind School, Poona-
malle, has also attached to it an industrial section
In the North-West Frontier Province and Orissa, there is no school for the blind.
No provision for their schooling outside the Province has been reported.
In the Punjab, there are two schools for the blind, one at Lahore and the other at
Amritsar, both exclusively for boys. The schooling extends over four to five years

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and includes general subjects like Arithmetic, Sanskrit and English in Braille and
crafts like Spinning and Weaving, Cane and Moonje work and Band-playing.
In Sind, there is one institution known as Ida Rieu School for the Blind, man-
aged by the Ida Rieu Poor Welfare Association.
In the United Provinces, there are six schools for the blind situated in Dehra
Dun, Aligarh, Mainpuri, Lucknow, Banaras and Naini near Allahabad.
The school at Dehra Dun is mainly for girls though boys up to the age of 7 are admit-
ted. The subjects taught in these schools include the 3 R’s, music and various other crafts.
In the Centrally Administered Areas, there is one residential school for the
blind at Ajmer. Its enrolment was 13 during the year 1946–47.
There is another school for the blind in Tuglakabad, Delhi, which is managed
by a private body.
Schools for the Deaf and Dumb
In Assam, there is a school at Sylhet, providing instruction to boys and girls
for a period of ten years in Lip-reading and Writing, Tailoring, Sewing, etc. Some
children are also sent to the Deaf and Dumb School at Calcutta, and they get
scholarships from the Provincial Government.
In Bengal, there are one or two deaf and dumb schools in each Division.
The most important of them is the Deaf and Dumb School at Calcutta, the oth-
ers being in Dacca, Mymensingh, Chittagong, Suri, Berhampore, Burdwan,
Rajshahi, Bogra, Barisal and Brahmanbaria. Except for the school at Calcutta,
these are managed by private bodies and Municipalities. Their courses of study
range from 8 to 10 years and comprise general subjects like Writing, Lip-read-
ing, History and Arithmetic and Carpentry, Tailoring, Weaving and Printing.
The Calcutta Deaf and Dumb School is important owing to its Teachers’ Train-
ing Department where teachers from different parts of the country come for train-
ing in the methods of teaching the deaf. Diplomas and certificates are awarded to
successful candidates.
In Bihar, there are two schools, one at Ranchi and the other at Patna. Government
give grants-in-aid and special scholarships. Both the schools are co-educational and
their courses extend from 8 to 10 years. The subjects of study are the 3 R’s, Tailor-
ing, Drawing, Clay-modelling, Spinning, Bee-keeping, Typewriting, etc.
In Bombay, the number of schools increased during the period under review
from 5 to 8. They are in Bombay, Poona, Sholapur, Ratnagiri, Nasik and Ahmed-
abad. Lip-reading and Articulation form main features of instruction in these
schools. Practical instruction in at least one of the common crafts is also given.
In the Central Provinces there is only one school, viz., the Bhonsla Deaf and
Dumb School situated at Nagpur. The school is in receipt of grants from Govern-
ment and local bodies.

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In Madras, there are co-educational institutions, one each in Coimbatore, Kara-

ikudi, Palamcottah, Teynampet and Mylapore. The one at Teynampet is a com-
bined school for the blind and the deaf-mute. During the period under review, the
school at Erode was closed.
Articulation and Lip-reading are special methods used in schools for dumb
children and Drawing, Painting, Needle-work and Embroidery are encouraged.
In Orissa, there is one small school at Cuttack, the All Orissa Deaf and Dumb
School, with an enrolment of 4 on 31st March, 1946. It is a co-educational institution.
Its course of studies extends over five years and consists of 3 R’s and a few crafts.
In the Punjab, there are no facilities for the deaf and dumb. The Government,
however, give an annual subsidy to the Lady Noyce School for Deaf and Dumb at
New Delhi, for taking in the afflicted children of this Province.
In Sind, there are no schools, nor any facilities for the teaching of the deaf and
dumb.
In the United Provinces, there were schools at Allahabad, Lucknow and Cawn-
pore, but the last one was closed in 1943–44. The Cawnpore school was a com-
bined school for the deaf-mutes and the blind.
In the Centrally Administered Areas, there is one school at New Delhi, the Lady
Noyce School for the Deaf and Dumb. Its course of training includes the 3 R’s and
crafts like Carpentry, Needle-work, Weaving, Dyeing, Tailoring and Toy-making.
It is co-educational, partly residential and it serves the Province of the Punjab and
other areas.
Schools for Those Afflicted with other Organic Diseases
Besides the blind, the deaf and the dumb, children suffering from other physical
handicaps such as diseases of the heart, lungs, skin, etc., also come within the purview
of the educational system. No facilities for such children have, however, been reported.
Bihar and Madras have schools for children whose parents are afflicted with the
heritable disease of leprosy. The Bihar School at Purulia had an enrolment of 251
(including 125 girls) on 31st March, 1947. The Purulia Leper Asylum received a
grant-in-aid of Rs. 720 per annum from the State Government. In Madras, there
are five schools for leper children. Medical attention forms a chief feature of these
schools. The total strength of these schools was 197 on the 31st March, 1947.
Speech Defect
No information is available regarding the existence of any special schools
for this type of deficiency in children and youth. Elocution and right pronuncia-
tion are, however, given some attention in many schools in the course of their
normal teaching. One of the benefits of oratorial contests, which are becoming
more and more popular, is to improve elocution and the art of speech generally.

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School for the Mentally Handicapped

During the decennium three schools for mentally handicapped children have
been reported—two in Bengal and one in Bombay. Of the schools in Bengal,
The Children’s Home at Kurseong which catered only for Anglo-Indian and
European children was closed in 1944. The other school, the Bodhana Niketan,
is at Jhargram in Midnapore District. The school in Bombay (Chembur) forms
a part of the Children’s Home conducted by the Local Children’s Aid Society.
The training in these institutions aims at correcting the special and the general
mental deficiencies of the children and giving them as much general education
as they are capable of. The institutions, however, are not run on scientific lines.
Table XXXI gives the number of institutions for the handicapped during 1946–
47, together with their enrolment and expenditure.

TABLE XXXI
Education of the Handicapped, 1946–47

NUMBER OF NUMBER OF SCHOLARS

EXPENDITURE
Province INSTITUTIONS IN INSTITUTIONS

Males Females Males Females Males Females

Rs. Rs.
Assam . . . . . . . . . . 1 .. 22 .. 3,060 ..
Bengal* . . . . . . . . . 15 .. 252 .. 1,80,752 ..
Bihar . . . . . . . . . . . 4 .. 123 .. 23,843 ..
Bombay . . . . . . . . . 11 .. 360 .. 65,248 ..
C. P. and Berar . . . 3 .. 50 .. 11,648 ..
Madras . . . . . . . . . . 12 .. 592 .. 92,713 ..
Orissa . . . . . . . . . . 1 .. 6 .. 1,420 ..
Punjab* . . . . . . . . . 2 .. 83 .. 34,370 ..
Sind* . . . . . . . . . . . 1 .. 7 .. 4,094 ..
United Provinces . . 5 1 118 55 29,251 8,711
Ajmer-Merwara . . . 1 .. 13 .. 1,935 ..
Delhi . . . . . . . . . . . 1 .. 68 .. 12,838 ..

TOTAL . . . . . . 57 1 1,694 55 4,61,172 8,711

* Indicates estimated figures.

REFORMATORY SCHOOLS FOR YOUNG OFFENDERS

Some children suffer from aberrations of conduct due to wrong education or
native impulse which, if neglected, is likely to render them social misfits and
social dangers. The Borstal or Reformatory schools aim at educating such chil-
dren so that they may become healthy and useful members of society.

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TABLE XXXII
Statistics of Reformatory Schools, 1946–47

Number of
Province Enrolment Expenditure
Schools

Rs.
Bengal . . . . . . . . 3 222 69,451
Bihar . . . . . . . . . 1 177 1,27,441
Bombay . . . . . . . 1 155 93,088
C. P. and Berar . . 1 204 11,648
Madras . . . . . . . . 5 2,540 4,12,850
Punjab . . . . . . . . 2 117 62,207

TOTAL . . . . 13 3,415 7,76,685

Table XXXII shows the facilities available in India for the education of young
offenders.
In Bengal, there were three schools, but the one at Alipore, which was for delin-
quents below 15 years of age, was closed in 1942–43 and the children sent to the
Hazaribagh Reformatory School in Bihar, which was jointly maintained by the
Provinces of Bengal, Assam, Bihar and Orissa. The two other schools at Bankura
and Berhampore admit delinquents between 15 and 21. These Borstal schools are
under control of the Inspector-General of Prisons. Instruction is given in general
subjects and in useful handicrafts.
There is no machinery for keeping in touch with the children after they leave
the school and for checking relapses which may occur. The Aftercare Association
of Bengal, however, receives into it those boys who have no guardians and wish
to stay there after their course of training.
In Bihar, the Hazaribagh Reformatory School is an outstanding institution. It is
a joint institution for Bihar, Bengal, Assam and Orissa and is maintained out of
Government grants supplemented by income derived from sale proceeds from the
workshop and other miscellaneous sources. In 1946–47, there were 177 boys of
whom 76 were from Bihar, 88 from Bengal, 12 from Orissa and 1 from Jaipur State.
Besides handicrafts, tho boys are taught general subjects up to the upper primary
standard. After pupils leave the school they are kept under observation for two years.
In Bombay, there are two types of institutions, viz., the Certified schools and
Borstal schools. The Certified1 schools are 3 in number and admit boys of 16 and
under. Of the second type there is one school meant for boys above 16 at Dharwar.
The Province also had in 1945–46 20 homes for delinquents.
All the schools teach up to the primary standard and give training in some
vocational subjects.
In Punjab, there are several Borstal schools and the Government also maintain
the Reformatory School at Delhi.

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In the United Provinces, there is only one school at Chunar. It was formerly
controlled by the Education Department, but in 1942–43 it was transferred to the
Prison Department.
All-India Institutions
There is no All-India or Central Institution for the problems of afflicted chil-
dren for their schooling or for the training of their teachers. There are, however,
some schools for children, notably two, which have attained an inter-provincial
standing. The school for deaf-mutes at Calcutta serves not only Bengal but also
the neighbouring Provinces of Assam, Bihar and Orissa. The Hazaribagh Refor-
matory School in Bihar also serves the same areas.
The Central Advisory Board of Education took up the question of an All-India
Braille Code for the blind in 1941 and appointed an Expert Committee for the pur-
pose. The Braille Committee has since designed a Uniform Braille Code for the
major Indian languages and its use has been recommended by the Government of
India for all schools for the blind in India. The Uniform Indian Braille will satisfy
a long-felt need for a common braille code for all Indian languages. The Govern-
ment of India are taking active steps to set up an up-to-date Braille Printing Press
for the production of suitable literature in Uniform Indian Braille. Apparatus and
appliances for the education and training of the blind will be manufactured. It is
also proposed to establish a Central Model Institute for the blind at a very early date.

CHAPTER IX
ÆSTHETIC EDUCATION
Arts and Crafts
TABLE XXXIII shows the number of schools teaching Arts and Crafts other than
Music, Dancing and Architecture, along with their enrolment and expenditure.
TABLE XXXIII

1937–38

Number of
Province* Enrolment Expenditure
Schools

Rs.
Bengal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 524 79,383
Bombay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 685 1,17,629
Madras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 332 67,281
Punjab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 161 65,842
United Provinces . . . . . . . . 2 332 66,644

TOTAL . . . . . . . . . 16 2,034 3,96,779

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1941–42
Bengal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 407 86,620
Bihar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 24 605
Bombay 3 726 1,24,743
C. P. and Berar . . . . . . . . . 1 44 3,502
Madras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 388 72,001
Punjab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 172 64,336
United Provinces . . . . . . . . 2 280 65,303

TOTAL . . . . . . . . . 19 2,041 4,17,110

1946–47

Bengal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 376 1,00,293

Bihar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 27 5,467
Bombay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 784 1,93,587
C. P. and Berar . . . . . . . . . 1 66 4,322
Madras . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 261 96,919
Punjab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 125 1,36,475
United Provinces . . . . . . . . 2 163 57,887

TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . . 16 1,802 5,94,950

* In other provinces/areas not mentioned in this table, there are no Arts and Crafts Schools.
There are no Arts Schools exclusively for Females.

The following is a brief account of the institutions and courses in Fine Arts and
Manual Arts and Crafts as they have developed or continued in various provinces
during the decennium.
In Assam, there is no institution under the Education Department exclusively’
for these subjects. Hand-work, Drawing, Painting and Needle-work, however,
form part of the school routine.
In Bengal, Art in a rudimentary form forms part of the curriculum for Primary
Schools and is included as one of the optional subjects—Handwork. The train-
ing gives an impetus to children to acquire a taste for Fine Arts. In Secondary
Schools, Drawing is a compulsory subject up to Class VIII and an alternative
subject in Classes IX and X.
Among the special institutions devoted to Arts and Crafts, an important place
is taken by the Kalabhavana of the Visva Bharati at Santiniketan and by the Gov-
ernment School of Art at Calcutta. The Kalabhavana has attracted students from
all over India and some from outside the country. The Government School of Art,
Calcutta, provides training in both elementary and advanced vocational grades in
Lithography, Clay Modelling, Wood Engraving, Commercial Art, Draftsmanship
and Drawing.

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In Bihar, Drawing continued to be a compulsory subject in Primary and Mid-

dle Schools and an optional subject in the Matriculation Examination. Clay Mod-
elling and Artistic Hand-work have been special features of education in schools.
Only one special school of Arts and Crafts exists in the Province, viz., the Art
School of Patna, which was recognised by Government in 1941–42. There is a
proposal to take it over under the management of Government.
In Bombay, there are three institutions specialising in Arts and Crafts, two
managed by Government and one by a private body. Of these the most impor-
tant is the Sir J. J. School of Art in Bombay. It provides training in Painting,
Modelling, Architecture and Commercial Art, Designing and Artistic Research,
Sculpture, etc.
In the Central Provinces and Berar, the Nagpur School of Art is the only recog-
nised and Government-aided institution that provides instruction in Drawing and
Painting up to the Diploma standard. It prepares candidates for the examinations
held by the J. J. School of Art, Bombay.
Drawing or Hand-work (manual training) is a compulsory subject in Middle
Schools in the Province. At the High School stage, there are courses in Drawing,
Painting, Art, Needle-work, Wood and Metal work.
In Madras, a large number of institutions consisting of schools, colleges,
training schools and colleges and special schools have manual training
classes attached to them. Several arts and crafts subjects are taught in these
classes.
For advanced vocational courses, the following institutions may be named:
(i) The School of Arts and Crafts, Egmore, Madras.
(ii) Art Masters’ Class, Teachers’ College, Saidapet.
(iii) Manual Training Class, Teachers’ College, Saidapet.
(iv) Municipal Art School, Kumbakonam.
The Manual Training Class at Saidapet was, however, suspended during
1946–47.
In the North-West Frontier Province, there are no special Arts and Crafts
schools, but Primary and Middle Schools in the districts provide elementary
training in local crafts. Basket-making, Gold and Silver Embroidery, Hazara
Embroidery, Toy and Doll-making, Mokiash work, Chab and Kundi work and
Rug-making are some of the important crafts taught.
Orissa offers a few scholarships to her students for study in other provinces, as
she has no school for Arts and Crafts herself.
For the Matriculation Examination, however, Drawing and Manual Training
have been included as optional subjects. In Primary and Middle Schools, instruc-
tion is provided in handicrafts. Provision has also been made for Arts and Crafts in
teachers’ training schools. Hand-work forms a compulsory subject for elementary
school teachers. Needle-work and Clay Modelling are compulsory for women
teachers of this grade.
In Punjab, elementary training in some Arts and Crafts has been provided in
Primary and Middle Schools for both boys and girls. Training in Arts and Crafts

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has also been insisted for training of teachers of all grades. The Re-organisation
Committee of 1937–38 recommended this training as compulsory for elementary
school teachers, and the recommendation was brought into force in 1939–40. At
the Central Training College, Lahore, instruction in Pottery-making, Clay Model-
ling, Cardboard Modelling, Papier-mache work, Book-binding and Marbling has
been provided in a separate class since 1942. In order to make University Educa-
tion more realistic and attractive for girls, the latter have been allowed to offer Art
as an elective subject at the Intermediate and B.A. Examinations. This is reported
to have proved a great success.
Of the special schools, the outstanding institution is the Mayo School of Art at
Lahore. During 1939–40, a Designs Department was added to it.
In Sind, Drawing is taught in Primary and Secondary Schools. Handwork has
been assigned an important place in the revised curriculum (1942) for Primary
Schools for boys and girls.
In the United Provinces, Arts and Crafts of an elementary character are taught
in the Basic and other Primary and Secondary Schools for boys and girls.
Art and handicraft classes have been provided in the Government Basic Train-
ing College for Teachers at Allahabad.
Facilities also exist for the teaching of Arts and Crafts outside the control of the
Department of Education. There was a good deal of artistic activity in the Prov-
ince. Private Art Schools came into existence at various places, the one at Alla-
habad attracting a large number of students. The Painting Class at the Allahabad
University maintained all-round progress.
In Ajmer-Merwara, Vernacular Primary and Secondary Schools provide instruc-
tion in Arts and Crafts as optional subjects, while High Schools encourage them
in the form of students’ hobbies. Arts and Crafts form part of the compulsory
course of studies in the Government Normal School for Women. The Sophia Girls’
Intermediate College at Ajraer provides instruction in Needle-work, Drawing and
Painting. For men teachers under training, the Government Normal School and the
Training College, both at Ajmer, provide instruction in Clay Modelling, Painting,
etc., of which in two subjects teachers are compulsorily required to take training.
In Delhi, no special schools exist for Arts and Crafts. But in the Delhi Poly-
technic and the Modern Higher Secondary School, provision is made for teaching
certain items of Arts and Crafts as part of the general curriculum, leading up to
Higher Secondary School or Matriculation Examination.
Music
In Assam, one notable event was the appointment of a Committee in 1941 to
consider the needs of Music Education in girls’ schools. As a result of its recom-
mendations, arrangements for teaching Music were made in four girls’ schools in
Shillong and 9 music teachers were appointed. In 1942, these classes had to be
closed on account of poor attendance due to the war.
For college students, similar provision outside college hours exists in the Murar-
ichand College, Sylhet, where there is a Music section organised on a voluntary basis.

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For specialised study of Music, the Govardhana Sangit Vidyalaya, Sylhet, pro-
vides a four-year course leading to the award of a Diploma.
The Province also provides an annual scholarship for advanced students at the
Marris College of Hindustani Music in Lucknow.
In Bengal, Music is taught as a regular subject in many girls’ schools and is a sub-
ject for Matriculation. Of the special schools of Music, the most prominent are the
Calcutta School of Music, the Sangit Vidyalala and the Sangit Sangha, all in Cal-
cutta, and the Sangit Bhavana of the Visva Bharati, Santiniketan. Sangit Bhavana
attracts students from all over India and abroad. The Music School at Moynadal in
the district of Birbhum was meant specially for imparting training in Kirtan.
In Bihar, Music is taught either as an extra-curricular subject or as an optional
subject for Matriculation Examination in selected High Schools particularly in
Giris’ High Schools. In all Middle Schools for Girls, Music is taught as a regu-
lar subject. European Secondary Schools for Girls prepare pupils for the Music
examination of the Trinity College of Music, London.
The Patna University has decided to open a College of Music at Patna for which
the Provincial Government have sanctioned a grant of Rs. 10,000 for a period of
three years and a non-recurring grant of Rs. 3,000.
Though not progressing satisfactorily, mention may be made of the two music
schools at Purulia, viz., Pashupati Gangadhar Sangit Vidyalaya and Saraswati
Sangit Vidyalaya.
In Bombay, the number of special music schools in 1945–46 was 10 with an
enrolment of 338. Instruction in Music is also imparted in certain Primary and
Secondary Schools.
In Central Provinces and Berar, there is provision for courses in Music at the
High School stage. Besides, there are a number of popular Music classes run
by private bodies in some of the big towns like Nagpur, Jubbulpore, etc. These
classes generally follow the Bhatkhande curriculum of Music and some of them
prepare students for examination in Music of the Lucknow University.
In Madras, the only recognised special institution for Music is the Teachers’
College of Music, Madras, which was recognised in 1937–38. This College pre-
sented 4 men and 9 women candidates in April 1946 for the examination for
Teachers’ Certificate in Indian Music and all of them were declared successful.
The Madras University has instituted a Bachelor’s Degree in Music.
In the North-West Frontier Province, Western Music is taught in the Convent Day
School, Peshawar. Indian Music is taught in a few of the Hindu and Sikh schools.
In Orissa, Music is provided in a few high schools and training institutions for
boys and in all high schools and training schools for girls. It is an optional subject
for the Matriculation and Teachers’ Certificate Examinations.

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Of the special schools, mention may be made of the Utkal Sangit Samaj at Cut-
tack, which provides facilities for the teaching of vocal as well as instrumental
Music. It receives a grant from the Provincial Government.
In Punjab, Music is provided in a large number of girls’ schools as an extra-
curricular subject and is reported to be very popular. It is also an optional sub-
ject for women for the Intermediate and B.A. Degree Examination of the Punjab
University.
In Sind, almost all the district towns have music schools which are private
institutions. Some of them are proprietary while others are managed by social,
charitable and semi-charitable bodies.
In the United Provinces, Music maintained its popularity during the period
under review. Apart from its being taught in a larger number of high schools and
inter-colleges as an optional subject, it was also taught in the Allahabad Univer-
sity which had organised Diploma courses in Music. It has also been introduced
as one of the subjects for the B.Sc. special course for women.
The chief institutions for teaching of higher classical Music are the Marris Col-
lege of Hindustani Music at Lucknow and the Prayag Sangit Samiti at Allahabad.
The Marris College of Hindustani Music is an all-India institution where students
from all over the country and even from outside come. It teaches the Bhatkhande
system of Music. It has two courses—one leading to Intermediate in Music, lasting
three years and five months, the other to Bachelor of Music, lasting two years after
the Intermediate. The financial condition of the institution is still unsatisfactory.
The Sangit Samiti at Allahabad has increased in strength steadily since its foun-
dation in 1926, and developed into an affiliating and examining institution, with the
authority to grant diplomas in Music. During 1943–44, dancing classes were added.
The Uday Shankar Culture Centre at Almora, which was designed primarily as an
institution for the Art of Dance, has also provided facilities for learning Indian Music.
In Ajmer-Merwara, Indian schools for girls and the European and Anglo-Indian
schools for boys and girls provide for teaching of Music. It is an optional sub-
ject for the High School Examination of the Rajputana area. Provision for Music
exists also in the Savitri College and the Government Normal School for Women
Teachers. During 1934–44, a private Music College was started in Ajmer.
In Delhi, about 12 girls’ schools have arrangements for Music which is an
optional subject both for the High School and S. L. C. and Higher Secondary
Education, Delhi Province.
Dancing
Action-songs and elementary forms of Dancing are taught in most of Primary
Schools in all provinces.

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In Assam, Bengal, Orissa, Ajmer and Delhi, in Secondary Schools for Girls,
Dancing is taught in conjunction with music. In some provinces like Bengal and
Bihar, Dancing on the Bratachari lines has been introduced in some schools.
Only a few provinces provide facilities for specialised study of Dancing.
Bengal has an outstanding centre for the cultivation of this art in the Sangita
Bhavan at the Visva Bharati, Santiniketan.
A notable institution in Indian Dancing is Kala Kshetra at Adyar, Madras. Men-
tion may also be made of the Kerala Kala Mandalam situated in the Cochin State
which is devoted to the Kathakali, another Indian style of Dance.
In the United Provinces, the Uday Shankar Culture Centre at Almora flourished,
though for a brief period, as an institute of Indian Dance. Founded in 1938–39,
on contributions from England and America, amounting to the sum of £20,000, it
provided a course of five years’ training in various branches of Dance and Music.
The Provincial Government also sanctioned a grant in 1941–42, but at the end of
1943, the institute had to close down on account of financial difficulties. During
its brief period of existence it gathered together eminent exponents of various
schools of Indian Dance and Music.

POST-WAR EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I

THE REPORT OF THE CENTRAL ADVISORY

BOARD OF EDUCATION

A. Main Features of Recommendations and Endorsement by the

Department of Education
THE Report of the Central Advisory Board of Education was submitted to the
Reconstruction Committee of His Excellency the Viceroy’s Executive Council in
1944, together with a Memorandum by what was then the Education, Health and
Lands Department of the Government of India. The Report consisted of an Introduc-
tion and a Conclusion and twelve chapters dealing with the main branches of activity
in a modern and democratic system of public instruction, viz., Basic (Primary and
Middle) Education, Pre-Primary Education, High School Education, University Edu-
cation, Technical, Commercial and Art Education, Adult Education, The Training of
Teachers, The Health of the School Child, The Education of the Handicapped, Rec-
reative and Social Activities, Employment Bureaux and Administration. In view of
their importance the recommendations at the end of each chapter are set out below:—

Chapter I—Basic (Primary and Middle) Education

(a) A system of universal, compulsory and free education for all boys and
girls between the ages of six and fourteen should be introduced as speedily as

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possible though in view of the practical difficulty of recruiting the requisite supply
of trained teachers it may not be possible to complete it in less than forty years.
(b) The character of the instruction to be provided should follow the general
lines laid down in the reports of the Central Advisory Board’s two Committees on
Basic Education.
(c) The Senior Basic (Middle) School, being the finishing school for the great
majority of future citizens, is of fundamental importance and should be gener-
ously staffed and equipped.
(d) All education depends on the teacher. The present status and remunera-
tion of teachers, and especially those in Primary Schools, are deplorable. The
standards in regard to the training, recruitment and conditions of service of teach-
ers prescribed in the Report of the Committee approved by the Central Advisory
Board in 1943 represent the minimum compatible with the success of a national
system: these should be adopted and enforced everywhere.
(e) A vast increase in the number of trained women teachers will be required.
(f ) The total estimated annual cost of the proposals contained in this chapter
when in full operation is Rs. 200 crores approximately.

Chapter II—Pre-Primary Education

(a) An adequate provision of pre-primary instruction in the form of Nursery
Schools or classes is an essential adjunct to any national system of education. The
provision in this respect at present is negligible.
(b) In urban areas, where sufficient children are available within a reason-
able radius, separate Nursery Schools or departments may be provided: elsewhere
Nursery classes should be attached to Junior Basic (Primary) Schools.
(c) Nursery Schools and classes should invariably be staffed with women
teachers who have received special training for this work.
(d) Pre-Primary Education should in all cases be free. While it may not be
feasible to make attendance compulsory, no efforts should be spared to persuade
parents to send their children to school voluntarily, particularly in areas where
housing conditions are unsatisfactory and/or mothers are accustomed to go out
to work.
(e) The main object of education at this stage is to give young children social
experience rather than formal instruction.
( f ) On the basis of a normal age range of three to six years, provision has
been made for 1,000,000 places in Nursery Schools and classes.
(g) The total estimated net cost of the proposals set out in this chapter when
in full operation is Rs. 3,18,40,000.

Chapter III—High School Education

(a) The High School course should cover six years and the normal age of
admission should be about eleven.

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(b) Entry to High Schools should be on a selective basis; only those pupils
should be admitted who show promise of taking full advantage of the education
provided. Additional places may be provided for those not selected provided that
no cost falls on public funds.
(c) In accordance with the general principle set out in (b) above, places in
High Schools should be provided for at least one child in every five of the appro-
priate age group.
(d) In order to secure the right children, the methods of selection to be employed
will require the most careful consideration. Special arrangements will have to be
made for the transfer from Senior Basic (Middle) Schools to High Schools of suit-
able children and particularly of those who show signs of late development.
(e) High Schools should be of two main types: (a) Academic (b) Technical.
The objective of both should be to provide a good all-round education combined
with some preparation in the later stages for the careers which pupils will enter
on leaving school.
( f ) The curriculum in all cases should be as varied as circumstances permit
and should not be unduly restricted by the requirements of Universities or exam-
ining bodies.
(g) In order that no poor child of ability may be excluded, liberal assistance in
the form of free places, scholarships and stipends should be available throughout
the course.
(h) In order to secure teachers of the right type, the salaries paid in all rec-
ognised schools, whether maintained by the State or by private bodies, should
not be less than those prescribed by the Central Advisory Board of Education.
(i) The estimated minimum net annual cost of the High School system out-
lined in this chapter when in full operation is Rs. 50 crores.

Chapter IV—University Education

(a) Indian Universities, as they exist to-day, despite many admirable features,
do not fully satisfy the requirements of a national system of education.
(b) In order to raise standards all round, the conditions for admission must
be revised with the object of ensuring that all students are capable of taking full
advantage of a University course. The proposed reorganisation of the High School
system will facilitate this. Adequate financial assistance must be provided for poor
students.
(c) The present Intermediate course should be abolished. Ultimately the
whole of this course should be covered in the High School but as an immediate
step the first year of the course should be transferred to High Schools and the
second to Universities.
(d) The minimum length of a University degree course should be three
years.
(e) The tutorial system should be widely extended and closer personal con-
tacts established between teachers and students.

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( f ) The importance of establishing a high standard in post-graduate studies

and particularly in pure and applied research should be emphasised.
(g) Steps should be taken to improve the conditions of service, including
remuneration, of University and College teachers where those now in operation
are not attracting men and women of the requisite calibre.
(h) An Indian University Grants Committee should be constituted for the pur-
poses and with the terms of reference set out in this chapter.
(i) To provide for the increased number of able and well-prepared students
which a national system of High Schools may be expected to produce, approxi-
mately 240,000 places, or double the existing number, should be available in
Universities.
( j) The estimated total net annual cost of the scheme for University education
set out in this chapter when in full operation is Rs. 672 lakhs.

Chapter V—Technical, Commercial and Art Education

(a) In view of the prospective needs of post-war industry and commerce
for skilled technicians, and in order to cater for the aptitudes of those who
will derive greater benefit from a practical course, the establishment of an
efficient system of Technical Education at all stages, on the lines set out in the
Report of the Technical Education Committee, is a matter of great urgency.
(b) Due regard should be paid to the recommendations of the Abbott-Wood
Report in respect of the scope and content of Technical Instruction.
(c) The estimated gross annual cost of the proposals contained in this chapter
will be approximately Rs. 10 crores and the net cost Rs. 8 crores.

Chapter VI—Adult Education

(a) Comprehensive arrangements on the general lines set out in the Adult
Education Committee’s Report should form an integral part of any national sys-
tem of education. These are particularly important in India to-day in view of the
very high percentage of illiterates.
(b) Literacy is a means not an end in itself. Although the main emphasis in
the beginning may be placed on the liquidation of illiteracy, adult education in the
full sense must be provided for those already literate. The amount of this should
progressively increase as illiteracy disappears.
(c) It is estimated that even with the introduction of a universal system of
Basic Education there will be over 9 crores of illiterates (age group 10 to 40) to
be dealt with. Plans should be made to solve this problem by a campaign spread
over twenty years. Before this campaign opens, five years should be devoted to
the necessary preparations, including the recruitment and training of the staff of
teachers required.
(d) In this as in all branches of education the quality of the teacher is of
supreme importance. The difficulty of obtaining a sufficient number of teachers
of the right type, particularly women, must on no account be underestimated.

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(e) The responsibility for adult education must rest with the State but every
effort should be made to enlist the aid of suitable voluntary organisations wher-
ever available.
( f ) The estimated total annual cost of the proposals contained in this chapter is
Rs. 3 crores. At the height of the literacy campaign this may be exceeded.by Rs. 25
to 30 lakhs, but the average annual cost for the twenty years will be little less than
Rs. 3 crores.

Chapter VII—The Training of Teachers

(a) The proposals for the recruitment and training of teachers as set out in
the Report approved by the Central Advisory Board in January 1943 should be
generally adopted.
(b) The existing training institutions are barely sufficient to meet wastage
among existing teachers and to train those hitherto untrained.
(c) New Training Schools and Colleges (including University Education
Departments) must be provided to supply the additional teachers whom a national
system will require. These will amount to over 2,000,000 non-graduates for
schools of all types and 180,000 graduates for High Schools.
(d) Arrangements should be made to pick out suitable boys and girls
towards the end of the High School course. This is particularly important in
Girls’ High Schools in view of the vast increase in the number of women teach-
ers required.
(e) The courses provided should be essentially practical and should be spe-
cially related to the needs of the schools in which the trainees will subsequently
serve.
( f ) No fees should be charged either in Training Schools or Training Col-
leges: liberal assistance should be available for the maintenance of poor students.
(g) Refresher courses are of the utmost importance and should be provided
for all types of teachers but particularly for those in remote rural areas. Facilities
should be provided for research and selected teachers should be encouraged to
study educational methods in foreign countries.
(h) It is impossible to calculate the precise annual cost of the proposals
contained in this chapter. The total net cost of training the additional teachers
required for a national system will amount, including maintenance where neces-
sary, to Rs. 1,59,94,98,250 over a period of thirty-five years or an average of Rs.
4,56,99,950 a year.

Chapter VIII—The Health of the School Child

(a) Provision for ensuring the physical welfare of all pupils and students
should be made on the lines set out in the Report of the Joint Committee.
(b) The cost of the School Medical Service including provision of meals and
special schools, etc., has, on the analogy of other countries, been estimated at 10

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per cent, of the total expenditure on the schools. Provision has been made for this
in the estimates of the cost of the national system at the appropriate stages.

Chapter IX—The Education of the Handicapped

(a) Provision for the mentally or physically handicapped should form an
essential part of a national system of education and should be administered by the
Education Department.
(b) Hitherto in India Governments have hardly interested themselves at all
in this branch of education: what has been done has been due almost entirely to
voluntary effort.
(c) Wherever possible, handicapped children should not be segregated from
normal children. Only when the nature and extent of their defect make it neces-
sary, should they be sent to special schools or institutions. Partialty handicapped
children should receive special treatment at ordinary schools.
(d) The blind and deaf need special educational arrangements, including spe-
cially trained teachers. It may be desirable to establish central institutions for
training the teachers required.
(e) Particular care should be taken to train the handicapped, whereever pos-
sible, for remunerative employment and to find such employment for them. After-
care work is essential.
( f ) In the absence of any reliable data it is impossible to estimate what would
be the cost of making adequate provision for the handicapped in India; 10 per cent,
of the total expenditure on Basic and High Schools has been set aside for special
services, which include such provision, and it is hoped that this will suffice.

Chapter X—Recreative and Social Activities

(a) The provision of recreative and social activities on an adequate scale is an
essential feature of any modern educational system.
(b) Apart from the needs of boys and girls in schools and colleges special
attention should be paid to those in the 14 to 20 age group who are no longer
attending school. To serve these a Youth Movement on an all-India basis should
be set up.
(c) A Youth Movement should aim at co-ordinating and supplementing rather
than superseding the work of organisations already dealing with aspects of this
problem.
(d) The main need of a Youth Movement will be for leaders, both men and
women, who will have to be specially trained. The possibility of finding suitable
recruits among demobilised Officers and N.C.O’s should be explored.
(e) The provision of social and recreative facilities for adults should form
an important part of any Social Service Scheme. Reference is invited for the
Report of the Board’s Committee on Social Service and Public Administration
(1941).

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( f ) It is impossible to estimate the ultimate cost of the provision contem-

plated in this chapter. Rs. 1 crore may be included in the estimate.

Chapter XI—Employment Bureaux

(a) Employment Bureaux form an essential part of educational administra-
tion: they are especially necessary in India in view of the restricted openings at
the moment for progressive employment.
(b) Employment Bureaux, if they are to fulfil successfully the functions set
out in this chapter, must be staffed by trained experts with practical experience of
teaching and of industrial conditions.
(c) While contact should be maintained with Unemployment Exchanges,
Labour Tribunals, etc., established by other departments, Employment Bureaux
which deal with the output of educational institutions, should be under the control
of the Education Department.
(d) It is estimated that the gross annual cost of running Employment Bureaux
(apart from those separately established by institutions of University rank) will
amount to Rs. 64,00,000. This should be regarded ultimately as a normal part of
administrative expenditure.

Chapter XII—Administration
(a) The Provinces should remain the main units for educational administra-
tion except in regard to University and Higher Technical Education, the activities
of which should be co-ordinated on an all-India basis.
(b) In the event of the Indian States taking part in educational development
on an all-India scale it may be necessary in order to form economic educational
units to group the smaller ones or attach them to larger States or contiguous
Provinces.
(c) A national system of education will require much closer cooperation,
financial and otherwise, between the Central and Provincial Governments.
(d) Provincial Governments should be left to make such changes in their
administrative arrangements as the carrying out of educational developments
on the scale contemplated may require. Experience, however, suggests that they
would be well advised to resume all educational powers from local bodies, except
where these are functioning efficiently.
(e) In order to enlist local interest in education, School Managing Bod-
ies, School Boards and District Education Committees may be constituted, if
and when sufficient people of the right type are available to serve on them.
An Education Advisory Board for the whole Province may be desirable.
( f ) A strong Education Department will be required at the Centre and in
this connection the scope and functions of the Central Advisory Board should be
enlarged.
(g) Steps should be taken in accordance with the recommendations of the
Board’s Committee on the Recruitment of Education Officers (1943) to check the

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present deterioration in the status and calibre of the educational administrative

service and to enable it to secure the services of the type of officer who will be
capable of carrying a scheme of the kind contemplated into successful operation.
(h) Arrangements should be made for the exchange of officers between the
Centre and the Provinces and between one Province and another. The desirability
of establishing a senior educational administrative service on an all-India basis
should receive consideration.
(i) The Director of Public Instruction should be directly responsible for the
general administration of education, other than University and Higher Technical
Education, throughout the Province. He should also be Secretary for Education,
should it be thought necessary, to keep in existence a separate post of this kind.
( j) Provision has been made under each separate branch of education for the
cost of administration which may be estimated at 5 percent, of the gross annual
expenditure.
At the same time as the Report a companion volume was issued containing in a
slightly abridged form the reports of the Board’s Committees on which the main
Report was based. The attention of those who are more interested in the educa-
tional methods than in organic structure is specially invited to this companion
volume, which can hardly be summarised here. The Departmental Memorandum,
which will be found in full in Appendix I, is also a document of sufficient inter-
est and importance and deserves a fairly full summary here, if only because it
attempts to deal with the major issues raised by earlier critics, including those
contained in the minutes of dissent to the Report itself.
Perhaps the most important of all the issues raised was that which concerned the
future relations between the Central and Provincial Governments. It was appre-
hended in some quarters that if the financial implications of the Plan involved
substantial grants-in-aid from Central Revenues—as they in fact did and do—
it might lead to some infringement of Provincial autonomy. The Departmental
Memo, pointed out in this connection that as a matter of principle no Central
Government could be expected to subsidise Provincial activities on a large scale
without requiring to satisfy itself that the money was spent for the purpose for and
in accordance with the conditions on which it was given but at the same time since
there would seem to be a large measure of agreement between the Centre and the
Provinces, both as to the objects to be secured and as to the best ways of securing
them, there was no reason why such liaison as might be essential should involve
any onerous interference by one with the other. Indeed, the Department of Educa-
tion looked forward to the establishment in the common interest of a cordial spirit
of co-operation between the parties concerned, a hope which the experience of
other countries where the cost of a public system of education is defrayed partly
from Central and partly from Local funds has shown to be not unrealisable.
Indeed, although such development as has so far taken place in the Provinces has
received substantial assistance from the Centre both in the way of money and advice,
there has been no instance as yet of any Province complaining of interference.

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The Memorandum also endorsed the views of the Central Advisory Board of
Education in regard to the sphere of work of the Central Government vis-a-vis
Provincial Governments in the field of education, viz., that its administration at
any rate up to the end of the High School stage, must remain a Provincial respon-
sibility. In the higher ranges of education, however, it was generally felt that the
more advanced forms of Technical, Commercial and Art Education in view of their
special character, their costliness and their intimate relation to the requirements of
industry and commerce rather than to those of any definite geographic area could
hardly be organised efficiently on a Provincial basis. The steps which have already
been taken at the instance of the All-India Council for Technical Education (a prod-
uct of the Report) to promote the development of higher technical institutions on
this broader basis are described in Chapter V of Part III of the Survey.
Fears had also been expressed that the application of the selective principle for
higher education as advocated in the Report might result in unfairness to members
of backward communities. The Memorandum recognised that pending the com-
plete establishment of a national system of education which catered impartially for
all, special measures would be necessary to safeguard the interests of backward
communities during the transitional period but pointed out that there was nothing
in the Report which precluded the Provincial authorities from taking such measures
as they thought necessary in this connection. There could, however, be little doubt
as to the validity of the selective principle itself, since boys and girls are born with
different abilities and aptitudes and apart from any question of social justice, the
public interest requires that those with the requisite capacity, in whatever class or
community they may be found, should be given the chance of further education in
order that they may be equipped to serve the community to the best of their ability.
The Memorandum then dealt at some length with the admittedly difficult and
controversial recommendation of the Report that the introduction of a compul-
sory system of basic education, since it obviously could not be brought into oper-
ation all over the country at one and the same time, should proceed from area to
area instead of from age to age. It had been argued that this might create serious
social conflicts, since the people in certain areas might have to wait a long time
for the educational facilities which those in other areas enjoyed. The Memoran-
dum, while admitting the force of this argument, pointed out that any scheme for
educational development would fail to achieve its purpose if it merely provided
education for all up to a certain point, e.g., the end of the primary or junior basic
stage without providing at the same time the necessary facilities for further edu-
cation for those who have the capacity to benefit by it. There was an urgent need
for increasing the supply of persons with expert knowledge and equipped to fill
positions of responsibility in all spheres of the national life and the time required
to satisfy it would be indefinitely extended if the number of High Schools from
which the additional required leaders, experts—not to mention teachers—could
alone be recruited was not very largely increased as quickly as possible. That

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was also the further consideration that public opinion which might acquiesce, as
elsewhere, in an inadequate provision of education, if this were the same for all,
would be stimulated to demand the most rapid extension possible by the very fact
that certain areas were given facilities in advance of others.
Although clearly recognising that it is for the Provincial and State Governments
to work out for themselves the best way of carrying out the policy outlined in the
Report, the Memorandum sets out certain considerations which should determine
the minimum size of any selected area. The determining factor is that the area
should be large enough to justify the provision of an adequate variety of facilities at
the High School stage. There are advantages in areas being partly urban and partly
rural, though there is no reason why an area which is exclusively urban or exclu-
sively rural should not be made an effective unit for organisation. The advantage of
a “mixed” area is that it emphasises the importance of variety more clearly than an
area of uniform character. Such an area would obviously need in addition to High
Schools of the normal academic type, High Schools with a technical or commercial
bias for urban districts and others with an agricultural bias for rural districts. From
the point of view of minimum size, it is suggested that the area should be at least
large enough to provide sufficient children of the requisite ability to fill 12 High
Schools and, in order to ensure the minimum variety of curriculum in the individual
schools, each school should contain at least two parallel classes in each year of the
course. On the basis of 30 pupils per class and a six years’ course, each High School
would thus contain not less than 360 pupils and an area with 12 schools would have
not less than 4,320 pupils at the High School stage. Assuming for the sake of sim-
plicity that the distribution of the school population at the lower stages is normal,
this would mean that there would be 18,000 pupils in the Junior Basic stage and
8,640 in the Senior stage. A school population of 28,800 between 6 and 14 years of
age (i.e., 18,000 + 8,640 + half of 4,320 falling within the age group) would mean
a total population of about 1,46,000. There is of course no reason why areas should
be of uniform size or restricted to the basis set out above which should indeed be
regarded as the absolute minimum for economic organisation rather than the opti-
mum size. There may be excellent arguments in favour of making them much big-
ger in many places and it would almost always be desirable to treat large towns
and their suburbs as single administrative units. On the other hand, particularly in
the earlier stages when the rate of expansion must be conditioned by the number of
teachers available, it would be easier with smaller units to meet the special claims of
backward communities and by spreading these units over the whole area to obviate
the criticism that one geographical section of Province or State was being favoured
at the expense of the rest.
While it would be convenient, that pre-Primary Education should also be organ-
ised on a similar basis, the area principle would not serve the purpose of Higher
Technical Education or University Education. Moreover, a separate approach on
much broader lines would also be required for such branches of education as

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Adult Education, the Training of Teachers, Employment Bureaux and the provi-
sion of Recreative and Social Activities for people of all ages.
In conclusion, the Memorandum endorses the opinion of the Central Advisory
Board of Education that it would imperil the ultimate success of the scheme if
in order to secure a large number of teachers in a short period the standards pre-
scribed for qualifications and training were in any way lowered and it expresses
the hope that every opportunity would be given to suitable recruits from the ex-
service personnel to join the teaching profession.

B. Approval of the Report by the Central Government.

On 19th October, 1945, the Viceroy’s Executive Council after considering the
Report, the Memorandum from the Department of Education and other relevant
documents arrived at the following decisions:—

1. The Council accepted generally, subject to the limitation of finance, the

principles and objects of the Central Advisory Board of Education on post-war
educational development of India, but resolved—
(a) that until the recommendation of the Central Advisory Board of Educa-
tion that educational opportunities should be available for all has been
fully implemented, steps should be taken to secure the provision of ad-
equate facilities for Muslims and other minority communities and to ac-
celerate the progress of the scheduled castes and backward communities;
(b) that with this object in view the Education Department be required to
examine all schemes submitted by Provincial Governments and Local
Administrations with a view to seeing that both in the selection of areas
for development and in the provision of facilities for education gener-
ally, the needs of Muslim and other minority communities, the scheduled
castes and backward communities are adequately satisfied; and
(c) that Central Government grants-in-aid for Provincial educational devel-
opment should only be sanctioned where the Education Department is
satisfied that the requirement set out above has been fulfilled.
2. The Council further directed that the Education Department in consultation
with the Finance Department should send a letter to Provincial Governments set-
ting out the general principles accepted by Council.

While conveying the decision of the Government of India accepting the Report
of the Central Advisory Board of Education to the Provinces, in January 1946,
the Department of Education reiterated the importance at all stages of educational
development, of preferring quality to quantity and of resisting the temptation
under political or other pressure to lower standards and to spread such funds as

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might be available thinly over the whole sphere of education rather than to con-
centrate on high standards in a more limited field.

CHAPTER VII
ANTHROPOLOGY, ARCHÆOLOGY,
ARCHIVES AND LIBRARY
THE Department, now Ministry, of Education has also to deal with the Anthro-
pological Survey of India, Archaeology, the National Archives and the Imperial
Library. Each of these sections have their own five-year plans, which are briefly
described below:—

A. The Anthropological Survey of India

The Anthropological Survey of India came into existence as a separate organ-
isation from 1st December, 1945. Prior to that, it had functioned since 1937 as a
section of the Zoological Survey of India.
The study of Man, in all its varied aspects, is of special importance in an
age like the present when the physical sciences are advancing at a pace out of
all proportion to the progress made by social and economic studies, and in a
country like India which in the dawn of independence is faced with the task of
welding her population into a unified whole. In Russia, for example, the work of
anthropologists has been recognised as of the first value in helping to unite the
U.S.S.R.’s great conglomeration of tribes and races of diverse language, origin
and customs into a single nation. Furthermore, the importance of having a well-
organised Anthropological Survey in a land which has an aboriginal population
of twenty-five millions, who need special care and protection against the disinte-
grating forces of modern civilisation, cannot be overstated. Already, through lack
of proper attention, deterioration and depopulation have taken place in several of
the aboriginal tribes like the Todas, the Andamanese, the Nicobarese, etc.
In India an enormous field of research, both theoretical and practical, lies before
the Anthropologist. Despite a number of outstanding monographs on individual
tribes and concise “glossaries” of tribes and castes, the social organisation, the
religion and the customs of vast numbers of the Indian people are still scantily
recorded and imperfectly understood. The great fascinating fields of criminology,
tribal art, primitive linguistics, the application of modern methods of psychologi-
cal investigation to aboriginal people, the economics of the countryside not only
offer a tempting subject of research to the scientist, but urgently require investiga-
tion if the inhabitants (and specially the more primitive inhabitants) of the country
are to be administered with sympathy and understanding.
The Five-Year Plan of the Anthropological Survey has, therefore, been drawn
on broad and comprehensive lines keeping in view the development in science in

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the advanced countries of Europe and America, which can be grouped under the
heads of Physical, Biological and Cultural.
I. Physical Anthropology. Under this head the following lines of investigation
are proposed:—
(a) Somatology, Craniometry and Osteometry
(i) Paleontological Work. The occurrence of such early forms as Sivap-
ithecus and Ramapithecus suggest the possibility that further explora-
tion may and probably will discover prehuman remains similar to those
found in China, South Africa and Java.
(ii) Pre-historical Survey. In this work close collaboration has already
been established between the archaeological and anthropological sur-
veys. Many human remains discovered by archaeologists have already
been handed over to the Anthropological Survey for study, and there
are opportunities, as for example the excavation of such cave-sites as
are suspected of having been inhabited, for joint research by the two
departments.
(iii) A Survey of Present-day Conditions. The acquisition of Somatometric
and Osteometric data regarding the whole population is of great impor-
tance. This study will include the examination of the skeletons of the
existing population by means of X-rays.

(b) Radiological Work

The examination of the skeletons of individuals of known age and the radio-
logical examination of living people in order to determine the age at which the
bones of the skeleton attain their final mature form or other differences in their
maturation, proportional lengths, general configuration, and adaptation to such
habitual postures as squatting. Such work is not only of anthropological interest
but also of legal value, as it will provide data for the determination of the age of
any individual.
(c) Somatological Work
This includes the study of such characters as the pigmentation of the skin,
colour of the eye, type of hair, and other bodily characteristics. It provides evi-
dence of the existence of different physical types, and research into such features
as finger-prints, hand-prints, types of nails, etc., are not only of legal value but
will provide data that will have bearing on the question of heredity.
(d) Physiological Work
Investigations will be conducted to discover whether any difference can be
detected in different tribes and especially in the more primitive groups in such phys-
iological factors as acuity of vision, range of colour vision, range of hearing, etc.

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(e) Psychological Work

Investigations will be carried out on the psychology of the various tribes and
races, particularly the more primitive, to discover their natural aptitudes, special
abilities and disabilities and the lines along which adjustment to modern condi-
tions can be directed without upsetting their general equilibrium.

II. Biological Investigations. Under this head the following lines of research
are proposed:—
(a) The examination of blood groups and the determination of the various
proportions of each in the different tribes and races.
(b) A study of the effects of nutrition and particularly of malnutrition, or of
an unbalanced diet, on growth, the vital capacity, age of onset of puberty,
resistance to disease, etc.
(c) A study of human genetics, and the effects of inter-marriage, endogamy,
etc., a study which has a direct bearing on the inheritance of criminal
trait, lunacy and other morbid conditions.
(d) The study of Twins, which will provide evidence with regard to human
heredity not obtainable except by direct experiments.
III. Cultural Studies
The need for this has already been emphasised. It will include the investiga-
tion of social organisation, economics, religion, tribal and local self-government,
linguistics, folk-lore, technology and art, crime and tribal law and the effects of
the impact of modern upon more primitive life. This line of research is of spe-
cial applied significance as leading to a right administration, especially of tribal
peoples.
The paucity of ethnographical objects in the museums of India as compared
to the Indian collections abroad has long been a matter of concern. Unless steps
are taken without delay to complete the collections in the Indian museum and
elsewhere a whole world of primitive arts and crafts of this country will pass
away without record. The preservation of the existing specimens is also a task of
considerable magnitude.
Towards the fulfilment of this programme a good beginning has already been
made. Work already done may be summarised under three heads:
(a) organisation of an efficient nucleus staff with proper equipment, library
and laboratories,
(b) initiation of scientific studies, and
(c) provision of post-graduate training in all branches of anthropology.
As regards (a) the following posts have been created—Director, Anthropologi-
cal Survey, and Anthropological Adviser to the Government of India.

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Deputy Director . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Superintending Anthropologist . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Anthropologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Biochemist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Statistician . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Subordinate Technical and Ministerial Posts . . . . 50
Training Scheme: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Anthropologist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Assistant Anthropologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Sub-technical and Ministerial Staff . . . . . . . . . . 4

For the second year, as part of the Five-Year Plan, the following posts have
been sanctioned:—

Anthropologist . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Assistant Anthropologists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Sub-technical and Ministerial Staff . . . . . . . 20

Some of the appointments have already been made and others are being made
through the Federal Public Service Commission.
Four Research Associates have also been appointed to work in the fields of
Physical Anthropology, Primitive Linguistics, Psychology and Folklore and oth-
ers will be appointed later.
The greater part of the year 1946–47 was spent in building up the equipment,
library and laboratories of the Department. An X-ray plant with accessories and
radiographic material has been purchased. The Applied Psychological Labora-
tory has been equipped with apparatus for mental tests, accessories and equip-
ment being made locally. Arrangements have also been made for purchasing from
America more delicate and complicated instruments for testing primitive people.
The number of books in the library has been doubled and complete sets of
important anthropological journals, such as Hereditas from Norway and The
American Anthropologist from Washington, as well as any other books and jour-
nals not otherwise available in India, have been obtained from abroad.
The scientific studies undertaken since December 1945 are as follows:—
(i) The detailed study and restoration of the skeletal materials from Harappa.
These fragile remains, in spite of the regular application of preservatives and all
possible care, have suffered greatly by being shifted from Calcutta to Dehra Dun
during the war and then again to Banaras and by the subsequent damage caused
by the great Varuna flood of September 1943. The greater part of the repairing and
restoration has now been completed; so has the larger portion of the diaptographic
tracing of skulls which were ruined by flood water. Much progress has also been

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made in the osteometric study of the bones including parallelograph drawings and
tracings and measurements of angles of retroversion and torsion.
Two short reports, one on the animal remains from Orikamedu and the other
giving a preliminary account of Harappa skeletons excavated this year, have been
sent to the Director-General of Archaeology.
(ii) Another important work completed was the preparation of a comprehensive
report on the cultural and racial affinities of the primitive tribes of India and the
problems affecting their administration in the light of the experience of tribal peoples
in different parts of the world. Maps illustrating the distribution of these tribes and
their proportionate strength were also prepared. This work entailed examination of a
large mass of material on non-Indian tribes which was only with difficulty obtained.
(iii) Field work was commenced at the earliest possible moment, even before tour-
ing equipment was available. The Deputy Director went with a party into the hills of
Orissa, where he made a special study of the religion of the Lanjhia Saoras, while
members of the party investigated the economics and physical characters of the people
from December 1946 to February 1947. In May 1947, the Director led a large expedi-
tion to the Jaunsar Bawar area, and valuable work was done both on the physical side
and in investigating the psychology and sociology of the inhabitants whose social cus-
toms present problems of peculiar difficulty and complexity to the administration. Mr.
Asutosh Bhattacharaya, a Research Associate, toured in the villages of Bengal and has
made a useful report on the distribution of the Dharma cult in that Province.
(iv) Another scientific investigation started during the year was the applica-
tion of mental tests to school-going children in Banaras for the assessment and
gradation of their mental abilities in order to provide norms for comparison with
the results of similar tests on children of primitive races.
(v) Arrangements for the publication of the first Bulletin and Memoirs of the
Anthropological Survey are now in an advanced stage and will include studies of the
Kols of Central India, the Santals, the Saoras and the anthropometry of Indus Kohistan.
An important aspect of the Survey’s literary work is the preparation of popular
handbooks in the national languages of the scientific works produced by members
of the Survey. One of these is now ready for the press and others are in preparation.
Six post-graduate students were selected for advanced training in anthropology
during 1946–47 and four others will be trained in 1947–48. Two students went on
the Orissa expedition early in the year and two others accompanied the Director
to Jaunsar Bawar. While at headquarters they have been given regular instruc-
tion and opportunities for laboratory training on a scale at present unobtainable
elsewhere. The training course for these students is of two years’ duration and a
stipend of Rs. 150 a month is allowed to them.
In view of the rapid advance in the development of method and tech-
nique in other countries, it is proposed to offer a few visiting Fellowships

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to foreign scholars, both Asiatic and Western, to facilitate their researches

in India and it is hoped that thereby not only will the cause of science be
advanced but the latest experience of world scholarship will be made avail-
able to the Survey.

B. The Archælogical Survey of India

1. Reorganisation of the Survey

With the setting up of Education as a separate department in 1945, the respon-
sibility for the maintenance and administration of the Archæological Survey was
allotted to the Department of Education.
The Archæological Survey of India was established in 1862, but was recon-
stituted and reinforced by Lord Curzon in 1902. It developed along three main
lines:—
(a) The conservation of historic and pre-historic buildings and sites; (b) the
excavation of ancient sites with a view to widening and deepening our knowl-
edge of the history of the Indian peoples; and (c) the collection of the almost
infinite epigraphical evidence upon which much of the history of India must be
founded.
To-day about 3,000 of the most important buildings and sites of India are con-
trolled in varying degree by the Department. These include monuments such as
the great group of temples at Bhubaneswar, the Taj Mahal and Fatehpur Sikri and
other world-famous buildings. It may fairly be said that an appreciable part of the
surviving contributions of India to the material culture of the world comes within
the purview of the Survey. The Department’s responsibility to India—and, for that
matter, outside India—is proportionately great.
Due to a number of factors, the Survey had reached a static stage by 1938 and in
order to revitalise it and to enable it to play its part to better effect, an enquiry was
made into the working of the Survey which brought to light a number of defects.
A three-year plan of development was accordingly worked out by the present
Director-General of Archæology and was accepted by Government for initiation
from 1945–46. As a result of these steps, considerable improvements have been
made in the reorganisation of the staff and the training of the circles and branches
in conformity with modern standards. The basic reconstruction of the Survey is
now nearing completion.
A detailed account of the reorganisation and recent development of the Survey
has been given in three memoranda issued by the Director-General in December
1947, March 1948, and April 1948. These are documents of the greatest interest
to all those interested in India’s vast, archæological treasures. Brief summaries of
them are given below:—

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Department of Archoælogy, 1944 to 1947

Organisation
The Department of Archæology was reorganised in many directions during the
last four years. The conservation of ancient monuments, which, in most Prov-
inces, had been done by the Provincial Public Works Departments, often with
deplorable results, was taken over for departmental execution. To cope with the
extra work, the strength of the cadre of gazetted officers was increased, so that all
circles could have a Superintendent and an Assistant Superintendent; a conserva-
tion staff of uniform strength was also sanctioned for all circles, which again were
reconstituted on an administratively convenient basis. The Epigraphical Branch
was strengthened by the addition of an Assistant Superintendent for Muslim Epig-
raphy, and the Chemical Branch by that of an Assistant Chemist. Another impor-
tant addition was a pre-historian, to deal with the rich pre-historic material of
India, especially of the South.
The activities of the Department are mainly judged outside by its publica-
tions, and it was therefore essential that a new orientation should be given to
its publications. A cheap and handy six-monthly Bulletin, named Ancient India,
was initiated and a new series of cheap and attractive guide-books to monuments
both in English and Indian languages was started. To look after the increased
publication activities a Superintendent for Publications was appointed.
The constitution of the Excavations Branch to replace the Exploration Branch
abolished in 1931 has been an event of great importance; it is the nucleus of a
bigger scheme of extensive exploration both pre-historic and historical. The spe-
cialised skill required of an excavator and his staff could not be expected in the
previous system of mustering an ad hoc staff for excavation, lacking in continuity
and specialised training.

Exploration
Already the Excavations Branch, working under the Director-General on a few
chosen sites, has achieved notable results. The sites have been equally divided
between the north and the south, so that the Dark Ages may be attacked from
both ends. The first site tackled by the Excavations Branch was Taxila; the work
showed that the occupation of the earliest city of Taxila extended back towards,
but scarcely beyond the annexation of North-West India by the Persian empire in
the sixth century B.C.
Renewed excavation at Harappa, the famous Indus Valley site in 1946, proved
the existence of formidable fortifications, which not only altered radically the earlier
interpretation of the Indus civilisation but seems to have enabled us to bring that
civilisation into direct relationship with the Aryan invasions reflected in the Rigveda.

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In the South, a fixed datum-line has been fixed by the 1945 excavation at Ari-
kamedu near Pondicherry, where, for the first time in the history of South-Indian
archæology, pottery and glassware imported from the Roman world in the first
century A.D. was found in association with a vast amount of local pottery, which
was thus now definitely dated.
It was now easy to extend this new knowledge inlands, and Brahmagiri in the
northern outskirts of Mysore State, where a distinctive type of Arikamedu pot-
tery had been known to exist, was the next choice. Here, in 1947, a simultaneous
exploration on the town-site and the adjacent megalithic cemetery was carried
out. The former revealed three successive cultures. The earliest was a primitive
culture by the use of polished stone axes, microliths, rough hand-made pottery
and occasionally small objects of copper and bronze; a reasonable computation
enables us to fix. 1000 to 200 B.C. as its date. The second may be called the
“megalithic culture” as its ceramic, polished, wheel-turned and parti-coloured in
black and brown, was also typical, of the neighbouring megalithic cist-burials.
This culture may be dated between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D., when it was sup-
planted by a culture associated from the outset with pottery which had been dated
at Arikamedu to the first century A.D. and which, at Chandravalli, also in Mysore
State, is coeval with the coins of the later Satavahanas (first century A.D.).
The dominant need of Indian archaeology at present is the systematisation
of the proto-historic and early historical cultures of India and the evolution
of a culture-sequence. The excavations mentioned above are a preliminary step
towards the fulfilment of the dominant need of Indian archæology at present—the
systématisation of the proto-historic and early historical cultures of India and the
evolution of a culture-sequence.

2. Proposed National Museum of Art, Archæology and Anthropology

The Government of India propose to establish a National Museum of Art,
Archæology and Anthropology for co-ordinating and developing cultural stud-
ies in India and regarding India. As yet there is no institution in India where the
public and the students can obtain anything approaching a general conception of
the development of Indian civilisation during the thousands of years in which man
has inhabited this sub-continent.
The idea originated with the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in November
1944 and received the whole-hearted support of the Anthropological Society of
Bombay. A scheme was prepared by the Director-General of Archæology and was
considered by the Central Advisory Board of Archæology at their meeting held
in January 1945.
It was suggested that the main functions of the Museum should be—

1. To maintain a representative collection illustrating the arts, crafts and cul-

tures of India from the earliest human occupation down to recent times.

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2. To provide the necessary materials and facilities for appropriate

research.
3. To set an international standard of presentation and general museum tech-
nique and so to provide India with the much-needed “scale of values” in these
matters.
4. To provide authoritative guidance to the Indian general public and to for-
eign enquirers in matters relating to the cultural heritage of India.
5. To provide authoritative guidance and technical assistance to provincial
and local museums in India.
6. To advise Government in the distribution of grants to the museum service
of India.
7. To issue publications for the information both of the general public and of
scholars.
8. To maintain and circulate loan collections amongst the educational and
other appropriate institutions of India, particularly in those towns and districts
lacking a museum service of their own.
9. Generally, to represent India both to Indians and to the outside world in
matters relating to the material contributions of India to the sum-total of human
civilisation.

The Government of India accepted these proposals in principle but appointed a

small Committee under the chairmanship of Sir Maurice Gwyer, Vice-Chancellor,
Delhi University, to frame the details for the establishment of such a Museum.
The Report of this Committee has since been received and is under examination.
The scheme in broad outline provides for a Directorate and five departments,
namely, Art, Pre-historic Archæology and Historic Archæology (Buddhist, Jaina,
Brahmanical, Muslim), Numismatics and Epigraphy and Anthropology (Cultural
and Physical). The whole scheme is again under scrutiny and it is to be hoped that
Government will initiate it in 1947–1948.

C. The National Archves

1. A Research Centre
Originally the Imperial Record Department used to be treated not as a public
records office where research facilities were available to all bona-fide scholars but
merely as a department of the Central Government catering mainly for the Central
administration and its officers. Since 1910 the Rt. Hon’ble the Secretary of State
for India had been urging upon the Government of India the need of throwing open
their records to research scholars and the Indian Historical Records Commission,
appointed in 1919, also lent its support to the steadily growing demand. But the
suggestions from the India Office could not be fully implemented on account of
opposition from the Provinces and in the years following the first great war, when
the Commission was in a state of suspended animation, the facilities previously

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granted were in many respects strictly circumscribed. In 1939, however, the Gov-
ernment of India decided to bring their policy in line with that of other progres-
sive countries and threw open all their records up to 1880 with such precautionary
restrictions as the safety of the archives themselves demanded. The result was
that the Imperial Record Department, or the National Archives of India as it is
now called, became one of the greatest research centres in the country. Since 1939
no less than 350 research students have made use of the unpublished manuscript
records of the Government of India. In 1938 only 14 research scholars came to the
Department and in 1939 their number rose to 30. During the war years the number
steadily went on rising despite the difficulties of transport and accommodation. In
1946 it reached the peak (57). In 1947, however, there was an appreciable decrease
due probably to the unsettled condition in the country. The research scholars came
from all parts of the country from Quetta to Mysore. Nor were other countries
absolutely unrepresented; one scholar came from Burma, another from Ceylon and
a third from Indo-China. Nor were the services of the Department limited to schol-
ars of established reputation like Sir Jadunath Sarkar, Sir Rustom Masani, Sir Don
Baron Jayatilaka, Sir Torick Ameer Ali and Colonel Thikimore but University stu-
dents and even Junior Technical Assistants of the Department, who stood in need
of expert guidance, took advantage of the new rules.
Nearly 100,000 pages of excerpts have been scrutinised and released for their
use. It is a matter of great satisfaction that so far there has been no case of abuse
of the privileges offered by the 1939 rules.

2. Preservation
During this period preservation work has received fresh stimulus. The years
of retrenchment following the peace of 1918 badly affected this Department and
the preservation staff was considerably reduced. Fragile documents demanding
immediate repair could not therefore be attended to in all cases and arrears in
repair work quickly accumulated. But although the Department suffered from
war-time scarcity of repairing materials, it has a good record of work to its credit.
During the period 1939 to 1947, 1,655,771 sheets of documents were reha-
bilitated, 1,825 volumes were bound, 14,934 volumes or bundles were fumigated
as a protection against insects and mildew and 60,260 leather bound volumes
were treated with a leather preservative dressing. In addition to this more than
200 old maps and charts were reconditioned and mounted and quite a number of
valuable manuscripts belonging to learned institutions, Government agencies and
individual scholars were rehabilitated as a courtesy service. Taking the figures
for the year 1939 as the basis of normal outturn, the rehabilitation of documents
increased by 500 per cent, and the treatment of leather bound volumes by 1,400
per cent, during the year of their maximum production.
The Research Laboratory was started in 1940 with a modest grant of Rs. 500
with one Technical Assistant and one Mechanic on the staff. The work done in

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this laboratory has received wide recognition. A rotary laminator and a type of
insecticide paper have been developed by this laboratory and the latter has since
been patented.
There has been considerable progress in the preservation of documents by
mechanical and scientific processes. The laminating machine and the vacuum fumi-
gation plant and their accessories are now awaiting shipment and a part has already
been shipped from the U.S.A. Amongst the laboratory apparatus and accessory
machines, for which orders have been placed, may be mentioned the following:—

1. Electric Boiler.
2. Photomicrographic Equipment.
3. Paper Testing Machines.
4. H.P. Meter for investigating the acidity of paper.
5. Humidifiers.
6. Rotary and Automatic Ironers.
7. Experimental Fumigation Tank.
8. Microfilming Cameras and Accessory Photographic Outfits.
9. Microfilm Storage Cabinets.
10. Air-Cleaning Tables.

One of the investigations in which the laboratory has been engaged is about the
indigenous methods of preservation.

3. Publication
In 1942 the Indian Historical Records Commission prepared a five-year pub-
lication programme which was later approved by the Government of India. The
programme falls under four main heads:—

1. Twenty-one volumes of Fort William-East India House Correspondence

to be published in extenso. The publication is to be financed by the Gov-
ernment of India and the editing is to be entrusted to eminent scholars
from the Universities and learned institutions. General Editor: Director
of Archives, Government of India.
The typescripts of all the volumes have been prepared and distributed
among selected Editors. Editing of five volumes has been completed.
2. Following five volumes to be edited by the Director of Archives and to
be published at Government expense:—
Three volumes of Shore Papers (typescript ready).
One volume of Browne Correspondence (gaps have yet to be filled by
transcripts from the India Office).

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Indian Travels of Thevenot and Careri (now ready for the Press).
3. Records in Oriental languages to be published through private agencies
(under the general editorship of the Director of Archives).
One volume of Bengali records (1779–1820) edited by the Director of
Archives already published by the Calcutta University.
One volume of Sanskrit records (1778–1857) edited by the Director of
Archives (in the press).
One volume of Marathi records (1779–1803) to be published by the
Bharata Itihasa Samshodhaka Mandala, Poona.
Two volumes of Hindi records (1793–1820) to be published by the Alla-
habad University and Kotah Durbar.
One volume of Tamil records (1824–1864) to be published by the Anna-
malai University.
One volume of Kannada records (1791–1865).
4. Selections from English records to be published through outside bodies.
(i) Selections from Orme manuscripts on Coromandel affairs to be pub-
lished by the Annamalai University.
(ii) Elphinstone Correspondence—Nagpur Period (1839–1842) to be
published by the Nagpur University.
(iii) Punjab Akhbars (1839–1841) to be published by the Sikh History
Society, Amritsar.
(iv) Punjab and Frontier News Letters (1839–1842).
(v) Ochterlony Papers on Delhi and Central India (1818–1825)—A
scholar is engaged in preparing a list of documents.
Besides these the Department is also responsible for the preparation and pub-
lication of:—

1. Calendar of Persian Correspondence—7 volumes already out, 2 volumes

in the press, 1 volume nearing completion.
2. List of Heads of the Administration—revised every five years.
3. Notes, etc., on Preservation of Old Records.
4. Handbook of Records (now under revision).

Two undertakings under this head deserve special mention:—

1. A Comprehensive Index to Records on Scientific Lines. The shortest series

in our custody, Revenue records from 1837–1859 has already been indexed
on these lines and the Department is now indexing the late Political Depart-
ment records.

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2. The Indian Archives—a quarterly journal, of which two issues have been
out and reviewed favourably in England and U.S.A. The journal aims at
popularising new developments in Archives science both in this country
and abroad.

4. Training
Few trained Archivists are now available in this country and if we have to
provide for even the minimum number of Archives offices in the Provinces and
the States a large number of them will be needed. In anticipation of this demand a
diploma course was opened in the National Archives of India in 1942. So far 17 stu-
dents have been awarded diplomas either for the entire course or for some special
branches and 10 are under training now.

5. Reconstitution of the Indian Historical Records Commission

In 1919 the Commission was appointed by the Government of India. It con-
sisted of a small number of official and non-official experts. It was soon perceived
that unless a larger number of scholars was associated with it, the Commission
would not be in a position to accomplish its task properly. Consequently, a number
of corresponding members was appointed for a period of three years each. After
several years of experiment it ‘was realised that the Commissioner’s recommenda-
tions would not carry due weight unless it was representative of all the interests
concerned. In 1940 therefore the Commission was reconstituted. The Provincial
Governments, the Indian States, the Universities and learned institutions of India
are now entitled to nominate their representatives to the Indian Historical Records
Commission.
The reconstituted Indian Historical Records Commission have already got
a fair record to their credit. They have prepared a comprehensive Post-War
Scheme of Archives reconstruction which has been accepted by the Govern-
ment of India in principle. The main aim of this scheme is to extend further the
research facilities available in this country and to convert the National Archives
of India into a great research centre. It proposes to acquire from abroad authen-
ticated copies of such manuscript records and works on India as are not avail-
able here to carry on a countrywide survey with a view to bringing to light
hitherto unnoticed records and historical manuscripts and to provide for their
preservation. It has also formulated detailed proposals for mechanising the pres-
ervation section and the Government have already purchased a Microfilm Unit.
A number of ad hoc Regional Committees have been appointed and the Govern-
ment have provided some funds for their survey work. A provision has also been
made for purchase of old records and rare manuscripts and some manuscripts
have already been acquired.

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6. Work Connected with Records Administration

The following figures will give some idea of the work done under the records
administration programme of the Department during the decade under review:

Accessions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
5,100 bundles
4,369 volumes
Requisitions received . . . . . . . . . . . . 216,190
Restorations done . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158,958

Plans for Development

The Government of India have accepted the proposals of the Director of
Archives to implement the recommendations made by the Research and Publi-
cation Committee of the Indian Historical Records Commission concerning the
post-war reorganisation of the Archives Offices and Historical Research in India.
The scheme, which extends over five years, is designed to make available to
bona-fide students working in India the original sources of Indian history without
putting them to the trouble and expense of going to foreign countries. To achieve
this object the scheme contemplates a large-scale expansion of the activities of the
National Archives on the following lines:—

1. Acquisition of records from official custody, e.g., from the India Office,
the Public Record Office, the British Museum, the Bodleian Library, the Royal
Asiatic Society of England and other European countries and the United States of
America; and also unearthing records in private custody in India.
2. Publication of records so as to make records available in print as far as pos-
sible and expedite the calendaring and indexing programme for the convenience
of research scholars.
3. Preservation of records by Air-conditioning, Vacuum Fumigation, Lamina-
tion, etc.

The scheme involves the procurement from abroad of costly equipment and
machinery, provision of additional accommodation as well as staff. The machin-
ery to be installed includes Air-clearing Unit, Fumigatorium, Film Preservation
and Micro-photographic Equipment and a Laminating Machine.
Courses have already been started at the National Archives for training a certain
number of students in Archives keeping.
The scheme is to come into operation from 1947–1948.

D. The National (formerly Imperial) Library, Calcutta

The National Library, Calcutta, was established in 1901 with the object of
affording greater facilities for research to students in this country. The then

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existing library in the Civil Secretariat buildings formed the nucleus of the new
institution. The Library was formally opened by Lord Curzon in January 1903.
It is under the control of the Government of India, but its internal management is
vested in a Council which in 1947 consisted of nominees of the Governor-General
in Council, the Government of Bengal and Calcutta University with the Edu-
cational Adviser to the Government of India as ex-officio Chairman.
The future constitution of the Council is under consideration.
The original intention was to establish a library at the metropolis of the Gov-
ernment of India similar in character to that attached to the British museum. The
object of the Library is thus described in the despatch of August the 8th, 1900, to
the Secretary of State:—
“We intend that it should be a library of reference, a working place for students
and a repository of material for the future historians of India, in which, so far as
possible, every book written about India at any time can be seen and read.”
But with the transfer of the capital of India to Delhi, the character and functions
of the National Library have gradually changed and since 1924 the Library has
tended more and more to assume the character of an ordinary provincial library.
This continues to be, in the main, the present position. For example, during the
year 1945–1946, which is the last year for which a report is available, 92 percent,
of the books lent out were lent in Calcutta, the second largest percentage of books
borrowed being 1.9 for the Province of Bengal.
The question of transferring the Library from Calcutta to Delhi is still under the
consideration of the Ministry of Education, but in the meanwhile the Government
of India have decided to establish a Central Reference Library with a Copyright
Section. It is proposed to appoint in 1947–1948 a small Expert Committee to
work out the various details in the first instance.
The importance of such a Library, where all the literature produced would be
available for purposes of reference, is of course beyond dispute.

Note
1 Included under “other schools” in the Statistical returns.

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 8
SISTER NIVEDITA, EXTRACTS FROM
HINTS ON NATIONAL EDUCATION
IN INDIA (CALCUTTA: BRAHMACHARI
GANENDRANATH, 1923, 3 RD EDN),
6–65, 95–110

PAPER ON EDUCATION—I.
The education that we give our children inevitably expresses our own concep-
tion of that synthesis of which our lives form a part. Thus, the American school
will consider itself incomplete, until it has found out how to initiate the youth into
mechanical processes. The Australian school will probably strive to lay the foun-
dations of agriculture. The schools of a scientific age will recognise the impor-
tance of science, and those of a classical revival, that of dead languages. It follows
that two different ages will, never repeat each other exactly, in the matter of edu-
cation, for the simple reason that in different historical epochs, nations select dif-
ferent branches of training, as of central necessity to their children, really because
they are paramount factors for the moment, in the national life.
In Bengal, for instance, under the Sanskrit Renascence of the Guptas, a knowl-
edge of the Sanskrit language and literature became the distinctive mark of a
gentleman. A thousand years later, a man in the same position had to be versed in.
Persian also. To-day, English is the test. Thus a similar mental and social dignity
is atained by changing means, at different epochs.
Fortunately for the civilisation of India, the Hindu has always clearly perceived
the mind behind the method, as the thing with which education has fundamen-
tally to deal. It is this which, in spite of so many catastrophes, has, in the past,
saved the Indian genius from destruction. And it is this which constitutes its best
security for the future. Just so long as the Brahminic system of directly training
the minds of the young to concentration persists, will the Indian people remain
potentially equal to the conquest of any difficulty that the changing ages may
bring them. But once let this training be neglected or lost, and in spite of purity
of race, the vigour of the Indian mind would probably fall to a level with that of
modern peoples in general, waxing and waning with the degree and freedom of
self-expression that the passing period might permit them. At present—owing
largely to the peculiar psychological discipline, received by girls as well as boys,

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along with their devotional training—the most salient characteristic of the Hindu
intellect is its reserve of strength, its conservation of power. As we read the history
of the country, we are amazed at the unforeseenness with which geniuses occur,
and the brilliance of their isolated achievements. The Indian Bhaskaracharya in
the twelfth century, envisages the fact of gravitation with as unflinching a
conviction—though social conditions do not lead him to so clear an enunciation—
as the Western Newton, in the seventeenth. A race of women, cloistered and
secluded, blossom forth suddenly into a Chand Bibi. Within the last twenty years,
in spite of universal clerkship, we have given to the world men who have enriched
humanity in Religion, in Science, and in Art. The invention of smokeless pow-
der, and improvements made in surgery, are extended applications of knowledge,
merely. India has shown herself potent to add to knowledge itself.
These things are some indication of the sleeping power of the Indian mind.
They are the chance blossoms that show the living-ness of the whole tree. They
tell us that what Indian people have done in the past, that Indian people can do
in the future. And if it be so, then we owe this undying vitality to the fact that,
whatever may have been the characteristic expression most prized, at any given
moment, our forefathers never neglected the culture and development of the mind
itself. The training of the attention—rather than the learning of any special sub-
ject, or the development of any particular faculty—has always been, as the Swami
Vivekananda claimed for it, the chosen goal of Hindu education. Great men have
been only as incidents, in the tale of this national effort, to achieve control and
self-direction of the mind itself.
It is not here, then, in the object and nature of the inner psychological process,
that Western educators have anything to teach India. Instead of this, the supe-
riority of the West lies in her realisation of the value of great united efforts in
any given direction,—even that of self-education—and in the particular synthesis
which, as she may think, it is necessary for the educational process to reflect.
Thus, India may, all things considered, be capable of producing a greater num-
ber of geniuses, per thousand of her population, than Germany or America: but
Germany and America have known how to bring the national mind to bear on
their respective problems! That is to say, they have organised the common, popu-
lar mind, and to this organised mind they have presented the riddle that is to be
guessed. Let us think of the mental weight and area, the material quantity and
power, so to speak, of the thought thus brought in contact with the question they
want answered. What is that question? Very probably it is strictly relative in its
character. We may perhaps assume, without injustice, that it is the prosperity and
well-being of their respective country and people, only. This is no impersonal, no
absolute goal, such as that Renunciation and Mukti which India proposes to her
children. Quite true. And yet, to the mind and soul of the individual German or
American the prosperity of his country will appear as an impersonal end. Even the
Hindu has to begin climbing towards renunciation in the abstract, by first practis-
ing self-suppression, for the sake of others, in the concrete. Even to the Hindu,
the thought of the family is apt to be the first, as it were, of “those altar-stairs that

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slope through darkness up to God.” Those dependent on him, he will say if we ask
him, are a trust put into his hands, as a means whereby to work out his own karma,
and reach true discrimination. And why should the German and the American not
feel the same thing about their own countries? Why should this not be to them the
last great step in “the altar-stairs” of life?
Supposing that it is so, the individual of each nation must be able to pursue
the studies necessary to the earning of a livelihood, with the idea before him of
a noble devotion to the cause of his people as a whole. Not cherishing this idea,
he would still have had to prepare himself for a life of earning—even the Hindu
has to do that! with the difference that he could not then have put into his train-
ing or his service all the ardour of motive, or all the lofty imagination of which
he is capable. There is nothing so belittling to the human soul, as the acquisition
of knowledge, for the sake of worldly reward. There is nothing so degrading to a
nation, as coming to look upon, the life of the mind as a means to bread-winning.
Unless we strive for truth because we love it, and must at any cost attain, unless
we live the life of thought out of our own rejoicing in it, the great things of heart
and intellect will close their doors to us. There is a very definite limit to the dis-
tance a man can go, under the impulsion of a worldly motive. But if, on the other
hand, his very love for those dear to him, is on a plane so lofty and so true that it
presents itself to him as a reason for being and reaching the utmost possible; if he
knows that the more he can realise, the better will it be, if not for his own imme-
diate family, yet for that wider kindred that he calls his country, then his public
spirit is of a quality to give him wings. It adds freedom, not bondage. It becomes
an achievement, not a limitation.
In this matter, India may have something to learn from the West. Why should
we limit the social motive to a man’s own family, or to his own community? Why
not alter the focus, till we all stand, aiming each at the good of all-the-others, and
willing, if need be, to sacrifice himself, his family, and even his particular’ social
group, for the good of the whole? The will of the hero is ever an impulse to self-
sacrifice. It is for the good of the People—not for my own good that I should strive
to become one with the highest, the noblest, and the most truth-loving that I can
conceive. It may even work out to my own personal destruction. It may lead to my
swimming across the flood, to carry on the work of the telegraph-station, or leap-
ing into the pit of death, for the rescue of a comrade. Either might be fatal. Shall I
leave my family to struggle with poverty, unprovided? Away with the little vision!
Shall we not eagerly die, both I and they, to show to the world what the Indian
idea of duty may be? May not a single household be glad to starve, in order that a
nation’s face may shine? The hero’s choice is made in a flash. To him, the larger
vision is closer than the near. Within an instant, he strikes for eternity, strikes and
is done. In concentrating the individual mind on the national problem, the West
makes a hero out of many a common man. This also is a form of realisation.
We have to think, then, of the concentration of the Indian mind on the Indian
problem. In order to do this, we are not asked to abandon that older system of
training the mind itself, and rendering it familiar with absolute and universal

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considerations, on which, as already, said, so much that is distinctive in Indian

power and culture has depended in the past, and must depend in the future. But
whereas, at present, the great bulk of our popular mind is pre-occupied with
schemes of instruction, for the purpose of earning individual livelihoods, we now
desire to consider the best means for bringing about a conscious unification of that
mind, in order that we may be better able to compass thereby the common weal,
the good of the whole. This substitution of the common good for the particular
good—with the result that a higher level of individual good is rendered
possible—is a. process whose practicability is evidenced in Europe herself. It is not
on special personalities and rarely-equipped faculties that the course of European
history depends to-day, so much as the weight and power of common mind that
has been unified and released, to work on certain given tasks. It is so released, and
prepared for such release, by the form and quality of popular education. It is for
us, then, who are Indian, to see what are the essentials of that education, with a
view to appropriating its benefits to India and the Indian people.

PAPER ON EDUCATION—II.
In a perfect education, we can easily distinguish three different elements not
always chronologically distinct. First, if we would obtain from a human mind the
highest possible return, we must recognise in its education the stage of preparing it
to learn, of training it to receive impressions, of developing it intensively, as it were,
independently of the particular branch of knowledge through which this is done.
Of the very existence of this phase of the educational process, many are unaware.
Secondly, in all historic epochs, but preeminently in this modern age, there is
a certain characteristic fund of ideas and concepts which is common to society as
a whole, and must be imparted to every individual, who is to pass, in his mature
life, as efficient. This is the element that is supposed in the common acceptance
to be the whole of education. It bulks the largest. It costs the most labour. It is
the process that it is most obviously impossible to eliminate. And yet it is really
only one of three elements. And strange to say, it is the very one which is least
essential to the manifestation of what we call genius. Never was there a period
in the world’s history, when this aspect of education was so large or imperative
as to-day. ‘Geography, history, algebra and arithmetic, all that mkes up the worry
and fret of childish life,’ as some one said, ‘are in reality the key to a glorious city.
They are the franchise of the modern consciousness. Carrying them, a man has a
basis of communication with the whole wide world of educated minds.’
But thirdly, these two elements taken together, in their highest degree (and it is
quite possible to be taken as ‘educated’, on a very modest allowance of the sec-
ond, only!) will only prepare the mind for real education. They are nothing more
than preliminary conditions. They are by no means the essential itself. Having
them, the mind has become a fit instrument. But of what? What shall be its mes-
sage? What is to constitute the burden of its education? What is it that so much
preparation has prepared it for? The third element in a perfect human development

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sweeps away the other two. It takes note of them only by implication, as it were, in
the higher or lower fitness of the mind itself. The man meets his guru, and devotes
himself to a perfect passivity. Or he surrenders to some absorbing idea, which
becomes the passion of his life. Or he takes up a pursuit, and lives henceforth
for it, and it alone. The phase of the one has succeeded to the phase of the many.
Regarded as a mind, the man has become a full human organism. He now stands
a chance of contributing to the riches of humanity as a whole.
It is characteristic of India that it is the third and highest of these three elements
that she has observed and analysed, allowing the other two to occur by accident.
It is equally characteristic of the West that it is numbers one and two that she has
observed and analysed, allowing number three to occur by accident!
Yet all three have their science, and certainly the last is not without it. Egoistic
response to stimulus, constant mental activity, much restlessness and intellectual
change of appetite, loud self-assertion, argumentativeness, and desire to manifest
power, are apt to be the characteristics of a healthy second stage. But when the
guru comes, or the idea that is to dominate the life is apprehended, there may be
a keen initial struggle, but after it there is a period of profound apparent quiet. To
see the thing as it appears to the mind of the master, is the one necessity. To serve
him, acting as his hands and feet, as it were, in order that one’s mind and heart
may be made one with his; to serve him silently, broodingly, with the constant
attempt to assimilate his thought, this is the method. Throughout this period, there
is no room for rebellion. Eventually the guru emancipates: he does not bind. It
would be a poor service to him, if we felt compelled in his name to arrest the
growth of an idea. Eventually we have to realise that the service to which he has
called us is not his own, but that of Truth itself, and that this may take any form.
But in the first place it is essential that we begin where he left off. In the first place,
emptied of self, we have to labour to give expression to that idea which has struck
root in us through him. We must understand that the whole significance of our
own lives depends, first and last, on their relation to his life.
The guru may have remained hidden, and the disciple may stand in the blaze
of the world. But every word, every gesture, will point the way to that secret
sanctuary, whence comes his strength. For the greatest energy is imparted by the
sense of working for the glory of another. No man could be so nobly ambitious for
himself as his wife could be, for him. The very fact that it was for himself would
undermine his sense of loftiness and inspiration. No disciple can win the same joy
from spiritual independence, as from the enthusiasm of guru-bhakti. No son can
feel so eager to make his own name famous, as he will be to magnify that of his
father. These are amongst the deepest secrets of the human heart, and they form
the area that India has chosen to explore. It is in this way that greatness is made.
It is difficult, however, in modern times,—and speaking in a sense more or less
worldly,—difficult to recognise greatness, unless it speaks in the language of the
second educational element. There is a certain fund of information which is more
or less essential to the development and manifestation of modern personality. It
is interesting to enquire, what are the essentials of this fund of information? But

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before we can enter into this, it may be advisable to consider the matter more as
a whole. We can see that unselfishness is the real distinction of fine persons, of
what Ramakrishna Paramhamsa might have called Vidyâvân-lok. In this sense,
a peasant-woman may be greater than a reigning queen. Even in intellect, the
farmer’s wife may be the greater, for she may have keenness of judgment, dis-
crimination, mother-wit, and a hundred powers in which the woman of rank and
power is by no means her superior. Are the tales of the world’s worship not of
shepherds and dairy women, of carpenters and camel-drivers? But we can see that
a mind whose field of activity is limited to some remote or obscure pursuit, has
not the same chance of making its power felt, as one that is able to deal with those
counters that the world as a whole recognises. Some Bhutia lad may be potentially
a great poet, but he is likely to live and die mute and inglorious. The Homers and
Shaksperes of history are partakers in the world-culture of their time.
And intellectual formulæ may be made a great help to moral development.
We know that we ought to restrain our individual anger and impatience. But it is
undoubtedly easier to do so, when we know something about the size and distance
of the fixed stars, and can take refuge in the thought of the vastness of the cos-
mos. The growth of character can be much aided by intellectual activity, besides,
requiring it in its maturity as a means of self-expression. We do not want to iden-
tify the mere drill of learning to read and write, and the memorising of a few facts
conveyed by that vehicle, with the idea of culture. We are well aware that even
literary culture might easily be greater in some illiterate Indian villager, familiar
with kathaks and mangol-gâyens in the most accomplished passer of examina-
tions. But we do not wish, on the other hand, to forget that it is a duty to develop
our intellectual powers. No Hindu, who wishes to fulfil his obligations to the jana-
desh-dharma ( ), can afford to neglect any opportunity of learning that
he can possibly make for himself. This is the daily sacrifice to the Rishis, and it is
as binding on women as on men.
By emphasising the third educational element, are made the poets and scholars
of the world. The idea before which we are passive, that we may absorb it, the idea
that fills our lives henceforth, the idea to which all our education has only been
preparatory, this is the idea that is spirituality itself. Our self-subordination here
is renunciation. Our enthusiasm here is an apostolate. It matters nothing about the
form of expression. Our whole character is bathed in the river of this intellectual
passion to emerge new, radiant, self-restrained, and self-directed. The only sin is
to expect a return to ourselves, in riches, or honour, or fame. But the man who
has really entered into the great life of ideas is not long held back, or seriously
embittered by this childishness, for the energy of his pursuit dominates him, and
excludes even himself from his thought. Palissy the potter was such an idealist.
So was Stephenson, who invented the railway engine. Newton, boiling his watch
instead of an egg, was a third. A nation stands or falls, in the long run, by the
number of such souls that she is capable of producing, out of the rank and file
of ordinary education. What about India, in this respect, to-day? Let the army
of her poor scholars answer! Let the capacity of her people for universal ideas

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answer! Let the trumpet-call of Advaita, on the lips of Vivekananda answer! Sci-
ence, art, history, the crafts, business, the development of men on planes external
and internal, all these are but so many different expressions of That One. Through
any of them may come the flood of light, the shaping and moulding of character,
the infinite self-forgetting that means the goal itself. To have a chance of this,
the idea must be stated. The ideal must be consciously held. Common education
must be reverenced as a sacrament, making the opportunity for this exaltation
and consecration. And if we once grasp these things, we shall see that we have no
choice, that the education of all, the People as well as the classes, woman as well
as man,—is not to be a desire with us, but lies upon us as a command. Humanity
is mind, not body—soul, not flesh. Its heritage is in the life of thought and feeling.
To close against any the gates of the higher life is a sin far greater than that of
murder, for it means responsibility for spiritual death, for inner bondage, and the
result is ruin unspeakable. There is but one imperative duty before us to-day. It is
to help on Education by our very lives if need be—Education in the great sense as
well as the little, in the little as well as in the big.

PAPER ON EDUCATION—III.
Our conception of education must have a soul. It must form a unity. . It must
take note of the child as a whole, as heart as well as mind, will as well as mind and
heart. Unless we train the feelings and the choice, our man is not educated. He is
only decked out in certain intellectual tricks that he has learnt to perform. By these
tricks he can earn his bread. He cannot appeal to the heart, or give life. He is not
a man at all; he is a clever ape. Learning, in order to appear clever, or learning, in
order to earn a livelihood,—not in order to become a man, to develop one’s own
manhood and manliness,—means running into this danger, Therefore, in every
piece of information that is imparted to a child, we must convey an appeal to the
heart. At every step in the ascent of knowledge, the child’s own will must act. We
must never carry the little one upwards and onwards; he must himself struggle to.
climb. Our care must be to put just so much difficulty in his way as would stimu-
late his will, just so little as to avoid discouragement. When, within and behind
the knowledge gained, there stands a man, there stands a mind, then the task of
instruction can be changed into one of self-education. The taught is now safe, he
will teach himself. Every boy sent abroad is sent, on the understanding that he is
in this sense developed. He is thrown into the moral ocean to battle for himself
with the waves of difficulty and of temptation. We assume that he is a swimmer.
But what have we done to ensure it?
There is one way, and one way only. It is, throughout the early years of educa-
tion, to remember that there is nothing so important as the training of the feelings.
To feel nobly, and to choose loftily and honestly, is a thousandfold more impor-
tant to the development of faculty than any other single aspect of the educational
process. The lad in whom this power is really present and really dominant, will’
always do the best thing possible under any given circumstances. The boy in

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whom it is not present is liable to confusion of the will, and confusion may mean
only error, or it may mean demoralisation.
Very few parents and teachers amongst us at present have thought much of
the pre-eminent necessity and importance of this training of the heart. What is
it then that we trust to, for our children, in a fashion so blind? We trust, more or
less unconsciously, to the general action of home, family, religion, and country,
on the conscience and the emotions. It is the immense moral genius of the Indian
people as a whole that has really formed so many fine men out of the students of
the past two or three generations. And it is the crucial importance of the element
in the environment that makes the foreign educator so undesirable. Our own
countryman, however unversed in educational theory, is likely to be in harmony
with our highest emotional life. His chance words will touch the keys of spiritual
motive, where the best-intentioned foreigner with all his efforts, is liable to fail.
The man who could not deliberately awaken the great formative influences, may
do so by accident, if he and we are sufficiently of one world. The chance is very
small that a stranger will even dream of the need for doing so. It is almost true
that the worst of ourselves is a better schoolmaster for us, than the best of another
people.
Having once recognised the law, however, we are no longer at the mercy of
circumstances. The home can see to it that the school builds up the child. Even an
ignorant mother, by teaching her boy to love, and to act on his love, can be the fin-
est of educators. It is this that makes, so many of our great men of to-day, attribute
so much to their mothers. The old education of the girl, by the brata, is full of this
appeal to the heart, as the only sound basis of education. But modern education,
in its first inception, ignored this factor altogether, and thus produced faculty out
of relation to its environment. Henceforth, the Indian people will not repeat this
error. Henceforth they will understand—indeed they have understood for sev-
eral years past—that even schooling has to justify itself to the conscience of the
schooled, by the great law of sacrifice, and that this law here is, the development
of the child for the good, not of himself, but of jana-desha-dharma ( ) or,
as the western would phrase it, the development of the individual for the benefit of
the environment. ‘Why are you going to school?’ says the mother to her little one,
at the moment of parting. And the child answers, in some form or other, growing
clearer and more eager with growing age and knowledge. ‘That I may learn to be a
man, AND HELP!’ There is no fear of weakness and selfishness for one whose whole
training has been formed round this nucleus.
This, the desire to serve, the longing to better conditions, to advance our fel-
lows, to lift the whole, is the real religion of the present day. Everything else is
doctrine, opinion, theory. Here is the fire of faith and action. Each day should
begin with some conscious act of reference to it. A moment of silence, a hymn,
a prayer, a salutation, any of these is ritual sufficient. It is not to the thing wor-
shipped, but to ourselves, that our worship is important! Any symbol will do, or
none. It is for this that our fathers have bidden us worship the water of the seven
sacred rivers, or the earth of holy places, the footsteps of the guru, or the name of

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the Mother. All these are but suggestions to the mind, of the jana-desha-dharma
( ) to which we dedicate ourselves, whose service is the motive-spring
of all our struggles. “No man liveth to himself alone.” In proportion as we realise
this, can be the greatness of our living. In proportion as it is our motive, will be
the reality of our education.

PAPER ON EDUCATION—IV.
Education in India to-day, has to be not only national, but NATION-MAKING. We
have seen what a national education is—a training which has a strong colour of its
own, and begins by relating the child to his home and country, through all that is
familiar, but ends by making him free of all that is true, cosmopolitan, and univer-
sal. This is the necessary condition of all healthy education, in all countries, what-
ever their political position or stage of development. These general statements are
as true of England and France, as of India, as true in happiness as in adversity.
The need for special attention to nation-making, however, is a question of the
moment, a matter of those temporary vicissitudes through which a country may
be passing, in a given period. It is always easy, by common consent of responsible
persons, or by the sound communal instincts of a healthy people, to select out
and emphasise, for a definite purpose, any elements in a general education that
may be thought desirable. All our institutions have arisen in some such way. The
need of purity was first brought forward, in our customs at some time when loss
of civilisation was a pressing danger. The regulation of marriage was a device
deliberately intended to prevent mixture of race. In a period that had to face this as
a possibility. Similarly, a people who need above all things the development of a
national sense, can make special provision for developing the necessary elements
of thought and character throughout the education of their children.
National feeling is, above all, feeling for others. It is rooted in public spirit,
in a strong civic sense. But these are only grandiloquent names for what may be
described as organised unselfishness. The best preparation for nation-making that
a child can receive is to see his elders always eager to consider the general good,
rather than their own. A family that willingly sacrifices its own interests to those
of the village, or the street, or the town; a household that condones no act of dis-
honesty on the part of public servants, out of consideration for its own comfort or
safety; a father who will fling himself at any obstacle, in the cause of honour and
justice for the people, these are the best and strongest education for nation-making
that a child can have. The wild-boar, small as he is, throws himself upon the horse
and his rider, never doubting his own capacity to destroy both. This is the courage
of the man who attacks public evils. This is the object-lesson by which a child can
best be trained. Hunger for the good of others, as an end in itself, the infinite pity
that wakes in the heart of an Avatar, at sight of the suffering of humanity, these are
the seed and root of nation-making. We are a nation, when every man is an organ
of the whole, when every part of the whole is precious to us; when the family
weighs nothing, in comparison with the People.

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China in Asia, and France in Europe, are the two countries that have best known
how to make the public spirit into religion. This is the fact that made Joan of Arc a
possibility. A peasant-girl in a remote village could brood over the sorrows of her
country, till she was possessed by the feeling that “there was much pity in Heaven
for the fair realm of France”. An idea like this was like the compassion of a Bud-
dha, and nowhere but in France could it have been applied to the country.
We must surround our children with the thought of their nation and their coun-
try. The centre of gravity must lie, for them, outside the family. We must demand
from them sacrifices for India, bhakti for India, learning for India. The ideal for
its own sake. India for the sake of India. This must be as the breath of life to them.
We must teach them about India, in school and at home. Some lessons must fill
out the conception, others must build up the sense of contrast. Burning love, love
without a limit. Love that seeks only the good of the beloved, and has no thought,
of self, this is the passion that we must demand of them.
We must teach them to think heroically. They must be brought up to believe in
their own people. Few stories are so moving as that of two English youths who
were killed by an angry mob in the Punjab, dying with the words on their lips,
“We are not the last of the English!” Similarly we must learn to draw every breath
in the proud conviction, “We are not the last of the Indians!” This faith our chil-
dren must inherit from us, along with all other forms of stern and heroic thought.
It is a mistake to think heroes are born. Nothing of the sort. They are made, not
born; made by the pressure of heroic thought. All human beings long at bottom for
self-sacrifice. No other thirst is so deep as this. We desire destruction, not prosper-
ity, and the good of others.
Let us recognise this. Let us make room for it. Let us emphasise it, and direct
it towards one single bhakti. Let love for country and countrymen, for People and
Soil, be the mould into which our lives flow hot. If we reach this, every thought
we think, every word of knowledge gained, will aid in making clearer and clearer
the great picture. With faith in the Mother, and bhakti for India, the true interpreta-
tion of facts will come to us unsought. We shall see the country as united, where
we were told that she was fragmentary. Thinking her united, she will actually be
so. The universe is the creation of mind, not matter. And can any one force in the
world resist a single thought, held with intensity by three hundred millions of
people? Here we have the true course of a nation-making education.

PAPER ON EDUCATION—V.
The reconstitution of a nation has to begin with its ideals. This, because in a
nation three primary elements have to be considered, first the country, or region,
second, the people, and third, the national mind. Of the three, the last is dominant,
and all-directing. By working through it, we may modify or even re-create either
or both of the other two while their influence upon it is comparatively feeble and
in-direct. Mind can re-make any thing, however inert or rebellious, but a rebel-
lious mind, what can reach? It follows that in national reconstruction there is

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no other factor so important as education. How is this to be made national and

nationalising? What is a national education? And conversely, what is un-national?
And further what kind of education offers the best preparation for the attempt to
solve the national problems? What type of education would be not only national,
but also nation-making?
Education has to deal with various factors, the imparting of special processes,
the assimilating of certain kinds and quantities of know-ledge, the development
of the man himself. Of all these it is the last which is incomparably the most
important, and in the man, it is again his ideals which form the critical element.
It is useless to attempt to teach a man anything which he does not desire to learn.
It is absurd to try to force on him an advantage which he resists. Education is like
mining. It begins with the ideal, it builds first at the top.
New ideals have to be approached through the old. The unfamiliar has to be
reached through the familiar. It may indeed be questioned whether there is such
a thing as a new ideal. There is an ideal and there is a form through which it is
expressed, but when we reach the ideal itself, we have reached the eternal. Here,
all humanity is at one. Here, there is neither new nor old, neither own nor foreign.
The limiting forms are some old, some new, but the ideal itself knows nothing of
time. Yet the expression “new ideals” has a certain meaning. European poetry, for
instance, glorifies and exalts the betrothed maiden. Indian poetry equally idealises
the faithful wife. Both are only customary forms through which is reached the
supreme conception, that of holiness in woman. Obviously, however, it would
be futile to try to lead the imagination of an Indian child to this ideal, through,
the characteristically European conception, and equally, foolish to try to lead the
European child through the prevailing Indian form. Yet, when education has done
its perfect work, in the emancipation of the imagination towards great and gra-
cious womanhood, it is clear that there will be an instant apprehension of this
ideal, even in new forms. The poetry of Tennyson and Browning will at once be
understood as its highest and best, by the trained and developed heart and yet it
would have been a crime to try to bring up the Indian child on it. Equal would
be the folly of trying to educate the European child on Sita and Savitri instead of
Beatrice and Joan of Arc, although the same child when grown up, may well test
the depth of its own culture by its instant sympathy with the Eastern heroines.
A national education is, first and foremost, an education in the national idealism.
We must remember, however, that the aim of education is emancipation of sympa-
thy and intellect. This is not often reached by foreign methods. But in the excep-
tional cases of a few individuals it may seem to occur; and better emancipation
through the foreign, than bondage through our own! By this fact of the attainment
of the universal, must the education ultimately stand justified, or condemned. To
emancipate the greatest number of people most easily and effectively, it is neces-
sary to choose familiar ideals and forms, and in every case, it is necessary to make
progression absolutely continuous, so that there be no sharp incongruity amongst
the elements of early experience. Such incongruity begets confusion of thought,
and this confusion is educational chaos. A national education then, must be made

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up of familiar elements. The ideals presented must always be first clothed in a

form evolved by our own past. Our imagination must be first based on our own
heroic literature. Our hope must be woven out of our history. From the known to
the unknown, from the easy to the difficult, must be the motto of every teacher, the
rule of every lesson. The familiar is not the goal; knowledge is the goal: trained
faculty is the aim. An education that stopped short at the familiar would be a
bondage instead of, an emancipation; a mockery not a reality. The familiar is
merely the first step. But as the first step, it is essential.
Geographical ideas must be built up first through the ideas of India. But they
must not stop there. A knowledge of geography would be singularly rustic, if it did
not include a clear concept of the world, as a whole. And even this is not sufficient.
There must, in a complete education, be a release of the geographical faculty, an
initiation into geographical enquiry, an inception of geographical research.
Similarly of history. The sense of historic sequence must be trained through
India. To that, every thing else historical must stand related., But the history of
India must be only a stepping-stone to constantly-widening circles of knowledge.
The history of Mongolian, Semitic, European and African peoples; their civilisa-
tions and their movements, must all be followed up. And the crown of this train-
ing will be found in the power to interpret anew the old facts, to perceive fresh
significance, and unthought of sequences, and to gather from the story of the past
the dynamic forces of the future.
So much for the historical education. It must never be forgotten that national-
ity in culture is the means, not the end. There is a level of achievement where all
the educated persons of the world can meet, understand and enjoy each others
associations. This level is freedom. Intellectually speaking, it is mukti But it can
be reached only by him whose knowledge is firm-rooted in love for mother and
mother-land, in tender memories of childhood and the early struggle after knowl-
edge, and in an unshakable assurance that the face of God shines brightest and His
name sounds sweetest, in the village of his birth.

THE PLACE OF FOREIGN CULTURE IN

A TRUE EDUCATION.
There is a great difference between a child’s relation to his own family and to
that of the great man of the village, in which he may be kindly received. Let us
suppose the child’s own father and mother and family, to be blotted out, and noth-
ing substituted for them save the more formal terms of a guest in the richman’s
house. What a blank the emotional life of the child has become! His feelings have
no natural root. The sense of the world has no centre within himself where he can
rest, and feel that he has found the home of the soul. The external is not in organic
continuity with an internal, in his life, Nothing can ever again equal, for any of
us, the sense of being enfolded in the old old associations of our babyhood, in
the arms where we lay, in the hour of our first awakening to the world, our child-
hood’s home.

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Every outer ought to be a direct branching out from some inner. The mind that
is fed from the beginning on foreign knowledge and ideas, not rooted and built
upon the sense of intimacy, is like the waif brought up in the stranger’s home. The
waif may behave well and reward his benefactor, but this is apt to be the fruit of an
intellectual notion of duty, not because, loving him, he could not help it.
Can foreign learning then ever be so deeply grafted upon the stem of a man’s
own development that it forms a real and vital part of his intellectual personality?
We might as well ask. Is there no place for the king or the zamindar in the mind of
a child who has, his own father and mother?
Again, there is the question of our relation to what is foreign, when our own
culture is perfect. There is such a thing as the emancipation of the heart. For
instance, we cannot imagine a cultivated person, of whatever nationality, not feel-
ing the beauty of the Tâj. Nor can we imagine a cultivated Hindu—whether he
knows English or not, failing to enjoy some beautiful old wood-carved Madonna
of Europe. The appeal of the highest poetry is universal. One of the supreme blos-
soms of culture is taste.
We notice here that the man coming to admire the Tâj is not a learner but is
already mature. The Indian standing before the Madonna is not going to imitate
her. He is there only to enjoy. This distinction is vital. In a true education the place
of foreign culture is never at the beginning. All true development must proceed
from the known to the unknown, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the near
to the far.
In all learning we should try to give knowledge, only in answer to enquiry.
This is the ideal. If we could attain it perfectly, every child would grow up to
be a genius. But how can there be curiosity about truth that is not within our
world? If we could realise how complex a process is the growth of knowledge
in a child, how the question that school must answer, awakens in him at some
unforeseen moment, at play, on the road, at home, in the family, then we should
also understand that every branch of thought in which the full activity of the mind
is to be looked for, must be knit up with the daily life. The American child can
learn truthfulness from George Washington: the Hindu had far better learn it from
Yudhisthira, The Hindu man may be thrilled by Shakespeare’s Brutus. But he can
appreciate him only in proportion as his own childhood has been fed on heroic
political ideals that he could understand in his own home, and in the Mahabharata.
There is no such thing in education as a pure idea. Pure ideas are attained by
paramahamsas. The ideas of the child are inextricably entangled with the things
he sees about him, with social institutions, and with his own acts. Hence a foreign
medium of education must first be translated by him into the weird and wonderful
forms, characteristic or his ignorance, and only after this, if it be so lucky, has it
the chance to emerge as knowledge at all.
The difference here between knowledge and the results of knowledge, is vital.
Knowledge is one. In pure. knowledge, and therefore in science, there can be nei-
ther native nor foreign. Emotion on the other hand, is entirely a matter of locality.
All form is purely local. Every man’s heart has its own country. Therefore art,

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which is form infused with emotion, must always be strongly characteristic of

the place, the people and the mental tradition, whence it has sprung. While the
beautiful is one, and art the unveiler of the beautiful that art must nevertheless
always be distinguishable as of this area or that. Knowledge is a duty, art is an
enjoyment. For this reason we should give infinite searching of heart to the ques-
tion of the place that foreign art may hold in a true education. And by art let it here
be understood that we refer, above all, to poetry, with its exotic forms of feeling;
drama; sculpture that is guided by canons that are not ours; music that we do not
understand; and architecture that is modern, and apt to be cheap and gaudy. This
not deeply and intimately understanding is of the essence of the whole question.
We are insincere when we strive for a thing, not because we already love it, but
because we believe that it ought to be admired. And this kind of insincerity may
creep into any action or opinion, even into so simple a thing as the choosing of
a jewel, to make one’s own character and personality seem vulgar and shoddy.
‘Imitation’, says Ruskin, ‘is like prayer; done for love it is beautiful, for show,
horrible.’
But have we no right to seek to extend our modes of feeling and forms of
expression? This question may be answered by a reference to architecture. Fer-
gusson points out in his great work that when the architecture of a people is great
and living, they are all the better for accepting and assimilating minor elements of
foreign origin. It matters very little, he tells us, whether the jewelled mosaics of
the Indo-Saracenic style were or were not Italian in their origin, since India made
of them something so singular in its beauty and so peculiarly her own. It is clear
however that she could not have done this from the standpoint of an architecture
that was itself a vague experiment. Because she knew thoroughly well what she
liked, in her own building, therefore she knew what would be a beautiful orna-
ment upon it. The dazed builder of to-day, working in forms with which he is
unfamiliar, is by no means so fortunate, when he adorns them with crazy pot-
tery or with monstrosities in the shape of artificial rockeries and many-coloured
foliage!
Certainly we have a right to increase the area of our emotional experience. But,
if we are sincere in this, it will be done only a little at a time, and as a result of
toil and pain. Not by chattering about love, even though we do it in rhyme, can
we become lovers! It is the delicacies, the renunciations, and the austerities of the
great sentiments through which we extend the area of our experience, and not the
gross caricatures of an easy pleasure-seeking. And there is none of us who seeks
to have the sword in his own heart.
In all directions we find that only when deeply rooted in the familiar, may
we safely take up the unfamiliar. In proportion as we rightly analyse the known,
rightly distinguishing, even in what is familiar, between the ideal ex-pressed and
the form assumed, in that proportion will it open for us the book of the whole
world. But in any case the man who does not love his own, the man who is not
clear as to what is his own, will never be received by any people as anything more
than half a man.

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How much this comes home to one when one sees the futile efforts made by
Indian parents to send their boys out into foreign countries to master the details of
scientific industry! The seedling that has no root is transplanted to the wilderness
for its growth! How clear it is that the one thing of all others that was necessary
was a rooting and grounding in its own environment! In. other words, before the
lad left India, he ought first to have acquired the methods of science. Then, in the
light of these methods he should have learnt all that India could have taught him,
of the particular industry he was going out to master, in its simple and primitive
Swadeshi form. Having weighed the primitive industry against his own modern
schooling, having become aware of the gap between the two, having read all that
he can find; having even experimented in so far as is possible, then let the lad
be sent out, when his own mind is quivering with enquiry. Only when curios-
ity is already awakened, have we, the energy to proceed from the known to the
unknown.
I heard of a student who went to a foreign country in the hope of learning from
some farm how to make the printers ink. Naturally enough, factory after factory
refused him, and he had to return to India, having wasted his own efforts and his
father’s money, without the knowledge he went out to seek. This instance was
particularly flagrant, because by India and China long ago was invented the very
idea of durable inks, and because the knowledge of these is still so far from lost,
that any manufacture of Swadeshi ink begun in a back lane to-day, can drive out
of competition at once an equal quantity of the foreign writing-fluid of commerce.
It follows that an Indian lad seeking to invent some form of printers’ ink, with a
moderate amount of intelligence and technological information, has a far better
start than, fifty or sixty years ago, had the people from whom he now proposes to
beg or steal. The whole trouble and loss arose in this case from a misconception
of the place of foreign knowledge in a true scheme of education. It has no right
to be, save as capstone and finial to a genuine, honest faculty and experience of
indigenous growth.
Of course while this is said, and the ideal laid down so glibly for the individual,
one. remembers, with a pang, the ordeal that India as a whole has had to face. One
remembers the unprecedented influx of foreign knowledge and foreign criticism,
from the early decades of the nineteenth century onwards—an influx that has
lost her many a mind and many a character that should have been amongst the
noblest of her sons—an influx that only an extraordinary national integrity and
self-determination could have enabled her to survive so long. While we remember
this with fulness of comprehension and compassion, however, it is only the more
binding upon us to walk warily in the matter of individual development; for only
by the bone and muscle of the individual, can we do aught to set right the wrong
that has been done the whole.
Even in science, apart altogether from industry, it will only be those men
who believe themselves to be inheriting and working out the greatest ideals of
the Indian past, who will be able to lay one stone in the edifice of the national
future,—if there is to be such an edifice at all. Not by the man who is working for

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his living, and wants it increased, that he may keep his wife and child in respect-
ability and comfort; not by the man who counts the cost; not by the man who
holds something back; not by the man who strikes a bargain with ideals will the
path of Indian science be ‘blazed’ through the forest. Asoka was the conqueror of
Kalinga, and therefore the enemy of some of his people, till the bar sinister was
wiped off his scutcheon by the message of Buddha, and he felt himself a man, and
an Indian man, with a right to rule in greatness over his own empire. Even so will
he who carries the torch of modern knowledge to the India of the future, be one
who feels himself enfranchised of the whole greatness of Indian spirituality. That
river of renunciation that courses through his will, must find its ocean indeed in
Science. But Science will not stand suspect of that bhakta as less than the highest
truth. Two things will contend in him,—the passion for truth, and the yearning
over his own people in their ignorance. There will be no time for thought of mukti
in that heart. Has the soldier thought of mukti when he follows his captain to the
breach? A fire of sacrifice, without let or limit, will be. the life that achieves this
end. The form may be modern; the name of science may be foreign; but the life,
the exfergy, the holiness of dedication will be Indian and know themselves for
Indian. So to cease from the quest of mukti is mukti itself. Viewed in the light
of such an impulse how mean and pitiful seems the effort at self-culture! The
whole body of foreign knowledge can be assimilated easily by one thus rooted
and grounded in his relation to his own country.
The anxiety for a theory of the right place of foreign culture too often, clothes
a mere desire for foreign luxury. With regard to this whole question, a man cannot
have too severe a standard of self-respect. There was a time when men were born,
either ravenous individuals, or at best, with the instincts of the pack. Today we
cannot imagine a child in whom family honour is not a primitive instinct. It may
be that ages will yet dawn in which the thought of motherland and countrymen
will be as deeply inwrought in the human heart. To the men of that age how might
the question look of the place of foreign luxuries in noble lives? Why should we
not be ‘anachronisms of the future,’ using only what belongs to us or ours, by
right of toil or moral conquest? Some standard of self-restraint and self-denial in
these matters is demanded of every individual by his own need of moral dignity.
The code that would use to the utmost not only all its opportunities but also all
its chances, this code is too likely to turn, Indian men into European women!
Effeminacy is the curse that follows upon indulgence, even innocent indulgence.
In foreign luxury. Frivolity, in moments of crisis, is the bane of the effeminate.
One of the noblest of Christian adjurations lies in the words, “Let us endure hard-
ness, as good soldiers of Christ;” and again the sublime exclamation, “Quit ye like
men! Be strong.” The inability to endure hardness, the inability to be earnest, the
inability to play the man, either in action or devotion, in life or in imagination,
these, if no worse, are the fruits of the tree of a luxury to which we have no right.
In the last and final court, It may be said, Humanity is one, and the distinction
between native and foreign, purely artificial. The difference is relative. In a man’s
own country are many things, foreign to his experience. With many a foreign

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luxury he has been familiar from his cradle. Morals, also it may be answered,
are entirely relative. The difference between life and death, between victory and
defeat, between excellence and degradation, are all entirely relative. By walking
truly with discrimination through the world of the relative, do we grow to the
understanding of such abstract and absolute ideas as the unity of Humanity. That
unity makes itself known to the soul as a vast enfranchisement. It is never even
dimly perceived by him who has taken the half for the whole, the outcast from
human experience, the seeker after foreign ways and foreign thoughts, whose
shame is his own mother,—the man who has no native land.

THE FUTURE EDUCATION OF THE INDIAN WOMAN

Here in India, the woman of the future haunts us. Her beauty rises on our vision
perpetually. Her voice cries out on us. Until we have made ready a place for her,
until we throw wide the portals of our life, and go out, and take her by the hand to
bring her in, the Motherland Herself stands veiled and ineffective, with eyes lost,
in set patience, on the earth. It is essential, for the joyous revealing of that great
Mother, that she be first surrounded by the mighty circle of these, Her daughters,
the Indian women of the days to come. It is they who must consecrate themselves
before Her, touching Her feet with their proud heads, and vowing, to her their
own, their husbands’, and their children’s lives. Then and then only will she stand
crowned before the world. Her sanctuary to-day is full of shadows. But when the
womanhood of India can perform the great ârati of nationality, that temple shall
be all light, nay, the dawn verily shall be near at hand. From end to end of India,
all who understand are agreed that the education of our women must needs, at this
crisis, undergo some revision. Without their aid and co-operation none of the tasks
of the present can be finally accomplished. The problems of the day are woman’s
as well as man’s. And how idle were it to boast that our hearts are given to the
Mother, unless we seek to enshrine Her in every one of our lives.
Indian hesitation, however, about a new type of feminine education, has always
been due to a misgiving as to its actual aims, and in this the people have surely
been wise. Have the Hindu women of the past been a source of shame to us, that
we should hasten to discard their old-time grace and sweetness, their gentleness
and piety, their tolerance and child-like depth of love and pity, in favour of the
first crude product of Western information and social aggressiveness? On this
point India speaks with no uncertain voice. “Granted,” she says in effect, “that a
more arduous range of mental equipment is now required by women, it is nev-
ertheless better to fail in the acquisition of this, than to fail in the more essential
demand, made by the old type of training, on character. An education of the brain
that uprooted humility and took away tenderness, would be no true education at
all. These virtues may find different forms of expression in mediæval and modern
civilisations, but they are necessary in both. All education worth having must first
devote itself to the developing and consolidating of character, and only second-
arily concern itself with intellectual accomplishment.”

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The question that has to be solved for Indian women, therefore, is a form of
education that might attain this end, of developing the faculties of soul and mind
in harmony with one another. Once such a form shall be successfully thought
out and its adequacy demonstrated, we shall, without further ado, have an era
amongst us of Woman’s Education. Each successful experiment will be the signal
for a circle of new attempts. Already there is longing enough abroad to serve the
cause of woman. All that we ask is to be shown the way.
Important to education as is the question of method, it is still only subordinate
to that of purpose. It is our fundamental motive that tells in the development we
attempt to give our children. It is therefore the more urgently necessary that in
the training of girls we should have a clearly-understood ideal towards which to
work. And in this particular respect, there is perhaps no other country in the world
so fortunately placed as India. She is, above all others, the land of great women.
Wherever we turn, whether to history or literature, we are met on every hand by
those figures, whose strength she mothered and recognised, while she keeps their
memory eternally sacred.
What is the type of woman we most admire? Is she strong, resourceful, inspired,
fit for moments of crisis? Have we not Padmini of Cheetore, Chand Bibi, Jhansi
Rani? Is she saintly, a poet, and a mystic? Is there not Meera Bae? Is she the queen,
great in administration? Where is Rani Bhowani, where Ahalya Bae, where Jan-
habi of Mymensingh? Is it wifehood in which we deem that woman shines bright-
est? What of Sati, of Savitri, of the ever glorious Sita? Is it in maidenhood? There
is Uma. And where in all the womanhood of the world, shall be found another as
grand as Gandhari?
These ideals moreover are constructive. That is to say, it is not their fame and
glory that the Indian child is trained to contemplate. It is their holiness, simplicity,
sincerity, in a word, their character. This, indeed, is always a difference between
one’s own and an alien ideal. Impressed by the first, it is an effort that we seek
to imitate: admiring the second, we endeavour to arrive at its results. There can
never be any sound education of the Indian woman, which does not begin and end
in exaltation of the national ideals of womanhood, as embodied in her own history
and heroic literature.
But woman must undoubtedly be made efficient. Sita and Savitri were great in
wifehood, only as the fruit of that antecedent fact, that they were great women.
There was no place in life that they did not fill graciously and dutifully. Both sat-
isfied every demand of the social ideal. At once queen and housewife, saint and
citizen, submissive wife and solitary nun, as heroic combatant, both were equal
to all the parts permitted them, In the drama of their time. Perfect wives as they
were, if they had never been married at all, they must have been perfect just the
same, as daughters, sisters, and disciples. This efficiency to all the circumstances
of life, this womanhood before wifehood, and humanity before womanhood, is
something at which the education of the girl must aim in every age.
But the moral ideal of the India of to-day has taken on new dimensions—the
national and civic. Here also woman must be trained to play her part. And again,

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by struggling towards these she will be educated. Every age has its own intel-
lectual synthesis, which must be apprehended, before the ideal of that age can
be attained. The numberless pathways of definite mental concept, by which the
orthodox Hindu woman must go to self-fulfilment, form, to the Western mind
a veritable labyrinth. So far from being really un-educated, or non-educated,
indeed, as is so commonly assumed, the conservative Hindu woman has received
an education which in its own way is highly specialised, only it is not a type rec-
ognised as of value by modern peoples.
Similarly, in order to achieve the ideal of efficiency for the exigencies of the
twentieth century, a characteristic synthesis has to be acquired. It is no longer
merely the spiritual or emotional content of a statement that has to be conveyed to
the learner, as in the mythologico-social culture of the past. The student must now
seek to understand the limitations of the statement, its relation to cognate ideas
and the steps by which the race has come to this particular formulation. The mod-
ern synthesis, in other words, is scientific, geographical, and historical, and these
three modes of knowing must needs—since there is no sex in truth—be achieved
by woman as by man.
Science, history and geography, are thus as three dimensions in which the mind
of the present age moves, and from which it seeks to envisage all ideas. Thus
the conception of nationality—on which Indian efforts to-day converge—must be
realised by us, in the first place, as a result of the study of the history of our own
nation, with all its divergent elements of custom, race, language, and the rest. The
civic sense, in the same way, must be reached by a study of our own cities, their
positions, and the history of their changes from age to age.
Again, the nation must be seen, not only in relation to its own past, and its
own place, but also, in relation to other nations. Here we come upon the neces-
sity for geographical knowledge. Again, history must be viewed geographically
and geography historically. A great part of the glory and dignity of the ideally
modern woman lies in her knowledge that her house is but a tent pitched for a
night on the star-lit world-plane, that each hour, as it passes, is but a drop from an
infinite stream, flowing through her hand, to be used as she will, for benediction
or for sorrow, and then to flow on irresistibly again. And behind such an attitude
of mind, lies a severe intellectual discipline. But even the proportion which the
personal moment bears to space and time, is not formula enough for the modern
spirit. This demands, in addition, that we learn what is to it the meaning of the
truth, or science, the fact, in itself. This particular conception of truth is perhaps
no more absolute than others, current in other ages, but it is characteristic of the
times, and by those who have to pass the world’s test, it has to be understood. Yet
even this marked truth, thus thirsted after, has to be held as only a fragment of
an infinitely extended idea, in which Evolution and Classification of the sciences
play the parts of history and geography.
Nature, the Earth, and Time, are thus the three symbols by whose means the
modern mind attains to possession of itself. No perfect means of using them
educationally has ever been discovered or devised by man. The spirit of each

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individual is the scene of a struggle for their better realisation. Every school-room
embodies an attempt to communalise the same endeavour. Those who would
transmit the modern idea to the Indian woman, must begin where they can, and
learn, from their own struggles, how better to achieve. In the end, the idea once
caught, the Indian woman herself will educate Indian woman—meanwhile every
means that offers ought to be taken. The wandering Bhâgabatas or Kathakas,
with the magic lantern, may popularise geography, by showing slides illustrative
of the various pilgrimages. History outside the Mahabharata and Ramayana might
be familiarised in the same way. And there is no reason why simple lectures on
hygiene, sanitation, and the plants and animals of the environment should not also
be given by the wandering teachers to the assembled community, with its women
behind the screens. Pictures, pictures, pictures, these are the first of instruments in
trying to concretise ideas, pictures and the mother-tongue. If we would impart a
love of country, we must give a country to love. How shall women be enthusiastic
about something they cannot imagine?
Schools large and small, schools in the home and out of it, schools elementary
and advanced, all these are an essential part of any working out of the great prob-
lem. But these schools must be within Indian life, not antagonistic to it. The mind
set between two opposing worlds of school and home, is inevitably destroyed. The
highest ambition of the school must be to give moral support to the ideals taught
in the home, and the home to those imparted in the school—the densest ignorance
would be better for our women than any departure from this particular canon.
In making the school as much an essential of the girl’s life, as it has always been
of the boy’s, we are establishing something which is never to be undone. Every
generation as it comes will have to carry out the great task of the next generation’s
schooling. This is one of the constant and normal functions of human society. But
much in the problem of Woman’s Education as we to-day see it, is difficulty of
the time only. We have to carry our country through an arduous transition. Once
the main content of the modern consciousness finds its way into the Indian ver-
naculars, the problem will have disappeared, for we learn more from our Mother-
tongue itself, than from all our schools and schoolmasters. In order to bring about
that great day, however, the Mother Herself calls for vows and service of a vast
spiritual knighthood. Hundreds of youngmen are necessary, to league themselves
together for the deepening of education in the best ways amongst women. Most
students, perhaps, might be able to vow twelve lessons in a year to be given either
in home or village, during the holidays—this should hardly prove an exhausting
undertaking—yet, how much might be done by it.
Others might be willing to give themselves to the task of building up the ver-
nacular literatures. The book and the magazine penetrate into recesses where the
teacher’s foot never yet trod. The library, or the book-self, is a mute university.
How are women to understand Indian history, if, in order to read about Buddha or
Asoka, about Chandragupta or Akbar, they have first to learn a foreign language?
Great will be the glory of those hereafter who hide their ambition for the present, in
the task of conveying modern knowledge in the tongues of women and the People?

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Seeing that this first generation of pioneer-work must needs be done mainly by
men, on behalf of women, there are some who would scoff at the possibility of
such generosity and devotion. But those who know the Indian people deeply can-
not consent to this sneer. Life in India is socially sound. Civilisation is organic,
spiritual, altruistic. When the practice of suttee was to be abolished, it was done
on the initiative of an Indian man, Ram Mohun Roy. When monogamy was to
be emphasised as the one ideal of marriage, it was again from a man, Vidyas-
agar of Bengal, that the impulse came. In the East, it is not by selfish agitation,
from within, that great reforms and extensions of privilege are brought about. It
is by spontaneous effort, by gracious conferring of right from the other side. Or
if indeed woman feel the pinch of some sharp necessity, some ill to be righted, is
she not mother of man as well as of woman? Can she not whisper to her son, in
his childhood, of the task to which she assigns him? And shall she not thus forge a
weapon more powerful than any her own weak hands could wield? Such a woman
was the mother of Pandit Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar and such was the inspiration
that made him the woman’s champion.
But one word there is to be said, of warning and direction to that young
priesthood of learning, to whom this generation entrusts the problem we have
been considering. Education can never be carried out by criticism or discour-
agement. Only he who sees the noblest thing in the taught can be an effective
teacher. Only by the greatness of Indian life can we give a sense of the great-
ness of the world outside India. Only by the love of our own people can we
learn the love of humanity—and only by, a profound belief in the future of the
Indian woman, can any man be made worthy to help in bringing that future
about. Let the preacher of the New Learning be consecrated to the vision of
one who resumes into herself the greatness of the whole Indian past. Let him
hope and most earnestly pray that in this our time, in all our villages, we are
to see women great even as Gandhari, faithful and brave as Savitri, holy and
full of tenderness as Sita. Let the past be as wings unto the feet of the future.
Let all that has been be as steps leading us up the mountain of what is yet to
be. Let every Indian woman incarnate for us the whole spirit of the Mother
and the culture and protection of the Homeland, Bhumyâ Devi! Goddess of the
Homestead! Bande Mâtaram!

A NOTE ON HISTORICAL RESEARCH.

1. In all that you do, be dominated by the moral aim. Remember that Truth, in
its fulness, is revealed, not only through the intellect, but also through the heart,
and the will. Never rest content, therefore, with a realisation which is purely men-
tal. And never forget that every act of our lives is a necessary sacrifice to knowl-
edge, that a man who consciously chooses a mean or ignoble course cannot long
continue to be a pioneer in the march of his fellows onwards. Only if we are
always striving, in every way for the highest that is attainable can we actually
achieve anything at all in any path.

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It has been said that “the great scientific discoveries are great social events.”
This is true of all advances in learning. We labour, even to win truth, not on
behalf of Self, but on behalf of man and the fruits of our labour are to be given to
man, not selfishly enjoyed. Better a low attainment generously shared, than a high
vision seen by oneself alone. Better, because more finally effective to the advance
of knowledge. The result of the straggle of the individual in our generation ought
to be the starting-point of the race in the next.
2. Never be contented with the ideas and the wisdom which are gathered in the
study. We are bodies as well as minds. We have other senses and other faculties,
besides those of language. We have limbs as well as brains. Use the body. Use all
the senses, use even the limbs in the pursuit of truth. That which is learned, not
only with the mind, by means of manuscripts and books, but also through the eyes
and the touch, by travel and by work, is really known. Therefore, if you want to
understand India, visit the great historic centres of each age. Turn over the earth
and stroke the chiselled stones, with your own hands, walk to the sight that you
want to see, if possible, rather than ride. Ride rather than drive. Stand in the spot
where an event happened, even if no trace of its occurrence is still visible. If you
desire to understand a religious idea, reproduce as perfectly as you can, in every
detail, the daily life of the man to whom it came, or the race to which it was famil-
iar. To understand the Buddhist Bhikku, go out and beg. To understand Aurang-
zebe, sit in the mosque at Delhi, and pray there the prayers of the Mohammedan.
Or, if social formations are your study, be sure to work, to experiment, as well as
to learn. Verify each truth, test each idea, that comes to you, Whatever you seek,
bend every faculty on its achievement. What you believe, make yourself to it as
dough kneaded by the baker, as clay worked by the potter, as the channel to the
water of the river. Spurn ease. Never rest content. Make thought into sensation;
sensation into experience; experience into knowledge. Let knowledge become
character. Glory in suffering. By what your work costs you, you may know its
possible value to the world.
3. Never forget the future. “By means of the past to understand the present,
for the conquest of the future.” Let this be your motto. Knowledge without a
purpose is mere pedantry. Yet at the same time, the intrusion of self-interest
upon the pursuit of knowledge, must be turned aside, as with the flaming sword.
Purpose, moral purpose, others-regarding purpose is the very antithesis of self-
interest. Refuse to be drawn into personal, social, or doctrinal disputes. Release
the energy that belongs to these worlds, and let it find a higher function, in aiding
you to your self-chosen goal.
4. And now comes the question of the scope of your work, the question of
what you are actually to do. On two points I know you to be clear,—first, you are
determined, whatever you do, through it to serve the Indian Nationality; and sec-
ond, you know that to do this, you must make yourself a world-authority in that
particular branch of work. On these two points, therefore, I do not need to dwell.
With regard to the actual field of labour, it has long, I think, been determined
amongst us that India’s assimilation of the modern spirit may be divided into three

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elements, which She has not only to grasp but also to democratise. These are:
Modern Science; Indian History; and the World-Sense or Geography,—Synthetic
Geography.
5. Now in whichever of these you choose your own task, most of your intel-
lectual pleasure must come from the others. If you were a worker in Science,
you might read a good deal of History, in interesting forms, as recreation. And
so on. One of the modes by which a line of high research becomes democratised
is just this. The historical epoch, for instance, that is opened up by the scholar is
immediately appropriated and clothed with flesh, by the novelist, the poet and the
dramatist. Scott’s novels have been one of the chief factors in the creation of the
modern spirit. And you do not need to be told what poetry has done for the popu-
larising of Buddhist research amongst the English-speaking peoples.
6. But whatever you do, plunge into it heart and soul. Believe that, in a sense,
it alone,—this modern form of knowledge, young though it be,—is true. Carry
into it no prepossessions, no prejudices. Do not try, through it, to prove that your
ancestors understood all things, but manfully determine to add its mastery to the
intellectual realm of your ancestor’s descendants, I see this vice on all hands.
People imagine that it is “national” to reply when told something new that ought
to thrill them through and through, “Ah yes, I am familiar with that in Sanskrit, or
from the Mahabharata, or from the sayings of such and such a Sadhu.” And there
their thought ends. This is pure idleness and irreverence. Such recognition kills
thought, and coffins it: it offers it no home in which to dwell, no garden in which
to grow! The man who would conquer new realms intellectually must never look
back except to find tools. The man who would see truth face to face must first
wash his eyes in dew, unused by human kind. Afterwards, when the task is done,
when you come home laden with your spoils, you may perform the great sacrifice
of reverence. You may tally this and that, amongst your own discoveries, with
this and that amongst the utterances of the fore-fathers, and find, in an ecstacy of
reconciliation, that you have gone by the same road as they, only calling the mile-
stones by different names. But, to-day, set your face sternly towards the tabula-
tion of difference, towards the new, the strange, the unproven, and undreamt, you
will prove yourself the true son of your father, not by wearing garments of their
fashions but by living their life, by fighting with their strength. Concentration and
renunciation are the true differentiæ of the Hindu mind, not certain subjects of
study, or a pre-occupation with Sanskrit.
7. And now, as to the subject itself. Already you have progressed in the direc-
tion of History and Indian Economics. It is to be supposed therefore that your
work itself will be somewhere in this region. But side by side with your own
specialism—in which you will faithfully do, with your trained habits, what Professor
Jadu Nath Sarkar calls “spade-work”—do not forget to interest yourself in sub-
jects as a whole. If you take up Geography, read History for recreation, but be a
great geographer, like Reclus. If you take up History do not forget to read Reclus’
Universal Geography, and every other synthetic work that you can find. The mind
seeks energy by reposing in synthesis or unity, and uses the energy so acquired, in

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analytical or specialistic fields. Again if Indian History be your work of research,

read the finest European treatises on Western History. They may not always be
valuable for their facts, but they are priceless for their methods. Read Buckle
and Lecky as well as Gibbon. And read the great Frenchmen if you can. It is said
that Bossuet’s short work on the movement of History, written for a Dauphin of
France, was the spark that set the soul of Napoleon on fire. I have not yet read it
but I hope to do so. I hope also to read Condorcet and Lamartine, and more than
I have yet done of Michelet. About Comte, I feel unable to advise you. I believe
fully that his has been the greatest mind ever devoted to History. But whether his
treatment of the subject is as valuable as his conclusions, I am unable to tell you;
for my own part, I have hitherto only been able to grasp a little bit at a time, and
with regard to the thousands of questions that are in my mind, I cannot even tell
whether he has given definite answers to them or not. Yet the two books that I
have lent you, by an English Positivist,—“The Meaning of History”—and “The
New Calendar of Great Men,”—seem to me, though very popular yet extremely
profound. As I have already pointed out to you, the short essays with which each
division of the latter book is introduced, and the connectedness of the treatment of
each life with others, are to my mind worth their weight in gold.
In Indian History, such a point of view is conspicuous by its absence. Some
writers are interested in Buddhist India (if indeed we have any right to employ
such a term) and some in various stages of Mahratta or Sikh or Indo-Islamic
History, or what not. But who has caught the palpitation of the Indian heart-beat
through one and all of these? It is India that makes Indian History glorious. It
is India that makes the whole joy of the Indian places. I felt this when I was at
Rajgir, and saw so plainly, shining through the Buddhist period, the outline and
colour of an earlier India still,—the India of the Mahabharata. And the other day
amongst the ruins at Sanchi, when a lady who had been in Egypt turned and said
to me, “If you think so much of 2,000 years what would you think of 4,000?”
I said “I care nothing for 2,000! Even Sanchi is but a heap of stones. But this
strength is in the Indian people still!”
Are you the man who can catch this truth, and justify it before the whole world
by the mingling of stern scholarship, with poetic warmth? Better still, are you the
man who can make India herself feel it? An Upanishad of the National History
would make eternal foundations for the Indian Nationality, in the Indian heart, the
only world in which the nationality can be built enduringly. Or do you lean rather
to the economic side of your studies? If so, do not allow yourself to become a
mere specialist on statistics, and still more earnestly guard yourself against being
the one person in the world who knows all that is to be known about India’s griev-
ances, and knows nothing else. Every country and every community in the world
has grievances, and grievances against certain definite other persons and com-
munities also. To think of our mistakes and weaknesses as our grievances against
another, is to postpone indefinitely the day of setting them right. The active, the
aggressive, attitude is quite different. Accepting the past—and if you wish to be
proud of some of your ancestor’s deeds, you must be calmly prepared to suffer for

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others. The law of opposites will hold here, as elsewhere!—the question is, what
is to be done next? Even the science of economics may be made moral, may be
made constructive. The doctrine that man always does what pays him, is vulgar
nonsense. In fact the highest men are rather attracted to the opposite extreme, of
doing always what does not pay.
Ruskin, Wicksteed and the Fabians, amongst English writers, may help one
to a true viewpoint for economics, for these have felt the wholeness of human
interests, through the specialism. For the technology of the subject, you must
read many books. But the morality and wholesomeness of human love, in it, you
will share with very few, and those nearly always representatives of some cult or
other, which teaches the love and service, instead of the exploiting and extermina-
tion, of human beings, as the highest and most permanent joy of man. There is
however a third subject which you might take up, and feed from both your stud-
ies, of Indian History and Indian Economics. I allude to Sociology, or the Study
of Society. This term was the creation of Comte, but was popularised by Herbert
Spencer, a very different person. Spencer and a host of other writers have gone
into the subject, through the study of Customs, in which there can be little doubt
that the history of society is chiefly written. Comte regarded it rather from the
point of view of an organism having a meaning, a responsibility and a destiny.
He saw the whole spirituality of man in every human being of every human race!
And many writers have attempted to work out theories of society, by comparing
those of men with those of ants and bees and so on. King of modern sociologists
is perhaps Kropotkin, with, his book on Mutual Aid published by Heinemann, in
which he works out the idea that mutual aid, co-operation, self-organisation, have
been much stronger factors than the competition of fellows, in, the evolution of
the higher forms of life and in the determining of success for the community.
Now this is surely a line of thought and research which is most important to
the question of Nationality. In my own opinion, we are entering here on a new
period in which Mutual Aid, Co-operation, Self-organisation, is to be the motto,
and we want, not only determined workers, but also great leaders, equipped with
all the knowledge that is to be had, and therefore capable of leading us in thought.
Is it true that an industrial society represents the highest social formation? If so,
is it equally true that it is always based upon an antecedent military? “From the
military, through the active, to the industrial,” some one said to me the other day.
We stand here on the verge of great questions. Yet one thing would seem clear—
only a people who are capable of industrialism, are capable of anything else. If
the beginning determines the end, clearly the end also determines the beginning;
the struggle to become fully industrialised is as high as the highest struggle that
there is.
Even to write the History of India, even to set down clearly the problems which
that history involves, I have long felt that we must first have experts in sociology,—
men who can at a glance assign to a social group its possible age in pre-historic
chronology. We want after that, and combined with it, those to whom the History
of the early Asiatic Empires,—Chaldean, Assyrian, Tartar, Pelasgian, Egyptian,

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Phœnician,—is an open book. And, lastly, we want those who are competent to
look out upon the future and determine towards what goal, by what line upon the
traceless ocean, the great ship of national well-being is to be navigated.
Are you to be a solitary student? Or are you one of those most happy and fruit-
ful workers who can call about them fellow-captains and fellow-crewsmen to toil
along the same lines and exchange the results of thought?

A NOTE ON CO-OPERATION.
As to what you can read. First, for what part of the national work do you wish
to train yourself? I believe, if rightly carried on, India is now entering on a period
in which her motto is to be—“Mutual Aid: Self-organisation: Co-operation.”
If you will look into the matter you will see that most cases of oppression
and corruption—where the advantage of numbers is so uniformly on one side,
as here—could be met by Organisation. It is more difficult to do wrong to ten
thousand men who stand solid and are intelligent, than to an isolated and illiter-
ate person. Take the case of clerks in offices, of Government servants, railway
servants, rate payers, peasants. Much could be done amongst all these classes by
simple enrolment and united action. But everything depends on such cases on the
organiser, who is usually the Secretary. Do you care to do, such work as this? It
is not merely for self-protection that the organ could be used, but for obtaining
credit, tools, knowledge, co-operation and mutual aid of many kinds.
If this is the branch which you are to take up, you will find that the subject has
a history and a literature of its own. Read up Co-operation in the Encyclopædia
Britannica. * * Read Mutual Aid, a scientific work, by Kropotkin, published by
Heinemann. Study the history of Trade Unions, Study the history of Co-operation
in Denmark. And study particularly the history of small countries, Norway, Swe-
den, the Hanseatic League, Motley’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, etc. Make a
small society for reading and discussing these subjects. Indeed do this in any case.
Share your own knowledge, and co-operate in extending and deepening it. Above
all, think things out, and put your thought into practice, learning from your own
mistakes. Organise a single group of people for some definite aim, and see how
you get on. Organise a class for, say, legal aid. That ought not to be difficult. But
I think it would be a better experiment to make than organising for a charity, an
enterprise which we are all accustomed to attempting and failing in. Organise for
a united struggle of some kind, against something definite.
Or do you want to specialise in politics? In that case you must study the Eco-
nomic History of India,—and the Congress publications, together with the books
of Dutt, Digby, Naoroji, P. C. Ray and others, with the speeches of Ranade,
Gokhale, and so on, will be your best fare.
Or is it India? In that case, work at History and do not neglect the His-
tory and Geography of other countries besides your own. For remember, it is
the national sense in the world-sense that we have to achieve. The structure of
human society,—Spencer, Tylor, Clodd, Lubbock and others; the history of Early

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Empires,—Assyria, Chaldea, China, Persia, Egypt, Greece, etc., and for India,—
Tilak’s two books, Fergusson’s Architecture, Cunningham’s Ancient India, and
other books. M’Crindle’s collections. Archæological survey reports etc., etc.,
etc. In this kind of reading, constantly reinforced by pilgrimages to the places of
which you read as far as possible—you can find the materials for a history yet to
be written.
Or will you serve the great cause through the Industrial Revival? In that case
all that helps for co-operation should help you. And a different class of work is
wanted.
Or do you care to undertake the work of getting modern knowledge written
up in the vernaculars? What books have you in your own vernacular, in which
women can read History? If you worked at this, in your own language, you would
need helpers, an army of them. And then, again, you would want the courage that
is born of feeling that others were carrying out the same idea in other languages.
For this, we would need the heroic devotion of thousands, of our choicest grad-
uates the country over, each choosing his own subject, and filling up a single
space in your great roll. There is nothing that so much needs doing. Nothing that
would bring more illumination with it. Here is a case of co-operation. Each man
would give only a few hours of leisure daily. The rest of his time he would be
earning his bread. Do you see?
But there are other causes. There is physical training, for example. This is much
needed. And so on and so on.
In any case read everything you can lay hands on, by Frederick Harrison.
His books are expensive, but worth their weight in gold. They are published by
Macmillan.

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