C P Brown: Education in India

15. EDUCATION IN INDIA

Prelude:
The biographers are agog that CPB started schools wherever he went, implying that we should be grateful, because the towns were rotting in ignorance but for his 3 schools. This view is unfortunately an outcome of the psychological bondage we discussed, besides a total ignorance foisted on us by the same rulers. Even after 6o years of independence the country has not done any research to expose the British perfidy. We have to fight this reluctance of the governments, and bring forth all the facts and tell the whole world that India was the fountain head of all knowledge till the 18th century be it agriculture or ship design; culinary or cotton fabrics, steel or paints… you name it we developed it. Some of the facts are:
At the end of the 18th century the percentage of literates in India was higher than that in any European country. There were four kinds of educational institutions/venues.
i. Lakhs of Brahmin families who took in resident students,
ii. Tols or Vidya-peeths in all the principal towns,
iii. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Mussalmans studying in Mathas and Madrassas which covered the whole country, and,
iv. Pathashalas, even in the smallest village. EIC’s rule ended the ancient institution of the village Panchayat which was taking care of Pathashalas

Keir Herdie, in his book India:
Max Mueller asserts that there were then 80,000 native schools in Bengal. Ludlow, in his “History of British India”, where we have swept away the village system as in Bengal, there the village school has also disappeared’.

I quote extensively from the Report of A.D. Campbell, Collector of Bellary, dated 17th August 1823:
“The economy with which children are taught to write in the native schools and the system by which the more advanced scholars are caused to teach the less advanced, and at the same time to confirm their own knowledge, is certainly admirable, and well deserves the imitation it has received in England…”

“The process of extinction set in with the establishment of the Company’s rule and gradual impoverishment of the country. Of nearly a million of souls in this district, noteven 7,000 are now at school. In many villages where formerly there were large numbers of schools, there are none now. Various schools in which reading, writing and arithmetic were taught in various dialects of the country, as has been always usual in India became defunct.”

“Learning has never flourished in any country except under the encouragement of the ruling power; and the support once given to science in this part of India has long been withheld. Of the 533 institutions for education… in this district, I am ashamed to say, not one now derives any support from the State”… (British Government)

“There is no doubt, that in former times, especially under the Hindoo Governments, very large grants, both in money and in land, were made for the support of learning”.

“Considerable alienation of revenues, which formerly did honour to the State by upholding and encouraging learning, have deteriorated under our rule into the means of supporting ignorance”.

Can anyone who reads this report of A D Campbell, have any doubt as to how the British ruined our culture through closure of our very system of Education? By throwing us into that pit of darkness and ignorance, they could create the morons who are happy that CPB opened schools!
The systematic opposition by the new English rulers to any effort to make the people knowledgeable.

Almost all the Englishmen ruling the country opposed educating Indians. J.C. Marshman. “The British Government strongly opposed any system of instruction for the natives”. One of the Directors stated “we had just lost America in the establishment of schools and colleges, and that it would not do for us to repeat the same act of folly in regard to India”…

During the parliamentary enquiry of 1831, Major-General Sir Lionel Smith, said: “The effect of
education will be to do away with all the prejudices of sects and religions by which we have hitherto kept the country – the Mussalmans against Hindoos, and so on; the effect of education will be to expand their minds and show them their vast power”.

It is time to understand the situation of Education Vs Society in India,before the advent of the British. Kum. Nivedita quotes Fillmore saying “The droppings of India’s soil fed distant regions”. 15% of lands were revenue free and balance revenue was used to run schools, improving irrigation etc. In 1822 a survey conducted by the British Collectors found that Bengal had one-lakh village schools, in Madras there was not a single village without a school. Teachers belonged to all castes. The Brahmins accounted for 7 to 48% of the teachers and the rest from other castes.

1. Palm leaf MSS were available, in good condition and were donated frequently till as late as 1930, i.e. 100 years after that abominable statement of CPB.
2. Hundreds of Manuscripts are available, in reasonably good condition and available for printing..
3. Writing was done, even in 16th, 17th, & 19th centuries though not on a grand scale.

Fifth column
The British felt the pressing need of a body of English-educated Indians who could keep them posted about the prevalent inner feelings of the Indian people’s ideas and opinions and mould them in favour of the English. “Hindu Sanskrit College” of Banaras was established to meet this requirement.

A number of English statesmen felt that it was necessary to translate Christian religious literature into Indian languages to assist English missionaries coming out to India. Amongst the witnesses examined was Major Ronaldson who had been for 17years the Persian interpreter attached to the Commander-in-Chief at Madras, and had also been the Secretary of the Education Committee of that Presidency’s Government.

Ronaldson opined that the education of Indians results in making them hostile to the English Government. General knowledge of European history brings home to them the enormity of a vast country like India lying under the heels of a handful of foreigners. This realisation naturally leads to an eagerness in their hearts to help in the liberation of their country from Foreign Rule.

“I have noticed this hostility in Hindus and Mussalmans – to a greater degree in the latter – particularly when these people come to know the secret of the basis of the English rule over them” They thought that the only way to extinguish the patriotism of the Indians and to turn them into useful tools of the foreign rule was to impart Western education.

Lord Macaulay arrived in India in the first quarter and decided the issue in favour of the Occidentalists, whose chief aim was to prevent the rebirth of Indian nationalism amongst the superior classes and to turn them into useful tools of the English administration.

The well-known historian, Prof. H.H. Wilson, has characterised the achievements of the Macaulay-Bentinck policy thus: “…We created a separate caste of English scholars, who had no longer any sympathy, or very little sympathy for their countrymen or what is worse, knowledge of his country. And– shallow to the core if it existed (Before the Select Committee of the House of Lords, 5th July, 1864)

Dr. Duff the historian, whilst commending this policy, has compared it with the policy of the ancient Romans who invariably suppressed the language and the literature of the people conquered by them and educated the latter in Roman language, literature, ideas and ways of life. He adds: “…1 venture to hazard the opinion, that Lord William Bentinck’s double act for the encouragement and diffusion of the English language and English literature in the East and simultaneously suppressing the native languages… is the grandest master-stroke of sound policy.”

Dr. Duff also confirmed the views of another English scholar about the tremendous influence which the language used by a people has on the ideas entertained by them. Bentinck banned the use of Persian. (And any wonder as to why CPB raised the vyavaharika to the grand literature level?)

Sir Charles E. Trevelyan, a powerful advocate of the instruction of Indians in English, presented a paper,” POLITICAL TENDENCY OF DIFFERENT SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION IN INDIA” English Educational Policy followed in India and of its aims and implications.

The instruction of Indians in Arabic and Sanskrit, and of keeping alive their age-old national literature, ideas and opinions would, in his view. “…be perpetually reminding the Mohammedans that we are infidel usurpers of some of the fairest realms of the faithful, and the Hindoos, that we are unclean beasts, with whom it is a sin and a shame to have any friendly intercourse.

“The spirit of English literature, on the other hand, cannot but be favourable to the English connection. Familiarly acquainted with us by means of our literature, the Indian youth almost cease to regard us as foreigners. They speak of our great men with the same enthusiasm as we do. They cease to think as violent opponents or sullen, conformists. “….As long as the natives are left to brood over their former independence, their sole specific for improving their condition is the immediate and total expulsion of the English.

The young men, brought up at our seminaries (Convents, Universities, colleges headed by British principals), turn with contempt from the barbarous despotism under which their ancestors groaned to the prospect of improving their national institution on the English model… they have no notion of any improvement but such as rivets their connection with the English, and makes them dependent on English protection and instruction…(In simple words the seminary is the training ground!

They will then cease to desire and aim at independence on the old Indian footing. A sudden change will then be impossible; and a long continuance of our present connection with India will even be assured to us. (How clearly do we see it happening now, alienating all our intellectuals from our national culture?)

Common Wealth: the educated classes… will naturally cling to us…There is no class of our subjects to whom we are so thoroughly necessary as those whose opinions have been cast in the English mould; (How deliberate and planned – 100years ago. and working wonderfully well!)

“The Indians will, I hope, soon stand in the same position towards us in which we once stood towards the Romans. From being obstinate enemies, the Britons soon became attached and confiding friends; and they made more strenuous efforts to retain the Romans than their ancestors had done to resist their invasion. (Justice party of south.) Our premature departure be dreaded as a calamity….

Even sensible and comparatively well-affected natives had no notion that there was any remedy for the existing depressed state of their nation except the sudden and absolute expulsion of the English.

The effect of training in European learning is to given an entirely new turn to the native mind. The young men educated in this may cease to strive after Independence.
And ages may elapse before the ultimate end will be attained. Lord Mont eagle, the Chairman of the Committee, educating India will be to postpone the separation for a long indefinite period.

A SUMMARY OF THE EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

India was the most literate country and in a survey by district collectors in 1822, it was found that there was not one single village in the Madras presidency without a school. We were made to believe that only Sanskrit was taught and that Brahmins only were in charge while, only 7% of students and 48 % of teachers only were Brahmins, and rest were from all castes. All children had education in their mother tongue for 4 to 5 years. This is the condition in which the British took hold of and in about 50 years demolished the whole structure. Look at what Macaulay says’ a single shelf of a good European library is worth the whole native literature of India’. Any wonder CPB states with that cocksure assurance only the ignorant can assert that Telugu literature was about to be extinct.

In1835, Bentinck published a resolution – stating that the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature amongst the natives of India. A thorough research of the British activities during 1820 – 1880 will help us know the methodology and the systematic destruction of a society and its cultural wealth. It can help us get over that colonial bind. But unfortunately the same canards of “caste ridden”, “fissiparous”, “blind religions beliefs” are bandied about. That is exactly what these biographers are also perpetuating it. It is time. We make full efforts to get at a balanced view of the society then, which struggled to be on its feet.