Kaka kar karta ki puja uske siva aur na dooja
Saturday, February 28, 2015
Education in pre- British India and reason behind its replacement
The British Government was afraid that if there were
more educated people in India the chances of revolution become brighter.
The intention behind the changes made by British
Government in education system of India can be made clear by Lord Macaulay’s
Address to the British Parliament 2nd February 1835. In his address, he said
that “I have travelled across the length
and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a
thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people
of such caliber, that I do not think we
would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this
nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I
propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is
foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their
self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a
truly dominated nation. ”
The
information about indigenous education, which is available today, whether
published, or still in manuscript form
in the government records, largely belongs to the 1820's and 1830's period.It
is significant to emphasize that indigenous education was carried out through pathshalas, madrassahs and gurukulas.[1]
These
three institutions were the source of traditional knowledge systems in India
and played a very significant role in the Indian education. These institutions were in fact the watering holes of the culture of
traditional communities. Therefore the term school is a weak translation of the
roles these institutions really played in Indian society.
The most well-known and
decisive point, which emerged from the educational surveys, lies in an
examination made by William Adam. He, in his observations found that there
existed about 1,00,000 village schools in Bengal and Bihar around the 1830s.
Adam divided the period spent in elementary
schools into 4 stages, which were: The first stage was a period of about ten
days, during which the young scholar was taught to form the letters of the
alphabet; the second stage, extending two and a half to 4 years, was
distinguished by the use of palm leaf as the material on which writing was
performed and the scholar was taught to read and write and also learn the Cowrie table,
the Numeration table, the katha table and the Ser table;
the third stage extended from 2 to 3 years, which were employed in writing on
the plantain leaf and addition, subtraction and other arithmetical operations
were taught during this period; and finally in the fourth stage, which extended
up to 2 years, the writing was done on the paper and the scholar was expected
to read the Ramayana, Manas mangal
1st
Stage 1- 10 days
2nd Stage 2-1/2 -4years
3rd Stage 2-3 years
4th Stage 2 years
Men like Thomas Munro, had observed that 'every
village had a school'. . At about the same time, England had very few schools for the children of
ordinary people till about 1800, and
many of the older grammar school were in poor shape.
According to this hard
data, in terms of the content, the proportion of those attending institutional
school education in India in 1800 is
certainly not inferior to what obtained in England then; and in many respects
Indian schooling seems to have been much more extensive. The content of studies
was better in India than in England. The method of school teaching was superior
in India at that time. The school attendance, especially in the district of
Madras Presidency, even in the decayed state of the period 1822-25, was
proportionately far higher than the numbers in all variety of schools in
England in 1800.
Two of the collectorsof Madras Presidency sent
detailed information pertaining to those who were being educated at home, or in
some other private manner. The collector of Malabar sent details of 1,594
scholars who were receiving education in Theology, Law, Astronomy, Metaphysics,
Ethics and Medical Science in his district from private tutors. The collector of Madras,
on the other hand, reported in his letter of February 1826 that 26,963
school-level scholars were then receiving tuition at their homes in the area
under his jurisdiction.
The government of Madras Presidency completed a
survey of Indian educational institutions in 1823-24. After that it came to be
known that despite the poverty and disturbance, there were about 13,000 schools and 740 colleges under the Presidency.
According to this survey the original number of students in school and colleges
were 1,88,650 out of which 42,502 were Brahmans and 85,400 were from the castes
known as Shudras. The remaining were Vaishya, Mohammedan and from other Hindu
castes. The numbers of girls were only 4540, but according to the report this
lesser number of girls as alleged was mainly due to the prevalence of home
education of girls.
The main subjects, which were reported to be
taught in the schools , were reading, writing and arithmetic. Ramayanum, Maha
Bharata, Bhagvata, were some other books which were reported to be taught in
these schools
The
caste-wise division of students provides the more interesting and historically
more relevant information. In the Tamil speaking areas where the twice-born
ranged between 13% in the South Arcot to some 23% in Madras, the Muslims were
less than 3% in South Arcot and Chingleput to 10% in Salem, while the Shudras
and the other castes ranged from about 70% in Salem and Tinnevelly, to over 84%
in South Arcot.
As per the survey done
by Collectors a total of 1,094 were
enumerated as Colleges. The largest number of these, 279, were in the district
of Rajahmundry with a total of 1.454 scholars; Coimbatore came next with 173
such places (724 scholars); Guntoor had 171 (with 939 scholars); Tanjore 109
(with 769 scholars); Nellore 107; North Arcot 69 (with 418 scholars); Salem 53
(with 324 scholars); Chingleput 51 (with 398 scholars); Masulipatarn 49 (with
199 scholers); Bellary 23; Trichnopoly (with 131 scholars) and Malabar with one
old institution with 75 scholars.
The books used in these institutions probably
were the Vedas, the various Sastras, the Purans,
th e more well known books on Ganeeta, and Jyotish-sastras and
epic literature.
The Government of the Presidency of Madras on 10
March 1826 ultimately reviewed the reports of the collectors. According to the Governor,
Sir Thomas Munro, the % of boys in
the age group of 5-10 was 1/4th but
if we include those taking being
taught at home it would be 1/3rd.
Observations
made by Dr. G.W.Leitner in 1882 show that the spread of education in the Punjab
around 1850 was of a similar extent. Leitner's researches showed that at the
time of the annexation of the Punjab, the lowest computation gave 3,30,000
pupils in the schools of the various denominations who were acquainted with
reading, writing and some methods of computation.
Gandhiji was very
disappointed at the condition of Indian education during the British period.
Gandhiji observed two main points in Indian education: (1) Today India is more
illiterate than it was hundred years
ago; and (2) the British administrators instead of looking after education and
other matters which had existed, began to root them out.
The colonial era saw huge differences
of opinion among the colonialists themselves about education for Indians. This
was divided into two schools - the Orientalists, who believed that education should happen in Indian
languages (of which they favoured classical or court languages like Sanskrit or
Persian) vrs Utilitarians (also calledAnglicists. In which latter prevailed[2]
.
Thomas
Babington Macculay being most prominent. He called an educational system that would create a class of
anglicised Indians who would serve as cultural intermediaries between the
British and the Indians.[22] Macaulay succeeded in
implementing ideas previously put forward by Lord William Bentinck, the Governor General since 1829.)
Jhaargues
that local schools for pre-adolescent children were in a flourishing state in thousands
of villages of Bihar and Bengal until the early decades of the nineteenth
century. They were village institutions,
maintained by village elders with local funds, where their children jha
education system in pre british bihar (from all caste clusters and communities)
could, if the father wished, receive useful skills. However, the British
policies in respect of education and land control adversely affected both the
village structure and the village institutions of secular education. The
British legal system and the rise of caste consciousness since the second half
of the nineteenth century made it worse. Gradually, village as the base of
secular identity and solidarity became too weak to create and maintain its own
institution by the end of the nineteenth century and the traditional system
decayed.[30]
One of the earliest observations made on the
subject of indigenous education was by Fra
Paolino Da Bartolomeo. Born in Austria, he spent fourteen years in India
(1776-1789). Recalling what Megasthenese wrote, he says that the method of
teaching and writing was introduced into
India two hundred years before Christ, and that he still found it in practice.
"No people, perhaps, on earth have adhered as much to their ancient usage
and customs as the Indians," he says. He tells us that the Greek
historians represent the Indians as people of greater size, and much more
robust than those of other nations. He himself "seldom saw in India a
person either lame, crooked, or otherwise deformed". Among many factors,
climatic and cultural (like wholesome nourishment, cold bath, oil message
etc.),
We may here also quote
the testimony of Brigadier-General Alexander
Walker who served In India between 1780 and 1810. He says that "no
people probably appreciate more justly the importance of instruction than the
Hindus". According to him, "they sacrifice all the feelings of
wealth, family pride and caste that their children may have the advantage of
good education". He also found that this love of learning was no exclusive
characteristic of the Brahmins but "this desire is strongly impressed on
the minds of all the Hindus. It is inculcated by their own system, which
provided schools in every village”[3]
Even during the early days of the British, when they had not
entrenched themselves so well, indigenous education was still thriving.
Discussing the famous "Nuddeah School" of Bengal, an article (Calcutta
Monthly Register, January 1791) has the following to say: "In the
college of Nuddeah alone, there are at present 1,100 students and 150 masters.
Their numbers, it is true fall very short of those in former days. In Rajah
Roodre's time (Circa 1680) there were at Nuddeah, no less than 4,000 students
and masters in proportion." All, the teachers as well as the pupils, were
supported by the revenue of free land, the Rajah's treasury supplying any
deficiency.[4]
The fact of wide-spread education - a school in every village - was
uniformly noticed by most early observers.[5] Even writing as late as 1820, Abbe J.A. Dubois says that
"there are very few villages in which one or many public schools are not
to be found ... that the students learn in them all that is necessary to their
ranks and wants ... namely, reading, writing, and accounts".
It turned out that what
the Government undertook was not a sample survey but a veritable census. The Madras study and
Adam's study of the Thana of the Nattore in the Rajashahy District of Bengal
counted every school, scholar and teacher.They touched many points: mode of
instruction ,curriculum, text-books, the hours of coaching, the tuition fees,
the financial support of the system. They also contained information regarding
the state of the female education; they collected the caste-composition of the
scholars and the teachers and also their religious and linguistic affiliations.
In this way, these reports, besides throwing light on the educational state of
the period, became a mine of information on many sociological facts.
There were certain characteristic features of
the Hindu mode of instruction. Reading and writing were combined. As a pupil
spoke aloud a letter, he also wrote it with his finger on the ground in sand.
The very first lessons which taught a knowledge of letters also provided moral
and religious instruction. A letter was learnt by referring to a word beginning
with that letter, then by a verse which was also a moral maxim, in order to
impress it better in the memory. For example the letter 'k' stood for kubrâ (hump-backed),
and it was accompanied by the verse:kakkâ kar kartâ kî pûjâ, wahî nirañjan
aur na dûjâ (worship the Creator; He is pure and He has no second).
Again, the alphabet 'd' was accompanied by this verse; dosh na dîje kâhû;
dosh karam apne kâ (do not attribute your failure to others; attribute
it to your own destiny).
There was also another feature of this mode of learning: the
pupils learnt in groups of four or five, generally led by a more advanced
student. Describing the method, A.D.
Campbell, Collector of Bellary, says: "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." This refers to the well known fact that some of the
features of the Indian indigenous education were borrowed by Europe.4
Private coaching including self-education
remained an important part of the Indian scene. Edward Thompson writing in the 1930's says: "There are in
India poor folk who never went to any sort of school who have learnt to read. .
. There must be more literacy in the sense of reading the vernaculars, than the
numbers in schools indicate, or else how every Bengal bazaar swarms with these
frightfully printed (but cheap) texts of Ramprasad,
Chandidas, Krittibas's Ramayana (before the War, according to Dinesh Sen,
two hundred thousand sold every year). .
. Sarat Chatterjee told me that in
1921 the twelve annas edition of his fiction had brought him in twelve thousand
rupees in royalties,
Higher Education
There was also a well-developed system of specialized education
and higher learning.
According to the Survey of Indigenous Education in the
Province of Bombay (1820-30), there were 16 schools of higher learning
in Ahmednagar; and in Poona there was as many 164 such schools out of a total
of 222 educational institutions of all description.
Madras Presidency reported 1,101 schools (with 5431 students) of
higher learning, Rajahmundry heading the list with 279 such schools.
Trichnopoly had 173, Nellore 137 and Tanjore 109. These taught 5,431 scholars
who learnt here, according to their specialization, the Vedas, or Law, or
Astronomy, or Poetics, or Music, etc.
Hamilton said in 1801 that within the limits
of the 24Parganas, beyond the limits of Calcutta, there were 190 seminaries,
all indigenously maintained where Hindu Law, Grammar and Metaphysics were
taught. Ward, who wrote in 1818,
enumerated 28 institutions of higher learning in the city of Calcutta alone
where Nyâya and Smriti Shâstras were taught. There was well organized instruction in the Indian system of medicine
and inoculation against small-pox was also taught.
Adam gives much data on the
subject. According to his Report, in the Thana of Nattore in the District of
Rajashahy alone, there were 38 higher schools of learning with 379 scholars, of
whom 261 came from distant places. We have the same story from another corner
in India, namely the Punjab. Leitner's
Report says: "The Vedas were, comparatively speaking, little taught in
the Punjab in Ranjit Singh's time, the teachers chiefly coming from the
Dekkan"; but, he adds that in Sanskrit and in Grammar, "Punjab
Learning was proverbial throughout India, whilst Punjabi Pandits also excelled
in Niaya (Logic), Mimansa, the Dharmshastras, Vedant and Sankhya (six Shastras),
Patidhant and Siddhant (Astronomy)".
The subjects taught in these schools of higher learning were the
Vedas, SâMkhya (Philosophy), the Six DarSanas, Law, Logic, Poetics, Grammar,
Astrology and Astronomy, and Medicine. Fra Paolino Da Bartolomeo, describing
education in Malabar also mentions the following subjects: Chess (ciudarangam),
fencing (payatta), Navigation (naushantra) and the use of the
spear on foot (hastiludiun). Another interesting subject taught was
silence or mauna. Yes, mauna too has to be taught and it is as important a
subject as any other. We learn from Leitner's Report that Ranjit Singh also
gave grants to architects and gun-makers. It is not clear whether the grants
were personal or meant for teaching their arts to other deserving students.
Adam praises the
teachers for their learning which was equalled only by their modesty. He found them
"not only unpretending but also plain and simple". Though
"adepts in the subtleties of the profoundest grammar" of a language
"probably the most philosophical", and masters of logic, ethical
philosophy and of their national laws, they were "discriminating and
mild". He found in them "no abjectness to a supposed or official
superior". They praised other Pandits for their learning, generally in
their absence, rather than themselves. Let us salute their memory. What was
said about the country's cotton-weavers could as justly be said about its
teachers and Acharyas - their bones are bleaching the plains of the country.
Text-books
The Collector of Bellary
District reports that "the three books which are most common in all the
schools, and which are used indiscriminately by all the several castes, are the
Ramayana Mahabharata, and Bhagvata". Thus contrary to the current notion,
the highest ethical and spiritual literature of the Hindus was open to all
irrespective of their caste. Very much unlike the West, where the Bible
remained unread and even a prohibited reading for many, many centuries; and, in
fact, many times its translators into vernacular were burned at the stake -
till the triumph of Protestantism, which gave birth to an opposite movement
called bibliolatry.
F.W. Robertson, Collector of Rajahmundry
District, names 66 text books including the Ramayana,
various Shutcums (Krishn Shutcum, Suryanarayan Shutcum, Jankeya Shutcum,
Narayan Shutcum), and various Charitums (like Vamana Charitum, Mala Charitum,
etc.). Some text-books, like the Visvakaram-Purana, were special to the manufacturing
classes. Adam names 29 text-books taught
in elementary schools in Bengal, and 120 books taught in higher Institutes.
These related to such subjects as Grammar (20), General Literature (11), Law
(17), Vedanta (4), Logic (31), Astronomy and Astrology (19), Medicine (4), etc
Education Open to All
There is a popular notion that education in
India was monopolized by the Brahmins; but the data destroys this myth
completely. This interested lie was first spread by the missionaries and the
British rulers and the colonized mind of
many Indian intellectuals still continue to sing their tune. But the data
reveals a different story. It tells us that out of the total number of 175,089
students, both male and female, elementary and advanced, only 42,502 were Brahmins
(24.25%); 19,669 were Vaishya students (about 11%); but 85,400 were Shudras
(about 48.8%); and still 27.516 more were "all other castes", meaning
castes even lower than the Shudras including the pariahs (15.7%). Thus the
higher castes were only about 35% and the Shudras and other castes were about
65% of the total Hindu students. If we also include the Muslims who were about
7% of the total Hindu and Muslim students, then the share of the Brahmins was
even less.
Even in higher learning, non-Brahmins were not unrepresented. In
Malabar, out of 1,588 scholars of Theology, Law, Astronomy, Metaphysics, Ethics
and Medical Science, only 639 were Brahmins, 23 Vaishyas, 254 Shudras and 672
"other castes". Only in the Vedas and Theology did the Brahmins have
a near-monopoly, as the Shudras and the "other castes" had in other
branches of advanced learning like Astronomy
and Medical Science. In Astronomy, out of a total of 806 scholars, Brahmins
were only 78, Vaishyas 23, Shudras 195, and other lower castes 510. In Medical
Science, the share of the Brahmin scholars was only 31 out of a total of 190.
The rest belonged to the Shudras and "other castes".
According to the Survey of Indigenous Education in the
Province of Bombay (1820-1830), Brahmins constituted only 30% of the
total scholars in that province.
Adam tells the same story about Bengal and Bihar. In the five
districts he investigated, the total number of Hindu students was 22,957. Out
of these 5,744 were Brahmins, or about 25%. Kayasthas were about 12%. Students
belonging to 95 castes find representation in his Report. It includes 66
ChanDals, 20 Muchis, 84 Doms, 102 Kahars, and 615 Kurmis.
In spite of the claims of the missionaries, they did no better for
the Hindu low-castes. According to Adam's findings, Burdwan had 13 missionary schools, yet they had
only 1 ChanDal student while the native schools had 60. The former had only 3
Doms and no Muchis while the latter had 58 and 16 respectively. Of the 760
pupils belonging to the lowest 16 castes, "only 86 were found in the
missionary schools, and the remaining number in native schools".
As teachers, the
Brahmins were even less represented. Out of a total of 2,261 teachers in these
districts, Brahmins were only 208, or about 11%. In this region Kayasthas were
the teachers par excellence. They were 1,019 in number, or a little less than
half the total. Other teachers belonged to other 32 castes. ChanDals had six,
Goalas had five, Telis had eleven; while Rajputs had only two, and Chhatri and
Kshetriya taken together had only three.
Comparisions
It will not be out of place here to compare the state of
instruction in India at this period with the one prevalent in the West, and
particularly in England, the country with which we have better acquaintance.
The West was at this time acquiring monasteries and new-style universities
which were gaining fame for teaching
theology, but it still had no national system of elementary education for
instructing its younger ones.
In England, the attempt to introduce any semblance of wider
instruction was first made in mid-fifties in the nineteenth century under
factory laws. But the legislation "provided nothing more than that the
children shall on certain days of the week, and for a certain number of hours
(three) in each day, be enclosed within the four walls of a place called a
school, and that the employer of the child shall receive weekly a certificate
to that effect signed by a person designated by the subscriber as a
schoolmaster or schoolmistress" (Report of the Inspector of Factories,
Parliamentary Papers, June 30, 1857).
The level of literacy of
these teachers was such that many of them signed the certificate of attendance
at school with a cross. As a result, an Act had to be passed in 1844 which
required that the "figures in the school certificate must be filled up in
the handwriting of the schoolmaster, who must also sign his Christian and
surname in full". But that did not improve matters very much. Sir John
Kincaid, Factory Inspector for Scotland, tells us how a school teacher, one
Mrs. Ann Killin, spelled her name sometimes with letter C, sometimes with K and
in various other ways. He also tells us of a "schoolroom 15 feet long, and
10 feet wide, and counted in this space 75 children, who were gabbling
something unintelligible" (Parliamentary Papers, 31st October 1858) About
the "cultural" acquirements of these scholars, one may read Karl Marx
(Das Capital, Part III, Chapter
10, Section 4), who quotes extensively from the Children's Employment Commission Report.
Punishment in India under the indigenous system of education was
mild. Even in the Punjab region where it was more common, it consisted in
making a student stand in a corner, or making him pull his own ears by passing
his hands through his knees; or making him sit down and stand up for a number
of times; or disallowing him to leave the class-room during the meal time. There
were no fines. On the other hand, teachers .in England were sadists - at least,
this is what the English accounts of the period tell us. For example, Charles
Dickens in his Nicholas Nickleby (1838-39) describes these
schools and their teachers, particularly in Yorkshire. He says that these
"schoolmasters, as a race, were the blockheads and impostures"; that,
they "were the lowest and most rotten in the whole ladder"; that they
were "ignorant, sordid, brutal men, to whom few considerate men would have
entrusted the board and lodging of a horse or dog". He said that these
schools were opened by "any man who had proved his unfitness for any other
occupation in life.
Sanction in Hinduism
The Indian national education system was no freak. It was grounded
in Hindu culture and its system of local self-government. Ludlow's British India says
that "in every Hindu village which has retained anything of its form ...
the rudiments of knowledge are sought to be imparted; there is not a child...
who is not able to read, to write, to cipher; in the last branch of learning
they are confessedly most proficient". The same source says at another
place that "where the village system has been swept away by us, as in
Bengal, there the school system has equally disappeared".
Leitner quotes a report of
a British Inspector of Schools in the Punjab which too brings out the intimate
link between indigenous educational system and it underlying system of ideas
and polity. It says: "The indigenous education of India was founded on the
sanction of the Shastras, which elevated into religious duties and conferred
dignity on the commonest transactions of every-day life. The existence of
village communities, which left not only their municipal, but also in part
their revenue and judicial administrations, in the hands of the people
themselves, greatly helped to spread education among all the different members
of the community."
British Hostility
The new rulers were
understandably hostile to the indigenous system. As soon as the British took
over the Punjab, the Education Report of 1858 says: "A village school left
to itself is not an institution which we have any great interest in
maintaining."
This hostility arose partly from a lack of imagination. To the new
rulers, brought up so differently, a school was no school if it did not teach
English. To such preponderant elements among them, the answer of a rare and
imaginative administrator like Leitner was this: "If a collegium held,
according to Hindu tradition, in the teacher's own house, is not a school; if
to read and write Gurmukhi and the naharas is not to know the
three or any r's, then, of course, all discussion is at an end... When,
however, by school is meant an indigenous school; by a knowledge of reading and
writing that of the indigenous characters; by learning or science, oriental
learning and science, then indeed was education far extended when we took the
Punjab than it is at present." To these who despised an indigenous school
because it taught a small number of students, he answered: "If the Lahore
Government College could be called a college when it had only four students,
there is no reason why an indigenous school should not be called a school when
it has less than ten students."
". Leitner quotes a report of a British Inspector of Schools
in the Punjab which too brings out the intimate link between indigenous
educational system and it underlying system of ideas and polity. It says:
"The indigenous education of India was founded on the sanction of the
Shastras, which elevated into religious duties and conferred dignity on the
commonest transactions of every-day life. The existence of village communities,
which left not only their municipal, but also in part their revenue and
judicial administrations, in the hands of the people themselves, greatly helped
to spread education among all the different members of the community."
Financial Support
The teacher of an indigenous school was an idealist, but the
system itself was founded on realistic public financial support. Schools were
supported by the grant of rent-free lands and monetary assignments. Leitner gives the names of many hundreds of
scholars who were endowed with such lands but whose grants were terminated and
as a result of which the institutions they ran so well died down within a
generation. The Collector of Bellary District wrote: "There is no
doubt that in former times especially under the Hindu Government very large
grants both in money and in land were issued for the sake of learning."
The old classes which supported local institutions were
impoverished. These and other causes combined to bring about a fast
deterioration is the educational condition. Adam mentions many specific
villages in Nattore Thana which at the time of investigation had only two
schools where there had been once ten or eleven schools in living memory. The
decay was fast.
Increasing Illiteracy
According to Sir Henry Lawrence, there was one school for every
1783 inhabitants of the most backward division of the Punjab at the time of
annexation. But thirty years later in 1881, "there is one school of whatever sort, to every 9,028 inhabitants",
according the President of the Educational Commission.
Adam estimated that
there was 11% literacy in the Thana of Nattore during 1830s. "A century
later the British considered this an accomplishment in many parts of
India," says Joseph DiBona, the
author of One Teacher, One School.
This is the charge which Mahatma Gandhi also brought against the
British when he said in 1931 that "today India is more illiterate than it
was fifty or a hundred years ago". He charged that the British destroyed
"the Beautiful Tree", an epithet he used to describe old Indian
indigenous education and which Dharampal has also borrowed f rom him to provide the title to his book on
the subject.
Indigenous education
served local needs, both economic and cultural and religious. Under the
British, it was divorced from both. For example, one Government report says:
"If a boy learns arithmetic in our schools, he is of little use for the
shop, because he finds there a different system of accounts, and the meanest
Banya can cast up the intricacies of the grain-trade accounts by a mental
process far more rapidly than if he had taken honours in Mathematics at the
Calcuttta University."
Under the indigenous
system, primary education was imparted in the local language. But the British Government
introduced Urdu as the medium of instruction over a large territory of North
India. This "practically excluded from primary instruction" the whole
Hindu priestly class, the artisans and the agricultural classes, according to
the testimony of the Brahmo Samaj
. Cultural Self-alienation
While teaching a boy
three r's, indigenous education also familiarized him with the nation's epics,
religion and literature. This did not suit the white rulers and missionaries.
So they put forward the principles of "secularism" and 'religious
neutrality' - principles which continue to be pleaded even today by our brown
sahibs with equal duplicity and equal harm to the deeper life of the nation.
The Ramayana and the other great indigenous literature still
continue to be on the Index of the so-called indigenous Government sixty-six
years after independence.
Thus the nation's accumulated riches were denied to the new
generations and they grew in self-forgetfulness of their rich heritage. The
nation's sciences, philosophies, religion and literature were taken out of the
life of the growing generations and these merely became the topics or subjects
of Indology under Nehru and so called champions of Secularism.
Under the indigenous
system, the Hindu schools were closed on Poornima of every month and on other Hindu festivals. Under
the new dispensation, Sunday became the new holiday. Thus we were cut off from
our calendar too with which so much else in our history and religious
discipline and observances is also connected
In due course, came into
being a class of Macaulay's dream, a class oblivious of its roots, a class of
cultural barbarians, a class Indian in blood and colour but European and
missionary in its contempt of everything Indian in general and Hindu in
particular.
Deep down, the issue was
not English language, or higher learning of the West or modern sciences. Hindu
culture had a rich tradition of secular learning and it could easily imbibe
whatever the West had to offer. In fact, it could even make its own contribution
to the pool and perhaps help in taming the aggressive urges of modern sciences. The
problem was deeper. It had to do with a pattern of self-forgetfulness and
self-alienation that was imposed on the country. And we were so thoroughly
brainwashed that we now delight in it. The imperialist-missionary policies of
the British have now become the political religion of our own neo-intellectuals
and administrators. The attack still continues under the guise of
"Tradition versus Modernity".
The Indian system of education was
so economical, so effective that some of its features were exported to England
and Europe. The "monitor", the "slate", the
"group-study" were directly borrowed from the old Indian practice. A
short account of this practice is available from an eye-witness report of a
European named Pietro Della Valle published in 1623.
But 200 years later, around 1800, two Britons,
Dr. Bell and Mr. Lancaster, who were servants of the East India Company,
introduced in England a "New System of Schooling", embodying Indian
practices of teaching. Both claimed originality for themselves. In the
controversy that ensued, it was found that both had borrowed from India without
acknowledgment, of course. In this connection we have the testimony of
Brigadier-General Alexander Walker who served in the East India Company from
1780 to 1810. While reporting on teaching methods in Malabar, he says that the
new British "system was borrowed from the Brahmans and brought from India
to Europe. It has been made the foundation of the National Schools in every
enlightened country. Some gratitude is due to a people from who we have learnt
to diffuse among the lower ranks of society instructions by one of the most
unerring and economical methods which has ever been invented". According
to him, by this method, "the children are instructed without violence, and
by a process peculiarly simple".
Robertson Collector Rajahmandry to his
report say that "the scholar is
barely taught so much' of the Vedam as will enable him to perform the usual
ceremonies of his religion." As regards the 279 colleges in Rajahmandry,
the following are the details of the various specializations.
Specialization
|
No. of Colleges
|
No. of Scholars
|
Vedam
|
185
|
1,033
|
Sastrams (Grammar, Logic, Law
etc.)
|
76
|
358
|
Jyotisham (Astronomy)
|
10
|
49
|
Andhra Sastram
|
2
|
14
|
The overall picture that emerges from all this
is that of a broad - based educational system that has often been claimed to be
the ideal discovered by Europe in its
modern phase.
In the end we should emphasise that all this data describe the situation as it was in South India after nearly 70 years of colonial rule which divested most of ,our local institutions of their financial support and state assistance. It may be appropriate to quote here a passage from Robertson's report.
"In those villages under my immediate management where there are no schools, I have found the inhabitants very willing to have such established among them, but some assistance from government will be necessary to get things going, say a monthly allowance of Rs. 2/- to each teacher, the scholar to make up the remainder. I shall be prepared to address your Board fully upon the subject should this proposal meet your approval."
Robertson did not have to wait long for the East India Company to make its policy on indigenous education more explicit. In 1823 the General Committee of Public Instruction was set up by the Company. In his report, (Feb. 1835), as President of the Committee, Macaulay stated:
"I think it is clear that we are not fettered by pledge expressed or implied 3; that we are free to employ our funds as we choose; that we ought to employ them in teaching what is best worth knowing; that English is better worth Knowing than Sanskrit or Arabic; that the natives are desirous to be taught English4 and are not desirous to be taught Sans¬krit or Arabic; that neither as the languages of Jaw nor as the languages of religion have Sanskrit and Arabic any peculiar claim to our encourage¬ment; that it is possible to make the natives of this country thoroughly good English scholars and to this end our efforts ought to be directed" (pp. 546 of 'A Concise History of Science in India')
—May we add that our efforts are continuing to be directed to the same end— Long live Macaulay!
In the end we should emphasise that all this data describe the situation as it was in South India after nearly 70 years of colonial rule which divested most of ,our local institutions of their financial support and state assistance. It may be appropriate to quote here a passage from Robertson's report.
"In those villages under my immediate management where there are no schools, I have found the inhabitants very willing to have such established among them, but some assistance from government will be necessary to get things going, say a monthly allowance of Rs. 2/- to each teacher, the scholar to make up the remainder. I shall be prepared to address your Board fully upon the subject should this proposal meet your approval."
Robertson did not have to wait long for the East India Company to make its policy on indigenous education more explicit. In 1823 the General Committee of Public Instruction was set up by the Company. In his report, (Feb. 1835), as President of the Committee, Macaulay stated:
"I think it is clear that we are not fettered by pledge expressed or implied 3; that we are free to employ our funds as we choose; that we ought to employ them in teaching what is best worth knowing; that English is better worth Knowing than Sanskrit or Arabic; that the natives are desirous to be taught English4 and are not desirous to be taught Sans¬krit or Arabic; that neither as the languages of Jaw nor as the languages of religion have Sanskrit and Arabic any peculiar claim to our encourage¬ment; that it is possible to make the natives of this country thoroughly good English scholars and to this end our efforts ought to be directed" (pp. 546 of 'A Concise History of Science in India')
—May we add that our efforts are continuing to be directed to the same end— Long live Macaulay!
Government after arrival of East India Company in India,
They started changing the Indian Education system gradually and one day we were
there with a completely new process of educating people.
1.They
transformed the whole system to encapsulate European attitude in Indian
children. They emphasized on use of English in education rather than our own
native languages.
2.They
started textbook culture in India. The motive of introducing textbooks was to
stop children from producing new knowledge and made them think that they were
mere consumers of the knowledge which the textbook writer wants to convey to
them. The second and the most dangerous impact of introduction of text books
was the degradation of respect of teachers in Indian society. The teachers lost
the right of deciding what to teach and how to teach. They had to just follow
the matter given in textbooks.
3.The
second concept introduced by the British in Indian Education was that of the
examinations. It was a plan of British to have a centralized control of Indian
Education System through the introduction of examination system. So the
students were limited to learn only those things which were supposed to be
covered in th
4,
Examination and rest of the things were left. In this way the area of knowledge
became very narrow. Examination system gave rise to a serious implication known
as cramming in students. The students started memorizing things whether
understood or not so that they could clear the exam. Indian students were not
very good at English those days. So they just started memorizing the concepts
in English rather than learning by heart. The textbooks contained more text on
European history as compared to Indian history. The students started getting
influenced by the western culture. Then a tendency to adopt western culture
grew up among Indian children. The purpose of examination system was to refrain
people from getting higher education. The fear of failure in
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