Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c12.166

c12.166

These words, *mutatis mutandis*, may be taken as a very true description of our system of higher education in India; only the evil of it is there intensely aggravated, because Indian students are practically denied any other means of education except the university courses. Our universities have always stood, in the eyes of India, as representative of the best light and leading of the West; yet the disabilities and injuries which they, as exponents of all learning recognised by the State, inflict upon Indian art and industry are probably without a parallel in the history of civilisation; for not only do they refuse to allow art its legitimate place in the mental and moral equipment of Indian youth—the average Indian graduate, with all his remarkable assimilative powers, is often less developed artistically than a Pacific Islander—but, by practically excluding all Indian artists of the old hereditary professions from the honours and emoluments of State employment, they lower the status of Indian art and give a wholly unjustifiable preference to the art imported from Europe, which comes with the prestige of a presumed higher order of civilisation. And after prolonged discussion of educational reform, with the experience of fifty years behind them, Indian universities have lately resolved to shut their doors still more decidedly upon Indian art.