The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c10.s1: Mahatma Gandhi on Indigenous Education

The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c10.s1

Language: English

Mahatma Gandhi on Indigenous Education

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...That does not finish the picture. We have education of this future state. I say without fear of my figures being challenged successfully, that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished. The village schools were not good enough for the British administrator, so he came out with his programme. Every school must have so much paraphernalia, building, and so forth. Well, there were no such schools at all. There are statistics left by a British administrator which show that, in places where they have carried out a survey, ancient schools have gone by the board, because there was no recognition for these schools, and the schools established after the European pattern were too expensive for the people, and therefore they could not possibly overtake the thing. I defy anybody to fulfill a programme of compulsory primary education of these masses inside of a century. This very poor country of mine is very ill able to sustain such an expensive method of education. Our state would revive the old village schoolmaster and dot every village with a school both for boys and girls.

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*Question* (SIR PHILIP HARTOG): Would Mr Gandhi give his authority for the statement that literacy had diminished in India during the last fifty years?

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Mr Gandhi replied that his authority was the Punjab Administration Reports, and said that he had published in *Young India* a study of the Punjab educational statistics.

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SIR PHILIP HARTOG: Would Mr Gandhi explain why the literacy figure was fourteen percent of the men and only two percent of the women, and why illiteracy was higher in Kashmir and Hyderabad than in British India?

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Mr Gandhi replied that the women’s education had been neglected, to the shame of the men. He could only conjecture, with regard to the figures for Kashmir, that if illiteracy was greater there, it was due to the negligence of the ruler or because the population was predominantly Mohammedan, but he thought that, as a matter of fact, it was six of the one and half a dozen of the other.

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—from *International Affairs*, London, November 1931: from a long speech by Mahatma Gandhi, on October 20, 1931 held under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, London; the meeting was attended by influential Englishmen and English-women drawn from all parts of England. Lord othian, who was one of the British chairmen at the Round Table Conference on India, presided at this meeting.

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(The above text is copied from *Collected Works*, Vol.48, pp.199-200, 201-2)

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5, Inverness Gardens, W.8. 21st October, 1931

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M.K. Gandhi, Esq., Round Table Conference, St. James Palace, S.W.1.

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Dear Mr Gandhi,

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I understood you to say last night at the Royal Institute of International Affairs that you could prove on the evidence of British officials that literacy had diminished in British India in the last fifty or hundred years. In reply to my request for the precise authority for this statement you mentioned a Punjab Administration Report, (without, however, giving the date,) and said that what had happened in the Punjab must have happened in the rest of India. You mentioned, too, an article in ‘Young India’, but also without giving its date. The subject is one in which I have taken a deep interest for some years, and I should be grateful, therefore, if you would very kindly give me precise references to the printed documents on which your statements were based, so that I may consult them.

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You will, I feel sure, forgive me for pointing out that the assumption that what happens in the educational world in the Punjab necessarily happens in the rest of India is a mistaken one. It is generally recognised that the Punjab has made more rapid advances in primary education in the last 10 or 15 years than any other province in India.

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In reply to my question about the inferiority of the literacy in the two largest Indian States, Kashmir, (Predominantly Mohammedan with a Hindu ruler), and Hyderabad, (Predominantly Hindu with a Mohammedan ruler), you suggested that perhaps Kashmir was educationally backward because it was predominantly Mohammedan, but this left the backwardness of Hyderabad as compared with British India unexplained. Probably the facts had not been previously brought to your notice.

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If you should find ultimately that the inference from your remarks that backwardness in literacy and education has been due to British administration in India was unjustified, I feel certain that you would wish to correct your statement.

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I am Yours sincerely, Sd/-Philip Hartog

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M.K. Gandhi Esq., Round Table Conference, St. James’ Palace, S.W.1

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88, Knightsbridge, London, W. 23rd October, 1931

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Dear Friend,

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Inadvertently, I have no doubt, you have omitted to sign your letter, but as the address is fully given, I am hoping that this letter will reach you.

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You will realise that I could not off-hand give you the dates, but since you would gladly study the whole question, I would find out the numbers of ‘Young India’ in which the articles appeared and send the references to you. I shall also find out what is possible to prove with reference to the other provinces, apart from the deductions that I have drawn from the Punjab. Meanwhile, I have no difficulty in drawing the deduction from the rest of the Provinces from the examples of the Punjab and Burma. Whatever may be the strides made by the Punjab during the past five or ten years, cannot affect the argument that I have advanced to you.

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About Kashmir, as I said in reply, mine was merely a conjecture, but since you are so interested in the question, I shall try and find out the true state of education in Kashmir.

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You are quite right in feeling certain that if there were any error in my reasoning or the facts that I stated, I should immediately correct them, and whilst I should try to verify more fully the statements that I made, you will also on your part oblige me by giving me such information as may be in your possession and as may help me to understand the truth.

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Yours sincerely, Sd/- M.K. Gandhi P.M.C.

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5,Inverness Gardens,W.8. 27th October 1931

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Dear Mr Gandhi,

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I am much obliged by your very friendly letter of 23rd October and must apologise for having omitted to sign my own of the 22nd. I must have signed the carbon copy instead of the copy sent.

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I shall be grateful for the references to the articles in 'Young India' which you promise me, and I will verify them and give you my opinion of them.

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Table 55

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In reply to your request for the sources of my own knowledge of the history of education in India, I would refer you to the sources quoted in the report of the Calcutta University Commission of which I was Chairman (Interim Report of the Indian Statutory Commission, H.M. Stationery Office, Cmd. 3407,1929), and especially to the literacy figures, taken from the census reports and quoted on p.382 of Vol.1 of the Simon Report, which I subjoin:—

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In 1911 the figure for British India was 12%; and in 1881 8%. It has always to be remembered that these percentages are adversely affected by the existence of nearly 20,000,000 aboriginals and hill tribes, as well as by the educational backwardness of a far greater number of ‘untouchables’.

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You will notice that the figure for males for British India increased from 8% in 1881 (50 years ago) to 12% in 1911 and 14.4% in 1921, not a rapid increase, but still an increase.

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In Travancore and Cochin you have a large number of Indian Christians. In Baroda the system of compulsory primary education taken from Western models, began to be introduced in 1893.

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The census figures, as you well see, are in complete contradiction with your assertion that literacy has diminished in British India in the last fifty years.

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The figures for Hyderabad (preponderatingly Hindu with a Mohammedan ruler), and for Kashmir (preponderatingly Muslim with a Hindu ruler) seem inexplicable if you attribute illiteracy to British administration.

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I would refer you also to the chapter on Education which I have contributed to ‘Modern India’ (Oxford University Press, 1931), and finally to a work by an advanced Indian political thinker, the late Lala Lajpat Rai (National Education in India, 1920), whose views, though in many ways opposed to your own, I am sure you would find interesting.

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I welcome your decision, of which I felt assured beforehand, that you will immediately correct your statement, if you are convinced that it is erroneous, and I look forward to your doing so.

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Believe me,

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Yours sincerely, 13th November, 1931

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M.K. Gandhi, Esq. 88, Knightsbridge, W.

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Dear Mr Gandhi,

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I wrote on October 27th in reply to your letter to me of October 23rd, but have not yet received from you the promised references to the documents (a Punjab Administration Report and the articles in ‘Young India’) on which your statement that literacy had diminished in British India during the last fifty years was based.