The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c10.s3.62

c10.s3.62

I find I have omitted one statement of some importance. Mr Gandhi said that he had not accused the British Government of having destroyed the indigenous schools, but they had let them die for want of encouragement. I said that they had probably let them die because they were so bad that they were not worth keeping up. In the United Provinces Mahomedan witnesses had told my Committee that the Mahomedan schools not organised by Government were not an aid but a hindrance to Mahomedan progress and I knew there were many voluntary schools in other parts of the country of which this might be said. I told Mr Gandhi that my interest in primary education in India was no new thing; and that when as a member of the Sadler Commission I had seen Mr Montagu and Lord Chelmsford in 1918 I had told them both that although university reform was perhaps the most urgent matter, the problem of primary education was the fundamental one for India, although I could not advise on it then. I said that India had probably not yet found the solution of the problem of giving the agricultural labourer an education that would make him a more efficient cultivator without making him want to be a clerk, but that the Punjab, under the inspiration of the late Mr Richey whose work had been carried on by Sir George Anderson, had made great strides in the last ten or fifteen years. I described the system adopted in Punjab and Mr Gandhi said he had heard of recent progress in that province. I then told him that Bombay had probably the most efficient schools in some ways under the system initiated by Dr Paranjpye, but that the complete transfer of control to local bodies by his successor had unfortunate results, as so many district boards were more interested in politics than in education of which they knew very little.