The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c10.s3.81

c10.s3.81

My statement is mild enough, moderate enough and its purpose is plain. I was obviously trying to go to the limits of concession that truth permitted, as to claims that I consider entirely wrong. That seems to me the only way to get a controversy forward. I never did believe in the method of belittling whatever case my opponent, whether British imperialist or Indian nationalist, may have. The context makes it clear that I have never thought that Indian schools amounted to much. It makes equally clear what I remember quite well was in my mind when I wrote that passage—this was that I do not agree with the steady crabbing of the last dozen years but to emphasise that on the whole they have been years far more progressive than any previous decade.