The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c10.s4.13

c10.s4.13

I shall come to Madras in a moment, and revert to statistical proof such as I can find,—thereafter. Let me here refer you to the classic case of Dr Leitner’s Report on the system of Indigenous Education in the Punjab, based on an investigation carried out by the learned Doctor,—principal of a Government College, because of a surprising difference between his figures of the people educated in indigenous schools, and those supplied by the Director of Public Instruction for the province, to the Indian Education Committee of 1882. Dr Leitner remarks, in his introduction to his Report,—'In short the lowest computation gives us 330,000 pupils (against little more than 190,000 at present) in the schools of the various denominations, who were acquainted with reading, writing and some method of computation; whilst thousands of them belonged to Arabic and Sanskrit colleges, in which oriental literature and systems of Oriental Law, Logic, Philosophy and Medicine, were taught to the highest standards.' I would particularly commend to your attention this classic document of 650 odd pages (folio), the more so as Dr Sir Wm. Hunter, president of the Indian Education Committee, made a special Minute to the Report of that Committee (pp. 621-2) in which he found that Dr Leitner's estimate of 120,000 pupils in the Punjab was actually an underestimate by some 15,000, while the official figure supplied by the D.P.I. of the province was below the actual figure by some 80,000 pupils. Incidentally, this will suffice to show how imperfect, inaccurate, undependable, was the official statistical information for these early days, when the people viewed with easily intelligible suspicion enquiries of this nature, and so passively refused to afford the correct information wherever and whenever they could help it. Without minimising in the least degree the value of statistical evidence, I cannot but add that such evidence is worse than useless, when we recall the conditions under which it was compiled, as also the temperament and training of the officials who helped in compiling the same in those primitive times of British rule in India.