The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c10.s4.24

c10.s4.24

Many thanks for your kind letter of February 15, which reached me last night. I fully understand your difficulties in carrying out your promise. I received by the same post as your own a long letter from Professor K.T. Shah dated February 20, which he has no doubt sent to you, but the letter contains absolutely no data which would enable one to judge whether literacy had advanced or declined during the last fifty years; it contains not a single literacy percentage. I have been very much pressed by other work, but I have in a rough state material for two or three articles on the progress of literacy in Bengal during the last hundred years, of which I will send copies both to yourself and Professor Shah when they are completed. The position is still that you are unable to supply the figure to which you referred in your address at the Royal Institute of International Affairs on October 20. I feel sure that you will be convinced by the facts as stated in my articles, which are not in any way converted by the statements in Professor Shah’s letter. I enclose a copy of my reply to Professor Shah and also a copy of a letter dated December 14th which appeared in the Journal of the Royal Institute for January.