The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c3.5

c3.5

Amongst the above-mentioned sources, G.W. Leitner’s work, based on earlier governmental documents and on his own survey, is the most explicitly critical of British policies. It holds the British authorities responsible for the decay, and even the destruction of indigenous education in the Punjab—the area with which his book is concerned. The reports of Adam, as well as the reports of some of the collectors in the Madras Presidency¹² refer likewise to the decay of indigenous education in the areas of India with which they were concerned. Of course, they do so much less explicitly—and in language more suited to British officers and gentlemen—(Leitner, though a British official, was ‘not an Englishman’).¹³