The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.s2.9

c4.s2.9

While much ink has been spilt on such a controversy, little attempt is known to have been made for placing these statements or observations in their contextual perspective. Leaving Leitner's work, most of these statements belong to the early decades of the nineteenth century. For the later British administrator, the difficulty of appreciating the substance of the controversy is quite understandable. For England had few schools for the children of ordinary people till about 1800. Even many of the older Grammar Schools were in poor shape at the time. Moreover, the men who wrote about India (whether concerning its education, or its industry and crafts, or the somewhat higher real wages of Indian agricultural labourers compared to such wages in England)³⁵ belonged to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century society of Great Britain. Naturally, when they wrote about a school in every village in India—whether that may or may not have been literally true—in contrast to the British situation, it must have appeared to them so. And though they did not much mention this contrast in so many words, it may reasonably be assumed that, as perceptive observers, it was the very contrast which led them to make such judgements.