The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.s5.t5.19

c4.s5.t5.19

It may be fair to observe that, despite his considerable learning and experience, Hartog seemed to have lacked both imagination and a sense of history. He was far too committed to the dogmas of pre-1939 Britain. His immigrant Jewish background may have accentuated such an outlook further. Whatever the reasons, it seemed inconceivable to Hartog that late eighteenth, or early nineteenth century India could have had the education and facilities which Gandhiji and others had claimed. Similarly, it had been inconceivable to William Wilberforce, 125 years earlier, that the Hindoos could conceivably have been civilised (as was stated by many British officers and scholars who in Wilberforce’s days had had long personal experience of life in India) without the benefits of Christianity. To Hartog, as also to Edward Thompson, and before them to an extent even to W. Adam, and some of the Madras Presidency Collectors, it was axiomatic that these Indian educational institutions amounted to very little, and that the Indian system had ‘become merely self-perpetuating, and otherwise barren.’