The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.s5.t5.3

c4.s5.t5.3

There is a sense of widespread neglect and decay in the field of indigenous education within a few decades after the onset of British rule. This is the major common impression which emerges from the 1822-25 Madras Presidency data, the report of W. Adam on Bengal and Bihar 1835-38, and the later Panjab survey by G.W. Leitner. If studies of the detailed data pertaining to the innumerable crafts, technologies and manufactures of this period, or for that matter of social organisation were to be made, the conclusions in all probability will be little different. On the other hand, the descriptions of life and society provided by earlier European accounts (i.e. accounts written prior to the onset of European dominance) of different parts of India, and the data on Indian exports relating to this earlier period (notwithstanding the political turmoil in certain parts of India), on the whole leaves an impression of a society which seems relatively prosperous and lively. The conclusion that the decay noticed in the early 19th century and more so in subsequent decades originated with European supremacy in India, therefore, seems inescapable. The 1769-70 famine in Bengal (when, according to British record, one-third of the population actually perished), may be taken as a mere forerunner of what was to come.