The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century c4.s6.1

c4.s6.1

The significance of what Gandhiji said at Chatham House in October 1931 ought to have been understood not in the literal way in which Philip Hartog did, but within the total context of Mahatma Gandhi's address, which attempted to reveal the overall disruption and decline of Indian society and its institutions under British rule. That a great decay had set in by the 1820s, if not a few decades earlier, in the sphere of education was admitted by the Madras Presidency survey, as well as by W. Adam with regard to Bengal and Bihar. In 1822-25, the number of those in ordinary schools was put at over 1,50,000 in the Madras Presidency. Evidently, the inference that the number was appreciably, perhaps a great deal higher some 20 or 30 years earlier, cannot be ruled out. At any rate, nowhere was there any suggestion made that it was much less than it had been in 1822-25. The population of the Madras Presidency in 1823 was estimated at 1,28,50,941, while the population of England in 1811 was estimated at 95,43,610. It may be noted from this that, while the *differences in the population of the two regions were not that significant, the numbers of those attending the various types of schools (Charity, Sunday, Circulating) in England were in all in the neighbourhood of around 75,000 as compared to at least double this number within the Madras Presidency. Further, more than half of this number of 75,000 in English schools consisted of those who attended school at the most only for 2-3 hours on a Sunday.*