Were Indians illiterate & Backward prior to arrival of the British in India? Myth or Reality? (A Historical Perspective) (Part I) (Dhiru Shah – an Atlanta based writer) History mirrors culture and traditions of a people and defines their social and national identity. No civilization can remain alive if its past values and traditions are not recorded truthfully without any element of fancy, preconceived ideological interpretations and distortion. People who are unaware of their roots will move towards a cultural holocaust and the eventual destruction of their civilization. George Orwell has rightly said: “The most effective way to destroy a people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their History.” He also points out: “Who controls the present controls the past, who controls the past controls the future.” Unfortunately, victors write history of vanquished people and their civilizations and the Indian history is no exception. It was imperative for the British for their imperialist rule to portray Indians as an inferior and primitive people in respect of their culture, education, traditions and intellectual accomplishments. Some of the 19th century British Indologists and historians like William Wilberforce, T. B. Macaulay and James Mills (History of British India-1817) depicted Indians as superstitious, primitive, morally depraved and culturally backward. This type of negative and distorted portrayal of India became the framework for writing history of India by the subsequent European and British historians. This deliberate distortion of the Indian history by the British has had a profound psychological impact on the minds of the future generations of Indians. The total mental and political subjugation made most Indians to accept the distorted image of them as real. Thus, suffering from the Stockholm syndrome, they started seeing India from the eyes of their former masters, the British. As a result, many educated Indians have developed a mindset of self-denigration and self-flagellation by rejecting and running down most things Indians including their culture, traditions and their ancestors’ achievements in education, science and technology. Against this prevailing background, Mahatma Gandhi said at Chatham House, London on October 20, 1931 that: “I say without fear of my figures being challenged successfully, that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the Brit-ish administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished.” In 1966 Dharampal, a Gandhian social worker took up the challenge to find out the true picture of the conditions prevailing India prior to the British arrival in 1770. Based on his research of the historical British documents in India and Britain over a period of two decades, he published five books including ‘Beautiful Tree’ on the indigenous education in pre-colonized India. His study on the indigenous Indian education as narrated in ‘Beautiful Tree’ covers the early 19th century source material available from: (a) the published reports by William Adam in Bengal and Bihar in 1835-38, (b) Surveys of the British government about indigenous education in Bombay Presidency in 1820s, (c) Other government surveys in Madras Presidency during 1822-25, and (d) G. W. Leitner’s exercise on indigenous education in Punjab. The following picture of the Indian education prior to 1770 emerges based on the British Government’s published records compiled and analyzed by Dharmpal: (a) The indigenous education in India was carried out through Pathshalas, Gurukuls, and Madrassahs. The first two institutions were in existence for thousands of years based on the ancient Vedic system. (b) As per William Adams report on state of education in Bengal and Bihar, there existed about 100,000 village schools around 1830s. This was further collaborated by Max Mueller that there were 80,000 schools in Bengal or one for every 400 of the population. (C) The 1819 report of the Bombay Education Society mentions: “There is probably as great a proportion of persons in India who can read and write, and keep simple accounts….” The same report for 1820 observes: “Schools are frequent among the natives, and abound everywhere.” In April 1821, Mr. Prendergast, a member of the Executive Council mentions in his minute: “… That there is a hardly a village, great or small, throughout our territories, in which there is not at least one school, and in larger village more, many in every town and in large cities in every division where young natives are taught reading, writing and arithmetic.” (Cp. Commons Report 1832) (d)Dr. Leitner’s Report on Punjab (around 1850) mentions: “In short, the lowest computation gives us 330,000 pupils in the schools of the various denominations, who were acquainted with reading, writing and some method of computation.” (e)In a Minute dated 10/3/1826 (Commons Report, 1832, P.506), Sir T. Munro (Madras) observed that there were 713,000 male pupils in the schools. The British government reports from all provinces recorded the following observations in respect of the prevailing education system in India: (a) The content of studies was better than what was studied in England. (b) The duration of study was more prolonged lasting from about 7 to 15 years. The average age of attending a school was five years. (c) The method of school teaching was superior and it is this very method which is said to have greatly helped the introduction of popular education in England but which has prevailed in India for centuries. (d) The conditions under which teaching took place in the Indian schools were less dingy and more natural. (e) As against the myth that only upper caste children were given education, the British records on the contrary show that the average percentage of higher caste students was less than 40% and rest of 60% of students consisted of Shudras and lower castes. (f) Most of the schools functioned for long hours, usually starting about 6 AM, followed by one or two short intervals for meals etc., and finishing at about sunset. (g) The main subjects reported to be taught in these Indian schools were reading, writing and arithmetic. Institutions of Higher Learning in India: (a) As per Adam’s Survey (of Post-1800 Material in Bengal) on average there were around 100 institution of higher learning in each district of Bengal. Eighteen districts of Bengal had about 1,800 such institutions and some 10,800 scholars studying in them. (b) In Madras Presidency, there was a total of 1,094 ‘colleges’ of higher learning (c) In professional specialization, Brahmins studied mainly Theology, Metaphysics, Ethics and Law. But in the Astronomy and medical science, most scholars came from other castes and background. For example, in Malabar, out of 808 studying astronomy, only 78 were Brahmins; and of the 194 studying Medicine, only 31 were Brahmins. (d) Other European travelers’ accounts record existence of hundreds of colleges and universities of higher learning throughout India before the arrival of the British in India. Comparative Status of Education in England till 1800: Based on the reports on the Education system in Britain till about 1800, the following picture emerges. (a) By mid-16th century, the enactment of a law required ‘that the reading of Bible was restricted to nobles, gentry and merchants but was denied to journeymen and laborers. (b) Around 1780, the Sunday schools were started as a ‘missionary enterprise’ with the idea that ‘every child should learn to read the Bible.’ School education, especially elementary education at the people’s level was hardly available till around 1800 (c ) The number of students attending schools was estimated at around 40,000 in 1792. The total number public and private schools in 1801 was stated to be 3,363 and by 1851 the number had reached 46,114. (d) Average period of schooling in 1835 in England was just about one year and only two years even in 1851. (e) Till 1834, the curriculum in the better class of national schools was limited to religious instructions, reading, and writing. It was not till 1851 that mathematics became a part of the regular school work. (f) For higher level of education, Britain had the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge from the 13th and 14th centuries but these institutions were restricted to the upper class aristocracy. The number of students around 1800 was about 760 which rose to 1,300 in 1820-24. The foregoing analysis explodes the myth, lies and distortion perpetuated by the 19th century British Indologists about the education system and Indian civilization in general prior to the British rule. Dharampal’s analysis based on the British records of the early 19th century reveals that education was very widely diffused amongst all strata of the Indian society. It also establishes that the literacy rate in the pre-British India was probably high in the region of 70-80 percent. Besides, the quality of education, both in schools and colleges, was of very high standard. In comparison, most people in Britain were illiterate till the 18th century, considering the small number of schools in existence and the quality of education was far below the level of the Indian education. ‘Beautiful tree’ as mentioned by Gandhiji which flowered knowledge, culture and well-being of the entire Indian nation, perished within a few decades of the British take over of India and the nation was turned into a country of illiterates, abject poverty and ignorance. In the second part of this article, we’ll analyze the causes of decay and decimation of not only the education system but the entire social, economic and cultural life of the world’s one of the most ancient culturally rich and economically prosperous civilizations.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 09:21:56 +0000
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