The Survey of 1822- 25
The British used the large majority of the early British
officials, of whom, most were also missionaries, for the enforcement of the
British Education System. They had to destroy the indigenous Education System
to establish theirs. It was done in a skillful method. The propaganda they
unlashed made our own people believe that the country did not have an Education
System of any kind before. Even now a lot of people (intellectual included)
think that British Education was the best thing happened to the country.
(Please remember the subject is not learning of English language here; it is
British Education System”.) First they introduced their schools (missionary)
and they found that the number of students was minimal. In order to find out
the reason and eradicate that reason, they conducted a survey in 1822 which
lasted until 1825. They propagated that it was to improve the then existing
Education System. But the hidden plan was different. The records of the discussions held in the British
Parliament on the subject in 1812-13, shows that it was for “the promotion of ‘religious and
moral’ improvement” in the colony; (meaning, they wanted to enforce ‘their
religion’ and ‘their moral’ on the people of our “Good old bhAratham).
The papers on the discussion also say: “Before any new policy could be devised,
the existing position needed to be known.”(1) That knowledge will sure help in
breaking up the existing system also and that is what exactly they did. They
did it with their Education System. Through that they taught us the people of
our “Good old bhAratham” ‘their moral’ and ‘their religion’. Because of
that we lost ‘our moral’ and ‘spiritual values’ or we misinterpreted and
misunderstood our own ‘moral’ and ‘spiritual values’. And what we learned from
them is what our values are now, at least for the majority of our people. Along
with that there is a notion also that they are better, because we failed to
learn the real values of our culture in its real form and frame. At the same
time the majority of us did learn how to use them very negatively against our
own people and inflict injury, which in actuality is “self-injury” as the
injured are our own people.
More proof
of their hidden aim is available to show that their (British) aim was
destruction of the indigenous Education System and Proselytizing at the same
time. On 12th October, 1836,
in a letter Mr Thomas
Macaulay wrote to his Father thus: “Our English schools are flourishing wonderfully.” ……..
“No Hindu who has received an English education ever remains sincerely attached
to his ‘religion’. It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are
followed up, there will not be a single ‘idolater’ among the respected classes
30 years hence. And this will be affected without our efforts to proselytize; I
heartily rejoice in the prospect.” (2)
What Macaulay
envisioned did happen; if not fully, partially. And proof for their Proselytizing
intention and action can also be seen in the book named "Life of Lord
Macaulay”. In this book, G. D. Trevelyan wrote thus, on the success of
Macaulay’s Education plan: “A new India was born in 1835”. “What Alexander and
the western missionaries had failed to do was accomplished by Macaulay’s
educational minutes, decreeing that India was to receive through English
Education.” “The very foundations of her ancient civilization began to rock and
sway. Pillar after pillar in the edifice came crashing down.” (3) And the majority of the people
went through that education has abhorrence towards their own ancestry. It is a
pity that the country still continues the same Education System.
The survey
of 1822-25 showed that the country they were colonizing had a better Education
System than they had. (4) According
to the survey, in Madras presidency ‘every
village had a school’.(5) For areas of the Presidency of Bombay, senior
officials like G.L. Prendergast noted ‘that there is hardly a village, great or
small, throughout our territories, in which there is not at least one school,
and in larger villages more.’(6)
‘In
terms of the content, and the proportion of students, the situation of our
“Good old bhAratham”
in early 1800s was certainly not inferior to what was in England then. In many
respects our schools seems to have been much more extensive; the number of
students was more and also the hours of learning were more. (7) The content of studies was better
than what was then studied in England. The duration of study was more
prolonged. The method of teaching was superior. School attendance, especially
in the districts of the Madras Presidency, even in the decayed state of the
period 1822-25, was proportionately far higher than the numbers in all variety
of schools in England in early 19th century. The conditions under
which teaching took place were less dingy and more natural. It was observed;
the teachers in the Indian schools were generally more dedicated and sober than
their English counter parts. The only aspect, where native institutions of
education seem to have lagged behind was with regard to the girls. It was
reported that girl students have been proportionately more in England in early
1800s.(8) Still
Vizagapattinam and Malabar had a very high percentage of girls in schools.(9)
The smaller number of girls in other area schools was explained, by the
fact that most of their education took place in their own home.
The more interesting and historically more relevant
information was provided by the ‘caste-wise account’ of students. Those days,
in Britten the education was limited to the elite of the society. (10)
Thus, it has generally been assumed by them that the education of any
kind in India, whether in the ancient period or just at the beginning of
British rule was mainly for the so-called upper caste (class). They did give
publicity to this assumption also. However, the data of the survey of 1822-25
indicate more or less a very different picture. The total of the upper caste
including Brahmin students ranged between 13% and 23%, in few cases up to 48%.
The Sudras & the “Other Castes”; together accounted for the rest. In
Malayalam-speaking area, the proportion of the Brahmins was below 20% of the
total, Muslim nearly 27%; while the Sudras and the “Other Castes” accounted for
the rest. (11) The term “Other Castes” used in the survey
included those who today are categorized amongst the Scheduled Castes, which
have now being changed to “Dalits” and OBCs and who were known once as
‘Panchamas’. If the
conditions were so in Malabar, they cannot be much different in rest of the
Malayalam speaking area as culturally they were the same. The medium of
Learning was SamskRutham and other local languages and the
subjects of learning included Grammar, Logic, Law, Literature, Lexicology,
Rhetoric, VedAnta, TantRa, MimAmsa, and SAnkhya. (12)
Even
though the survey revealed that Education was available for All Sections,
especially Elementary Education, it is true that more teachers were Brahmins, in some areas of
the country. Yet, quite a good number came from “Other Caste” groups also,
specifically In Madras Presidency. They found that even members of the ‘lowest
of the low’, the “ChandALa” were also teaching and learning in the indigenous
schools. At the same time students from the lower castes were much less in the
missionary run schools. (13)
The survey thus also revealed that the teacher’s background presented a picture
in sharp contrast to the “scholarly” pronouncements that it was ‘Brahmins
only’. It was the groups termed “Sudras”, and the “castes considered below”
them who predominated as teachers in the thousands of the then existing
indigenous schools.(14) “In most areas, the Brahmin schoolars [students] formed a small
proportion of those studying in schools as more of them were being tutored in
their own homes. Higher learning, however, being more in the nature of
professional specialization, seems in the main to have been limited to the
Brahmins,” in the “disciplines of Theology, Metaphysics, Ethics, and to a large
extent Law”. It was also found that higher studies in subjects such as
Astronomy, Medicine and Surgery were for all and people from variety of castes.
They were learning and practicing them. This is very evident from the Malabar
data as: “out of 808 studying Astronomy, only 78 were Brahmins; and of the 194
studying Medicine, only 31 were Brahmins.” According to British medical men,
the barbers were the best in Surgery.(15) There were also ‘General Medical
Practitioners’, ‘Village Doctors’, ‘Smallpox Inoculators’, ‘Women Midwives’,
and ‘Snake Conjurors’ practicing. And those practitioners were from different
“Castes”; from the lower and the higher spectrum of the social ladder. (16) Not just in
education, but the country was ‘good all around’.
The British also, “found that such views and judgments of
good; in fact were applied to every domain of life. Even the rights of the
Indian peasantry were tailored accordingly for the good of the cultivation. The
cultivator had the right to the land.” To change it around, the House of
Commons made some decisions. Accordingly, the Fifth Report on this subject of
the House of Commons stated that the “occupants of land in India could
establish no more right, in respect to the soil, than pedantry upon an estate
in England can establish a right to the land, by hereditary residence:” They
also decided and conveyed through the same report that “a villager was
therefore defined to be, a preference of cultivation derived from hereditary
residence,” but it shall be “subject to the right of government as the superior
lord of the soil, in what way it chooses, for the cultivation of its own
lands.” (17)
That virtually made the British Government the final authority and the owner of
the land of the people of our “Good old bhAratham”.
It
should also be noted that, at that time, as per Mr Thomas Munro; "If a good system of
agriculture, unrivalled manufacturing skill, a capacity to produce whatever can
contribute to convenience or luxury, schools established in every village for
teaching, reading, writing and arithmetic; the general practice of hospitality
and charity among each other; and above all, a treatment of the females
full of confidence, respect, and delicacy, (if all these) are among the signs
which denote a civilized people, then the Hindus, are not inferior to the
nations of Europe; and if civilization is to become an article of trade between
England and India, I am convinced that England will gain by the import."(18) On “10 March 1826, he did admit
in his oblique way that indigenous education ‘has, no doubt, been better in
earlier times.”(19)
From all these it becomes clear that the architects of British Education did
know that our Education System was very good and we now know that, the British
wanted to destroy it and they actually destroyed it. If this was the state of
affairs, how did it change for the verse? Who made the change and who helped to
make that change?
Bibliography
1.
(i) Collected
Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Page 17; (ii) Hansford, June 22 and July 1,
1813: Debate on Clause No.13 of the India Charter Bill, titled in Hansford as
‘Propagation of Christianity in India’.
2.
“The Destruction
of the Indian System of Education” by Kumari. B. Nivedita (Adapted from a
speech given under the auspices of Vivekananda Study Circle, IIT-Madras in Jan
1998.)
3.
(i) House of
Commons Papers, 1812-13, volume 7, evidence of Thomas Munro, p.127.33 (ii)
Collected Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Page 88.
4.
“Life of Lord
Macaulay” by G. D. Trevelyan Volume 1 Page164)
5.
(i) Collected
Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Page 17; (ii) Hansford, June 22 and July 1,
1813: Debate on Clause No.13 of the India Charter Bill, titled in Hansford as
‘Propagation of Christianity in India’.
6.
(1) House of
Commons Papers, 1831-32, volume 9, Page 468; (2) Collected Writings Volume III,
by Dharampal, Page 18.
7.
House of Commons
Papers, 1812, Volume VII, p.105),
Collected Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Page 42, 90.
8.
(i) Collected
Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Page 32, 41. (ii) House of Commons Papers, 1812,
Volume VII, Page 105)
9.
(i) Collected
Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Volume III, Page 46 and 90. (ii) Document submitted
by PRINCIPAL COLLECTOR, MALABAR TO BOARD OF REVENUE dated 5.8.1823 numbered
(TNSA: BRP: Vol.957, Pro.14.8.1823, pp.6949-55 Nos.52 & 53).
10. Collected Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Page 20.
11. (i) Dharampal, Collected Writings, Volume III, Page 8,
19, 20; 2. (ii) A. E. Dobbs: Education and Social Movements 1700-1850, London,
1919, p.80, quoting Oxford Commission, 1852, Report, Page 83; (iii) Cutcherry,
the Collector of Cuddapah, Roychooty, G.M. Ogilvie, 11th February, 1825.
Sub-Collector in charge.
12. Collected Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Page 26
to 30.
13. Dharampal, Collected Writings, Volume III, Page 55.
14. Dharampal, Collected Writings, Volume III, Page 54.
15. Dharampal, Collected Writings, Volume III, Page 26 to
30.
16. (i) Collected Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Page
35. (ii) Madras Board of Revenue Proceedings of 17 September 1821, and of 9
March 1837, and other proceedings referred to therein.
17. (i) Collected Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Page
35, 52, 53, 61. (ii) Madras Board of Revenue Proceedings of 17 September 1821,
and of 9 March 1837, and other proceedings referred to therein. (iii) Madras
Board of Revenue Proceedings of 17 September 1821, and of 9 March 1837, and
other proceedings referred to therein.
18. (1) India in Bondage: Her Right to Freedom - By Rev.
Jabez T. Sunderland Page 324-325, (2) The Invasion That Never Was - By Michel
Danino and Sujata Nahar Page 17.
19. Collected Writings Volume III, by Dharampal, Volume
III, Page 81.
(Will continue;
Copyright © Udayabhanu Panickar)
അഭിപ്രായങ്ങളൊന്നുമില്ല:
ഒരു അഭിപ്രായം പോസ്റ്റ് ചെയ്യൂ