EDUCATIONAL BACKWARDNESS
“The Educational returns,” remark the authors of the Report, “tell us much the same story,” viz., the appalling dissimilarity of conditions in Europe and in India. While it is painfully true that the percentage of illiteracy in India is greater than in any of the countries of Europe, we cannot admit that that fact is a fatal bar to the beginnings of responsible government in India or to the granting of a democratic constitution to the country. Literacy is, no doubt, a convenient, but by no means a sure index of the intelligence of the people, even much less of their character. The political status of a country is determined more by intelligence and character than by literacy. In these the people of India are inferior to none. By that we do not mean that they are possessed of the same kind of political responsibility as the people of the United Kingdom or of France or of Germany or of the United States, but only that by intelligence and character they are quite fitted to start on the road to responsible government, at least to such kind as was conceded for the first time to Canada, Australia, Italy, the Balkan States, Austria, Hungary, etc. The illiteracy of the masses may be a good reason for not introducing universal suffrage, but it is hardly a valid reason for refusing a kind of constitution which may place India in the same position, in the matter of responsible Government, as Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy and the United States were when those countries showed the same percentage of illiteracy. Literacy has nowhere been the test of political power. Burma had almost no illiteracy when the British took possession of it; its population was absolutely homogeneous and the solidarity of the nation ran no risk from “cleavages of religion, race and caste.” Even today Burma has the highest figures of literacy in the whole of British India. In that respect it occupies a higher position than Roumania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, many of the Russian States and perhaps even Italy and Hungary and possibly some of the South American Republics. In the matter of race and religion, too, its position is better than that of the countries mentioned, yet the authors of the Report do not propose to concede to it even such beginnings of responsible government as they are prepared to grant to the other provinces of India. The fact is that mere literacy does not play an important part in the awakening of political consciousness in a people. It is a useful ingredient of character required for the exercise of political power but by no means essential.