XVI
EDUCATION
In the previous chapters we have embodied and discussed the important parts of the Report of Mr. Montagu and Lord Chelmsford. In this chapter we give a summary of what they say about education. The statements of fact made by the two distinguished statesmen are so lucid and fair that we make no apology for copying the whole article embodying the same.
“There is, however, one aspect of the general problem of political advance which is so important as to require notice in some detail. We have observed already that one of the greatest obstacles to India’s political development lies not only in the lack of education among its peoples taken as a whole, but also in the uneven distribution of educational advance. The educational policy of Government has incurred much criticism from different points of view. Government is charged with neglect, because after sixty years of educational effort only 6 per cent. of the population is literate, while under 4 per cent. of the total population is undergoing instruction. It is charged, on the other hand, with having given to those classes which welcomed instruction a system which is divorced from their needs in being purely literary, in admitting methods of unintelligent memorising and of cramming, and in producing, far in excess of the actual demands of Indian conditions, a body of educated young men whose training has prepared them only for Government service or the practice of law. The system of university education on Western lines is represented as cutting off the students from the normal life of the country, and the want of connection between primary education in the vernaculars and higher education in English is regarded as another radical defect.”
The period of sixty years mentioned is evidently counted from 1858, the year in which the rule of the East India Company ceased and the Crown assumed direct responsibility for the Government of India. British rule in India however began in 1757 A.D. and the foundation of public education in India under the British might well be considered to have been laid by Warren Hastings in 1781, in which year the Calcutta Madrassa was established. For a period of almost 50 years the discussion whether the Indians should be instructed in English or not went on until it was settled in 1835 by Lord Macaulay’s famous minute in favour of English and the European system. In 1824 there were 14 public institutions in Bengal imparting education on Western lines.
In the same year, i.e., in 1824, Monstuart Elphinstone formulated a similar policy for the Bombay presidency.
To the remarks made in the above quotation about the extent and kind of education imparted in India till now, the distinguished authors of the report add:
“From the economic point of view India had been handicapped by the want of professional and technical instruction: her colleges turn out numbers of young men qualified for Government clerkships while the real interests of the country require, for example, doctors and engineers in excess of the existing supply. The charge that Government has produced a large intelligentsia which cannot find employment has much substance in it: it is one of the facts that lie at the root of recent political difficulties. But it is only of late years and as part of the remarkable awakening of national self-consciousness, that the complaint has been heard that the system has failed to train Indians for practical work in manufactures, commerce, and the application of science to industrial life.”
After making a few general observations on the so called difficulties in the way of a general spread of education “the chief needs at present” are thus pointed out: