Indian Unrest

by Sir Valentine Chirol

(f) That he will engage in no personal quarrel with any one.

(g) That he will always keep in view the aims of the society and watch over its interests with the utmost zeal, doing all he can to advance its work and never doing anything inconsistent with its objects.

The head of the society, called the First Member—who is Mr. Gokhale—is to hold office for life, and its affairs are to be conducted in accordance with by-laws framed for the purpose by the First Member, who will be assisted by a council of three, one of whom will be his own nominee, whilst two will be elected by the ordinary members. The powers assigned to the First Member are very extensive and include that of recommending the names of three ordinary members, one of whom, when the time comes, shall be chosen to succeed him. His authority is, in fact, the dominant one, whether over the probationers under training for a period of five years, three of which are to be spent at the society's home in Poona, or over the ordinary members admitted to the full privileges of the society, or over those who, as attachés, associates, and permanent assistants, are very closely affiliated to it without being actually received into membership. The scheme is, of course, at present in its infancy, as the society still numbers only about 25, the majority of whom have not yet completed their term of probation. Mr. Gokhaie, however, hopes very soon to have 50 probationers constantly in residence, and he has already gathered together in the well-appointed buildings of the society's home just outside Poona, in close proximity to the Ferguson College, a group of young men, to some of whom he kindly introduced me, who have evidently caught the fervour of his enthusiasm. One of the latest recruits was by birth a Mahomedan, of whom Mr. Gokhale was specially proud, as he is very anxious that the society shall be, in fact as well as in theory, representative of all castes and creeds.

One of the first questions which this remarkable experiment suggests is whether the ideals which Mr. Gokhale sets before the "Servants of India" will suffice to supply the necessary driving power. Hitherto some form of religious faith and the hope of some heavenly reward have alone availed to induce men to renounce the world and all its material interests and surrender themselves to a life of rigorous and selfless discipline in the service of their fellow-creatures, or rather in the service of God through their fellow-creatures. Mr. Gokhale's society makes no claim to any religious sanction. Though Indian asceticism has from the most remote times found devotees willing to lead a life of far more complete self-annihilation than any that the most rigorous monastic orders of Christendom have ever imposed, or that, for the matter of that, Mr. Gokhale seeks to impose upon his followers, it has always been inspired by some religious conception. Will the "Servants of India" find the same permanent inspiration in the cult of an Indian Motherland, however highly spiritualized, that has no rewards to offer either in this world or in any other? On the political as well as other potentialities of such an organization as Mr. Gokhale contemplates there is no need to dwell. For the "Servants of India," moulded by one mind and trained to obey one will, are to go forth as missionaries throughout India, in the highways and by-ways, among the "untouchables" as well as among the higher classes, preaching to each and all the birth of an Indian nation.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE GROWTH OF WESTERN EDUCATION.

The rising generation represent the India of the future, and though those who come within the orbit of the Western education we have introduced still constitute only a very small fraction of the whole youth of India, their numbers and their influence are growing steadily and are bound to go on growing. If we are losing our hold over them, it is a poor consolation to be told that we still retain our hold over their elders. I therefore regard the estrangement of the young Indian, and especially of the young Hindu who has passed or is passing through our schools and colleges, as the most alarming phenomenon of the present day, and I am convinced that of all the problems with which British statesmanship is confronted in India none is more difficult and more urgent than the educational problem. We are too deeply pledged now to the general principles upon which our educational policy in India is based for even its severest critics to contemplate the possibility of abandoning it. But for this very reason it is all the more important that we should realize the grave defects of the existing system, or, as some would say, want of system, in order that we may, so far as possible, repair or mitigate them. There can be no turning back, and salvation lies not in doing less for Indian education, but in doing more and in doing it better.

Four very important features of the system deserve to be noted at the outset:—(1) Following the English practice, Government exercises no direct control over educational institutions other than those maintained by the State, though its influence is brought in several ways indirectly to bear upon all that are not prepared to reject the benefits which it can extend to them; (2) Government has concentrated its efforts mainly upon higher education, and has thus begun from the top in the over-sanguine belief that education would ultimately filter down from the higher to the lower strata of Indian society; (3) instruction in the various courses, mostly literary, which constitute higher education is conveyed through the medium of English, a tongue still absolutely foreign to the vast majority; and (4) education is generally confined to the training of the intellect and divorced not only, absolutely, from all religious teaching, but also, very largely, from all moral training and discipline, with the result that the vital side of education which consists in the formation of character has been almost entirely neglected.

To make the present situation intelligible, I must recapitulate, however briefly, the phases through which our Indian system of education has passed. The very scanty encouragement originally given, to education by the East India Company was confined to promoting the study of the Oriental languages still used at that time in the Indian Courts of Law in order to qualify young Indians for Government employment and chiefly in the subordinate posts of the judicial service. After long and fierce controversies on the rival merits of the vernaculars and of English as the more suitable vehicle for the expansion of education, Macaulay's famous Minute of March 7, 1835, determined a revolution of which only very few at the time foresaw, however faintly, the ultimate consequences. Lord William Bentinck's Government decided that "the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of English literature and science, and that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed in English education alone."

Another influence—too often forgotten—had at least as large a share as Macaulay's in this tremendous departure. That was the influence of the great missionary, Dr. Alexander Duff, who inspired the prohibition of suttee and other measures which marked the withdrawal of the countenance originally given by the East India Company to religious practices incompatible, in the opinion of earnest Christians, with the sovereignty of a Christian Power. Duff had made up his mind, in direct opposition to Carey and other earlier missionaries, that the supremacy of the English language over the vernaculars must be established as a preliminary to the Christianization of India. He had himself opened in 1830 an English school in Calcutta with an immediate success which had confounded all his opponents. His authority was great both at home and in India, and was reflected equally in Lord Hardinge's Educational Order of 1844, which threw a large number of posts in the public service open to English-speaking Indians without distinction of race or creed, and in Sir Charles Wood's Educational Despatch of 1854, which resulted in the creation of a Department for Public Instruction, the foundation of the three senior Universities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, the affiliation to them of schools and colleges for purposes of examination, and the inauguration of the "grant-in-aid" system for the encouragement of native educational enterprise by guaranteeing financial support according to a fixed scale to all schools that satisfied certain tests of efficiency in respect of secular instruction. Duff's influence had assured the supremacy of English in secular education, but he never succeeded in inducing Government to go a step beyond neutrality in regard to religious education, and though the remarkable successes which he had in the meantime achieved, not only as a teacher but as a missionary, amongst the highest classes of Calcutta society no doubt led him to hope that, even without any active co-operation from Government, the spread of English education would in itself involve the spread of both Christian ethics and Christian doctrine, he never ceased to preach the necessity of combining religious and moral with secular education or to prophesy the evils which would ensue from their divorce.