Indian Unrest

by Sir Valentine Chirol

On the 7th of August [1908] most of the Hindu students abstained from attending the college and high schools at Comilla as a demonstration in connexion with the boycott anniversary. Immediately afterwards, on the date of the execution of the Muzafferpur murderer, the boys of several schools in the province attended barefooted and without shirts and in some cases fasting…. At Jamalpur the demonstration lasted a week…. Later in the year, on the occasion of the execution of one of the Alipur murderers, the pupils of the Sandip Cargill school made a similar demonstration.

The report adds, in a sanguine vein, that, as a result of various disciplinary measures, a marked improvement had subsequently taken place, but quite recent events, during the great conspiracy trial at Dacca, show that something more than disciplinary measures is required to eradicate the spirit which inspired such occurrences.

The heaviest responsibility rests on those who, claiming to be the intellectual leaders of the country, not only instigated its youth to take part in political campaigns, but actually placed them in the forefront of the fray. However reprehensible from our British point of view other features of a seditious agitation may be, to none does so high a degree of moral culpability attach as to the deliberate efforts made by Hindu politicians to undermine the fundamental principles of authority by stirring up the passions or appealing to the religious sentiment of inexperienced youth at the most emotional period of life.[19] Even the fact that political murders have been invariably perpetrated by misguided youths of the student class is hardly as ominous as the homage paid to the murderers' memories by whole schools and colleges. Most ominous of all is the tolerance, and sometimes the encouragement, extended to such demonstrations by schoolmasters and professors. These are symptoms that point to a grave moral disease amongst the teachers as well as the taught, which we can only ignore at our peril and at the sacrifice of our duty towards the people of India. In his last two Convocation speeches, Dr. Ashutosh Mookerjee has himself felt constrained to lay special stress on the question of teachers and politics. Alluding in 1909 to "the lamentable events of the last 12 months," he maintained, "without hesitation," that "the most strenuous efforts must be unfalteringly made by all persons truly interested in the future of the rising generation to protect our youths from the hands of irresponsible people who recklessly seek to seduce our students from the path of academic life and to plant in their immature minds the poisonous seeds of hatred against constituted Government." This year he was even more outspoken, and laid it down that even the teacher "who scrupulously abstains from political matters within his class-room, but at the same time devotes much or all of his leisure hours to political activities and agitation, and whose name and speeches are prominently before the world in connexion with political organizations and functions," fails in his duty towards his pupils; for "their minds will inevitably be attracted towards political affairs and political agitation if they evidently constitute the main life-interest and life-work of one who stands towards them in a position of authority." Teachers should therefore avoid everything that tends "to impart to the minds of our boys a premature bias towards politics."

A most admirable exhortation; but I had an opportunity of estimating the weight that it carried with some of the political leaders of Bengal when I accepted an invitation from Mr. Surendranath Banerjee to meet a few Bengalee students in an informal way and have a talk with them. They were bright, pleasant lads, and, if they had been left to themselves, I might have had an interesting talk with them about their studies and their prospects in life, but Mr. Banerjee and several other politicians who were present insisted upon giving to the conversation a political turn of a disagreeably controversial character which seemed to me entirely out of place.

The mischievous incitements of politicians would not, however, have fallen on to such receptive soil if economic conditions, for which we are ourselves at least partly responsible, had not helped to create an atmosphere in which political disaffection is easily bred amongst both teachers and taught. The rapid rise in the cost of living has affected no class more injuriously than the old clerkly castes from which the teaching staff and the scholars of our schools and colleges are mainly recruited. Their material position now often compares unfavourably with that of the skilled workman and even of the daily labourer, whose higher wages have generally kept pace with the appreciation of the necessaries of life. This is a cause of great bitterness even amongst those who at the end of their protracted, course of studies get some small billet for their pains. The bitterness is, of course, far greater amongst those who fail altogether. The rapid expansion of an educational system that has developed far in excess of the immediate purpose for which it was originally introduced was bound to result in a great deal of disappointment for the vast number of Indians who regarded it merely as an avenue to Government employment. For the demand outran the supply, and the deterioration in the quality of education consequent upon this too rapid expansion helped at the same time to restrict the possible demand. F.A.'s (First Arts) and even B.A.'s are now too often drugs in the market. Nothing is more pathetic than the hardships to which both the young Indian and his parents will subject themselves in order that he may reach the coveted goal of University distinctions, but unfortunately, as such distinctions are often achieved merely by a process of sterile cramming which leaves the recipients quite unable to turn mere feats of memory to any practical account, the sacrifices prove to have been made in vain. Whilst the skilled artisan, and even the unskilled labourer, can often command from 12 annas to 1 rupee (1s. to 1s. 4d.) a day, the youth who has sweated himself and his family through the whole course of higher education frequently looks in vain for employment at Rs.30 (£2) and even at Rs.20 a month. In Calcutta not a few have been taken on by philanthropic Hindus to do mechanical labour in jute mills at Rs.15 a month simply to keep them from starvation. Things have in fact reached this pitch, that our educational system is now turning out year by year a semi-educated proletariat which is not only unemployed, but in many cases almost unemployable. A Hindu gentleman who is one of the highest authorities on education told me that in Bengal, where this evil has reached the most serious dimensions, he estimates the number of these unemployed at over 40,000. This is an evil which no change in the relative number of Europeans and natives employed in Government and other services could materially affect. Even if every Englishman left India, it would present just as grave a problem to the rulers of the country, except that the bitterness engendered would not be able to vent itself, as it too often does now, on the alien rulers who have imported the alien system of education by which many of those who fail believe themselves to have been cruelly duped.

Similar causes have operated to produce discontent amongst the teachers, who in turn inoculate their pupils with the virus of disaffection. It was much easier to multiply schools and colleges than to train a competent teaching staff. Official reports seldom care to look unpleasant facts in the face, and the periodical reports both of the Imperial Department of Public Education and of the Provincial Departments have always been inclined to lay more stress upon the multiplication of educational institutions and the growth in the numbers of pupils and students than upon the weak points of the system. Nevertheless, there is one unsatisfactory feature that the most confirmed optimists cannot ignore. Hardly a single one of these reports but makes some reference to the deficiencies and incapacity of the native teaching staff. The last quinquennial report issued by Mr. Orange, the able Director-General of Public Education, who is now leaving India, contains a terse but very significant passage. "Speaking generally," he writes, "it may be said that the qualifications and the pay of the teachers in secondary schools are below any standard that could be thought reasonable; and the inquiries which are now being made into the subject have revealed a state of things that is scandalous in Bengal and Eastern Bengal, and is unsatisfactory in every province." Very little information is forthcoming as to the actual qualifications or pay of the teachers. It appears, however, from the inspection of high schools by the Calcutta University that out of one group of 3,054 teachers over 2,100 receive salaries of less than 30 rupees (£2) a month. One cannot, therefore, be surprised to hear that in Bengal "only men of poor attainments adopt the profession, and the few who are well qualified only take up work in schools as a stepping-stone to some more remunerative career." That career is frequently found in the Press, where the disgruntled ex-schoolmaster adds his quota of gall to the literature of disaffection. But he is still more dangerous when he remains a schoolmaster and uses his position to teach disaffection to his pupils either by precept or by example.

I have already alluded to the unfortunate effect of the recommendations of the Public Service Commission of 1886-7 on the native side of the Education Service. But if it has become more difficult to attract to it the right type of Indians, it has either become almost as difficult to attract the right type of Europeans, or the influence they are able to exercise has materially diminished. In the first place, their numbers are quite inadequate. Out of about 500 Europeans actually engaged in educational work in India less than half are in the service of the State. Many of them are admittedly very capable men, and not a few possess high University credentials. But so long as the Indian Educational Service is regarded and treated as an inferior branch of the public service, we cannot expect its general tone to be what it should be in view of the supreme importance of the functions it has to discharge. One is often told that the conditions are at least as attractive as those offered by an educational career at home. Even if that be so, it would not affect my contention that, considering how immeasurably more difficult is the task of training the youth of an entirely alien race according to Western standards, and how vital that task is for the future of British rule in India, the conditions should be such as to attract, not average men, but the very best men that we can produce. As it is, the Education Department cannot be said to attract the best men, for these go into the Civil Service, and only those, as a rule, enter the Educational Service who either, having made up their minds early to seek a career in India, have failed to pass the Civil Service examinations, or, having originally intended to take up the teaching profession in England, are subsequently induced to come out to India by disappointments at home or by the often illusory hope of bettering their material prospects. When they arrive they begin work without any knowledge of the character and customs of the people. Some are employed in inspection and others as professors, and the latter especially are apt to lose heart when they realize the thanklessness of their task and their social isolation. In some cases indifference is the worst result, but in others—happily rare—they themselves, I am assured, catch the surrounding contagion of discontent, and their influence tends rather to promote than to counteract the estrangement of the rising generation committed to their charge. Some men, no doubt, rise superior to all these adverse conditions and, in comparing the men of the present day with those of the past, one is apt to remember only the few whose names still live in the educational annals of India and to forget the many who have passed away without making any mark. The fact, however, remains that nowadays the Europeans who have the greatest influence over their Indian pupils are chiefly to be found amongst the missionaries with whom teaching is not so much a profession as a vocation.

CHAPTER XIX.

SOME MEASURES OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM.

Though already in 1889, when Lord Lansdowne was Viceroy, an important resolution, drafted by Sir Anthony (now Lord) MacDonnell as Secretary to Government, was issued, drawing attention to some of the most glaring defects of our educational system from the point of view of intellectual training and of discipline, and containing valuable recommendations for remedying them, it seems to have had very little practical effect. A more fruitful attempt to deal with the question was made during Lord Curzon's Viceroyalty. He summoned and presided over an Educational Conference, of which the results were embodied in a Government Resolution issued on March 11, 1904, and in the Universities Act of the same year. They were received at the time with a violent outburst of indignation by Indian politicians, who claim to represent the educated intellect of the country. The least that Lord Curzon was charged with was a deliberate attempt to throttle higher education in India. This factious outcry has now died away, except amongst the irreconcilables, and Dr. Ashutosh Mookerjee, an authority whom even Hindu partisanship can hardly repudiate, declared in his last Convocation speech that the new regulations which are now being brought into operation, far from bearing out the apprehensions of "alarmist prophets," have been distinctly beneficial to the better and stronger class of students.