Indian Unrest

by Sir Valentine Chirol

Whatever danger may lie in that direction, it cannot be allowed to affect the policy of Government, who gave to Mr. Gokhale's resolution a sufficiently sympathetic reception to induce him to withdraw it for the present. To the principle of extending primary education the Government of India have indeed long been committed, and increased efforts were recommended, both in the Educational Despatch of 1854 and by the Education Commission of 1883. Stress was equally laid upon it by the Resolution of 1904 under Lord Curzon, who already, in 1902, had caused additional grants, amounting to more than a quarter of a million sterling, to be given to provincial Governments for the purpose. Under Lord Minto's administration Government seemed at one moment to have gone very much further and to have accepted at any rate the principle of free education, for in 1907 the Finance Member conveyed in Council an assurance from the Secretary of State that "notwithstanding the absence of Budget provision, if a suitable scheme should be prepared and sanctioned by him, he will be ready to allow it to be carried into effect in the course of the year, provided that the financial position permits." It was rather unfortunate that hopes should be so prematurely raised, and it would surely have been wiser to consult the local Governments before than after such a pronouncement. For when they were consulted their replies, especially as to the abolition of fees, were mostly unfavourable, and this year also Government, whilst expressing its good will, felt bound to defer any decision until the question had been more fully studied and the financial situation had improved.

The present situation is certainly unsatisfactory. In 1882 there were 85,000 primary schools in India recognized by the Educational Department which gave elementary education to about 2,000,000 pupils. In 1907, according to the last quinquennial report, the total attendance had increased to 3,631,000; but though the increase appears very considerable, the Director-General of Education had to admit that, assuming progress to be maintained at the present rate, "several generations would still elapse before all the boys of school age were in school." And Mr. Gokhale's resolution applies, at least ultimately, to girls as well as to boys! Now in British India—i.e., without counting the Native States—the total number of boys of school-going age on the basis of the four years' course proposed for India would be nearly 12 millions, and there must be about an equal number of girls. The total cost to the State according to the estimates of local Governments would be no less than £15,000,000 per annum, whilst non-recurring expenditure would amount to £18,000,000. The fees at present paid by parents for primary education, which is already free in some parts of India and in certain circumstances, make up only about £210,000 per annum. The whole of the enormous difference would, therefore, be thrown upon the Indian taxpayers, who now have to find for primary education less than £650,000 per annum. Even Mr. Gokhale does not, of course, propose that this educational and financial revolution should be effected by a stroke of the pen, and one of his Hindu colleagues held that, it would be contrary to all Hindu traditions for parents to avail themselves of free education if they could afford to pay a reasonable sum for it.

But even if the state of Indian finances were likely within any appreciable time to warrant an approximate approach to such vast expenditure, or if Government could entertain the suggestions made by Mr. Gokhale for meeting it, partly by raising the import duties from 5 to 7-1/2 per cent, and imposing other taxes, and partly by wholesale retrenchment in other departments, the financial difficulty is not the only one to be overcome. Model schoolhouses could no doubt be built all over India, if the money were forthcoming, instead of the wretched accommodation which exists now, and is so inadequate that in the Bombay Presidency alone there are said to be 100,000 boys for whom parents want, but cannot obtain, primary education. But what of the teachers? These cannot be improvised, however many millions Government may be prepared to spend. There is an even greater deficiency of good teachers than of good schoolhouses, and, in some respects, the value of primary education still more than that of secondary education depends upon good teachers—teachers who are capable of explaining what they teach and not merely of reeling off by rote, and imperfectly, to their pupils lessons which they themselves imperfectly understand. The total number of teachers engaged in primary education exceeds 100,000, but their salaries barely average Rs.8 (10s. 8d.) a month. So miserable a pittance abundantly explains their inefficiency. But there it is, and a new army of teachers—nearly half a million altogether—would have to be trained before primary education, whether free and compulsory, as Mr. Gokhale would have it, or optional and for payment, as others propose, could be usefully placed within the reach of the millions of Indian children of a school-going age.

In this as in all other matters, the Government of India cannot afford to stand still, and will have to take Indian opinion more and more into account. But whilst there is a very general consensus that more should be done by the State for primary education, there is no unanimity as to its being made free and compulsory. Various Indian members of Council have expressed themselves against it on different grounds. Some contend that many parents cannot afford, as bread-winners, to be deprived of the help of their children. According to others, there is already much complaint amongst parents that school-going boys do not make good agriculturists and affect to consider work in the fields as beneath their dignity. Others, again, ask, and with some reason, who is going to care for boys of that age who may have to leave their homes and be removed from parental control in order to attend school. There is, doubtless, something in all these objections. Assuming that Government can do more than it has hitherto done to further primary education, the wisest course would be to improve the quality rather than the quantity, and, most of all, the quality of the teachers. Here, again, uniformity should be avoided rather than ensued. No primary curriculum can be evolved which will meet the needs alike of the rural population and of the townsfolk, or of the different parts of India with their varying conditions of climate and temperament. Even more than with regard to secondary schools, the needs of parents must be consulted, and the greatest latitude given to provincial Governments to vary the system in a practical spirit and in accordance with local requirements. Nor can the opinion, strongly held by many parents, be overlooked that religious instruction cannot be safely excluded from the training of such young children. Some of the objects to be kept specially in view have been well stated by Mr. Orange, the Director-General of Public Education:—

We desire to see, if not in every village, within reach of every village, a school, not an exotic, but a village school, in which the village itself can take pride, and of which the first purpose will be to train up good men and women and good citizens; and the second; to impart useful knowledge, not forgetting while doing so to train the eye and the hand so that the children when they leave school, whether for the field or the workshop, will have begun to learn the value of accurate observation and to feel the joy of intelligent and exact manual work.

This is undoubtedly the goal towards which primary education should be directed, but it can only be reached by steady and continuous effort spread over a long term of years. Otherwise we shall discover, again too late, that, as in the case of secondary education, most haste is worst speed.

I shall not attempt to deal with the question of female education, either primary or secondary, for it is so intimately bound up with the peculiarities of Indian, and especially Hindu, society, that it would be difficult for the State to take any vigorous initiative without running a great risk of alarming and alienating native opinion[21]. Owing to Indian social customs and to the practice of early marriage or at least of early seclusion, for girls, their education presents immense practical difficulties which do not exist in the case of boys. Hence the slow progress it has made. At the last census only eight per thousand women could read and write; and in the whole of India only about half a million girls, or four out of every 100 of a school-going age,—even on the basis of a four years' course, are receiving any kind of education. Of such as do go to school nine out of ten only go to primary schools. Mr. Gokhale himself has abandoned the idea of making primary education compulsory for girls as well as for boys. Female education is just one of the questions upon which Indian opinion must be left to ripen, Government giving, in proportion as it ripens, such assistance as can be legitimately expected. It has long engaged the attention of enlightened Indians, and in some communities, especially amongst the Aryas of the Punjab, some headway is being made. The Parsees, of course, as in all educational and philanthropic developments, have always been in the van. With the growth of Western education the Indian woman of the higher classes cannot indefinitely lag behind, and, if only to make their daughters more eligible for marriage, the most conservative Indian parents will be compelled to educate them, as some have already done, so that they shall not be separated from their male partners by an unfathomable gulf of intellectual inferiority. In Calcutta, in Bombay, in Madras, and indeed in all the principal cities of India, one may already meet native ladies, both Hindu and Mahomedan, of education and refinement, who, however few their numbers, are shining examples of what Indian womanhood can rise to when once it is emancipated from the trammels of antiquated custom.

CHAPTER XXII.

SWADESHI AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS.

Was it not Talleyrand who said that speech had been given to man in order to enable him to disguise his thoughts? Indian politicians are no Talleyrands, but they sometimes seem to have framed their vocabulary on purpose to disguise political conceptions which most of them for various reasons shrink from defining at present with decision. We have already seen how elastic is the word Swaraj, self-government, or rather self-rule. In the mouth of the "moderates" of the Indian National Congress it means, we are assured, only a pious aspiration towards the same position which our self-governing Colonies enjoy within the Empire. For the "advanced" politician Swaraj means a transition stage which he hopes and believes must infallibly lead to a complete severance of the ties that unite India to the Empire. For the "extremists" it means the immediate and violent emancipation of India from British rule, and absolute independence. So it is with the term Swadeshi, which means anything from the perfectly legitimate and commendable encouragement of Indian trade and industry to the complete exclusion of foreign, and especially of British, goods by a "national" and often forcible "boycott" as part of a political campaign against British rule.