Arnold, the first Director of Public Instruction, termed this opposition in a racist way by declaring that, “to an Asiatic, everything is distasteful, which is new.”9
The resentment against the introduction of Hindustani was due to two reasons. Firstly, it was unfamiliar language and secondly, the British promoted Hindustani as the language of the Muslims other parts of India. This language ←45 | 46→was spoken by people in and around Delhi, which was a seat of erstwhile Mughal Empire. This was a politically motivated stand to keep the two communities separate and prevent a possible threat of combined opposition to the colonial rule. Officials openly declared that “divide et imperia had always been our best policy and must continue to be so.”10 The Muslims in various parts of India spoke the language of their Hindu neighbours and used Arabic for religious purposes. They spoke Bengali in Bengal Presidency, Gujarati and Marathi in Bombay Presidency, Tamil and Malayalam in Madras Presidency. The colonial state argued that the Muslims had forgotten their culture and established separate schools for Muslims to teach Hindustani.11 These schools were not successful; the Muslim boys studied in them could not get jobs as they had no command over the local language. But they were successful in promoting a distinct Muslim identity.
Lajpat Rai developed his ideal of national education as a reaction to this policy. He also held a very high status and position in the Arya Samaj, the revivalist organisation established by Dayananda Saraswati in 1875. He wanted “to instil pride in the Indian nation” by making Punjabi as the medium of instruction in the educational institutions and teach ancient India’s cultural, and scientific achievements in addition to the modern curriculum.12 His movement was region-specific.
Aurobindo Ghosh drew up a constructive plan for national education during the Swadeshi movement during 1905–1908. Aurobindo explained that the national education movement was an attempt “to rescue education from subversive to foreign and petty ends and to establish colleges and schools maintained and controlled by Indians which would give an education superior to the government-controlled education.” Aurobindo insisted that “we must acquire for her the best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. All these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so on to build up men and not machines.”13 So the national education model promoted ←46 | 47→by Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo Ghosh proposed to teach patriotism along with the modern curriculum.
The second model was developed first by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and then by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. They rejected modern education as it supposedly destroyed the structures of hierarchy. This paper limits its analysis to the second group as its protagonists were the most vocal advocates of national education and exhibited vehement opposition to modern education.
The sources for national education
During the colonial period, two sources were available to build educational systems upon India’s own pre-colonial system and the system as practised in England. Regarding the Indian system, the British officials and educators had conducted extensive village level enquiry and published reports for most parts of India. The Indian society was stratified in terms of caste, with Brahmins as priests and interpreters of sacred texts alone having access to the Sanskrit schools.
Vernacular schools, in contrast, were open to boys of all castes. Nearly two-thirds of students and a large portion of teachers in pre-colonial vernacular schools came from peasant and artisanal castes. In the Bombay Presidency, the village-wise data for Ratnagiri district is available. Here of the 1468 boys in schools 418 were non-Brahmin, and 393 belonged to artisanal castes, and the rest were Brahmins, Muslims and Jews.14 In Ahmedabad district, of the 2,973 boys, 410 were Brahmins, 1,772 trading castes (Wani), 791 boys belonged to the peasant and artisanal castes.15 In the Burdwan district, Bengal Presidency, out of 12,408 boys, 3,429 were Brahmins, and 4,361 were from artisanal castes, 750 boys came from untouchable castes. They studied with upper-caste boys in the same classroom.16 Caste was largely disregarded in schools. High caste Brahmin and Muslim boys studied under non- Brahmin teachers.17 Language and arithmetic formed the backbone of the curriculum in these schools. Vernacular translations of Sanskrit epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, Amara Kosha, a treatise in ←47 | 48→grammar were used to teach language and grammar. Arithmetic, including multiplication tables, was taught in all these schools. Some schools taught boys to “cast up accounts and to draw out a bill of exchange, book-keeping and calculate compound interest” in their curriculum.18
The majority of teachers and students were ‘miserably poor,’ and parents of the boys paid a monthly fee and occasional gifts to the teachers. The poor students received education gratis.19 On average, the earnings of teachers were lower than that of agricultural labourers. In spite of the low economic status, poor teachers and students were well respected.20 This was because of the underlying Indian belief that one could pursue knowledge only by giving up comforts and the Indian tradition had numerous examples, including that of Gautama the Buddha. So, the pre-colonial vernacular schools in India were open to boys from all castes, a very high standard of literacy and numeracy was taught, and the parents paid for such education. The chief drawback in terms of access was that girls were not allowed into these schools.
The education system in England
England too exhibited a similar trend in the pre-modern times. Richard Aldrich has quoted an instance of how “a beggar’s brat could become a bishop, and sit among the peers of the realm and lord’s sons and knights crouch to him.” However, in the sixteenth century, the establishment of the Anglican Church legitimised social stratification.21 The expansion of trade and Empire enabled the English elites to strengthen their position. The industrialisation further alienated the poor from education.22 By the eighteenth century, two parallel systems of education emerged, wherein the elite children were prepared by either private tutors or expensive private ‘preparatory schools’ to enter exclusive secondary ←48 | 49→schools called Grammar Schools. This type of institutions taught Greek, Latin, and mathematics, and served as a gateway to the universities.23 The poor could send their children to Charity schools, Schools of Industry and Sunday schools which gave only rudimentary instruction in reading and reinforced the existing social stratification. Sunday schools were promoted by the social reformer Robert Raikes (1736–1811) who argued that for the children who worked the entire week, Sunday was a day of freedom, where “the misuse of Sunday appears by the declaration of every criminal to be their first step in the course of wickedness.” The parents paid one dime per week. The Sunday schools thus aimed to keep the children occupied to prevent crime.24
The Schools of Industry were much more severe kind of system. As early as 1675 Thomas Firmian (1632–1697) had erected a spinning factory where children of four or five years of age were taught to read and spin. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the English philosopher John Locke argued that “the children of labouring people are an ordinary burden to the parish, and are usually maintained in idleness so that their labour also is generally lost to the public till they are 12 or 14
