that they will be “from infancy [three years old] inured to work.” He went on to outline the economics of these schools, arguing not only that they will be profitable for the parish, but also that they will instil a good work ethic in the children.25 Several industrial schools set up in the early part of the eighteenth century taught gardening, carpentry, cobbling and printing to boys and spinning, knitting, sewing and straw-plaiting to girls. The work done by the children was sold, and proceeds went to their maintenance. If the child’s earnings exceeded the cost of his keep, he was given a cash payment. The idea was to make schools self-supporting. In some schools of industry, children were taught reading and writing, but there was always the temptation to emphasise the occupational aspect to cover expenses. The boys’ schools were largely a failure as their products did not command the market like ←49 | 50→those from girl’s schools. These schools declined due to industrialisation as even very young children came to be employed in modern factories.
The underlying idea common to all three kinds of schools was that the poor ought to be trained to accept and internalize the existing social stratification. Even though the educational attainments of these children were in no way a threat to the elite monopoly of Grammar schools and the universities, it was still resented. It was argued that the education of the poor would result in discontent and rebellion. The poor occupied a position in society which had been assigned to them, and if they were to be labourers, they should be used to their position from the first.26
The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church was established in 1811 in London. The society established a network of schools for the poor.27 The purpose of the system was to “infuse […] a cheerful and uniform subjection to all lawful authority,” and to keep them away from “discontentment.”28 The Church wished that “the children to learn through their readers about the demarcation between rich and poor and the mutual dependence of each in a harmonious society. Contentment in the station of life to which God had assigned them was an important precept.” A fable meant for children gave the example of what disaster would befall a person if the various parts of the human body went on strike in protest at the seeming greed and selfishness of the stomach. The fable explains that the stomach is to the body what the rich man is to the poor man in society, and concludes that “a rich man, even though he may care for no one but himself, can hardly avoid benefitting his neighbours.”29 Even this disciplining of children from the most impoverished section of the society was not free; the parents had to pay one shilling per quarter on first Monday in January, April, July, and October.30 So the poor paid for being disciplined by the Church.
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These measures were eventually opposed and countered by English liberals. They were successful in getting various education acts passed only after 1870 and compulsory and free education was successfully implemented throughout England.
The colonial state policy in India
The colonial state in India virtually followed the system that was practised in England. It closed down the schools established by the Scottish officers like Thomas Munro, T. B. Macaulay, Robert Shortread and others as they contained boys from “lower classes and miserable background”.31 It was while upturning Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 by his own Minute of 1839 that governor-general Auckland argued that if modern education was given to the poor “the student may be unhappy and discontented in his peculiar position.” It was not Macaulay’s Minute but Auckland’s Minute that laid the foundation for the educational policy of the colonial state. It encouraged the admission of the children of landlords and repeatedly told the headmasters to dismiss the boys from a poor background; it closed down over 100 schools as they had “no sons of the landed gentry.” It carefully trained and appointed Brahmins as schoolmasters.32 It openly opposed the admission of poor Brahmin as well as lower caste boys by stating that, “if the beggarly Brahmins are freely admitted into the government schools, what is there to prevent all the despised castes - the Dhers, Mahars from flocking in numbers […] If education is open to men of superior intelligence from any community, and with such qualifications there would be nothing to prevent their aspiring to the highest offices open to native talent.”33
In spite of these elitist measures, the poor students formed the majority of the school and college-going children during the colonial period. The British headmasters often ignored the government directives to remove poor students from schools.34 Secondly, the missionaries extended free education to all. The leading members of the Indian National Congress like Dadabhai Naoroji and ←51 | 52→Gopal Krishna Gokhale who fought for radical social, economic and educational reforms had risen from poverty. So both the Indian tradition and the existing social reality pointed in the same direction; namely that, what India needed was equal educational access and good quality education for all.
Nationalising an imperial idea
The leading anti-colonial political leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had, however, different ideas on what constituted an education for Indians. By rejecting the reformers as “anglicised, un-national leaders,”35 Tilak and later Gandhi attempted to provide an alternative socio-educational philosophy that had a far-reaching impact on education.
Tilak came from a family of landlords, moneylenders and government officials. He entered the public arena in 1881, through his weekly publication The Mahratta. He used it effectively to oppose colonial policies and to attack the reformers. He defended the caste system in the name of “cleanliness,” and declared that “the Hindu religion owed its existence to the caste system.”36 The term caste is a modern one, and the Hindu religious texts refer to this stratification as chaturvarna or four-fold division and the system which specifies how each caste should behave, follow certain occupations and punishment for those who transcend it is referred to as varnashrama dharma. Tilak used all three terms, sometimes in the same speech or editorial.
To begin with, Tilak was not against modern education. He actually declared that “we were an ignorant mass of people,” before its “civilising influence.”37 However, he opposed the reformers’ campaign for equal educational access for all sections of the society by arguing that, such a measure took the lower castes away from their traditional occupation and traditional existence:
You take away a farmer’s boy from the plough, the blacksmith’s boy from the bellows and the cobbler’s boy from his awl with the object of giving him liberal education, […] you remove him from a sphere where he would have been contented happy and useful to those who depend upon him and teach him to be discontented with his lot and with the government.38
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Tilak emphasised that teaching a modern curriculum for the lower castes had “no earthly use in practical life,” and would actually “do more harm than good to them.” He insisted that they should be taught “only those subjects which would be necessary for their living, […] befitting their rank and station in life.” They should be taught “most ordinary trades like those of a carpenter, blacksmith mason and tailor.”39 Later
