volunteers for ambulance corps for the British. He returned to India in 1915. At that time the Indian National Congress was losing its liberal leaders one by one. The death of A. O. Hume (1912), Gokhale (1915), Dadabhai Naoroji (1917), William Wedderburn (1918) left the party virtually leaderless. Consequently, Tilak dominated the political arena. Gandhi supported the Home Rule agitation, but also engaged in the recruitment of young Indians as soldiers for the British army during the First World War, arguing that “we should become partners in the empire.”61 In 1919, the colonial government wanted to remove English as a medium of instruction in high schools, while retaining it in the universities. If implemented, ←56 | 57→this measure virtually would have prevented thousands of high school students from entering the universities, and only Indian landed gentry who studied in exclusive schools alone would have been in a position to enter the universities. The landed gentry was known by various names like Talukdar, Inamdar, Jagirdar institutions, which denoted various demarcations within the landholders and Chiefs Colleges and Rajkumar Institutions where the sons of the Indian royal families studied. There was a widespread opposition, which was led by members of the Indian elite like Srinivasair, the advocate general of Madras, Krishna Nair, the Diwan (prime minister) of Travancore, or Sitanath Roy – one of the biggest landlords of Bengal. The colonial state could get support only from Gandhi, and the Lord Bishop of Madras, an Anglican Bishop, which is used to substantiate its final decision. The Bishop argued that “English is an intolerable burden on the students; foreign languages impose crushing weight upon the whole educational system of India. English has created cleavages between English educated and the mass of the population.”62 This was virtually a verbatim representation of ideas that Gandhi held regarding modern education. The British government, however, could not implement it immediately as the political agitation intensified.
Gandhi attacked modern education as early as 1908 in his book Hind Swaraj – Indian Home Rule. He denounced modern education as godless claiming that “India will never be godless, rank atheism cannot flourish in this land.”63 He attacked the modern curriculum by stating that:
A study of geography, astronomy, algebra, geometry is false education and it is not for the millions. To give millions knowledge of English is to enslave them. Our ancient school system is enough. Character building has the first place in it, and that is primary education.64
Gandhi went on to argue as governor-general Auckland and Tilak had done before him, “do you wish to make a peasant discontented with his cottage or his lot?” He also declared that “our ancient school system is enough.” Gandhi criticised the supporters of compulsory education as “those carried away by the flood of western thought.”65 Like Tilak, Gandhi too argued that modern education is “calculated to wean the masses from their traditional culture. They are never taught to have any pride in their surroundings, and the government ←57 | 58→schools had entirely denationalized the masses.”66 During the compulsory education debate, Gopal Krishna Gokhale had suggested using eight annas (half a rupee) salt tax to fund compulsory education. Gandhi claimed that Gokhale was his political guru, but did not support Gokhale’s Bill and later famously made his opposition to salt tax central to his anti-colonial struggle during 1930–1931.
Extraordinary political developments took place in India during 1919–1920. The post-war political reform earlier promised by the British did not lead to Home Rule. This frustrated the rank and file of the Indian National Congress. At the same time, the government passed the Rowlett Act under which anyone suspected of anti-British activities could be imprisoned for two years without trial. There was widespread protest against this law, and in one such peaceful meeting at Jallianwallah Bagh in Punjab, a British police officer opened fire, killing and injuring more than 1,000 unarmed persons. Around the same time, the Muslims in India began Khilafat – a pan-Islamic movement against the British, which added to widespread discontent among all sections of the society against the colonial rule.67
When Gandhi began his non-cooperation movement in 1919, as a part of the larger programme of boycotting the government offices and courts, he asked the students to boycott the schools and colleges. He and his supporters established national schools. These schools rejected the modern curriculum as well as the English language. Gandhi emphatically declared that:
If I had the powers of a despot, I would today stop the tuition of our boys and girls through a foreign medium. If I had my way, I would certainly destroy the majority of the present text-books and cause to be written text-books which have a bearing on and correspondence with the home life, so that a boy as he learns may react upon his immediate surroundings.68
Gandhi argued that:
The curriculum and pedagogic ideas which form the fabric of modern education are foreign, and till they are repudiated there never can be national education. The force that maintains society together is a series of high loyalties, loyalty to faith, calling, parents, ←58 | 59→family, dharma. The ancient educational system in India certainly maintained a long tradition of pride and service.69
Elaborating on this, Gandhi explained that:
When our children are admitted to schools, they do not need slate and pencil and books, but simple village tools which they can handle freely and remuneratively. This means a revolution in educational methods. Only, reading and writing would come during the last year when really the boy or girl is ready for learning the alphabet correctly. Text-books especially for children are for the most part useless when they are not harmful.70
These were exactly the issues that the nationalists and particularly Tilak had campaigned on for four decades. The only difference was that Tilak openly advocated it for the lower castes and classes, while defending the right of affluent Brahmins to modern education. Gandhi tactically avoided this mistake. He remained silent on higher education and did not ask for the abolition of English in higher education and the universities but directed his educational experiment to the masses.
The schools established by Gandhi and his supporters were called ‘self-supporting’ schools. The children as young as 6 years had to spin yarn which was sold and the money thus earned was used for giving salary to the teachers and upkeep of the schools. Gandhi declared that “if every school introduced spinning, it would revolutionise our ideas of financing education.” He calculated that:
The boy works at the wheel for four hours daily, he will produce every day ten tolas of yarn and thus earn for his school one anna per day. […] A boy can earn 1-10-0 per month and a class of 30 boys would yield an income of 48-12-0 per month.71
Since the people who supported the non-cooperation movement did not show similar enthusiasm for his educational activity, Gandhi tried to convince them. He told the people that “of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideals of liberty, and developing accuracy of thought.”72 He also asserted that “the government schools have unmanned us, rendered us helpless and godless.”73
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