# Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 3/Chapter 2/Section 2

SECTION II.
Plan proposed and its application to the improvement and extension of vernacular instruction.
The objections that apply to the plans brought under review in the preceding Section should at least make me diffident in proposing any other for adoption. The considerations I have suggested show that the subject has been viewed in various ​aspects, and in what follows I shall endeavour impartially to point out the difficulties, as well as the advantages, of the measure which, on the whole, I venture to recommend.
The leading idea, that of employing existing native institutions as the instruments of national education, has been already suggested; and if their adaptation to this purpose had not been so much overlooked, it would have seemed surprising that they were not the very first means adopted for its promotion. Their importance, however, has been recognized, at least in words, by some of those who have been most distinguished for their intimate practical acquaintance with the details of Indian administration. Of these, I may cite here, on account of the comprehensive although cursory view it presents of the subject, the opinion expressed by Mr. Secretary Dowdeswell in his report of September 22nd 1809, on the general state of the Police of Bengal, contained in Appendix No. 12 to the Fifth Report on East India affairs. At the close of his report Mr. Dowdeswell says—“I have now stated all the measures which suggest themselves to my mind for the improvement of the Police, without entering into minute details, or deviating into a course which might be thought foreign to the subject. I am satisfied that if those measures be adopted they will be attended with considerable benefit in the suppression of the crimes most injurious to the peace and happiness of society,—an opinion which I express with the greatest confidence, as it is founded on practical experience of the system now recommended so far as the existing regulations would permit. I am, at the same time, sensible that a great deal more must be done in order to eradicate the seeds of those crimes,—the real source of the evil lies in the corrupt morals of the people. Under these circumstances, the best laws can only have a partial operation. If we would apply a lasting remedy to the evil, we must adopt means of instruction for the different classes of the community, by which they may be restrained, not only from the commission of public crimes, but also from acts of immorality by a dread of the punishments denounced both in this world and in a future state by their respective religious opinions. The task would not, perhaps, be so difficult as it may at first sight appear to be. Some remains of the old system of Hindu discipline still exist. The institutions of Mohammadanism of that description are still better known. Both might be revived and gradually moulded into a regular system of instruction for both those great classes of the community; but I pretend not to have formed any digested plan of that nature, and at all events it would be foreign, as above noticed, to the immediate object of my present report.“ It does not appear what institutions Mr. Dowdeswell meant to describe, and confessedly his views were general and not very defined. A closer attention will show that Hinduism and Mohammadanism have certain institutions ​peculiar to them as systems of religious faith and practice, and certain other institutions peculiar to the people professing those systems, but forming no part of their religious faith and practice. To attempt to interfere with the former would be equally inconsistent with the principles and character of a Christian government, and opposed to the rights and feelings of a Hindu and Mohammadan people. But to revive the latter, and gradually to mould them “into a regular system of instruction for both those great classes of the community,” is the dictate both of sound wisdom and of the most obvious policy.
The question arises in what manner native institutions may be most effectually employed, with a view to the gradual formation of a regular system of instruction for the benefit of all classes of the community; and the answer which, after mature consideration, I am disposed to give is by proposing the establishment of public and periodical examinations of the teachers and scholars of those institutions and the distribution of rewards to the teachers proportioned to their own qualifications and the attainments of their scholars,—the examinations to be conducted, and the rewards bestowed, by officers appointed by Government and placed under the authority and control of the General Committee of Public Instruction. This plan appears adapted to the character of the people and to the present condition of native society. Mr. Wyse in his recent work entitled Education Reform, Vol. I. p. 48, remarking on those dispositions which, in some manner, form the public character, the moral physiognomy, of nations, says—This peculiar public character, formed of the aggregate of private, again acts in a very striking manner upon the character of the individual. But this action is still further affected by the changes of the times. A period of total quiet, resulting from a long continued acquiescence in old institutions, leaves a very different imprint upon the national mind from that which is the necessary consequence of a general breaking up of old principles and forms, and an earnest search after new. In the first instance, an education of stimulants becomes necessary, it is essential to the healthy activity of the body politic; in the second, steadiness, love of order, mutual toleration, the sacrifice of private resentments and factious interests to general good, should be the great lessons of national education.” At no period in the history of a nation can lessons of steadiness, love of order, mutual toleration, and the sacrifice of private to public good be deemed inappropriate; but if any where an education of stimulants is necessary to the healthy activity of the body politic, it is here where a long continued acquiescence in old institutions, and a long continued subjection to absolute forms and principles of government have produced and continue to perpetuate a universal torpor of the national mind. This education of stimulants I propose to supply on the basis of native institutions, and by means of a system of public and periodical ​examinations and rewards; and I hope to show, in conformity with the characteristics that have been sketched of a scheme likely to be attended with success, that, while the plan will present incitements to self-exertion for the purpose of self-improvement, it will be equally simple in its details and economical in expenditure, tending to draw forth the kindly affections of the people towards the Government, and to put into the hands of the Government large powers for the good of the people.
The first proposed application of the plan is to the improvement and extension of vernacular education; and to the importance of this branch of public instruction testimony has been at different times borne by the highest authorities in the State. Of these, I shall quote two only in this place. Lord Moira in his Minute on the Judicial Administration of the Presidency of Fort William, dated the 2nd October 1815, after mentioning certain evils in the administration of the Government and in the character of the people, goes on to say—“In looking for a remedy to these evils, the moral and intellectual improvement of the natives will necessarily form a prominent feature of any plan which may arise from the above suggestions, and I have, therefore, not failed to turn my most solicitous attention to the important object of public education. The humble but valuable class of village school-masters claims the first place in this discussion. These men teach the first rudiments of reading, writing, and arithmetic for a trifling stipend which is within reach of any man’s means, and the instruction which they are capable of imparting suffices for the village zemindar, the village accountant, and the village shop-keeper. As the public money would be ill-appropriated in merely providing gratuitous access to that quantum of education which is already attainable, any intervention of Government, either by superintendence or by contribution, should be directed to the improvement of existing tuition and to the diffusion of it to places and persons now out of its reach. Improvement and diffusion may go hand in hand; yet the latter is to be considered matter of calculation, while the former should be deemed positively incumbent.” Twenty-two years have elapsed since these wise and benevolent views were expressed by one of the ablest and most distinguished rulers that British India has possessed, and no adequate means have yet been employed to discharge a duty declared to be positively incumbent by introducing improvement into the existing system of tuition practised by the humble but valuable class of village school-masters, and to extend the improved ininstruction to persons and places which the old system does not reach. We appear to have even retrograded, for not only has vernacular instruction been overshadowed and lost sight of by the almost exclusive patronage bestowed on a foreign medium of instruction, the English language, but even some of the principal efforts to improve the village schools and school-masters have, with ​or without reason, been abandoned. It was, I believe, under Lord Moira’s government that the Ajmere native schools were established and the Chinsurah native schools patronized by Government, but both have proved signal failures, and Government support has been withdrawn from them; the grand mistake being that new schools were formed subject to all the objections that have been described in another place, instead of the old schools and school-masters of the country that enjoyed, and still enjoy, the confidence of the people, being employed as the instruments of the desired improvements. The only other attempt known to me on this side of India to improve the system of vernacular instruction on a considerable scale unconnected with religion was that made by the Calcutta School Society, which received the special approbation of the Court of Directors. In 1825, in confirming the grant of 500 rupees per month which had been made to this Society by the Local Government, the Court made the following remarks:—“The Calcutta School Society appears to combine with its arrangements for giving elementary instruction, an arrangement of still greater importance for educating teachers for the indigenous schools. This last object we deem worthy of great encouragement, since it is upon the character of the indigenous schools that the education of the great mass of the population must ultimately depend. By training up, therefore, a class of teachers, you provide for the eventual extension of improved education to a portion of the natives of India far exceeding that which any elementary instruction that could be immediately bestowed would have any chance of reaching.” The plan of the Calcutta School Society so highly approved was that of stimulating teachers and scholars by public examinations and rewards, and although it was very limited in its application, and very imperfect in its details, the effects upon tha state of vernacular instruction in Calcutta were for a time highly beneficial. Yet the plan has been relinquished, the Society has ceased to exist, and the donation of Government, confirmed by the Court of Directors on the grounds above stated continues to be drawn by the nominal secretary and is now applied to the support of an English school and to the gratuitous education of thirty students of the Hindu College. It is evident, therefore, that in proposing to lay the foundations of national education by improving and extending the system of vernacular instruction, and to improve and extend that system, not by forming new and independent schools, but by employing the agency of the long-established institutions of the country, I am proposing nothing new. It is necessary only that we should retrace our steps, and, taught by past experience, start again from the position we occupied twenty years ago. In 1815 Lord Moira saw the necessity, either by superintendence or by contribution, of improving and diffusing the existing tuition afforded by village school-masters; and in 1825 the Court of Directors, by deeds as well as by words, ​pronounced that upon the character of the indigenous schools the education of the great mass of the population must ultimately depend. These sentiments and opinions are worthy of the highest authorities in the government of a great empire, and they are confirmed by the whole history of civilization. It is deeply to be regretted that they have hitherto produced no fruit in this country; and it is earnestly to be hoped that the time has now arrived to give them a practical, a systematic, and a general application.
Assuming the importance of vernacular instruction as the very foundation-stone of a sound and salutary system of national education, and assuming also that the old and established village schools and school-masters, if they can be rendered available and qualified, present the most appropriate instruments for gaining a ready access to the people and a trustful acceptance of the improvements which we are desirous of introducing and diffusing, it remains for me to show with what preliminary arrangements, in what manner, and to what extent, I would propose to employ their agency.
The first step to be taken is the selection of one or more districts in which Government shall authorize the plan to be tried. It is desirable that the experiment should be made simultaneously in several districts, for the purpose of comparing the results obtained under different circumstances. The attempt may succeed in one district and fail in another, the failure arising from local and temporary, and the success from permanent and general, causes; and if the experiment was made only in one district, it might be one in which local and temporary causes are in operation leading to failure, and thus undeserved discredit might be entailed upon the whole scheme. The number of districts usually included in a division subject to a Commissioner of Revenue and Circuit would probably afford a just criterion.
Having fixed upon the districts in which a trial is to be given to the plan, the next step will be to institute an educational survey of each district, or a survey of all the institutions of education actually found in it to determine the amount of juvenile instruction, and a census of the population of each district, to determine the amount of domestic and adult instruction. With a view to the completeness of the results, I would recommend that the census of the population should not be limited to one thana in each district, but should be co-extensive with the survey of the schools. This would undoubtedly entail much additional trouble and some additional expense, but it is by such means that the interests of humanity, the interests of a future as well as of the present age, are promoted. I have shown in the preceding chapter how such investigations have been, and may be, conducted economically, and, I hope and believe, efficiently and inoffensively; and ​as a means of throwing a strong light upon the moral and intellectual condition of native society, I trust they will be continued, pari passu, with every attempt to extend vernacular instruction. If the suggestions offered, or to be offered, in this report possess any value, it is derived from these inquiries conducted under the authority of Government, without which a whole life’s residence in India would not have given me the inwrought conviction I now possess of the unparalled degradation of the native population, and the large and unemployed resources existing in the country applicable to the improvement of their condition and character; and it is only by the unwearied prosecution of such inquiries, and by the detailed publication of their results, that this conviction can be wrought out of the minds of the actual observers into the minds of the community at large, and especially into the minds of those members of the community who wield the powers and direct the measures of Government. I long entertained an opinion of the importance of such inquiries before I had undertaken, or had any prospect of undertaking, such a duty in person. In 1829 or 1830, at the request of Lord William Bentinck, I sent him a Memorandum on the subject of education, in which I pointed out an educational survey of the country as an indispensable preliminary to every other measure, and four years afterwards the adoption of the suggestion showed that the utility of such a course was appreciated by his Lordship’s Government. Experience has confirmed the opinion I then expressed, and in perusing the Revenue and Judicial Selections during the past year, I have discovered with pleasure that the advantage of inquiries into the actual state of native education is still further supported by the high authority of that truly great and good man Sir Thomas Munro, the late Governor of Madras, and by that of the Court of Directors. The importance of this branch of the subject and the weight due to these authorities induce me to embody their views in full in this report from the Selections, Vol. III., page 588, omitting only the tabular form in which Sir Thomas Munro directed the information to be collected:—
Extract Fort St. George Revenue Consultations, Dated the 2nd July 1822.
The President records the following Minute:— Minute by Sir Thomas Munro.
“Much has been written, both in England and in this country, about the ignorance of the people of India and the means of disseminating knowledge among them; but the opinions upon this subject are the mere conjectures of individuals, unsupported by any authentic documents, and differing so widely from each other as to be entitled to very little attention. Our power in this country, and the nature of its own municipal institutions, have ​certainly rendered it practicable to collect materials from which a judgment might be formed of the state of the mental cultivation of the people. We have made geographical and agricultural surveys of our provinces; we have investigated their resources, and endeavoured to ascertain their population; but little or nothing has been done to learn the state of education. We have no record to show the actual state of education throughout the country. Partial inquiries have been made by individuals, but those have taken place at distant periods and on a small scale, and no inference can be drawn from them with regard to the country in general. There may be some difficulty in obtaining such a record as we want. Some districts will not, but others probably will, furnish it; and if we get it only from two or three it will answer, in some degree, for all the rest. It cannot be expected to be very accurate, but it will at least enable us to form an estimate of the state of instruction among the people. The only record which can furnish the information required is a list of the schools in which reading and writing are taught in each district, showing the number of scholars in each and the caste to which they belong. The Collectors should be directed to prepare this document according to the form which accompanies this paper. They should be desired to state the names of the books generally read at the schools; the time which scholars usually continue at such schools; the monthly or yearly charge to the scholars; and whether any of the schools are endowed by the public, and, if so, the nature and amount of the fund. Where there are colleges or other institutions for teaching theology, law, astronomy, &c., an account should be given of them. These sciences are usually taught privately, without fee or reward, by individuals, to a few scholars or disciples; but there are also some instances in which the native governments have granted allowances in money and land for the maintenance of the teachers.
​“It is not my intention to recommend any interference whatever in the native schools. Every thing of this kind ought to be carefully avoided and the people should be left to manage their schools in their own way. All that we ought to do is to facilitate the operations of these schools, by restoring any funds that may have been diverted from them, and perhaps granting additional ones where it may appear advisable; but on this point we shall be better able to judge, when we receive the information now proposed to be called for.
THOMAS MUNRO.”
Extract, Revenue Letter, to Fort St. George, Dated the 18th May 1825.
“We think great credit is due to Sir Thomas Munro for having originated the idea of this inquiry. We shall be better able when we have seen specimens of the report to judge whether the prescribed inquiry is sufficient to bring forth all the useful information capable of being obtained. The proportion in which the great body of the people obtain the knowledge of reading and writing, the degree to which the means of obtaining them are placed within their reach, the extent to which the branches of knowledge esteemed of a higher kind are objects of pursuit and the means of instruction in them are afforded, are the most important points, and these appear to be fully embraced. The most defective part of the information which will thus be elicited is likely to be that which relates to the quality of the instruction which the existing education affords; but of this we shall be able to form a more correct opinion when we see what the reports contain. It was proper to caution the collectors against exciting any fears in the people that their freedom of choice in matters of education would be interfered with, but it would be equally wrong to do any thing to fortify them in the absurd opinion that their own rude institutions of education are so perfect as not to admit of improvement.”
The four volumes of Revenue and Judicial Selections which I have seen, and which are I believe all that have been published, do not contain any reference to the reports made in conformity with Sir Thomas Munro’s instructions. The utility of the statistical inquiries recommended by that sagacious and experienced statesman, and so explicitly approved by the Honorable Court with a distinct view to the improvement to be introduced into the existing rude institutions of education, is still further increased when they are regarded as introductory and auxiliary to a general system of popular instruction. The information thus collected is highly valuable in itself and for its own sake, for the insight it affords and the inferences to which it leads respecting the interior structure and condition of native society; but the details it ​supplies respecting the number and residence, the character, qualifications, and emoluments of the teachers, and the number, the payments, and the attainments of the scholars will come into constant requisition in the practical conduct of a system of popular instruction. Nor will the benefit to be derived stop here, for it is only by previously ascertaining the nature and amount of juvenile and adult instruction in a district or in a division that we can obtain a standard of comparison with the future condition of education in the same district or division after the experiment of a national system shall have been fully and fairly made.
A further measure indispensable to the working of the plan is the preparation of a small series of useful school-books in the language of the districts in which it is to be carried into effect. The entire subject of school-books in the native languages involves so many principles and details, both moral and literary, that to do justice to it would require a separate and full report. All that I shall attempt in this place is to indicate a few of the leading ideas connected with it that bear most directly upon my immediate object.
For the purposes of vernacular instruction in Bengal, school-books should be prepared in the Bengali language, and for the same purposes in Behar in the Hindi language. These two languages will bring the instruction within the reach of the whole Hindu population of those two provinces and also of the rural Musalman population. Hindi school-books will be occasionally required in Bengal, Bengali books never in Behar; and for a majority of the Musalman population in some of the principal cities and towns of both provinces, such as Calcutta, Moorshedabad, and Dacca, Patna, Behar, and Gya, school-books in Urdu or Hindusthani will probably be the most appropriate. For the purpose of giving a trial to a system of vernacular instruction in the few districts of a commissioner’s division Bengali school-books only will be required, and a translation of them into English should be simultaneously printed and published in order that the members of the Government and the European community generally may know the nature and amount of the instruction proposed to be communicated.
The question what shall constitute the subject-matter of school-books under a national system of instruction is one on which a great diversity of opinion may be expected to prevail; and unless large and catholic views preside over their preparation, evil instead of good may be expected to result from the attempt. I deem it proper to introduce and fortify my opinions on this subject by those of others whose sentiments and reasonings are more likely to obtain general assent.
Lord Moira, in the Minute of 2nd October 1815, from which I have already had occasion to quote, continuing to speak of the ​native system of education, says—“The general, the sad defect of this education is that the inculcation of moral principle forms no part of it. This radical want is not imputable to us. The necessities of self-defence (for all our extensions of territory have been achieved in repelling efforts made for the subversion of our power) and our occupation in securing the new possessions have allowed us, till lately, but little leisure to examine deliberately the state of the population which we had been gradually bringing beneath our sway. It was already vitiated. The unceasing wars which had harassed all parts of India left every where their invariable effects, a disorganization of that frame-work of habit and opinion which enforces moral conduct and an emancipation of all those irregular impulses which revolt at its restraint. The village school-masters could not teach that in which they had themselves never been instructed, and universal debasement of mind, the constant concomitant of subjugation to despotic rule, left no chance that an innate sense of equity should in those confined circles suggest the recommendation of principles not thought worthy of cultivation by the Government. The remedy for this is to furnish the village school-master with little manuals of religious sentiments and ethic maxims conveyed in such a shape as may be attractive to the scholars, taking care that, while awe and adoration of the Supreme Being are earnestly instilled, no jealousy be excited by pointing out any particular creed. The absence of such an objection and small pecuniary rewards for zeal occasionally administered by the magistrates would induce the school-masters to use those compilations readily.”
The Honourable Mounstuart Elphinstone in his report dated 25th October 1819, on the territories conquered from the Paishwa (Calcutta Edition, p. 74, re-printed in Revenue and Judicial Selections, Vol. IV., p. 187) after describing the moral character of the people of the Deccan, has the following remarks:—“I do not perceive any thing that we can do to improve the morals of the people except by improving their education. There are already schools in all towns and in many villages, but reading is confined to Brahmans, Banyans, and such of the agricultural classes as have to do with accounts. I am not sure that our establishing free schools would alter this state of things, and it might create a suspicion of some concealed design on our part. It would be more practicable and more useful to give a direction to the reading of those who do learn, of which the press affords so easily the means. Books are scarce and the common ones probably ill-chosen, but there exist in the Hindu languages many tales and fables that would be generally read and that would circulate sound morals. There must be religious books tending more directly to the same end. If many of these were printed and distributed, cheaply or gratuitously, the effect would without doubt be great and beneficial. It would, however, be indispensable that they should ​be purely Hindu. We might silently omit all precepts of questionable morality, but the slightest infusion of religious controversy would insure the failure of the design. It would be better to call the prejudices of the Hindus to our aid in reforming them, and to control their vices by the ties of religion which are stronger than those of law. By maintaining and purifying their present tenets, at the same time that we enlighten their understandings, we shall bring them nearer to that standard of perfection at which all concur in desiring that they should arrive; while any attack on their faith, if successful, might be expected in theory, as is found in practice, to shake their reverence for all religion and to set them free from those useful restraints which even a superstitious doctrine imposes on the passions.” Mr. Elphinstone, when Governor of Bombay, reiterates the same sentiments in a Minute dated 6th April 1821 (Revenue and Judicial Selections, Vol. III., p. 695) on the Revenues and Survey of the Western Zillah north of the Myhee:—“In all discussions connected with the means of improving the situation of the people, our attention is drawn to the amendment of their education. This seems to be nearly in the same state here as in the Deccan. I should rather think there were more schools, but there are no books. The same plan I recommend in the Deccan may be adopted here, the circulation of cheap editions of such native books of those already popular as might have a tendency to improve the morals of the people without strengthening their religious prejudices. Passages remarkable for bigotry or false maxims of morality might be silently omitted, but not a syllable of attack on the religion of the country should be allowed.”
The late Mr. Shore in his Notes on Indian Affairs, Vol. II., p. 1, asks —“Is a rational attempt to educate the people of this great country to be made? Or are they to be allowed to remain in their present state of ignorance? i. e., as far as relates to the assistance of their English masters. Is one great impediment to the due administration of justice to be removed? Or is it still to remain to the discredit of the British system of legislation? These, I grieve to say, are the two real questions into which this subject may be resolved. What has been, and what ought to have been, the course pursued by the British rulers? Certainly it was their duty first, to have ordained that the language and character of the country should be that of the courts of justice; secondly, to have established schools, or at least to have encouraged those that already existed, for the education of the people in their own language and character; thirdly to have promoted the translation of books of knowledge into the vernacular tongue; and fourthly to have afforded all who had leisure or inclination the means of acquiring that language in which the most general information is concentrated, the English. What has been the course hitherto pursued? We have actually imitated the example of a nation ​whom we affect to consider barbarians and centuries behind us in civilization, and have attempted to inflict a foreign language on a hundred millions of people! We have even gone beyond our model. On the first conquest of India by the Mohammedans, one party at least—the conquerors—understood the language of the courts of justice; but it has been the pleasure of the English to carry on business and administer justice in a language alike foreign to themselves and to their subjects.” In the same volume, pp. 464-465, Mr. Shore describes the works that he recommends to be translated into the vernacular language and character. They should not, he says, be confined to works of a religious nature, “but the selection should include books of instruction and even amusement. History, geography, elementary works on arts and sciences, would be extremely acceptable to the people.” He proposes also “to prohibit any direct attempts at conversion in the schools established by Government, nor should the study of religious works be compulsory as school-books. Such books should, however, be placed within their reach for all who chose to consult them.”
I will add only one other authority on this subject. Mr. B. H. Hodgson, Resident in Nepal, in the preface to his letters addressed to the Editor of the Friend of India, on the pre-eminence of the vernaculars, p. 9, has the following remarks;—“In the most enlightened parts of Europe the general opinion now is that schools for teachers have in the present century created a new era in the practical science of education. Why then is Government inattentive to so noble and successful an experiment? Especially since there is about this method of normal instruction, or teaching of teachers, just that sort of definiteness which may be compassed by limited public funds, with yet a concomitant prospect of great and diffusive benefits to the country from the adoption of the measure. But workmen must have tools; and good workmen, good tools; wherefore, to a nursery for the regular supply of competent vernacular school-masters, should be added one for the equally regular supply of sound books in the three prime vulgar tongues of our presidency, books embodying the substance only of our really useful knowledge, with stimuli and directions for the various sorts of mental exertion; so that in the result there might exist for the people at large the easy and obvious bridge of the vulgar tongue leading from exotic principles to local practices, from European theory to Indian experience.” In support of the principle of drawing on Indian experience, of borrowing the precepts, examples, and illustrations of Indian literature, to recommend to general attention the substance of a higher knowledge, moral and social, as well as physical, Mr. Hodgson urges the following considerations"—“The elemental laws of thought,—including a designation of the necessary boundaries of human inquiry and the best rules of investigation within those limits—the law of population; the philosophy of wealth; the general principles ​of jurisprudence, of judicature, and of reformative police! How are we to inculcate the elements of our knowledge upon these topics, which are at once infinitely more essential to the welfare of the people of India than mathematical and physical science, and infinitely more liable to the adverse influence of prejudice and prepossession? Physical science is almost unknown in India, and hence there will be little for us to undo: it stands almost wholly aloof from the turmoil of the passions and interests of men, and hence there will be little difficulty in removing obstructions to fair and patient attention. But the philosophy of life, however ill it is yet understood, has been an object of study in this land for 3,000 years—,in all which the falsest interests, and the most turbulent passions, and the most fantastic opinions have contributed the warp, as nature and experience have the woof, to its net-work. To leave the woof as it is, and to supply a new warp from the schools of European wisdom—hoc opus, hic labor est! To attempt to remove both warp and woof were, I believe, to disorganize society, and to insure our own destruction in its disorganization! Here it is certainly that the countenance and support, real or seeming, of established maxims and examples is most needed and most readily to be had,—most needed, because of the prejudices and passions that are indissolubly bound up with the topics; most easily to be had, because of that universal consciousness and almost universal experience which necessarily supply the ultimate evidence of such topics. High-dated and literary as is the character of Indian civilization, it could not be that their literature should have failed to gather ample materials for the just illustration, in some way or other, of most, if not of all, parts of the philosophy of life, and with respect to the fact, you Sir, need not be told that it has not failed to gather them.”
The following appears to be the substance of the views expressed by these authorities. The vernacular school-books prepared and issued under the authority of Government should embrace religious instruction as far as it can be communicated without engaging in religious controversy or exciting religious prejudice, without inculcating the peculiarities of any one religion or attacking those of another. Perhaps, the best way in which this might be effected would be, without employing any direct forms of religious inculcation, to cause the spirit of religion—its philanthropic principles and devotional feelings—to pervade the whole body of instruction on other subjects. On these other subjects, physical science, moral truths, and the arts and philosophy of civil and social life, the aim should be, not to translate European works into the words and idioms of the native languages, nor to adopt native works without the infusion of European knowledge, but so to combine the substance of European knowledge with native forms of thought and sentiment, and with the ​precepts, examples, maxims, and illustrations of native literature as shall render the school-books both useful and attractive. For this purpose the union of European and Native agency would be necessary,—European agency aided by the best works that have been framed in Europe and America for the use of schools, and Native agency of a high order of qualification to command readily the resources and appliances of native learning.
Under the guidance of such general principles, and in the employment of such a united agency, a series of school-books in Bengali might be framed on the following plan:—
The first of the series might be made with advantage to include all that is at present taught in scattered and disjointed portions in the vernacular schools, systematically arranged and presented in the clearest, most comprehensive, and most perfect form in which it can be prepared. It would thus be a text-book for instruction in writing on the ground, on the palm-leaf, on the plantain or sal-leaf, and on paper; in reading both written and printed compositions; in accounts both commercial and agricultural as taught in the works of Subhankar and Ugra Balaram; in the correct and fluent composition of letters, petitions, grants, leases, bonds, and notes of hand according to the most popular and approved forms; in the elements of grammar and lexicology as taught in Sabda Subanta, Ashta Sabdi, Ashta Dhatu, and the vocabulary of Amara Singh; and finally, in the moral verses of Chanakya. This work would make the learners, whether teachers or scholars, thoroughly competent in the knowledge and use of the most improved forms of their own vernacular system of instruction before introducing them to any higher grades of knowledge; and the first trial in every district would thus also be disembarrassed of the prejudices which might be raised if any new and strange subjects of instruction were suddenly and generally presented to them. Those portions of the above-mentioned native school-books that are in Sanscrit should be translated into Bengali.
The second book of the series might explain the most important arts of life that contribute to comfort, improvement, and civilization, and might give elementary views of the sciences which have produced and must help to perfect them. Trade and the sub-divisions of manual labour; manufactures and the uses of machinery; and above all agriculture,—the most valuable products, the best modes and seasons of culture, the most useful implements and manures, the rotation of crops, draining, irrigation, large and small farms—all these are subjects which, in plain language and with appropriate local illustrations, might be brought home to the business and bosoms of nine-tenths of the people. The modes of applying agricultural capital are notoriously very rude and unproductive, and the quantity of land cultivated by the ​ryot is generally so very small that the value of that portion of the produce which falls to him as wages or profits barely supports him and his family even in the most favourable seasons, and in times of scarcity leaves him without resource. With such a vast agricultural population, upon the proper application of whose labor the entire prosperity of the country and the Government depends, what duty can be more imperative than to instruct them in the best use of all the circumstances of their condition?
The third book of the series might be made explanatory of the moral and legal relations, obligations, and rights, whether personal, domestic, civil, or religions, of men living in a state of society and under the existing Government. A reference should be maintained throughout to the peculiar circumstances, wants, and character of the people. Thus, the expenditure of the people is in general so profuse and ill-directed as to account for much of the wretchedness of their condition. Inculcate, therefore, a prudent economy, and show not only by precept, but by examples and illustrations drawn from savings’ banks, &c., the advantages of steady industry and small accumulations as contrasted with the tyranny on the one hand, the slavery on the other, and the general distrust between man and man, arising out of the established system of money-lending and borrowing at exorbitant rates of interest. Again, the produce of their labor is often diminished by the illegal exactions of money-lenders, landlords, settlers, and the native officers of Government, whether of justice, revenue, or police. Teach the people their civil rights, the disposition of Government to protect them in the enjoyment of those rights, and the modes in which they may be most effectually protected. Still further, law to be obeyed, the violations of law to be shunned, and the punishments attached to those violations to be feared, should be known. But its requisitions, its prohibitions, and its sanctions are unknown to the body of the people, and law is to them, for the most part, the arbitrary will of the judge. In the absense of other means to make the penal laws generally known, let this school-book explain their principal provisions for the protection of person and property, the equal subjection of all to their authority, and the obligation and utility of contributing each person to the defence and security of every other subject of the State.
​It is easy for me to sketch the principal topics of these works, and the series might be still further extended; but it would be a more difficult task to fill up the outline in such a manner that the whole would deserve the approbation of Government and be acceptable to the people. Their utility, however, would compensate for the labor, the time, and the expense bestowed, for a really good school-book is a powerful instrument of good to a country. By these and by similar works a small native standard library might be formed; and the most important ideas they contain might, by the means I am about to recommend, be gradually worked into, and embodied with, the earliest impressions and the permanent convictions of native society.
Having prepared and printed the first book of the series, the next step is to appoint a Government agent to each of the districts in which the plan is to be carried into effect. The duty to be assigned to him, as will afterwards more fully appear, is the examination of teachers and scholars, and with this view he should unite the acquirements both of a Native and English education. Without a good native education he could not, with credit and efficiency, act in the capacity of an examiner of native teachers and scholars; and an English education will be useful to conciliate the respect of his countrymen, to give him confidence in his own comparative attainments, and to enable him to receive and communicate to the people just views of the intentions of Government, and to the Government just views of the feelings and wishes of the people. In addition to these literary acquirements, an unimpeached character for steadiness, industry, and integrity is indispensable. Much will depend upon these examiners, and their appointment should be made with great care and discrimination. Those natives who have received an English education have in general too much neglected the ordinary branches of a Native education, and some difficulty may at first be experienced in obtaining competent persons; but a very little application on the part of the intelligent young men who have passed through the Hindoo College, the General Assembly’s Institution, and other public schools, will supply the requisite qualification, and the difficulty will speedily disappear.
The examiner will proceed to the district to which he has been appointed with a recommendation from the Commissioner of the division to the Magistrate who will be instructed to aid him with counsel, influence, and co-operation, as far as they can be bestowed, without trenching on his individual responsibility, or the unfettered action of the people. It will not be inconsistent with these restrictions if the magistrate should publish throughout the district a simple declaration or explanation of the intentions of Government addressed to all generally, to none individually; and if as in South Behar there is a district newspaper, the notice should receive all the publicity that can be given to it by that ​means. The examiner, by the survey which has been already made of the district, is acquainted with the names, places of residence, and qualifications of all the school-masters in every thana, and by means of perwannahs, letters, and personal visits he will make known to them in still greater detail the intentions of Government, and the subsidiary arrangements by which he purposes to carry those intentions into effect.
The subsidiary arrangements will be variously modified by the circumstances of different districts and by the judgment and experience of different examiners. The object should be to bring the benefit as much as possible within the reach of the people with the least sacrifice on their part of time, labour, and money in travelling. For this purpose the examiner may fix on some central point of two or three contiguous thanas, at which he will invite all the school-masters of those thanas to meet him at a certain date. He will there explain to them verbally and at length, what he had before stated to the same persons in writing, that he had in charge from Government certain copies of a book, one of which he was prepared to give to any school-master, or to any person proposing to act as a school-master, who should, either by the written or verbal testimony of his neighbours, appear to be of respectable character, and who should engage to appear with it again at the same place six months thereafter; that the names, ages, castes, and places of residence of the receivers and those testifying to their character would be inscribed in a register; and that at the time and place appointed an examination of the receivers would be held, and rewards bestowed on those who should be found competent in the knowledge of its contents and in the capacity of explaining them.
The nature of the rewards to be bestowed will require much consideration. Money-rewards of three or six rupees to the teachers according to their proficiency might be promised, and the effect would no doubt be great and immediate, but I am inclined to recommend that in the first instance at least they should be withheld. If the plan can be made to work efficiently without money-rewards, the advantage in point of economy is obvious; and although that is a very inferior consideration with reference to a single district or division, the effect will be far from unimportant on a large scale by leaving in the hands of Government the means of giving general extension to the plan without weighing too heavily on the resources of the State. Another advantage will be in the greater simplicity of the plan without the suspicions, the wranglings, and the opportunites and imputations of corruption and compromise between the Government examiners and the native teachers that may arise out of money-payments. Still further, by dispensing with those payments, the teachers will be thrown entirely on their own qualifications and on the support of parents for success in their ​profession; whereas in bestowing money-rewards it will be difficult, although not impossible, to ascertain the amount that will have the effect of stimulating the zeal of teachers without checking the exertions and sacrifices of parents. An additional consideration is this that if the other forms of reward and distinction I am about to suggest are found to be ineffectual, or effectual in too limited a degree, we may afterwards have recourse to money-rewards, but if we begin with the latter we cannot afterwards so easily discontinue them without abandoning the whole plan. We may ascend from weaker to stronger motives, not descend from stronger to weaker ones. It might be admissible, however, even from the first to give, according to the price of grain in the district, one, two, or three annas per day to each approved teacher as travelling expenses and subsistence-money,—the amount of the former to be determined by the number of days’ journey in coming from and returning to his home, and that of the latter by the number of days he remains in attendance on the examiner.
The first reward I would hold out to teachers is the gift of books. Each will receive a copy of the first book of the series already described with an engagement to return it in six months; and he will make it his own only by studying its contents, and undergoing a thorough and satisfactory examination on the subject which it treats. This examination will also entitle him to receive a copy of the second book of the series, at first on loan and for use only, but ultimately to become his own property in the same way. Still further the same examination will entitle him to receive three, six, or twelve copies of the first book of the series for the use of his scholars, to be accounted for in the manner hereafter described. That these books will be received not as mere compliments, but as substantial gifts equivalent to money, is probable, because the use and possession of them will both raise the qualifications of the teacher and afford him increased facilities for the instruction of his scholars in his own increased knowledge, for which he will naturally demand and receive increased compensation from their parents.
The next reward I would propose to hold out would be one tending to gratify the love of distinction, common to all and strong in them. The names and designations of those who have sustained the examination may be enrolled in a separate register, transmitted to the General Committee of Public Instruction, on the approval and recommendation of that body published in the official gazette, and on their appearance in the gazette proclaimed by the order of the magistrate throughout the district as the names and designations of persons constituting an approved class of native vernacular teachers. A written certificate may also be given to each, stating the extent of his qualifications and signed by the president and Secretary of the Committee of Instruction, or a ​Sub-Committee appointed for that purpose, and by the examiner. These distinctions will have a practical value also by raising the approved teachers in the estimation of the native community, and thereby increasing their emoluments.
Other rewards to be bestowed according to the progressive qualifications of the teachers and scholars, such as eligibility to a course of instruction in the Normal School of the district, to a course of instruction in the English School of the District and ultimately to the possession of a permanent endowment, will be detailed hereafter.
Having with every necessary explanation and encouragement distributed books to all teachers of good character desirous of receiving them, the examiner will next proceed in the beginning of the following month to some central point of some two or three other thanas of the same district. There, according to previous invitations and arrangements, he will meet the native school-masters of those thanas, and will go over precisely the same ground with them as in the preceding instance. Thence he will proceed in the beginning of the next month to another set of thanas, so as to traverse the whole district in six months. If the district contains twelve or a smaller number of thanas, the arrangement may be made with one or two per month; if more than twelve and not more than eighteen, with two or three per month; and if more than eighteen, an arrangement adapted to the peculiarity of the case may easily be devised. In Moorshedabad, which contains in all thirty-seven thanas, it will be advisable to assign one examiner to the city and another to the district; and in like manner one to Calcutta and another to the 24-Pergunnahs. If the district is too large to be traversed by the examiner, with the requisite delays in six months; or if the book distributed is too large or too difficult to be mastered by the teachers in the same period, a twelve month may be allowed. No good will arise from prematurely urging to completion any part of the process. The plan must be allowed to work into the minds of the native community and to obtain gradually a firm place in their confidence.
I will now suppose that after the lapse of six or twelve months the examiner has returned to the point from which he set out, having in the previous month by a formal notice reminded the school-masters who had received books of their engagement to attend for examination. Distrust, indolence, sickness, death, will doubtless cause the absence of some. Others who do attend will be badly prepared for examination, and the best but indifferently. But under every discouragement the plan should be steadily and kindly prosecuted, the school-masters being treated as grown-up children, now needing reproof and now encouragement. The examiner will find that he has much to learn from them as to the best modes of giving effect to the intentions of Government. The style of the book may be too high or too low; the matter ​of the book may be too copious, or not sufficiently explanatory; the time allowed for preparation may be too short, or unnecessarily long; the rewards held out may require to be modified or extended. The attention of the examiner will be alive to every circumstance likely to convey a useful hint and will place it on record for his own guidance or for suggestion to his superior authority. According to the greater or less degree of zeal excited among the body of school-masters will be the strictness or laxity of the examinations. If the competition is general and active, the examination will be searching and the rewards bestowed on those only who have made themselves thoroughly competent. If the number of competitors is small and their efforts feeble, the examination will be less strict, and the rewards bestowed on a lower standard of excellence in order to encourage others to appear as candidates. As the plan gains ground throughout the country in public confidence, the rewards will be gradually limited to the highest standard of excellence, consisting in a perfect acquaintance with the contents of the work forming the subject of examination. When on these or similar principles the examiner will have completed the examination of the school-masters of two or three thanas, he will proceed to the next set of thanas, and so on until he has a second time completed the tour of the district. At this period the examiner should be required to make a report containing the results of his experience as to the working of the plan, his opinion of its advantages or disadvantages, and the improvements of which it is susceptible. My expectation is that, by these means judiciously employed in a given number of districts, in a period at the farthest of two years, a body of school-masters would be formed incomparably better instructed in what they all at present profess, more or less, to teach than any equal body of school-masters of the same class now to be found throughout Bengal.
The preceding details contemplate the employment of the first volume only of the proposed series of school-books containing complete instruction in all the branches of a native vernacular education. I assume that this instruction must be at the foundation of all real improvement, for unless the people have a competent knowledge of the forms of composition and accounts universally practised in native society, whatever else they may be taught, they cannot be deemed to have received a practical education, and without that knowledge no native teacher should be recognized as qualified to act in such a capacity. If it should be supposed that the great body of the people do not need and cannot be expected to acquire more than this amount of instruction, and that, therefore, we should be contented with it in their teachers without seeking to carry them any farther, the advantage will still be great of carrying both teachers and people thus far. With the increased attainments of the teachers, and with the respect and ​encouragement bestowed on them by Government, there would be, it is believed, a gradual extension of instruction to the people which, even within the limits of the native system, in proportion as it became general would give the people greater protection against the impositions and exactions to which their ignorance of letters often subjects them. Others may be of opinion, as I am, that it is desirable and practicable to instruct the body of the people in the useful arts adapted to their circumstances, in the moral and social duties of life, and in a knowledge of the leading facts and principles belonging to the physical constitution of the world and to the history and condition of their own and other countries; and for this purpose their instructors must, in the first place, be rendered qualified. Accordingly the second, third, and fourth volumes of the series of school-books being prepared in succession, those school-masters who have successfully passed through the first examination will receive a copy of the second volume of the series to be the subject of examination the second year; and the third and fourth volumes will, in like manner, be distributed to the successful candidates, respectively, of the second and third years until all the volumes to which it may be deemed advisable to extend the series are exhausted. Thus within a period of four years four different classes of native teachers might be, and probably would be, produced; for some would rest contented with the distinction acquired by proficiency in the first volume; others would stop at the second; a third class would be ambitious to study the succeeding volume; and a fourth class would complete the series; no one receiving the fourth volume who had not been satisfactorily examined on the third, nor the third who had not been examined on the second, nor the second who had not been examined on the first. All would have their names registered as respectively belonging to the first, second, third, and fourth classes of approved vernacular teachers; and there would thus probably continue to be four classes of native teachers with various qualifications and attainments corresponding to the wants of the different classes and conditions of native society.
All that has yet been proposed, if carried fully into operation, will only have the effect of communicating to the body of teachers a superior degree and kind of instruction to that which they now possess; but it will have no direct, and little indirect, effect in improving their capacity to convey that instruction to others. The capacity to acquire and the capacity to communicate knowledge do not necessarily co-exist in the same person and are often found separate. The discipline and management of native common schools are in general the worst that can be conceived, for they consist in the absence of almost all regular discipline and management whatsoever; and as a teacher is only half qualified for his duties who perfectly knows all that he is expected or required to ​teach, and who is ignorant of the most approved modes of conveying instruction to others, it is indispensable to devise means for communicating that description of qualification to native teachers.
There are three modes in which this object may be, less or more, perfectly attained, and three occasions on which each mode, respectively, may be usefully employed.
The first mode is by written directions verbally explained. Every school-book prepared and distributed under the orders of Government will contain well-digested practical directions, clearly and simply expressed, for the guidance of teachers in the use they are to make of it for the instruction of their scholars; and the directions will be minutely and verbally explained by the examiner when he puts the book in to their hands.
The second mode is by practical example. In the periodical examinations of teachers—and of their scholars too, according to a part of the plan yet to be developed—such an arrangement of details will be adopted as may present a fit example for the imitation of the whole body of native teachers. According to the plan, these examinations will probably occur once every month in the same district and twice a year in the same part of the district. It is, therefore, important that such arrangements should be made for these frequently recurring exhibitions as will afford a lesson of simplicity, order, quiet, promptitude, and general efficiency; and the attention of native teachers should be drawn to the mode of conducting them that they may derive any practical hints which good sense and experience may enable them to apply to their own institutions. The spirit of these examinations also—the superior importance attached to practical knowledge and moral excellence above mere form and routine, intellectual display, or metaphysical subtilty—may be reasonably expected to give some tone to the character and instructions of the native teachers.
The third mode is by precept and example combined in normal schools. I am satisfied that the two modes previously mentioned, although they may be partially beneficial, are inadequate, and that it is only by the third mode that teachers can be thoroughly qualified for their important functions. They have been suggested because no form or mode of useful influence directly attainable should be neglected, and because, without further experience, it may be feared that they are the only modes in which the majority of teachers will at present submit to be guided on such a subject. The attempt, however, should be made to employ the most efficient means, and with that view there should be a normal school for teachers in every district in which the plan now proposed is introduced. For this purpose, adhering to the principle of building on existing institutions, whether new or old, I propose to connect by friendly relations the long-established vernacular schools of the country with those which have been ​recently formed and are every year increasing in number under the management of the General Committee of Public Instruction. For some years the plan of the committee has been to establish an English school at the head station of every district; and within the last two years, with the growing conviction of the importance of cultivating the language of the people, a vernacular department has been attached to each institution. The manner in which I would link the English school with the established vernacular schools will afterwards be shown. It is the vernacular department of the English school that I would propose gradually to form and mature into a normal school for native teachers, answering every purpose which that department now does, and at the same time affording both instruction and example to native teachers in the art of teaching. The qualifications of the teachers appointed to the vernacular department or normal school should be estimated and the whole discipline framed with a distinct view to this important purpose.
I am not prepared to speak with confidence of the extent to which the instruction offered in normal schools would be sought by native teachers. In every district there are certain months of the year—in different districts and in different years the months vary—when it would be more convenient to the teachers to attend than in other months. A general failure of the crops of any season would have the effect of closing many schools from the inability of parents to pay for their children’s schooling; and the failure of any particular crop in a district would have a local and temporary effect of the same kind. On such occasions many teachers would probably be glad to attend the normal school for regular practical instruction in their profession; while at other times when crops are abundant and parents able to pay, they would be unwilling to relinquish the profits, and we should not seek to draw them from the duties of their vocation. The normal school, therefore, should be open to native teachers throughout the year, and it should not surprise or disappoint us if for months in succession, or even for a whole year, none should appear to receive instruction. To stimulate their attendance, two expedients may be legitimately adopted. One is that all native teachers shall not be permitted indiscriminately to attend the normal school, but only those who have evinced such industry and devotion to their profession as shall have enabled them to pass successfully through at least one of the periodical examinations. It will thus be a favor, and therefore an object of desire, or rather a reward bestowed on merit, and therefore an object of ambition. It will probably have the double effect of stimulating a greater number of teachers to appear as candidates for examination and a greater number of successful candidates to seek the advantages of instruction in the normal school. In other words, it will both be a motive and an end, an auxiliary to success, and in itself the success which is sought. A ​second expedient is that those native teachers who attend the normal school shall be relieved from all anxiety respecting the means of subsistence during the period of attendance. That period I would limit to four successive years for each teacher and to three months in each year,—the month to be reckoned not by days or broken parts of months, but month by month, or entire months, in order that the instruction may, for some time at least, be continuous and systematic. The native teachers will receive travelling expenses at the rate of one to three annas per day, according to the price of grain in the district and according to the number of days’ journey in coming from and returning to their homes, and subsistence-money at the same rate during the period they remain in regular and diligent attendance at the normal school within the prescribed limits. The only object for which I recommend this allowance is to remove a probable objection against attendance at the normal school by giving the teacher who cannot afford the loss of his time and labor a bare subsistence during the period of his absence from home; but it is possible that the extreme poverty of many may cause it to operate as a direct inducement. Beyond these expedients I do not at present perceive that any others can be with advantage employed, however desirable and important to obtain the attendance of native teachers at a well-disciplined and well-instructed normal school.
Having gone thus far in the formation of a body of approved vernacular teachers, and having obtained results upon the whole satisfactory during a trial of four years, I would propose to take one step farther, with a view to connect those teachers permanently with the Government and the people, and to secure their usefulness and responsibility to both. It must be evident that the measures yet recommended are preparatory in their nature and will be uncertain and fluctuating in their effects. They will awaken increased attention to education among the natives, convince them of the desire of Government to promote it, and more or less elicit their co-operation. They will call into existence a better class of teachers and fit them for the discharge of their duty to the community. But the effect cannot be, and should not be expected to be, permanent. I have before expressed the opinion that, in the present torpid state of the national mind in this country, an education of stimulants is required; but the operation of stimulants is by their very nature temporary, and they gradually cease to produce the effects expected from them. Some means, therefore, must be sought to give a stable and enduring character to the system. What is to be desired is that, at the close of the course of public examinations and pedagogic instructions through which the teachers may be required to pass, we may be able to place before them some higher reward than any they have hitherto obtained, which will rouse them to further exertion, which when obtained will satisfy their ambition, and which will also be accompanied by such ​checks and guards as will secure their continued zeal, activity, and usefulness. A small endowment of land to each village school-master will answer this description. Such an endowment will be far more earnestly desired than even an assignment on the land-revenue of Government, both because the latter is open to all manner of abuse, and because the former gives more consideration in native society. It will give the village school-master a resting-place and a permanent means of subsistence for life or during good behaviour, and will thus produce both contentment of mind and diligence in the discharge of duty. It will fix his obligations, his interests, and his pleasures in one locality, and thus surround him with the most salutary influences derived from those to whom he will be constantly responsible. It may be added that numerous authorities may be adduced to show, if it were necessary, that under the ancient Hindu village system this has been from time immemorial the mode of remunerating the village servants. On these grounds I propose that small endowments of land should be the means employed to give permanence to the system of vernacular schools, and I will now briefly mention the conditions under which they should be granted and indicate some of the sources from which they may be derived.
The school-masters entitled to claim this endowment shall be those only who have successfully passed through the public and periodical examinations in the four school-books of the series already described; who, during the period in which this has been accomplished, shall have instructed six scholars per annum in any one of those books in such a manner as to enable them to pass through the examinations hereinafter to be prescribed for scholars; who shall farther have passed through a course of instruction in the normal school of the district with approved characters and attainments; and who shall finally receive and produce the written testimony and recommendation of three-fourths of the landowners, tenants, and householders of the villages to which they belong, or in which they propose to settle, and in which the endowment is to be situated. A lower degree of qualification cannot be required with a view to their future efficiency; and so high a degree of qualification will, for some time, prevent any considerable number of candidates for this reward from making their appearance, although in prospect it will produce its effect even upon those who may never reach the object of their ambition.
The endowment is to consist of land belonging to the lands of the village in which the incumbent is to exercise his vocation, the quantity of land to be determined by the value per bigha, and the total value not to exceed one-half of the ascertained average annual income of a vernacular teacher in that district. Thus the mean rate of payment to such a teacher in the city and district of Moorshedabad, as shown at page 177, is rupees 4-12-9, or to allow for unascertained sources of profit, say, rupees 5 per month, or ​rupees 60 per annum. The proposed endowment in this case should be worth thirty rupees yearly; and it might consist of thirty bighas of land worth one rupee per bigha, or fifteen worth two rupees, or ten worth three rupees, or seven and a half worth four rupees, per bigha, or of any greater or less number of bighas of one quality or of different qualities of land, the entire value of which should not exceed thirty rupees per annum. The village school-master would thus have one-half of his income secured to him in a form that would in general admit of considerable improvement, and in a form, too, the most gratifying to his self-respect and the most conducive to the respect of the little community of which he is a part; while he would have to look to that community to supply the remaining moiety, either in fees or in perquisites, or in any other form which they might choose to adopt, as a mode of remunerating him for the instruction of their children.
No endowment should be created, no trust should be exercised without checks against mal-appropriation and mal-administration. I, therefore, propose that all those landowners, tenants, and house-holders who have petitioned for a school-endowment and nominated and recommended a candidate shall constitute a village-school association acting by a committee under known regulations for the inspection, superintendence, and control of the village-school, the committee to be chosen by the general body of village-constituents and reported to the district committee. When a vacancy occurs, three-fourths of those who constitute the village association shall have the power of nominating a successor, which nomination, accompanied by the necessary proofs of the amount of support it has received, shall be reported to the district committee, and through that committee confirmed by the general committee. The endowment will be held only for life or during good behaviour, and on deprivation or death it will revert to the educational fund of the State until the appointment of a successor. Deprivation will take place on complaint of not less than one-fourth of the landowners, tenants, and householders of the village, the sufficiency and validity of the complaint being ascertained by the actual investigation of an ameen or agent deputed by the district committee for the purpose, and his decision being confirmed by that committee after perusing the recorded evidence of both parties and the report of the ameen on the whole. To obtain the means of estimating the utility of every school compared with the actual wants of the village population, and to keep up a general control and superintendence over the village school association, and through that association over the village school and school-master, a list of children belonging to the village above five and below fourteen years of age should be required every year or every half year from the village association by the district committee and transmitted to the general committee, together with a list of daily attendance at the school to be signed by the master and ​certified every month by the committee of the village association. It may, perhaps, be proper to mention that when I speak here of a village, I mean an Asli village with its attached Dakhili villages, together equivalent to an English parish or French commune. The Asli village, as the name imports, is the original one from which the others have sprang. The Dakhili villages, as the name also imports, are those sub-divisions of the village-lands which have been entered separately in the revenue records, although still belonging to the village and contained within its boundaries. The Dakhili villages or hamlets are called variously in different districts, para, chak, bhag, danga, dihi, dighi, digha, khali, bati, bari, ghat, ganj, kalpa, &c., with some other name prefixed. They are generally inhabited, but sometimes merely denote a proprietary distinction of lands. The Asli and Dakhili villages together usually contain from 1,000 to 1,500 inhabitants; and if, according to the calculation in page 229 founded on the population returns contained in Chapter I., Section XIII. of this Report, we take the average number of children between 14 and five to be about 20 per cent., it follows that in such a cluster of villages and hamlets there will be from two to three hundred children of the teachable age, affording ample scope and remuneration for the labors of one teacher. I hope also that it will appear to others, as it does to me, that the village-community, wherever it can be brought to act, is the proper authority for watching over the endowment and enforcing its conditions. I am, indeed, by no means sanguine that it will be easy to induce the villagers to combine and to act for such a purpose when and where we please, but every facility and encouragement to such associations should be given, and the attempt should be steadily and unweariedly prosecuted, for upon its success would depend an incalculable amount of good to the country. Such associations, originally formed for school-purposes and effectually contributing to their accomplishment, would gradually and almot necessarily grow into nuclei of public spirit and organs for its expression in various ways and for various purposes; for the purposes of municipal government, village police, local improvement, and statistical knowledge. In time of danger from without, or difficulty from within, they would be chains of posts intersecting the country in all directions and affording ready and faithful instruments of communication and co-operation. At the present moment (April 2, 1838) in the absence of such instruments how helpless both the Government and the public feel themselves to be in their attempts to alleviate the frightful famine which afflicts the western provinces, or even to know the extent to which it exists in the interior parts of districts remote from the dwellings of public functionaries and European settlers!
Many of these details relating to the administration of village-school endowments will probably require to be modified in ​practice, but they are mentioned here that the various bearings of the question may be better understood. I shall now attempt briefly to indicate some of the principal sources from each of which, to a greater or less extent, the means of establishing the proposed endowments may be gradually derived.
The first source is the Khas Mahals of Government. In the two provinces of Bengal and Behar, in which the land-revenue is for the most part permanently settled and limited, there are in every district, or in almost every district, estates called by the above name belonging in full and entire propriety to Government, Government is the landlord, the sole and exclusive owner of those estates, just as much as any nobleman in England is of the estates which he has inherited free of debt or entail from his ancestors. The farmers and cultivators of those estates are Government tenants with varying periods and conditions of lease. The managers, who have to treat with the tenants, are Government servants specially appointed for the purpose. The entire net produce is the property of Government, and Government is consequently subject to all the liablilities and responsibilities attaching to a large and wealthy landed proprietor. It is not necessary to advert here to the modes in which Government has come to retain or assume this character in the settled provinces; nor does my information enable me to state the number and extent of the estates so held, although it is undoubted that they are considerable in both respects, and it is believed that they are not distinguished in any way from estates held by private proprietors for improved modes of management or cultivation, or for the superior character and comforts of the cultivators. All that is requisite to my present object is to bring distinctly into view the fact that such estates exist, and to suggest that here, if any where, a beginning may be made in the attempt to give a permanent character by means of small endowments to an improved system of village-schools. If the importance of the object is admitted, the community will naturally look to Government to afford proofs of its advantages on the Government estates and to set an example of liberality, I am not sufficiently acquainted with the mode in which those estates are managed to point out the way in which such an object may be most conveniently, economically, and efficiently attained, but many friends of native education are competent to furnish such information when it shall be required. The renewal of leases will afford an opportunity of setting apart for this purpose a few bighas of the lands of each village with a deduction so inconsiderable from the rent payable by the farmer as to be scarcely perceived, and to be hereafter more than compensated by the pecuniary as well as moral benefits which an improved system of instruction will bring in its train. Whatever the mode adopted of carrying it into effect, the principle I propose is that Government should make it legally obligatory on itself to establish ​such endowment in the villages of Khas estates, subject to all the provisions, conditions, and limitations before described. This may be done not only with little cost to the State, but with great administrative facility in consequence of the existence of a distinct class of public officers who are charged with the management of those estates.
After setting such an example, it is worthy of consideration whether Government might, not only without difficulty or offence, but with honor and credit to itself, look to the endowed establishments of the country for similar arrangements on their estates, and enact that they shall be in like manner legally obligatory under the provisions aforesaid. The most important of these are religious establishments, with which no interference for religious purposes can be justified. To prevent misapprehension, therefore, and to guide to the adoption of views likely to obtain practical effect, I shall quote here the opinions which I find expressed by the Bengal Government and by the Court of Directors.
In a revenue letter from Bengal on the affairs of Cuttack, dated the 30th March 1821, and contained in the Revenue and Judicial Selections, Vol. III., pp. 68—90, the Bengal Government expresses its sentiments to the following effect:—“It appears to us to be doubtful whether it be advisable for the officers of Government to interfere to give effect to endowments purely of a religious nature; and we can scarcely consider it a matter of public interest to prevent the appropriation by individuals (Musulman or layman) of rents designed to support the servants of a Hindu temple or idol. The right of Government to do so is undoubted. In some cases where useful object are combined with purposes of religion, the exercise of the power may be a public duty; and if any class or community interested in maintaining an endowment shall complain of the misappropriation, it is, of course, our duty to see that the wrong done is redressed, though the ground of complaint may be founded on prejudice and superstition. Farther than this we are little disposed to go, for the misappropriations, though abusive, appear to us, in regard to most of the institutions in question to be of rather good than ill consequence to the public, and the nature of the instruction is such that it is always difficult for an European officer to touch without injuring them.”—p. 79, paragraphs 99—101.
The Court of Directors in a revenue letter to the Bengal Government, dated 10th December 1823, in reply to the preceding paragraphs, thus writes—“We concur in most of the sentiments which you have expressed upon this subject. When alienated by a competent authority, you doubt if they“ (lands held free for the support of religious institutions) “could be resumed for the purposes of Government, even though the revenue of them should be found to be misapplied. We think, however, that you may ​justly make an exception where forfeiture has been legally incurred by neglect of the condition on which the grant was made. In other cases we agree with you that it can scarcely be regarded as a matter of public interest to interfere. ‘The misappropriations,’ you say, ‘though abusive,’ appear to you, and we doubt not justly, ‘in regard to most of the institutions in question, to be rather of good than ill consequence to the public.’ One thing, however, in such cases is always worthy of attention, and that is, the inquiry whether to objects of little or no utility which thus may have an expenditure devoted to them, might not be annexed other objects really beneficial; whether good institutions of education, for example, might not be combined with the services performed to an idol, and even in some cases whether the useful objects might not quietly and without offence be substituted for the useless. It was highly proper that you should issue orders for an accurate account of the extent and nature of the lands thus appropriated. When that is before you (and we desire its communication to us), it will be more perfectly seen in what way any endeavour can be made to derive from such a fund some general advantage.”—Selections, Vol. III., p. 96, paragraphs 33, 34.
Again, the Court in a revenue letter to the Madras Government, dated 29th September 1824, after referring to various recorded proceedings of the Local Government relating to the temples of natives and the control exercised, or proper to be exercised, by Government, remarks—“The questions connected with this subject are both delicate and important; but we are sorry to perceive from the documents before us that so little of order has hitherto been established, and that the proceedings of Government have been so little regulated by any settled principle. The difficulty is how to interfere so as to prevent the misapplication of the funds to mischievous purposes, without exciting the religious jealousies of the people. But yet we doubt not that a line of conduct may be drawn, by which, without infringing on religious liberty, or interfering with the most jealous scruples of the people, not only evil where it exists may be avoided, but something useful especially in the shape of education, may be connected with the expenditure of the revenues, often very large, of the native temples.”—Selections, Vol, III, p. 596, para 7.
It is probable from these extracts that any measure which would have the effect of peaceably drawing forth the resources of these religious establishments, to however limited an extent, for the promotion of education, would receive the sanction of the Honorable Court. The Government and the people have strong claims upon them for strenuous co-operation in prosecuting such an object, provided always that nothing shall be mixed up with that object inconsistent with their character as religious institutions. ​The wealthy religious communities, for example, at Kali Ghat in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, at Deoghur in Beerbhoom, at Gya and Bauddah Gya in South Behar, are bound as such, in return for the perfect religious freedom they enjoy, and even in some instances for the peculiar privileges they possess, to be follow-workers with Government in providing for the better instruction of the people—an object which is not only good in itself, but which is specially incumbent on them as religious communities for the maintenance and improvement of that social order under which they live, and of which religion, its institutions, and its ministers are the proper securities and guards. It matters not whether such an obligation would at first be admitted; if it exists, it belongs to Government to make it be heard, felt, and recognized. The voice of the Government in such a matter would be responded to by that of the people, whose claims on these religious bodies are no less strong. They have derived all their accumulated wealth from the offerings of the people, they profess to exist for the benefit of the people, from the depths of their poverty and ignorance, have a right to look to the spiritual guides whom they have enriched and raised above themselves for something more than empty forms and ceremonies, some practical knowledge, and moral instruction. Such an object, however, must be sought not only “without infringing on religious liberty,” but also without “interfering with the most jealous scruples of the people.” All fears on this head must be removed by the terms of the suggestion I have offered, according to which a requisition of three-fourths of the householders, &c., of a village is necessary to create the legal obligation on the proprietor of the estate to establish the proposed endowment of a village school-master. I have no means of ascertaining with accuracy the extent of landed property belonging to those religious establishments, but according to common report it is considerable. In Beerbhoom it was stated to me that the priesthood of Deoghur possess estates not only at Deoghur, Sarhaut, and Giddari in that district, but also in the districts of Bhaugulpore, Patna, Tirhoot, Moorshedabad, and Burdwan, and even in Nepal, a foreign country. I would apply the principle, not only to the landed estates of Hindu temples, but also to those of public endowed institutions wherever they are to be found, whether Hindu or Buddhist, Mohammadan, or Christian. The Mohammadan institution at Kusbeh Bagha in Rajshahi has 42 villages, in each of which a vernacular school might thus be established. The Calcutta Madrissa is reputed to possess landed property. At Bohar and Chaughariya in the Burdwan district, and at Durbhanga in Tirhoot, there are Mohammadan institutions largely endowed. Serampore College has an estate in the Sunderbuns; and there may be other endowed Christian institutions, Protestant, Catholic, Armenian, Greek, possessing similar property in the Mofussil. If any, then all without exception should be required by law under similar circumstances to aid ​Government in its endeavours to extend instruction to those classes whose labor gives value to the entire property of the country, and whose improvement will be its best safe-guard and protection.
Another source from which such endowments may be anticipated is the voluntary contributions of wealthy zemindars, whether called forth by a sincere desire to benefit their dependent country-men, or by the prospect of those honours and distinctions which Government can bestow, or by a combination of both motives. Who can doubt that when Government shall engage with earnestness and on a large scale in the work of instructing the people, the example will light up into a flame many a generous feeling which would otherwise be smouldering in its native seat, unseen and unknown, unblessing and unblest? I will not attempt to enumerate the benefactions that within my own recollection during the last twenty years have flowed from the liberty of native gentlemen. Roads have been constructed, bridges built, and other public works executed. They are at this moment joining heart and hand with the European community for the relief of the western provinces; they have established at their own expense and in some instances teach by their own labor English schools for the intellectual advancement of their countrymen; and they have from time to time placed large sums at the disposal of the Committee of Public Instruction for the objects of that body. No one can regret that their public spirit and philanthropy have taken these directions, but the greatest triumphs of native benevolence remain yet to be achieved in raising the body of their countrymen from the debasement of slaves and serfs to the knowledge, the self-respect, and the self-dependence of free men, and all that has been yet accomplished is only a pledge of what the native gentry can do, what they are ready to do, and what they will do, when the path is pointed out to them and the lead is taken by Government in the adoption of measures for the general education of the people. In the distribution of civil honors to those who deserve well of Government and of society, let special regard be had to all who shall make adequate provision for the education of the ryots on their estates, and a rich harvest of good to the country may be expected to spring up. I do not anticipate the want of endowments for school-masters so much as of qualified school-masters to take possession of the endowments which intelligent and wealthy zemindars will be found prepared to create for them.
There are numerous small landed tenures throughout the country, neither included in the Khas Mehals of Government, nor in the estates of endowed establishments, nor in the large zemindaries, but which constitute in the aggregate a very large proportion of the landed property of the country. They are, for the most part, owned by those who, in revenue language, are called ​dependent and independent talookdars, i. e., small landed proprietors who pay the revenue due from them to Government dependently or through a large proprietor, and those who pay it independently or direct to the officers of Government without the intervention of any other party. Most of these small proprietors are probably unable without inconvenience to endow a school-master in each village at their own sole expense, but they would, in a majority of instances, be found both able and willing to contribute their aid towards such an object, and some means must be devised for drawing it forth, some channel formed through which it may flow. What is wanting on their part must be supplied by Government, and therefore some limit must be fixed to ascertain those who will be entitled to the assistance which it is proposed that Government should bestow. For the sake of illustration, without pretending to be able to judge what the precise limit ought to be, I will suppose that those only who pay less than Rupees 1,000 per annum of land revenue to Government will receive the advantage, while all above that standard will be held competent to provide for the instruction of their ryots from their own unaided resources. Having fixed this, or any other standard, it is proposed that any one talookdar, dependent or independent, paying revenue under the standard, or any number of talookdars, putneedars, &c., in Bengal, or of village zemindars, maliks, &c., in Behar, who shall establish a village-school endowment with the prescribed guarantees, shall be entitled to claim from Government a remission of one-half of the annual revenue due on account of the land so endowed, it being always understood that the net produce of the total quantity of land endowed shall be equivalent to one-half only of the average income of village-school-masters in the district in which the village is situated. Thus, if rupees 60 per annum is the average income, one-half of that sum will continue to be provided by fees and perquisites, and one-half will be provided by endowment. Of the latter, one moiety will consist of revenue remitted by Government to the extent of rupees 15 per annum, and the other moiety only will be contributed by the small proprietors. I am assured by intelligent natives that this remission of revenue would prove a powerful stimulus to the small proprietors, and would inspire them with confidence in the good intentions of the Government and affection from those who administer it. There are various modifications under which this arrangement may take effect, but it is not necessary to my present purpose to do more than indicate the general principle.
​First.—A sum of one hundred thousand rupees is by Act of the Imperial Parliament devoted to the encouragement of learning in British India, but I am not aware that any portion of this sum has hitherto been employed in the education of the poor through the medium of their own language. Can it be applied to a more needful or a fitter purpose? Half the amount would annually purchase 166 endowments for qualified village school-masters, each worth rupees 30 per annum and bought at 10 years’ purchase.
Second.—Considerable sums of money have, from time to time, been placed by wealthy natives at the disposal of Government for the general purposes of public improvement or of public instruction without any more specific appropriation; and there can be little doubt that similar sums Will continue to be bestowed. May it not be hoped that the sums which have been or may be received in this way will henceforth obtain, in whole or in part, a destination suited to the most urgent wants of the country and be applied to the instruction of the poor and ignorant, those who are too ignorant to understand the evils of ignorance, and too poor, even if they did, to be able to remove the cause that produces them?
Third.—Instructions have been issued to the officers engaged in the prosecution of the measures for the resumption of lakhiraj tenures liable to assessment to report every case that may come under their cognizance in which lands or money have been granted for purposes connected with education, whether falling under the operation of the resumption laws or not. What the effect ot these instructions which were issued in September 1836 may have been, or may yet be, I have not had the means of ascertaining except in one district, that of South Behar, where, according to a statement furnished by Mr. Reid, the Deputy Collector, under date the 30th January 1837, the number of endowments appear to be considerable granted for the joint benefit of fakeers, poor travellers, and scholars but now almost all alleged to be converted to the private uses of the heirs of the grantees or their assigns. The same state of things will probably be found to exist in other districts. In what instances or to what extent these endowments may now be deemed applicable to the purposes of village education it is not for me to judge; but, if found legitimately applicable, the benefit would be great. Seven tenures of this description, of which the details are contained in the statement above-mentioned, include an area of 4,539 bighas which, at the low average rate of one rupee per bigha, would afford the means of establishing in one district 151 such village-school endowments as I have proposed. A remark reported to me in that district as made by a person whose lakhiraj tenure had been assessed under the resumption laws may help to show the way in which the subject would be regarded by the people. He lamented the loss of property he had sustained, and added that even in this loss there would have been some remaining ​ground of satisfaction, if the amount of assessment, instead of being absorbed into the general revenue of the country, had been devoted to the purposes of education to which, in part at least, it had been hitherto applied. I must add, however, that the education which this person had probably in view was not vernacular, but Persian and Arabic education.
Fourth.—If all other resources fail, there is still one left, the general revenue of the country on which the poor and the ignorant have a primary claim,—a claim which is second to no other whatsoever, for from whence is that revenue derived, but from the bones and the sinews, the toil and sweat of those whose cause I am pleading? Shall £10,000 continue to be the sole permanent appropriation from a revenue of more than twenty millions sterling for the education of nearly a hundred millions of people?
By these means, and from these sources, I propose to qualify a body of vernacular teachers, to raise their character and provide for their support, and to give a gradual, a permanent, and a general establishment to a system of common schools. Without competent instructors all efforts at educational improvement must be futile, and I have, therefore, directed my principal attention in all that has yet been advanced to the means of making and keeping them efficient. With this view, according to the plan now sketched, teachers will not only be taught, but provision will be made for their subsistence. They will feel that, to the extent of at least one-half of an average income, they are dependent during good behaviour on Government,—the common trustee of all the endowments that may be created for this purpose; and to the extent of the remaining half upon the degree of repute and acceptance they enjoy in the village communities to which they attach themselves. The recommendation of those communities will be essential to the enjoyment even of the former moiety, and their well-founded complaints should be sufficient to ensure deprivation. If, as I anticipate, the co-operation of the village communities in this object shall have the effect in time of eliciting public spirit and awakening and directing proper domestic and social feeling, the appointment and displacing of teachers should be vested in them, and ultimately the power of imposing a common rate upon all householders in substitution of unequal and uncertain school fees and perquisites. In fine, I look to these village communities, if wisely estimated and treated by Government, as the germs from which the real prosperity of the country must spring, local and municipal improvement and efficient district and provincial administration.
If I were to stop here, and to obtain the sanction of Government and the co-operation of the native community to accomplish the views now propounded, I should hope that a sure foundation would thus be laid for a national system of education. But something else may be done to facilitate the operation of the ​plan, to extend the improved instruction, and to stimulate and aid the teachers in the interval before they can become eligible to hold a village-school endowment. That interval will probably extend to a period of four years which will be occupied in acquiring a knowledge of the series of school-books, and in passing through a course of normal instruction. But the vernacular school-masters are poor men, and they must teach as well as learn, nor will they learn the less successfully because their circumstances compel them to make immediate use from year to year of the new knowledge they acquire. What is proposed, then, is to devise some means of assisting and encouraging them in the exercise of their profession,—some means not merely of improving their qualifications, but of extending the utility of the instruments thus obtained and fashioned.
For this purpose I must revert to the point at which it was assumed that, on the occasion of the first periodical examination, a body of native teachers had established their competency in the first book which had been put into their hands six months before, and had received the second volume of the series of school-books in which they were invited to qualify themselves still further. I have proposed also on the same occasion to give to each approved teacher on loan and for the use of his scholars from three to twelve copies of the first book of the series, with the engagement on his part to produce six months thereafter from three to twelve pupils, according to the number of copies, thoroughly instructed in its contents and capable of standing a searching examination similar to that through which the teacher himself has passed. The inducements to accept and employ these copies are various. First, they are offered on loan, not to the scholars, but to the teacher who may sell the use of the books, as well as his own instruction to the scholars or their parents, and thus increase his emoluments. Second, they will become the absolute property of the teacher for future similar use, only by producing an equal number of instructed scholars. Third the teacher will receive a corresponding number of copies of the second book of the series on loan and for the use of scholars, only if he shall be found to have made a proper use of those copies of the first received for the same purpose. Fourth, one of the qualifications for an endowment is that the teacher shall have instructed six scholars per annum in some one of the books of the series in such a manner as shall enable them to sustain an examination; and to strengthen this inducement and insure justice, the name, age, and caste of the teacher whose scholars have passed, their and his place of residence, the book in which they have qualified themselves and the date of their examination should be recorded. Fifth, a strong additional motive might be presented to the teacher by offering him one rupee for every instructed scholar produced not exceeding six or twelve; but, for the reasons already assigned, I would, if possible, avoid money-payments. ​Sixth, the scholars will be attracted to the study of the book by the higher price which their parents will have to pay for their instruction, by the curiosity and pleasure which new and useful knowledge will inspire, and by the love of display which a public examination will gratify. An honorable ambition may be still further gratified by the formal registry of their names, designation, and places of residence, as those of approved students of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th class, according to the number of the series in which they have been examined; and, on grounds to be immediately explained, by making the 4th class eligible to a course of instruction in the English School of the district.
At the second periodical examination those teachers who had, in whole or in part, fulfilled the purpose for which the books were given would produce their pupils for examination. To give the examiner time, it may perhaps appear to be desirable that not more than six pupils of one teacher should be pronounced qualified; but if one or more of the six produced shall not stand the examination, he may be permitted to bring forward one or more to the extent of six to be substituted for them. By this means not more than twelve scholars of the same teacher can be examined at the same time, and not more than six of those twelve can be finally approved. If the number who shall successfuly pass through the examination be less than six, for the actual number only should the teacher receive credit. If the number of the scholars and the competition of the teachers should be great, only the highest qualifications of the scholars should be recognized. If the number is small, and the competition feeble, a lower standard of qualification must be admitted; and, according to the discretion of the examiner, some consideration should be shown for those teachers who appear to have bestowed a great deal of labor upon their scholars without any very successful result.
At the next and subsequent examinations the same course will be pursued as at the former with such modifications as increasing experience will suggest and the nature of the text-book forming the subject of examination may require. If the plan should go into full operation there will ultimately be as many classes of teachers and as many classes of scholars to be examined at one time as there are kinds of books distributed, and in this state of things the examiners will enjoy no sinecure. But the number of teachers necessary in a district will soon be filled up, and gradually the class of teachers will come to be composed of those who have already, as scholars, passed through the requisite examinations, and whose claim on this ground to be recognized as approved teachers may be at once decided by a reference to the examiner’s own records. The old race of school-masters will thus gradually pass away, and be succeeded by a race trained from the beginning under the operation of the new system. It will thus ​happen that by the operation of the system itself the expenditure on account of it will be lessened, and its efficiency at the same time increased, leaving the whole of the funds to be applied to the extension and consolidation of the plan by carrying it into new districts or provinces, by increasing the number of scholars in the same districts or provinces, by enlarging generally the course of instruction, or by establishing more numerous or more ample endowments until the various classes and grades of native society shall know all that it is important to their own welfare and to the prosperity and good order of society that they should be taught.
The general effect of this training upon the face of society, if steadily pursued, will be to increase intelligence, enterprise, and morality, to make the people better acquainted with their own interests and with the legitimate means of protecting and promoting them, and I confidently believe and hope to attach them by gratitude and affection to the European rulers of the country as their real friends and benefactors. It is not, however, to be denied that such a system of popular instruction will, in the higher order of minds, excite more ambitious aspirations than it can gratify,—aspirations which, if not gratified, may ferment into discontent or degenerate into crime. To maximize the certain good and to minimize the possible evil, an opening must be made out of the narrow circle of a native education into the wider scope for talent and for ambition afforded by an English education. In the present circumstances of the country the knowledge of English is for the native aspirant the grand road to distinction; and its attainment opens to him the prospect of office, wealth, and influence. To draw, therefore, the best and noblest spirits into close and friendly communication with ourselves, and to employ them for the greatest good of the country, I propose that those scholars who shall successfully pass through an examination in the highest vernacular class book shall receive a special certificate declaring them entitled, whenever a vacancy may occur, to receive admission into the English school of the district. The first effect of this will be to improve the working of the native part of the system by stimulating the vernacular scholars to zeal and industry, since a course of native instruction must be completed before eligibility to the English school can be recognized. The second effect will be to improve the working of the English part of the system by furnishing a constant and abundant supply of candidates whose minds have at an early age been expanded by a liberal course of native instruction; whereas at present much of the attention of English teachers in district schools is frittered away in teaching the mere elements of the English language to children who are uninstructed in their own mother tongue.
In suggesting this plan of vernacular instruction, my chief hope is not to obtain an unqualified assent to my views and recommendations, but to rescue the subject from mere generalities ​and to present something definite and tangible to Government and the public, either to approve or disapprove, to adopt, to alter, or to reject. I am far from supposing that the plan is liable to no objections, will be attended with no difficulties, and will require no modifications.
The grand and primary objection is one that would apply to all projects whatsoever of a similar tendency, viz., the dangerous consequence to our power in this country from imparting instruction to the natives. This objection cannot be better answered than in the words of Sir Charles Metcalfe contained in his report on the revenue of the territory of Delhi, dated 4th September 1815. After describing and recommending a particular system of revenue settlements, which would have the effect of improving the condition of the village zemindars and conferring benefits on them not enjoyed by the cultivators living under former or present native Governments, he adds—“It is, perhaps, impossible to foresee all the remote effects of such a system, and there may be those who would argue that it is injudicious to establish such a system which, by exciting a free and independent character, may possibly lead, at a future period, to dangerous consequences. There does not appear to be sufficient reason to apprehend any evil consequences, even at a remote period, from the introduction of this system. It rather seems that the establishment of such advantages for the bulk of our subjects ought to attach them to the Government which confers the benefit. But even supposing the remote possibility of the evil consequences which may be apprehended, that would not be a sufficient reason for withholding any advantages from our subjects. Similar objections have been urged against our attempting to promote the education of our native subjects, but how unworthy it would be of a liberal Government to give weight to such objections! The world is governed by an irresistible power which giveth and taketh away dominion, and vain would be the impotent prudence of man against the operations of its Almighty influence. All that rulers can do is to merit dominion by promoting the happiness of those under them. If we perform our duty in this respect, the gratitude of India, and the admiration of the world, will accompany our name through all ages, whatever may be the revolutions of futurity; but if we withhold blessings from our subjects, from a selfish apprehension of possible danger at a remote period, we shall not deserve to keep our dominion, we shall merit that reverse which time has possibly in store for us, and shall fall with the mingled, hatred, and contempt, hisses and execrations of mankind. These remarks are offered in reply to objections which may be, and have been, urged against our conferring on our Indian subjects the blessings of independence and education. My own opinion is that the more blessings we confer on them, the better hold we shall have on their affections, and in consequence the greater strength and duration to our empire. It ​is for the wisdom of Government to decide whether this expectation is visionary or founded on reason.”
May these burning words produce their full effect until not an Englishman shall be found in India or out of India who will not be anxious to acknowledge that it is equally the duty and the interest of the British Government to improve and instruct its native subjects! The political power which rests on the affections of its subjects may be likened to the “wise man who built his house upon a rock, and the rain descended, and the streams came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.” The political power which rests on the ignorance of its subjects may be likened to the “foolish man who built his house on the sand, and the rains descended, and the streams came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell, and the fail of it was great.”
The next objection may be held to apply to the expense of the plan and on this topic various considerations may be suggested. It would be very satisfactory to me if I could state within what precise limits the expense will be confined; but it must be evident that in a country so vast and populous, where so very little has been done, and where so much remains to be accomplished, where so much must be hoped; and so little may be obtained from the co-operation of the native community, any such estimate would be deceptive. One thing, however, is certain that, if this or any similar plan is adopted, Government must lay its account with incurring first a small, then a gradually increasing, and ultimately a considerable, expenditure for the purpose, since it is, in fact, the creation of a new department of administration to be in time extended over the whole country. Another thing next to certain is that, in proportion as the plan is extended, it will have a direct effect in advancing the prosperity of the country, and an indirect effect in lessening the expense of governing it. But although it is impossible to know at present the cost of the plan when it shall be in full operation, yet I find it equally impossible to conceive any plan that shall afford a reasonable prospect of effecting so much good with so small an expenditure of means; for in any given district, by means of an educational survey, the appointment of an examiner, and the distribution of a few books, it proposes to call forth and set at work an infinite complication of hopes and fears, desires, ambitions and activities on the part of parents, teachers, and scholars, all aiming at the same object and tending to the same end,—the giving and receiving of instruction. Let us endeavor, however, without pretending to strict accuracy, to ascertain the cost of the experiment continued in a single district during a period of four years, and for this purpose we must look at every item of expense separately.
The first item will consist of the examiner’s salary and allowances. I propose that for the first four years he shall have a salary ​of 100 rupees per month, and an allowance of 50 rupees per month for establishment, stationery, and travelling expenses. This will be an expenditure of 1,800 rupees per annum.
The second item of expense will be occasioned by the survey of the district, to be conducted under the direction of the examiner. I will suppose that the district contains eighteen thanas; that a census both of the population and of schools is to be extended over the whole district; that five waqifkars will be requisite for each thana; that each waqifkars will receive ten rupees per month, including salary and allowances of every kind; and that the survey will occupy three months. The total expenditure will be 2,700 rupees, but as the benefit of the survey will be diffused over the whole period of four years, this is equivalent to an expenditure of 675 rupees per annum.
The third item of expense is that of books. I have no means of judging what the cost of preparation will be, and I can but conjecture what will be the cost of printing since the books are not yet written. In gross, however, let us suppose that the total cost to Government will be covered by two rupees per copy; and even this probably will be found in excess of the ultimate cost, if Government retain the copyright and stereotype the works. Suppose, further, that twenty-five teachers will appear as successful candidates in each thana, or four hundred and fifty in the whole district, and that each will receive one book for himself and six for his scholars in the year. That number will cost Government 6,300 rupees per annum.
A fourth item of expense may be found in the advantage of having an inspector for the number of districts included in a division to aid, advise, direct, and control the examiners, and to see generally that nothing is wanting to give efficiency to the plan. I would propose to give this officer a salary of 400 rupees per month, and 100 rupees per month for establishment, stationery, and travelling expenses. This will amount to 6,000 rupees per annum for a division, and assuming that the division contains five districts, it will be equivalent to 1,200 rupees per annum for each district.
The total expenditure for one district will thus be 9,975 rupees per annum, or 831 rupees per month, and for a division containing five districts 4,155 rupees per month, a sum less than many European servants of Government derive individually from the public revenue; and yet with this small sum—small in comparison of the good to be effected—might a foundation be laid for infusing fresh, moral, and intellectual life into seven or eight millions of an impoverished, debased, and neglected population.
Exclusive of fundamental objections to the principle, or the cost of the measure, practical difficulties may arise, some of which perhaps I do not now anticipate. Difficulty, for instance, may be experienced in consequence of the proposed exclusive employment ​of native agency which may convey the impression to the native community that the object is one in which Government feels little interested, and unless means are employed to counteract such an impression, it may paralyse every exertion that the inspector and examiners may make. One means that may be suggested would be the publication, in some authentic form, of the sentiments and intentions of Government and of its expectations of native co-operation, embodied in a resolution, declaration, or address which would receive general circulation in all the English and native newspapers. The names and appointments of the inspectors and examiners should be published in the Gazette, giving them an official status of respectability. The commissioner of the division and the magistrate of the district should be instructed to give them support and countenance in every legitimate way, as was before suggested; and, in like manner, the proposed publication in the Gazette of the results of the periodical examinations, would have a beneficial effect.
A practical danger to which the efficiency of the measure may be exposed will arise from the want of a vigilant, prompt, and efficient superintendence exercised over the examiners. To supply such a superintendence I have proposed the appointment of an inspector for all the districts of a division. His duty would be generally to give efficiency to the plan, to counsel and guide the examiners, to receive and transmit their reports with his own observations, and the instructions of the General Committee for their guidance, and further to aid collectors of khas mehals, zemindars on their estates, and talookdars, maliks, and ryots in villages in organizing the proposed village-institutions with the endowments for their permanent support. The inspectors and examiners will be placed under the authority of the General Committee of Public Instruction. As the mainspring of the whole machinery will be found in this body, I trust that my anxiety for the success of a measure from which, if adopted, much good may arise, will not be interpreted in a sense disrespectful to the Committee, through which this report is forwarded to Government, if I add that its constitution does not appear adapted to a purpose which was not contemplated when it was originally formed and since re-modelled. The number of individuals composing the Committee, the fact that, with the exception of the Secretary, their services are gratuitous and occasional, and that all the members without exception including the Secretary have other weighty duties to perform, must make it at least doubtful whether they can exercise a constant and systematic superintendence over an extended scheme of national instruction.
With the most cordial co-operation on the part of Government and its functionaries, and with the most vigorous superintendence by the General Committee of Public Instruction and by inspectors, much will depend upon the Selection of examiners. If well ​qualified they will make up for many deficiencies elsewhere; but nothing will compensate for the absence of intelligence, energy, honesty, and discretion on their part. They should be competent to understand and appreciate the object of Government, and to engage in promoting it with zeal untainted by fanaticism and with calmness that shall not degenerate into apathy. They should be thoroughly instructed in the subject-matter of the series of school-books, and possessed of integrity and firmness to require, in resistance both to the reproaches and blandishments of unworthy candidates, the degree of qualification which shall alone entitle to reward and distinction. The emoluments of the office should be fixed at such an amount as will present an immediate object of ambition to the class from which the examiners will chiefly be drawn; and they should be so graduated as to afford the prospect of promotion, and thus stimulate to the discharge of duty and operate as a check upon misconduct or neglect. With these views I have proposed that the examiners should receive for the first four years of service a consolidated allowance of 150 rupees per month, and I now add that they should receive for the second four years a corresponding allowance of 200 rupees per month, and for the third four years 250 rupees per month, after which an examiner shall be eligible to be appointed an inspector of a division with a consolidated allowance of 500 rupees per month. Promotion from one grade to another should, of course, be made to depend on good conduct in the preceding grade; and it should always be given, if possible, in the same district and division. No arrangements will afford security in every case against the possibility of malversation, but those now proposed will, I should hope, in most instances command the honourable and industrious exertions of qualified natives.
Having noticed the objections to which the measure may be deemed liable, and the difficulties with which it may be attended, I must be permitted to advert to some of the advantages by which it is recommended.
The primary advantage is the coincidence of the plan with all existing institutions of education. It introduces the metropolitan organ of Government, the General Committee of Public Instruction, to new and higher duties than any which have yet engaged its attention, but to none inconsistent with those which it has hitherto discharged. The district English schools or colleges and the vernacular departments attached to them will be extended, their scholars multiplied, and their efficiency increased. The native schools will have a new life infused into them, the qualifications of school-masters and the attainments of scholars will be raised, and a more anxious desire will be produced amongst parents that their children should enjoy this improved instruction. The plan does not come into collision with indigenous elementary schools, or with the interests of the teachers. On the contrary, it ​enlists them all in the race of improvement and establishes the most friendly relations with them. The leading idea upon which the plan is framed is that of building on the foundations which the people themselves have laid and of employing them on the scaffolding and outworks, so that when they shall see the noble superstructure rising, and finally raised complete in all its parts, they will almost, if not altogether, believe it to be the work of their own hands. The plan will thus maintain the most perfect congruity with existing national institutions, and at the same time admit of the gradual expansion and improvement which European civilization demands.
Another recommendation of the plan is the simplicity of the means employed. The examiner with his books and his public examinations is the prime agent, both giving and prolonging the impulse. For this purpose he will not, as in other cases, have to follow the school-masters and the scholars into their villages, their huts, and their school-rooms; to reprove into order and quiet the noisy irregularity of the teacher; to guide in detail the desultory labors of the scholar; and to stimulate to some effort or sacrifice the stolid ignorance of the parent. If the plan work at all, it will make parents, scholars, and school-masters all alike ambitious to earn the distinctions and rewards which it holds out. It contains within itself a self-acting principle which only requires to be directed and controlled.
It is, perhaps, an effect of this simplicity, but still a separate and distinct advantage, that the plan, whether tried on a large or on a small scale, and whether fully successful or not successful to the extent anticipated, can be productive only of good unmixed with evil. It may be introduced into new districts as they are found prepared for it, or it may be discontinued without injury or injustice in any district where it has been found to work unsatisfactorily, provided always that all promises and engagements shall be faithfully performed. The good done will be certain, and Government may either extend, contract, or abandon the plan without embarrassing any native institution, but on the contrary leaving those who have been influenced by it with an increased power of self-dependence.
Instead of considering the expense an objection, the plan will be found economical when compared with the completeness and diffusiveness of the effect. The expense of a school is made up of various items, the cost of a school-house and its furniture, the pay of the teacher, the price of pens, ink, leaves, paper, and books, and if the institution is a Government one, the charge for superintendence. In ordinary cases much of this apparatus produces no distinct or appreciable result. Of any given number of scholars, say 100, who engage in a particular course of study, perhaps not more than 50 generally acquire a satisfactory proficiency. ​The incapacity and negligence of both teachers and scholars cause a great waste of time, of labor, and of money; and even the successful student is successful with a much greater consumption of these means than is indispensable. The economy of the plan now submitted is that in respect of time, of labor, and of money, it throws all the expense of many of the preliminaries of education and of all inefficient study and instruction upon parents, teachers, and scholars, and that it bestows the resources of Government only in reward of efficient study, for the production of the actual and perfect result of successful instruction, and for such apparatus as is necessary to prove that this result has been attained. The effect also will be more general than might at first appear. Let it be supposed that in a district of eighteen thanas, twenty-five school-masters in each thana will annually bring forward their pupils for examination; that each teacher can pass only six of his scholars; and that he is at liberty to offer to the extent of twelve, if any of the first six should be rejected. They will, according to this arrangement, bring forward 5,400 of their scholars, but of these not more than 2,700 can be declared qualified, and perhaps not more than half that number will pass the examination successfully. Even 1,350 scholars in one district and within one twelve-month thoroughly instructed in any one of the school-books I have described would be an ample return to Government for the expenditure incurred. But the benefit would not rest here. The whole number of scholars, 5,400, must be deemed by their teachers qualified for examination, else they would not be brought forward; and the unsuccessful condidates or those scholars whom, as it may happen, it was not necessary to examine at all, must have attained much, and many may have attained all, that would have been required of them. It is by no means necessary to suppose that even the whole number produced for examination will be the whole number instructed. On the contrary, they will be the very elite of the little village flocks, and those flocks will be composed of hundreds and thousands of other scholars in various degrees instructed in the same useful knowledge, all hoping one day to distinguish themselves, and all stimulated by the impulse which Government will have given to the cause of public instruction. The plan will ultimately be as economical to the people as to the Government. At first the approved teachers will probably affix a higher price on the superior instruction they will be qualified to bestow; but the facilities to acquire this superior qualification will be open to all, and many new competitors with equal advantages will rapidly enter the profession, while at the same time the demand for instruction will keep constantly increasing. Under those simultaneous and counteracting influences, a new rate of remuneration will come to be formed, the advantage of which, as in all improved processes that are in general demand will be in favor of the community; and when this new rate shall ​be modified in any district, by the general adoption of the system of endowments, the cost of educating their children will be reduced to the people to the extent of one-half. Even if the amount of fees and perquisites should remain the same without reduction, the value received from the teachers of youth will be far greater, which both to parents and scholars is the best kind of economy.
It is, perhaps, admissible to regard as an advantage arising from the plan that it affords an opportunity of employing for the benefit of the country the class from which I propose to draw the inspectors and examiners. Extraordinary efforts have been made to extend a knowledge of the English language to the natives; but those who have more or less profited by the opportunities presented to them do not find much scope for their new attainments, which, on the other hand, little fit them for the ordinary pursuits of native society. They have not received a good native education, and the English education they have received finds little, if any, use. There is thus a want of sympathy between them and their countrymen, although they constitute a class from which their countrymen might derive much benefit. There is also little sympathy between them and the foreign rulers of the country, because they feel that they have been raised out of one class of society without having a recognized place in any other class. If they were employed in visiting the different districts as the agents of Government for promoting education, they would fulfil a high destination satisfactory to their own minds and would not fail to enjoy the respect and affection of their countrymen. The qualifications required of them would teach them, what is so important to their own usefulness and hitherto so much neglected, to unite the acquirements of an English and a native education, since it is only by means of the latter class of acquirements that English principles and ideas can be generally transfused into, and incorporated with, the native character.
The only other recommendation of the plan which I will now suggest is that it would be a proper complement to a measure that has been already adopted. It would be worthy of the Government which has decreed that the business of the country shall be conducted in the language of the people. This is so important a measure and bears so directly upon the present subject that I subjoin here the Resolutions of Government relating to it. The following is the Resolution of the Governor General of India in Council:—
Resolution.
“The attention of His Lordship in Council has lately been called to the Regulations of the Bengal Code, which positively enjoin the use of the Persian language in Judicial and Fiscal proceedings. His Lordship in Council is sensible that it would be in the ​highest degree inexpedient hastily to substitute any other language for that which has, during a long course of years, been appropriated to the transaction of public business. He is satisfied that in many parts of the country a sudden and violent change would produce serious public inconvenience, and that it would reduce many old and useful servants of the public to distress,—such as no humane Government would willingly cause. At the same time His Lordship in Council strongly feels it to be just and reasonable that those judicial and fiscal proceedings on which the dearest interests of the Indian people depend should be conducted in a language which they understand. That this great reform must be gradual, that a considerable time must necessarily elapse before it can be carried into full effect, appears to His Lordship in Council to be an additional reason for commencing it without delay. His Lordship in Council is, therefore, disposed to empower the Supreme Executive Government of India, and such subordinate authorities as may be thereunto appointed by the Supreme Government, to substitute the vernacular languages of the country for the Persian in legal proceedings and in proceedings relating to the revenue. It is the intention of His Lordship in Council to delegate the powers given by this Act for the present only to the Governor of Bengal and to the Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, and he has no doubt that those high authorities will exercise these powers with that caution which is required at the first introduction of extensive changes, however salutary, in an old and deeply-rooted system.”
In conformity with this Resolution Act XXIX. of 1837 was passed, making it lawful for the Governor General of India in Council by an order in Council to dispense with the provisions which enjoin the use of the Persian language and to prescribe the language and character to be used in its stead, and further empowering him to delegate those powers to any subordinate authority. Such a delegation of powers having, accordingly, been made to the Deputy Governor of Bengal, that authority passed the following Resolution:—
Resolution.
“The President of the Council of India in Council having been pleased on the 4th ultimo, in conformity with Section 2, Act XXIX. of 1837, to delegate to the Deputy Governor of Bengal all the powers given to the Governor General in Council by that Act, the Deputy Governor has resolved that, in the districts comprised in the Bengal division of the Presidency of Fort William, the vernacular language of those districts shall be substituted for the Persian in judicial proceedings and in proceedings relating to the revenue, and the period of twelve months from the 1st instant shall be allowed for effecting the substitution. His Honor is sensible that this great and salutary reform must be introduced with caution, involving as it does ​the complete subversion of an old and deeply-rooted system. He, therefore, vests the various heads of departments with a discretionary power to introduce it into their several offices and those respectively subordinate to them by such degrees as they may think judicious, only prescribing that it shall be completely carried into effect within the period abovementioned. For His Honor's information, a report of the progress made in the introduction of this measure will be required on the 1st July next, and again on the 1st January 1839. Ordered that a copy of the above Resolution be transmitted to the General Department for the issue of instructions to the above effect in respect to the offices subject to that Department.”
Judicial and Revenue Department, 23rd January 1838.
It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the importance of this measure to the character of the Government and the welfare of the people. The object is to give the people, or to enable them to acquire through their own language, a knowledge of what may affects their interests—what constantly, deeply, and extensively affect their interests—in the judicial and fiscal departments of Government. The effect will be to bring within the reach of Government for administrative purposes a large amount of cheap and useful native agency of which it has hitherto voluntarily deprived itself, and to rescue the great body of the people who know only their own language from those who, under the covert of a foreign tongue, misrepresent and pervert the cases of prosecutors and accused, the claims of plaintiffs and defendants, the evidence of witnesses, the wishes of petitioners, and the decisions of Judges, defiling the stream of justice, impeding its course, and exciting the disgust and disaffection of those who seek healing in its waters. The facility of complaint through the vernacular tongue will also deter many from the commission of crime and injustice who are now encouraged to the perpetration of them by the knowledge that the injured will be prevented from seeking redress through the difficulty, expense, and liability to abuse of the official medium of communication. But if this measure will prove important and useful, as it undoubtedly will, standing alone and by itself, its importance and utility will be incalculably increased if followed by the establishment of a national system of instruction through the medium of the vernacular tongue. If the use of the language of the people will enable every man to understand the statement of his own case, even when he is wholly ignorant of his mother tongue except as a spoken language, how much more complete his protection if he knows it as a written language. If the employment of a cheap Bengali writer, or pleader, or attorney, or agent instead of a dear Persian one will be economical and protective to the poor man, how much more economical and protective will it be if he can make known his wishes, explain his case, ​prefer his complaint, or engage in his defence in his own name, or through another under his own intelligent control and superintendence. If Government by this measure, even in the present state of vernacular instruction, will find ampler means placed at its disposal for the cheaper and more efficient administration of local affairs, how much greater will be the scope afforded when the kind of instruction shall be improved, and when this superior instruction shall be generally diffused. Now, then, is the time for Government to step forward and provide good teachers for the people and good books for teachers. Every consideration combines to show the advantage of following up the measure that has been already adopted with that which is now recommended. If any other consideration were wanting, it would be found in the grateful affection with which, under any circumstances, but especially in such a connection, it would be received by the people.