# Hints Relative to Native Schools/Section 1

​The situation of the inhabitants of India indeed seems to furnish them with a peculiar claim to our attention. Placed as they are by Divine Providence, under the fostering care of Britain, they have extended over them by British laws, that security and protection relative to their persons and property which were unknown in India under their native sovereigns. Advantages, however, which their present lamentable state of ignorance prevents their fully enjoying: for, to say nothing of the gross impositions from their own countrymen to which the ignorance of the lower classes renders them constantly liable, the present state of their minds is such as to deprive them of a great part of the happiness arising from social life, and to leave them almost utterly unacquainted even with the nature and obligation of relative duties. Scarcely any thing can be more shocking than their ignorance of parental duty on the one hand, and of filial obedience on the other, unless it be that insensibility to the finer feelings of humanity, and to the obligations of truth, fidelity and justice, which is so painfully witnessed by most Europeans intimately connected with them.
It is acknowledged that much of this national prostration of morals and feelings may be traced to their system of religion. But it would be wrong not to advert to the degree in which ignorance aggravates all these evils. When idolatry existed both in Rome and in Greece, the sanctions of an oath were not wholly disregarded among them; perjury on the contrary was regarded with horror; falsehood in general with detestation; and the ties of social life which bind man to man, as well as those of probity, fidelity and justice, were felt and acknowledged to be of universal obligation. It will hence be easily seen, either that Hindoo idolatry in its principle and operation is far more inimical to public morals than was the ancient idolatry or that ignorance has exceedingly aggravated its evils. It will perhaps be found that both of these causes have had their full share herein; and that they have produced a reacti​on on each other; the system tending to produce and perpetuate ignorance of the worst kind, and this ignorance, on the other hand, tending to add to the horrors of the system.
That the system has had its full share in the degradation of morals and manners, few will be inclined to doubt who consider its nature and tendency. Not only are the people in general destitute of every just idea of God; they can scarcely be said to be fully impressed with the importance of a single principle of morality. In addition to their being wholly unconscious of that accountability to the Judge of All, which in Europe is written on almost every heart, as well as ignorant both of the justice and mercy of God, of the evil which follows immorality and sin even in this life, and of the happiness which results from piety, probity, truth, fidelity and integrity; they have no just idea of the objects of nature so constantly before them, of the sun, moon, and stars—the clouds, the winds, the rain;—the earth on which they dwell,—the groves, trees and plants which surround them—the domestic animals which they nourish; nor, in a word, of the flowing stream, the buzzing insect, or of the plant which creeps over their lowly shed. To them the sun retires behind a mountain, the rain from heaven is given by a god they are in the habit of despising and vilifying, the rainbow is the bow of Rama, the river is a deity, the birds, the beasts, and even the reptiles around them are animated by the souls of their deceased relatives;—falsehood and uncleanness are nothing, perjury a trifle, and a failure in fidelity and probity, often a subject of praise; while ablution in the waters of a river is deemed a due atonement for almost every breach of morality.
That this state of misery is heightened by their ignorance, will be evident when we consider the little knowledge they possess even ​of their own language. The wretched schools they have in their towns and villages are so few, that on the average scarcely one man in a hundred will be found who can read a common letter. But the knowledge gained in these schools is so small that it does little more than serve to make darkness visible. Without books, without the vestige of a grammar in the common dialects, without the most limited vocabulary, what can they acquire even of their own language? They merely learn to trace the letters of the alphabet, to write a few names, and, as their highest accomplishment, to copy a meagre and ill-written letter. Hence when brought into life, numberless instances occur wherein their wretched writing and far more wretched orthography, almost the dictate of every man’s fancy render them quite unable to read each other’s hand. Hence too the perusal of books from which principles of integrity and uprightness might be imbibed, is quite out of the question. If there be any thing in Manu, or in any other of their writers, which could preserve the tone of public morals, it is never brought within the reach of the common people. Printed books they have none, unless a copy of some book of the scriptures should have found its way among them. And as to manuscripts, they have scarcely one in prose; but if they possessed a multitude, their ignorance of their own language would render the perusal of an inaccurate and ill-written manuscript too formidable a task to be often attempted. Thus with a regular and copious language of their own, nearly all who are ignorant of the Sungskrit language, (which is not understood by one in ten thousand throughout India,) are in a state of ignorance not greatly exceeded by that of those savage hordes who have no written language, while numerous causes combine to sink them far below most savage nations in vice and immorality.
Add to this, that their knowledge of Arithmetic is scarcely less wretched. What avails their possessing treatises in Sungskrit both on Arithmetic and Geometry? from these the common people de​rive about as much advantage as though they were written in Chinese. Hence, though some of them, through long habit, are expert in calculation, as is the case with many in England unacquainted with a single rule of Arithmetic, at school they learn even the four fundamental rules in so wretched a manner, that an English boy of eight years old would, in a few minutes, resolve a question in multiplication or division, the solving of which would cost them an expense of time scarcely to be credited.