Mr Gandhi replied that the women’s education had been
neglected, to the shame of the men. He could only conjecture,
with regard to the figures for Kashmir, that if illiteracy was
greater there, it was due to the negligence of the ruler or because
the population was predominantly Mohammedan, but he
thought that, as a matter of fact, it was six of the one and half a
dozen of the other.
—from International Affairs, London, November 1931: from
a long speech by Mahatma Gandhi, on October 20, 1931
held under the auspices of the Royal Institute of
International Affairs at Chatham House, London; the
meeting was attended by influential Englishmen and
English-women drawn from all parts of England. Lord
othian, who was one of the British chairmen at the Round
Table Conference on India, presided at this meeting.
(The above text is copied from
Collected Works, Vol.48, pp.199-200, 201-2)...
5, Inverness Gardens,
W.8.
21st October, 1931
M.K. Gandhi, Esq.,
Round Table Conference,
St. James Palace,
S.W.1.
Dear Mr Gandhi,
I understood you to say last night at the Royal Institute of
International Affairs that you could prove on the evidence of
British officials that literacy had diminished in British India in
the last fifty or hundred years. In reply to my request for the
precise authority for this statement you mentioned a Punjab
Administration Report, (without, however, giving the date,) and
said that what had happened in the Punjab must have happened
in the rest of India. You mentioned, too, an article in ‘Young
India’, but also without giving its date. The subject is one in
which I have taken a deep interest for some years, and I should
be grateful, therefore, if you would very kindly give me precise
references to the printed documents on which your statements
were based, so that I may consult them.
You will, I feel sure, forgive me for pointing out that the