In reply to your request for the sources of my own
knowledge of the history of education in India, I would refer you
to the sources quoted in the report of the Calcutta University
Commission of which I was Chairman (Interim Report of the
Indian Statutory Commission, H.M. Stationery Office, Cmd.
3407,1929), and especially to the literacy figures, taken from the
census reports and quoted on p.382 of Vol.1 of the Simon
Report, which I subjoin:—
In 1911 the figure for British India was 12%; and in 1881
8%. It has always to be remembered that these percentages are
adversely affected by the existence of nearly 20,000,000
aboriginals and hill tribes, as well as by the educational
backwardness of a far greater number of ‘untouchables’.
You will notice that the figure for males for British India
increased from 8% in 1881 (50 years ago) to 12% in 1911 and
14.4% in 1921, not a rapid increase, but still an increase.
In Travancore and Cochin you have a large number of
Indian Christians. In Baroda the system of compulsory primary
education taken from Western models, began to be introduced in
1893.
The census figures, as you well see, are in complete
contradiction with your assertion that literacy has diminished in
British India in the last fifty years.
The figures for Hyderabad (preponderatingly Hindu with a
Mohammedan ruler), and for Kashmir (preponderatingly Muslim
with a Hindu ruler) seem inexplicable if you attribute illiteracy to
British administration.
I would refer you also to the chapter on Education which I
have contributed to ‘Modern India’ (Oxford University Press,
1931), and finally to a work by an advanced Indian political
thinker, the late Lala Lajpat Rai (National Education in India,
1920), whose views, though in many ways opposed to your own,
I am sure you would find interesting.
I welcome your decision, of which I felt assured
beforehand, that you will immediately correct your statement, if
you are convinced that it is erroneous, and I look forward to your
doing so.
Believe me,Yours sincerely,
Sd/- Philip Hartog