COPY OF ARTICLE TAKEN FROM ‘YOUNG INDIA’
8TH DECEMBER 1920THE DECLINE OF MASS EDUCATION IN INDIA
(By Daulat Ram Gupta, M.A.)It is generally believed that from the time the British Government
have taken in their hands the duty of educating the people of
India, in accordance with the Parliamentary dispatch of 1854,
the country has made remarkable progress in education, in so
far as the number of schools, the number of scholars, and the
standard of education are concerned. It will be my business to
prove, that we have made no such progress in these respects,—a
fact which will be startling to some and a revelation to others—
and in so far as our mass education is concerned, we have
certainly made a downward move since India has passed to the
British Crown.
The advent of British Rule found in India systems, of
education of great antiquity and value existing among both
Hindus and Mussalmans, in each case closely bound up with
their religious institutions. There was not a mosque, a temple, a
Dharamsala, that had not a school attached to it. To give and
receive instruction was regarded as a religious duty. Schools of
learning were formed in centres containing a considerable high
caste population, where Pandits gave instruction in Sanskrit,
grammar, logic, philosophy and law.
For the lower classes, village schools were scattered over
the country in which a good rudimentary education was given to
the children of petty traders, cultivators and landlords. The very
fact that every family of the DWIJA (twice-born) and every guild
of the mixed castes, and every village of any importance, had its
own priest, and that it was enjoined upon the priest to teach as
well as to minister to religion, leads one to the belief, on strong
prima facie grounds, that education was very widely diffused
among the people.
The higher education of the Mussalmans was in the hands
of men of learning. Schools were attached to mosques and
shrines and supported by the state grant in cash or land, or by
private liberality. The course of study in a Muslim Madrassa
included grammar, rhetoric, logic, literature, jurisprudence, and
science.
Thus, in Madras, in an inquiry conducted by Sir Thomas
Munro in 1826, it is stated that in 1826 there were 11,758