conditions was liable to be followed by serious
consequences. Fees were raised to a degree, which,
considering the circumstances of the classes that resort to
schools, were abnormal. When it was objected that
minimum fee would be a great hardship to poor students
the answer was such students had no business to receive
that kind of education. Managers of private schools who
remitted fees in whole or in part, were penalised by reduced
grants-in-aid.
Thus, by this policy, education was only confined to the
well-to-do classes.
‘They it was believed would give no trouble to the
Government.’ Sri Sankaran Nair, therefore, concludes that,
It is the universal belief, and there is little doubt that facts
unfortunately tend to prove it, that primary English
Education for the masses, and higher education for the
higher classes are discouraged for political reasons. Higher,
professional, industrial and technical education is
discouraged to favour English industries and recruitment
in England of English officials.
In the Punjab the state of indigenous education was much
better because of the special efforts made by Maharaja Ranjit
Singh to promote learning. Dr Leitner, who was the Principal of
the Oriental College and Government College, Lahore, and who
also officiated for some time as Director of Public Instruction,
Punjab, conducted a very thorough going inquiry into the state
of indigenous education in the Punjab, and in his book on the
‘History of Indigenous Education’ in the Punjab, he writes:—
I am about to relate—I hope without extenuation or
malice—the history of the contact of a form of European,
with one of the Asiatic, civilisation; how in spite of the best
intentions, the most public-spirited officers, and a
generous government that had the benefit of the traditions
of other provinces, the true education of the Punjab was
crippled, checked and is nearly destroyed; how
opportunities for its healthy revival and development were
either neglected or perverted; and how, far beyond the
blame attaching to individuals, our system stands
convicted of worse then official failure.
He therefore writes:—
I fear that my account of the decline of indigenous
education in the Punjab may offend some prejudices and
oppose