the literacy of a century ago amounted to very little to justify a
song about it (b) that the average M.E. or M.C. schools of prewar
days was a farce. We used to be asked continually to take over
village ‘M.V.’ schools, with a failed Inter Arts or even failed
Matric, as their head, and their students appalled me. Our own
high school boys were bad enough but...I tell you what it is. The
prewar administration of India in many ways was appalling. I
know the difficulties. But tell me—what is it that has been wrong
with Indian administration? I am reading old records by pre-
Mutiny residents. They teem with information that makes you
hope the Congresswalla will never get hold of it. Oxford swarms
with ex-I.C.S. I like and respect them very much indeed. But
what has happened to the often first class record of intellect they
had before entering the I.C.S.? It seems to me the very
hopelessness of...huge Indian job used to oppress and...us. We
did not do anything like as much as Englishmen should have
done.
I scandalously ran on to the back of this—which I never do
hurriedly—to keep it short. You see, I sail December 24, and I
am shockingly overworked until I get off.
...
TO THE EDITOR, ‘INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS’ (Extract from
‘International Affairs’, the journal of the Royal Institute for
International Affairs, for January, 1932. p. 151.)
Sir,
At a very largely attended meeting at Chatham House on
October 20th last, Mr Gandhi said:
‘I say without fear of my figures being challenged
successfully that today India is more illiterate than it was
fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the
British administrators, when they came to India, instead of
taking hold of things as they were, began to root them
out.’^1
It will be seen from the report of the meeting that Mr
Gandhi did not at the time quote the figures to which he
referred. I therefore asked him if he would give his authority for
the statement that literacy had diminished during the last fifty
years and he replied: