introduction to his Report,—‘In short the lowest computation
gives us 330,000 pupils (against little more than 190,000 at
present) in the schools of the various denominations, who were
acquainted with reading, writing and some method of
computation; whilst thousands of them belonged to Arabic and
Sanskrit colleges, in which oriental literature and systems of
Oriental Law, Logic, Philosophy and Medicine, were taught to the
highest standards.’ I would particularly commend to your
attention this classic document of 650 odd pages (folio), the
more so as Dr Sir Wm. Hunter, president of the Indian
Education Committee, made a special Minute to the Report of
that Committee (pp.621-2) in which he found that Dr Leitner’s
estimate of 120,000 pupils in the Punjab was actually an
underestimate by some 15,000, while the official figure supplied
by the D.P.I. of the province was below the actual figure by some
80,000 pupils. Incidentally, this will suffice to show how
imperfect, inaccurate, undependable, was the official statistical
information for these early days, when the people viewed with
easily intelligible suspicion enquiries of this nature, and so
passively refused to afford the correct information wherever and
whenever they could help it. Without minimising in the least
degree the value of statistical evidence, I cannot but add that
such evidence is worse than useless, when we recall the
conditions under which it was compiled, as also the
temperament and training of the officials who helped in
compiling the same in those primitive times of British rule in
India.
Let me now speak of Madras, that earliest settlement of
British rule in India, and even now said to be the best educated
province in the Empire. Sir T. Munro, in a Minute dated
10.3.1826 (Commons Report, 1832, p.506) observes that, taking
the male part of the population only, and taking children of
between 5-10 years of age only, as school going population,
(assumed to be one-ninth of the total population) there were
713,000 male pupils that would be at school. The actual number
of pupils in recognised schools was found by him to be 184,110
which works out to be a little over a fourth of the total school-
going population. Sir Thomas, however, was of opinion that the
actual proportion was nearer one-third than one-fourth, owing to
a large number of children receiving instruction privately, and so
not included in the above calculation.
In Bengal, (Cp. Adam’s Report, 1838) the total number of
children between 5-14 years of age is taken at 87,629. Of these,
6,786 were returned as receiving instruction in the recognised
schools, or 7.7%. This includes both men and women, girls as