DHARAMPAL • COLLECTED WRITINGS

number is 4.73 times. Though it is true that half of these
privately tutored were from amongst the Brahmins and the
Vysees, still those from the Soodras form 28.7% of this number,
and from the other castes 13%. Furthermore, the Indian part of
Madras city at this period was more of a shanty-town. In
comparison to the older towns and cities of the Presidency, it
was a relatively badly organised place, the status of its Indian
inhabitants being rather lower in the social scale than their
counterparts in other places like Madura, Tanjore, Trichinopoly,
etc. It may be quite probable, therefore, that the number of those
privately educated in other districts, if not some 4 to 5 times
more than those attending school as in Madras city, was still
appreciably large. The observation of Thomas Munro that there
was ‘probably some error’ in the number given of 26,903 being
taught at home in Madras city—a remark incidentally which has
been made much of by later commentators on the subject—does
not have much validity. If the number had been considered
seriously erroneous, a new computation for the city of Madras,
to which alone it pertained, would have been no difficult matter,
especially as this return had been submitted to the Governor a
whole year before this comment. It was perhaps required of
Thomas Munro—as head of the executive—to express such a
reservation. Undoubtedly, it was the sort of comment which the
makers of policy in London wished to hear.^55 This draft, however,
was followed by the remark that ‘the state of education here
exhibited, low as it is compared with that of our own country, is
higher than it was in most European countries at no very distant
period.’ As may be guessed from the data pertaining to Britain,
the term ‘at no very distant period’ really meant the beginning of
the nineteenth century, which had been the real start of the Day
schools for most children in the British Isles.