closer enquiry of this type conducted by Leitner is far more
reliable, and so also the obiter dicta of people in the position to
have clear impressions’; and felt that ‘even those impressions
must be held to give rather an underestimate than otherwise.’
But Shah’s long letter was a wasted effort as far as Hartog
was concerned. It constituted merely a further provocation. In
his reply, Hartog told Shah that ‘your letter does not touch the
main question which I put to Mr Gandhi’; and concluded that ‘I
am afraid that I am altogether unable to accept your conclusion
with regard to the history of literacy in Bengal during the past
100 years, of which there remains a good deal to be said.’
Though it is not fair to compare individuals and to
speculate on the motivations which move them, it does seem
that at this stage Sir Philip Hartog had feelings similar to those
experienced by W.H. Moreland after the latter had read Vincent
Smith’s observations (in his book on Akbar the Great Mogul) that
‘the hired landless labourer in the time of Akbar and Jahangir
probably had more to eat in ordinary years than he has now.’^73
In reviewing the book, Moreland had then said, ‘Mr Vincent
Smith’s authority in Indian History is so deservedly great that
this statement, if allowed to stand unquestioned, will probably
pass quickly into a dogma of the schools; before it does so, I
venture to plead for further examination of the data.’^74 And from
then on, Moreland seems to have set himself the task of
countering such a ‘heretical view, and of stopping it from
becoming a dogma of the schools.’
Whatever his motivation, Philip Hartog set himself the task
of proving Gandhiji wrong on this particular issue. The result
was presented in three ‘Joseph Payne Lectures for 1935-36’
delivered at the University of London Institute of Education
under the title, Some Aspects of Indian Education: Past and
Present.^75 The lectures were presented along with three
Memoranda: (a) Note on the statistics of literacy and of schools
in India during the last