It may be fair to observe that, despite his considerable
learning and experience, Hartog seemed to have lacked both
imagination and a sense of history. He was far too committed to
the dogmas of pre-1939 Britain. His immigrant Jewish
background may have accentuated such an outlook further.
Whatever the reasons, it seemed inconceivable to Hartog that
late eighteenth, or early nineteenth century India could have had
the education and facilities which Gandhiji and others had
claimed. Similarly, it had been inconceivable to William
Wilberforce, 125 years earlier, that the Hindoos could
conceivably have been civilised (as was stated by many British
officers and scholars who in Wilberforce’s days had had long
personal experience of life in India) without the benefits of
Christianity. To Hartog, as also to Edward Thompson, and before
them to an extent even to W. Adam, and some of the Madras
Presidency Collectors, it was axiomatic that these Indian
educational institutions amounted to very little, and that the
Indian system had ‘become merely self-perpetuating, and
otherwise barren.’
Besides Gandhiji’s statement, two other facts seem to have
had quite an upsetting effect on Philip Hartog. The first, already
referred to, were the writings of G.W. Leitner. The second seems
to have hurt him even more: this was a statement relating to
what Hartog called ‘what of the immediate future’. In this
context, Hartog noted that, ‘an earnest Quaker missionary has
predicted that under the new regime [evidently meaning the
post-British regime] there will be a Counter-Reformation in
education, which will no longer be Western but Eastern’; and, he
observed: ‘Thus India will go back a thousand years and more to
the old days...to those days when she gave out a great wealth of
ideas, especially to the rest of Asia, but accepted nothing in
return.’ Such a prospect was galling indeed to Philip Hartog,
burdened as he was—like his illustrious predecessors—with the
idea of redeeming India morally as well as intellectually, by
pushing it along the western road.
As Gandhiji was the prime cause of this effort, Hartog sent
a copy of his lectures to him. He wrote to Gandhiji that he had
‘little doubt that you will find that a close analysis of the facts
reveals no evidence to support the statement which you made at
the Royal Institute of International Affairs’; adding that Gandhiji
‘will therefore feel justified now in withdrawing that statement.’
Gandhiji replied some months later. His letter had all the
ingredients of a classic reply: ‘I have not left off the pursuit of the
subject of education in the villages during the pre-British