The Collector of Bellary, A.D. Campbell, was an
experienced and perceptive officer, previously having held the
post of Secretary of the Board of Revenue, and was perhaps one
of Thomas Munro’s favourites. It may be said to Munro’s credit
that in his review of 10 March 1826, he did admit in his oblique
way that indigenous education ‘has, no doubt, been better in
earlier times.’ The fact that it got disrupted, reduced and well-
nigh destroyed from the time the British took over de facto
control and centralised the revenue, was obviously not possible
even for a Governor as powerful as Thomas Munro to state in
formal government records.
Illustrations such as the above can be multiplied ad
infinitum. It only requires searching the records pertaining to the
early period of British rule in different areas of India. With much
industry and in a fairly objective manner, Leitner tried to do this
for the Panjab. For Gandhiji, an intuitive understanding of what
could have happened was enough. He could, therefore, with
confidence, reply to Hartog that, ‘my prejudice or presentiment
still makes me cling to the statement I made at Chatham House.’
IX
This brings us finally to an assessment of the content of the
indigenous system of education. The long letter of the much-
quoted A.D. Campbell, collector of Bellary, had been used a
century earlier by London to establish that in India reading and
writing