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Parimala V. Rao

Imperial Roots of Nationalist Education Model in India 1880–1947

If you give education to the poor -

It “would teach them to despise their lot in life, instead of making them good servants in agriculture” (Tory MP Davies Giddy 1807)¹

“The student may be unhappy and discontented in his peculiar position […]” (Governor-General Auckland 1839)²

“teach him to be discontented with his lot.” (Bal Gangadhar Tilak 1881)³

“do you wish to make a peasant discontented with his cottage or his lot?” (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi 1909)⁴

Abstract The roots of decolonial projects reach far back to the colonial policies and experiences. The chapter analyses the strong links between the colonial and the post-colonial in the history of nationalist educational proposals. The emergence of the first nationalist educational discourses – particularly from Bal Gangadhar Tilak – appear as a re-elaboration of an ‘imperial idea’ that critically continued the practice of establishing modern education along the lines of class and gender hierarchisation. The author shows that its underlying aim was the (re)construction of an imagined pre-colonial social order disrupted by British colonial rule. Similarly, Gandhi’s famous educational proposals represented the spiritualization of this very imperial idea and did not pose an emancipatory alternative with regard to the questions of hierarchy and discrimination. The chapter highlights the character of nationalist education as an elite project. Education constituted ←43 | 44→a primary tool in the fabric of independence and liberation. But this tool was still both imperial and socially conservative in outlook and purpose.

Keywords: India, independence, nationalism, women, low castes

Introduction

The similarity in the ideas of a conservative member of the British parliament, the British governor-general of India who laid the foundation for its colonial education policy⁵ and the most vocal anti-colonial leaders who have assumed an iconic status is quite extraordinary. Popular writings about the history of education in India assert that the British colonisers imposed English education while anti-colonial nationalism rejected it and that M. K. Gandhi produced the most original and revolutionary alternative.⁶ The terms ‘English’ and ‘English education’, as used in the colonial records and the nationalist writings, denote modern education.

During the first ninety-three years (1757–1850) of its rule, the colonial state did not establish a single modern educational institution. It established Arabic and Sanskrit colleges and issued stipends and scholarships to study these languages. It incorporated nearly 70,000 indigenous vernacular schools by giving a small salary of five rupees to the teacher and established several schools where a “pre-colonial” vernacular curriculum was taught. Though the British liberals forced the colonial government to earmark 100,000 rupees a year for Indian education in 1813, the amount remained unutilised till 1823, and partially utilised till 1852–1853. During this period, few English schools were established by individual British officers, which were regularly closed down soon after the death or departure of their respective founders. Indians themselves established most of the modern educational institutions like the Hindu College at Calcutta, The Elphinstone College at Bombay, Pacheyappa College at Madras.

Two models of national education

The imperialist and nationalist historical narratives create binaries by side-lining the areas of convergence, co-operation and trans-national connections. In fact, ←44 | 45→the origin of the anti-colonial agitation itself was rooted in a transnational connection. Alan Octavian Hume (1829–1912), son of the radical Scottish member of British Parliament Joseph Hume, was the moving force behind the establishment of the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885. The liberal Indian and British leaders who joined Hume opposed oppressive agrarian policies and campaigned for the introduction of compulsory and free education. They were idealists, rationalists, and humanists who refused to turn a blind eye on the traditional social disabilities suffered by women and lower castes and the abject rural poverty. They believed that economic and social transformation achieved through universalisation of education and political agitation for India’s liberation from colonial rule should take place simultaneously.⁷

A group of leaders who called themselves as nationalists opposed this liberal agenda of the INC. The most prominent among them were Lajpat Rai (1865–1928), Aurobindo Ghosh (1872–1950), Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920) and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948). These nationalist leaders could be divided into two categories: those who did embrace modern education and those who opposed it. Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo Ghosh supported modern education but insisted on teaching cultural, religious, and philosophical achievements in ancient India. Lajpat Rai was the first to raise the issue of “national education in 1883” two years before the establishment of the Indian National Congress. His primary concern was peculiar to his province of Punjab. When the British conquered Punjab in 1849, they rejected the Punjabi language which was spoken by the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs as ‘a dialect’ and imposed Hindustani or what came to be later called Urdu in Persian script as the official language and the medium of instruction in schools.⁸ This was resented by all the three communities. William Arnold, the first Director of Public Instruction, termed this opposition in a racist way by declaring that, “to an Asiatic, everything is distasteful, which is new.”⁹

The resentment against the introduction of Hindustani was due to two reasons. Firstly, it was unfamiliar language and secondly, the British promoted Hindustani as the language of the Muslims other parts of India. This language ←45 | 46→was spoken by people in and around Delhi, which was a seat of erstwhile Mughal Empire. This was a politically motivated stand to keep the two communities separate and prevent a possible threat of combined opposition to the colonial rule. Officials openly declared that “divide et imperia had always been our best policy and must continue to be so.”¹⁰ The Muslims in various parts of India spoke the language of their Hindu neighbours and used Arabic for religious purposes. They spoke Bengali in Bengal Presidency, Gujarati and Marathi in Bombay Presidency, Tamil and Malayalam in Madras Presidency. The colonial state argued that the Muslims had forgotten their culture and established separate schools for Muslims to teach Hindustani.¹¹ These schools were not successful; the Muslim boys studied in them could not get jobs as they had no command over the local language. But they were successful in promoting a distinct Muslim identity.

Lajpat Rai developed his ideal of national education as a reaction to this policy. He also held a very high status and position in the Arya Samaj, the revivalist organisation established by Dayananda Saraswati in 1875. He wanted “to instil pride in the Indian nation” by making Punjabi as the medium of instruction in the educational institutions and teach ancient India’s cultural, and scientific achievements in addition to the modern curriculum.¹² His movement was region-specific.

Aurobindo Ghosh drew up a constructive plan for national education during the Swadeshi movement during 1905–1908. Aurobindo explained that the national education movement was an attempt “to rescue education from subversive to foreign and petty ends and to establish colleges and schools maintained and controlled by Indians which would give an education superior to the government-controlled education.” Aurobindo insisted that “we must acquire for her the best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. All these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so on to build up men and not machines.”¹³ So the national education model promoted ←46 | 47→by Lajpat Rai and Aurobindo Ghosh proposed to teach patriotism along with the modern curriculum.

The second model was developed first by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and then by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. They rejected modern education as it supposedly destroyed the structures of hierarchy. This paper limits its analysis to the second group as its protagonists were the most vocal advocates of national education and exhibited vehement opposition to modern education.

The sources for national education

During the colonial period, two sources were available to build educational systems upon India’s own pre-colonial system and the system as practised in England. Regarding the Indian system, the British officials and educators had conducted extensive village level enquiry and published reports for most parts of India. The Indian society was stratified in terms of caste, with Brahmins as priests and interpreters of sacred texts alone having access to the Sanskrit schools.

Vernacular schools, in contrast, were open to boys of all castes. Nearly two-thirds of students and a large portion of teachers in pre-colonial vernacular schools came from peasant and artisanal castes. In the Bombay Presidency, the village-wise data for Ratnagiri district is available. Here of the 1468 boys in schools 418 were non-Brahmin, and 393 belonged to artisanal castes, and the rest were Brahmins, Muslims and Jews.¹⁴ In Ahmedabad district, of the 2,973 boys, 410 were Brahmins, 1,772 trading castes (Wani), 791 boys belonged to the peasant and artisanal castes.¹⁵ In the Burdwan district, Bengal Presidency, out of 12,408 boys, 3,429 were Brahmins, and 4,361 were from artisanal castes, 750 boys came from untouchable castes. They studied with upper-caste boys in the same classroom.¹⁶ Caste was largely disregarded in schools. High caste Brahmin and Muslim boys studied under non- Brahmin teachers.¹⁷ Language and arithmetic formed the backbone of the curriculum in these schools. Vernacular translations of Sanskrit epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata, Amara Kosha, a treatise in ←47 | 48→grammar were used to teach language and grammar. Arithmetic, including multiplication tables, was taught in all these schools. Some schools taught boys to “cast up accounts and to draw out a bill of exchange, book-keeping and calculate compound interest” in their curriculum.¹⁸

The majority of teachers and students were ‘miserably poor,’ and parents of the boys paid a monthly fee and occasional gifts to the teachers. The poor students received education gratis.¹⁹ On average, the earnings of teachers were lower than that of agricultural labourers. In spite of the low economic status, poor teachers and students were well respected.²⁰ This was because of the underlying Indian belief that one could pursue knowledge only by giving up comforts and the Indian tradition had numerous examples, including that of Gautama the Buddha. So, the pre-colonial vernacular schools in India were open to boys from all castes, a very high standard of literacy and numeracy was taught, and the parents paid for such education. The chief drawback in terms of access was that girls were not allowed into these schools.

The education system in England

England too exhibited a similar trend in the pre-modern times. Richard Aldrich has quoted an instance of how “a beggar’s brat could become a bishop, and sit among the peers of the realm and lord’s sons and knights crouch to him.” However, in the sixteenth century, the establishment of the Anglican Church legitimised social stratification.²¹ The expansion of trade and Empire enabled the English elites to strengthen their position. The industrialisation further alienated the poor from education.²² By the eighteenth century, two parallel systems of education emerged, wherein the elite children were prepared by either private tutors or expensive private ‘preparatory schools’ to enter exclusive secondary ←48 | 49→schools called Grammar Schools. This type of institutions taught Greek, Latin, and mathematics, and served as a gateway to the universities.²³ The poor could send their children to Charity schools, Schools of Industry and Sunday schools which gave only rudimentary instruction in reading and reinforced the existing social stratification. Sunday schools were promoted by the social reformer Robert Raikes (1736–1811) who argued that for the children who worked the entire week, Sunday was a day of freedom, where “the misuse of Sunday appears by the declaration of every criminal to be their first step in the course of wickedness.” The parents paid one dime per week. The Sunday schools thus aimed to keep the children occupied to prevent crime.²⁴

The Schools of Industry were much more severe kind of system. As early as 1675 Thomas Firmian (1632–1697) had erected a spinning factory where children of four or five years of age were taught to read and spin. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the English philosopher John Locke argued that “the children of labouring people are an ordinary burden to the parish, and are usually maintained in idleness so that their labour also is generally lost to the public till they are 12 or 14 years old.” He, therefore, suggested that ‘working schools’ be set up in each parish in England for poor children so that they will be “from infancy [three years old] inured to work.” He went on to outline the economics of these schools, arguing not only that they will be profitable for the parish, but also that they will instil a good work ethic in the children.²⁵ Several industrial schools set up in the early part of the eighteenth century taught gardening, carpentry, cobbling and printing to boys and spinning, knitting, sewing and straw-plaiting to girls. The work done by the children was sold, and proceeds went to their maintenance. If the child’s earnings exceeded the cost of his keep, he was given a cash payment. The idea was to make schools self-supporting. In some schools of industry, children were taught reading and writing, but there was always the temptation to emphasise the occupational aspect to cover expenses. The boys’ schools were largely a failure as their products did not command the market like ←49 | 50→those from girl’s schools. These schools declined due to industrialisation as even very young children came to be employed in modern factories.

The underlying idea common to all three kinds of schools was that the poor ought to be trained to accept and internalize the existing social stratification. Even though the educational attainments of these children were in no way a threat to the elite monopoly of Grammar schools and the universities, it was still resented. It was argued that the education of the poor would result in discontent and rebellion. The poor occupied a position in society which had been assigned to them, and if they were to be labourers, they should be used to their position from the first.²⁶

The National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church was established in 1811 in London. The society established a network of schools for the poor.²⁷ The purpose of the system was to “infuse […] a cheerful and uniform subjection to all lawful authority,” and to keep them away from “discontentment.”²⁸ The Church wished that “the children to learn through their readers about the demarcation between rich and poor and the mutual dependence of each in a harmonious society. Contentment in the station of life to which God had assigned them was an important precept.” A fable meant for children gave the example of what disaster would befall a person if the various parts of the human body went on strike in protest at the seeming greed and selfishness of the stomach. The fable explains that the stomach is to the body what the rich man is to the poor man in society, and concludes that “a rich man, even though he may care for no one but himself, can hardly avoid benefitting his neighbours.”²⁹ Even this disciplining of children from the most impoverished section of the society was not free; the parents had to pay one shilling per quarter on first Monday in January, April, July, and October.³⁰ So the poor paid for being disciplined by the Church.

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These measures were eventually opposed and countered by English liberals. They were successful in getting various education acts passed only after 1870 and compulsory and free education was successfully implemented throughout England.

The colonial state policy in India

The colonial state in India virtually followed the system that was practised in England. It closed down the schools established by the Scottish officers like Thomas Munro, T. B. Macaulay, Robert Shortread and others as they contained boys from “lower classes and miserable background”.³¹ It was while upturning Macaulay’s Minute of 1835 by his own Minute of 1839 that governor-general Auckland argued that if modern education was given to the poor “the student may be unhappy and discontented in his peculiar position.” It was not Macaulay’s Minute but Auckland’s Minute that laid the foundation for the educational policy of the colonial state. It encouraged the admission of the children of landlords and repeatedly told the headmasters to dismiss the boys from a poor background; it closed down over 100 schools as they had “no sons of the landed gentry.” It carefully trained and appointed Brahmins as schoolmasters.³² It openly opposed the admission of poor Brahmin as well as lower caste boys by stating that, “if the beggarly Brahmins are freely admitted into the government schools, what is there to prevent all the despised castes - the Dhers, Mahars from flocking in numbers […] If education is open to men of superior intelligence from any community, and with such qualifications there would be nothing to prevent their aspiring to the highest offices open to native talent.”³³

In spite of these elitist measures, the poor students formed the majority of the school and college-going children during the colonial period. The British headmasters often ignored the government directives to remove poor students from schools.³⁴ Secondly, the missionaries extended free education to all. The leading members of the Indian National Congress like Dadabhai Naoroji and ←51 | 52→Gopal Krishna Gokhale who fought for radical social, economic and educational reforms had risen from poverty. So both the Indian tradition and the existing social reality pointed in the same direction; namely that, what India needed was equal educational access and good quality education for all.

Nationalising an imperial idea

The leading anti-colonial political leaders like Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had, however, different ideas on what constituted an education for Indians. By rejecting the reformers as “anglicised, un-national leaders,”³⁵ Tilak and later Gandhi attempted to provide an alternative socio-educational philosophy that had a far-reaching impact on education.

Tilak came from a family of landlords, moneylenders and government officials. He entered the public arena in 1881, through his weekly publication The Mahratta. He used it effectively to oppose colonial policies and to attack the reformers. He defended the caste system in the name of “cleanliness,” and declared that “the Hindu religion owed its existence to the caste system.”³⁶ The term caste is a modern one, and the Hindu religious texts refer to this stratification as chaturvarna or four-fold division and the system which specifies how each caste should behave, follow certain occupations and punishment for those who transcend it is referred to as varnashrama dharma. Tilak used all three terms, sometimes in the same speech or editorial.

To begin with, Tilak was not against modern education. He actually declared that “we were an ignorant mass of people,” before its “civilising influence.”³⁷ However, he opposed the reformers’ campaign for equal educational access for all sections of the society by arguing that, such a measure took the lower castes away from their traditional occupation and traditional existence:

You take away a farmer’s boy from the plough, the blacksmith’s boy from the bellows and the cobbler’s boy from his awl with the object of giving him liberal education, […] you remove him from a sphere where he would have been contented happy and useful to those who depend upon him and teach him to be discontented with his lot and with the government.³⁸

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Tilak emphasised that teaching a modern curriculum for the lower castes had “no earthly use in practical life,” and would actually “do more harm than good to them.” He insisted that they should be taught “only those subjects which would be necessary for their living, […] befitting their rank and station in life.” They should be taught “most ordinary trades like those of a carpenter, blacksmith mason and tailor.”³⁹ Later he urged the government to remodel the courses prescribed for rural schools and “introduce in them agricultural subjects such as preparing of soil, the tending of bullocks, the implements of husbandry etc.”⁴⁰ He asked the colonial government to limit English education to affluent Brahmins and set up separate schools to meet the educational requirements of “variously civilized communities.”⁴¹ Against this background, it is hardly surprising that he openly opposed the admission of boys from untouchable castes into schools.⁴²

What is interesting in these early discussions is that, Tilak although he called himself a nationalist, yet warned the colonial government “that the interests of the society and the government are similar […] by placing the latest results arrived at by moral and political science in a young graduate’s hand the government is encouraging the reformers to ask for extreme reforms in the society which would lead to reformers demanding similar extreme reform in the governance.”⁴³

By 1891, Tilak changed his stand. The British and Indian reformers were successful in getting the Age of Consent Bill passed. This Bill was introduced in the Imperial Legislature by Andrew Scoble and Dayaram Gidumal and was a limited measure, aiming at the abolishment of child marriage and meant to raise the marriageable age of girls to 12. During the debate, the reformers argued that the additional years secured in a girls’ life could be used to educate them. Tilak vehemently opposed it by arguing that if girls were educated “India would lose its nationality its individuality as a separate nation”.⁴⁴ By quoting the British newspapers, he argued that “the brain of a woman on an average weighed less by five ounces than that of a man.”⁴⁵ He even stated that women reformers like Rakmabais, Pandita Ramabai “should be punished for the same reason as there ←53 | 54→is punishment for thieves, adulterers and murderers.”⁴⁶ After the passing of the Age of Consent Act, Tilak became a vocal advocate of anti-colonial nationalism and national education. He placed the traditional caste hierarchy - varnashrama dharma at the heart of the Indian nationhood and argued that “had it not been for the influence of caste, the Hindu nation would have long ceased to exist.” He asserted that activities of the reformers “would kill the caste and with it kill the vitality of the nation.”⁴⁷ Since modern education undermined “respect for old institutions and beliefs” and led to “religious nihilism,” it was a great impediment to Indian nationalism.⁴⁸ Tilak argued that religious and vocational education alone should form the basis of the curriculum to restore respect for “old institutions, old values and old idol”. Tilak explained that with “old institution” he was referring to the caste stratification and by “old values” he hinted to the honour and respect paid by the lower castes to the “old idol”, the Brahmins.⁴⁹ Since modern education had upturned all three, national education was vital to re-construct a strong Indian nation.⁵⁰ Tilak opposed the teaching of Sanskrit poetry or even Hindu philosophy. He explained that “much of the religious instruction should consist of dogma pure and simple. The schoolboys will have to be told dogmatically that there is God […] of course; the schoolboy who wants an ocular proof of the existence of God will have to be caned into silence.”⁵¹

Tilak and his supporters established national schools during the first phase of anti-colonial struggle (called the Swadeshi movement, 1905–1912). These schools were not popular with the people and soon disappeared. The quality of literacy that was advocated in the schools was very low. They opposed the efforts of Gopal Krishna Gokhale’s Compulsory Education Bill 1912 and the efforts of the Maharaja of Baroda to implement compulsory education in his province.⁵² During the public debates surrounding the passing of the Compulsory Education Bill, they argued that “the soul of education is really information; hence, it is sufficient to give information to boys.” Since everybody loves to write his name, ←54 | 55→he should be taught to do so. They also suggested “the appointment of a music master to play music in public and arrange slide shows of Hindu religious places to attract people.”⁵³ Beyond this, the masses did not require education.

Tilak started the Indian Home Rule League, modelled after the Irish Home Rule League in 1916 to intensify his agitation against colonial rule. Home Rule aimed at the transfer of India’s internal administration into Indian hands while India continued to be part of the British Empire. The justification he gave for Home Rule was that chaturvarna had declined under the influence of modern education and India needed Home Rule to protect varnashrama dharma – the caste system.⁵⁴ Tilak argued that “the colonial education discouraged students from learning anything from their elders about the actual surroundings […] only in the national schools independent of government control, adequate education in making good citizen can be given.”⁵⁵ In these schools the children should be taught “the theory of karma and the existence of god,” and the pedagogy “is found in our Puranas” (Hindu Mythological stories).⁵⁶ The theory of karma in the Hindu religion provides justification for a person’s low or high birth, and the Puranas upheld these justifications linking it up with the will of god. The instruction given to boys was mostly oral.⁵⁷ So, the aim of national education was to make children accept their caste and economic status in the society and not question them.

Two important issues can be deducted from these developments. Firstly, Tilak did not advocate the abolition of modern schools, colleges and universities. Secondly, the national education advocated by Tilak and comprised of religious and vocational education was essentially for the lower caste and lower class Indians. This meant that the affluent upper-caste Brahmins would have access to modern education and thereby control important positions of power, while the poor from the upper caste and the lower castes would be taught to accept the social and economic hierarchy. This was not based on the pre-colonial Indian education system but certainly derived from the class-based education system of the imperial rulers.

Tilak’s national education could not be dismissed off as rhetoric produced during the time of anti-colonial struggle to cater to popular demand or to seek ←55 | 56→the support of the more conservative sections of the society. His supporters controlled ten out of eleven municipalities in the Marathi speaking areas of the Bombay Presidency where they refused to expand educational infrastructure or support the admission of lower caste boys, let alone the education of girls.⁵⁸ They also refused to implement compulsory education even after the provincial Bill was passed in 1918.⁵⁹ Tilak, however, died on 1 August 1920, and the leadership passed on into the hands of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Spiritualising an imperial idea

If Tilak successfully nationalised the imperial idea of keeping the poor, girls and the lower castes from getting any meaningful education and emphasise religious instruction as real national education, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi went a step ahead and spiritualised it. Gandhi was born into privilege; his father was a prime minister of the princely states of Porbandar and Rajkot. By his own admission, Gandhi was an average student and barely managed to pass the examinations,⁶⁰ yet he was sent to England for higher education. Later he went to South Africa in 1893 to represent a legal case of an Indian trader and spent the next 14 years there experimenting with and refining his social and political ideas. When the First World War broke out in 1914, he recruited volunteers for ambulance corps for the British. He returned to India in 1915. At that time the Indian National Congress was losing its liberal leaders one by one. The death of A. O. Hume (1912), Gokhale (1915), Dadabhai Naoroji (1917), William Wedderburn (1918) left the party virtually leaderless. Consequently, Tilak dominated the political arena. Gandhi supported the Home Rule agitation, but also engaged in the recruitment of young Indians as soldiers for the British army during the First World War, arguing that “we should become partners in the empire.”⁶¹ In 1919, the colonial government wanted to remove English as a medium of instruction in high schools, while retaining it in the universities. If implemented, ←56 | 57→this measure virtually would have prevented thousands of high school students from entering the universities, and only Indian landed gentry who studied in exclusive schools alone would have been in a position to enter the universities. The landed gentry was known by various names like Talukdar, Inamdar, Jagirdar institutions, which denoted various demarcations within the landholders and Chiefs Colleges and Rajkumar Institutions where the sons of the Indian royal families studied. There was a widespread opposition, which was led by members of the Indian elite like Srinivasair, the advocate general of Madras, Krishna Nair, the Diwan (prime minister) of Travancore, or Sitanath Roy – one of the biggest landlords of Bengal. The colonial state could get support only from Gandhi, and the Lord Bishop of Madras, an Anglican Bishop, which is used to substantiate its final decision. The Bishop argued that “English is an intolerable burden on the students; foreign languages impose crushing weight upon the whole educational system of India. English has created cleavages between English educated and the mass of the population.”⁶² This was virtually a verbatim representation of ideas that Gandhi held regarding modern education. The British government, however, could not implement it immediately as the political agitation intensified.

Gandhi attacked modern education as early as 1908 in his book Hind Swaraj – Indian Home Rule. He denounced modern education as godless claiming that “India will never be godless, rank atheism cannot flourish in this land.”⁶³ He attacked the modern curriculum by stating that:

A study of geography, astronomy, algebra, geometry is false education and it is not for the millions. To give millions knowledge of English is to enslave them. Our ancient school system is enough. Character building has the first place in it, and that is primary education.⁶⁴

Gandhi went on to argue as governor-general Auckland and Tilak had done before him, “do you wish to make a peasant discontented with his cottage or his lot?” He also declared that “our ancient school system is enough.” Gandhi criticised the supporters of compulsory education as “those carried away by the flood of western thought.”⁶⁵ Like Tilak, Gandhi too argued that modern education is “calculated to wean the masses from their traditional culture. They are never taught to have any pride in their surroundings, and the government ←57 | 58→schools had entirely denationalized the masses.”⁶⁶ During the compulsory education debate, Gopal Krishna Gokhale had suggested using eight annas (half a rupee) salt tax to fund compulsory education. Gandhi claimed that Gokhale was his political guru, but did not support Gokhale’s Bill and later famously made his opposition to salt tax central to his anti-colonial struggle during 1930–1931.

Extraordinary political developments took place in India during 1919–1920. The post-war political reform earlier promised by the British did not lead to Home Rule. This frustrated the rank and file of the Indian National Congress. At the same time, the government passed the Rowlett Act under which anyone suspected of anti-British activities could be imprisoned for two years without trial. There was widespread protest against this law, and in one such peaceful meeting at Jallianwallah Bagh in Punjab, a British police officer opened fire, killing and injuring more than 1,000 unarmed persons. Around the same time, the Muslims in India began Khilafat – a pan-Islamic movement against the British, which added to widespread discontent among all sections of the society against the colonial rule.⁶⁷

When Gandhi began his non-cooperation movement in 1919, as a part of the larger programme of boycotting the government offices and courts, he asked the students to boycott the schools and colleges. He and his supporters established national schools. These schools rejected the modern curriculum as well as the English language. Gandhi emphatically declared that:

If I had the powers of a despot, I would today stop the tuition of our boys and girls through a foreign medium. If I had my way, I would certainly destroy the majority of the present text-books and cause to be written text-books which have a bearing on and correspondence with the home life, so that a boy as he learns may react upon his immediate surroundings.⁶⁸

Gandhi argued that:

The curriculum and pedagogic ideas which form the fabric of modern education are foreign, and till they are repudiated there never can be national education. The force that maintains society together is a series of high loyalties, loyalty to faith, calling, parents, ←58 | 59→family, dharma. The ancient educational system in India certainly maintained a long tradition of pride and service.⁶⁹

Elaborating on this, Gandhi explained that:

When our children are admitted to schools, they do not need slate and pencil and books, but simple village tools which they can handle freely and remuneratively. This means a revolution in educational methods. Only, reading and writing would come during the last year when really the boy or girl is ready for learning the alphabet correctly. Text-books especially for children are for the most part useless when they are not harmful.⁷⁰

These were exactly the issues that the nationalists and particularly Tilak had campaigned on for four decades. The only difference was that Tilak openly advocated it for the lower castes and classes, while defending the right of affluent Brahmins to modern education. Gandhi tactically avoided this mistake. He remained silent on higher education and did not ask for the abolition of English in higher education and the universities but directed his educational experiment to the masses.

The schools established by Gandhi and his supporters were called ‘self-supporting’ schools. The children as young as 6 years had to spin yarn which was sold and the money thus earned was used for giving salary to the teachers and upkeep of the schools. Gandhi declared that “if every school introduced spinning, it would revolutionise our ideas of financing education.” He calculated that:

The boy works at the wheel for four hours daily, he will produce every day ten tolas of yarn and thus earn for his school one anna per day. […] A boy can earn 1-10-0 per month and a class of 30 boys would yield an income of 48-12-0 per month.⁷¹

Since the people who supported the non-cooperation movement did not show similar enthusiasm for his educational activity, Gandhi tried to convince them. He told the people that “of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideals of liberty, and developing accuracy of thought.”⁷² He also asserted that “the government schools have unmanned us, rendered us helpless and godless.”⁷³