How the British screwed India while acting Saviours? #Education

Preface

Try finding the socio economic status of Indian sub continent during and earlier years before the British and Portuguese arrived in India. You will find almost none as if that period India had melted away thanks to amenable spineless pot boiling dishonest historians who wrote only to curry favours from the powerful in a spirit that’s analogous to contemporary news media sarcastically called presstitutes today.

Did the Europeans invade a land that was steeped in Superstition and where people lived in abject poverty as was the case when British left India in 1947? The ruthless British were credited with modernisation of India today, for the education system in vogue, for launching Industries and for the modern medicine that exists in India today? Some even believe that the British were better than contemporary Indian leaders especially those of the sychophantic corrupt congress which didn’t make a transformational impact on Indian economy. It’s time to check facts and this Iam aware is a long search for truth that has been long shielded  from Indians and the world. Were the Indians as bad as many westerners and many educated Indians claim that India was?

It’s a hilarious claim  that British contributed to modern India. India which was ahead of her times and who was most modern with high standards in every area of human endeavour is now being heckled by English educated Indians. The very purpose for which British dismantled the cultural systems in India. Work delivered by the British. But even today, these English educated or Hindu hating Indians refuse to listen to facts for fear of changing their opinions. They are crediting savagery and dacoity that went on for centuries. If you sharply notice, these hats will behave more British than the colonialists both in attitude and bragtitude. 

Am making an effort to understand the India that was and the India that was it was forced to be by the might of gun powder. Does British self pat and claim to credit themselves as having united the sub continent true? Was India the poorest nation steeped in poverty, ignorance and superstitions that was blessed by the British and other unselfish European crusaders in the areas of health, education and industry? Was India mired in backwardness and did the Europeans invade just another Africa in India? If British had contributed to Indian education, why was 93% of India illiterate when they left India. I was shocked and amazed at the facts that stared at me and long hidden from public perception. 

Education in India before and after British arrival

It is a must to read Dharampal’s The Beautiful Tree to understand the indigineous education that existed before British arrived. India was dotted with patasalas, gurukulus and even some madarasas. Thomas Munro observed that every village had a school. Even in early 1800s, Bihar and Bengal was estimated to be home for a lakh schools claimed the surveys of one William Adam. The data further revealed the following facts as claimed by him:

“The proportion of those attending schools in India was no less than in UK and Indian schooling was more extensive than that was taught there. The content of studies and method of teaching were far ahead too. The school attendance was more in the decayed period of early 1800s especially in Madras Presidency than what existed in UK”.

William Adam’s report known as Adam’s report studied education in Bengal. This report found that elementary education was divided into four stages. The first stage spread over ten days taught to form the letters of the alphabets. The second stage extending from two and a half to four years taught to use the palm leaf as a writing material and the student was taught to read and write , learn the Cowrie table, the numeration table, the Katha table and the Ser table. The third stage comprised of learning mathematical calculations including subtraction and multiplication were taught over a 2-3 year period. In the fourth stage spread over two years the student was taught to write on paper and was expected to read the Ramayana, Manas Mangal, etc. 

We can see that admirers of British education mocking at us and claiming that higher education in India was due to the influx of Christian education brought into the country. The government of India completed an educational survey during 1823-24. It was found that despite poverty and disturbance inflicted by the British, there were a whopping 740 colleges in the Madras Presidency. An undated enumeration by collectors claimed that 1,094 institutions of higher learning in the same area. There were 279 in Rajahmundry, 173 in Coimbatore, 171 in Guntur, 109 in Tanjore, 107 in Nellore, 69 in North Arcot, 53 in Chingleput, 51 in Salem and so on. These were not mass educational production centres but focused on students with a handful, the way education ought to be. 

What was taught in these institutions were the Vedas, the epics, The shashtras, the puranas, The Jyotish shastras and well known books like Ganeeta.

Statistical study proved that there were no discrimination of religion and caste in learning. The 1823-24 survey concluded that out of the total students in schools and colleges, less than one third were Brahmins and more than two third were from other castes including the shudras. Obviously such figures will hurt dividing forces like the Dravidian and Dalit parties so they resort to racist and hate practices to make victims of vote bank in contemporary India. Girls too learnt and it was found Muslim girls in Malabar were much more than the hindu girls. And made up for one fourth of total students. 

Home learning was in vogue then with the rich and elitist families. All that mattered was education that respected roots and an understanding of the past and present to conceptualise a future. Forty five years after Adam’s report, Dr G W Leitner did a study on Punjab. The students of the indigenous schooling were far more skilled and the modern British education students couldn’t compete even in simple commutation. The decay in education had begun.

Initially, the East Indian Trading co focused on plunder and profit making. But as time went on they decided to create an elite amongst Indians who would be English in behaviour and would interpret and act as a go between them, the rulers and the masses. This was called downward filtration theory. The posts of JCOs in defence services were an offshoot of this desire. 

Two missionaries, Charles Grant and William Wilberforce forced East India co to give up its non intervention policy in education and sought amendment to the Education act of 1813 so English can be taught along with Christian education and literature. The amendment also permitted spread of Christianity. In 1835,Macaulay’s Education Policy unveiled the stings that were to bite on indigenous native oriental education and replace it with western education. The focus was shifted to providing English education to the elite, made English the language of judiciary, availability of English books were either made free or cheap and funds allotted exclusively for these purposes. 

The Wood’s despatch of 1854, the hunter commission of 1882-83, the Saddler commission ensured that the indigenous education died by giving and limiting subordinate jobs in government services to those who knew English. English became a glorified language as was desired by Christian missionaries. Vast tracts of prime property were given away free of cost by the British for establishing Christian Schools and Colleges and funds sanctioned for infrastructure from the money plundered from the Hindus. And Muslims. Now you know why Christian Educational institutions have huge land parcels in every city in India. The Churches didn’t lag behind either.

Yet there are intellectuals in India who are in total love of whatever the British did for education in India. Will Durant says that when Brits arrived there was this system of community schools throughout India. East India company destroyed these village communities and took no steps to replace schools.  Whatever the Crown established later, exacted a tuition fees though small to a western purse, loomed large on a family hovering on starvation. The Brits in late 1800s were spending eight cents per person on education while spending eighty three cents per person on army. Such magnanimity!

In 1911, Gokhale introduced an act for universal compulsory private education in India. It was defeated by the British and government appointed members. In 1916, another similar attempt was made by Patel but was defeated similarly. It was clear then that the British desired to keep people in ignorance and accompanying poverty and whatever was done was limited through those eight cents was on English education in secondary schools and universities. Will Durant said “ Young Hindus after striving through poverty to prepare themselves for college, found that they had merely let themselves to a ruthless process that aimed to denationalise and deIndianise them and turn them into imitative Englishmen”.

The excuse given by British was that caste interfered with education. Facts say it didn’t and caste became a stick to hit Hindus. Caste was not a factor that didn’t interfere with crowding of hindu classes indiscriminately in railway coaches, tram cars, factories and army. It ought not to have interfered in schools and schools may have helped conquer caste. The responsibility of of the British for India’s illiteracy seems to be beyond question says Sunderland. 

During 1882-1907, a period of quarter century the appropriation for education in British India increased by $2000000 while appropriation for the fratricidal army increased by $ 43000000. Instead of encouraging education, the British India government encouraged alcohol and narcotics. Warren Hastings praised Indians thus: The temperance of the people is demonstrated in the simplicity of their food and their total abstinence from spirituous liquor’s and other substances of intoxication. Even as trading posts were established in India, saloons were opened for the sale of rum and East India company made handsome profits by them. The govt revenue in 1922 from sale of alcohol stood at $60000000 annually, three times the appropriation to schools and universities. In addition were 7000 opium shops operated by the British Govt in the most conspicuous places in every town.

The central legislature alarmed by the effect of opium on people, passed a bill prohibiting the growth or sale of opium in India. The benevolent Government refused to act on it. The sale of drug brought one ninth of the total revenue apart from debilitating a large section of population and British saw themselves profiting and benefiting and were unwilling to show Christian mercy on masses that made their nation an economic super power. It was indeed ruthless drugging on people by men pretending to be Christians. 

Lord Macaulay in 1833 addressing the House of Commons spoke: It was..the practice of the miserable tyrants whom we found in India, that when they dreaded the capacity and spirit of some distinguished subjects, and yet could not venture to murder him, to administer to him daily dose of pousta, a preparation of opium , the effect of which was in a few months to destroy all the bodily and mental powers of the wretch who was drugged with it, and turn him into a helpless idiot. That detestable artifice, more horrible than assassination itself , was worthy of those who employed it. It is no model for the English nation. We shall never consent to administer the pousta to a whole community, to stupefy and paralyse a great people.

Mahatma Gandhi opined that India of his time was more illiterate than the India a hundred years earlier. The colonial rulers had snuffed out India centric education to replace it with a British English education so Indians turned contemptuous of themselves, their own heritage and will admire all that was western as progressive. Even the white skin came in for admiration and continues to be so, seventy years after the colonialists left India .

To those brilliant who credit British for Indian education, a request. Your claim that churches, missionaries and British laid the foundation for education in India proves your ignorance, inability to know your roots and past achievements and a desire to look modern by praising the English. The British were responsible for bringing down literacy to an abysmal 7% when they left India but credit to them that they succeeded in their pretensions as saviours of India while stabbing the Hindu nation ruthlessly. If any Indian is not revolted by what the British did to India, he doesn’t deserve this country. Nor can be called a human.

(To be continued).