Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
“The Educational policy devised by Lord Curzon has given a correct analysis of the brighter and darker aspects of the contemporary Indian education; but unfortunately though the diagnosis was correct, the remedy suggested was neither appropriate nor opportune. Lord Curzon was right in many things he said; but it was the way in which he wanted to reform that raised grave suspicions in the minds of the educated Indians. They thought that this reform move camouflaged some deep political motive” A.N. Basu , ‘Education in Modern India’.
Lord Curzon came to India as Viceroy in 1899. Lord Curzon came to India in a very crucial period of Indian history. This was the beginning of 20th century and severe famine and epidemic of Plague had crippled the social life of the people. But the people of the country started realising the need for a system of education that would represent our national character. Several national leaders like B.G. Tilak, Annie Besant, C. R. Das, Dadabhai Naoroji, Gokhale had emerged and helped in the development of the spirit of nationalism.
The education system, which the British had worked out to consolidate their rule, within four decades, produced results contrary to their expectations. The Curzon reforms reflected the fact that necessary changes had to be made corresponding to the needs of the ruling classes.
The beginning of the 20th century marked a great change in the educational policy in India. The Laissez faire system of education introduced by the Woods Despatch of1854 and reiterated by the India Education Commission of 1882 was reversed by Lord Curzon. The liberalization of educational policy during the latter half of the 19th century was viewed with distaste by Lord Curzon as it resulted in increased criticism of governmental policies. Therefore, Curzon planned to reform the educational structure by officialising Indian education through higher control
He formulated a rather ambitious programme of reforms to be introduced into the administration of the country. One of these reforms related to education. Every one in the country, who has had anything to do with education in India, was of opinion that the country was very backward in education and that the system of education there in vogue was defective. It laid too great stress on the literary side and did not fit people for the battle of life; it gave undue importance to the English language and Western modes of thought, at the cost of the vernaculars and the indigenous civilization of the country; it encouraged “cram” at the cost of real merit; it produced a class of imitators and left little scope or none for originality; it invited third class men from England to fill the highest positions in the educational service of the country, and placed the best native intellect and talent under them to starve and rot for want of opportunities; it did not recognize the duty of the Government to look after the education of the child from the beginning until he was fit to fight his own way in the world.
The educational system of the country required radical changes, but what was most needed was that the Government should be prepared to spend adequate sums of money for its spread and in order to make it efficient. Lord Curzon’s pronouncements and programme therefore raised great hopes in the minds of the people. His University Commission was simply flooded with suggestions and statements from Indians and Anglo-Indians. The two classes, however, discussed the matter from entirely different standpoints : The Indians wanted greater facilities for education, more schools, more colleges, more masters, more stipends, an extension of primary school education, abler and better-paid teachers, freedom of private enterprise, ample provision for technical and industrial education ; but what they wanted most and cared for most was that education should be more nationalized and humanized. The Anglo-Indians wanted a curtailment of the educational opportunities, a greater and stricter control of private enterprise, a raising of university standards, and a system of education which would curb the rising generation and make them more easily amenable to discipline and obedience.
Lord Curzon did go into all these questions, but the decision arrived at convinced the educated Indians that the motive which underlay Lord Curzon’s policy was the tightening of government control, the strangling of all independence in matters educational, and the eventual weakening of all national movement and national sentiment.
Lord Curzon’s Secret Educational Conference
Lord Curzon’s educational reforms started with the Simla conference held in September 1901, a starting point of an era of increased educational activity and earnest prosecution of educational reforms The first step in the educational reform that Lord Curzon initiated was the holding of a conference at Simla in September 1901. This was the first conference on all India basis. The conference was attended by the Provincial Directors of Public Instruction, representatives of the Christian Missionaries and a few selected educationists. But the representatives of the Indian people were conspicuously absent. The conference continued for a fortnight. Lord Curzon himself presided over the conference and took a very prominent part in drafting the resolution. All total 150 resolutions were passed, which were mostly unanimous and which covered all the stages of Indian education from primary to university level.
The Commission submitted its report in June 1902 and its major recommendations were: enlarged legal powers to the older Universities, local limits of Universities, recognition of Universities as teaching bodies, senate, syndicate, and the faculties to be more representative of the affiliated institutions and properly constituted governing bodies for each college.
These resolutions formed the basis of the Government Resolution of 1904 on Education Policy.
The fact that he admitted no Indian to the meeting of the Secret Educational Conference held at Simla, when he formulated the government policy, strengthened that idea. His University Legislation shocked the country beyond measure and left no doubt whatsoever that what he aimed at was a complete official control of all education in India. Educated Indians read between the lines and concluded that it was a mistake to look to the Government to do things or to follow a policy which might quicken the national pulse, strengthen the Nationalist sentiment, or add to the efficiency of the people so as to fit them to stand on their legs and desire to get rid of the leading strings in which they were held by the British.
Lord Curzon’s Primary Education Policy
Actually, the policy of Lord Curzon marked the beginning of a new era in the history of primary education in India. He correctly identified that money was the main hurdle to achieving the objectives of primary education. Accordingly, he followed the policy of sanctioning liberal grants from the Government funds for its expansion and consequently there was a considerable increase in the number of pupils attending primary schools. Curzon also stopped the discriminatory system of payment by results and introduced the more scientific method of paying recurring and non-recurring grants to remove financial difficulties. As a result the number of recognised primary schools increased from 93,604 in 1901-02 to 1,18,262 in 1911-12, i.e., within a period of 10 years .
Lord Curzon also tried to remove traditionalism in our primary education system and introduced subjects like Agriculture and Physical education in the primary school curriculum to make it more useful, practical and modern. He made provision for training of the teachers and make their pay scale improved and uniform.
Besides these, Curzon tried to introduce improved method of teaching like the Kindergarten method and gave importance on developing the reasoning power rather than mechanical memorization. By observing all these we must admit that Lord Curzon tried to bring the spirit of modernization in our primary education.
Primary Education and Elementary Education used Interchangeably hereafter. Government was in favor of it initially but later rejected it on the ground that the scheme was not well worked out and that all the local governments were against it and the suspicion that the intention was to overthrow British Raj
In the well-known resolution of January 1901 the sole purpose was to revolutionise school teaching in Bengal. Presidency by the introduction of a system under which ‘Children are trained and not taught, this is to say, trained to do and learn things by themselves. It strove to activate the innate intelligence of the children for its proper growth. The school work was to become for children a developed part of their everyday life, while habits of accuracy and obedience were to be inculcated by the process of stick-laying and simple physical exercise and action song ”
These high goals were felt quite difficult to realise, but the intention of the authors of resolution of 1901 was that “bad teaching with a good education system will produce better results than bad teaching with a bad and unsound system”. The resolution also mentioned clearly that the then prevailing system was quite mechanical system of training, where in the memory was used for imparting education.
Curzon’s Secondary Education Policy
As a whole, we may term his secondary education policy as ‘successful’ because it raised the quality of secondary education. His policy to make the secondary schools receive recognition from the Government as well as from the university helped in improving its quality of education. Many private secondary schools had to close down for the failure to get recognition because of which many nationalist Indians criticized Lord Curzon for his policy and expressed that he wanted to crush nationalistic upsurge. But his strict policy helped to improve not only the quality of education but also the quality of administration of secondary schools also.
Secondly, as the schools had to take recognition from the University, they had to give importance on teacher training and raising the academic standard in order to send their students for matriculation examination.
Thirdly, it is worth mentioning that it was Lord Curzon who insisted that mother tongue should be the medium of instruction up to middle level. For this measures many poor students were able to receive education through their own languages. This paved the way for introducing mother tongue as a medium of instruction in secondary schools in later stages.
Curzon’s University Education Policy
But the unfortunate result of Curzon’s reforms was the excessive officialisation of the University administration. No doubt Curzon was trying to bring education under the control of the Government to suppress the nationalist movement in India, but his educational policy introduced efficiency and improvement in the quality of education and was the basis of the educational system for many years to come.
It is clear from the above discussion that Lord Curzon wanted to control the functioning of the universities and thereby break the autonomy of the universities. In the recommendations of the Indian University Commission of 1902, there was no proposal for establishing new university. Moreover, there was no representation of any Indian in the two Commissions because of this for his policy did not find favour with the Indian Public. Although two Indian members— G. D. Banerjee and Syed Hasan were included in later stage yet even the then Indian public did not feel happy. They were suspicious of the intention of Curzon and felt that through policy that the Govt. wanted to suppress nationalism. Many private colleges had to close down because of the policy of shrinkage of higher education taken by Lord Curzon. The number of degree colleges reduced from 192 in 1902 to 170, within a span of 10 years. This had received widespread criticism. But we cannot deny the fact that Curzon gave importance on improving the standard and quality of higher education. The credit for initiating a university improvement campaign was moving slowly but steadily towards its well defined objectives.
Indians and Lord Curzon at Cross Purposes
Indians saw that they and Lord Curzon were at cross purposes. They aimed at self-government and freedom; Lord Curzon aimed at prolongation of the period of their bondage and the permanence of the existing political conditions. We wanted independence; he wanted us to be dependent on the British. We wanted to quicken the pace of national advance; he wanted to slacken it. We wanted to be assertive and self-reliant; he wanted us to be submissive and in permanent control and tutelage. We wanted to go forward, he mistrusted us. We wanted a policy of honest confidence; instead of that he inaugurated a policy of suspicion. We wanted unity, he proceeded to bring into existence fresh causes of friction between community and community. We wanted the marshaling of our forces in the common cause, he proceeded to divide us and to keep us apart. We wanted consolidation, and he started active disintegration. We wanted an extension of representative, Lord Curzon did his best to discredit the institutions that had been granted and to set back the hands of the clock.
The Congress Deputation to England in 1905
The leaders of the Indian National Congress saw all this ; they resisted Lord Curzon’s policy rather boldly; they spoke with courage; they sought his patronage and sent their president to wait on him. Lord Curzon refused to see him and thus slapped the Congress in the face. He characterised their activities as the letting off of “gas.” Their resolutions he looked upon with contempt because, as he said, nothing had ever come out of them. The leaders felt offended, they fretted and foamed. But all they resolved to do was to appeal to the British public. So a deputation was sent to England in 1905 to place the grievances of India before the British public.
This deputation was composed of Messrs. Gokhale . They addressed a large number of meetings in Great Britain, made many friends, saw some politicians; but they were not very hopeful as to the results. One of them on his return (the present writer) struck an unmistakable note of despondency. He frankly told his people that the British democracy was too busy with their own affairs to do anything for them, that. the British press was not willing to champion Indian aspirations, that it was hard to get a hearing in England, and that the influence and the credit of the Anglo-Indians was too strong to be met successfully by the necessarily inadequate agitation which the Congress could set up in England. On his return to India the message which he brought to his people was, that if they really cared for their country, they would have to strike the blow for freedom themselves, and that they would have to furnish unmistakable proofs of their earnestness.
His message was in no way different from what Mr. Hume had told the graduates of the Calcutta University in 1883, or in his pamphlets “The Star in the East” and the “Old Man’s Hope.”
The Congress of 1905
This was the first time that an Indian publicist had spoken in that strain. The swadeshi and boycott had already been started in Bengal during his absence from India. Even Mr. Gokhale approved of the boycott as a political weapon. So the message which he brought fell on willing and sympathetic ears. The country was in a mood to listen to it, and it did listen. The Congress Session of 1905, held at Benares,( Presided over by the Honourable Mr. G. K. Gokhale, a member of the Viceroy’s Council. ) gave an opportunity for comparing notes and for settling a programme.
When the meeting of the Subjects The resolution relating to Swadeshi,( Swadeshi means the cult of home industries, i. e., the use of the articles made in the country ) boycott, and national education, again evoked lively discussion resulting in compromise, wherein the principles for which the Nationalists stood were conceded.
In the Congress camp, the younger generation had met in open conference to discuss their future programme. It was then that Mr. Tilak gave out the idea of passive resistance. No formal resolutions were passed, but the better mind of the people present decided to inaugurate an era of self-help and self-reliance based on an active boycott of government service and of the semi-government institutions.
Object of the Passive Resistance Movement
The object was to create a passionate love of liberty, accompanied by a spirit of sacrifice and readiness to suffer for the cause of the country. This was to be done more by example than precept. What the programme was may better be stated in the words “ Boycott both economic and political, boycott of foreign and especially British goods, and of all honorary associations with the administration, national education implying a withdrawal of the youths of the nation from the officialised universities and government-controlled schools and colleges, and training them up in institutions conducted on national lines subject to national control and calculated to help the realisation of the national destiny, national civic volunteering, aiming at imparting a healthy civic training to the people by the voluntary assumption of as much of the civic duties, at present discharged by official or semi-official agencies, as could be done without any violation of the existing laws of the country,— duties, for instance, in regard to rural sanitation, economic and medical relief, popular education, preventive police duties, regulation of fair and pilgrim gathering,— settlement of civil and non-cognisable, criminal disputes by means of arbitration committees : — these were the proclaimed methods of the Nationalist school.”
Now it should be noted here in passing, that with the exception of boycott and volunteering, every other item in the above propaganda had been more or less tried and with varying success in all parts of the country, but more particularly in the Punjab and Maharashtra before this. The Deccan education Society and the Poona Fergusson College were the offshoots of the desire to further the cause of education by self-imposed sacrifices, with the underlying motives of quickening the patriotic impulse and the Nationalist spirit. Similarly Swadeshi, co-operative organisations, and private arbitration courts had been thought of and tried. The motives underlying these attempts were absolutely patriotic, combining an element of philanthropy in them. The private colleges in Bengal, started by Vidyasagar and others, were also due to the same impulse, and so was the Pachaipiya College at Madras. Bombay had its own schemes and was ahead of the rest of India in purely Indian industrial and trade organisations. Similarly in the Punjab the idea of swadeshi had been started as early as 1877. The motives were economic and patriotic. The idea of national education had found expression in the D. A. V. (Dayanand Anglo-Vedic) College, and that of national co-operative organisations in the “Punjab National Bank,” the “Bharat Insurance Company” and other joint stock concerns. Religious and philanthropic motives had brought into existence the Hindu orphan movement, the famine relief movement, and so on. A little volunteering had also been attempted in connection with the famine relief movement and the Kangra earthquake relief movement. Long before 1905, the Punjab had a network of privately organised, privately financed, unaided schools and other charitable institutions, over which the Government had little effective control. Patriotism and philanthropy were the underlying motives of these institutions, but not politics.
The ruling bureaucracy did not quite like these activities, but they could not suppress them. Individual officers sometimes sympathized and even helped these movements. So far Bengal had been rather backward in the matter of national development on these lines. So, when Lord Curzon proclaimed the partition of Bengal, attacked the veracity of the orientals in his Calcutta University convocation speech, and on other occasions called them cowards, windbags, unpractical talkers, and mere frothy patriots, the Bengalees awoke to a consciousness of their weaknesses, and resolved to revenge themselves upon Lord Curzon, and prove to the world at large that Lord Curzon was a liar. Moreover the keynote of these organisations was association and co-operation with Government, and not independent self-assertion.
Lord Curzon was severely criticised in his days. He failed to create faith and confidence in the minds of educated Indians. They thought that his reform had some deep political motives. For the socio-political condition of the country in those days it was not possible to evaluate Curzon’s activities in an objective and impartial manner. But now it is admitted that Lord Curzon did yeoman service to the cause of Indian education. During his days every aspect of education received his keen attention and it was Lord Curzon who started the movement for educational reconstruction in India. He laid the foundation of the reforms of Indian universities and tried to raise the standard of Indian higher education. He recognised the responsibility of education by the central Govt. Standards of secondary education was also raised through rigid and regular inspection and stricter condition of recognition. Due to his patronage expansion of primary education was striking. Technical and vocational education received impetus in his hands. Reforms were also introduced in agriculture education, department of Agriculture was established and arrangement was made for agricultural research. His attempt to preserve the ancient monuments of India and creation of a department of Archaeology was praiseworthy.