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
In 1908, when Lala Har Dayal wrote these articles for the “Punjabee” I laboured under the belief that some kind of education was better than no education, but my opinions have since undergone a great change and now I feel that while upto a certain point this education did us a certain amount of good, for some years backwards however it has been productive of positive harm. It has helped in the multiplication of intellectual and economic parasites and retarded our progress towards freedom.
At the present moment, I strongly believe that this system of education is more harmful than useful ; that it is emasculating and enervating ; that it is denationalizing and degrading ; and that the so-called educated man is more effective a hindrance to our progress in political freedom than his uneducated brother.
LALA LAJPAT RAI
The British rulers of India established schools and colleges in order to consolidate their and weaken our Hindu institutions and polity. In doing so they only followed the example of great conquerors all the world over.
The strength of a nation consists in the vitality of its permanent and distinctive institutions and on its moral calibre. If it can be proved that an educational system weakens our national institutions and lowers our character, as a race, that system stands self-condemned. We need not waste breath in discussing its merits and demerits.
I. National Institutions. National institutions are the sign and symbol of national individuality. All men have the organs of sense; the intellect, affections, feelings, passions, love and hate, jealousy and sympathy, avarice and philanthropy are common to all civilized people. All men eat take part in the religious worship of some sort or other, and pay homage to some historical past. The essence of national life consists in the particular religion which we follow, the particular history which we cherish, the particular language that we love and speak, the particular social life which we appreciate. Language, social life, religion, literature, history — these form the living forces in a community which mould national character and aspirations. It is for their protection and preservation that we create the State, the army, the navy and the police. It is for the defence of these beloved institutions, the heirlooms which we have inherited from our ancestors, that we desire to attain Swaraj. It is for these sacred treasures that every nation sacrifices ease and wealth and life from generation to generation. They form the nerves and fibres of the organism called the State. They constitute the foundations of the National Polity. The nation decays when we cease to love them with a passionate all-absorbing love.
National institutions are thus the essential marks of national life. There can be no Nation without national institutions. It is mere moonshine to talk of ‘nationality’ when there are no living institutions corresponding to the idea of nationality. Rationality is kept alive and strengthened by real institutions which are a part and parcel of our daily life which we have been taught to love and revere from childhood. It is not fed on speeches, aspirations, arguments, imagination, cosmopolitanism and such like in substantial stuff.
Now let us see how the British educational system de-Hinduizes us and causes the decay of our national institutions, thereby hindering the growth of the feeling of Hindu Unity and national life.
(i) Language. Language is a most important national institution. It is often the distinguishing feature of nationality. A Dutch proverb says, No language, no nationality. Language is the bond of society. It marks off our countrymen from the stranger. Bhasha is also the mother, as the Ganga is the Mother, for without Bhasha we cannot live even for a day.
Language not only unites the men of the present generation and enables them to deliberate together on national affairs, but it also enables us to hold communion with the dead. It is the key to national history. The words and deeds of our forefathers are enshrined in our language, in Sanskrit, Hindi and Panjabi like pearl in a shell. National language thus preserves historical continuity, which is the life of the nation. A common historical background is one of the indispensable conditions of national growth.
Language is also the guardian of the national literature, which voices the national spirit. A nation’s literature is one of its most precious possessions. Carlyle has written that if he were asked to give up the Indian Empire or Shakespeare, he would gladly forego the former, but not the great national poet of England. The Empire, he says, must go some day, but Shakespeare represents the eternal, imperishable wealth of England.It is language then that preserves and interprets National History and Literature.
The effect of the British educational system on the National Language is disastrous.
The Hindu nation has two languages which it should teach to every member of the race. One is an imperial language: the other is the provincial tongue.
Corresponding to the double consciousness of tribal and of national unity, we have two languages for every cultivated Hindu who wishes to discharge his duty towards his country. There is the Sanskrit, the language of Empire and Religion, the imperial and sacred language of the Hindus ; and then comes the Vernacular, the tribal tongue of different provinces, Hindi, Bengali Marathi, etc. When a Hindu addresses the whole nation he uses Sanskrit : when he confines himself to his own particular province, he employs his vernacular. Sanskrit embodies the common imperial past of the nation.
How does the British educational system affect our languages, Sanskrit and Hindi or Marathi or Gujrati ?
One fact will enable us to realize the situation better than a whole page of exposition.
“I, an educated Hindu, am writing an article in English in this paper and communicate my thought not to Englishmen or Americans but to my own friends and countrymen, living in the same province and the same country and speaking the same language as myself.”
If I had followed nature, if our whole life had not been rendered ridiculous, artificial and miserable by this educational system, I should have written in Sanskrit to appeal to my countrymen in ‘Bengal, Bombay or Madras (an aspiration which has not altogether been abandoned) and in Hindi to address the people of my province.
I take this occasion to apologize to the Ancestors and to my countrymen of the present generation for thus dishonouring and weakening a national institution.
My only excuse is that the pernicious habit of reading newspapers and magazines published in English which prevails among our upper classes compels me to address them through the medium of the language of a foreign country situated 7,000 miles away from Lahore. The upper classes are the brain of the nation. If we wish to rescue a man from a bog we have to enter it ourselves and give him a helping hand. It is for this reason that I stoop to compromise my national dignity by indulging in this artificial and ludicrous practice.
(ii) History. National History is the sine qua non of national unity and growth. A nation that has no past must lack cohesion and patriotism. Common hero- worship is the bond of society. The British rulers of India teach our boys what is really a caricature of Hindu history. The text-books written by the Lethbridges and Hunters of the Anglo-Indian community give us no idea of our ancient greatness. They impress on the minds of our boys the notion that we have been an incapable race since the dawn of history and that our only function has been to lose battles one after another in the course of centuries. There is no mention of all that should be the pride of every Hindu.
Woe to the nation that allows its children to read history as it is written by its foreign conquerors ! No people with a particle of self-respect would tolerate it even for a moment. We may be unable to emulate our ancestors : but let us at least refrain from reviling them.
A man who sends his son to an Anglo-Indian school commits the sin of pitri-ninda, the vilification of national heroes, the dishonouring of national history.
(iii) Literature:— Language and literature go together. Sanskrit literature must lose ground before English if the present system endures. Our boys have to study Scott and Milton, while they are utterly ignorant of Sanskrit literature, which is equally inspiring and artistic. English is already taking the place of Sanskrit as the medium of communication among Hindus belonging to different provinces. English is a compulsory subject for all classes at school and college. The Hindu nation must choose between Sanskrit and English. Under the present system Sanskrit literature and learning will gradually perish and with its decay will fall the whole edifice of Hindu civilization. For our society draws its morality and religion, its social spirit and its laws, from the Shastras. The decline of Sanskrit learning will reduce us to the condition of a disorganized mob without national institutions.
Ayurveda is being undermined by Government Medical Colleges. A Hindu youngman can become a
“graduate” in Philosophy without reading anything of Hindu metaphysics – the highest product of Hindu genius ! Religion is proscribed in Government schools. The study of the Upanishads and the Smrities is no part of the University curriculum.
The British education system will destroy Sanskrit literature and learning which is the pride and glory of our race and the well-spring of our moral and social ideals.
This unnatural system will also kill out our vernaculars. Already we see the sorrowful spectacle of parents writing letters to their children in English, of people reading newspapers in English, of students giving English name to their clubs and associations, of national assembly’s possessing English names ! There are thousands of Hindus in Oudh who have received “education” at Anglo-Indian schools, and can not therefore read the Ramayan with facility. The language of the people is systematically ignored in the University curriculum. The Anglo-Indians compel them to answer examination papers in history and geography in English With literature will go our culture and art. Indeed, the decay of Hindu intellectual life is patent to all who have eyes to see. Sir George Birdwood makes the following candid confession : “ We are destroying their faith and their literature and their arts, and the continuity of the spontaneous development of their civilization and their great historical personality ; in a word, we are destroying the very soul of the nation.”
(iv) Social Life. Social life is a national institution. It grows and changes like all other institutions. But it is all times a determining factor in national life. It is the product of the instinct which leads all nations to adapt themselves to their surroundings. It creates the environments in the midst of which it is possible for national intellect and morals to grow and develop. A natural healthy social life, suited to the time and place, is a national asset of the greatest value.
Social life is also a mark and symbol of national unity. It should not be tampered with in an irreverent spirit.
The British educational system throws our social life out of gear. It upsets all rules and conventions and weakens our sense of social duty. It leads to indescribable confusion in dress, modes of speech and rules of etiquette. The climax is reached in such instances as that of the man who said, on entering a temple, “Good evening, Vishnu !”. Many young Hindu take to shaving their moustache even when they are not in mourning for the loss of their parents. Others might insist on being buried after death. A few have married European wives without converting them to Hinduism. The national social life is thus thrown off its hinges. The Muhammadans gave at the first shock from which it has not been able to recover. The present educational system tends to disorganize and destroy it altogether.
(v) Character. What idea does not the British educational system represent ? And what ideal does it inculcate ? If it does not stand for any great idea and does not touch a great ideal, it must have a ruinous effect on Hindu character. Ideas and ideals quicken the moral life of a people. The only idea which it may be said to represent is the acquisition of a knowledge of the language: the only ideal that it seems to place before us is that of becoming a graduate,
Idealism.— the soul of an individual’s moral life, has no place in this system, for it deliberately excludes religion from its curriculum. And it does not teach national history either. Religion and patriotism are the two great forces which have made men great in different countries and ages. An educational system which does not value either of them must produce men without an ideal and without backbone!
Hence the students of our colleges have no faith in anything religion or politics or art or science. They believe only in things of the world. Those among them who have risen above materialism or moral inertia have come under the influence of powerful forces originating outside the Anglo-Indian educational system. The majority of our graduates have lost the fine old faith of their fathers in Hindu social institutions and have not found any other moral basis of life.
Patriotism:— British ‘educational’ policy alienates the cultured classes from the common people, diminishes their reverence and love for great heroes like Rama, Krishna and Guru Govind, and curbs their political aspirations. Mr. Gokhale tells us that Mr. Ranade wrote an essay depreciating the British system of Government in comparison with Mahratta rule, “ Sir Alexander Grant, who was then Principal of Elphinstone College, and who had great admiration for Mr. Ranade’s talents, sent for him and after pointing out to him the error of his views, said to him: ‘Youngman, you should not thus run down a Government which is educating you and doing so much for your people.’ And to mark his serious displeasure he suspended Mr. Ranade’s scholarship for six months.” The Government has turned its colleges into comfortable prisons for our youngmen, who are prevented from reading nationalist newspapers and attending meetings at which sound political ideas are promulgated. Woe to those who lose their birthright of learning about the condition of their country and honouring the great men of the nation for a mess of pottage in the shape of a license for practice at the Bar or a Government diploma of graduation ! They sacrifice the end for the means : they lose the substance and run after the shadow. They demoralise themselves and teach others to do violence to their conscience. Thus the British educational system promotes servility, cowardice and social decay. Sir W. Lee Warner, in his little book “The Citizen of India”, teaches our boys the following precious truth :
“ There is no ‘drain’ of wealth from India to England. The former rulers of India never cared for their people. India is growing in prosperity under British rule.”
Courage is not a quality which can grow in the unhealthy moral atmosphere of our colleges. Students who have to show respect to officials for whom they have really no love in their hearts, cannot possess any moral courage. A life of Fraud and Falsehood can never build up character. The strain which the artificial method of teaching through the medium of English puts on our energies undermines our physical stamina and exhausts out vitality even before we enter on the struggle of life.
As to the minor virtues which have adorned Hindu character from time immemorial, simplicity, temperance, courtesy, family affection, and respect for elders, the British ‘educational’ system is notoriously fatal to their development.
Patriotism and spirituality — the two great character — making forces —are absent from this “educational” system. The smaller virtues which are also inherited by Hindus, decay through the influence of ill-digested European ideas and the example of third-rate European professors.
The Hindu character is ruined. The springs of the national moral life are poisoned. If a man gain the world, but lose his own soul, what shall it profit him ? So said a teacher of old. And if a nation should acquire the learning of the whole world but lose its life, its institutions and its character, how will it survive ? We cannot give our life in exchange for a smattering of English literature and Science. We cannot consent to part with our nationhood for such paltry advantages.
The British Educational System is the present of two great evils — Denationalization and demoralization. It weakens Hindu social and religious institutions and it undermines patriotism and moral courage. No device could be more effectual for accelerating our decline as a nation.
There are several other consequences of the establishment of Government schools and colleges which deserve notice :—
(a) The Social Degradation of the Hindu race :— The Briton, having acquired the power and glory which belonged to the Kshatriya, tries to step into the place held by the Brahman in order that he may complete the social conquest of India by England. Political and Military predominance must be supported by social supremacy, otherwise it can not endure. A nation, which has only lost its national State, is not crushed, it is under a merely temporary eclipse, But if it should gradually lose the sense of self-respect and national individuality by mixing with foreigners on terms of inequality, it can not rise again. Political subjection is not so grave an evil as social serfdom to Europeans.
Schools and colleges convert our Brahmans, Kshatriyas and Vaisyas into docile and respectful pupils of Christians and Anglo-Indian officials. The conquerors get an opportunity of posing as teachers and benefactors of the “subject” race. Our boys learn to occupy a position of social inferiority to Europeans in everyday life, for the teacher must always sit above the pupil. They begin to look up to members of the conquering race as their moral and spiritual guides. Thus does Brahmanhood too pass from the Hindu Brahman to the Englishman. Another victory in the conflict of civilization is won by the Briton. The Brahman who should teach our children, is displaced by the pushing foreigner. The social conquest proceeds apace, killing out national pride and self-respect and the feeling of national identity along our upper and middle classes.
(b) The prestige of the bureaucracy :— The Government of India should control and guide all activities in Hindu society, if it wishes to enhance its prestige and take the place of an earthly Providence in the mind of the people. The educational system adds to the prestige of the officials who manage it. They stand forth before the public as instructors and receive spontaneous homage from unthinking men who do not understand their policy. A Government school in a village impresses on the imagination of the people great truth that the Sirkar is an all-powerful, all-absorbing, omnipresent and omniscient agency controlled by men of wonderful power and wisdom. The Sirkar is a very Ishwara on earth : it is here, there and every where : it does so many things and does them well. Verily, saith the rustic philosopher, the Sirkar is the only reality in the world : all else is maya. It has no hands, but it works; it has no eyes but it sees. The Sirkar is the source of all Life.
(c) The Loss of Self-Government.— A subject people should at least try to keep the direction of their social affairs in their own hands as far as possible. All interference on the part of foreigners, even if it is well-meant, should be nipped in the bud. The political and military activities of the nation must pass under the control of foreigners as a necessary consequence of subjugation. But we need not give them all when they ask only an inch. Those who send their sons to Anglo-Indian schools are following the stupid policy of surrendering to Government more than it demands of us as a conquering power : Education, Religion and Social customs should form the sacred circle within which all unhallowed foreign control is inadmissible. The British Government does not compel us to resort to its schools. Why should we give up the duty of managing our own affairs in these spheres of national life and activity which are still under our own control. The British Educational system will destroy Kashi, Nuddea, and other centres of Hindu learning. It robs us of our capacity for self-government in educational matters. The old-world Pundit who opens an “indigenous” school on his own account practises self-government on a small scale. But enlightened public men who patronize Government Colleges, help the extension of bureaucratic influence in our social life. Cursed be those who destroy the small remnants of self-government which a jealous and grasping bureaucracy still allows to a subject people. We have lost much : we have fallen. Why should we lose more and fall lower ? Why should we give up the privilege of self-government in Educational affairs?
It should be clearly understood that all extension of Government control and supervision involves a corresponding decay in the vitality of the people. Everything that is done by the bureaucracy must take something out of the hands of the people. Government control and initiative must be fatal to the growth of the capacity for self-government among the nation. This is self-evident. Light must recede as the shadows advance. Even a beneficial institution established by Government impairs our power of establishing and managing it through our own energy and enterprise. The loss of self-government, even if accompanied with a temporary advantage, is to be dreaded like a calamity, for it saps the moral qualities which are necessary for complete self-government and which it should be our duty to foster. When it brings in its train other evils, it is of course an unmitigated curse. A public library established by Government only hinders the growth of popular civic life while it confers a temporary benefit on us. Even a pathshala or a temple which is established by Government for the promotion of Sanskrit learning is injurious to our national interests for it undermines the habits of self-help and self-reliance, which alone can save the Hindu race and its religion. But Government schools and colleges rob us of all that we hold dear self-respect, character, patriotism, national literature and history, and finally self-Government in educational affairs.
(d) The Extension of British Influence in Indian States.— The Universities have been efficient instruments for driving the thin end of the wedge of British influence into the affairs of Indian States. It is no where provided in any treaty that a ruling Indian Prince should connect the schools and colleges of his State with the British Universities. Yet we are so foolish that we cut at the root of our own national life by sending up our boys in the States for University Examinations. The Government is not to blame in this respect. It does not compel any Raja or Nawab to place his educational department in partial subordination to the British Educational Service. As I observe the humilitating spectacle of an Indian State requesting British Universities to exercise control and authority in their Colleges, I am reminded of Raja Sir T. Madhav Rao’s pregnant words:—
“ The longer I live, observe and think, the more deeply do I feel that there is no community on the face of the earth which suffers more from self-invited, self-accepted or self-aggravated, and therefore avoidable evils than the Hindu community.”
(e) The Industrial Backwardness of the Nation:— The British educational system serves to convert the sons of our bankers, traders and landowners into dependents of the bureaucracy while the field of industrial and commercial enterprise is left open for the European settlers in India. The University curriculum prepares our youngmen for no useful profession. It encourages literary culture but proscribes commercial training and technical studies. Mr. Chesney has recognized this defect of the British educational system in his book on “The Indian Polity” , The inevitable effect of that system is the creation of an ever-increasing class of useless persons, who know no art or trade and who are compelled to serve the administration as officials or lawyers in order to earn a living. The foundations of our economic life are thus undermined. It is sad, indescribably sad, to see sons of shop-keepers and bankers trying to “rise” in the social scale by taking to the profession of a lawyer. They suffer from a strange perversion of judgment. They imagine that a lawyer or an official is entitled to greater social esteem than an honest shopkeeper or landowner. The educational system tends to incapacitate our youths for a commercial or industrial career. It smooths the path of the European exploiter before him. It will turn the children of our Vaishyas into hangers-on the bureaucracy, lawyers arid officials while European capitalists are getting our trade and industry more and more into their hands. The process of dethroning the Vaishya from his pedestal of financial power and installing the European planter or merchant or banker in his place is in progress. And the Universities help materially in the process. They facilitate and accelerate the economic enslavement of our race.
THE SO-CALLED AWAKENING
There is another error which has found acceptance in all circles and which is, if possible, even more grotesque and disastrous. The idea is abroad that the British educational system is the parent of Progress. It is supposed to have conferred on us poor benighted Asiatics the great notions of liberty, political enfranchisement, social advancement, and what not. It is said to have vevified our decaying civilization and rescued us from the slough of despondency into which we had fallen. It is the mother of “New India”. Shall we kill the hen that lays the golden eggs ?
The advocates of the British educational system assume too much. They have to prove that a system which teaches no religious ideals and discourages patriotism can confer any benefits on a people. They must show that the English-educated classes have brought about any political awakening I think that our political aspirations have been curbed and crushed by this system. The ideal of co-operation with the bureaucracy —which means playing second fiddle only as the summum bonum of In dian humanity, could be evolved only out of the dwarfed imagination of half-educated men who could not think clearly and boldly. The tree is judged by its fruits. The vast majority of those who have been educated at schools and colleges are continually engaged in undermining the foundations of their nationality. They serve as assistants to the bureaucracy, as teachers in Government schools, as lawyers and barristers in British courts of law, and thus enhance the power and prestige of the bureaucratic rulers of the country. They are helping in the destruction of the national genius for original and independent pursuits. That is what the “English educated” class is doing— it is dragging the nation to a lower level in the scale of humanity by accepting the ideals, the discipleship, and the patronage of the bureaucracy. It has been truly said that if there were not a poor and ignorant peasantry on one side and a degenerate and unpatriotic “educated” class on the other, things in India would be different from what they are at present.
A few men here and there have escaped the soul-corroding, denationalizing influence of this educational system chiefly through the agency of various religious movements which, of course, can not owe their origin to British schools and colleges. These few men have not learnt the lessons of sacrifice and spirituality, moral courage and patriotism, at the feet of Anglo-Indian officials who teach in the Colleges. For of thorns men do not gather figs. The innate vitality of Indian civilisation is not yet exhausted, otherwise there would be no hope for us. That civilisation has given us the few great men we have produced in the 19th century Ranjit Singh, Dayanand, Ram Krishna, Salar Jang, Vivekanand and a few others. How can the soulless instruction given in the Anglo-Indian schools produce great men ? The effects of Anglo-Indian education were seen in the first generation of Bengalis who were turned out from Government Colleges a set of fashionable, denationalized, unpatriotic, selfish creatures, the very scum of Indian humanity thrown up to the surface by official patronage. Scores were converted to Christianity. Since then the old Hindu civilization has asserted itself against the baneful effects of this system, and the evil has been to some extent counteracted. But we must devise a thorough cure for this malady. It has been asserted that the ideas of “liberty”and “nationality” have been conferred on us by this Anglo-Indian system. These ideas are said to be peculiarly Western products, and the study of Mill and Thomas Paine is supposed to have fired our hearts with a passion for freedom. Mr. S. Nair, who is now a Government servant, cried : “ You cannot urge a man into slavery in the English language.” Mr. Gokhale is of opinion that the “new spirit” has been produced by the education imparted at Government schools and colleges.
It would be strange, passing strange, if such ideas as those of liberty and nationality could grow in the servile and denationalizing atmosphere of Government colleges. And how has Afghanistan got such a firm hold on these great ideas ? How have the Gurkhas acquired their intense love of liberty? Our “educated” men have learned a few quotations from Burke and Mill ; they have read sonnets in praise of Liberty. But of the real thing, patriotism, many of them know as little as the man in the moon. Why, a man who possessed European ideas of patriotism and national self-respect would never send his sons to schools that lead to denationalization. And some of us serve the bureaucracy and then prate of “national” unity ! Parrots repeat Vedic Mantras and the holy name of liberty is desecrated in the mouths of men who talk glibly of patriotism while helping the bureaucratic regime as lawyers and officials ! As for our “Congressmen”, they seem to have lost the primary instincts of self-respecting nations. They think they have learned the lesson of “patriotism” at British schools and colleges. Queer “patriotism” indeed which makes its votaries regard it glory to occupy a position of permanent inferiority playing the second fiddle again-to Englishmen in the “constitution of the Government !”
The Fallacy of The “Awakening”. —The Indian National Congress is often supposed to be the outcome of the British educational system. And it is taken for granted that the Congress is a monument of wisdom and patriotism. It follows therefore that the political progress of India depends on the British educational system.
Is the Congress a sign of political progress or of decay ? Does it represent an advance in political ideas and methods, or does it imply a retrogression in the political life of the nation ? This point must be settled before we can pronounce on the merits and demerits of the British educational system, as it is believed in some circles that the Anglo-Indian colleges have led to a great political awakening, which is symbolized by the Congress. This erroneous idea has not been got rid of even by some Nationalists.
If the Congress were the quintessence of the Indian Nation’s wisdom and patriotism, I should be very doubtful as to the future of that nation. The Congress marks a retrograde step in the political life of India, and the British educational system is responsible for the decline in India’s political morality and sagacity which made the Congress possible. For such an assembly could not exist in a country where natural feelings of self-respect and pride had not been undermined by some cause or other.
Let us analyse the idea for which the Congress stands or stood. The ideal of association with the bureaucracy which has been proclaimed by the Congress in the resolutions, and the agitation in favour of simultaneous examinations and the admission of Indians to high offices in the service of the British Government, clearly represent a sad decay of national self-respect and of the ethical standard of the nation.
Let us not be misled by appearances. We some times deceive ourselves that we are more civilized than our grand-fathers because we hold so many meetings, deliver speeches in the right Royal London style, and possess newspapers and journals. But noise is not life. We know the proverb which says that empty vessels make much noise. Maharashtra boasts of many newspapers, dailies and weeklies, while Nepal and Afghanistan do not enjoy the luxury of newspaper reading. But which has more true and vigorous national life Maharashtra or, Afghanistan ? Some of us have learned all the beauties of the theory of nationality, but are the Gurkhas politically in a worse condition than the Bengalis simply because they cannot discourse on the blessings of liberty ?
As to the methods of political work, the majority of the English-educated classes shrink from self-help and national self-assertion. They believe in oratory arid pursuation. They have preached for twenty years and more that the only method of political advancement is the use of the tongue and the pen to the exclusion of other instruments. They have degenerated into mere poltroons and windbags, and want to impose their wrong ideas on the sturdy peasants who know that politics is not a war of words between bureaucrats and their courtly disciples. They know the essential principles of politics and are not deluded into erroneous opinions like the English-educated wiseacres who deliver eloquent speeches before the English tailors and cobblers and grocers. The idea of “agitation” for political purposes was altogether unknown to our ancestors who lived before the era of schools and colleges, for they never suspected that a disarmed nation could work out its salvation by the use of its tongue and lungs. They did not imagine that vast gatherings of cowardly serfs, even if held everyday would induce Government to relinquish any of its powers and privileges. They never made any mistakes on fundamental questions like the nature of British rule, the character and aims of the British people, the need of maintaining social and political isolation from the rulers, the futility of mere words in political matters and the future destiny of India. On all these points, their ideas were sound and natural. But strange and absurd opinions have been manufactured in Government colleges under the guidance of clever Anglo-Indians and are now held up to our admiration as tokens of a great “political awakening,” as symbols of a “new spirit” of which Messrs Surendranath Bannerjee, Ranade, Mehta, W. C. Bonnerji and others are the apostles. These men were the “enlightened ones,” the leaders who dispelled the “darkness” in which brave old-fashioned peasants and Rajas wandered blindly about, and who inaugurated the era of “light and progress”. Let us examine what the “awakening” was like. What were the antecedents of the “leaders” who had emerged from the colleges with the new gospel of political puerility and emasculation, which was to be preached from the platform of that small body with a big name “The Indian National Congress”.
Mr. Surrendra Nath Banerji, the orator of the “awakening,” established a college for which he could not find the name of any Indian hero, and so had to fix on Ripon. He praises Alexander Duff, the Christian missionary, in terms of warm appreciation. Then again he pleaded for simultaneous examinations, which should enable more Indians to ruin their county by joining an aristocratic service which holds itself aloof from the masses. Mr. Ranade was thrice invited to accept the honour and dignity of the Dewan of large Hindu States, but his denationalized proclivities led him to cling to his post under the British Government, This was the “new spirit”, which taught Hindu scholars to prefer subordinate places under the British to honour and power under a Hindu Raja in a free State. Mr. Mehta is so great a friend of India that he called the British educational system “a great boon,” while at the same time he was convinced that this system would clear the way for Christianity. (Mehta’s Speeches Ed,— by Chintamani). He was the man who uttered that blasphemous sentence which makes every Hindu burn with shame :—
“ Lord Ripon, Lord Buddha styled on earth “.
This champion of the “awakening” compared a Christian Viceroy to, a Hindu avatar, one of the greatest men, if not the greatest man indeed, that the world has yet produced. He also declared that “ his faith was large even in Anglo-Indians”. And, last but not least, we have Mr. Gokhale one of those patriots who could not choose a better name for the college which was supported by their noble self-sacrifice than that of an English Governor of Bombay. So much for the apostles of this “new” dispensation which has been the product of British schools and colleges and which postulates permanent subordination and inferiority to Englishmen as its ideal.
We need not study history to find out that the “education “ imparted in Government schools and colleges has blinded us to the Primary truths of political science which were clear as day light to those noblemen and peasants who had not come under Anglo-Indian influence. We may look around us to-day and discover that the “uneducated” unsophisticated people still possess sound ideas on important questions like the essential nature of British Rule and the methods of political work. The artisans of the towns and the peasants in the villages look upon the British as a strange people who will not mix with them and with whom they should not mix. In their hearts they are convinced of the superiority of their fine old civilisation. They have shown their political capacity and insight on many occasions, . The repeal of plague regulations, the prohibition of the sale of beef in a manner which offended the religious susceptibilities of the Hindus, belief for the indebtedness of the Deccan riots — these and other necessary reforms have not been obtained through the efforts of the orators and politicians of the Congress school but have been due to the spontaneous united action of the masses of the people. Had the common people sat at the feet of the Congress “leaders”, they would never have succeeded in remedying the evils from which they suffered.
Thus recent history also proves that the illiterate peasants and townsmen have more commonsense and insight than the English-educated graduates who have preached the gospel of the so-called “awakening”. The people know how to help themselves, whatever the misguided platform speakers may say.
The much-talked-of political “awakening” which has been traced to the education given in Government Schools is a myth and a delusion, This blessed educational system has given birth to the class of political buffoons mimics who expose us to the ridicule of the world by preaching the association with the bureaucracy in the administration is the panacea of all our social and political ills, and that a fallen nation does not need self-help, self-respect, and the power to stand on its own legs for its political regeneration.
REFERENCE:
OUR EDUCATIONAL PROBLEM – BY HAR DAYAL, M. A.,
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY LALA LAJPAT RAI
First Published in 1922