द ब्यूटीफुल ट्री: १८वीं सदी में भारत की स्वदेशी गुरुकुल शिक्षा (धर्मपाल)

5,Inverness Gardens,W.8. 2 December 1931 Dear Mr Thompson, My apologies for not having acknowledged your kind letter of November 23rd with its references earlier. I was familiar with Adam’s Reports and Leitner, and with Howell from quotations. I have looked at Keay, and I’m afraid he doesn’t impress me. I will ask F.W. Thomas what he thinks of the book, but it all seems to me second-hand. After going through your reference I am still in doubt as to whether the statement on p.255 of the ‘Reconstruction of India’ ‘Nevertheless there was more literacy if of a low kind, than until the last ten years’ is justifiable. You mention figures for Bombay schools and Bengal schools. But from my experience of Indian schools it is a far cry from attendance to literacy. In the ten years 1917-27 with an increased enrolment of nearly 370,000 pupils in Bengal, the number in Class IV, where first you may expect permanent literacy, declined by 30,000. (See EDn Comtee of Simon Commission Report, p.59, including Table xxxiv). I imagine from my reading of Adam, and Howell and Leitner—all pressing the claims of indigenous education—that this kind of thing is not new. Did you notice in Long’s edition of Adam p.268 a quotation from a report of Mountstuart Elphinstone dated 25 October 1819 in which he says: ‘There are already schools (in the Deccan) in all towns and in many villages, but reading is confined to Brahmans, Banyans, and such of the agricultural classes as have to do with accounts.’ And Howell, p.7, in referring to Adam’s estimate that there were 100,000 schools in Bengal in 1835 and similar estimates in Madras and Bombay says ‘although all authorities were agreed that the existence of these schools was a satisfactory evidence of a general desire for education, there was equal unanimity that the instruction actually imparted in them was, owing partly to the utter incompetence of the teachers, the absence of all school books and appliances, and the early age at which the children were withdrawn, almost worthless.’ All the people I have quoted wanted Government to build up a system on the basis of the village schools. 368