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

the literacy of a century ago amounted to very little to justify a song about it (b) that the average M.E. or M.C. schools of prewar days was a farce. We used to be asked continually to take over village ‘M.V.’ schools, with a failed Inter Arts or even failed Matric, as their head, and their students appalled me. Our own high school boys were bad enough but...I tell you what it is. The prewar administration of India in many ways was appalling. I know the difficulties. But tell me—what is it that has been wrong with Indian administration? I am reading old records by pre- Mutiny residents. They teem with information that makes you hope the Congresswalla will never get hold of it. Oxford swarms with ex-I.C.S. I like and respect them very much indeed. But what has happened to the often first class record of intellect they had before entering the I.C.S.? It seems to me the very hopelessness of...huge Indian job used to oppress and...us. We did not do anything like as much as Englishmen should have done. I scandalously ran on to the back of this—which I never do hurriedly—to keep it short. You see, I sail December 24, and I am shockingly overworked until I get off. · · · TO THE EDITOR, ‘INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS’ (Extract from ‘International Affairs’, the journal of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, for January, 1932. p. 151.) Sir, At a very largely attended meeting at Chatham House on October 20th last, Mr Gandhi said: ‘I say without fear of my figures being challenged successfully that today India is more illiterate than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators, when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out.’¹ It will be seen from the report of the meeting that Mr Gandhi did not at the time quote the figures to which he referred. I therefore asked him if he would give his authority for the statement that literacy had diminished during the last fifty years and he replied: 371