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

VIII During this prolonged debate, the critical issue that was seldom touched upon and about which in their various ways, the Madras Presidency collectors, the reports of Adam, and the work of Leitner provided a variety of clues, was how all these educational institutions—the 1,00,000 schools in Bengal and Bihar, and a ‘school in every village’ according to Munro and others—were actually organised and maintained. For, it is ridiculous to suppose that any system of such wide and universal dimensions could ever have maintained itself without the necessary conceptual and infrastructural supports over any length of time. Modern Indians tend to quote foreigners in most matters reflecting on India’s present, or its past. One school of thought uses all such foreign backing to show India’s primitiveness, the barbaric, uncouth and what is termed ‘parochial’ nature of the customs and manners of its people, and the ignorance, oppressions and poverty which Indians are said to have always suffered from. To them India for most of its past had lived at what is termed, the ‘feudal’ stage or what in more recent Marxist terminology is called the ‘system of Asiatic social organisms’. Yet, to another school, India had always been a glorious land, with minor blemishes, or accidents of history here and there; all in all remaining a land of ‘Dharmic’ and benevolent rulers. For yet others subscribing to the observations of the much-quoted Charles Metcalfe, and Henry Maine, it has mostly been a happy land of ‘village republics’. Unfortunately, due to their British-oriented education, or because of some deeper causes (like the scholastic and hair- splitting tendency of Brahmanical learning), Indians have become since the past century, too literal, too much caught up with mere words and phrases. They have lost practically all sense of the symbolic nature of what is said, or written.⁷⁹ It is not surprising, 73