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

The Collector of Bellary, A.D. Campbell, was an experienced and perceptive officer, previously having held the post of Secretary of the Board of Revenue, and was perhaps one of Thomas Munro’s favourites. It may be said to Munro’s credit that in his review of 10 March 1826, he did admit in his oblique way that indigenous education ‘has, no doubt, been better in earlier times.’ The fact that it got disrupted, reduced and well- nigh destroyed from the time the British took over de facto control and centralised the revenue, was obviously not possible even for a Governor as powerful as Thomas Munro to state in formal government records. Illustrations such as the above can be multiplied ad infinitum. It only requires searching the records pertaining to the early period of British rule in different areas of India. With much industry and in a fairly objective manner, Leitner tried to do this for the Panjab. For Gandhiji, an intuitive understanding of what could have happened was enough. He could, therefore, with confidence, reply to Hartog that, ‘my prejudice or presentiment still makes me cling to the statement I made at Chatham House.’ IX This brings us finally to an assessment of the content of the indigenous system of education. The long letter of the much- quoted A.D. Campbell, collector of Bellary, had been used a century earlier by London to establish that in India reading and writing 81