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

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Annexure E History of Education in the Panjab since Annexation and in 1882 LEITNER ON INDIGENOUS EDUCATION IN THE PANJAB (EXTRACTS) GENERAL: I am about to relate—I hope without extenuation or malice—the history of the contact of a form of European with one of Asiatic civilisation; how, in spite of the best intentions, the most public-spirited officers, and a generous Government that had the benefit of the traditions of other provinces, the true education of the Panjab was crippled, checked, and is nearly destroyed; how opportunities for its healthy revival and development were either neglected or perverted; and how, far beyond the blame attaching to individuals, our system stands convicted or worse than official failure. Whether it is possible to rouse to renewed exertion, on behalf of its own education, the most loyal population that has ever been disappointed, is a question which the following pages will only partially attempt to answer. Much will of course, depend on the wise adaptation of the noble principle just propounded—of ‘local self-government’— to a department of the Administration,—that of education,—in which, above all others, it can be introduced with perfect safety and the greatest political advantage. Respect for learning has always been the redeeming feature of ‘the East’. To this the Panjab has formed no exception. Torn by invasion and civil war, it ever preserved and added to educational endowments. The most unscrupulous chief, the avaricious money-lender, and even the freebooter, vied with the small landowner in making peace with his conscience by founding schools and rewarding the learned. There was not a mosque, a temple, a dharmasala that had not a school attached to it, to which the youth flocked chiefly for religious education. There were few wealthy men who did not entertain a Maulvi, Pandit or Guru, to teach their sons, and along with them the sons of friends and dependents. There were also thousands of secular 341

schools, frequented alike by Mahomedans, Hindus and Sikhs, in which Persian or Lunde was taught. There were hundreds of learned men who gratuitously taught their co-religionists, and sometimes all-comers, for the sake of God-‘Lillah’. There was not a single villager who did not take a pride in devoting a portion of his produce to a respected teacher. In respectable Mahomedan families husbands taught their wives, and these their children; nor did the Sikhs prove in that respect to be unworthy of their appellation of ‘learners and disciples’. In short, the lowest computation gives us 3,30,000 pupils (against little more than 1,90,000 at present) in the schools of the various denominations who were acquainted with reading, writing, and some method of computation; whilst thousands of them belonged to Arabic and Sanskrit colleges, in which Oriental Literature and systems of Oriental Law, Logic, Philosophy, and Medicine were taught to the highest standards. Tens of thousands also acquired a proficiency in Persian, which is now rarely reached in Government and aided schools or colleges. Through all schools there breathed a spirit of devotion to education for its own sake and for its influence on the character and on religious culture; whilst even the sons of Banyas who merely learnt what they absolutely required in order to gain a livelihood looked with respect, amounting to adoration, on their humble Pandhas, who had taught them the elements of two ‘Rs’. We have changed all this. The annexation disturbed the minds of believers in Providence, and all that was respectable kept, as much as possible, aloof from the invader,—just as the best Englishman would not be the first to seek the favour of a foreign conqueror. CLASSIFICATION OF INDIGENOUS SCHOOLS I. SIKH INDIGENOUS EDUCATION

1. Gurmukhi Schools II. MOHAMMEDAN INDIGENOUS EDUCATION
2. Maktabs
3. Madrasas, religious and secular
4. Koran Schools. III. HINDU INDIGENOUS EDUCATION
5. Chatsalas (for the trading community)
6. Patshalas (religious) 342

7. Patshalas (semi-religious)
8. Secular Schools of various kinds and grades IV. MIXED INDIGENOUS EDUCATION
9. Persian Schools
10. Vernacular Schools
11. Anglo-Vernacular Schools V. FEMALE INDIGENOUS EDUCATION
12. (a) Female Schools for Sikh girls (b) -do- Mohammedan girls (c) Instruction at Hindu homes With a more minute subdivision the indigenous schools might have to be classified as follows:- I. MAKTABS OR MADRASAS
13. Arabic Schools and Colleges (of various grades and specialities)
14. Perso-Arabic Schools and Colleges (of various grades and specialities)
15. Koran Schools (where merely or chiefly the Koran is read)
16. Perso-Koran Schools
17. Koran-Arabic Schools
18. Perso-Koran-Arabic Schools
19. Persian Schools
20. Persian-Urdu Schools
21. Persian-Urdu-Arabic Schools
22. Arabic Medical Schools
23. Perso-Arabic Medical Schools II. GURMUKHI SCHOOLS
24. Gurmukhi Schools
25. Gurmukhi and Lande Schools III. MAHAJANI SCHOOLS
26. Lande Schools of different kinds (Chatsalas)
27. Nagari-Lande Schools (Chatsalas)
28. Perso-Lande Schools IV. PATSHALAS
29. Nagari-Sanscrit Schools
30. Sanscrit religious Schools 343

19. Sanscrit secular literary Schools (cultivating various branches)
20. Sanscrit semi-secular Schools (cultivating various branches)
21. Sanscrit Medical Schools (Chiefly)
22. Hindi-Sanscrit Schools
23. Sanscrit astrological or astronomical Schools (Chiefly) V. FEMALE INDIGENOUS SCHOOLS (classified as above) LIST OF SANSCRIT BOOKS USED Balbodh Akshar dipika I. GRAMMAR Saraswat Manorama Chandrika Bhashya Laghu Kaumudi Paniniya Vyakaran Kaumudi Siddhant Kaumudi Shekar Prakrita Prakasa II. LEXICOLOGY Amar Kosh Malini Kosh Halayudh III. POETRY, THE DRAMA AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY Raghu Vans Mahabharat Megh Duta Venisanhara Magh Sakuntala Kirat Arjun Naishadha Charita Ramayan Mrichhakatika Sri Mad Bhagwat Kumara Sambhava and other Puranas IV. RHETORIC Kavya Dipik Kavya Prakash Sahitya Darpana Dasu Rupa Kuvlayanund V. MATHEMATICS, ASTRONOMY, AND ASTROLOGY Siddbant Shiromani Nil Kanthi Mahurta Chintamani Brihat Jatak Shighra Bodh Parasariya Garbh Lagana 344

VI. MEDICAL SCIENCE Sham Raj Nighant Susruta Sharang Dhar Charaka Bhashya Parichehed Madhava Nidan Vagbhat VII. LOGIC Nyaya Sutra Vritti Gada dhari Vyutpattivad Tarkalankar Tark Sangrah Kari kavali VIII.VEDANT Atma Bodh Sarirak Panch Dashi IX. LAW Manu Smriti Parasara Smriti Yagya Valk Gautama Mitakshara X. PHILOSOPHY Sankhya Tatwa Kaumudi Patanjali, Sutra Britti Sutra with Bhashya Sankhya Pravachan Bhashya Vedanta, Vedantsar (see Yoga Sutra also above) Vaiseshika, Siddhant Mimansa, Sutra with Muktavali Sutra with Bhashya Artha Sangraha a commentary XI. PROSODY Srut Bodh Vritta Ratnakar XII. PROSE LITERATURE Hitopadesa Vasavadatta Dasa Kumara Charita XIII. RELIGION Rigveda Sanhita (rare) Samaveda, Mantra Bhaga Yajurveda, Shukla Yajur Chhandasya Archika (very Vajasneyi Sanhita rare) 345

Annexure F Correspondence between Mahatma Gandhi and Sir Philip Hartog MAHATMA GANDHI ON INDIGENOUS EDUCATION ...That does not finish the picture. We have education of this future state. 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. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root, and left the root like that, and the beautiful tree perished. The village schools were not good enough for the British administrator, so he came out with his programme. Every school must have so much paraphernalia, building, and so forth. Well, there were no such schools at all. There are statistics left by a British administrator which show that, in places where they have carried out a survey, ancient schools have gone by the board, because there was no recognition for these schools, and the schools established after the European pattern were too expensive for the people, and therefore they could not possibly overtake the thing. I defy anybody to fulfill a programme of compulsory primary education of these masses inside of a century. This very poor country of mine is very ill able to sustain such an expensive method of education. Our state would revive the old village schoolmaster and dot every village with a school both for boys and girls. Question (SIR PHILIP HARTOG): Would Mr Gandhi give his authority for the statement that literacy had diminished in India during the last fifty years? Mr Gandhi replied that his authority was the Punjab Administration Reports, and said that he had published in Young India a study of the Punjab educational statistics. SIR PHILIP HARTOG: Would Mr Gandhi explain why the literacy figure was fourteen percent of the men and only two percent of the women, and why illiteracy was higher in Kashmir and Hyderabad than in British India? 346

Mr Gandhi replied that the women’s education had been neglected, to the shame of the men. He could only conjecture, with regard to the figures for Kashmir, that if illiteracy was greater there, it was due to the negligence of the ruler or because the population was predominantly Mohammedan, but he thought that, as a matter of fact, it was six of the one and half a dozen of the other. —from International Affairs, London, November 1931: from a long speech by Mahatma Gandhi, on October 20, 1931 held under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House, London; the meeting was attended by influential Englishmen and English-women drawn from all parts of England. Lord othian, who was one of the British chairmen at the Round Table Conference on India, presided at this meeting. (The above text is copied from Collected Works, Vol.48, pp.199-200, 201-2) · · · 5, Inverness Gardens, W.8. 21st October, 1931 M.K. Gandhi, Esq., Round Table Conference, St. James Palace, S.W.1. Dear Mr Gandhi, I understood you to say last night at the Royal Institute of International Affairs that you could prove on the evidence of British officials that literacy had diminished in British India in the last fifty or hundred years. In reply to my request for the precise authority for this statement you mentioned a Punjab Administration Report, (without, however, giving the date,) and said that what had happened in the Punjab must have happened in the rest of India. You mentioned, too, an article in ‘Young India’, but also without giving its date. The subject is one in which I have taken a deep interest for some years, and I should be grateful, therefore, if you would very kindly give me precise references to the printed documents on which your statements were based, so that I may consult them. You will, I feel sure, forgive me for pointing out that the 347