Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
There remains one vital aspect of the educational problem which was left
untouched by the Educational Resolution of 1904, and has been left
untouched ever since we entered three-quarters of a century ago on an
educational experiment unparalleled in the world's history--a more
arduous experiment even than that of governing the 300 millions of India
with a handful of Englishmen. Many nations have conquered remote
dependencies inhabited by alien races, imposed their laws upon them, and
held them in peaceful subjection, though even this has never been done
on the same scale of magnitude as by the British rulers of India. We
alone have attempted to educate them in our own literature and science
and to make them by education the intellectual partners of the
civilization that subdued them. Of the two tasks, that of government and
that of education, the latter is not by any means the easier. For good
government involves as little interference as possible with the beliefs
and customs and traditions of the people, whereas good education means
the substitution for them of the intellectual and moral conceptions of
what we regard as our higher civilization. Good government represents
to that extent a process of conservation; good education must be
partially a destructive, almost a revolutionary, process. Yet upon the
more difficult and delicate problems of education we have hitherto, it
is to be feared, bestowed less thought and less vigilance than upon
administrative problems in India. The purpose we have had in view is
presumably that which Dr. Ashutosh Mookerjee admirably defined in his
last address to the University of Calcutta as "the raising up of loyal
and honourable citizens for the welfare of the State." But is it a
purpose which those responsible for our Indian system of education have
kept steadily before them? Is it a purpose that could possibly be
achieved by the _laisser faire_ policy of the State in regard to the
moral and religious side of education? If so, how is it that we have had
of late such alarming evidence of our frequent failure to achieve it?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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