Education -- India; India -- Politics and government -- 1857-1919; India -- Social conditions
It is on similar grounds also that the promoters of the new movement in
favour of "National Schools" advocate the maintenance of schools which
purchase complete immunity from Government control by renouncing all the
advantages of grants-in-aid and of University affiliation. They have
been started mainly under the patronage of "advanced" politicians, and
have too often turned out to be mere hot-beds of sedition, but their
_raison d'etre_ is alleged to be the right of Hindu parents to bring up
Hindu children in a Hindu atmosphere.
From the opposite pole in politics, most of the ruling chiefs in their
replies to Lord Minto's request for their opinions on the growth of
disaffection call attention to this aspect of education, and the Hindu
princes especially lay great stress on the neglect of religious and
moral instruction. I will quote only the Maharajah of Jaipur, a Hindu
ruler universally revered, for his high character and great
experience:--
My next point has reference to the neglect there seems to
be of religious education, a point to which I drew your
Excellency's attention at the State banquet at Jaipur on the
29th October, 1909. I must say I have great faith in a system
of education, in which secular and religious instruction are
harmoniously combined, as the formation of character
entirely depends upon a basework of religion, and the noble
ideals which our sacred books put before the younger generation
will, I fervently hope, make them loyal and dutiful
citizens of the Empire. Such ideals must inevitably have
their effect on impressionable young men, and it is perhaps
due to such ideals that sedition and anarchy have obtained
so small a footing in the Native States as a whole. In the
Chiefs' College Conference, held at the Mayo College in 1904,
I impressed upon my colleagues the necessity of religious
education for the sons of the chiefs and nobles of Rajputana,
and it should be one of the principal objects in all schools for
the Pandits and the Moulvies to instil in the minds of their
pupils correct notions as to the duty they owe to the community
they belong to and to their Sovereign.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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