India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947; India -- Politics and government -- 1765-1947
schools, and more is required of these institutions than an
ability to pass a certain proportion of boys through the Calcutta
University Matriculation examination.... The present condition of
secondary schools is undoubtedly prejudicing the development of
the presidency and is by no means a negligible feature in the
existing state of general disturbance. It is customary to trace
the genesis of much sedition and crime to the back streets and
lanes of Calcutta and Dacca, where the organizers of anarchic
conspiracies seek their agents from among University students.
This view is correct as far as it goes, but it is in the high
schools, with their underpaid and discontented teachers, their
crowded, dark and ill-ventilated classrooms, and their
soul-destroying process of unceasing cram, that the seeds of
discontent and fanaticism are sown." [The italics are ours.]
Yet for years nothing was done to improve education, to make it
practical and creative and productive. In fact nothing has been done up
till now.
Let the reader read with this the report of the Indian Industrial
Commission recently issued under the authority of the Government of
India and he will at once find the true causes which underlie the
revolutionary movement in India. These causes are not in any way
peculiar to Bengal or to the Punjab; they are common to the whole of
India, but they have found a fruitful soil in these provinces on account
of the rather intense natures of the people of these two provinces. The
Bengali is an intensely patriotic and emotional being, very sensitive
and very resentful; the Punjabee is intensely virile, passionate and
plucky, having developed a strong, forceful character by centuries of
resistance to all kind of invasions and attacks. Of the Punjab, however,
we will speak later on. For the present we are concerned with Bengal
only. The amazing phenomenon mentioned by the committee on p. 20 and
referred to by us before is easily explained by the facts hinted in the
Directors' report quoted above. And this notwithstanding the fact that
in the matter of Government patronage Bengal has been the most favored
province in India, throughout the period of British rule. To the
Bengalis have gone all the first appointments to offices that were
thrown open to the natives of the soil. They have been the recipients of
the highest honors from the Government. Bengal is virtually the only
province permanently settled where the Government cannot add to the Land
tax fixed in 1793. The Bengalis are the people who spread over India,
with every territorial extension of the British Raj. They have been the
pampered and favored children of the Government and for very good
reasons, too. They are the best educated and the most intelligent of all
the Indian peoples. They know how to adapt themselves to all conditions
and circumstances, they know how to enjoy and also how to suffer. They
have subtle brains and supple bodies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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