Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 3/Chapter 2/Section 4

SECTION IV.

Application of the Plan to the improvement and extension of Instruction amongst the Mohammadan Population.

The encouragement given to the existing vernacular schools and to the Hindu schools of learning will embrace the whole of the male Hindu population, and will carry rich and poor, learned and unlearned, forward in the path of improvement with mutual good-will and co-operation, and with a common and joint feeling of attachment and gratitude to the source from which the advantage is derived. The measures requisite for the improvement and extension of instruction amongst the Mohammadan population demand separate consideration.

The first question that arises here is—What is the fit means to be employed for communicating some useful knowledge of letters to the poor and uninstructed, which is by far the most numerous portion of that population?

I have shown in another place that Persian instruction is the only substitute for vernacular instruction peculiar to the Mohammaddan population, and that the language has a strong hold on native society; but it is on the upper class of native society that it has this hold, and it has not descended, and cannot be expected to descend, to the body of the Mohammadan population. To them it is foreign and unknown, and consequently unfit for being employed as the medium of instruction to the people. To those who are instructed in it, it is the language of books, of correspondence, and of accounts; not the language of conversation in domestic life or of the general intercourse of society. It has been shown also that even those who cultivate it as the language of books of correspondence and of accounts are found in five districts in the proportion of 2,087 Hindus to 1,409 Musalmans. There can be little doubt that the official use that has been made of it by Government and its functionaries is the sole reason for its cultivation by Hindus; and as many Musalmans have the same interests to protect by the same means, the reason for its cultivation by them also must be deemed in many instances to be the same. When, therefore, the measures that have recently been adopted for the discontinuance of the Persian and the employment of the vernacular language in public business shall have full effect, it may be expected, not only that all the Hindus, but that a considerable proportion of the Musalmans, who would have otherwise had their children instructed in Persian, will have recourse to some other medium. The use of the Persian is at present in a state of transition. What the ultimate effect of the present measures may be is yet to be seen, but it cannot be deemed favorable to the cultivation of the language; and whatever the natural and unforced use which the social and religious wants of the Musalman population may give it, the Persian can never be regarded in this country as a fit instrument of vernacular instruction.

For a language of instruction to the Musalman population we must turn from the Persian to some of the vernacular dialects, Bengali, Hindi, or Urdu. In Bengal the rural Musalman population speak Bengali; attend, indiscriminately with Hindus, Bengali schools; and read, write, correspond, and keep accounts in that language. With the exception, therefore, of a portion of the Musalman population of large cities in Bengal, the means that have been already described for the promotion of vernacular instruction in this province through the medium of the Bengali language, may be deemed adequate for Musalmans as well as Hindus. The rural Musalman population of Behar use the Hindi language to some, although not to an equal, extent; and when the plan for the promotion of vernacular instruction shall be applied in Behar through the medium of the Hindi language and Nagari character, it will be found to embrace a considerable proportion of the rural Musalman population; but it will leave a considerable proportion of that population, and also of the urban Musalman population who speak Urdu, unprovided with the means of vernacular instruction; and, for their benefit, it would seem desirable that distinct arrangements should be made. Those arrangements will consist merely in the preparation of a separate series of school-books in the Urdu language and Persian character, differing from the similar works prepared in Bengali and Hindi chiefly in the subject-matter of the first volume of the series, which should contain the most approved and complete course of native instruction known amongst Musalmans in India on the Persian model. Such a series of school-books will make the transition easy from the system of Persian schools at present so numerous in Behar and now ceasing to be adapted to the wants of the country, to the system of Urdu schools which the measures of Government will soon render indispensable. They will bring within the reach of the humbler classes of the Mohammadan population whatever really useful knowledge is found in the Persian school-books; and they will help to raise those classes to a community of feeling and of information with the superior classes of their co-religionists and with the general intelligence of the country.

The second question bearing on the improvement of the Mohammadan population is—What is the fit means to be employed for improving the instruction communicated in Mohammadan schools of learning and for obtaining the co-operation of the learned in the prosecution of the measures that may be adopted to extend instruction to the Mohammadan population generally?

Mohammadan schools of learning are not so numerous as those of Hindus; but they are in general more amply endowed, and the teachers enjoy the same high consideration in Mohammadan society and exercise the same powerful influence that belong to the corresponding class of the learned in Hindu society. The same remarks apply to those institutions that were made respecting Sanscrit schools. We have not called them into existence, nor is it any part of our object to increase their number. We find Arabic schools long established in the country possessing in several instances large resources, and taught by men intelligent, learned, revered, influential, anxious to compare their systems of knowledge with ours, and willing to aid us in the measures that may be devised for the instruction of their countrymen. In the search of instruments with which to work out good for the country, these institutions cannot be wisely neglected. The only question that can be raised is as to the way in which they may be made available.

Without minutely repeating the same details, it is sufficient to remark that the course which has been suggested to be pursued towards Hindu schools of learning will probably be found equally applicable to those of Mohammadan origin. A series of text-books in Arabic, public examinations both of teachers and scholars, and the distinctions and rewards appropriate to each already described would, there can be little doubt, produce the desired effect. Learned Musalmans are in general much better prepared for the reception of European ideas than learned Hindus; and when they shall have become convinced of the integrity of our purpose, and of the utility of the knowledge we desire to communicate, they will be found most valuable coadjutors.

The endowed Mohammadan institutions of learning present another class of means for improving the State of instruction. I would equally deprecate the appropriation by the state of the property belonging to such institutions and its misappropriation by private individuals. The rights and duties of all institutions of this class should be defined and general rules laid down to preserve their property, purify their management, and provide for their effectual supervision and real usefulness. With these views a determinate course of study should be prescribed, a visiting power exercised, and periodical returns required. It is utterly futile to leave the visiting and controlling power over such institutions in the hands of what are called the local agents under the Board of Revenue, since the offices of collector and magistrate, usually filled by the same persons, completely absorb their time and attention. In so far as such institutions exist for educational purposes, their superintendence and direction on the part of Government should be vested in the General Committee of Public Instruction and exercised through the officers subject to its authority. Properly regulated, such institutions as those at Kusbeh Bagha, at Bohar, at Chaughariya, and at Moorshedabad, would become centres of improvement, sending forth all sorts of salutary influence to the districts in which they are situated.

The reform of the office of cazy, besides other direct and collateral advantages, woald furnish Government with an extensive and cheap agency in every district for the improvement of Musalman institutions of education.

The following extract from the revised edition of the first volume of the late Mr. Harington’s analysis of the regulations will exhibit the rules in force for the appointment of city, town, and pergunnah cazies, together with the nature of the duties expected to be performed by those officers:—“The judicial functions which pertained to the office of cazy-ul-cuzat, or head cazy, and in some instances to that of inferior cazies, under the Mohammadan government, have been discontinued since the establishment of the courts of justice under the superintendence of British judges; and, with an exception to the law officers attached to the civil and criminal courts, the general duties of the present cazies stationed at the principal cities and towns and in the pergunnahs which compose the several zillahs or districts, are confined to the preparation and attestation of deeds of conveyance and other legal instruments, the celebration of Musalman marriages, and the performance of ceremonies prescribed by the Mohammadan laws at births and funeral and other rites of a religious nature. They are eligible, however, under the regulations to be appointed commissioners for the sale of property distrained on account of arrears of rent, as well as commissioners for the trial of civil causes, and are also entrusted by Government in certain cases with the payment of public pensions. It is, therefore, necessary that persons of character who may be duly qualified for the subsisting office of cazy should be appointed to that station, and encouraged to discharge the duties of it with diligence and fidelity by not being liable to removal without proof of incapacity or misconduct. The cazy-ul-cuzat, or head cazy, of several provinces under this Presidency, and the cazies stationed in the cities, towns, or pergunnahs within those provinces, were accordingly declared by Regulations XXXIX., 1793, and XLVI., 1803, not to be removable from their offices, except for incapacity or misconduct in the discharge of their public duties, or for acts of profligacy in their private conduct; and the rules subsequently enacted in Regulations V., 1804, and VIII., 1809, concerning the appointment and removal of the law officers of the courts of justice, were extended to the local cazies by Section 10 of the former Regulation and Section 4 of the latter. At the same time the office of cazy is declared (in Section 5 of Regulations XXXIX., 1793, and XLVI., 1803, respectively,) ‘not to be heriditary;’ and it is further provided in these regulations that when the office of cazy in any pergunnah, city, or town, shall become vacant, the judge within whose jurisdiction the place may be situated is ‘to recommend such person as may appear to him best qualified for the succession from his character and legal knowledge. The name of the person so recommended is to be communicated to the head cazy who, if he shall deem him unqualified for the office, either from want of legal knowledge or the badness of his private character, is to report the the same in writing.’ It is likewise ‘the duty of the head cazy to report every instance in which it may appear to him that the cazy of any city, town, or pergunnah is incapable, or in which any such cazy may have been guilty of misconduct in the discharge of his public duty or acts of profligacy in his private conduct.’ And a similar report is required to be made by the judges of the zillah, city, and provincial courts to the court of sudder dewanny adawlut, with whom it rests to confirm the appointment or removal of the cazies of cities, towns, and pergunnahs under Section 4, Regulation VIII., 1809.”

As far as I am aware, such continues to be in all essential particulars the legal position of the office of cazy, and I will now illustrate its practical working by a brief abstract of certain documents relating to a single district, that of Tirhoot, which I have been permitted to examine in the judicial department. From these documents it appears that there were in 1818 in that district eighteen cazies appointed to one hundred pergunnahs containing 8,431 villages, and discharging their duties by means of forty naibs or deputies. In that year their number was reduced to fourteen and their jurisdictions equalized. Those eighteen cazies, in virtue of their offices, held rent-free lands amounting to 352 bighas, and they received in the form of salaries or allowances from Government sicca rupees 4,398-1-6 per annum; but these disbursements were suspended at the time mentioned in consequence of its having been found on inquiry that they were altogether unauthorized by Government. It was, however, deemed probable that some allowance would hereafter be granted for their support. The amount of fees received by them for attesting deeds, entering them in their books, and granting copies, varied from four annas to two rupees for each deed. The inferior Musalman castes who employ the cazies at marriage ceremonies pay a fixed fee of one rupee, of which four annas are the understood perquisite of the cazy’s deputy, and the remaining three-fourths are received by the cazy himself. A similar division is probably made of the fees received by deputies for notarial acts. As the office of cazy at present exists, considerable abuse is practised. A fee of from one to five per cent. on the value of the thing transferred is exacted for affixing the seal to deeds of consequence. At the arbitrary will of the cazy a different rate is paid for malguzary and lakhiraj lands transferred, and it not unfrequently occurs that considerable delay and difficulty is made on the part of the cazy in affixing the seal, with a view to increase of emolument, or from other interested motives. In practice, it sometimes, perhaps often, occurs that a candidate for the cazyship is sent to be examined by the mufti of the court, and on his report the candidate is recommended by the judge. Evil arises from the non-residence of the cazies. They invest the whole of their authority in deputies, who generally purchase their situations and make as much of them as they can by the most unjustifiable and illegal means. The Mohammadan law officers of the sudder dewanny adawlut gave a formal opinion, when the subject was referred to them, that the cazies have no power to appoint deputies unless expressly permitted to do so, and such permission they never do receive.

My personal inquiries in the different districts I have visited confirm many of these statements. The frauds arsing out of the non-regulation of the office of cazy were brought very earnestly to my notice and made the subject of strong representation. I happened to meet with a munsiff who is also the cazy of two separate pergunnahs and who performs the duty in both by deputy; and I was informed of two others who were only twelve and thirteen years of age, respectively,—one of them being still at school pursuing his studies. They were stated to be brothers, the sons of a person who was the former cazy of both pergunnahs, and whom after his death they were permitted to succeed. The point, however, to which I solicit special attention is the character, in respect of learning, of the former race of cazies compared with that of the present race. It is maintained by Mohammadans of the present day that even pergunnah cazies under the former Government were invariably learned men, and that it was indispensable that they should be so to enable them with credit to determine questions of Mohammadan law. At present they are, with scarcely any exception, unlearned, although the name of maulavi is sometimes assumed where it is not deserved. In one instance only of those that came under my notice and inquiry was the cazy a really learned man. Their usual attainments do not extend beyond a knowledge of reading, writing, and accounts in Persian. I infer from the abuses and frauds which are connected with the office, if not promoted by the office-holders, from the case of the two boys who succeeded their father, showing that the notion of hereditary succession to this office is not yet eradicated; from the case of the munsiff-cazy acting by deputy, proving that the opinion of the Mohammadan law officers of the sudder dewanny adawlut is not enforced; and from the generally unlearned character of the cazies, establishing that the “legal knowledge” shown by Mr. Harington to be required by the regulations is not possessed; from these premises I infer that the office of cazy needs reform, and what I submit is that the reform which it may receive should, in addition to other objects, be made the means of improving the state of learning amongst the Mohammadan population.

For this purpose, in addition to the ordinary attainments of a learned Musalman, I would require that the candidate for the office of cazy shall have passed successfully through examinations in the four Arabic text-books prepared under the orders of Government for the use of Mohammadan schools of learning; and that he shall have instructed six pupils in each of those books in such a manner as will have enabled them also to pass through similar examinations. The office of cazy would thus be raised from one of insignificance, uselessness, and sometimes positive injury to the community, to one of great importance and direct utility. Amongst the most disaffected portion of the population, the proposed measure would raise up a body of instructed men existing solely by the will of Government, capable of appreciating and explaining its measures, and exercising a powerful and undisputed influence over the whole Musalman population of their jurisdiction. Without additional expense, it would furnish Government with a ready-made body of examiners of the Urdu teachers and scholars of the district. The effect would be an increased feeling of satisfaction and attachment to the Government, in addition to all the other advantages that may be expected from the growth of intelligence and information, of public principle, and of private morality in a community.