Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 3/Chapter 2/Section 9
SECTION IX.
Concluding Remarks.
I have now completed the duty that was assigned to me. I have collected information respecting the state of native education, reported the results of my inquiries, and recommended those measures which observation and reflection have suggested. It is for Government to deliberate, to resolve, and to act. I am by no means sanguine that my views will be adopted; and even if they are generally approved with the modifications which may occur to others, I would guard against the supposition that I desire or expect them to be all immediately and simultaneously carried into operation. It is only by gradual and constantly widening efforts perseveringly and consistently directed to one object that the various agencies and institutions I have indicated can be fully utilized. If I were desired to state in what direction those efforts should be first employed, I would earnestly recommend that a beginning should be forthwith made with the series of measures suggested for the improvement and extension of vernacular instruction.
To whatever extent the present recommendations may be approved, and in whatever direction the efforts of Government may be primarily employed, I disclaim the expectation of producing a permanent or an extensive effect by education alone unaccompanied by the other appropriate aids of civilization, or by any means whatever in a very short time. No change that shall be at the same time salutary and lasting can be suddenly produced on personal, much less national, character. The progress of individuals and of classes in intelligence and morality to be sure and satisfactory must be gradual, and improvement by an almost imperceptible process interwoven with the feelings, thoughts, and habits of domestic and social life. Moreover, all great results affecting the condition and character of a whole people will be found to be attainable only by the concurrence of many causes. The effect of religion cannot be overlooked, although it is a subject with which, in reference to the native population, the Government of this country cannot justly or safely meddle. The influence of just and equal laws purely administered, security of person and property, freedom of industry and enterprize, protection from invasion and civil war, moderate taxation, and improved internal and external communication, in one word, the influence of good government must also be great in moulding the character of a people. But it may be confidently affirmed that while education without these can do little, these without education cannot do all, and that even what they can accomplish will be much less complete and stable than when matured, directed, and steadied by the intelligence, the foresight, the consistency of purpose, and the morality of conduct which are the proper fruits of mental cultivation. Further, if it may be truly affirmed that education alone is inadequate to reform a people, a fortiori it will be admitted that instruction of any one kind, through any one medium, to any one division of the population, or by means of any one class of institutions must be insufficient for the purpose; and above all must this insufficiency be maintained in a country like India more resembling a continent, inhabited not by a single nation or people of one language, the same religion, and similar manners, customs, and habits, but by numerous and wide-spread nations and tribes, speaking different languages, professing different religions, and existing in totally dissimilar grades of civilization. No one means, no one language, no one system of institutions, can be adequate. All means, all the languages of the country, all existing institutions should be made subservient to the object.
The actual position and prevailing policy of Government demand the adoption of comprehensive measures for the promotion and right direction of national education. The position of Government is that of foreigners on a strange soil among people with whom no common associations exist. Every district has a single encampment of civil functionaries who administer its affairs, and who are so engrossed with details of public business while they remain in any one district, and are involved in such a constant whirl of change from one district to another, that it is almost impossible that any attachment can arise between them and the people, or that either can generally appreciate what is good in the other. We are among the people, but not of them. We rule over them and traffic with them, but they do not understand our character and we do not penetrate their’s. The consequence is that we have no hold on their sympathies, no seat in their affections. Under these circumstances, we are constantly complaining of the want of co-operation on the part of the people, while we do nothing to elicit it where it would be useful, or to make it intelligent and enlightened, if it were afforded. A wisely framed system of public instruction would, with other means, help to draw the people closer to the Government, give the Government a stronger hold on the affections of the people, and produce a mutual and answering sympathy between the subject many and the ruling few.
The prevailing policy of Government is characterized by various measures more or less directly bearing on the present question; by the equal eligibility to office of all classes of Her Majesty’s natural-born subjects without distinction of religion, place of birth, descent, or color; by the extended, and constantly extending, employment of native agency for the purposes of local administration, by the approaching general use of the languages of the people in transacting the public business of the country, and by the legalized freedom of the press. These immunities and powers were equally demanded by justice and conceded by wisdom, but it must not be forgotten by the friends of improvement in this country that just in proportion as civil and political privileges are extended, is the obligation increased to bestow upon the people that instruction which can alone enable them to make a fit and salutary use of their expanding liberties. Take, for instance, the measure which bestowed on the country the liberty of unlicensed printing. The press is in itself simply an instrument, a power, an agency which may be employed either for good or for bad purposes. The capacity of such an instrument to subserve useful purposes is an exact measure of its liability to abuse; and the only effectual security against the possible abuse of its power must be sought in the intelligence and morality of those who wield the instrument and in the check imposed on them by the intelligence and morality of the community which they address and to which they belong. The measure, therefore, legalizing the freedom of the press and all other measures tending to enlarge the civil and political rights of the natives of the country are not in themselves either erroneous in principle, or necessarily injurious in their consequences, but without a national system of instruction they will remain essentially imperfect, since it is instruction only that can give a right direction to the use of these new powers. As yet no time has been lost; but if we would raise an adequate safe-guard against evils which may be distant, but which are both possible and avoidable. Government will by a general system of instruction, timely established, teach the people the proper use of the mighty instrument that has been put into their hands, and of the various franchises that have been, and from time to time may be, bestowed.
Under any circumstances, our position in this country requires wary treading. In the actual case we have done and are doing little to conciliate and not a little to alienate the good feelings of the people. Individual cases, sometimes enlarging into classes, no doubt exist where a feeling of attachment to the English rule called forth by peculiar circumstances is strong and decided so long as those circumstances last and so far as their effect is felt. But among certain other classes dissatisfaction is not sought to be concealed; and the utmost that can be said of native society in general, even in its most favorable aspect, is that there is no hostility, but in place of it a cold, dead, apathetic indifference which would lead the people to change masters to-morrow without a struggle or a sigh. A system of national instruction, if judiciously executed, would be the commencement of a new era in the spirit and principles of our Government. Excluded as we are from much social intercourse with the natives of the country, it would be one of the most effectual means that could be employed to throw down the barrier which the pride of foreign rulers and the prejudices of native society have combined to raise. In proportion as the scheme was extended over the country it would place the Government in friendly relations with every city, town, and hamlet, with every head of a family, with every instructor of youth, and with the entire juvenile population speedily to become the instructed adult population of the country. It would constitute a chain, the links of which would be found in every village and at every hearth. It would produce men not only able to understand the measures of Government, which would be something; but, what would be still better, morally disposed to appreciate the good intentions of Government and to co-operate in carrying them into effect.
“Sovereigns and chiefs of nations!” says DeFellenberg, “the fruitful source of sedition, of crime, of all the blood which flows upon the scaffold, is owing to the erroneous education of the people. Landlords! it is here you must seek the cause of all those obstacles which the idleness and growing vices of the laboring classes oppose to the increase of the produce of your estates.”—“By degrading the people we dry up the richest source of power, of wealth, and of happiness which a State can possess.”
“In the infancy of the British administration in this country,” says Lord Moira, “it was perhaps a matter of necessity to confine our legislation to the primary principle of justice, ‘not that nice and delicate justice, the offspring of a refined humanity, but that coarse though useful virtue, the guardian of contracts and promises, whose guide is the square and the rule, and whose support is the gallows.’ The lapse of half a century and the operation of that principle have produced a new state of society which calls for a more enlarged and liberal policy. The moral duties require encouragement. The arts which adorn and embellish life will follow in ordinary course. It is for the credit of the British name that this beneficial revolution should arise under British sway. To be the source of blessings to the immense population of India is an ambition worthy of our country. In proportion as we have found intellect neglected and sterile here, the obligation is the stronger on us to cultivate it. The field is noble. May we till it worthily!”
| Calcutta;, | |
| The 28th April 1838. |
