Development of Education under British Rule

Modern education was one of the most far-reaching changes the British brought to India. But it was shaped by colonial needs, not Indian ones. The British wanted cheap clerks and a loyal elite. So they favoured English higher education for a few over mass literacy for the many. Yet the same education gave Indians the tools of modern thought. They turned those tools against colonial rule. This topic traces the debates, despatches and commissions that built the system, a favourite hunting ground for exam questions.

For its first 60 years the Company, a trading concern, took little interest in education. The early institutions were aimed at training officials and winning over elites:

• Calcutta Madrasah: set up by Warren Hastings (1781) for the study of Muslim law.
• Sanskrit College, Benaras: set up by Jonathan Duncan (1791) for Hindu law and philosophy.
• Fort William College: set up by Wellesley (1800) to train the Company's recruits (closed in 1802).

The turning points came in three stages:

• Charter Act of 1813: a "humble beginning". It accepted the principle of promoting education and directed the Company to spend one lakh rupees a year. But the money was held up for years by a dispute over how to spend it.
• Orientalist-Anglicist Controversy: within the General Committee on Public Instruction, the Orientalists wanted to expand traditional Indian (Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic) learning. The Anglicists wanted the funds spent on modern Western studies.
• Macaulay's Minute (1835): Lord Macaulay settled the row in favour of the Anglicists. The limited funds would go to teaching Western sciences and literature through English. The aim was to create a class "Indian in blood and colour but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect" who would act as interpreters between the rulers and the masses. This was the "downward filtration theory". It meant English schools for a small upper class and the neglect of mass education.
• Wood's Despatch (1854): prepared by Charles Wood, this was the first comprehensive education plan. It is called the "Magna Carta of English Education in India". It asked the government to take responsibility for mass education, rejecting downward filtration on paper. It systematised a hierarchy from vernacular primary schools up to affiliating universities in the presidency towns. It also pushed female and vocational education, made government education secular, and set up a grants-in-aid system.

Following Wood's Despatch, the first three universities at Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were set up in 1857. The Bethune School (1849), founded by J.E.D. Bethune, became the first fruit of the movement for women's education. Then came a series of reviews:

• Hunter Commission (1882-83): chaired by W.W. Hunter, it focused on the neglected primary and secondary education. It stressed that the state must specially care for primary education through the vernacular and transfer its control to district and municipal boards.
• Indian Universities Act, 1904: based on the Raleigh Commission, this was Curzon's attempt to tighten government control over universities. Curzon justified it in the name of quality. But nationalists like Gokhale called it a "retrograde measure" meant to discipline the educated towards loyalty.
• Government Resolution on Education, 1913: the government refused to make primary education compulsory, despite Gokhale's bill. But it accepted the goal of removing illiteracy and urged the provinces to expand free elementary education.
• Sadler (Calcutta University) Commission, 1917-19: it held that improving secondary education was the key to improving university education. It proposed a 12-year school course with an intermediate stage before a three-year degree. Seven new universities came up in 1916-21.
• Hartog Committee (1929): set up by the Simon Commission, it warned against "quantitative" expansion. It stressed consolidation and quality, especially in primary education, highlighting the problems of wastage and stagnation.

Indian leaders pushed back against a system designed for colonial ends.

• Sargent Plan (1944): drawn up by John Sargent, the Educational Adviser, it was a long-term plan aiming at universal literacy within 40 years, with free compulsory education for the 6-14 age group. It was criticised as too slow and too costly, but was, in fact, ahead of its time.
• Wardha Scheme of Basic Education / Nai Talim (1937): the most important nationalist contribution. Based on Gandhi's ideas and worked out by the Zakir Hussain committee, its core principle was "learning through activity". It educated the child through a productive craft such as spinning, weaving or carpentry, taught in the mother tongue, with no religious education. Gandhi held that existing education had created a gulf between the educated few and the masses. It was less a teaching method than a vision of a self-reliant, cooperative society. The Second World War and the resignation of the Congress ministries (1939) cut short its development.

Education was one channel through which modern ideas spread. The printing press was the other. A newspaper could reach a remote village, be read aloud in a local library, and turn a government policy into a subject of public criticism. The British understood this power and tried, law after law, to muzzle it. The story is best learnt as a tug-of-war between repressive Acts and the journalists who defied them.

The first newspaper in India was The Bengal Gazette (also called the Calcutta General Advertiser), started by James Augustus Hickey in 1780. Its outspoken criticism got it seized in 1782. That seizure set the pattern of conflict to come. The early regulations swung between repression and liberty:

• Censorship of Press Act, 1799: enacted by Wellesley, anticipating a French invasion. It imposed almost wartime restrictions, including pre-censorship. (Pre-censorship was relaxed under Hastings in 1818.)
• Licensing Regulations, 1823: enacted by the reactionary acting Governor-General John Adams. Running a press without a licence became a penal offence. The rules were aimed mainly at Indian-language papers. Rammohan Roy's Mirat-ul-Akbar had to stop publication.
• Press Act of 1835 (Metcalfe Act): Metcalfe repealed the obnoxious 1823 ordinance. He earned the title "liberator of the Indian press". A liberal policy led to a rapid growth of newspapers.
• Licensing Act, 1857: re-imposed licensing during the Revolt emergency.
• Registration Act, 1867: replaced Metcalfe's Act; it was regulatory, not restrictive, requiring every paper to print the name of the printer, publisher and place of publication.

From the early 19th century, defence of press freedom was high on the nationalist agenda. Rammohan Roy protested against press restrictions as early as 1824.

• The press as a tool. In the moderate phase (c. 1870-1918), the movement focused on political education and propaganda rather than mass agitation. The press was its crucial instrument. The Indian National Congress in its early days relied solely on newspapers to spread its resolutions. These papers were run as public service, not for profit. They reached the villages, where a single copy would be read and debated in "local libraries".
• The great papers and editors. Among the most famous were The Hindu and Swadesamitran (G. Subramania Aiyar), Bengalee (Surendranath Banerjea), Voice of India (Dadabhai Naoroji), Amrita Bazar Patrika (Sisir Kumar Ghosh), Kesari (Marathi) and Mahratta (English) (Bal Gangadhar Tilak), and Sudharak (Gokhale's associate, Gopal Ganesh Agarkar).
• Tilak and press freedom. Bal Gangadhar Tilak is most closely associated with the fight for a free press. He built anti-imperialist feeling through the Ganapati festival (1893), the Shivaji festival (1896), and his newspapers. He was tried for sedition in 1897 and again in 1908. In 1908 he was transported to Mandalay for six years. He became a national hero, given the title "Lokmanya". His arrest sparked the first political strike by Bombay textile and railway workers. Lenin hailed this as the entry of the Indian working class onto the political stage.

The government struck back with a chain of repressive laws.

• Vernacular Press Act, 1878: passed under Lytton to "better control" the Indian-language press. That press had attacked his handling of the famine of 1876-77. Nicknamed the "gagging Act", its worst features were that it discriminated between the English and vernacular press and allowed no right of appeal. The magistrate's action was final. Ripon repealed it in 1882. (To escape it, the Amrita Bazar Patrika turned overnight into an English newspaper.)
• Repression of journalists. In 1883 Surendranath Banerjea became the first Indian journalist to be imprisoned. Section 124A of the Penal Code (sedition) and the later Section 153A were used freely against editors.
• Newspaper (Incitement to Offences) Act, 1908: aimed at Extremist activity, it let magistrates confiscate the press of papers publishing matter likely to incite violence.
• Indian Press Act, 1910: revived the worst features of the Vernacular Press Act for all papers; nearly 1,000 papers were prosecuted and over 500 publications proscribed under it.
• Wartime controls. The Press Acts of 1908 and 1910 were repealed in 1921, on the Tej Bahadur Sapru committee's advice. However, the Press (Emergency Powers) Act, 1931 gave provincial governments sweeping powers against the Civil Disobedience Movement. During the Second World War, publication of all Congress activity was declared illegal.