Imagine a group of horsemen riding into the campus of a world-famous
university, mowing down students and professors until their bodies lie
scattered everywhere. Imagine the same scene repeated at other
universities, one after the other. And imagine all this in a time when
there were no computers, no digital storage devices and no clouds to
save the knowledge accumulated over generations. Mindless violence
unleashed on the foremost universities of the time – Nalanda,
Vikramshila and Odantapuri by Mohammad Bakhtyar Khilji and his men sent
shock waves through Indic lands in the 13
th century. The
sacredness associated with institutions and persons of learning was
violated in a manner never seen in India before.
The attack was chronicled by Minhaj-i-Siraj, principal historian of
the Delhi Sultans in Tabaqat-i-Nasiri, who described the slaughter of
thousands of “Brahmins” with shaven heads.
“There were a great number of books there; and, when all these
books came under the observation of the Musalmans, they summoned a
number of Hindus that they might give them information respecting the
import of those books; but the whole of the Hindus had been killed.” (A.S.Altekar, 1944)
It is ironic that Bakhtyar Khilji hailed from a tribe in what is
known as Afghanistan today, which practised Buddhism for centuries
before being overrun by Ghaznavids and converting to Islam. In
subsequent years, as Muslim rule spread and consolidated in different
parts of India, many more universities were destroyed, such as
Jagaddala, Somapura, Valabhi, Kashmir and others. As the news spread,
scholars abandoned their colleges even before the Muslim invaders
appeared. In Banaras, one of India’s ancient centres of education, when
several hundreds of temples were destroyed by Qutubuddin Aibak in the 12
th
century, many learned Brahmins who taught there fled to southern India
along with their families (A.S.Altekar, 1944). Some of the scholars who
escaped from Vikramshila and other universities, such as Sakya Sribhadra
and Vibhutichandra made their way to Tibet, another hub of higher
learning (Mookerjee, 1960). Records maintained by Buddhist monks at
Tibet give accounts of the destruction of Indian universities.
Translations of Sanskrit texts preserved in Tibet help to give some idea
of the books that were found in the libraries of the great Indian
universities (Sharma R. N., 2012).
Picture
captioned “The end of Buddhist Monks, A.D. 1193” in Hutchinson’s Story
of the Nations (Pg 169) shows Bakhtyar Khilji trying to make sense of
the manuscripts that fell into his hands, Wikimedia Commons.
Had the rulers of India learned lessons from the earlier destruction
of libraries in Alexandria, Cordoba, Persia and Ghazni (many of which
contained texts that originated in India itself), and put their
differences aside, perhaps India would boast of the world’s longest
running universities today. More importantly, India would have retained
its link with ancient works in Sanskrit, especially the ones on science
and medicine. The destruction of key centres of higher education in
India, including temples and the persecution of Hindus, Buddhists and
other followers of Dharmic faiths during the centuries of Muslim
domination affected the progress of Sanskrit scholarship considerably.
The writing of new smritis and their revisions suffered a setback.
Historian A.L Srivastava has described the “325 years of Turko-Afghan
rule” as a period of great suffering for Hindus, which were clearly not
conducive to education, especially female education.
Not only were they deprived of their position as rulers,
ministers, governors and commanders of troops, but were also treated
contemptuously. The Turkish Sultans and their principal followers sought
their brides from well-to-do Hindu families and compelled the proud
chiefs to part with their daughters. In accordance with the Muslim law,
the Hindu girls were first deprived of their religion, converted to
Islam, and then married. (A.L.Srivastava, 1964)
The accounts of Brahmins fleeing to different parts of India to
escape Muslim persecution are too many to be missed. Despite attempts by
scholars to regroup in distant locations, and even to rebuild some of
the destroyed universities, the old glory of Indic educational
institutions could not be restored. The absence of science education
that was noted by British chroniclers in a later era can be linked to
the Muslim invasions of India. Sanskrit works of scientists and
mathematicians of earlier periods began to be forgotten in their land of
origin, even as their Arabic and Latin translations as well as
plagiarised versions became the basis of science, mathematics and
technology in Europe (See
Part 2 of this article series).
Emphasis on Islamic Education
Madrasa built by Mahmud Gawan in Bidar, Karnataka. Photo: Syed Suhaib Mustafa, Wikimedia Commons
As the various Muslim dynasties got entrenched within India,
education with the aim of imparting Islamic teachings became the norm.
Muktabs and madrasas attached to mosques began to impart training in
Islamic traditions. Says M.A. Khan in “Islamic Jihad: A Legacy of Forced
Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery”:
Muslim rulers in India built only Islamic schools, namely muktabs
and madrasas, often linked to mosques, solely for training Muslim
students in their religion and other crafts for administrative and
military duty, useful for the Muslim state. Learning Arabic and Persian
language and memorizing the Quran, prophetic tradition and Islamic laws
were the major subjects of study. Limited training was also given in
agriculture, accountancy, astrology, astronomy, history, geography and
mathematics, needed for running the state.
Muslim education was patronised by rulers from the Mamluk, Tughlaq
and Lodhi dynasty as well as the Mughals and Bahmani Sultans. Delhi
became one of the most important centres of Islamic learning
(A.L.Srivastava, 1964). Other towns such as Jalandhar, Agra, Firozabad
and provincial capitals also began to teach literature, philosophy and
various humanities. The Islamic schools that used Persian as a medium of
instruction were out of bounds for Hindu students. The lack of state
support for education for Hindus led to a drastic decline in their
higher education even though primary schools in villages continued to
function wherever unjust taxation had not crippled finances completely.
Many Hindus converted to Islam and learned Persian as a way of gaining
respectable positions and to avoid the Jaziya tax imposed on
non-Muslims. This was also a time when caste stratification became more
rigid amongst Hindus in order to retain identities and preserve
traditions.
Keeping Sanskrit and regional languages alive
Rich businessmen, Hindu Rajas and local communities kept the flame of
learning alight for Hindus (Dwivedi, 1994). During the reign of Mughal
emperor Akbar (16
th century), Sanskrit received some amount
of royal patronage since the ruler was interested in harmonising
relationships between his Muslim and Hindu subjects. The first
Sanskrit-Persian dictionary was compiled during Akbar’s reign (Mehta,
1984). Many works were produced in Sanskrit, Hindi-Urdu and regional
languages such as Bengali and Marathi. It was the age of Tulsidas and
Rahim. Akbar was keen for students to not solely restrict themselves to
theology and classical literature. In
Ain-i-Akbari, which chronicles the reign of Akbar, it is stated:
Everybody ought to read books on morals, arithmetic, the notation
peculiar to arithmetic, agriculture, mensuration, geometry, astronomy,
physiognomy (the art of discerning character from the features of the
face), household matters, the rules of government, medicine, logic,
Tabiyi (natural science), Riyazi (higher mathematics) and Ilahi
(metaphysics and theology), and history; all of which may be gradually
acquired.
In studying Sanskrit, students ought to learn the Vyakarana,
Nyaya, Vedanta and Patanjali. No one should be allowed to neglect these
things which the present time requires” (Dwivedi, 1994)
.
Akbar also encouraged the opening up of Madrasas for Hindu children
so that Hindus and Muslims could study side by side. He introduced the
study of Sanskrit in many madrasas. His imperial library in Agra housed
as many as 24,000 manuscripts. The books had attractive bindings and
were beautifully illustrated. The king loved to listen to readings of
books on a variety of subjects. Jain monks produced a number of Sanskrit
works during Akbar’s reign. (Mehta, 1984)
To some extent, the encouragement of literature in Sanskrit and
regional languages continued under the reign of Jahangir and Shah Jahan.
Sanskrit poets such as Panditaraja Jagannatha and Kavindra Acharya
Saraswati were patronized by Shah Jahan (Sarma, 1994). A new language
emerged from the amalgamation of Persian, Arabic and Hindustani, which
was similar to today’s Urdu and Hindi.
Dara Shikoh in the company of holy men. This painting is ascribed to Dal Chand. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
However, Aurangzeb reversed the inclusiveness that Akbar had ushered
in during his reign. An Islamic fanatic, he persecuted Hindus and built
new maktabs and madrasas on the ruins of demolished temples. (Riaz,
2008) On hearing that Brahmins at Thatta, Multan, Sindh and specially
Varanasi were attracting Muslims to their discourses, he ordered all
their temples and schools to be demolished (Mukhia, 2004). He killed his
elder brother Dara Shikoh, the rightful heir to the throne, who was a
Sanskrit scholar himself. With the help of pandits, Dara had translated
Ramayana, Gita, Upanishads and Yogavasisthas to Persian; all of which
constituted blasphemous acts in the eyes of his brother.
Dara’s Persian translation of Upanishads was translated to Latin in the beginning of the 19
th
century and created a renewed interest in the Upanishads among learned
Europeans (Figueira, 1955). Had Dara become the emperor instead of
Aurangzeb, India’s destiny could have been vastly different.
Neglect of sciences in the Mughal reign
The Mughals did not build on the leading-edge concepts presented by
Hindu scholars of an earlier era to become the world leader in science
and mathematics. While madrasas proliferated and students became adept
in the finer details of the Quran and Hadiths in Muslim India, the
western world was making advances in science and technology. Of course,
these advances were considerably assisted by the Toledo school
translations of Arabic works that were derived from India. (See
Part 2
of this article). The Mughal kings missed the opportunity to ride the
wave of technological discoveries in the west despite ruling over the
richest land in the world. When Portuguese missionaries presented
printed papers to Akbar, he was least interested in the potential of the
printing press to transform education. His son Jahangir was similarly
indifferent to a mechanical clock presented to him by the royal French
delegation. (Riaz, 2008)
“The Mughal Empire has not produced a single worthwhile text on
crafts or agriculture, how many volumes of poetry or histories it might
have to its credit,” writes Irfan Habib (Habib, 2008). Apart from
printing press and clocks, Mughal rulers were aware of nautical
instruments, telescopes, pumps, various mechanical gadgets and
wheelbarrows. Yet, these did not excite any desire for indigenous
adaptation (Qaisar, 1982). The marvels of Mughal architecture were
achieved without the aid of wheelbarrows (Kumar & Desai, 1982).
Arrival of the colonialists
Meanwhile, the Europeans who had been coming to India via the sea route from the 15
th
century onwards were battling amongst themselves for cornering the
trade with India. The British East India Company emerged victorious
after pushing the Portuguese, French and Dutch to the periphery and
began spreading its tentacles within India. At first, the British did
not bother themselves with education of the “natives” and focused on
playing politics with different rulers and enriching themselves. Over
time, they realised that “their dominion in India could not last long
unless education – especially western – was diffused among the
inhabitants of the land” (Basu, 1922).
A Mohammedan and a Sanskrit college were set up in Kolkata and Banaras respectively in the late 18
th
century “to provide a regular supply of qualified Hindu and Mohammedan
law officers for the judicial administration” (Trevelyan, 1838). The
British did not have any noble motives of education of the masses when
they set up institutes of learning. These were the same people who
imposed serious punishment on black slaves in America and passed laws to
the effect that “assemblage of negroes for the purpose of instruction
in reading or writing shall be an unlawful assembly” (Basu, 1922).
Anglicists versus Orientalists and their disdain for Indian knowledge
Many of us are familiar with Macaulay’s memorandum or “minute” on
Indian Education, which was circulated by him prior to the passing of
the English Education Act of 1835. That act gave effect to
Governor-General William Bentinck’s decision of reallocating of funds
towards a western curriculum with English as the language of
instruction.
Thomas Babington Macaulay’s
minute is a classic that needs to be read by every “educated” Indian:
“We must at present do our best to form a class who may be
interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern – a class of
persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions,
in morals and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the
vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms
of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by
degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the
population.”
Macaulay’s minute and the English Education Act came after a 15-year
debate between the older faction of Orientalists and the later
Anglicists. The Orientalists argued that government funds should be used
to support colleges for the teaching of Arabic and Sanskrit, to pay
stipends to the students at these colleges, and to translate works into
Arabic and Sanskrit. The Anglicists on the other hand, advocated that
these government funds should be spent on teaching English, with no
stipends or translations at all. (Clive, 1971)
Most Orientalists and Anglicists had one thing in common – their
belief in the “innate inferiority of the Indian culture” and the need to
educate the elites (Clive, 1971). They only differed on how best to
“improve” the minds of Indians, how to “correct” their beliefs and make
them more useful as subjects of the British Empire.
Orientalists such as John Tytler believed in gradual reform via
teaching in Arabic and Sanskrit so that the British could understand
Indian culture and then prove it wrong. This method would lead to
Indians themselves “correcting their countrymen”. (Clive, 1971)
Charles Trevelyan, brother-in-law of Macaulay and an avowed
Anglicist, said before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the
Government of Indian Territories that both “Hindoos and Mahomedans”
regarded the British as “usurping foreigners” who had “taken the country
from them” and excluded them from “the avenues to wealth and
distinction”. He argued that European learning “would give an entirely
new turn to the native mind”. The natives would cease to “strive after
independence in the native model” and would not regard the British as
“enemies and usurpers”, but as “friends and patrons, and powerful
beneficent persons”. (Basu, 1922)
Trevelyan’s arguments against Sanskrit and Arabic as a means of
instruction sound Kautilyan in strategy. Arabic literature would keep
reminding Muslims that the British were “infidel usurpers” while
Sanskrit texts would inform Hindus that their foreign rulers were
“unclean beasts”. He pointed out that already in the army, there was a
clear distinction between the English officers and the native sepoys.
Not “one native out of 500” educated in Arabic in a seminary would be
interested in enlisting in the army. Therefore, it was important to
educate “sepoys” in English at the elementary level (Trevelyan, 1838).
For the elites, English literature would do the trick. Familiarly
acquainted with literature, the Indian youth would speak of great
Englishmen with the “same enthusiasm” as the British themselves. They
would reject the teachings of Brahmin priests. “The natives will not
rise against us because we shall stoop to raise them,” he explained.
Also, he noted that those educated in English would “cling” to the
British rule because they would have everything to fear from a native
government, which could mark them out for persecution. This last surmise
of Trevelyan’s was clearly wrong, as the subsequent freedom movement of
India proved.
Many Anglicists emphasised on the convenience attached to having
English-speaking natives. Given that a large number of British officers
were constantly being deputed in India, it was troublesome for them to
understand the various languages and dialects of the natives. Also, it
was a costly and time-consuming affair to translate various English
books into native languages. In other words, the interests of the people
of the land became subservient to convenience.
In addition to the Anglicists, there were the Vernacularists, who
rejected Sanskrit and Persian in favour of regional languages. They
championed the teaching of European knowledge in “vernacular” languages.
The term “vernacular” itself has a derogatory meaning in the sense of
being a language that is less cultured or refined.
Christian evangelism as a driver of education
It must be noted that spreading Christianity was a desirable goal for
most Anglicists, Orientalists as well as Vernacularists. Dr Alexander
Duff, an Anglicist, who opened a popular school in Calcutta was against
“heathen” institutions. Macaulay himself wrote in a letter to his
father, “No Hindoo who has received an English education ever remains
sincerely attached to his religion.” He expressed his “firm belief” that
if his plans of education were followed up, “there will not be a single
idolator amongst the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence.”
(Basu, 1922)
JC Marshman who made a sincere plea for retaining “Bengalee” as a
medium of instruction gave the example of Serampore missionaries whose
“labours” in “civilization and evangelization of the province of Bengal”
had led to the establishing of 40 printing presses in a few decades and
selling of 30,000 books in just one year. (Basu, 1922)
Many Christian missionaries learned regional languages such as Tamil
and Kannada, published dictionaries in them and translated the Bible for
evangelization activities. They appropriated several aspects of
Hinduism into Christianity in order to make it more palatable to the
locals and wean them away from traditional Sanatana Dharma.
English language struck roots in the land as the English Education
Act began to take effect and the missionary schools that mushroomed
across the country made English the “first language”.
Many Indians were Anglicists
An important argument made by Anglicists in favour of standardising
English-medium education was that the Indian natives themselves were
eager to learn English. “A taste for English has been widely
disseminated,” said Trevelyan. He happily noted that a “loud call” arose
from the natives themselves to be instructed in English. Schools
teaching in English were extremely popular and English books were
selling far more rapidly than books in Sanskrit and Arabic (Trevelyan,
1838). This is not surprising, since a good knowledge of English opened
opportunities for government jobs all over the country. Besides, the
vacuum in science and disconnect with Sanskrit works on science and
mathematics caused by the Muslim rule made many Indians feel backward in
comparison to the Europeans.
Raja Rammohan Roy’s statue in Bristol
Raja Rammohan Roy is one of the most notable Indian Anglicists, who
petitioned for the teaching of the “arts and sciences of modern Europe”
and argued against establishing a new Sanskrit college in Calcutta in
his letter to Lord Amherst. “The Sanskrit language, so difficult that
almost a lifetime is necessary for its acquisition, is well known to
have been for ages a lamentable check on the diffusion of knowledge; and
the learning concealed under this almost impervious veil is far from
sufficient to reward the labour of acquiring it,” he wrote. A new
Sanskrit college, which taught the same things that were taught “two
thousand years ago” would not help since ‘no improvement can be expected
from inducing young men to consume a dozen of years of the most
valuable period of their lives in acquiring the niceties of Byakaran or
Sanskrit grammar,” he felt. Roy believed that giving allowances to the
teachers engaged in teaching Sanskrit in different parts of India would
be enough to keep the language alive and no new Sanskrit colleges were
necessary. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Hindoo
College in 1817 for imparting secular and scientific education, which
later came to be known as the famous Presidency College of Kolkata. The
alumni of the institute include outstanding personalities such as Bankim
Chandra Chatterjee, Satyendranath Bose and Meghnad Saha.
Dharampal’s revelations of astounding data on India’s popular schooling system
When India was embroiled in the education debate, England was itself
languishing in illiteracy. A minuscule fraction of the children in
England went to school, and the only book most literate people had read
was the Bible. In the 1960s, Dharampal, a Gandhian thinker came across
archival material of extreme significance in London. He discovered
documents related to a series of surveys commissioned by the British
government in the 19
th century to assess the level of
indigenous education in India. This set him on the path of pioneering
research, which brought up startling data. He discovered Thomas Munro’s
statement that almost every village in India had a pathshala (school).
There were 100,000 village schools reported in Bengal and Bihar alone in
the 1830s. Reading, writing, arithmetic, epics and more were being
taught. William Adams, one of the surveyors has written that he could
not recollect studying in his village school in Scotland anything that
had more “direct bearing” upon daily life than what was taught in the
“humbler village schools of Bengal”. (Dharampal, 2000)
From different parts of India came reports of dedicated teachers,
superior methods of teaching and high school attendance. But what simply
challenged every stereotype was that in a large number of schools,
“Soodras” were in majority while the Brahmins and “Vysees” were in
minority. In Tamil-speaking areas, the Shudras ranged from 70% in Salem
and Tinnevelly to over 84% in South Arcot. In Malayalam-speaking
Malabar, Brahmin students constituted only 20% of schools, while Shudras
were 54% and Muslims were 27%. The same trend was reported in
Kannada-speaking Bellary and Oriya-speaking Ganjam. Only in the
Telegu-speaking districts, the dwija castes formed the majority of
students. Some collectors who furnished data spoke about poor Brahmins
who taught children with no expectation of compensation. Girls were
mostly home-schooled. However, in the Malabar district as well as
“Jeypoor Zamindari of Vizagapatam district”, the percentage of girls was
close to 30%, a very high number. (Dharampal, 2000)
It must be remembered that schooling was not the only way of
transmitting basic education. Artisans, craftsmen and agriculturalists
taught their skills to apprentices via a separate system of education.
A.D.Campbell, the collector for Bellary applauded the “economical”
teaching methods in Indian schools and the system of “more advanced
scholars” teaching the “less advanced” thereby confirming their own
knowledge. He mentioned that this method “well deserved the imitation it
had received in England”. He was referring to the “Madras Method” of
teaching, which was introduced by Reverend Andrew Bell in England. Dr
Bell had been impressed by little children in Madras writing with their
fingers on sand, which “after the fashion of such schools had been
strewn before them for that purpose”. He saw a system of children
learning from peers. After Dr Bell published his paper on Madras Method,
he was in great demand to introduce this in British schools. By 1821,
300,000 children were reportedly being educated under Dr Bell’s
principles and his ideas were adopted in Europe, West Indies and even
Bogota, Colombia. (Tooley, 2009)
The Beautiful Ecosystem is uprooted
As the British rule progressed in India, villages got increasingly
impoverished. For example, when the British with the Nawab of Arcot
attacked Thanjavur in 1771 and imposed taxes as high as 59% of gross
produce, they created mass poverty overnight! The entire British
administrative apparatus was geared towards fleecing the citizens and
even the designations of officers such as “District Collectors”
indicated that the only aim of the government was to collect taxes. One
collector of Bellary was so moved by the plight of the people that he
wrote a letter to the authorities that the degeneration of education was
attributable to the “transfer of capital of the country from the native
government…to the Europeans, restricting it by law from employing it
even temporarily in India and daily draining it from the land.” Further,
he wrote, “The means of the manufacturing classes have been greatly
diminished by the introduction of our own European
manufactures.”(Dharampal, 2000)
The British educational policies also sounded the death knell for
regional languages as the rush for English-medium education intensified.
With every subject being taught in English and mother-tongues being
relegated to “second language” the quality of literature in regional
languages began sinking. Illiteracy and low self-confidence began to be
associated with absence of English proficiency. M.K.Gandhi said in 1931
that the British had left India more illiterate than it was a hundred
years ago. Today, India has the largest number of illiterate in the
world.
Disturbingly, India’s self-gaze is still through alien eyes. The past
heritage lies buried in regional and Sanskrit literature, awaiting
illumination. When India became independent from the British in 1947,
there was a fresh opportunity to write a new chapter of decolonization.
India is still waiting.
The author would like to acknowledge the critical inputs of the
members of Indian History Awareness and Research (IHAR). She would also
like to express gratitude to Rare Book Society of India and Nikhil
Dureja for generously sharing books that provided key references for
writing this article.
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Feature Image Credit: Erik Törner
Disclaimer: The facts and opinions expressed within this article are
the personal opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any
responsibility or liability for the accuracy, completeness, suitability,
or validity of any information in this article.
Sahana Singh is a
writer/editor who specializes in environmental issues, current affairs
and Indian history. She is a member of Indian History Awareness and
Research (IHAR), a think tank headquartered in Houston.
