t 1 EDUCATION IN BENGAL 1912 - 1937 Zaheda Ahmad Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, May, 1981. ProQuest Number: 11010556 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 11010556 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 Abstract This thesis deals with the organisation and structure, the policies and objectives of the British educational system in Bengal from 1912 to 1937# At each level, primary, secondary and main­ stream higher education, it seeks to judge the contribution, financial, political and educational, of the central and provincial governments, of the professional educators in the Indian Education Service, the Directors of Public Instruction and college principals, and of their Indian counterparts, most notably such Vice-Chancellors as Asutosh Mookerjee, together with the contributions of the politicians and publicists, both Hindu and Muslim, and of their constituents, the consumers of the education so fashioned and provided. The first two chapters deal with change in the structure and organ­ isation of higher education as Calcutta became a teaching university and Dacca, founded in 1921, emerged from its shadow. Chapters three and four examine the problems of administration and control of secondary education and relate these to the financial constraints felt by government and the social and political pressures exerted by Bengali society. Primary education forms the subject of the fifth chapter, where the problems of expansion and improvement, of quantity and quality, within a restricted budget are examined and related to the rapid enlargement in the electorate after 1919 and 1935, The last chapter deals with education, seen again at all three levels, in terms of Muslim needs and aspirations - and of Hindu fears and opposition relating these to problems of employment and of political power. Contents Title Abstract Acknowledgements Abbreviations Illustrations and Maps Introduction Chapter I Higher Education : Structure and Organisation Chapter II Higher Education : Finance and Frustration Chapter III Secondary Education s Politics and Administration Chapter IV Secondary Education s The Battle for a Board Chapter V Primary Education : Expansion and Consolidation Chapter VI Muslim Education : Alienation or Integration ? Bibliography Acknowledgements In the course of preparation of this thesis I have received help and support from many institutions and individuals. The British Council were generous in their grant towards my fees; my research in India was made possible by financial assistance from the School of Oriental and African Studies and from London University, and I am most grateful to Dacca University for allowing me paid study leave for four years. My thanks are also due to the staff of the India Office Library and Records, of the British Library, the Indian House Library and of the Library of my own School here in England, in India to the staffs of the National Archives in Delhi, the West Bengal State Archives and the Library of the Uest Bengal Secretariat, The National Library, Calcutta, and in Bangladesh to the Bangla Academy and Dacca University Library. The staff of the Bangladesh High Commission in India, particularly Mr S.A. Hakim and Mr A.F. Qadirfhelped me greatly with visa formalities. I am glad to acknowledge the help and co-operation of many individuals in India who smoothed my stay there. I am particularly thankful to Dr S.C. Ghosh, Miss S. Basu, Dr M. Shendge, Miss S. Sarkar and Miss E.D*Souza. My warmest thanks ara due to Mrs Doan Dobbyn who not only typed the whole thesis with great care and efficiency but encouraged me by taking a most lively interest in the work. Lastly, to my long-suffering husband and children who have had to bear four long years of separation I offer my sincerest thanks and apologies. Abbreviations BAR Bengal Administration Report BLCP Bengal Legislative Council Proceedings BNNR Bengal Native Newspaper Reports BQR Quinquennial Report of the Progress of Education in Bengal GB—Appointment Government of Bengal - Appointment Proceedings GB-Finance Government of Bengal - Financial Proceedings GB— Gen-Edn Government of Bengal — General Proceedings, Education Department GI-Home-Edn Government of India — Home Proceedings, Education Department IAR Indian Annual Register IQR Quinquennial Report of the Progress of Education in India ISC Indian Statutory Commission (Simon Commission) 6 Maps, Chart and Illustrations Maps Calcutta University, jurisdiction and colleges, 11 1911-12 Maps Bengal, sites of colleges, 1919 105 Maps: English literacy and Bhadralok Hindus, 1921 156 Maps: General literacy and Mohammadans, 1921 157 Chart; Administrative Machinery of the Department of Education, Bengal, 1920— 1937 203 Illustrations: Primary Schools, Bengal, 1912 238 Illustration: Guru Training School, Bengal, 1912 242 Illustration: Board Primary School, Chittagong, 1912 254 Illustration: Dacca Madrassa, 1912 301 Illustrations: Bengali Society in Profile, 1931 325— 328 7 INTRODUCTION This is not an all-inclusive study of Bengal education, our main concern has been with the purposes and policy, the organisation and structure of the western system of education which the British introduced, and with the efforts made by the two great communities, the Hindus and the Muslims, to adapt what was offered or imposed to their own purposes. All three major elements in the system, the primary, secondary and higher levels of instruct­ ion are dealt with - but not the specialist topics, important though they are, of professional and technical education, of female education, or of teacher training, and though something is said of the overall pattern of curricula, no attempt has been made to follow recent example and examine the changing intellectual content of the education given through an analysis of text-books and examination papers. Many of these topics are technical, several are self- contained, for some source—material is very patchy — but more important, neither time nor space allowed their investigation,^ { h - 1912 has been chosen as^/starting point for this study since it is from this date that Bengal becomes a compact administrative and linquistic unit and acquires a homogeneity which makes a statistical approach reasonably easy, though it is unfortunate that the 1911 Census was taken while Bengal was still divided while that of 1941 was incomplete. The coming into practical effect of the constitutional changes of 1935 in 1937 provides the excuse for halting at the latter date. The twenty five years covered saw two major financial disasters for the cause of education — the first World War, with its attendant shortages, inflation and debt and the world slump which made its impact from 1929 onwards; saw two periods of political disruption - the Non-Co-operation Movement and the Civil Disobedience Movement, both of which distorted 1, Though at all points the constraints imposed by finance have been touched upon - as for example in considering the outcome of the Calcutta University Commission's radical proposals — no separate study has been included, A separate paper on finance has been written and is to be submitted for publication 8 educational policies very markedly in Bengal; saw the creation of the new universities, those of Dacca and Patna within the area hitherto under Calcutta University*s jurisdiction, and in Calcutta itself a shift from being a purely examining institution to one actively teaching at post­ graduate level, and finally saw with the introduction of Dyarchy the extinction of the role of the Government of India in provincial education, and far more importantly, the beginning of mass politics, which in Bengal also meant the beginning of communal politics, in education as in all other spheres. I was warned by friends in Calcutta when I began this study, that nothing of interest happened in Bengal education in my chosen period and that the nineteenth century would have been far more exciting. Even the brief outline above suggests that interesting things were happening — but it can perhaps be said that many forces and pressures tended in this period to cancel one another out, so that in the absence of clear, dramatic movement the straining effort of the tug-of-war is not easily seen. Sometimes the pull is within government itself, as when the Home Government, the Government of India and the Government of Bengal struggle each in turn to save something of the reforming impulse of Sadler but to put the burden of paying for change on another*s shoulders. Or it may be within a community - westernised Calcutta-based Muslim leaders denouncing the blinkering obscurantism to be found in maktabs or madrassas while the more orthodox Eastern Bengal presses for more special institutions; Muslims both seek more employment and to pursue an education which unfits them for it, now complaining of the lack of Muslim University teachers, then hounding out Abul Hussain from Dacca for his questioning of traditional dogma or passing over Humayun Kabir in favour of a comparative nonentity more acceptable to the orthodox. At times the conflict is within a single individual - as in the case of Asutosh Mookerjee, more often it involves a whole series of interests s the professional educators, the DPIs or college principals like H.R. Dames, the bureaucrats, provincial 9 and all-India of the Education, Home and Finance departments who are usually at cross-purposes, and the politicians, Congress, League or Krishak Praja.