DOCUMENT RESUME ED 408 747 EC 305 618 AUTHOR Miles, M. TITLE Disability Care & Education in 19th Century India: Dates, Places & Documentation, with Some Additional Material on Mental Retardation and Physical Disabilities up to 1947. Revised Version. PUB DATE May 97 NOTE 68p. PUB TYPE Information Analyses (070) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC03 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Citations (References); *Disabilities; *Educational History; Elementary Secondary Education; Foreign Countries; Institutionalized Persons; Mental Retardation; Physical Disabilities; Residential Care; Residential Institutions; *Special Education IDENTIFIERS *India; *Nineteenth Century ABSTRACT This monograph uses brief excerpts from many sources to document the history of the education and care of individuals with disabilities in India, primarily in the 19th century. An introduction describes the author's methodology in compiling and annotating the excerpts, which are listed alphabetically by locality in India. Under each locality, excerpts are listed chronologically and typically describe individual children, the institutions they attended, services provided to them, and the children's responses. A separate section provides excerpts from documents about institutions and services for individuals with mental retardation and physical disabilities in the early 20th century (to 1965). An appendix provides excerpts from legal papers concerning the establishment of a specific asylum for the blind at Benares. (Contains approximately 300 references.) (DB) ******************************************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made * * from the original document. * ******************************************************************************** DISABILITY CARE & EDUCATION IN 19TH CENTURY INDIA: Dates, Places & Documentation with some additional material on mental retardation and physical disabilities up to 1947. Revised version, May 1997. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as M. MILES received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to 4 Princethorpe Rd, improve reproduction quality. Birmingham B29 5PX, UK. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY rar.,fvas%fareaMilii tit Rim P- OCO B uur iiMBLADLiC 2 TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) DISABILITY CARE & EDUCATION IN 19TH CENTURY Some Dates, Places & Documentation INTRODUCTION who was herself blind. Miss Asho had Writers in the past fifty years, both Indian received her first education in a school for and foreign, have been poorly informed sighted children at Lahore in the 1870s, and about Indian special needs education and later gained vocational skills and an aptitude disability care in the 19th century - and for for teaching. The Amritsar hospital manager mental retardation and orthopaedic under whose authority the subsequent disabilities, the developments up to 1947. institution for blind people existed, wrote in Much inaccurate data has been copied from 1898 that, "Asho's coming really marks the secondary sources. For example, one of the date of the beginning of this school." few historical 'facts' given by most modern (HEWLETT, p.50). Sharp, who admitted to writers is that the first school for blind knowing almost nothing about teaching blind people in India was founded in the 1880s by people, acted as school manager among her Annie Sharp, a missionary at Amritsar (e.g. many missionary duties, and doubtless did so ROY, 1944, p.6; MAKHDUM, 1961, p.2; with great devotion. She herself noted AMESUR, 1961, p.330; PRASAD, 1961; (references below) that the first necessary BHATT, 1963, pp.25, 161, 217; MUKERJI, step in opening a school had been to find an 1964, p.408; KAOOSJI, 1967; VYAS, 1968; Indian blind teacher. TAYLOR & TAYLOR, 1970, p.155; GORE, 1978, p.660; MOHSINI & GANDHI, Before Annie Sharp set foot in India, 1982, p.9; CULSHAW, 1983, p.33; Charles LEUPOLT had already published NARASIMEAN & MUKHERJEE, 1986, his recollections (1884, pp.243-7) of p.2; ADVANI, 1987; MANI, 1988, pp.154-5; education for blind people at Benares 20 JOACHIM, 1990; AHUJA, 1990; years earlier, under the energetic hand of his CHAUHAN, 1990; RAWAT, 1991, p.28; wife, Jane Leupolt. This was based partly in PANDEY & ADVANI, 1995, p.70; and the Church Missionary Society orphan doubtless many more). This claim is partly school, partly in an asylum for blind people misleading and largely mistaken. Documents founded by Raja Kali Shanker Ghosal which excerpted below show that the Amritsar took in its first residents in January 1826 institution hardly began as a 'school', as (See Appendix 1 below). Educational work at understood in modern Indian or British the asylum was commended in government English; the role of Annie Sharp was reports at least as early as 1869 different from what is generally imagined; (Annual..Dispensaries.. 1869, pp.26A-27A). there was some teaching of blind people at It clearly started several years before that. Amritsar years before Miss Sharp arrived; Education for blind boys at a similar asylum and even that was by no means the first in Bareilly appeared around the same time effort to give blind Indians a regular (Annual..Dispensaries..1870, p.19), and schooling. Leupolt noted successful starts at several towns. The systematic training of blind To set the record straight does not maulvis also took place at Deoband in the detract from the useful work done by Miss 1870s (Leitner, 1882/1991, p.79). Sharp, as described by her contemporaries. Indeed, it seems all the more commendable Some 30 years earlier still, in 1838 or in the world of the 1990s that, on closer 1839, an agent of the Bengal Military examination, the educational work at Orphan Institution, Calcutta was enquiring Amritsar in the 1880s turns out to have about methods of teaching blind orphans, centred on an Indian teacher, Miss Asho, and by 1840 these orphans were learning to - 1- fr» read using the Lucas system of embossing, years. ... The hands of the missionaries supplied by the London Society for Teaching are visible in the founding of the the Blind to Read. The oprhanage ordered a majority of the existing schools, which further supply in 1844 (First now number sixteen. The movement Report...London Society, 1839, p.11; Third originally began with the establishment Report..., 1841, p.!!; Seventh Report..., of homes for the helpless blind, and the 1845, p.12). only attempt at education was to teach them to read the Bible in Moon. Later In 1853, an Indian army officer was on work was introduced in these using William Moon's system of embossed places..." type "..in preparing a Gospel in Hindustani for the multitudes of blind in India.." (Fifth Shah was unaware of the work using Annual, 1853, p.9). In 1861, an Indian Lucas's script at the Bengal Military Orphan woman at Amritsar called 'Blind Sarah' Asylum around 1840; and Leupolt's account received an unspecified chapter of the Bible of education for blind students clearly went in Moon's (Romanised) Urdu; she had beyond Bible-teaching. The Government was already learnt to read Moon in English in wary of missionaries' evangelistic aims; it the 1850s (Eighth Report, 1864, pp.9-10). would hardly have paid the teacher's salary By 1873, Moon's list of Bible portions had the curriculum not extended beyond published in England with embossed type `Bible'. Did Shah not know of the work included "the Gospel of St. Matthew in the Leupolt described? Can more be discovered Urdu language, for the use of the blind in in the 1990s about the start of special India" (MOON, 1873, p.56). In 1883, the list education in India, than was available in included four Bible portions in Hindustani, 1912 to the Governor of Bengal and his three in Bengali and one each in Malayalam advisors? Even in the late 1890s, Sarah and Tamil (MELDRUM, 1883, p.112). Moon Hewlett at Amritsar seems to have been wrote that by this date his type had been unaware of other services available for blind adapted also to Sanskrit, Telugu, Canarese people in northern India; and made no and Punjabi (RUTHERFURD, 1898, p.122). mention of schools for blind children in Such publications were clearly in use by Madras Presidency run by members of her people teaching blind Indians to read, own Church of England Zenana Mission whether individually, or in integrated (HEWLETT, 1898, p.!). classes, or in special schooling. Moon keenly advocated that blind children be taught in Documentary Basis schools with sighted children, and arranged The following quotations and notes aim to for this to be implemented both in Britain place future writings on a sounder and abroad (MOON, 1877, pp.165-7) documentary basis, to encourage critical reflection and re-examination of earlier Lord Carmichael, Governor of Bengal, sources, and to indicate where further complained in 1912 that he had "..found it research might be useful. This paper is very difficult to get information regarding far from an exhaustive survey. It represents institutions or societies for the education of several months' work in British libraries plus the blind in India..." (quoted by A.K. brief visits to Indian research libraries, and SHAH, 1914; date given by Amal SHAH, it is subject to any errors of transcription or 1941, p.8). Part of the problem might have selection bias inadvertently introduced by the been in distinguishing merely custodial compiler. More data is certainly available in asylums from institutions where educational Indian archives; such material remains to be or vocational work was undertaken. A.K. studied systematically. Not all the quotations SHAH (1914) believed that here mutually agree. Some discordances may "..the education of the blind in India shed light on the process by which special does not date back more than thirty schools came into being. Others may arise 4 from errors of transcription or typography.