The Mirror and the Lamp: Colonial Educational Reform in 19th Century Punjab by Atiyab Sultan {bit.ly/4c9S34z}
For more materials on education, see LINK. This paper shows how the British attempted to reform existing educational systems in Punjab and ended up destroying them.
FIRST FEW PARAGRAPHS are copied below
Recently, education in colonial India has generated considerable and varied academic interest. Bayly’s seminal work on knowledge and information gathering extended the discussion on knowledge systems in India beyond the cabinet and classroom while Viswanathan’s analysed the use of literature to advance imperial political and religious aims. Other scholars like Minault, Kumar, Allender, Whitehead and Seth critically engaged with female education and social reform, the political economy of education, the rule of missionaries and the social and political historiography of education respectively. A critical lacuna that remains, however, is a searching look at the indigenous system of education in the subcontinent and its fate at the hands of colonialism. This paper attempts to fill the gap by evoking a description of the system using colonial sources and describes the unfortunate impact of colonialism on it. Simultaneously, the disappointment and disillusionment that met British efforts to achieve mass literacy are also charted and lessons for educational policy and reform today are then drawn from this historical episode. For a more focussed discussion, attention is restricted to the province of Punjab, at that time one of the largest provinces of British India, spanning territory from Delhi to Peshawar.
The paper is structured as follows: a brief look is taken at the larger policy debates among British policymakers at the time to give the relevant intellectual framework in which reform took place in the Punjab. The particularities in the province are then studied in closer detail using the work of G.W. Leitner, a renowned orientalist and linguist of the time, and government papers and reports. The paper concludes with some recommendations for policy reform in the region today that emanate from this engagement.
Historical Background:
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the British were not overly concerned with education in India, primarily because their efforts were concentrated on expanding and consolidating their political power (Moir and Zastoupil 1). At this time, they opposed missionary activity in the region as they feared it would create unrest and antagonism in a populace they were endeavouring to subjugate.
By the beginning of the 19th century however, British power was more firmly established and the ‘contempt for an inferior and conquered people’ had set in (Ghosh 178.) As part of their civilizational mission, the British felt the urge to enlighten the Indians and introduce them to the wonders of Western science and learning. In a sense, colonialism became pedagogic, with the instruments of education extending beyond formal institutions to give public works, railways, the postal system, etc. an educative significance (Seth 2.) Education became a hot topic in parliamentary debates with different camps lobbying for specific policies. At this time, there were three groups trying to influence education in India- the evangelicals, the liberals and the utilitarians. Evangelicals like Charles Grant regarded the Indians as a ‘race of men lamentably degenerate and base’ (Basu 54) that had to be succoured by Christianity and western science and literature. Viewing Indian society as locked in a deadly embrace of tradition and authority, Grant criticized the ‘false system of beliefs and total want of right instruction’ among the Indians