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ABSTRACT

THE ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN INDIAN
HIGHER EDUCATION SINCE INDEPENDENCE, 1947

by Raghu Nandan Singh

Purpose of the Study
The primary purpose of this study was to examine
critically the role of the Federal Government in Indian
higher education since independence and to review its
development in the total historical perspective. An addi-
tional purpose was to identify some of the continuing
problems of the Indian society which must be effectively

dealt with by higher education in the future.

Sources and Methods

Since complete first-hand information was not avail-
able in the United States, the writer sought the relevant
data from historical works, government reports, publica-
tions of the Ministry of Education, and unpublished
doctoral dissertations.

Secondary sources of information included books on
India and Pakistan, and numerous articles published in
various periodicals by eminent scholars, foreign visitors,

and advisers to the Government of India.

 

 

A
/
A.

(A)

Raghu Nandan Singh

Historical, descriptive, and analytical methods are

used as a basis for drawing conclusions and formulating

recommendations intended to assure sound economic and edu-

cational developments in the future.

2.

3.

5.

Major Findings
The ancient Indian higher education was very
selective, philosophical, and theological. It could
never become popular and remained mostly confined to
the Brahmans.
The British introduced scientific and technical edu-
cation but emphasized it to only a minor degree.
After independence the Government of India has
expanded higher education enormously by giving huge
grants to universities and colleges.
The Federal Government has put a premium on techni-
cal education after independence.
The expanding enrollments in Indian universities and
colleges have lowered the academic standards and
created unemployment problems before the government.
The state governments have failed to finance higher
education; therefore it has become necessary for the

Federal Government to increase its contribution.

Conclusions
The Federal Government should raise the quality of
higher education and provide jobs for the university

graduates.

Raghu Nandan Singh
2. As the provinces cannot meet the growing costs of
higher education, the Federal Government should
increase its financial aid substantially.
3. For better utilization of its educated manpower, the
Government of India needs more realistically planned

development in the sphere of higher education.

THE ROLE OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IN INDIAN

HIGHER EDUCATION SINCE INDEPENDENCE, 1947

BY

Raghu Nandan Singh

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

College of Education

1966

~_‘

—-

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writer takes this opportunity to express his
debt of gratitude to Dr. Cole S. Brembeck, Chairman of the
doctoral guidance committee, for his understanding,
encouragement, and advice during the various phases of the
doctoral program. Without his direction, patience, and
sympathetic attitude, this doctoral study might never have
come to fruition.

The writer acknowledges his sincere appreciation to
Dr. Edgar A. Schuler, Dr. John H. Useem, Dr. Floyd Parker,
and Dr. William H. Roe, members of the committee, for their
advice, counsel, and assistance in various aspects of the
study.

The writer is especially indebted to Dr. Edgar A.
Schuler, who discussed the plan, read each handwritten
chapter as the work progressed, and raised many critical
questions. Without the significant corrections, comments,
patience, and support of Dr. Schuler, this dissertation
would never have reached the final stage.

The writer wishes to express his sincere appreci-
ation to Dr. Ernest O. Melby, Dr. T. C. Cobb, Dr. Wilbur B.
Brookover, Dr. Jack R. Rombouts, Dr. Eugene Debenko, and

ii

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Dr. Dharmendra Prasad, for their encouragement and assist-
ance in the completion of this study.

A special debt is owed to Mr. Glenn E. Heck,

Mrs. W. E. Beardslee, and Mrs. H. E. Hillier, for their
kind interest and moral support.

The debt owed to Mrs. W. E. Ceeley, for her enthu-
siasm, cooperation, interest, and assistance, is too great
to be expressed in words.

To the men whose thoughts are quoted in this disser-
tation are extended the thanks of a grateful student.

The writer's wife, Sudha Singh, has been of invalu—
able help in locating research materials for the study and
thus deserves special acknowledgment.

To mention each individual who contributed in a
major way in this study would be impossible. But this
acknowledgment would not be complete if sincerest thanks
were not expressed to Mrs. Juanita Kiesling who typed the
manuscript within the limited time so accurately and
beautifully.

iii

 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWIIE DGMENTS O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O O O 0

LIST OF TABLES O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

Chapter
I 0 INTRODUCTION. 0 O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

Purpose of the Study. . . . . .
Some General Assumptions. . . .
Sources and Methods of Study. .
Organization of the Study . . .

II. THE MAJOR CHARACTERISTICS OF ANCIENT INDIAN
E DUCATION O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O 0

Part I.--The Main Teachings of the
Upanishads. . . . . . .
Part II.—-The Administrative Structure of

Education 0 O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O 0
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

III. HISTORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION SINCE THE BRITISH

Early Attempts of the East India Company.
Reasons-for the East India Company's
Indifference to Education . . .
The Charter of 1813 . . . . . .
The Charter of 1833 . . . . .
Macaulay's Minute, 1835 . . .
Education Despatch of 1854. .
London University . . . . . .
Commission of 1882. . . . . . .
Indian Universities Commission (19
Indian Universities Act, 1904 . .
Educational Policy of 1913. . . . .
Calcutta University Commission, 1917.
Hartog Committee Report, 1929 . .
Higher Education under Dyarchy: 1921-

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09.000.00.900.

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iv

Page
ii
vii

KOOJCDb H

12

13

19
35

37
38

42
44
45
48
52
53
57
58
61
63
65
67
69

 

Viv

‘1.

CONTENTS--Continued

 

Chapter

Abbot and Wood Report, 1937 . . . . . .
Sargent Report, 1944. . . . . . .
Radhakrishnan Commission, 1948- 49 . . .
Higher Education in Free India, 1947-63
Experiments in Higher Education . . . .
Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

IV. REVIEW OF THE GROWTH OF FINANCING OF HIGHER
EDUCATION IN INDIA FROM 1780 TO 1963. . . . .

Arts Colleges . . . . . . .
Professional Colleges . . .
Period from 1780 to 1857. .
Period from 1857 to 1947. .
Period from 1947 to 1963. .
Conclusion. . . . . . . . .

V. ROLE OF THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN HIGHER EDU-
CATION SINCE 1947 WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO
UNIVERSITY GRANTS COMMISSION. . . . . . . . .

Ministry of Education . . . . . . . . . .
Ministry of Education (General) . . . . . . .
Ministry of Scientific Research and

Cultural Affairs. . . . . . . . .
University Grants Commission (U. G. C° ) . . . .
conc1u51°nO O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

VI. MODERNIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION THROUGH
F I VB YEAR PLAN S O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

Planning Commission .
First Five Year Plan.
Second Five Year Plan
Third Five Year Plan.
Gandhian View . . . .
Conclusion. . . . . .

O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O
O O O O O O

O O O O O O

VII. EVALUATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGICAL
AND SCIENTIFIC EXPANSION OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

Obstacles to Development. . . . . . . .
Is India Short of Skilled Manpower? . .
Unemployment of the Educated. . . . . .
Employment of Foreign Educated Indians.
Concluding Observations . . . . . . . .
Foreign Exchange. . . . . . . . . . . .

V

Page

72
73
74
75
76
79

82

82
83
84
89
101
106

108

110
110

119
123
130

132

132
133
136
137
139
140

143

144
156
160
162
164
167

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CONTENTS--Continued

 

Chapter
Various Other Problems.
Backward Agriculture. .
Suggestions . . . . . .
Conclusion. . . . . . .
VIII. CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . .

Summary of Findings .
Major Conclusions . .

Suggestions for Improvement

Education . . . . .
GLOSSARY O O O O O O O O O O O O

BI BLIOGRAPI'IYO O O O O O O O O O

vi

O O O O

of Indian

Page
169
171
177
190
193

195
196

198
199
201

 

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Table

1.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

LIST OF TABLES

Number of European and Indian Senate Members
in univerSitieSO o o o o o o o o o o o o o 0

Number of Affiliated Colleges and Their
Enrollment in 1917 . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Location and Type of College in India,
1780-1857. 0 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 0

Statement Showing the Total Expenditure on
Education from 1813 to 1853. . . . . . . . .

Colleges in India in 1882. . . . . . . . . . .

Number of Students in Colleges on March 31,

1902 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

Government's Expenditure on Instruction of
Higher Education, 1870—1902. . . . . . . . .

Finances of Higher Education, 1901-02. . . . .

Progress of Higher Education, 1901-02 to
1921-22. 0 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Institutions for Higher Education in 1855 and
1921-22.00.00.000000000000

Central Government's Grants for College Educa-
tion from 1904-22O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

Numbers of Institutions of Higher Education by

Numbers of Scholars in Institutions of Higher
Education in 1921-22, 1936-37, and 1946-47 .

Allocation of Expenditures for Institutions of
Higher Education in 1921-22, 1936—37, and
1946-470 0 o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o o 0

vii

Page

62

64

87

88
9O

91

92
93

94

95

96

98

99

100

 

 

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Table
15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

TABLES--Continued

Enrollment in Schools from 1946-47 to 1965-66. .

Numbers of Institutions for Higher Education
from 1946-47 to 1963-640 0 o o o o o o o o o 0

Numbers of Scholars in Institutions of Higher
Education in 1946-47 and 1963-64 . . . . . . .

Government Grants for Various Types of Aid to
Higher Education During 1962-63. . . . . . . .

Foreign Aid to Technical Education Promised or
Received up to 1960. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Increase in Number and Output of Engineering
and Technological Institutions During the
First Five Year Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Number of Engineering Colleges and Polytechnics,
Their Admission Capacity and Outturn in the
Three Plan Periods . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Estimated Additional Requirements for Graduates
in Engineering and Technology. . . . . . . . .

Estimated Additional Requirements of Diploma
Holders in Engineering and Technology. . . . .

Investment in Selected Industrial Projects
During the Third Five Year Plan (1961-66). . .

Major Irrigation Schemes and the Expected Area
of Irrigation by the End of the Third Plan
in India O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

Staff of the Economics Departments of Jadavpur

University, Calcutta, and Aligarh Muslim
University, Aligarh. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

viii

Page

101

102

102

104

105

134

138

141

142

159

174

187

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

India has a very ancient tradition of higher
learning. The institutions in the past known as "asramas"
were run by individual scholars and imparted education in
various fields. The aim of traditional education was not
to seek worldly advancement but to achieve salvation.
These institutions are still alive in limited numbers and

1 Their curriculum contains

are known today as "Gurukulas."
the authoritative texts of ancient wisdom to preserve the
traditional culture and civilization from perishing. These
institutions have survived without any apparent change for
many centuries, and their ideals still appeal to the modern
scholars of India.

In November, 1961, Dr. N. M. Pusey, the President of
Harvard University, was invited by the University of
Delhi's Chancellor, the distinguished Brahmin philosopher,
Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, to deliver the commencement

speech before the university graduates. What the Univer-

sity of Delhi had to say to its trained young people was

 

1Gurukula--the word literally means "the family of
the teacher."

 

 

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distributed in the form of a booklet. The message of the
university was in the form of quotations taken from the
Upanishads and presented under two headings: the "Advice"
and the "Commandment." Dr. Pusey describes his feelings in
these words:
At the Delhi commencement, degrees were awarded in
nursing, medicine, agriculture, engineering, business,
and in other subjects for professional training. . . .
Here were new recruits ready for the task. But . . .
what the university seemed to be trying most to say to
its new graduates had very little to do with jobs or
development. Its deeper concern was spoken through a
little booklet, a copy of which was given to each
graduate. This little pamphlet carried two quotations
from ancient wisdom literature of India.2
Neither Buddhist education, which started in the
sixth century B.C., nor the Muslim influence, which dates
back to 1192 A.D., significantly changed the traditional
'Indian thinking. Buddhist education actually was not much
different from the ancient Hindu education; therefore,
there was no major open conflict. Muslim education laid
great emphasis on worldly achievement which was the root
cause for the failure of Muslim rulers to impose their
education on the Indians.
The East India Company of England started its trade
in India from 1600, but it was the Charter of 1813 which

forced the company to spend not less than one lakh of

 

2Nathan M. Pusey, The Age of the Scholar-~Observa-
tions on Education in a Troubléd Decade (Cambridge, Mass.:
arvar n vers y ress, 19637, pp. I91-92.

 

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rupees per year on the education of the natives of India.
Thus started a new era in Indian education.

For some time there raged a battle between the
Orientalists and Anglicists about the curriculum, but in
1835 the famous Minute of Macaulay, the Governor-General,
brought the controversy to an end. Since then the study of
European science and literature has flourished in India and
laid the foundation of her modern education. In 1857 three
presidential universities were established-—at Bombay,
Calcutta, and Madras-~on the model of London University.
India's university system is still basically the same as it
was in 1857.

A On August 15, 1947, India achieved independence, and
with independence came the new demands of the free nation.
India rapidly expanded her education in all directions and
at all levels. By 1963 she had increased by more than
three times what she had in 1947. She greatly emphasized
the technical and scientific fields of education which were
ignored by the British because of their business interests.
.As a consequence, the employment problem of the educated
has become acute. India's expensive large plans which
<emphasize heavy industries have drained the country's
Icapital. At present India is looking for generous foreign

aixi to save her economy from being shattered.

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Purpose of the Study

 

The main purpose of this study is to examine the
role of the Federal Government in Indian higher education
after independence, 1947. During these eighteen years of
independence the expansion of higher education has been
revolutionary. This thesis will attempt to give exact
figures of enrollment and financial allocations to indicate
the efforts of the government.

The government today is engaged in a Herculean
effort to promote the economic growth of the country by
utilizing all its resources. The two centuries of British
rule contributed little toward removing the backwardness
and poverty of the people in India. It ignored the Indian
industries, or worse, to promote the industrial sector of
England. Furthermore, the famines of 1877, 1878, 1889,
1892, 1897, and 1900, which carried off fifteen millions of
people, indicate the primitive condition of agriculture and
the institution of food distribution.3 The failure of
improvement in agriculture has retarded industrial growth
even after independence.

Education, which was made the responsibility of the
colonial government, laid emphasis on the training of an

elite at the university level. Technical and scientific

3Romesh Dutt, "The Nationalist Critique," The

_§ritish in India-~Igperialism or Trusteeship? ed. Martin D.
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training and education were found to be in an almost
primitive stage at the time independence was achieved.

Free India started with these disadvantages, and she
now wants to jump the centuries by putting emphasis on
heavy industries and on technical education. The major
limiting factor to industrial development today is the
enormous lack of capital in the country. Agriculture is
today virtually the only source of national wealth in
India. And as the country is restricted by the amount of
money she can afford to spend on a particular item, she has
not made much progress in the absence of improved seeds,
fertilizer, and irrigation facilities. True, India's five
year plans have made provision for agricultural develop;
ment, but the writer believes that the country would not
have faced the hazards of inflation and devaluation if
agriculture had been considered of utmost importance. The
agrarian revolution is imperative to create a solid base
for industrial progress.

As regards the expansion in the number of university
students, the government has reiterated that it needs
trained people of all types to develop the national econ-
omy. The purpose of this thesis, then, is to trace the
development of higher education from the days of the
Upanishads to 1963 which will give a clear picture of the
country's educated personnel and the interests taken by the

past governments in it.

 

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Another matter that will merit attention in this
dissertation is a graphic description of Indian institu-
tions and conditions which will largely determine how well
or poorly the nation's trained manpower is to be used.

More specifically, then, the purpose of this disser-
tation is to describe the efforts of the Indian Government
after independence in the field of higher education and to

analyze their adequacy in the light of the national

economy.

Some General Assumptions
When the writer starts considering the expansion of
Indian higher education in the cultural and economic
setting of the country, some of the important assumptions
which underlie his thinking are as follows:

1. That the colonial administration prepared the
university graduates for jobs with the government,
and that the rush for the government jobs will
hardly decline in the future though agriculture
might absorb more people at present and in the near
future.

2. That India is already overpopulated, that she has a
stagnant agriculture, and that capital investments
in agriculture are very important.

3. That the aspiration of a free country for a higher
level of living does not necessarily indicate the

country's ability to translate the desire into

6.

7
action programs which will result in achievement of
the cherished goal. It is especially true when the
country has been ruled by a ruthless foreign govern-
ment and her industries have been strangled to avoid
competition and to keep her weak and helpless.
That the issue is not whether India needs technical
and scientific education or more heavy industriali-
zation, but whether, in her present economic situ-
ation, she can afford to invest in the long-range
plans without bringing the country's economy to a
crisis.
That the Government of India has recognized her
responsibility in the field of education as never
before, but her assistance for educational expansion
has been meager in relation to total needs and thus
university education has been unable to maintain its
quality.
That the provincial governments are experiencing
increased difficulties in meeting the financial
burdens of higher education due to their enlarging
enrollments.
That the number of graduates turned out by the uni—
versities has increased disproportionately to the
jobs that are available in government, industry, and

other professions.

8

8. That the new graduates of the universities, if not
incorporated into the plans of the government, will
remain unemployed because of lack of capital and
credit required to start something new and establish
themselves.

9. And finally, the intended policies of the government
will fail recurrently if it lacks proper administra-

tive staff.

Sources and Methods of Study

As it was not possible for the writer to go to India
to collect material for this study due to many factors,
such as lack of funds, immigration rules, and time limits,
this study has relied for its primary sources of data upon
historical works and government documents. To collect data
for the period before 1947 the writer was able to take
advantage of the opportunity to secure inter-library loans
through the Michigan State University library. Through one
of his friends in India he was able to secure all the
important government reports and publications on higher
education published after 1947.

The secondary sources of data have been derived from
works in humanities and social sciences, various periodi—
cals, and Indian newspapers. The literature on Indian
philosophy, culture, and social conditions is abundant in
this library, but for its analysis the writer had to depend

largely upon his background and his experiences as a teacher

 

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in several Indian colleges. In addition, his discussions
with American professors who have been to India have con-
tributed significantly to his understanding and analysis of
the problems.

The methods used in this research are historical,
analytical, and statistical. At some points description
has been considered more necessary than the giving of
figures to stress the importance of a problem. Quotations
from eminent writers have been used generously to add
vitality to this study, especially when they appeared to

have expressed the feelings of the writer more felicitously.

Organization of the Study

The organization of the chapters which comprise the
thesis will be presented briefly at this point.

Chapter II indicates the major characteristics of
ancient Indian higher education. As the educational system
of a society reflects the values held by its peOple, this
chapter at some length traces the teachings of the Upani-
shads which formed the basic curriculum in the ancient
institutions of higher learning. This chapter also pre—
sents the structure of that education to help the reader
understand traditional educational procedures and goals.
It also discusses the values of Buddhist and Muslim educa-
tion in India and gives the reasons for their failure to

change the stream of Indian thinking.

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Chapter III presents the highlights of educational
developments during the period of British rule. The
Charter of 1813 provided government funds for education.
Macaulay's Minute of 1835 made English the medium of
instruction. Lord Hardinge's Resolution of 1844 favored
the English-knowing Indians among applicants for government
jobs. Wood's Despatch of 1854 recommended the establish-
ment of the universities of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay.
In brief, the history of higher education during the Brit-
ish rule has been described to indicate the gradual changes
which have taken place in Indian thinking. The British
system of education made the worshippers of the West forget
their ancient education and culture and adopt new education
and manners to advance in the modern world.

Chapter IV gives relevant information about financ-
ing and the quantitative growth of higher education in
India from 1780 to 1963. An account of the development of
higher education requires exact information about financing
and enrollments, and such data are given.

Chapter V discusses the role of the central govern-
ment in higher education since 1947. It describes the
major advisory bodies of the government and gives partic—
ular attention to the University Grants Commission which
occupies a unique place in Indian higher education. As it
gives financial aid to colleges and universities, its

description at some length has been considered necessary.

 

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Chapter VI considers the efforts of the five year
plans to modernize higher education by putting emphasis on
scientific and technical education. The plans needed
scientific and technical personnel to introduce new proc-
esses of production in Indian industries. The British did
not emphasize technical education in India because they
were not much interested in helping to expand the Indian
industries. This chapter thus completes the presentation
of the total picture of Indian higher education.

Chapter VII identifies the major strains in Indian
economy and the problems created by the rapid expansion of
higher education. The shortcomings of India's administra-
tion and economy have been discussed in detail because on
their efficiency depends the fate of the millions of the
writer's countrymen. Thousands of technical graduates who
are able and willing to work will not be able to find
employment if the obstacles to economic development of the

country are not removed.

 

they 1

into

CHAPTER II

THE MAJOR CHARACTERISTICS OF

ANCIENT INDIAN EDUCATION

Indian education before the British was based on the
philosophical ideas found in the teachings of the Upani—
shads. It was religious in nature and put minimum emphasis
on mundane affairs. The teachings of the Upanishads not
only framed the traditional Indian philosophy of education;
they became a part of the mental structure of the people of
India.

The purpose of this chapter is to provide insight
into the ancient higher education of India by discussing
the philOSOphy of the Upanishads, which was the core of
that education. The atmosphere of the asramas and the
characteristics of teachers favored to achieve the ideal
held in the Upanishads and produced a well-run system of
education which lasted for more than two thousand years.

Later on, the adherents of Islam invaded India
several times. They destroyed the institutions and killed
the teachers. Their rule in India continued for centuries,
but the pre-existing aim of education--that every posses—
sion, even one's life on this earth, is transitory and is

12

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13
not a thing to be pursued or sought out-—remained constant.
The spiritual aspiration of the Hindu sages was in the air
and people breathed it. The efforts of the Muslim rulers
to transform the traditional philosophy proved futile.

This chapter is divided into two parts. The first
part gives the essentials of the teachings of the Upani-
shads, and the second gives the distinctive details of the
administrative structure of that education. To proceed to
describe modern education without giving an accurate pic-
ture of Indian education as it existed before the British
would be to mislead the reader. Higher education in the
modern sense was initiated by the British, no doubt, but
the seeds of movement in this direction were sown thousands
of years ago by the Indian sages prior to the advent of the
East India Company. Though their aims differed altogether
from those of the British, yet they need to be clearly
pointed out so that the context in which British moderniza-
tion of Indian higher education took place can be properly

understood.
Part I.--The Main Teachings of the Upanishads

_§xistence of One Supreme Reality

About the age of the Upanishads there is a great
<:ontroversy. But if the date of the Vedas is about
4000 B.C., as is generally held, then the date of the Upa-

nishads cannot be later than 1500 B.C.

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It is very hard to ascertain precisely what are the
teachings of the Upanishads because they contain conflict-
ing views. But one thing is clear: they are consistently
concerned with one god. They use different names for God,
such as "the Brahman," "the Absolute," "the Supreme
Reality," "the Self," etc.
The concept that behind all the manifestations of
God there is only one Brahman and that the Self of man is
no different from Him has been suggested by many stories
and parables. To illustrate, one such parable is quoted
here from the Chandogya Upanishad wherein the teacher is
trying to convey to the mind of the young learner the idea
that the nature of the Self and of the Absolute is iden-
tical:
1. "Bring hither a fig from there."
"Here it is, Sir."
"Divide it."
"It is divided, Sir."
"What do you see there?"
"These rather fine seeds, Sir."
"Of these, please divide one."
"It is divided, Sir."
"What do you see there?"
"Nothing at all, Sir."
2. Then he said to him: "Verily, my dear, that finest
essence which you do not perceive--verily, my dear,
from that finest essence this great Nyagrodha

(sacred fig) tree thus arises."

3. "Believe me, my dear," said he, "that which is the
finest essence--this whole world has that as its

 

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15

Self. That is Reality. That is Atman. That art
thou, Svetaketu. . . ."1

Once it was determined that Brahman and Atman are
one, this became one of the central teachings of the Upani-

shads. And from here they proceeded to discover the true

nature of the world.

The World Is an Illusion

"The world comes out of Brahman as a web from a
spider and has no individuality" is the way they express
its nature. Radhakrishnan examines this relationship
between God and the world and finds the arguments of the

ancient thinkers inadequate:

If we raise the question as to how the finite rises
from out of the bosom of the infinite, Samkara [one of
the greatest expositors of the Vedic philosophy] says
that it is an incomprehensible mystery, maya. We know
that there is the absolute reality, we know that there
is the empirical world, we know that the empirical
world rests on the Absolute, but the how of it is
beyond our knowledge. . . . Samkara believes that it is
not possible to determine logically the relation
between God and the world. . . .2

However, whether the ancient thinkers could prove
the relationship of the world to God or not, "the world is
Gassentially an illusion" is the dominant thought in the

IJpanishads. A dialogue in the Brhadaranyaka Upanishad

‘

1S. Radhakrishnan and Charles A. Moore (trans. and
Eéds.), A Source Book in Indian Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.:
Eirinceton University Press, 1957), p. 69.

2S. Radhakrishnan, The Hindu View of Life (London:
George Allen and Unwin, Ltd. , 1928) , pp. 66-67.

 

 

 

 

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between Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi reveals the general think-
ing of that time:

Yajnavalkya wants to leave the world and become a
hermit. One of his two wives, Maitreyi, requests him
to take her with him:

1. "Maitreyi!" said Yajnavalkya, "Lo verily, I am about
to go forth from this state. Behold! let me make a
final settlement for you and that Katyayani."

2. Then said Maitreyi: "If now, sir, this whole earth
filled with wealth were mine, would I be immortal
thereby?"

"No," said Yajnavalkya. "As the life of the rich,

even so would your life be. Of immortality, how-

ever, there is no hope through wealth."

3. Then said Maitreyi: "What should I do with that
through which I may not be immortal? What you know,,
sir--that, indeed, tell me!"3
The temporary nature of the world perplexed the

Indian mind from the earliest historical periods. They
wanted to transcend the world and especially death. Even
Lord Buddha faced the same problem of the transitory nature
of all earthly objects. Like the Upanishadic thinkers, he
was also in search of the ultimate reality. ,Life to him
looked "like an echo, a dream, the note of a lute, the
lightning that flashes for an instant, and is gone."4

The conclusion reached by Buddha after three

enlightening incidents was contained in the teachings of

the Upanishads about two thousand years earlier. A brief

 

3Radhakrishnan and Moore, op. cit., p. 80.

4Charles D. B. Mills, Buddha and Buddhism: A Sketch
(Northampton, Mass.: Journal and Free‘Press Co., 1876),
p. 18.

 

 

(f)

(h

1?
description of the three incidents would reveal how he
reacted to these natural phenomena:

One day, starting from the eastern gate of the city
with a numerous retinue for a ride to the garden of
Lumbini, . . . he met upon the way an aged man. He was
broken, decrepit, covered with wrinkles, . . . scarcely
able to walk. "Who is this man?" he asked of the
coachman. . . .

"Sir," replied the coachman, "this man is borne down
by old age. . . . In every creature youth is overcome
by old age. . . ."

"Alas then," answered the prince, "are creatures so
weak, so ignorant and foolish . . . not seeing the old
age that awaits? For myself, I will away. Coachman,
turn my chariot quickly. I, the future prey of old
age, what have I to do with pleasure or joy?"

Another day, going out as before, he met a sick man,
. . . dying in destitution and filth. And again he met
a corpse upon a bier, borne by weeping friends, for the
tomb. He interrogated his coachman, and learned that
these too were under the lot of humanity. . . . Once
again he met a bhikshu, a mendicant. He interrogated
his coachman, and was answered, "This man has renounced
all pleasures, all desires, and leads a life of severe
austerity. He tries to conquer himself. He has become
a devotee. . . ."

"Well said," replied the prince; "the life of a
devotee has always been praised by the wise. It shall
be my refuge and the refuge of other creatures; it will
lead us to a real life, to happiness and immortality."5

The above discussion establishes the fact that the
“Upanishads have considered mainly the infinite reality
'which is limitless and illimitable. The Indian thinkers
.sought to retire from the world which they regarded as a
(great illusion so that they might attain immortality.

There was no wide gap between philosophy and higher
education in ancient India. Those who renounced worldly

JLLfe became the teachers and leaders of society. They

‘—

SIbido, pp. 19-20.

18
colored the whole of Indian education with their deep long-
ing for the infinite. The young students' main problem was,
like their teachers, how to escape from Maya or illusion
and immerse themselves in formless and unchanging substance.
They rejected all the enjoyments of life and the bewitch-
ments of material and earthly objects. The story of
Naciketas in the Katha Upanishad shows how the young minds
of those days were imbued with the philosophic coloring of

asceticism:

The father of Naciketas, while performing a sacri-
fice, gave away all of his possessions. Upon Naciketas'
asking again and again, "To whom will thou give me?"
the father in anger said, "To death." To fulfill the
words of the father, Naciketas set out to see the god
of death. When Naciketas reached the abode of Yama
(the god of the world of departed spirits), he was not
there. So Naciketas waited for three days. Since he
was willing to wait for three days without eating, Yama
offered him three boons for the hospitality which was
due in Yama's absence.

Naciketas' first wish was that his father should
forgive him when he returned to earth. Next, he asked
for instruction regarding the sacrificial fire that
leads to heaven. The third wish he made constitutes
the quintessence of the teachings of the Upanishads and
is quoted to illustrate my point:

Naciketas: "He exists," say some; "he exists not," say
others. This would I know. . . .

Death: Even the gods had doubt as to this of yore!
. . . Another boon, O Naciketas, choose!

Naciketas: . . . No other boon the equal of it is
there at all.

Death: Choose centenarian sons and grandsons, many
cattle, elephants, gold, and horses. . . .

V.’

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19

Naciketas: Ephemeral things! . . . Thine be the
vehicles! Thine be the dance and song!

Part II.--The Administrative
Structure ofIEducation

 

 

Upanishadic Period
Now the question arises, what steps did the ancient
Indian teachers take to incorporate these two fundamental
conceptions of the Upanishads-—there is only one Supreme
Reality and the World is Illusion--in the education they
were giving at their asramas?
First, they divided the whole life span of the indi-
vidual into four parts, known as asramas or stages:
1. The Stage of a Student.
2. The Stage of a Householder.
3. The Stage of a Hermit.
4. The Stage of a Sanyasi.
Throughout this dissertation, the writer is concerned with

the first stage only.

The Stage of a Student.--The life of a student

 

started ordinarily between the eighth and the twelfth years.
Education was not compulsory and the individual had to
decide whether he wanted education or not: "Once upon a

time Satyakama Jabala addressed his mother Jabala: 'Madam!

 

6Radhakrishnan and Moore, op. cit., pp. 43-44.

4

 

 

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20
I desire to live the life of a student of sacred know-

ledge.'"7

Admission to Studentship.--Students were admitted

 

from three castes only: Brahmans, Kshattriyas, and
Vaishyas. In case of unknown caste identity, the teacher
had to ascertain it on the basis of the student's other
qualities. The story of Satyakama in Chandogya Upanishad
is a fine example of India's selectiveness in this sphere:
Teacher: "Of what family, pray, are you, my dear?"

Student: "I do not know this, sir, of what family I
am. I asked my mother. She answerd me: 'In
my youth, when I went about a great deal
serving as a maid, I got you. So, I do not
know this, of what family you are. However,
I am Jabala by name; you are Satyakama by
name.‘ So I am Satyakama Jabala, sir."

Teacher: "A non-brahmin would not be able to explain
this. Bring the fuel, my dear. I will
receive you as a pupil. You have not devi-
ated from the truth."8

Period of Studentship.--There was no fixed period

 

for higher education since it required the dedication of an
entire lifetime. To realize the knowledge of Brahman, the
legend is the Saint Bhardwaja lived all three of his lives
as a student. (This conception is based on the Hindu
belief that one's next birth is determined by one's good
and bad deeds in his previous life. Bhardwaja's three suc-

cessive births as a human being imply that the life of a

 

7 8

Ibid., p. 66. Ibid.

 

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21
student was considered to be good, but was not good enough
for the realization of Brahman.) In the Chandogya Upani-
shad, Indra lived for more than a hundred years with
Prajapati as a student:
Then he (Indra) lived with him (Prajapati) for five
years more. That makes one hundred and one years.
Thus it is, that people say, "Verily, for one hundred
and one years Maghavan lived the chaste life of a stu-
dent of sacred knowledge (brahmacarya) with Prajapati."9
Normally, the period was twelve years according to Mookerji.
He gives the example of Svetaketu who returned home after
spending twelve years with his preceptor.10
On the basis of the Chandogya Upanishad, Johri and

Pathak conclude:

. . . this period was sufficient for the study of
one Veda. In case a student wanted to study all the
four Vedas, he had to devote twelve years to each.
Generally, students were satisfied with the twelve
years required for studying one Veda. The students of
literature and Dharmashastras completed their course in
ten years.11

Subject of Study.--The ancient Indian teachers pre-
pared their students not only for this life but for life

beyond. Emphasis was on the study of the Vedas. In

 

9Robert Ernest Hume (trans.), The Thirteen Princi-

al U anishads (Madras: Oxford University Press, 19497,
p. 275

10Radha Kumud Mookerji, Ancient Indian Education:

jgrahmanical and Buddhist (Delhi: MotilaI Banarsidass,
1960?, p. I34.

11B. P. Johri and P. D. Pathak, An Outline of Indian
jgducation (Agra: Vinod Pustak Mandir, I963), p. 12.

 

 

 

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Brahmin families the Vedas were studied all the time to
influence the mind. T. N. Siqueira says:

Education was meant to be a religious initiation:
the teacher had to teach the pupil how to pray, to
offer sacrifice, to perform his duties according to his
stage of life. . . . Early Indian education was essen-
tially religious and personal.12

The ancient educators were always conscious of the

presence of the Supreme Person in the universe. And this

consciousness led them to put into the personality of the

student some of their own mystic findings. Reflection on

the nature of the Supreme Self was more important to them

than the student's skill in reading and writing. Spalding
says:

This spiritual ideal controls the Hindu conception
of education for the masses, to read and write is of
small account. Men learn more by the spoken than by
the written word.13

Teacher's Qualities.--Knowledge of the Absolute was

thought to be not attainable through the written word.
People felt that knowledge could only be acquired directly
from the Guru (the venerated teacher whose disciple the
student became). One interesting episode is that of Kabir.

He heard Ramananda Swami, one of the great teachers of his

age, in the streets of Benares and was profoundly impressed

k

12T. N. Siqueira (S. J.), The Education of India
(Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1952), p. 5.

13H. N. Spalding, Civilizatign in East and West: An
ggntroductionto the Studygof Human Progress (ffindon: Oxford
IJniversity Press, 1939i, pp. 209-10.

he W1

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23
with his teachings and personality. He knew that a
teacherless mystic was no good for a life of higher devo-

tion and contemplation. So he went to Ramananda for initi-

ation.14

In ancient India the teacher had very high status.
He was respected by everyone, for he refused all sensual
pleasures and aspired to transcend this world through his
quest for truth. In the following passage Radhakrishnan
gives his eulogy of the teachers:

From the beginning of her history, India has adored
and idealized, not soldiers and statesmen, not men of
science and leaders of industry, not even poets and
philosophers, . . . but those rarer and more chastened
spirits, . . . who have stamped infinity on the thought
of life of the country, men who have added to the
invisible forces of goodness in the world. To a world
given over to the pursuit of power and pleasure, wealth
and glory, they declare the reality of the unseen world
and the call of the Spiritual life. Their Self-
possession and Self-command, their strange deep wisdom,
their exquisite courtesy, their humility and gentleness
of soul, their abounding humanity, proclaim that the
destiny of man is to know himself and thereby further
the universal life of which he is an integral element.

This ideal has dominated the Indian religious land-
scape for over forty centuries.15

The attitude of his mind, the way of his living, and
his modesty attracted students from far and wide. His

spiritual and intellectual qualities made him the leader of

~—

14H. P. Shastri, "Kabir," Indian Inheritance--

 

lLiterature, Philosophy and Religion, ed.tfi. M. MufiEfii and
R. R. Diwakar (Bombay: ‘Bfiaratiya Vidya Bhavan), Sec. III,
Chap. XV, p. 182.

15S. Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religions and Western
fIhought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 35.

24
the society and, to seek his guidance, even the mighty
kings went to him in a humble spirit. McKee writes:

The teachers of these forest schools, or asramas,
were hermits who had left the haunts of men and the
vanity of life and had given themselves to meditation
and to the study of reality, religion, and philosophy.
Their lives were often marked by a Spirit of humility,
reverence, meditation, hospitality, and piety. No
travelers, pilgrims, or seekers for truth were turned
away from their doors. Simple living, deep thinking,
and a willingness to assist those who came to them for
guidance and help often marked their 1ives.15

Teacher-pupil Relationship.--The relation between

the teacher and the student was that of father and son.

The teacher was to infuse the great ideals into the person-
ality of his student. It was not possible without intimate
contact between them. Rai writes:

In fact, the taught lived like the family member of
his teacher. Some of the students (Shishyas) became so
closely connected with their teachers (Guru) that they

remained with them for their whole life and forgot
their homes even.17

Teacher's Duties to His Student.--One of the most
important duties of the teacher was to teach truth to the
student. The highest truth was taught when the teacher was
satisfied with the student's nobler qualities. All know-

ledge was divided into two parts: the Para Vidya (higher

knowledge) and the Apara Vidya (lower knowledge). Knowledge

 

16William John McKee, New Schools for Youn India
(Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carogina
Press, 1930), p. 3.

17B. C. Rai, History of Indian Education (Lucknow:

Kendra, 1965), p. 25.

 

 

 

 

O
CLQ‘H-

Obu‘.

ICE

25
of physical matter was the lower knowledge, and knowledge
of the Spirit by which Brahman could be known was the
higher knowledge.

To the ancient Indian teachers the realization of
the Self was essential, which depended upon contemplation
and meditation, and not on great stores of information and
facts gathered by the student during the period of his
studies. One such example is that of Narad which reveals
the supermundane attitude of the teachers:

Narada states that he had studied subjects like the
Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda, the Atharva Veda
as fourth, Itihasa-Purana as the fifth Veda, Grammar
(called Vedanam Vedam, "the Veda of Vedas"), Biology
(Bhuta-Vidya), Arithmetic (Rasi). . . . Said Narada:
"These subjects, sir, have I studied. Therefore am I
learned in the scripture (Mantravit), but not yet
learned in the Atma (Atma—vit). Yet have I heard from
such as are like you that he who knows that Atman van-
quishes sorrow. I am in sorrow. Lead me then over, I
pray, to the farther shore that lies beyond sorrows."18

Teacher's Farewell Address to Students.--Indian
saints did not encourage withdrawal from life. They empha-
sized attainment of the higher life through life in the
world. The next stage after the stage of the student—-that
of the householder--has been glorified in Indian literature.
But after marriage one should not completely forget the
religious life. The spirit of service and sacrifice is the
main thing to provide continuity with the other stages of

life. But Keay very aptly observes:

 

18Mookerji, op. cit., p. xxxiii.

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Owing, however, to the current philosophy which
taught the unreality of this world of time, and that
the highest wisdom was to seek release from the worldly
fetters which held the soul in bondage, and that the
highest knowledge was to become acquainted with the
method by which release could be obtained, there was a
tendency to despise the practical duties of life and
the preparation for them. The idea of the four stages,
or asramas, seems to have been formulated to try and
check this tendency by inculcating the desirability of
a student passing to the state of a householder before
he became a forest hermit or wandering ascetic; but,
many passed straight from the student life to the life
of complete renunciation of the world, and the Upani-
shads show us how there was a tendency amongst the more
earnest to despise the ordinary learning of the schools
and preparation for this life in comparison with the
higher philosophic knowledge which was concerned with
the life beyond.19

A student who finished his studies had to leave the
home of the teacher and go back to his parents. The teach-
er's last address to the student for his welfare contains
the quintessence of the traditional Indian philosophy of
education:

Say what is true! Do thy duty! Do not neglect the
study of the Veda! After presenting gifts to thy
teacher, take care that the thread of thy race be not
broken! Do not swerve from truth, from duty! Do not
neglect your health! Do not neglect your worldly pros—
perity! Do not neglect the learning and teaching of
the Veda!

Do not neglect the (Sacrificial) works due to the
Gods and Manes! Let thy mother be to thee like unto a
God! Let thy father be to thee like unto a God! Let
thy preceptor be to thee like unto a God! Let thy
guest be to thee like unto a God! Whatever actions are
blameless, those should be regarded, not others. What-
ever good works have been performed by us, those should
be observed by thee--not others.

Thus, conduct thyself. This is my admonition. This
is the teaching. This is the true purport (Upanishad)

 

19F. E. Keay, Ancient Indian Education: AntInquiry
into Its Origin, Development and IdeaIs (LondOn: Oxford
‘University Press, 1918), p. 171.

 

 

 

(\-
.‘.‘E

27

of the Veda. This is the command. Thus you should
observe. Thus should this be observed.20

India has not forgotten these injunctions even in
the modern days. Though the system of higher education in
India today is completely different from that of the
ancient times, the Vice-Chancellor of the Banaras Hindu
University still reads the Pali version of the Upanishadic
exhortation on the Convocation day to the students:

Etad attha Katha, etad attha mantana, etad attha

Upanisa, etad attha sotavadhanam.
This is the command. This is the teaching. This is

the secret doctrine of the Veda. This is the instruc-

tion. Thus should one worship. Thus indeed should one
worship.21

Before discussing the financial aspect of adminis-
tering the asramas, a description of the location of the

educational centers seems necessary.

The Location of Educational Institutions.--The house
of the teacher was the center of education. Teachers often
lived in forests. The forest offered them peace as well as
the daily necessities. Basu expresses it in these words:

. . . education in ancient India was esoteric; the

school was the home of the teacher, a hermitage amid

Sylvan surroundings away from the hubbub of town life,
amidst silence and in a calm atmosphere, a place of

 

20Mookerji, op. cit., pp. 99—100.

218. Radhakrishnan (ed.), The Principal Upanishads

(New York: Harper and Brothers, I953T, p. 539.

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solitude, an ideal place for contemplation and medita-
tion on Truth or Reality.22

It is difficult for others to understand the role
that forests play in the life of an Indian. The whole of
Indian civilization is based on them. "The forest entered
into a close living relationship with their work and lei-
sure, with their daily necessities and contemplations."23

India is a hot country. The cool shade of the
trees, rivers and lakes, air and open sky are very comfort—
ing and give opportunity to pay homage to the unknown in
solitude. They could not be satisfied in any other sur-
roundings once they adopted the ideal of unity in the
universe. Nakamura observed:

Nearly every Indian religious thinker seeks to live
in the bosom of nature, and there to have direct com-
munion with the Absolute. He renounces the world,
lives in the depths of the forest, sits under a tree or
on a rock, and keeping himself aloof from all secular
affairs, concentrates his thoughts on the quest for
truth. . . . The main current of Indian civilization
has been not in the cities, but in the woods. It has

been the civilization of the tranquil life in the
forest.24

 

22Sobharani Basu, "Forest Universities of Ancient
India," Education and Philosophy-—The Yearbook of Education
1957, ed. George 2. F. Bereday and Joseph A. Lauwerys (New
YorE: World Book Co., 1957), Sec. IV, Chap. I, p. 319.

23Rabindra Nath Tagore, Creative Unity (New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1922), p.445:

24Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern
geoples: India--China--Tibet—-Japan (Honqulu, Hawaii:
East-West Center Press, I964T, p. I63.

 

29

Finances of the Asramas.--Their needs for the life
of a student were very few. Students lived with the family
of the teacher and were fed and taken care of by him.
Teachers got gifts and grants from kings and wealthy people
to support themselves. The life of the teacher and the
student was simple and unpretentious. Education was free,
but the pupil had to perform certain services for his
teacher. Begging was one of them:

It was the usual rule of the Brahmacharin to go

about begging for his teacher. In the Chandogya (iv,

3, 5) while the householders . . . were being waited on

at their meal, a religious student begged of them.25

The great teachers were rewarded for their wisdom in
debates organized by kings. One such example is that of
Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:

l. Janaka, (king) of Videha, sacrificed with a sacri-
fice at which many presents were distributed.
Brahmans of the Kurupanchalas were gathered together
there. In this Janaka of Videha there arose a
desire to know which of these Brahmans was the most
learned in scripture. He enclosed a thousand cows.

To the horns of each ten padas (of gold) were bound.

2. He said to them: "Venerable Brahmans, let him of
you who is the best Brahman drive away these cows."

Those Brahmans durst not.

Then Yajnavalkya said to his pupil: "Samasravas, my
dear, drive them away."

He drove them away.26

 

25Mookerji, op. Cit., p. 93.

26Hume, op. cit., p. 107.

   

in the Brit
3: ted the
for some as
Jana

came u'
pose h
subtle

9",.
.LA.

Cox
dweners
the stude
plicity t

L.‘ ‘
Lg‘eWk. T

dutie's C
a‘CCEP‘CZ’LI

30
There is a dialogue between Janaka and Yajnavalkya
in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad from which it can be inter—
preted that in times of need the teachers went to the kings
for some assistance:

Janak, (king) of Videha, was seated. Yajnavalkya
came up. To him he said: "Yajnavalkya, for what pur-
pose have you come? Because you desire cattle or
subtle disputations?"

"Indeed, for both, your Majesty," he said. . . .27

Cows too were a great help and saved the forest

dwellers from starvation. Good care was taken of them by
the students, and the teacher kept an eye upon their multi-
plicity to save the asrama economy from hazards. There are
instances when the students risked their lives to protect
them. Tending the teacher's cows was one of the sacred
duties of a student. In the Chandogya Upanishad, after
accepting Satyakama Jabala as his student, Haridrumata
Gautama (the teacher):

Separated out four hundred lean, weak cows and said:
"Follow these, my dear."

As he was driving them on, he said: "I may not

return without a thousand." So he lived away a number
of years. . . .28

Buddhist Period

 

Buddhism began in the sixth century B.C. when the
Lord Buddha started preaching that the cause of human
misery is desire which must be overcome. It comes next to

the Upanishadic period which has been described above.

 

27Ibid., p. 127. 281bid., p. 218.

31

Buddhism has been considered as a refined form of Hinduism
with almost no significant difference from the Upanishads.
Buddhist monks, too, strove for the highest knowledge
through austerities. The Vedas formed the nucleus of edu-
cation in both systems. But the most remarkable change was
that Buddhism opened its doors to all, whereas Brahmanic
education did not admit the Sudras.

As regards the similarity, Max Muller gives a speci-

fic account:

The Upanishads are to my mind the germs of Buddhism,
while Buddhism is in many respects the doctrine of the
Upanishads carried out to its last consequences, and,
what is important, employed as the foundation of a new
social system. In doctrine the highest goal of the
Vedanta, the knowledge of the true Self, is no more
than the Buddhist Samyaksambodhi; in practice the
Sannyasin is the Bhikshu, the friar, only emancipated
alike from the tedious discipline of the Brahmanic stu-
dent, the duties of the Brahmanic householder, and the
yoke of useless penances imposed on the Brahmanic
dweller in the forest. The spiritual freedom of the
Sannyasin becomes in Buddhism the common property of
the Sangha, the Fraternity, and that Fraternity is open
alike to the young and the old, to the Brahman and the
Sudra, to the rich and the poor, to the wise and the
foolish. In fact, there is no break between the India
of the Veda and the India of the Tripitaka, but there
is an historical continuity between the two, and the
connecting link between extremes that seem widely sepa-
rated must be sought in the Upanishads.29

The size of educational institutions increased during
this period and the ruins of their magnificent universities

can still be seen. These universities were destroyed by

 

29F. Max Muller (ed.), The Sacred Books of the East,
Vol. XV (Oxford, London: Clarendon Press, 1884), pp. li-
lii.

 

  
 

the melim

flourishin:
India in 1
during the
the Year

Only PO‘we
aptly Su:
paSSage:

1:
abok
in
tem
in
int
f O:
by
the

32
the Muslim invaders who came before the Mughals. N. N. Law
writes:

We have harrowing tales of old universities broken
up, libraries looted and the votaries of indigenous
learning, Hindu or Buddhist, murdered or driven away
homeless.3O

Muslim Period

Brahmanic and Buddhist systems of education were
flourishing side by side when Mahmud of Ghazni invaded
India in 1001 A.D. Though Muslim invasions had started
during the eighth century, India was not subjugated until
the year 1192, when Muhammad Ghori executed Prithviraj, the
only powerful king in the north. Monier Williams has very
aptly summarized the Muslim rule in India in the following
passage:

Muhammad's successors, after occupying Damascus for
about one hundred years, fixed their capital at Baghdad
in 750, and thence their power extended into Afghanis-
tan. The Arabs, however, never obtained more than a
temporary footing in India. Under the Khalif Walid I,
in 711, Muhammad Kasim was sent at the head of an army
into Sinde, but the Muslims were expelled in 750; and
for two centuries and a half India was left unmolested
by invaders from the west. About the year 950, when
the power of the Arabs began to decline in Asia, hardy
tribes of Tartars, known by the name of Turks (not the
Ottoman tribe which afterwards gained a footing in
Europe, but hordes from the Altai mountains), were
employed by the Khalifs to infuse vigour into their
effeminate armies. These tribes became Muhammadans,
and gradually took the power into their own hands. In
the province of Afghanistan, Sabaktagin, once a mere

 

30N. N. Law, "Promotion of Learning in India During

Muhammadan Rule," quoted in Bhagwan Dayal, The Develgpment
of Modern Indian Education (Bombay: Orient Longmans, Ltd.,
I955), p. l.

33

Turkish slave, usurped the government. His son Mahmud
founded an empire at Ghazni in Afghanistan, and made
his first of thirteen incursions into India in the year
1000. During the thirteenth century the Mongol or Mogul
hordes, under the celebrated Jangiz Khan, overthrew the
Turkish or Tartar tribes; and in 1398 Timur, uniting
Tartars and Mongols into one army, made his well—known
invasion of India. After desolating the country he
retired, but the sixth in descent from him, Baber
(Babar), conquered Afghanistan, and thence invading
India about 1526, founded the Mogul empire, which his
grandson Akbar (son of Humayun) established on a firm
basis in 1556; a very remarkable man, Shir Shah Sur,
having previously usurped the empire of Hindustan, and
raised it to great prosperity. The power of the Moguls,
which rapidly increased under Akbar, Jahangir, and
Shahjahan, until it culminated under Aurangzib, began
to decline under Shah 'Alam (Bahadur Shah), Jahandar
Shah, and Farrukh—siyar; and under Muhammad Shah, the
fourth from Aurangzib, took place the Persian invasion
of Afghanistan and thence of India, undertaken by Nadir
Shah (A.D. 1738) to avenge on the Afghans their inroads
into Persia.3l

Education in the Muslim Period.--Muslim education
was for the followers of Islam. Very great emphasis was
laid on religion and worldly affairs. For Indians who for
thousands of years had observed the tradition of seeking
the highest realization of the Self, it was difficult to
accept what was completely based on mundane life.

The Muslims destroyed all the great centers of Hindu
learning and made the study of the Holy Quran compulsory.
But these actions did not touch the Indian mind because it
continued to worship the teacher who led an austere life

and escaped from maya to realize the Self. Humayun Kabir

 

31Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom or Examples of the
Reli ious, Philosophical,ana Ethical Doctrines of the
Hindus (LondEnz’IWm. H. AIIen and Co., 1875), pp. xix-xx.

  
  
  
    
  
 

emmerates
themiqhty
Indian str

The
lead t
practi.
advanc<
Muslim
starte'
higher
with 1:
subsid
bOdy o
Confo:
Outwar
and pr
tion f
trite
ThOSe
IELQIE
thOug}
GUS 84
pay a]
ancie:

34
enumerates some of the principal reasons why the reign of
the mighty Muslim rulers did not fundamentally change the
Indian stream of thought:

The appearance of Islam on the Indian scene did not
lead to any marked change in the educational thought or
practice of the country. Various reasons may be
advanced to explain this fact. Education among the
Muslims, like education in most other communities,
started with a religious bias. Madrasas (schools of
higher learning) were essentially schools of theology,
with linguistic and philosophical studies occupying a
subsidiary position. They aimed at stabilizing the
body of belief and ensuring that the code of conduct
conformed to these beliefs. As these were, at least in
outward form, quite distinct from the religious beliefs
and practices of the Hindus, the two systems of educa-
tion flowed in parallel streams and did not interpene-
trate except in the case of a few rare individuals.
Those who followed the ancient modes of Indian learning
rarely if ever took to the serious study of Islamic
thought. Nor did Moslem scholars or students at vari-
ous stages of education, with a few rare exceptions,
pay any attention to the rich and complex heritage of
ancient India.32

East India Company

The Muslim conquerors invaded India with the sword
and the Quran but could not change the Indian stream of
thought which was busy with the unperceived reality. But
when Queen Elizabeth accepted the application of the trad-
ing corporation entitled "Governors and Company of London
Merchants Trading to the East Indies" on December 31, 1600,

a new era started. The company's growth can be noted from

the following:

 

32Humayun Kabir, Indian Philosophy of Education

(Bombay: Asia Publishing House, I96II, p. I89.

 

The
of the
island
as the
her mar
was wit
Charles-
factory
1636; N
1640 , a
battle
Of the ‘

   
   

Pad beCome
aiVent Of

EdUCatiOn

way Of li
was One <
S.

whet

educ

35

The first factory was built at Surat, near the mouth
of the Tapty, north of Bombay, in 1613. In 1661 the
island of Bombay was ceded to the British by Portugal,
as the marriage portion of the Infanta Catharine, on
her marriage with Charles II, but its final possession
was withheld for four years. It was handed over by
Charles to the East India Company in 1669. Another
factory was built on the Hooghly above Calcutta in
1636; Madras came into the Company's possession in
1640, and they purchased Calcutta itself in 1698. The
battle of Plassy, from which dates the real foundation
of the British empire, was fought June 23, 1757.33

The modern age in Indian education begins with the
British. They refashioned the old thinking. By this time
the Hindu centers of learning were all destroyed, and no
great teachers were left to inspire the youth. Traditions
had become burdensome and superfluous. Thus, with the
advent of the British, starts a fresh era in Indian higher
education. Nevertheless, some worshippers of the Indian
way of life and education did not like the renaissance
brought by the English educational system. Annie Besant
was one of them:

Such was Education in India under Indian Rule,
whether Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim. When that great
bird of prey, the East India Company, winged its way
eastward and descended on her land, ravaging and

destroying, filling itself fat with ill-gotten spoil,
education naturally shared in the general ruin.34

Conclusion

 

The aim of ancient education was very lofty. It put

great emphasis upon the understanding of God. The truly

 

33Williams, op. cit., p. xx.

34Annie Besant, India Bond or Free? (London: G. P.

Putnam's Sons, Ltd., 1926), p. lII.

eiucated ma

 

Students or
care, and t
the real se
Tea:
constant qt
India's cull
PW, poetry
pletEIY fac
tC-day the
seeks God
The
Wilding a
ject Was C
than fault

The
due to it
higher ed
Chapter.
\

+ 35
.L

Cx Or 1::

36
educated man was one who understood the nature of the Self.
Students once accepted were treated with great love and
care, and they were the torch-bearers of their teachers in
the real sense.

Teachers were great personalities, and through their
constant quest for something permanent, they have made
India's cultural inheritance rich in the fields of philoso-
phy, poetry, and religion. Their influence has not com-
pletely faded out, even after four thousand years. Even
today the foreigner still gets the impression that "India
seeks God as no other civilization has done."35

The ancient education was very good for character
building and specialization in one subject, and that sub-
ject was God. On the whole, it still has more admirers
than fault-finders.

The Muslim rule could not influence Indian education
due to its orthodoxy. How the British changed the face of
higher education in India is the subject of the next

chapter.

 

35H. N. Spalding, Civilization in East and West: An

Introduction to the Studyof Human Progress (London:
OxfOrdUniversity Press, I939), p. 2I4.

 

 

f‘

Chr:
interest 1‘
more impor
educatiOnE
The first
tend that
than "to

Cational

directior

?
4-31

diam e<

CHAPTER III

HISTORY OF HIGHER EDUCATION

SINCE THE BRITISH

Christian missionaries were the first to show an
interest in education and to start schools in India. But
more important to them, than providing India with modern
educational institutions, was the spread of Christianity.
The first Portuguese who landed in India did not even pre-
tend that they had come to India with any other purposes
than "to seek Christians and spices."1 Therefore, the edu-
cational historians of India discount their efforts in this
direction and begin with the India Act of 1813 for modern
Indian education.

In the previous chapter, pre-British education has
been discussed which consisted of the Upanishadic, the
Buddhist, and the Muslim educational periods. By the
twelfth century A.D. Indian education had been destroyed by
the numerous invasions of the Muslims. When the British

occupied India, accordingly, the country was suffering from

 

1Quoted in Ram Gopal, British Rule in India: An
Assessment (New York: Asia PfiinShing House, I963I,
p. 2IO.

 

37

complete c‘r

(1'

India Comp
education 1
and other 5
England to
Company in
less than 0

Of India.

 

medium Of 1
EngliSh Ian
little to n
education.

were Opened
of the Long

higher edUc

[M

In
indicated
making Q.

-L

38
complete chaos. Unfortunately, in the beginning the East
India Company also was not concerned with the promotion of
education in India. The zealous efforts of missionaries
and other scholars, however, compelled the Parliament of
England to add a clause in the charter of the East India
Company in 1813 which authorized the company to spend not
less than one lakh of rupees on the education of the natives
of India. Afterward a long controversy rose about the
medium of instruction which resulted in the triumph of the
English language in 1835. From 1835 to 1857 there is
little to narrate regarding the development of collegiate
education. But, when in 1857 the first three universities
were opened at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras on the pattern
of the London University, then ensued a new era in the
higher education of India.

This chapter examines the efforts of the East India
Company and the British government to introduce modern
higher education in India. To understand the present
development in higher education, one must first become
acquainted with the historical events that have provided

the pattern and resources as well.

Early Attempts of the East India Company
In the beginning the East India Company, as has been
indicated, did not pay any attention to the education of
the country. It was primarily a business concern, so the

making of profit was its watchword.

J

company , tl.

To

forced to
Charles G:

entitled C

described
words:

Up
Peepl
rate
OCllg

Gr

exaggerat

Wanted tc

tOWard t}

The Firsl
\

A
named th

GOVernOr

39

Toward the end of the eighteenth century, the
company, through the efforts of several Englishmen, was
forced to concern itself with the education of Indians.
Charles Grant was one of these. In his treatise of 1792,
entitled Observations on the State of Society Amongpthe
Asiatic Subjects of Great Britain, Particularly with
Respect to Morals, and on the Means of Improving It, he
described the condition of the people of India in these
words:
Upon the whole we cannot help recognizing in the
people of Hindoostan, a race of men lamentably degene-
rate and base, retaining but a feeble sense of moral
obligation. . . .2
Grant's description has been considered as full of
exaggeration, but his motive deserves admiration because he
wanted to attract the attention of the British public
toward the needs of the inhabitants of India for education.
The Firstpgontribution
to Higher Education

A college for Mohammedans was established in 1781,
named the Calcutta Madrissa, by Warren Hastings, the
Governor-General of India. It was the first educational
institution to be founded in India by an officer of the
East India Company. The idea of establishing a college did

not originate with him. It was the request of the leading

 

2Quoted in Bhagwan Dayal, The Development of Modern

Indian Education (Bombay: Orient Longmans, Ltd., 19557,
p. 186.

l’nslins an
irplenente

The
Din, a
the sol
leading
of snox
of lea:
able q
sweepe
tional
govern

 

4
Endia _
Univ

40
Muslims and an outstanding maulvi that he reSponded to and
implemented. O'Malley gives some of the details:

The arrival in Calcutta, in 1780, of one Majid-ud-
Din, a maulvi renowned for piety and scholarship, and
the solicitation on his and their behalf of a number of
leading Muslims, gave Warren Hastings the opportunity
of showing the new government in the guise of a patron
of learning. The establishment of the maulvi in suit-
able quarters, with forty stipendiary students and a
sweeper on RS.3 a month, begins the history of educa-
tional action in India as a concern of the British
government.3

As regards the financing and object of the Madrissa,
Jagdeesh Prasad Vyas summarizes it as follows:

Mr. Hastings provided a building at his own expense
and at whose recommendation the government assigned
lands of the estimated value of 29,000 rupees per annum
for the founder was to produce from this seminary well
qualified officers for the courts of justice. It was
never attained to the extent of his expectations. . . .

A sum of nearly a lakh or a half was given for the
erection of an edifice. . . .4

Establishment of the
‘BEEares Sanskrit‘aallegg

In 1791, Jonathan Duncan founded the Benares San-
skrit College which was supported by the Earl of Corn-
wallis. The reasons for its establishment, as given by
Duncan, were:

Two important advantages seemed derivable from such
an establishment, the first to the British name and

 

3J. R. Cunningham, "Education," Modern India and the
West, ed. L. S. S. O'Malley (London: Oxford UniVersiEy
Press, 1941), p. 140.

4Jagdeesh Prasad Vyas, "Central Government's Role in
Indian Education 1813-1961" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
University of Saugar, 1962), p. 56.

nation
to the
tage t?
felt .
of the
tors ar
in the
genuine

 

The
:essful.
llIlES of t
in the SOC
and 50 Are

tions.

fiw F0v+
\N

41
nation in its tendency towards endearing our government
to the native Hindus. . . . The second principal advan-
tage that may be derived from this institution will be
felt . . . by preserving and disseminating a knowledge
of the Hindu law, and proving a nursery of future doc-
tors and expounders thereof, to assist European judges
in the due, regular, and uniform administration of its
genuine letter and spirit to the body of the people.5
The Madrissa and the Sanskrit College were not suc-
cessful. Both were mismanaged and followed the traditional
lines of teaching. The company did not want to interfere
in the social, cultural, and religious life of the country,
and so Arabic and Sanskrit continued in the above institu-

tions.

The Fort William College

In 1800, Lord Wellesley started the Fort William
College to provide instruction in Hindu and Muslim laws,
Indian history, Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, and Modern
Indian languages. It provided instruction only for the
civil servants of the company, so educational historians
omit any consideration of it in their discussion of higher
education though its staff consisted of such distinguished
scholars as Dr. Gilchrist, Dr. Colebrooke, Dr. Carey, and

Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar.

 

5Quoted in Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A Histor
of Education in India (Durin the British Period} (Bombay:
Macmillan and CS.,‘EEd., 195 , pp. 58-59.

 

lndi enous
ere Stan:
\

Ce:

tain pass

throw
lea31
EVQr}
Where
9fit]
Or b
SChQ
and

the:
COmp
aCCt
amor
mOrE

42

Reasons for the East India Companyfs
Indifference to Education

Why the company did not recognize the need for edu-
cation in India can be summarized under two heads:
1. Indigenous education was considered standard and
adequate.
2. Fear of losing the country as a result of the

advancement of education.

Indi enous Education Consid-
ered Standard and Adequate

Certain documents which deal with the Madras and
Bombay Committees of Public Instruction of that time con-
tain passages of the following type:

. . . there is hardly a village, great or small,
throughout our territories, in which there is not at
least one school, and in larger villages more, many in
every town, and in large cities in every division,
where young natives are taught reading, writing, and
arithmetic upon a system so economical from a handful
or two of grain to perhaps a rupee per month to the
schoolmaster, according to the ability of the parents,
and at the same time so simple and effectual, that
there is hardly a cultivator or petty dealer who is not
competent to keep his own accounts with a degree of
accuracy, in my opinion beyond what we meet with
amongst the lower orders in our own country whilst the
more splendid dealers and bankers keep their books with
a degree of ease, conciseness and clearness I rather
think fully equal to those of any British merchant.6

6A. N. Basu, Indian Education in Parliamentapy

Pa ers Part I (18325 (Bombay: ASia Publishing House,
a P0 o

 

 

       
     

Fear of Le

The
and Charle

to send te

 

there. Th
the renewa
1793. (Th
every twer
Nilberfor:
Charter tc
he failed
afraid of

Po
had b
tion
fEelj
first
NI. V
Chari
to I]
the t
with
Ver
the
Educ
COUn
Dire
fell
and
the
the
the)
aftE
fee]

43

Fear of Losing the Countr
with Advancement of Education

The missionaries, through the efforts of Wilberforce

 

 

and Charles Grant, were always trying to compel the company
to send teachers and missionaries to India to change things
there. Their endeavors gathered momentum at the time of
the renewal of the charter of the East India Company in
1793. (The charter of the company had to be renewed after
every twenty years.) Charles Grant through his friend
Wilberforce tried to have some new clauses inserted in the
charter to make the company responsible for education, but
he failed in this attempt. What the company was really
afraid of has been clearly expressed by J. C. Marshman:

For a considerable time after the British Government
had been established in India, there was great opposi-
tion to any system of instruction for the natives. The
feelings of the public authorities in this country were
first tested upon the subject in the year 1792, when
Mr. Wilberforce proposed to add two clauses to the
Charter Act of that year, for sending out schoolmasters
to India; this encountered the greatest opposition in
the Court of Proprietors, and it was found necessary to
withdraw the clauses. That proposal gave rise to a
very memorable debate, in which, for the first time,
the views of the Court of Directors upon the subject of
education, after we had obtained possession of the
country, were developed. On that occasion, one of the
Directors stated that we had just lost America from our
folly, in having allowed the establishment of schools
and colleges, and that it would not do for us to repeat
the same act of folly in regard to India; and that if
the natives required anything in the way of education,
they must come to England for it. For twenty years
after that period, down to the year 1813, the same
feeling of opposition to the education of the natives

CC‘Q‘.

L.» :(
9.1-.

renewal

44
continued to prevail among the ruling authorities in
this country.7
The Charter of 1813
The charter of the East India Company again came for

renewal in 1813. That year is very important in the his-
tory of Indian education because in 1813 the British
Parliament first authorized the company to spend money on
education.

By Act 53 of King George III, the following clause

was added to the Charter of 1813:

It shall be lawful for the Governor-General in
Council, that out of any surplus which may remain of
the rents, revenues and profits arising from the said
territorial acquisitions after defraying the expenses
of the military, civil and commercial establishments
and paying the interest of the debt, a sum of not less
than one lac of rupees in each year shall be set apart
and applied to the revival and improvement of litera-
ture; and the encouragement of the learned natives of
India, and for the introduction and promotion of a
knowledge of the sciences among the inhabitants of the
British territories in India. . . .8

Education became the duty of the company from that

time on and thus was laid the foundation of the modern
Indian educational system. But the spending of one lakh of

rupees on education was still conditional because it

depended upon the attainment of surplus revenues. Moreover,

 

7Quoted in B. D. Basu, History of Education in India
under the Rule of the East IndiECompapy (Calcutta: Modern
Review Office, I922), pp._5- .

8Vyas, op. cit., pp. 69-70.

 

nothing he

Governor-G

tee of
tainin
Public
consid.
90Vern'
appear
instru

 

The

ment
Monte

" Y~y

Instr
meht

45
the authorities were unwilling to carry out the order of
the Parliament sincerely.

When it was realized a decade later that almost
nothing had been done for education since 1813, the
Governor—General adopted a resolution on July 17, 1923:

. . . there should be constituted a general commit-
tee of public instruction, for the purpose of ascer-
taining the state of public education, and of the
public institutions designed for its promotion, and of
considering, and from time to time submitting to
government the suggestion of such measures as it may
appear expedient to adopt, with a view to the better
instruction of the people. . . .9

The directors of the company were so unwilling to
spend money on education of the Indian people that even
after expenditure of the money for this purpose was author-
ized by the British Parliament and a general committee of
public instruction was formed, no one claimed the arrears:

Mr. C. H. Cameron, in his examination before the
Select Committee of the House of Lords on the govern-
ment of Indian Territories in 1853, was asked by Lord
Monteagle of Brandon on July 7, 1853:

"When you were at the head of the Council of Public
Instruction, did you ever endeavor to obtain the pay-
ment of any portion of the arrears of that lakh of

rupees which had been left unpaid for so many years?"
His answer was, "No, we never did."10

The Charter of 1833
The Charter of 1813 gave freedom to the missionaries,
so they increased their activities in the field of educa-

tion. The company had recognized the importance of

 

9Quoted in Gopal, op. cit., p. 216.

10Quoted in Basu, op. cit., p. 37.

     
  

education,
grants als
forward an
of several
he colleg

um follow

thrOug
David
Marsh;
Pore w
nine
1820,
suburb
In 183
Instit

 

The

‘-
“he act is

he

46
education, so occasionally their institutions received
grants also. The other parties or individuals also came
forward and the period between 1813 and 1833 saw the rise
of several institutions for higher learning. A glimpse of
the colleges started during this period can be had from
the following account:

. . . the Hindu College [was] established in 1817
through the joint efforts of Raja Ram Mohan Roy and
David Hare. In 1818, three missionaries, Carey,
Marshman and Ward started a Mission College at Seram-
pore which received a Charter from the King of Denmark
nine years later empowering it to confer degrees. In
1820, the Bishop's College was established at Sibpur, a
suburb of Calcutta by the Church of England Mission.

In 1830, Alexander Duff started the General Assembly's
Institution which soon grew into a college.11

The fact which supported the spread of education in

the act is notable:

No Native of the said Territories, nor any natural
born Subject of His Majesty resident therein, shall, by
reason only of his religion, place of birth, descent,
color, or any of them be disabled from holding any
Place, Office, or Employment under the said Company.12

As the opportunity for employment was made available

to everyone without prejudice, the triumph of the English
language became certain. It seems necessary, however, to
discuss the language controversy which persisted for many
years between the two groups known as Oriental and Occiden-

tal over the preferred medium of instruction. With the

 

11D3y51, OE. Cite, pp. 36-370

l2Quoted in Syed Mahmood, A History of English
Education in India: 1781-1873 (Aligarh: M.A.O. Co ege,
1895), p. 48.

passing of
company t:
revival ar
of the lee
as to whic
mentioned
Hm Indiar
Occidental

The

 

Ram Mohan

Excerpts ,

18239 to I

Occidenta-
noble

Empir.

is r.
must
proud

He

47

passing of the Charter Act of 1813, which authorized the
company to spend one lakh of rupees annually for the
revival and improvement of literature and the encouragement
of the learned natives of India, a great controversy began
as to which methods should be employed to achieve the above
mentioned end. The Orientalists favored the education of
the Indian people through their classical languages. The
Occidentalists advocated the medium of English for progress.

The greatest defender of English education was Raja
Ram Mohan Roy, widely known as the Father of Modern India.
Excerpts from his speech and his letter of December 11,
1823, to Lord Amherst would represent the thinking of the
Occidentalist party:

. . . I allude to that wise, that benevolent, that
noble clause which enacts that no native of our Indian
Empire shall, by reason of his color, his descent, or
his religion, be incapable of holding office. . . . I
must say that, to the last day of my life, I shall be
proud of having been one of those who assisted in the
framing of the Bill which contains that clause. . . .13

He was greatly disappointed by the company's deci-

sion to start a Sanskrit College at Calcutta and submitted
a memorial to the Governor—General on December 11, 1823:

. . . We now find that the government are estab-
lishing a Sanskrit School under Hindoo Pundits to
impart such knowledge as is already current in India.

. . . The Sanskrit System of education would be best
calculated to keep this country in darkness. But as
the improvement of the native population is the object

of the government, it will consequently promote a more
liberal and enlightened system of instruction,

 

13Quoted in Nurullah, op. cit., p. 196.

The
Orientalis
Party and
Education
were gain;
is illust:

I s
annour
change
dlSpog
IEdge
brOUg}
the a
adult-
beYond
tanght

 

 

 

 

 

But

the balanc

14C

15

}.

§Ehram , Er?
W

48

embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry

and anatomy, with other useful sciences which may be

accomplished with the sum proposed by employing a few
gentlemen of talent and learning educated in EurOpe,

and providing a college furnished with the necessary

books, instruments and other apparatus.14

The older officials of the company formed the
Orientalist group. H. T. Prinsep was the leader of the
party and secretary to the government of Bengal in the
Education Department. The fact that the Occidentalists
were gaining the upper hand was very frustrating to him, as
is illustrated by the following quotation:

I saw in that Resolution, said Mr. Prinsep, the
announcement that the time was come for an important
change, and I dreaded and still dread the effect of the
disposition . . . to disparage and deprecate all know-
ledge save that in which they have themselves been
brought up. . . . It is thought to be kindness to cram
the a, b, c, of the West down the throats of Eastern
adults, even though it ends in their never reaching
beyond the reading and spelling point in the language
taught. . . .15

But the arrival of Lord Macaulay on the scene tipped

the balance in favor of the Anglicists.

Macaulay's Minute, 1835
Macaulay came to India as a Law Member of the Council
of Governor—General on June 10, 1834. He was soon appointed

as the President of the general Committee of Public

 

14Quoted in GOpal, op. cit., pp. 214-15.

15Minute, August 15, 1834, quoted in B. K. Boman-
Behram, Educational Controversies in India: The Cultural
gonquest of India under‘firitish Imperialism (Bombay:
Taraporewala, 1943i, pp. 265566.

49
Instruction by Lord William Bentinck. He was asked to give
his advice on the meaning of Section 43 of the Charter Act
of 1813 and about the method of spending one lakh of rupees
sanctioned by the Parliament. This gave him an opportunity
to write his decisive and justly famous Minute of Febru-
ary 2, 1835, which is quoted in length below:

It does not appear to me that the Act of Parliament
can by any art of construction be made to bear the mean-
ing which has been assigned to it. It contains nothing
about the particular languages or sciences which are to
be studied. . . . It is argued, or rather taken for
granted, that by literature the Parliament can have
meant only Arabic and Sanskrit literature. . . . This
does not appear to be a very satisfactory interpreta-
tion. 0 O 0

All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the
dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part
of India contain neither literary nor scientific infor-
mation, and are moreover so poor and rude . . . that it
will not be easy to translate any valuable work into
them. It seems to be admitted on all sides that the
intellectual improvement . . . can at present be
effected only by means of some language not vernacular
amongst them. What then shall that language be? One
half of the Committee maintain that it should be
English. The other half strongly recommend the Arabic
and Sanskrit. The whole question seems to me to be
which language is the best worth knowing? I have no
knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic. . . . I have
never found one . . . who could deny that a single
shelf of a good European library was worth the whole
native literature of India and Arabia. . . .

How then stands the case? We have to educate a
people who cannot at present be educated by means of
their mother tongue. We must teach them some foreign
language. The claims of our own language it is hardly
necessary to recapitulate. . . . Whether we look at the
intrinsic value of our literature or at the particular
situation of this country we shall see the strongest
reason to think that of all foreign tongues the English
tongue is that which would be the most useful to our
native subjects. . . .

To sum up what I have said. I think it clear that
we are not fettered by any pledge expressed or implied;
that we are free to employ our funds as we choose; that
we ought to employ them in teaching what is best worth

knowi:
Sansk;
taugh
Sansk.
law n
and A.
that ;
thorCt
our e:

The
Views of -

cPpositiox

 

 

 

minute anr

The
liked by .

Counc
and it
Was p
rEQUi
lite:
ing s
deCla
ShOul
Euro;
langL
memo:

Pr
Proc1amat

l. H:
01

50

knowing; that English is better worth knowing than
Sanskrit or Arabic; that the natives are desirous to be
taught English, and are not desirous to be taught
Sanskrit or Arabic; that neither as the languages of
law nor as the languages of religion have the Sanskrit
and Arabic any peculiar claim to our encouragement;
that it is possible to make natives of this country

thoroughly good English scholars, and that to this end
our efforts ought to be directed.16

The Governor-General was not at all impressed by the
views of the Orientalists so he paid no attention to their
opposition to Macaulay's Minute. He promptly approved the
minute and issued a Proclamation on March 7, 1835.

The attitude of the Governor-General was not at all
liked by the Orientalists and Prinsep wrote in his diary:

. . . When the subject came under consideration in
Council, there was a very hot argument between myself
and Mr. Macaulay. The issue was the resolution that
was published not abolishing existing colleges, but
requiring them to teach English as well as native
literature and making the former obligatory, also giv—
ing some encouragement to vernacular studies, but
declaring that all government pecuniary aid in future
should be given exclusively to promote the study of
European Science through the medium of the English
language. Lord W. Bentinck would not even allow my
memorandum to be placed on record. . . .17

Presentation of some crucial passages from that
Proclamation also seems to be necessary here because it
suppressed the oriental learning altogether:

1. His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the great

object of the British government ought to be the
promotion of European literature and science among

 

16Ramsay Muir, The Making of British India: 1756-

1858 (London: University of Manchester Press, 1923),
pp. 298-301.

17Quoted in Nurullah, op. cit., p. 138.

 

 

in
Cor:
Lo:
fur

51
the natives of India; and that all the funds appro-

priated for the purposes of education would be best
employed on English education alone.

0 O O O O C O O O O C O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

3. It has come to the knowledge of the Governor—General
in Council that a large sum has been expended by the
Committee on the printing of Oriental works; his
Lordship in Council directs that no portion of the
funds shall hereafter be so employed.

4. His Lordship in Council directs that all the funds
which these reforms will leave at the disposal of
the Committee be henceforth employed in imparting to
the native population a knowledge of English litera-
ture and science through the medium of the English
language. . . .1é
However, the controversy did not end with this

resolution. It was Lord Auckland, the successor of Lord
William Bentinck, who ended the conflict by assigning some
additional funds to satisfy both parties. On the whole, he
gave very little to the Classicists and the spread of
English was reaffirmed.

Thus, the English language came to the forefront and
with it came the modern institutions. The Proclamation of
Lord Hardinge in 1844 gave preference to men in public
empdoyment who had received English education. It linked
.English education with government service and thus helped
in its promotion beyond all bounds. But the epoch-making
event in the history of Indian higher education had yet to

takerplace. It occurred at the time when the charter of

the East India Company came up for renewal in 1853.

 

18Quoted in Basu, op. cit., pp. 88-89.

52

Education Despatch of 1854

The Despatch of Sir Charles Wood in 1854 outlined
the complete and systematic organization of Indian educa-
tion. The establishment of the universities resulted from
it. By this time the authorities felt completely assured
that educating the people of India would in no way endanger
their hold over the country. On the contrary, the educated
Indians would actually prove a source of strength to the
British government. With this object the despatch was out-
lined by Sir Charles Wood who was then President of the
Board of Control of the East India Company.

The despatch, dated July 19, 1854, consists of 100
paragraphs and was addressed by the Court of Directors of
the East India Company to the Governor-General of India.
Two significant paragraphs relevant to this study are as

follows:

2. Among many subjects of importance, none can have a
stronger claim to our attention than that of Educa-
tion. It is one of our most sacred duties to be
the means, as far as in us lies, of conferring upon
the natives of India those vast moral and material

blessings which flow from the general diffusion of
useful knowledge. . . .

O O O O O O 0 O O O O O O 0 0 O 0 O O O O 0 O O O O

24. Some years ago, we declined . . . to a proposal
. . . for the institution of an university in
Calcutta. The rapid spread of a liberal education
. . . the high attainments shown by the native
candidates . . . have led us to the conclusion that

«C
D.

.a‘.

'{e

f

53

the time has now arrived for the establishment of
universities in India. . . .19

The despatch suggested many things, but what seems
most significant to the writer is that it recommended the
establishment of universities in the three presidency
towns, that is, Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras.

The despatch also recommended that the Indian uni—
versities should be designed according to the pattern of
London University.

The principles laid down for the universities at
that time were reaffirmed in 1859 after the Great Mutiny of
1857 when the East India Company was abolished and adminis-
tration of the country went directly to the Crown. Indian
universities are still following the same pattern. There—
fore, it becomes essential here to examine briefly the
pattern of London University which provided the model for

the Indian universities.

London University
Some of the important facts regarding London Uni-
versity can be summarized as follows:

1. The University of London was opened in 1828 without
a charter.

2. The University of London was vested with power to
examine and confer degrees on certified students
from University and King's Colleges and other

 

19Roper Lethbridge, High Education in India: A Plea

for the State Colle es (London: Wm. H. Allen and‘Eo.,
), pp. .6, 7, an 0.

F a. .

.u.‘ SJ

 

54

institutions. Thus it became known as the Examining
Body of students from numerous schools privileged to
grant certificates of attendance.

3. The charter of 1858 abolished the exclusive connec-
tion of the University with the affiliated institu-
tions and so it opened its degrees to all males able
to pass its examinations. It required evidence of
attendance for medical degrees.

4. In response to the complaints that a university
should not only examine and confer degrees, but also
teach and advance research, the government appointed
a commission which reported that one university
could do both the jobs of teaching and examining.

5. The highest governing and executive body is the
senate, consisting of 56 members, inclusive of the
Chancellor. Within the senate are three committees
from whom it receives reports to decide upon the
matters within the province of the committees.20

The British government founded three universities in
India at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras. The Indian Univer-
Sities Act of 1857 states:

. . . it has been determined to establish the
university for the purpose of ascertaining by means of
examination the persons who have acquired proficiency
in different branches of Literature, Science and Art,
and of rewarding them by academical degrees as evidence
of their respective attainments. The Acts went on to
state that except by special orders of the Senate no
person shall be admitted as a candidate for a degree
unless he shall present to the university a certificate
from an institution authorized in that behalf by the
Governor-General or Governor in Council to the effect
that he has completed the course of instruction pre-
scribed by the university in the bylaws to be made by
them under the power in that behalf given by the Acts.
It is observed from the text of these Acts that the
Universities in India were constituted on the general
plan of the University of London, that they were purely
examining bodies and that institutions affiliated to

 

20George Edwin Maclean, Studies in Higher Education

1J1 En land and Scotland, Bulletin 1917, No. 16 (Washington,
5.5.: Bureau of Education, 1917), pp. 67-70.

 

55

them were only such as were approved by the Governor-
General in Council in the case of the Calcutta Univer—
sity or by the Governor in Council in the case of the
Universities of Bombay and Madras. The power of affil-
iating colleges to a university vested not in the uni-
versities themselves but in government. The Acts of
1882 and 1887 constituting the Universities of the
Punjab and Allahabad respectively followed the lines of
the Acts of 1857 in making provision for the university
being only an examining corporation, the power of
affiliating colleges vesting in government.21

The above description shows that all the teaching
was done by the affiliated colleges, and the university was
simply an administrative body to conduct examinations and
award degrees. In the beginning, no doubt, it facilitated
higher education but soon after people in India as in Lon-
don started complaining that a purely examining and affili-
ating university was inadequate to provide an atmosphere of
learning and maintain the standards of university life. To
what extent the London University shocked the people of
England can be seen in the poetic description of Thwing:

The comparison of the University of London with
Oxford and Cambridge presents a contrast almost as
sharp as the contrast between the violet-crowned cities
on the Isis and Cam and the Babylonian town on the
Thames. The University in the metropolis has little or
none of academic atmospheres or associations. It has
no noiseless and shadowy quadrangles of velvety turf
made soft and fine by seven hundred years of cropping.

Its towers are not crowned with either time or ivy.
Its common rooms play an insignificant part in academic
fellowship. Its chapels have small relation to kings
or to Christ Church Cathedral. Neither prestige nor
tradition rests upon it with a hand at once as loving
as life and as heavy as death. The Middle Ages have

 

21R. Littlehailes(ed.), Progress of Education in
India: 1922-27, Ninth Quinquennial Review, Vol. I
(EaICutta: Government of India, 1929), p. 52.

 

56

flung over it no spell. Unreasoned and unreasonable

beliefs have not troubled its students, nor have arti-

ficial or arbitrary discriminations proved determina-
tive. What Oxford and Cambridge count as of primary
worth . . . London regards as secondary. And what

London might regard as of first significance, the

ancient foundations interpret as of less worth. . . .22
To the Hindu mind, too, higher education was some-

thing to be carried on in secluded places under the wise
guidance of an ascetic sitting by the bank of the Ganges,
"watching the phantasmagoria of existence with indiffer-
ence."23 It can easily be seen how far these examining
universities fell short of an ideal so lofty.

But the question arises, why did the rulers take the
University of London to be the model for the Indian univer-
sities? The reasons given for this decision can be summed
up in the following points:

1. It was going to cost very little.

2. It enabled all the existing collegiate institutions
to be incorporated into the same scheme and provided
an impartial mode of examination.

3. It not only gave freedom to the mission colleges to

carry on their work but made it possible to help
them with public funds.24

 

22C. F. Thwing, Universities of the World (New York:

23Commission on Christian Higher Education in India,
Report of the Commission: an En uiry into the Place of the
n Indi (

 

 

 

 

Zfiiristian College in Moder a London: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1931), p. 51.
24

Arthur P. Newton, The Universities and Educational
Systems of the British EmpireTNew York: Henry H01? and
Co., 1924i, p. 34.

 

57

4. It met the immediate need better than any other
system could have done.

5. Most colleges were not ready to assume responsibil—
ity for freedom of teaching, hence a uniform system
of examinations was necessary to preserve standards.

6. The Indian universities were founded in the year of
the Mutiny so it was wise for the government not to
undertake a program involving great expenditure.25

Commission of 1882

The Despatch of 1854 had promised the withdrawal of
the government from the field of higher education but, in
fact, the government kept on financing higher education and
due attention was not paid to primary education. So the
missionaries started criticizing the policy of the govern-
ment and made the enquiry necessary.

Lord Rippon appointed the commission on February 3,
1882, and Sir William Hunter was appointed as its Presi-
dent. This commission is known as the "Hunter Commission."

The commission was mainly to examine the state of
primary education and had to report whether or not the
government had paid greater attention to higher and second-
ary education at the cost of primary education.

The commission enquired into the condition of
primary education but instead of suggesting that grants to

higher education should be curtailed, it recommended their

enlargement to assure its improvement.

 

5Report of the Calcutta University Commission,
Vol. I, quoted in Nurullah, op. cit., p. 276.

58
Since this thesis is concerned only with higher
education, the selected recommendations of the commission
regarding higher education are given below:

1. The grant-in aid to be given to a college should be
determined by the strength of the staff, the
expenditure on its maintenance, the efficiency of
the institution, and the wants of the locality.

2. If necessary, special grants should be given to
colleges for the supply and renewal of buildings,
furniture, libraries, and other apparatus of
instruction.

3. A larger number of Indian graduates who have also
graduated in European universities should be
employed in government colleges. . . .25
As is obvious, the recommendations of the commission

were favorable to collegiate education so more and more
private colleges were established. The growth in the num-
ber of colleges after 1882 has been summarized by Nurullah

as follows:

In 1882 the total number of colleges affiliated to
Indian universities was 68 only. . . . In the next
decade, 1882-91, sixty-one new colleges were affiliated.
. . . In the decade 1892-1902, fifty more colleges were
affiliated. . . . In 1901-02, therefore, the total num-
ber of Arts colleges affiliated to Indian universities
was 179. . . .27

Indian Universities Commission (1902)
Three universities were opened in 1857, namely,

Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras, on the model of the London

 

26Quoted in B. P. Johri and P. D. Pathak, An Outline
of Indian Education (Agra: Vinod Pustak Mandir, 19637,
p. 156.

 

27Quoted in Nurullah, op. cit., p. 285.

59
University. The Acts of 1882 and 1887 opened two more
universities-the Punjab and the Allahabad. The Punjab
University was different from the previous universities as
can be noted from the Quinquennial Review of the Progress

of Education in India, 1897-1902:

 

1. It has a Faculty of Oriental Learning, and confers
the degrees of Bachelor, Master, and Doctor of
Oriental Learning . . . through the medium not of
English but of Urdu.

2. It maégtains an Oriental College and a Law College.

About the University of Allahabad which opened in
1887, the following extract from the Quinquennial Review of

the Progress of Education in India, 1897-1902 is worth

 

noticing:

. . . It was felt that Calcutta was too far distant,
and that the regulations of that university were not
altogether suitable to the development of higher educa—
tion in Northern India. . . . An Act was accordingly
passed in the Council of the Governor-General in the
year 1887, incorporating the University of Allahabad.
The local government carefully considered the exact
form the University should take, and in especial
whether in addition to prescribing courses and conduct-
ing examinations it should maintain a staff of profes-
sors . . . after the pattern of the Universities of
Germany. While recognizing the great value of a Uni-
versity of this type the lieutenant-governor considered
that . . . the University should confine its operations
to the direction of the methods and aims of instruction.
. . . The Act imposes no limitations, . . . but hitherto
Allahabad has conformed to the practice of the three
original Universities. . . .29

In 1899 Lord Curzon came to India as Viceroy. He

gave preference to higher education and a part of his speech

 

28

Ibid., p. 277. 29

Ibid. , p. 278.

60
at the Simla Conference in 1901 gives reasons for the
appointment of the commission on January 27, 1902:

. . . Here the University . . . is a body that
controls courses of study and sets examination papers
to the pupils of affiliated Colleges. . . . The affili-
ated Colleges of the Calcutta University are scattered
in regions as remote as Burma and Ceylon. Then look at
the Colleges. They are not residential institutions,
with a history, a tradition, a genius loci, a tutorial
staff, of their own. They are for the most part col-

lections of lecture-rooms, and classrooms, and labora-
tories. . . .30

The purpose of the commission was not to change the
system of the universities. It simply made suggestions to
improve and strengthen the existing system. The commission
submitted its report on June 9, 1902 to the government with
some of the following recommendations:

1. New universities should not be established.

2. Existing universities should be reorganized as
teaching bodies.

3. While under-graduate work should be left to affili-
ated colleges, provision for advanced courses of
study should be made in universities.

4. No private student should be admitted to the Inter-
mediate Examination, or to the examination for the
degree of B.A. or B.Sc. unless by a special order of
the Senate. . . .31
Though many criticisms have been made of its recom-

mendations, this commission at least, for the first time,

suggested direct teaching in the Indian universities.

 

301bid., p. 459.

31Quoted in Johri, op. cit., pp. 175-76.

61

Indian Universities Act, 1904

 

On the basis of the recommendations of the commis-
sion, Lord Curzon framed an educational act on March 11,
1904 which was passed on March 21, 1904 and became a law.
The provisions of the act are summarized by Zellner as
follows:
1. The functions of the University are enlarged.

2. The University Senates are cut down to manageable
size. . . .

3. It increased the number of fellows to be elected.

4. Syndicates were given statutory recognition and
University teachers on syndicates were given ade-
quate representation.

5. Stricter conditions were provided for affiliating
colleges to the University, including inspection.

6. The government was vested with powers regarding the
regulations framed by the University Senate.

7. The Governor-General in Council was empowered to 32
define the territorial limits of the Universities.

The Indian Universities Act was violently opposed.
People looked at the act with suspicion because it seemed
to them that the government was going to control the uni-
‘versities directly.

The fear that government wanted to control by creat-
ing a majority of Europeans in the university senates was

to only a limited extent true, as can be seen in Table l.

 

32Aubrey Albert Zellner, Education in India: A Sur-

;¥§y of the Lower Ganges Valley in Modern Times (New York:
:dekman Associates, 1951), pp. 109—I0.

 

62

TABLE 1

NUMBER OF EUROPEAN AND INDIAN SENATE
MEMBERS IN UNIVERSITIES

 

 

No. of Fellows Authorized

 

 

Universities Totals
European Indian

1. Calcutta 41 43 84

2. Bombay 41 59 100

3. Madras 36 34 70

4. Punjab 35 40 75

5. Allahabad 39 36 75

 

Source: Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A History of
Education in India_£During the British Period) (Bombay:
MacmiIIan and Co., Ltd., 1951), p. 470:

 

What can unquestionably be credited to the act, how—
ever, is the fact that the universities were authorized to
provide teaching from now onward. It was Sir Ashutosh
Mookerjee who started utilizing this provision of the act.
But no significant progress could be made in this direction
because the tradition of centralized examining was still
very strong.

The number of affiliated colleges also decreased
because the conditions of affiliation and periodical
inspection were more strict now, so the weaker colleges
‘were struck off the list.

On the whole, however, the act of 1904 could not be
judged a success because conflicts were going on which were
cine to suspicion of the government's intention on the part

<3f the Indian public.

63

Educational Policy of 1913
The King-Emperor George V visited India in 1912. In
the Darbar (Darbar is an open court held at the consent of
a sovereign for diplomatic or social purposes) which was
organized at Delhi, the Calcutta University presented an
address to him on January 6, 1912. The attitude of the
government can be seen in his reply to the address:
It is my wish that there may be spread over the land
a network of schools and colleges, from which will go
forth loyal and manly and useful citizens. . . . It is
through education that my wish will be fulfilled, and

the cause of education in India will ever be very close
to my heart.33

This expression of the King-Emperor compelled the
government to reformulate its policy. The main recommenda-
tions regarding higher education made by the "Government
Resolution on Educational Policy," which was published on
January 21, 1913, were as follows:

1. Universities have done good work under conditions of
difficulty, but as the condition of university educa-
tion is not satisfactory, they need reform.

2. India still needs affiliating university and that
day is far when she can dispense with this type of
university.

3. At present there are five universities and 185
colleges. They are not sufficient to meet the needs
of the country. Hence, the number of universities
should be increased and one university should be
established in each of the leading provinces.

4. Teaching and residential universities should be
established. . . .

 

33Quoted in Zellner, op. cit., p. 122.

64
5. To free the universities for higher work, Provincial
Governments and Native States should be authorized
to grant recognition to high schools.
6. Universities should create an atmosphere from which
students should imbibe good social, moral, and
intellectual influence.

7. Colleges which have attracted students from distant
places should be developed into universities. . . .34

The above quotation shows that the government was in
favor of opening more universities. Previously, the growing
demand for higher education was met by creating more col-
leges and by expanding their enrollment. The number of
affiliated colleges in 1917 is given in Table 2 which indi-

cates that they were becoming burdensome to the universi-

 

 

 

 

ties.
TABLE 2
NUMBER OF AFFILIATED COLLEGES AND
THEIR ENROLLMENT IN 1917

University Colleges Students
Calcutta 58 28,618
Bombay 1? 8,001
Madras 53 10,216
Punjab 24 6,558
Allahabad 33 7,807

Totals 185 61,200

 

Source: Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A History of
JEducation in India (During the British Period) (Bombay:
Macmillan and Co. , Ltd. , 195I7, p. 505.

 

 

34Quoted in Johri, op. cit., pp. 197-98.

65

Calcutta University CommissionL 1917

The Government of India's Resolution on Educational
Policy of 1913 made many recommendations to improve and
expand higher education, but when the First World War broke
out in 1914 all innovations were suspended for the time
being.

Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy, announced the creation
of the Calcutta University Commission in 1917. Sir Michael
Sadler, the Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University, was
appointed as its chairman. The purpose of the commission
was as follows:

. . . to inquire into the working of the present
organization of the University of Calcutta and its
affiliated colleges, the standards, the examinations,

. . . to examine the . . . constitution of the Univer-
sity and make such suggestions as may be necessary for
their modifications. . . .35

The commission submitted its report in March, 1919.
This very comprehensive report is regarded as a classic.
Some of its major suggestions for higher education are

quoted below:

1. Immediate establishment of a unitary teaching uni-
versity at Dacca is necessary.

2. The teaching resources of the Calcutta city should
be so organized as to create a teaching university.

3. Mofussil colleges should be developed in such a way
as to make the gradual rise of new university cen-
tres possible. . . .

 

35Quoted in Zellner, op. cit., p. 142.

66

4. Government control over universities should be less
rigid. . . .

5. In the place of Senate and Syndicate, there should
be Court and Executive Council.

6. Provision should be made for imparting instruction

in engineering, education, medicine, law, agriculture
and technological courses. . . .

7. . . . Muslim education should be encouraged. . . .36
The commission's attentions were confined to the
Calcutta University, but its recommendations were relevant
and of great value to the entire system of higher education
throughout India.
Since the terms "examining," "affiliating," "resi-
dential," "teaching," and "unitary" are going to be used

again and again in this thesis, it seems necessary to pre-

sent some of their distinctive characteristics.

Examining University

Its main function is to examine candidates for
degrees. It does not concern itself with the teaching
which the students have received prior to examination nor

with their residence and discipline.

Affiliating University

It affiliates to itself or associates with itself in
a quasi-subordinate capacity such colleges which make provi-
sion for the instruction of students according to the

instructions of the university. The university controls

 

36Quoted in Johri, op. cit., pp. 202-03.

67
externally. The internal control vests entirely in the

college authorities.

Residential University

 

Its essential condition is residence at the center
or centers of the university for those desiring its member-

ship.

TeachingrUniversity
A "teaching" university is one in which some or all
of the teaching is not only controlled but also conducted

by persons appointed by the university.

UnitaryrUniversity

A "unitary" university is one, usually localized in
a single center, in which the whole of the teaching is con—
ducted by university teachers appointed by the university
authorities. It is always a teaching university, though

every teaching university is not a unitary university.37

Hartog Committee Report, 1929
In the period after the war, Mahatma Gandhi had
started openly condemning the British system of education.
His basic arguments against it can be summarized in a few
(words: it represents a foreign culture, is taught through

.a foreign medium, and ignores the culture of the heart and

 

37Litt1ehailes,op. cit., p. 54.

68
the hand. Some representative passages from Gandhi's
speeches are as follows:

. . . I hold it to be unmanly . . . to receive
grants for our education from a government which we
heartily dislike. . . .

Our children should receive their education in a
free atmosphere, even though it may be given in humble
cottages or in the shade of trees and under teachers,
who being themselves free, would breathe into our
children the spirit of freedom. . . .

. . . Surely they do not need government university
degrees. . . .

. . . A systematic study of Asiatic culture is no
less essential than the study of the western sciences.
. . . The ideal is a synthesis of the different

cultures that have come to stay in India. . . . This
synthesis will naturally be of the swadeshi type . . .
and not of the American pattern, where one dominant
culture absorbs the rest and where the aim is . . .
toward an artificial and forced unity. . . .38

The impact of Gandhi's views made it essential for
the government again to make an inquiry into the existing
system of education. A committee was appointed in 1927
under the chairmanship of Sir Philip Hartog to inquire into
the various aspects of Indian education which presented its
report in September, 1929. It did not deal with university
education in detail, but it put forward some relevant
recommendations, as follows:

1. Teaching and unitary university is much better than
affiliating university for imparting higher educa-

tion. 0 o o

2. The standard of university education should be
raised. . . .

 

38D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma: Life of Mohandas
Karamchand Gandhi, Vol. Twoii920-I929 (Deihi: Ministry of
Informatidn andIBfoadcasting, 196i), pp. 23-24.

69

3. In order to check unemployment among graduates
technical training should be developed. . . .3é

Higher Education under Dyarchy: 1921-37

 

In 1919 the Government of India Act was passed by
the British Parliament which introduced dyarchy in the
provinces in 1921. Its basis was the report of Montagu,
the then Secretary of State, and Lord Chelmsford, the then
Governor-General. Rai explains its formation and function
more clearly:

When British Government made India a partner in the
Second World War, it promised to give freedom to it.
But when the war came to a close, the British Govern-
ment did not keep their promise. This . . . made
Indian people restless. A new political unrest was in
the offing. In order to meet the situation the
Government gave to India, Government of India Act, 1919.
This created a diarchy in the provincial adminiEtration.
Certain subjects were transferred to be administered by
the Ministers as the representatives of the people,
while certain subjects were kept back as Reserve.
These subjects were to be administered by the adminis-
trative officers who were responsible to the Governor-
General or the Secretary of the State for India in
England. Education was transferred to the representa-
tives of the people. . . .40

 

 

As public education became the responsibility of the
provinces by this act and central government stopped giving
them financial aid for this purpose, the development of
education was checked. But the improvement in the finan-
cial position of the provinces assisted in additional

expenditure on education. So higher education could be

 

39Quoted in Johri, op. cit., p. 223.

40B. C. Rai, History of Indian Education (Lucknow:
Prakashan Kendra, 19657, pp. 192-93.

 

7O

expanded and reorganized during this period, five univer-

sities were started:

1.

Delhi University--unitary, teaching, and residential
(1922).

Nagpur University--affiliating (1923).

Andhra University—-teaching and affiliating (1926).
Agra University--teaching and affiliating (1927).
Annamalai University--unitary, teaching, and affili-
ating (1929).

A good deal of reorganization took place in the

older universities. For example, the Madras University

took up teaching and research, and the Bombay University

organized post-graduate teaching.

Technical Education

 

Since the government felt that technical education

was needed, the following institutions were established:

1.
2.
3.
4.

5.

Bose Research Institute, Calcutta.

Harcourt Butler Technological Institute, Kanpur.
Imperial Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi.
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad.

Education of Women

After the First World War, great change occurred in

the outlook of Indian women toward education. Though men

like Karve and women like Annie Besant and Mrs. Ranade laid

71
the foundation-stone in this direction, the greatest
influence was that of Gandhi. His call "Serve the Mother"
(Mother stands for India) appealed to all the women through-
out the length and breadth of India:

. . . Tenderly nurtured women, physically under-
developed because of the rigours of former seclusion,
women used to soft silky garments, bejewelled, shel-
tered, economically dependent, women a short while ago
too shy even to speak freely to a stranger and too
proud to grant a glimpse of their face . . . these
women, dressed in plain rough garments . . . suddenly
. . . [were] found in the streets. . . .41

It is obvious from the above quotation that the
women were eager to serve the country, and as soon as
Gandhi made an appeal, they came forward, throwing away
their age-long chains:

Mother is in chains--sacrifice for her, suffer for
her! This was a tremendous idealistic appeal to the
very heart of the . . . Indian womanhood. . . . They
were ready to march forth in defiance of all edicts, as
the women of antiquity had done who stormed the gates
of their own city and went forth to greet the coming
Buddha.

Gandhi's profound knowledge of the heart of his
people was never better shown than in his special
appeal for women to come and serve. . . .42

Sarda Act, 1929

 

The "Prohibition of Child-Marriage Act" is generally
known as the "Sarda Act" because the bill was sponsored by
Rao Bahadur Harbilas Sarda. The passing of this act in

1929 removed the evils of child-marriage because the age of

 

41Frieda Hauswirth, Purdah: The Status of Indian
women (New York: Vanguard Press, 1932i, p. 10.

421bid., p. 231.

72
fourteen was fixed as minimum for the marriage of girls.

It gave great impetus to the education of women, as well.

Higher Education for Women in 1937

The foregoing description presents enough evidence
that nationalism became the greatest driving force in the
field of female education. From this point women started
demanding opportunities for education. And as a result of
all the above influences, the colleges for girls, which

were 12 in 1921—22, rose to 31 in 1936-37.

Abbot and Wood Report, 1937

The Central Advisory Board of Education was formed
in 1921 to coordinate the activities of the central and
provincial governments in the sphere of education. It was
dissolved after two years for the sake of economy. In 1935
it was revived on the recommendation of the Hartog Com—
mittee. It advised the government to lay more stress on
technical and vocational education. To implement this
recommendation the government appointed the Abbot and Wood
Committee in 1937.

A. Abbot was Ex—Chief Inspector of Technical Schools,
Board of Education, England, and S. H. Wood was Director of
Intelligence, Board of Education, England. Their joint
-report, which contained many valuable suggestions for the
improvement of vocational education, was submitted in June,

19375 But when the Second World War broke out, two years

73
later, the government locked it up for safekeeping as a

valuable document but failed to implement it.

Sargent Report, 1944

The Second World War was a period of severe disor-
ganization for India. Though India was not directly
involved in the war, yet it disrupted all her progressive
schemes. After the war the Central Advisory Board of Edu-
cation deputed Sir John Sargent, then the Educational
Adviser to the Government of India, to prepare a plan for
the development of Indian education. He submitted his
Memorandum to the board in 1944. The board completely
endorsed his recommendations and supported their implemen—
tation. Some of its major conclusions relating to univer-
sity education are as follows:

a. Indian Universities . . . do not fully satisfy the
requirements of a national system of education. . . .

b. The minimum length of a University degree course
should be three years. . . .

c. An Indian Universit Grants Committee should be
constituted. . . .4

The educational standards basic to Sir John
Sargent's report were those of the existing educational
system of England. His memorandum presented a complete
picture of Indian education with suggestions for its cor-

responding improvement.

 

3Government of India, Bureau of Education, Post-War
Educational Development in India (Delhi: Manager of Put-
‘Iications, 1944), p. 35. ‘

74

Radhakrishnan Commission, 1948-49

After the achievement of independence on August 15,
1947, the number of students increased rapidly and the
number of universities also went up to cope with the needs
of the new nation. With freedom, people complained that
the universities were not prepared to meet the unprece-
dented demands of the country. Hence, on the recommenda-
tion of the Inter-University and the Central Advisory
Boards of Education, the government appointed another com—
mission on November 4, 1948, under the chairmanship of
Dr. Radhakrishnan. This commission was to suggest ways to
improve numerous aspects of university education in India.
It submitted its report on August 25, 1949.

The Radhakrishnan Commission's Report is very com-
prehensive and covers all aspects of university education,
but its most important characteristic is that its sugges-
tions have been made in accordance with the changed condi-
tions of India. In discussing the aims of university
education it states:

a. Great changes have taken place in . . . Indian
society. . . . Universities . . . have to provide

leadership. . . .

b. . . . the aim of university education should be to
produce intellectual adventurers.

c. We are engaged in a quest for democracy through the
realization of justice, freedom, equality and
fraternity. Hence, it is necessary that our

75
universities should be the emblems and protectors of
these ideals.44
Higher Education in Free India, 1947-63

The expansion of education after independence has
been almost without limit. The British had provided an
outline which was totally inadequate to the needs of the
country. Barbara Ward summarizes India's condition in the
following passage:

In 1939, after a hundred years of British invest-
ment . . . India still had an industrial establishment
of only two million workers, a steel output of less
than a million tons. . . . Not by any stretch of the
imagination can this be called a record of dynamic
growth. It is simply the first sketch of a first
beginning.45

Since hundreds of writers have dealt with this

topic--the blame of England for keeping a huge nation so
underdeveloped--and since it goes beyond the scope of the
present study, it will not be discussed further here.

There has been great expansion in higher education

in free India. In 1947 there were only 19 universities,
but by 1965-66 the number is expected to have tripled to 61.
To assure a many-sided improvement in the field of higher

education, the Radhakrishnan Commission had recommended

establishment of the University Grants Commission. This

 

44Quoted in Rai, op. cit., pp. 242-43.

4SBarbara Ward, "Modernization Begun But Not Com-
pleted," The British in Imgia: Imperialism or Trusteeship?
ed. M. D. Lewis (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1962),
p. 63.

76
proposal was accepted and in 1953 the University Grants
Commission was established.
Tables and figures in the next chapter will document
the expansion of Indian higher education from 1857 to 1963.
But this discussion would be incomplete without a descrip—
tion of some of the Indian experiments in higher education

which depart from the regular pattern.

Experiments in Higher Education
In 1921 Mahatma Gandhi's voice rose high to boycott
everything foreign. Summarizing his views about education,
he said:

. . . My experience has proved . . . that literary
training by itself adds not an inch to one's moral
height and that character-building is independent of
literary training. I am firmly of the opinion that the
government schools . . . have rendered us helpless and
Godless. . . . They have made us what we were intended
to become--clerks and interpreters. . . .45

Hindu patriots enthusiastically came forward to

start new institutions to revive the values of traditional
Indian culture. Gurukulas (a literal translation of
"Gurukula" is: the family of the teacher) were the first

to be established.

Gurukula Kangri
Swami Shraddha Nand was the founder of a Gurukula in
1903. In 1924 that Gurukula was transferred to Kangri from

Saharanpur where the river Ganges flows. The institution

 

46Tendulkar, op. cit., p. 45.

77
is dedicated to the revival of Vedic culture. Brahmacharya,
meditation, contact with nature, seclusion from the influ-
ences of the cities are some of the prominent characteris-
tics of this institution.

The Gurukula was thought to be the only institution
committed to the purpose of reviving and enhancing the
feelings of nationalism in Indian youth.

Gurukula, Vrindaban; Kanya Gurukula, Dehradun; Kanya
Gurukula, Sasni; Arya Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Baroda; and
Kanya Mahavidyalaya, Jallundur, are all very much alike,
being based on the model of Gurukula Kangri in aims and

functions.

Vidyapiths

There is no significant difference between the
Gurukulas and the Vidyapiths with regard to their objec-
tives. The Vidyapiths, however, are a little closer to the
ideals of Mahatma Gandhi and thus have more modern curric-
ula than the Gurukulas. But both aim to impart education
in the ancient Indian culture in order to develop the
physical, moral, and intellectual qualities of the students.
Vanasthali Vidyapith, Kashi Vidyapith, and Gujarat Vidya-
pith are very famous throughout India and have produced a

number of distinguished national leaders.

78

Jamia Millia Islamia

 

Mahatma Gandhi's Non—Cooperation Movement also
inspired the Muslims, leading to the establishment of the
Jamia Millia Islamia at the outskirts of New Delhi. The
aim of the Jamia Millia in the beginning was to generate
feelings of nationalism and unity in both Hindus and
Muslims. Now it gives more emphasis to basic education

and other subjects which deal with rural life.

Shrimati Nathi Bai Damodar

Tfiakerse Women's Univer-
sity, Poona

Maharshi Karve was the founder of this institution

 

 

 

for women. Here education is given in practical subjects
which contribute to the preparation of successful house-

wives and mothers.

Vigya Bhavan Udaipur

This institution was to give training to boys in
scouting. With the passage of time, however, it has deve-
loped into a training college. Its main aim is to reform

society through social service and public education.

.Arvind Ashram

Sri Arvind, the famous modern Indian philosopher,
(established this Ashram in 1910. In 1952 an International
Center of University Education was founded to provide a

'three-year course of higher training for those who abide by

79
the rules of the Ashram. The educational philosophy of the

Ashram consists of spiritualism, discipline, and yoga.

Vishva Bharati

Rabindranath Tagore established the Shantiniketan
school in 1901. This school was converted into a univer-
sity on May 6, 1922. Tagore was a great worshipper of
Indian culture. Freedom, creativity, love of nature, and
mother-tongue formed the basic tenets of his educational
philosophy. To incorporate his broad philosophy into edu-
cation the curriculum of the university has been made very
comprehensive and students can select from a wide range of

subjects according to their interests and aptitudes.

Conclusion

Though the Charter of 1813 initiated interest of the
East India Company in education, yet no progress was made
in the modernization of Indian education until 1835. The
adoption of Macaulay's Minute in that year contributed to
the firm establishment of English education in India. Lord
Hardinge's Resolution in 1844, which favored English-
knowing Indians for government jobs, was another important
stimulus to the spread of English education.

Wood's Despatch of 1854 recommended the foundation
of the universities in India. As a result, in 1857 three
universities came into existence--at Calcutta, Madras, and

Bombay-~as examining bodies based on the pattern of the

80

London University. Subsequently, reviews of education were
ordered from time to time, but they did not achieve any
significant changes in higher education. In 1887 two other
universities, Punjab and Allahabad, were added, which
brought the total number of Indian universities to five.
These were all affiliating universities. By 1916 the num-
ber of affiliated colleges had become burdensome to these
universities since their number had increased to 185. The
Government Resolution on Educational Policy recognized the
need of new teaching universities in 1913. But the govern-
ment's recommendation alone would have been unable to
achieve much in the direction of adding more universities
if local and provincial patriotism had not given it strong
implementation. Creation of the Universities of Benares
(1916), Patna (1917), Osmania (1918), Aligarh (1920),
Rangoon (1920), Lucknow (1920), Dacca (1921), Delhi (1922),
Nagpur (1923), Andhra (1926), and Agra (1927) indicates the
rising interest of the people and provinces in higher
education.

The Calcutta University Commission, appointed in
1917, helped to modify and improve the administrative struc-
ture of the universities. The Sargent Report, 1944 and the
Radhakrishnan Commission, 1948 submitted comprehensive
reports which contributed to the improvement and expansion

of higher education.

81

India gained freedom on August 15, 1947. Since then
the volume of grants in aid has increased many times. This
strengthening of financial support has caused the expansion
of higher education in many directions.

A precise account of the development of higher edu-
cation calls for some quantitative treatment. The purpose
of this chapter has been to present the landmarks in the
history of university education in India. The next chapter
will round out the development by giving the relevant infor-
mation about financing and quantitative growth which is
essential to an analysis and understanding of the role of

government in Indian higher education.

CHAPTER IV

REVIEW OF THE GROWTH OF FINANCING OF HIGHER

EDUCATION IN INDIA FROM 1780 TO 1963

The purpose of this chapter is to give the figures
on expanding enrollments and increasing financing which
will help the reader better understand the development in
India of college and university education in its historical
perspective.

Colleges in India sometimes have high schools,
junior high, and even primary schools. But in this review
only those colleges have been included which provide
instruction leading to a bachelor's degree in arts,
science, or a higher profession. A college degree in India
requires successful completion of a four years' course
after matriculation. For convenience, all the colleges
have been divided into two parts: (1) arts colleges, and

(2) professional colleges.

Arts Colleggg
Arts colleges provide instruction in the sciences as
well as the arts. Subjects such as English, history,
vernacular languages, philosophy, politics, geography,
82

83
mathematics, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, geology,

and physiology are taught in these colleges.

Professional Colleges

 

These colleges train men and women for the profes-
sions, such as medicine, law, engineering, teaching,
agriculture, and commerce. All the arts and professional
colleges are affiliated to some university. Colleges can-
not examine students or award degrees. These are functions
of the university. However, there are some independent
professional colleges as Chinnappa describes:

There are, however, a few special professional
colleges which are not affiliated to any university
although they are of a very high order, such as the
Thomason Civil Engineering College, Roorki, United
Provinces; the Agricultural Colleges at Cawnpore and
Lyallapur; the Veterinary College at Lahore; and a few
Oriental Colleges. These colleges confer their own
diplomas on the successful candidates at the termina-
tion of courses lasting from two to four years.1

The first college known as Calcutta Madrissa was
established in 1780. Data from 1963 onward are not avail-
able in full at the time of writing this dissertation, so
it is not possible to report on the period after that. To
facilitate understanding and to make the educational pic-

ture more clear, the present chapter is divided into three

periods:

 

1S. Paul Chinnappa, The British System of Education

in India (Bangalore: Radha Power Printing Ffess, n.d.T,
pp. I75-76.

84
1. Period from 1780 to 1857.
2. Period from 1857 to 1947.

3. Period from 1947 to 1963.

Period from 1780 to 1857

Calcutta Madrissa (1780)

The first educational institution for higher educa-
tion established by the East India Company was the Calcutta
Madrissa in 1780. Atmanand Misra summarizes its finances
from Howell:

. . . Warren Hastings . . . purchased a piece of
ground for the erection of a suitable building for it,
at his own expense amounting to RS.5,641. The monthly
cost of the College was RS.625 . . . until 1782. . . .2

B. D. Basu presents more details:

RS.

Cost of original building in 1781 . . . . . . 75,745
Revenue of lands granted to the institution

as an endowment of the estimated value of

29, 000 rupees per annum, from A. D. 1782 to

1793,12 years. . . . . . . . 348,000
Actual expenditure from 1794 to 1818, 25

years as per account exhibited in July,

1819. O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O 0 494,197
Charges on account of the Madrissa as fixed

by Government,

A.D. 1819 O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O O O 0 30,000
1820 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30,000
1821 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 30,000
1822 O O O O O O I O O O O O O O O O 30’000
1823 O O O O O O O O O O 0 0 O O O O 30’000
1824 O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O 0 30,000

 

2Quoted in Atmanand Misra, Educational Finance in
India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, I962), p. 54.

85

Sum appropriated in July, 1823 for the
purchase of ground, and erection of a
new Madrissa 140,537

 

Total 1,238,4793
Benares Hindu Sanskrit
College (I7917

Jonathan Duncan founded the Benares College in 1791
to supply Hindu assistants to European judges. Its finances
were as follows:

The Governor in Council wrote, we entirely approve

of the plan of the Hindoo College. . . . From the com-

mencement of the fussly year 1200, we authorise . . .
RS.20,000 per annum. . . .4

Basu summarizes the finances of the college in the following

manner:
RS.
For the year 1791 . . . . . . . . . . . . 14,000
From lst January, 1792 to Blst December,
1824, being 33 years at 20, 000 rupees per
annum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 660,000
Total 674,0005

In the above sums are included the high salaries of
the two Anglo-Indian superintendents who were appointed to

supervise these institutions. The Superintendent of the

 

3B. D. Basu, History of Education in India Under the

Rule of the East India Co ompamy (CaIcutta: Modern Re view
Office, 1922i, pp. 32-33.

4Quoted in J. P. Vyas, "Central Government's Role in
Indian Education: 1813-1961" (unpublished Ph.D. disserta-
tion, University of Saugar, 1962), p. 58.

5Basu, op. cit., p. 33.

86
Calcutta Madrissa got RS.6,000 and that of the Benares
College RS.5,400 a year.6

Colleges were opened seventy-seven years earlier
than universities. But these early colleges were not
really imparting higher education in its strict sense.

The word "college" was used vaguely and some colleges
taught classes at a level even lower than that of the high
school.

When the Governor-General appointed a "General Com—
mittee of Public Instruction” on July 17, 1823, it helped
in the expansion of college education. In a period of ten
years, i.e., from 1823-33, the committee did the following:

1. Reorganised the Calcutta Madrissa and the Benares
Sanskrit College;

2. Established a Sanskrit College at Calcutta in 1824;

3. Established two more Oriental Colleges at Agra and
Delhi. 0 o o7

In 1835 the Calcutta and Madras Medical Colleges
also came into existence. In 1847 Thomason established a
Civil Engineering College at Roorki. The details regarding
many other colleges which were started during this period
by the government, missionaries, Indians, and Englishmen

cannot be given here for lack of space. However, Table 3

 

61bid., p. 34.

7Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A History of Educa-

tion in India (Durin the British Period) (Bombay: Mac-
miIlan and Co., Ltd., I95II: p. 92.

 

87
gives the numbers of colleges, classified by type and by

location, that existed between 1780 and 1857.

TABLE 3

LOCATION AND TYPE OF COLLEGE IN INDIA, 1780-1857

 

 

 

 

Location by Province Arts Medical Engineering
Bengal 15 1 . .
United Provinces 4 . . 1
Bombay 4 1 l
Madras 3 l . .
Total 26 3 2

 

Source: 5. Paul Chinnappa, The British System of
Education in India (Bangalore: RadEa Power Printing Press,

n.d.), p. I65.

 

As regards finances, separate accounts for higher
education covering this period are not available. From
Table 4 some idea can be had about the total annual educa-
tional expenditure of the company. Figures which are
available date from 1813, when the company was authorized
to spend one lakh of rupees annually on the education of
the natives of India.

Table 4 indicates, by the meagerness of support
given, that until 1853 the company was not thinking
seriously of promoting higher education in India. Higher
education there really began with the famous Despatch of

1854rWh1Ch authorized the establishment of the universities.

88

TABLE 4

STATEMENT SHOWING THE TOTAL EXPENDITURE
ON EDUCATION FROM 1813 TO 1853

 

 

 

 

Year Total RS.
1813 51,290
1814 125,850
1815 54,220
1816 62,040
1817 64,520
1818 63,210
1819 89,410
1820 76,880
1821 79,560
1822 101,550
1823 72,080
1824 218,840
1825 665,630
1826 274,120
1827 453,130
1828 358,410
1829 380,760
1830 443,300

Total 3,634,800

1831-34 Figures not available
1834-35 416,418
1837-38 587,777
1840-41 604,315
1843-44 773,089
1846-47 876,869
1849-50 960,378
1852—53 1,002,134
Total (from 1834—35
to 1852-53 all .
years) 14,279,410

 

Source: From 1813-30-—Anath Nath Basu (ed.), Indian
Education in Parliamentar Pa ers Part I 1832 (Bombay:
Asia Publishing House, I952), p. 143; from IB3Z-1853--Syed
Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A History of Education in India

(During the British Period) (Bombay: Macmillan and Co.,
L O, , p. O

 

 

89

Period from 1857 to 1947

Period from 1857-1902

Number of Universities.--In 1857 three universities

 

were established at Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras. Punjab
and Allahabad were added to these in 1882 and 1887, respec-
tively. After 1887 no new university was established until
1916.

Number of Collegg_.--The number of colleges in 1857
has been given in Table 3. In 1882 there was a significant
increase in the number of colleges because more and more
students were seeking higher education for government
employment which depended upon their having university
degrees. Table 5 indicates the number of colleges in 1882.

The Indian Education Commission appointed by Lord
Ripon in 1882 had suggested the expansion of secondary
education. Consequently, the colleges were opened to
absorb the successful matriculates who needed college edu-
cation for better jobs. Nurullah writes:

In 1901-02 . . . the total number of Arts colleges
affiliated to Indian universities was 179 of which 136
were in British India 32 in Indian States, 9 in Ceylon
and 2 in Burma. . . .é

College Enrollment.--The number of students in all
179 affiliated colleges in 1902 is indicated in Table 6.

 

8Nurullah, op. cit., p. 285.

90

TABLE 5

COLLEGES IN INDIA IN 1882

 

 

Conducted by

 

 

Province Government Aided Unaided Total
Bengal
English 12 5 4 21
Oriental 6 . . . . 6
Bombay
English 3 2 1 6
Oriental . . . . . . . .
Madras
English 10 11 3 24
Oriental 1 . . . . 1
North-Western Province
English 3 2 3 8
Oriental 1 2 . . 3
The Punjab
English 1 . . . . 1
Oriental . . l . . 1
Central Provinces
English 1 . . . . 1
Total 38 23 11 72

 

Source: Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A History of

Education in India (During the British Period) (Bombay:
MacmiIlan and o., L ., 951), p. 281.

 

91

TABLE 6

NUMBER OF STUDENTS IN COLLEGES ON MARCH 31, 1902

 

 

 

 

Students
Arts Colleges
English
Male 16,971
Female 177
Oriental
Male 503
Female . .

 

Colleges for Professional Training

 

 

Law
Male 2,767
Female . .
Medicine
Male 1,390
Female 76
Engineering
Male 865
Female . .
Teaching
Male 179
Female 11
Agriculture
Male 70
Female . .
Total 23,009

 

Source: Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A
Histor of Education in India (Durin the '-
Britist Peridd)‘IB6mBay: MacmiIIan and Co.,
Ltd., 1951), p. 287.

 

92
Finance.-—The revenue of the Government of India was
restricted due to its policy of not opening industries in
India. Instead, it taxed the poor in the form of land
revenues and the salt tax. As enough funds were not
available, there was no question of the progress of educa-
tion. Table 7 indicates the funds allocated to higher

education by the Government of India from 1870-1902.

TABLE 7

GOVERNMENT'S EXPENDITURE ON INSTRUCTION
OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 1870-1902

 

 

Professional and
Technical Education

(R5. in Lakhs)

Year Higher Education

 

1870-71 10.54 11.85
1880-81 14.16 13.28
1886—87 22.49 13.63
1891-92 25.17 25.40
1896-97 30.41 28.28
1901-02 33.74 34.77

 

Source: Atmanand Misra, Educational Finance in
India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, I962), p. 460.

Table 8 gives a complete picture of the finances of
higher education for the year 1901-02. The figures make it
clear that by far the largest expenditure in 1901-02--about

two-thirds of the total-—was on the English arts colleges.

Period from 1902-22
During the second half of the nineteenth century,

nationalist sentiment began to germinate in the minds of

93

 

 

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94

individual native thinkers. But it was checked because
their mother language did not provide an adequate framework
upon which to erect a theory of nationalism. The impact of
European thought upon the mind of the educated class
reawakened the Spirit of Hindu India.9

The great social and political awakening precipi-
tated a great expansion of collegiate education. The

progress of higher education between 1901-02 and 1921-22 is

recorded in Table 9.

TABLE 9

PROGRESS OF HIGHER EDUCATION, 1901-02 TO 1921-22

 

 

No. of Institutions No. of Scholars

 

Type of Institution
1901-02 1921-22 1901-02 1921-22

 

 

Universities 5 10 ‘ °

Arts Colleges 145 165 17,651 45,418

Professional Colleges 46 64 5,358 13,662
Total 196 239 23,009 59,080

 

‘Figures not available.

Source: Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A Histor of
Education in India (Duringthe British Period) (BomBay:
MacmilIan and Co., Ltd., 951), p. 444.

The figures quoted above look especially impressive

when compared with the statistics of 1855 in Table 10.

 

9B. T. McCully, English Education and the Origins of

Indian Nationalism (New York: ‘CqumbiEUniversityPfess,
, pp. an 242.

95

TABLE 10

INSTITUTIONS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION IN 1855 AND 1921-22

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1855 1921—22
Universities . . 10
Arts Colleges 21 165
Professional Colleges 13 64

 

Source: Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik, A Histor of
Education in India (During the British Period) (BomBay:
MacmilIan and Co., Ltd., 1951), p. 595.

Finances.—-The financial situation of education
during this period is discussed by Misra as follows:

During the first twenty years of the new century,

education received larger finances than it had ever
done before. . . . During the period the Government of
India made recurring grants amounting to RS.299 lakhs
and non-recurring grants totalling RS.493.38 lakhs for
education. Such huge grants by the Central Government
were unheard of before and they enabled the education
of the country to expand and improve in an unprece-
dented manner. The other sources of educational income
too contributed in larger measure.10

This was the time of Lord Curzon. He gave priority
to higher education. To promote university education he
appointed the Indian University Commission in 1902. Two
years later, according to the recommendations of the com-
mission, he framed an Educational Act. Thus the first
grant of RS.5 lakhs was made in 1904 to the universities as

can be seen in Table 11.

 

10Misra, op. cit., p. 149.

96

TABLE 11

CENTRAL GOVERNMENT'S GRANTS FOR
COLLEGE EDUCATION FROM 1904-22

 

 

Rupee Value

Year of Grant Recurring or

Purpose of Grant

 

(in lakhs) Non-recurring
1904-05 5 Recurring Universities and
colleges
2.5 Recurring Technical education
1912-13 10 I Recurring Higher education
1914-15 10 Non-recurring For Calcutta Uni-
versity hostels
1918-19 30 Recurring Agricultural, com-

mercial, and
technical educa-
tion

 

Total 57.5

 

Source: Seventh Quinquennial Review of Progress of
Education in India, adapted from Atmanand Misra, Educa-
tional Finance in India (Bombay: Asia Publishing House,
T962), p. 514.

About the grant Nurullah writes:

. . . prior to 1904, government did not give any
grants-in-aid to any university except the Punjab which
received an annual grant of about RS.30,000 because it
conducted the Oriental and Law Colleges. No grant was
also felt to be necessary as the only items of expendi-
ture in a university were a small office establishment
and examinations. . . .11

11Nurullah, op. cit., pp. 472-73.

97

Period from 1922-47

 

In the beginning of this period higher education did
not progress significantly because two influences were
working against it. One was the economic distress caused
by the first Great War and the other was the personality of
Gandhi opposed to English education. Panikkar writes:

From 1920 to 1948 the Indian stage was dominated by
the frail figure of Mahatma Gandhi. . . . In the period
of discontent and political frustration that followed
the first Great War, Gandhi ji . . . announced his new
programme for the immediate attainment of self-
government of India. . . . It was a call to young India
to cast aside all that it had so far cherished as essen-
tial for progress. Lawyers were to give up their prac-
tice, students to turn their backs on colleges and
institutions maintained or supported by government.

But after 1924 the economic condition of the country
improved gradually which helped in the expansion of higher
education. Littlehailes remarks:

. . . a period which has witnessed great political
changes, some economic improvement and the gradual
cessation of non-cooperation activities has also wit-
nessed an exceptionally large increase in the numbers
of educational institutions . . . the undertaking of
many new educational ventures. . . .13

In very condensed form, Tables 12, 13, and 14 show,

respectively, the expansion in numbers of institutions, in

k

12K. M. Panikkar, The Foundations of New India
(London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1963), p. 99.

13R. Littlehailes (ed.), Pro ress of Education in
India--l922-27, Ninth Quinquennia Review, Vol. I (CaIcutta:
overnment of India, 1929), p. 1.

98
numbers of students enrolled, and financial support for

higher education during 1921-47.

TABLE 1 2

NUMBERS or INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER EDUCATION
BY TYPES, IN 1921-22, 1936-37, AND 1946-47

 

 

 

 

Institution 1921-22 1936-37 1946-47
Universities 10 18 21
Arts and Science '

Colleges 165 271 297
Professional

Colleges 64 75 140

Totals 239 364 458

 

Source: From l921-37-—Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik,
A History of Education in India (Durin the British Period)
'Tfiombay: Macmillan and—EST, Ltd., 195 , p. 619;‘ffom
1946-47—-Government of India, Ministry of Education, Review
of Education in India: 1947-1961 (New Delhi: Nationa
CounciI of‘Educational Research and Training, 1961), p. iii.

 

To sum up, the total number of universities rose
from 10 in 1921-22 to 21 in 1946-47. Data are not avail-
able for enrollment in universities during the same period,
but it increased from 9,697 in 1936-37 to 16,148 in 1946-47.
The total expenditure on instruction in the universities
rose from RS.73.41 lakhs in 1921-22 to RS.229.77 lakhs in
1946-47.

As regards arts and science colleges, their number
was 165 in 1921-22 which rose to 297 in 1946-47. The total
number of scholars increased from 45,418 in 1921-22 to

212,000 in 1946-47. The total expenditure on instruction

99

TABLE 13

NUMBERS OF SCHOLARS IN INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER
EDUCATION IN 1921-22, 1936-37, AND 1946-47

 

 

Numbers of Scholars

 

 

 

Institution
1921-22 1936-37 1946-47
Universities Figures not 9,697 16,148
available
Arts and Science
Colleges 45,418 86,273 212,000
Professional
Colleges 13,662 20,645 44,000
Totals 59,080 116,615 272,148

 

Source: From l921-37—-Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik,
A History of Education in India (During the British Period)
Tfiombay: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 195i), p. 619; from
1946-47--Government of India, Ministry of Education, Review
of Education in India: _1947-l961 (New Delhi: Nationa
Council ofIEducationaI Research and Training, 1961), p. iv.
rose from RS.110.42 lakhs in 1921-22 to RS.439.15 in

Significant expansion can also be seen in profes-
sional colleges. In 1921-22 the total number of profes-
sional colleges was 64. It rose to 140 in 1946-47. The
enrollment increased from 13,662 in 1921-22 to 44,000 in
1946-47. The total expenditure on instruction was RS.59.78
lakhs in 1921-22 which increased to 186.59 in 1946-47.

The above figures show that India's social and

political awakening helped significantly to expand colle—

giate education. The enrollment in arts colleges increased

100

TABLE 14

ALLOCATION OF EXPENDITURES FOR INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER
EDUCATION IN 1921-22, 1936-37, AND 1946-47

 

 

Expenditures in Lakhs of Rupees

 

 

 

Institution
1921-22 1936-37 1946-47
Universities 73.41 126.03 229.77
Arts and Science
Colleges 110.42 196.19 439.15
Professional
Colleges 59.78 77.92 186.59
Totals 243.61 400.14 855.51

 

Source: From l921-37--Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik,
A History of Education in India (During the British Period)
Tfiombay: MacmiIIan andCo.,:Ltd., 1951), p. 619;_from
1946-47—-Government of India, Ministry of Education, Review
of Education in India: 1947-1961 (New Delhi: Nationai
COuncil of EducationaIiREseardh and Training, 1961), p. 135.

more than four times between 1921 and 1947. The enrollment
in professional colleges during this period increased a
little more than three times. According to Anderson the
causes for this increase were as follows:

‘A burst of enthusiasm swept children into school
with unparalleled rapidity; an almost childlike faith
in the value of education was implanted in the minds of
the people; parents were prepared to make almost any
sacrifice for the education of their children; the seed
of tolerance towards the less fortunate in life was
begotten; ambitious and comprehensive programmes of
development were formulated, which were calculated to
fulfil the dreams of a literate India; . . . enlight-
ened women began to storm the citadel of old-time
prejudice against the education of Indian girls.
Government, with the full concurrence of Legislative
Councils, poured out large sums of money on education,

101
which would have been regarded as beyond the realm of
practical politics ten years previously.14
Period from 1947 to 1963
With the attainment of independence on August 15,

1947, there began a new era of progress in the field of
education. India aims at providing free and compulsory
education for all children in the age group 6-14 years.
The increase in enrollment at the primary, junior high, and

secondary level can be seen in Table 15.

TABLE 15

ENROLLMENT IN SCHOOLS FROM 1946-47 TO 1965-66

 

 

 

 

6-11 11-14 14-17

Year Age Group Age Group Age Group
(Primary) (Junior High) (Higher Secondary)
(In Lakhs)
1946-47 141 20.4 8.7
1950-51 192 31.0 12.0
1955-56 252 43.0 20.0
1960-61 330 61.0 30.0
1965-66’ 504 100.0 44.0
‘Target.

Source: Barbara Ward, India and the West (New York:
W. W. Norton and Company, 1964), p. 163.

With the expanding base at the elementary and

secondary levels of education, the demand for higher

 

14Sir George Anderson (ed.), Progress of Education
‘én India-—l927—32, Tenth Quinquenniai Review, Vol. I (DeIhi:
Government of India, Manager of Publications, n.d.), p. 3.

 

102
education has increased greatly. Tables 16 and 17 indicate

this growth.

TABLE 16

NUMBERS OF INSTITUTIONS FOR HIGHER
EDUCATION FROM 1946-47 TO 1963—64

 

 

 

 

Institution 1946-47 1963-64
Universities 21 55
Arts and Science Colleges 297 1,418
Professional Colleges 140 693

Totals 458 2,166

 

Source: Government of India, University Grants
Commission, Universit Develgpment in India: Basic Facts
and Figpres--I963-64 (New Delhi: Unitersity Grants Com-
mission, 1964), p.‘20.

 

 

TABLE 17

NUMBERS OF SCHOLARS IN INSTITUTIONS OF
HIGHER EDUCATION IN 1946-47 AND 1963-64

 

 

 

Institution 1946-47 1963-64
'Universities 16,148 ‘
.Arts and Science Colleges 212,000 ‘
Professional Colleges 44 ,000 *

Totals 272,148 1,184,697

 

'Figures not available separately.

Source: From 1946—47--Government of India, Ministry
Chf Education, Review of Education in India: 1947-1961 (New
Delhi: NationaI CounciI odeucaHonaI Research arfij'rain-
11mg. 1962), p. iv; from l963-64—-Government of India,
Ufniversity Grants Commission, University Development in
India: Basic Facts and Pi ures--19t3-64 (New DeThi: Uni-

Veursity Grants Commission, 64), p. 42.

103
Allocation gf Expenditures
for Hi her Educatidn in
I946-43 and 1962-63

The financial assistance to universities and col-

 

leges amounted to RS.855.51 lakhs in 1946-47. Since then
grants have been given in many directions to promote higher
education. Since more money is needed to develop technical
education for industrial progress and the utilization of
natural resources, the government is giving huge grants as
can be seen from Table 18.

In 1946-47 the government grants for all types of
aid to higher education amounted to RS.855.51 lakhs. In
1962—63 it increased to RS.1,067.82 lakhs which shows a
definite increase.

Foreign aid to higher education is provided in the
form of personnel, equipment, and fellowships as is indi-
cated in Table 19.

The magnitude of this support shows that the Govern-
ment of India has placed a premium on technical education
after independence. During the reign of the British,
higher education was mostly humanistic and literary.
Though the British educators as early as 1891 pointed out
that.technica1 education in India would need to come into
Sharp focus to provide material prosperity, yet it was
treated as a stepchild until 1947. In 1891 Thomas wrote:

. . . the spread of technical education and practi-

cal science is a matter scarcely second in importance
to the spread of primary education itself. It is from

104

TABLE 18

GOVERNMENT GRANTS FOR VARIOUS TYPES OF
AID TO HIGHER EDUCATION DURING 1962-63

 

 

 

Type of Aid Amount in Rupees
1. Administration Charges 1,337,239
2. Block Grants to Central Universities 18,500,000

3. Block Grants to Institutions Deemed
to be Universities 4,091,646

4. Maintenance Grants to Constituent and
Affiliated Colleges of Delhi Uni-
versity 4,578,468

5. Grants to Central Universities for
Schemes not Covered under Block Grants 42,007

6. Grants to Central and State Universities
for Humanities 7,344,837

7. Grants to Central and State Universities
for Higher Scientific Education and

 

Research 14,911,172
8. Grants to Central and State Universities
for Engineering and Technology 8,204,053
9. Grants to Constituent and Affiliated
Colleges 8,182,029
10. Grants to Central and State Universities
for Miscellaneous Schemes 39,574,260
11. Expenditure Incurred by U.G.C. on Semi-
nars and Conferences, etc. 16,287
Total - 106,781,998

 

Source: Government of India, University Grants Com-
mission, Re ort for the Year: 1962-63 (New Delhi: Uni-
versity Grants Commission, I964), p. 52.

105

TABLE 19

FOREIGN AID TO TECHNICAL EDUCATION
PROMISED OR RECEIVED UP TO 1960

 

 

 

 

Value of No. of Fellow-
No. of Equipment ships for
Aid Program/Country Experts in Rs. Training of
Lakhs Indian Staff
T.C.M. of the U.S.A. 88 163.27' 106
Colombo Plan 37 52.08 24
UNESCO and UNTAA 18 13.47 30
USSR Aid for Indian
Institute of Tech-
nology, Bombay, under
UNESCO Program 18 166.80 20
USSR for Indian Insti-
tute of Technology,
Bombay . . 36.00 . .
West Germany 24 170.00 20
Totals 185 601.62 200

 

'Exclusive of aid of RS.107.5 lakhs provided by the
U.S.A. out of the Rupee Fund for Indian Institute of Tech-
nology, Kanpur, for buildings and indigenous equipment.

Source: S. N. Mukerji (ed.), Administration of Edu-
cation in India (Baroda: Acharya BooE Depot, 1962), p. 250.

 

this source chiefly that we must look for the vast
increase in material wealth for which the country sup-
plies such great natural advantages. Such an increase
is not only desirable; it is imperative . . . it is
only by creating an interest in the practical applica-
tions of science, by making it understood that a high
education is not merely a literary and quasi-scientific
or mathematical training, but embraces every kind of

106
knowledge which is considerable in extent, well-
ordered, and clearly grasped.l5
Conclusion
The history of modern higher education in India is a
little more than one hundred years old. Prior to 1947
professional and technical education was not developed
according to the needs of the country because the British
did not want to see India develop as an outstanding indus-
trial country. Whatever they started in the direction of
scientific and technological education was to promote their
own interest. Panikkar writes:

. . . the great irrigation projects required
engineers. The development of railways under Company
management required skilled technicians . . . there was
no interest in scientific research or learning, and no
institutions existed for such specialization. The
beginning of the century found India living in an
almost pre-scientific age. . . .16

After independence India embarked on a policy of

expanding technology for an industrial revolution which
depends upon a large number of highly educated people.
This required an expansion in the number of universities

and colleges. The number of institutions of higher learn-

ing rose from 458 in 1946-47 to 2,166 in 1963—64.

¥

15F. W. Thomas, The History and Prospects of British
EdUCation in India (Cambridge, London: eorge Be I and)

Sons, IBgIS, pp. 140-410

16K. M. Panikkar, Common Sense about India (New
York: The Macmillan Company, 1960), p. 106.

107

The great expansion in the field of higher education
has been possible due to the interest of the government.
Mr. Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, took personal
interest in the advancement of Indian science. The rapid
advancement of science and technology after 1947 indicates
the evolution of a philosophy almost alien to India.
Before the British rule, other worldliness was the main
characteristic of Indian higher education and when the
British model was adopted it also underemphasized the sci-
entific education:

Indian intellectuals had diagnosed correctly the
sources of Western strength . . . namely, their science
and literature. But when they sought it for themselves
the literary and cultural proportion was greater and
overwhelmed the rest. . . . A hundred years of its
operation still did not bring India close to the prac-
tical world of living, and, in the light of compara-
tively rapid progress in science and technology else-
Whereol7

What has been the policy of the Government of India

after 1947 toward higher education needs to be discussed in
detail in the succeeding chapter before making an analysis

(Df its long-term effects on the country.

‘

.175. R. V. Rao, "Higher Education in India: with

Special Reference to the Third Five Year Plan" (unpublished
PT1.D. dissertation, Cornell University, 1963), p. 74.

CHAPTER V

ROLE OF THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

SINCE 1947 WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO UNIVERSITY

GRANTS COMMISSION

Education is the state responsibility in India. The

Central Government finances and supervises the four central

universities, namely, Aligarh, Benares, Delhi, and Visva

Bharati (Visva Bharati was declared as a central university

in May, 1951). It is also responsible for the coordination

of higher education, research, and scientific and technical

education. The Seventh Schedule of the Constitution of

India has restricted the role of the Central Government to

the following institutions only:

62.

63.

64.

The institutions known at the commencement of this
Constitution as the National Library, the Indian
Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the Victoria
Memorial, and the Indian War Memorial, and any
other like institution financed by the Government
of India wholly or in part and declared by Parlia-
ment by law to be an institution of national
importance.

The institutions known at the commencement of this
Constitution as the Benares Hindu University, the
Aligarh Muslim University and the Delhi University,
and any other institution declared by Parliament by
law to be an institution of national importance.

Institutions for scientific or technical education
financed by the Government of India wholly or in

108

109

part and declared by Parliament by law to be insti-
tutions of national importance. . . .

66. Co-ordination and determination of standards in
institutions for higher education or research and
scientific and technical institutions.1
In this chapter first a brief description will be
given of the principal bodies functioning under the
Ministry of Education (General) and the Ministry of Scien-
tific Research and Cultural Affairs. These bodies are
mainly responsible for the role that the Central Government
plays after independence in higher education. Later the
role of the government in higher education will be dis-
cussed by describing the University Grants Commission which
Offers funds of magnitude for the development of the uni-
versities. As the universities are greatly handicapped
by scarcity of funds and the nation is in a highly devel-
oped state of underdevelopment, the pressure from the
government on higher education is naturally increasing
which to some extent disturbs the autonomy of the universi-
ties. But it is too early to predict the outcome of
federal financing in higher education in India.

In brief the Government of India discharges its
responsibilities toward higher education on the advice of

the Ministry of Education.

‘

1Government of India, The Constitution of India: As
Modified Upto the lst NovemberJ I956*(DeIhi: Manager of
Publications, I956), p. 259.

 

110

Ministry of Education

 

The Department of Education was first established in
1910. It was amalgamated with the Department of Health and
Lands in 1923. In 1945 education was separated from the
other two heads of health and lands and became an independ-
ent department. At the time of independence in 1947 the
Department of Education became the Ministry of Education.
In 1957 when great emphasis was laid on technical education
and scientific research, the ministry was renamed the
Ministry of Education and Scientific Research. In 1958 it
was divided into two--the Ministry of Education (General)
and the Ministry of Scientific Research and Cultural
Affairs--and each branch has been headed by a separate

Minister of State since then.2

Ministry of Education (General)

Since the reorganization, this ministry in higher
education is responsible for the four centrally adminis—
tered universities, namely, the Benares Hindu University,
the University of Delhi, the Aligarh Muslim University, and
the Visva Bharati at Santiniketan.

There are many advisory bodies functioning under
this ministry, but for higher education only four of them

need to be discussed here:

‘

25' N’ Mukerji (ed.), Administration of Education in
9141-13 (Bamda‘ ACharya Book Depof. I962), pp. 36—37.

111
1. Central Advisory Board of Education.
2. University Grants Commission.
3. National Council for Rural Higher Education.

4. Inter-University Board.

Central Advisory Board of Education
The Central Advisory Board of Education was first
organized in 1920 to assist provincial governments with
expert advice. In 1923 it was abolished on the recommenda-
tions of the Inchcape Retrenchment Committee to save money.
The same year the Department of Education was also amalga-
mated with the Department of Health, Revenue, and Agricul-
ture for the same reasons. But the Hartog Committee
seriously criticized the government's policy:
We are of opinion that the divorce of the Govern-
ment of India from education has been unfortunate.
. . . We have suggested that the Government of India
should serve as a center of educational information

for the whole of India and as a means of coordinating

the educational experience of the different provinces.
. . .3

As a result of the above recommendation, the Central
Advisory Board of Education was revived in 1935. The main

functions of this Board are:

a. To advise on any educational question which may be
referred to it by the Government of India or by any
state government; and

b. To call for information and advice regarding educa-
tional developments of special interest or value to

 

3Quoted in Syed Nurullah and J. P. Naik,

A Histor
of Education in India (Durin the British Period) (BomBay:
Macmillan and 66., Ltd., 1 ), p. 617.

112

India; to examine this information and circulate it

with recommendations to the Government of India and

to the state governments.4

The board meets once a year to discuss and make
recommendations regarding matters of educational policy.
Its recommendations are not followed literally because it
has no powers of implementation. However, the state govern-
ments consider its recommendations seriously because the
Minister for Education and Scientific Research is the Chair-

man of the Board and the Secretary of the Department of

Education acts as its Secretary.

University Grants Commission

 

A University Grants Committee was first appointed in
1945 to recommend to the Ministry of Education the grants
to be paid to various universities. It continued to retain
this responsibility until 1948 without any funds at its
disposal. The Radhakrishnan University Education Commis-
sion recommended specifically that a University Grants Com-
mission should be appointed with funds of its own. This
recommendation was supported by the Inter-University Board.
As a result of these recommendations the University Grants
Commission was established on December 23, 1953.

. . . the Government of India decided to establish a

University Grants Commission and on the 23rd of Decem-
ber, 1953, at a brief ceremony, with Pandit Jawaharlal

 

4Indian Institute of Public Administration, The

Or anisation of the Government of India (Bombay: Asia Pub-
TIshing House, I958), p. 260.

113

Nehru present Moulana Azad inaugurated the Commis-
Siono o o o

The commission consists of nine members, and they
are chosen as follows:

a. not more than three members from among the Vice-
Chancellors of Universities;

b. two members from among the officers of the Central
Government to represent that Government; and

c. the remaining number from among persons who are
educationists of repute or who have obtained high
academic distinctions. . . .5

Some of the functions and powers of the commission

1. Inquire into the financial needs of universities.

2. Allocate and disburse, out of the Fund of the Com-
mission, grants to universities established or
incorporated by or under a Central Act for the
maintenance and development. . . .

3. Allocate and disburse . . . grants to other univer-
sities as it may deem necessary for the development
of such universities. . . .

4. For the purpose of ascertaining the financial needs
of a university or its standards of teaching, exami-
nation and research, the Commission may, after con-
sultation with the university, cause an inspection.

5. If any university fails within a reasonable time to
comply with any recommendation made by the

 

5Samuel Mathai, "The University Grants Commission:
a Retrospect," The Journal of University Education, III,
No. 3 (March, 1965), I76.

6Government of India, Ministry of Law, The Univer-
sity Grants Commission Act, 1956: 3 of 1956 (DeIhi:
Manager 0 uincations, I963), p. 2.

 

 

114

Commission . . . the Commission . . . may withhold
from the university the grants proposed to be made
out of the Fund of the Commission. . . .7

The commission took into account the limited
resources of the country and succeeded in developing the
strengths of the universities by emphasizing an inter-
disciplinary approach to knowledge. The commission's
stress is on the quality of higher education rather than
its quantitative expansion. In his speech introducing the
University Grants Commission Bill, 1955, Shrimali said:

. . . research and higher education are expensive
and there are certain subjects which cost an enormous
amount if research is to be carried on, on proper
lines. Take for example, aero—engineering and naval
architecture. These are highly specialized subjects
and it is not possible for all the universities to make
provision for subjects like these. Even in Great Brit-
ain, for an important subject like nuclear physics,
there is provision only in six out of their seventeen
universities. Nuclear physics is a very important sub-
ject but no country can afford to establish an unlim-
ited number of laboratories and carry on scientific
research in this subject. We shall, therefore, have to
coordinate our work and distribute the subjects in such
a way that the universities can make a real contribu-
tion to higher research.8

Ngtional Council for
Rural Higher Education

The Indian University Commission in 1948-49 pointed
out the need of higher educational institutions which would

assist in the development of rural India. To implement the

 

7Ibid., p. 3.

8K. L. Shrimali, Problems of Education in India:
§elected S eeches, 1955-I960 (DeIhi: Ministry of Informa-
tion and Broadcasting, I96I), pp. 109-10.

 

115

recommendation of the commission, the Ministry of Education

appointed a team of experts to study the working of the

Danish Folk High Schools and Colleges in 1953. It sub-

mitted its report in 1954.

Following its report the Govern-

ment of India appointed the Rural Higher Education Commit-

tee in October, 1954. The terms of reference were as

follows:

1.

To undertake a comprehensive survey and appraisal of
promising ideas, institutions and experiments in the
field of higher education in rural areas;

to determine what specific projects and institutions
should be encouraged to carry on experimental work
in this field;

to recommend a possible pattern for rural universi-
ties; . . .

to suggest ways and means of making education in the
existing universities more useful and more closely
related to rural needs and problems, so that a sound
and reasonably uniform system of rural higher educa-
tion suited to our needs and resources may be
evolved for the whole country.9

The committee recommended the establishment of rural

institutes in its report. In pursuance of the recommenda-

tions of this committee, the National Council for Rural

Higher Education was set up in 1956. The main functions of

the council are:

a.

To serve as an expert body to advise the Central and
the state governments about the improvement and
expansion of rural education in all its aspects;

to advise the rural education institutions and act
as a coordinating agency amongst them;

9Quoted in S. N. Mukerji, Higher Education and Rural

 

India (Bardoa: Acharya Book Depot, I956), p. 90.

116

c. to examine and appraise proposals in this behalf
referred to it by the Government of India and the
state governments and assist them in the implementa-
tion of approved programmes; . . .

d. to advise the Government of India on grants to be
made to institutions participating in the rural
development schemes. . . .10
The Minister of State in the Ministry of Education

and Scientific Research is the Chairman of the council.
The post of the Vice-Chairman goes to the Secretary of the
Department of Education. The Secretary of the council is
one of the senior officers of the Department of Education.
The remaining sixteen members--nine non-official and seven
officia1--are nominated by the Chairman.

It is interesting to note that it was Tagore who
first provided leadership in the reconstruction of villages
through agricultural education. Government was slow to
recognize the problem of the villages. Tagore's corres-
pondence with L. K. Elmhirst, an Englishman, who was study-
ing agriculture at the Cornell University in 1921, is a
clear evidence of his deep interest in agricultural educa-
tion of India. Elmhirst writes:

A I remember well the morning in the spring of 1921

when a telegram reached me at Ithaca, from Tagore,

which read, "Come and See Me in New York." . . . I made

a hurried journey to New York, and shall never forget

the friendly welcome I received. "I have," said

Tagore, "an institution of learning and the arts at

Santiniketan which is mainly academic. It is surrounded
by villages, some Hindu, some Muslim, some Santal, but

 

10Indian Institute of Public Administration, op.
Cit. , p. 261.

117
all are decaying, all had an ancient culture, but today
they appear sick. They are dying. Will you come and
help me to find out why? . . .11
Tagore did not like the intricate life of the city.
He worshipped a simple and clean life which he believed
could be found only in the villages. In the introduction
of Reconstruction and Education in Rural India he wrote:
Villages are like women. In their keeping is the
cradle of the race. They are nearer to nature than
towns, and are therefore in closer touch with the foun-
tain of life. They have the atmosphere which possesses
a natural power of healing. It is the function of the
village, like that of women, to provide people with
their elemental needs, with food and joy, with the
simple poetry of life, and with those ceremonies of
beauty which the village spontaneously produces and in
which she finds delight. . . .12
Elmhirst arrived at Santiniketan on November 28,
1921, and under his leadership Tagore's agricultural insti-
tution came into existence in 1922 at Shri Niketan which is
about a mile and a half from Santiniketan. The education
given at Sriniketan, the Institute of Rural Reconstruction,
supplemented the education given at Visva Bharati. Sub-
jects like poetry, philosophy, literature, art, religion,
history, and science formed the basic curriculum at

Santiniketan while agriculture, weaving, dyeing, village

welfare, cooperatives, scouting, medical care, sanitation,

 

11John Murray (distributor), Rabindranath Tagore,
gigneer in Edpcation: Essays and Exchan es betweep
Rabindranath Tagore and L. K. Elmhirst (LondOn: John
Murray, 1961), p. 20.

12Prem Chand Lal, Reconstruction and Education in
Rural India (London: George‘AIIen and Unwin, Ltd., 1932),
p. 15.

 

 

118
and vocational education were the main activities at
Sriniketan.
In 1956 after adopting the scheme of rural higher
education approved by the Ministry of Education, Sriniketan

was reconstituted as the Institute of Higher Education.

Inter-University Board

The Inter-University Board was formed after the
Conference of Indian Universities held at Simla in 1924.
It was convened by the Government of India and was inaugu-
rated by Lord Reading, the then Viceroy of India. In his
inaugural address he pointed out:

. . . it is essential to ensure the preservation of
the highest standards of university education and to
safeguard against any falling away from the ideals of
the best class of university training. With a multi-
plication of institutions, . . . there is no small risk
of deviation from the right road to educational effi-
ciency. . . . It is a time for mutual help and
co—operation between universities. . . . There must be
a joint effort to develop higher education in India to
the highest standard. . . . The Government of India
will always take a profound interest in the progress of
the universities, and it is with the hope of strengthen-
ing the structure as a whole and of adding solidarity
to the general system that they have initiated this
conference.13

As a result of this conference the Inter-University
Board was established in 1924. Its main purpose was to
bring together the universities of the country. Some of

its aims are as follows:

 

13Quoted in P. Seshadri, "The Universities of
India," The Year Book of Education: 1935 (London: Evans
Brothers, Ltd., 1935), Sec. VII, Chap. I, p. 739.

 

119

a. To act as an inter-university organization and
bureau of information;

b. to facilitate the exchange of professors;

c. to serve as an authorised channel of communication
and facilitate the coordination of university work;

d. to assist Indian universities in obtaining recogni-

tion for their degrees, diplomas and examinations in

other countries. . . .14

The board consists of one representative of each
university in India. The Government of India also sends
one representative as an adviser to the board. The board
has no mandatory powers over universities, but its contri-
butions are very significant because it organizes discus-
sions of educational problems at different universities
once a year.

.Ministry of Scientific Research
and CulturaI Affairs

All-India Council for
TechnicaIIEducation

 

In the field of technical education, the Central
Government discharges its responsibilities through the All-
India Council for Technical Education. It was established
on November 30, 1945. The council is presided over by the
Minister of Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs.

The council has made valuable contributions toward
the development of technical education. It deals with all

technical institutions above the high school stage except

 

14Ibid.

 

120
the technological departments of universities. As the
council does not have any controlling powers, its work,
which falls under three categories, is usually purely
advisory:

i. framing of courses of technical studies and laying
down of standards;

ii. improvement and strengthening of the existing insti-
tutions; and

iii. establishment of new institutions and development of
facilities in new fields of technical education.15

For the purpose of maintaining standards in techni-
cal education:

. . . The Council has appointed seven boards of
studies in different fields, viz., Engineering and
Metallurgy, Chemical Engineering and Chemical Tech-
nology, Textile Technology, Architecture and Regional
Planning, Applied Art, Commerce, and Management. In
addition to the 7 Boards, the Council has appointed 4
Regional Committees, one each for the Eastern, Western,
Southern, and Northern Regions of the country to sur-
vey the facilities in those regions, determine regional
needs in consultation with the State governments con-
cerned, foster liaison between the industry and techni-
cal institutions and assist and advise on the desirable
and coordinated development in their respective
regions. . . .16

The council has proved very useful and effective in
the advancement of technical education in India.

There are many other advisory bodies attached to the
ministry, but the drive for development in technical educa-

tion comes mainly from this council.

 

15Indian Institute of Public Administration, op.

cit., p. 277.

16Ibld., pp. 277—78.

121

Research Institutions

 

When India achieved freedom in 1947 it had
scientists and industrial laboratories, but they were not
enough to meet the needs of the free country. Two of the
research institutions which had been established by private
philanthropy before 1947 deserve special mention.

Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science,
Calcutta, was started by Dr. Mahendra Lal Sircar in 1876
and is still flourishing as a research center for physics
and chemistry.

The Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, was
started in 1908 by Jamshedji Tata, a leading industrialist
of Bombay. It has become one of the most important Indian
centers today for training and research in science and
technology.

These few institutions were not adequate to meet the
growing needs of the country and, consequently, scientific
research was promptly recognized by the government. More-
over, India, like other underdeveloped countries, also
recognized that science and technology were the only means
to reach the level of material well-being of the advanced
nations of the world. W. E. F. Ward summarizes this
feeling:

But in poor countries, technical education has

experienced an even more dizzy swing into popularity.
Until the other day, all ambition was concentrated on

becoming a clerk, a civil servant, an effendi; any
occupation which involved getting sweaty and oily was

122

despised as utterly as it was despised by Aristotle.
Today, technical education is regarded as the key to
wealth and power: let us drill our own oil-wells, dam
our own rivers, manufacture our own materials, pilot
our own air-craft; thus shall we increase national
wealth and patch up with the material comfort of the
West. . . .

Fortunately India is big both in size and population
and so it has an advantage over the other smaller under-
developed nations of the world. Some of the economic advan-
tages of a country of substantial size and population in
the words of Raymond Frost are:

. . . the relatively large area-—offers a variety of
soils and climatic conditions for growing a wide range
of agricultural products. It may offer a choice of
rivers, harbors, and other transportation facilities,
permitting the exploitation of wide areas. Finally, it
may include one or other valuable deposits of minerals.
A fairly large population also offers economic advan-
tages that are not present in smaller groups. The cre-
ation of wealth requires the division of labor among
different skills, trades, crafts, and other functions.
The more people there are, the wider and finer are the
possibilities of such specialization. These special-
ized functions have then to be organized together in
the form of plantations, factories, public services;
and the more people there are, the broader the possi-
bilities of achieving effective organization. A large
population also provides the possibility of a large
market. The more consumers there are, the greater the
potential demand for products; and the greater this
demand, the more stimulus there may be for productive
enterprise. Finally, a large population may yield
greater resources of capital than a small one could.18

To exploit the advantages afforded by her natural

resources, India gave high priority to science and

 

17W. E. F. Ward, Educating Young Nations (London:
George Allen and Unwin, L ., , pp. - .
18

Raymond Frost, The Backward Society (New York:
St. Martin's Press, 1961), pp. 44-45.

123
technology in higher education. First the existing insti-
tutions were expanded and then came the establishment of
higher institutions based on the model of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. For all these purposes the
Government of India works on the recommendations of the
advisory bodies mentioned previously. Among these the
University Grants Commission has played a significant role
and needs to be discussed in detail to delineate the

increasing role of the government in higher education.

University Grants Commission (U.G.C.)

The main function of the University Grants Commis-
sion is to reorganize the universities for better teaching
and research. The Central Government has no control over
the universities because education is a provincial subject.
The universities are established by an act of a state
legislature and get capital and maintenance grants from the
state governments. The U.G.C. therefore experiences diffi-
culties in its dealings with them. Universities hinder the
collection of statistical information deemed necessary by
the U.G.C. Sometimes grants given by the U.G.C. are not

utilized as they should be.19

Despite these limitations it
has developed steadily in its influence over university edu-

cation. It is influential because it provides funds for the

 

19C. D. Deshmukh, "Problems of University Adminis-
tration," Indian Journal of Public Administration, III,
No. 4 (OctoBer—December, I957), 323.

 

124
developmental needs of the universities. During the
second five year plan (1956-61) it paid RS.395.2 lakhs to
all the universities for their developmental schemes in
humanities and paid RS.378.7 lakhs non-recurring and
RS.22.7 lakhs recurring to the universities for development
of higher scientific education and research.20

Since the universities depend for their finances on
the states and the U.G.C., the increasing interference of
the government is inevitable in their internal affairs.

The questioning attitude of the U.G.C. does not arise from
its desire to control the universities but from concern
over the wise use of the limited finances allotted by the
government.

Since India is poorly industrialized, there is no
other possibility of getting money for the increasing
expenditure of the universities. Some of the universities
such as Benares Hindu University previously received con-
siderable donations from the princely states which have
been liquidated now, following independence. The main
increases in expenditure of the universities during the
past decade have been in the salary and the equipment. The
main sources of income are the state governments, the Uni-

versity Grants Commission, fees, and endowments. The state

 

20Government of India, University Grants Commission,
Re ort of the Upiversity Grants Commission: April 1960 to
Marcfi I96I_(New Delhi: Manager of_Puincations, 1962),
pp. 42 and 46.

125
governments are not in a position to allot extra money for
developmental purposes. Any increase in tuition would be a
great burden on the parents of the students and would
arouse the students who are already notorious for their
indiscipline. As regards endowments, abolition of the
princely states has significantly reduced them.

Grants by the University Grants Commission in the
present circumstances are the only hope for the universi-
ties to meet their needs for increased expenditures. These
grants are given on the condition that the state government
will bear one-third of the non-recurring and half of the
recurring expenditure. The state governments hesitate to
give such assurance. As an example, the universities in
the State of Bombay could not raise the salary scales of
their teachers previously because the state government did
not want to involve itself in such a big financial liabil-
ity, even though the U.G.C. was going to bear 80 per cent
of the increased expenditure during the second five year
plan.21

This strait-jacketed situation of the universities
in financial matters accounts for radical actions by the
Central Government in university affairs. For example, to
ensure greater administrative orderliness in the internal

affairs of the Benares Hindu University, some of the

 

21Government of India, Ministry of Education, Indian
University Administration (Delhi: Manager of Publications,
I958), p. 44.

126
actions taken by the Central Government as described by

Pran Nath are given here in detail:

. . . the President of India promulgated an ordi-
nance on June 14th, 1958, by virtue of which all powers
within the university were concentrated in an executive
council of nine members, nominated by the Central
Government. The pre-existing bodies . . . were dis-
missed. Further, a screening committee consisting of
the Vice—Chancellor and two other members was consti-
tuted, with the task of recommending the removal, by
the executive council, of teachers whose continued
employment was believed to be detrimental to the inter-
ests of the university. Later, by an amendment, Par-
liament converted the screening committee into the
reviewing committee. . . . In pursuance of this proce-
dure, the exclusively nominated Executive Council first
made allegations against the ten dismissed teachers,
but when these allegations could not be substantiated,
their services were terminated without any reason.

. . . Later, the law court upheld the action of the
Executive Council, considering this body as the master
and the teachers as the servants. Thus the teacher
community realised for the first time the master-
servant or employer-employee relationship existing
within the corporate body of scholars. . . .

What has happened to the Benares Hindu University is
gradually overtaking all the universities in the
country. The process has indeed been catalysed by the
University Grants Commission . . . which gives grants
to the universities, which have to justify their exist-
ence to this body in terms of various imposed stand—
ards. Evidently the university governments are also
standardised. The present chairman of the U.G.C. is an
ex-Indian civil service man. . . . The Vice-Chancellor,
who instead of being elected is now nominated, is the
so-called educationist of the country who has had lit-
tle contact with a university except as an undergradu-
ate. . . . Recently the Central and State Governments
have been appointing retired judges as Vice-
Chancellors, presumably because they can measure the
sins of university men better than their counterparts
from other professions.22

The University Grants Commission has been giving

assurance from the beginning that its existence is to keep

 

dom, No. 18 (March, 1961), p. 29.

22Pran Nath, "Letter from India," Science and Free-

 

127
the autonomy of the universities intact. But at the same
time it feels that the universities have a responsibility
toward the society which they serve and, therefore, they
have to examine themselves and put their house in order.23
The disparity of these goals creates tension. Because the
universities in India are based on the pattern of the Brit-
ish universities and their constitutions are similar to
them, they are operated in the same spirit also.

As regards the British universities, Oxford and
Cambridge started out as religious institutions. Later on
King James II attempted to build up Roman Catholicism at
Oxford, but the university struggled and with the flight of
the King the attack on the universities collapsed. About
a century and a half after the defeat and flight of
James 11, Oxford and Cambridge were still the only univer-
sities in England.

In the 1830's another era started in the British
university world with the creation of the universities of
Durham and LOndon in 1832 and 1836, respectively. But by
this time the tradition of academic freedom established by
Oxford and Cambridge had become strong. Hence the two new
universities, even though they did not follow the institu-
tional arrangements developed at Oxford and Cambridge,
adhered to their view that a university must be an independ-

ent and self—governing institution. As a result, all the

 

23Shrimali, op. cit., p. 111.

128
universities in England, in their constitutions, charters,
statutes, or acts of Parliament, have provision for
autonomy as self-governing institutions.24

Before the Second World War, Indian universities

were able to maintain themselves with financial assistance
from the state, fees, and endowments. But since the war
prices have gone up considerably and, partly in conse-
quence, by 1955 such universities as Allahabad and Lucknow
were in debt to the extent of 18 and 21 lakhs of rupees.25

It is evident from the above description that the

Indian universities now face an acute financial problem.
Though Dr. A. L. Mudaliar, the Vice-Chancellor of the
Madras University, has expressed his resentment at the
interference of the states in the affairs of the universi-
ties, many would like the situation better if the govern-
ment completely took over university education. The
following quotations illustrate the feelings of some of the
Vice-Chancellors on this topic.

Dr. A. L. Mudaliar, Madras University:

. . . I am speaking in general on behalf of univer-
sities. . . . It is a matter of regret to me that it
should be possible for a Minister of a State to summon
a meeting of the Principals to discuss various ques-

tions, academic and administrative. That is . . . to
make the position of the Vice-Chancellor untenable and

24H. W. Baade and R. D. Everett (eds.), Academic
Iflreedom: the Scholar's Place in Modern Society (New York:
Oc—‘eana Puincations, I964), pp. 221-27.

25Government of India, Ministry of Education, op.
C1:t., p. 49.

129

no one with any sense of academic duty . . . can
possibly continue under such circumstances.26

R. P. Paranjpye, Poona University:

. . . university education instead of being regarded
as a joint responsibility of both the State and Central

Governments should be wholly taken over by the Central.
. . .2

B. D. Patel, Sardar Vallabhabhai Vidyapeeth:

. . . the Act of my university was passed in Septem-
ber, 1955 . . . since then, I have not received from
the Bombay government a single naya paisa [worth about
1/5 of one cent, smallest coin in Indian currency]
toward the recurring or the non—recurring grants . . .
it is best that all the universities should be taken
over by the Centre.28

H. V. Divatia, Gujarat University:

I am myself of the opinion that in view of the pre-
vailing circumstances and our past experiences, univer-
sity education should be made a Central subject. . . .29

P. K. Parija, Utkal University:

. . . I, therefore, agree with Mr. Divatia that the
post-graduate and research departments should be the
concern of the Centre, whilst the responsibility of the
under-graduate departments should devolve on the State
governments. . . .30

T. M. Advani, Bombay University:

. . . I do not share . . . that university education
should be the responsibility of the Centre and the Uni-
versity Grants Commission only. I think the State must
bear its part. . . .31

 

26A. L. Mudaliar, Education in India (Bombay: Asia
Publishing House, 1960), p. 69.

 

 

27Government of India, Ministry of Education, op.
Cit. , p. 50

28Ibid., p. 50. 291516.

30 31

Ibid., p. 51. Ibid., p. 50.

130
It is clear from the above statements that expansion
of higher education has created financial problems which
are of constant worry to the Vice-Chancellors. Under these
circumstances it is small wonder that the instructions
issued by the University Grants Commission have the nature
of directives which interfere with the autonomy of the

universities.

Conclusion

 

India is trying to change her pattern of higher edu-
cation from the colonial emphasis on the literary to the
modern emphasis on the technical. The previous view that
the aim of higher education should be to develop the best
qualities of man through the humanities is becoming obso—
lete in free India. But enlargement or improvement of any
type of education, whether it is humanistic or technical,
needs substantial financial support. And like many other
underdeveloped countries, funds for education are hardly
available in India. Major investment is in the big proj-
ects, which makes any educationist think like Raymond
Frost:

. . . Backward countries have a liking for the sort

of photogenic investment projects that symbolize in a
dramatic way the process of development. Perhaps the
symbols are attractive because the reality is so
intransigent. It may take a long time to improve and
modernize the whole country, but it is some consolation

to possess amidst the surrounding backwardness a few
items of capital, such as dams, highways, power

131

stations, that are indisputably big, modern and
expensive. . . .32

As capital is not so easily available from any other
source in a poor country like India, higher education has
had to depend upon the mercy of the Central Government.

The University Grants Commission, no doubt, acts very prud-
ently in dealing with the universities. Even so, the
attitude of the Central Minister for Education has some-
times baffled the educationists. In one of his speeches
K. L. Shrimali, the Central Minister for Education, said:
. . the Government does have a certain duty to
perform in that it has to put these houses of learning
in order. . . .33

Besides financial allocation to higher education,
the Central Government has laid great emphasis on science
and technology. The total allotment made to the scientific
and technological education during the five year plans
bears no comparison to what was done in this direction
prior to 1947.

As India is in a hurry to improve her economy
through the five year plans by making use of modern

scientific technology, it needs to be discussed in detail

in the next chapter.

 

:ZFrost, op. cit., p. 159.

33Quoted in B. D. Shrivastava, The Develgpment of
Modern Indian Education (Bombay: Orien tL Longmans, 1963),
p. 350.

CHAPTER VI

MODERNIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

THROUGH FIVE YEAR PLANS

India achieved independence on August 15, 1947. In
the first three years of independence, the government had
to settle a number of political problems, such as rehabili—
tation of millions of refugees due to the partition of the
country, integration of the 555 princely states with the
Indian Union, reorganization of the administrative and
technical services, and the formation of a constitution for
the country. The plight of the country was such that the
appointment of the Planning Commission was considered

essential.

PlanningyCommission
In March, 1950, the Planning Commission was set up
by a resolution of the Government of India, and its func-
tions were defined as follows:

1. To make an assessment of the material, capital, and
human resources of the country, including technical
personnel, and to investigate the possibilities of
augmenting such of these resources as are found to
be deficient in relation to the nation's require-
ments 0

132

133

2. To formulate a plan for the most effective and
balanced utilisation of the country's resources.

3. To define the stages in which the Plan should be
carried out and to propose the allocation of
resources for the due completion of each stage on a
determination of priorities. . . .l
The setting up of the Planning Commission was the

first and most important step taken by the government after
independence in the direction of economic planning. The
Planning Commission laid down the five year plans, keeping

in view the political and social objectives of the govern-

ment.

First Five Year Plan

 

The commission produced the first five year plan in
January, 1953, which covered the period from 1951—52 to
1955-56. The first five year plan gave special attention
to the training of technical personnel because they were in
great demand in all the spheres of life. Table 20 indi-
cates the increase in the number of engineering and tech-
nological institutions as well as their output.

The year 1950 has been included to give an idea of
the rapid progress of technical education during the plan
period. Increase in admissions is reflected in increases
in output, and there is a great amount of wastage due to

failures. One reason for many failures is perhaps the fact

 

1P. P. Agarwal, "The Planning Commission," The
Indian Journal of Public Administration, III, No.
TOctober-December,I957), 335.

INCREASE IN NUMBER AND OUTPUT OF ENGINEERING
AND TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTIONS DURING

134

TABLE 20

THE FIRST FIVE YEAR PLAN

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Engineering
Year No. of Degree Level Institutions Intake Output
1950 35 3,337 1,700
1951 39 3,893 2,163
1952 41 4,209 2,426
1953 41 4,436 2,286
1954 43 4,457 2,602
1955 47 4,875 3,395
Engineering
Year No. of Diploma Level Institutions Intake Output
1950 61 5,350 2,146
1951 64 5,485 2,257
1952 65 5,786 2,332
1953 66 6,550 2,505
1954 70 7,619 2,982
1955 88 9,418 3,511
Technology
Year No. of Degree Level Institutions Intake Output
1950 25 782 498
1951 24 895 530
1952 27 975 525
1953 27 1,014 594
1954 27 1,011 605
1955 28 879 613
Technology
Year No. of Diploma Level Institutions Intake Output
1950 31 553 332
1951 29 731 369
1952 30 713 323
1953 32 663 242
1954 34 694 415
1955 39 1,198 561
Source: Government of India, Planning Commission,

Review of the First Five Year Plan (Delhi:

PUBIICations, I957), p.)257.

Manager of

135
that admission to these institutions is not always based on
merit. As a degree from these institutions is considered
synonymous with an upward movement in the social scale,
parents use all kinds of influences to see their children
get admitted to these institutions. Mr. C. D. Deshmukh,
the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, deplored
this tendency:

Mr. Deshmukh . . . said it was alarming to find
students of obviously inferior calibre being admitted
into engineering colleges under political pressure or
as a result of undue influence and an exaggerated
desire to give everyone a chance. He was aware of
cases where Vice-Chancellors and Principals of engi-
neering colleges in some States had been unceremo-
niously hustled or browbeaten by some State Govern-
ments into accepting inferior material, that was to
say . . . students who would take ten years or more
before they could be molded into qualified engineers.

The Planning Commission agreed to a total provision

of RS.14.8 crores on technological education. This
included an expenditure of about RS.4.2 crores on the
Institute of Technology at Kharagpur, RS.78 lakhs on the
development of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,
RS.1.9 crores for the development and expansion of fourteen
selected institutions, about RS.4 crores for the develop—

ment of scientific and technical education and research,

and over RS.50 lakhs for scholarship schemes.3

 

2Quoted in Justus M. Van Der Kroef, "The Educated
Unemployed in Southeast Asia," The Journal of Higher Educa-
tion, XXXI, No. 4 (April, 1960), I8I.

3Government of India, Planning Commission, Review of
the First Five Year Plan (Delhi: Manager of Publications,
1957), p. 257?

 

136

Second Five Year Plan

The Planning Commission approves the plans prepared
by the All-India Council for Technical Education in the
field of technical education. On October 30, 1954, the
All-India Council for Technical Education appointed a
special committee to formulate schemes for the second five
year plan. The committee submitted a plan of RS.80 crores
for technical education during the period of the second
plan. The amount allocated to technical education was
RS.49.3 crores.

In the first five year plan, great emphasis was laid
upon the setting up of national laboratories and research
institutions, but in the second plan attention was devoted
to developing the existing facilities and to coordinating
the work of scientists in the national laboratories and of
research workers in universities and other research centers
for national progress.

On account of this planning the achievements under
the second five year plan have been summarized as follows:

. . . The number of (engineering) colleges has gone

up from 65 to 100, the annual admissions increasing
from 5,890 to 13,860. The number of polytechnics which
offer diploma courses has risen from 114 to 196 and
their annual admissions have increased from 10,480 to
25,570. Over the Second Plan the annual outturn of

graduates has risen from 4,020 to about 5,700 and of
diploma holders from 4,500 to over 8,000. . . .4

 

4Government of India, Planning Commission, Third
Five Year Plan (New Delhi: Government of India, 19605,
p. 608?

137
This increase was considered inadequate by the

Engineering Personnel Committee set up by the Planning Com-
mission. The committee recommended the expansion of train—
ing facilities for 1,690 additional engineering graduates
and 5,750 diploma holders. The committee further recom-
mended that the capacity of existing institutions should be
increased by 20 per cent in graduate training and by 25 per
cent for the training of diploma holders. The government
was considering these suggestions to meet the needs of the

third plan.

Third Five Year Plan

 

The total outlay on education, including engineering
and technological education, was RS.153 crores in the first
plan and RS.256 crores in the second plan. In the third
plan education has been allocated RS.560 crores wherein
RS.142 crores are earmarked for technical education. In
the first and second plans technical education shared 13
and 19 per cent, respectively, of the total outlay on edu-
cation, but in the third plan technical education repre-
sents about 25 per cent of the total provision for educa-
tion.

Considerable expansion of facilities for technical
education took place during the second plan. To meet the
demands of the fourth plan, facilities for technical edu-

cation have been created as follows:

138
'. . In 1966 the annual intake in engineering

colleges is expected to be 19,140 (13, 860 in 1961),

diploma courses 37, 390 (25, 570 in 1961), agricultural

and veterinary colleges 7,660 (5,900 in 1961) and

medical colleges 8,000 (5,800 in 1961). . . .§

The achievements of the Planning Commission since

its birth in 1950 have been outstanding. The progress made
in the direction of technical education is summarized in

Table 21.

TABLE 21

NUMBER OF ENGINEERING COLLEGES AND POLYTECHNICS,
THEIR ADMISSION CAPACITY AND OUTTURN
IN THE THREE PLAN PERIODS

 

 

 

 

 

 

No. of
Year Institutions Admission Capacity Outturn
Degree Courses
1955-56 65 5,890 4,020
1960-61 100 13,860 5,700
1965-66 117 19,140 12,000
(Estimated)
Diploma Courses
1950-51 86 5,900 2,480
1955-56 114 10,480 4,500
1960-61 196 25,570 8,000
1965-66 263 37,390 19,000
(Estimated)

 

Source: Government of India, Planning Commission,
Third Five Year Plan (Delhi: Manager of Publications,
1961), p.608.

 

5V. T. Krishnamachari, Fundamentals of Planning in

India (Calcutta: Orient Longmans, 19627, p. I35.

139
Thus, it is obvious that the five year plans have
required large numbers of engineers and technicians to
achieve a more rapid rate of economic growth and improve—

ment of the standard of living.

Gandhian View

 

In the Gandhian view of society, educational insti-
tutions were supposed to be self-supporting. He despised
all types of government controls. In his opinion a demo-
cratic state was not obliged to find money for establishing
universities and colleges. People should voluntarily
contribute the funds for them. Being an ardent worshipper
of freedom, he said regarding grants from the government:

. . . I hold it to be unmanly for us to continue to
receive grants for our education from a government
which we heartily dislike. . . .

Is it not better that our children should receive
their education in a free atmosphere, even though it
may be given in humble cottages or in the shade of
trees. . . .

. . . Surely they do not need government university
degrees. And if we could but get rid of the love of
government degrees for our boys, the question of find-
ing money for their education is in reality simple.
For, a week's self-denial by the nation will provide
for the edugation of its school-going children for one
year. . . .

He distrusted the machinery, too. His rural society
did not need much engineering and technological skill.

Very few would doubt the soundness of Gandhi's vision of a

 

6D. G. Tenduklar, Mahatma-~Life of Mohandas

Earamchand Gandhi, Vol. Two, 1920-1929 (Delhi?* Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting, 1961), p. 23.

 

140
happy life, but he was battling against the times.
Brembeck briefly remarks:

. . . His emphasis upon the integrity of the
village, cottage industries and basic education was
designed to redirect the modernizing river away from
the cities. . . . But even Gandhi may have underesti-
mated the size of the great force with which he was
battling. . . . Still, I think Gandhi's social burden
was correct. He was concerned about the wholeness of
people's lives and the wholeness of the communities in
which they lived. He saw that the sweep of modern
industrialization takes a heavy human toll. And he
valued people above machines.7

Conclusion

 

But, as has been reviewed in this chapter, the years
of independence almost changed the whole scene. Consider-
ing the way these five year plans demand the technologists,
it seems that all castes would adopt the new caste, the
technologist, by leaving their ancient professions. The
magnitude of the need for technical personnel envisioned in
the plans is evident from Tables 22 and 23.

The progressiveincrease of technical education has
led India to the technological age. India is now suffi-
ciently equipped with scientific and technical personnel to
introduce new processes of production in all fields. But
the writer, in the next chapter, intends to concentrate on
the problems which have come up. For it seems to him that

somehow the pace of progress has been set rather too fast

 

7C. S. Brembeck, "Education for Whole Nations,"

Education and the Development of Nations, ed. J. W. Hanson
and C. S. BrembeckITNew York: HoIE, RInehart and Winston,
1966), Part IV, Chap. IX, p. 228.

141

TABLE 22

ESTIMATED ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS FOR GRADUATES
IN ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

 

 

 

 

Second Third Fourth

Plan Plan Plan

Civil Engineering 12,400 13,000 20,000
Mechanical Engineering 5,300 15,300 24,000
Electrical Engineering 5,600 10,500 17,000
Telecommunication Engineering 1,600 2,500 4,000
Chemical Engineering 2,300 3,500 7,000
Metallurgy 700 1,100 1,600
Mining 500 1,600 2,400
Others‘ 1,000 3,500 4,000
Totals 29,400 51,000 80,000

 

‘Includes sugar technologists, jute technologists,
leather technologists, architects and town planners, auto-
mobile, aeronautical, marine, public health and sanitary,
and agricultural engineering personnel.

Source: Government of India, Planning Commission,
Third Five Year Plan (Delhi: Manager of Publications,
1 , p. .

in the plans without taking into consideration the limited
resources of the country. Indian administration has not
yet achieved that refinement which is necessary for the
projects to proceed harmoniously. When one adds to this
the foreign exchange crisis, one is inclined to give up all
hope about India's ability to step up beyond her existing
capacity to make good the investments made in technical

education.

142

TABLE 23

ESTIMATED ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS OF DIPLOMA
HOLDERS IN ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

 

 

 

 

Second Third Fourth

Plan Plan Plan

Civil Engineering 29,000 39,000 48,000
Mechanical Engineering 12,200 26,000 33,500
Electrical Engineering 10,400 18,000 22,500
Telecommunication Engineering 600 600 800
Chemical Engineering 800 3,500 5,000
Metallurgy 200 1,100 1,300
Mining 600 4,000 5,000
Others‘ ' 2,000 7,800 8,900
Totals 55,800 100,000 125,000

 

‘Includes sugar technologists, jute technologists,
leather technologists, architects and town planners, auto-
mobile, aeronautical, marine, public health and sanitary,
and agricultural engineering personnel.

Source: Government of India, Planning Commission,
Third Five Year Plan (Delhi: Manager of Publications,

CHAPTER VII

EVALUATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS OF TECHNOLOGICAL AND

SCIENTIFIC EXPANSION OF HIGHER EDUCATION

In colonial days the reason for the neglect of
technical education in India was the enthusiasm of the
rulers for liberal education. What the government needed
was a small group of graduates cut off from the mass of the
people to work as civil servants and clerks. The dilemma
of the colonial education was that it was for the elite who
gradually assimilated the standards of the rulers. Thus
higher education, instead of developing the country, cre-
ated hierarchies, snobbism and erected barriers between
men. But there was no open conflict between the philoso-
phies of ancient Indian higher education and traditional
Western education. Both systems deprecated practical sub-
jects and isolated themselves from mundane affairs. J. M.
Van Der Kroef describes:

. . . In the traditional native culture, learning
had an essentially magico-religious character, demand-
ing memorization and rote application of sacred texts;
its non-utilitarian function was safeguarded by the
ascetic cleric, personified by the Indian Brahman.

. . . Later, the gradual spread of a colonial educa-
tional system did not present a dramatic break with
this tradition . . . the authoritarian, title-conscious
atmosphere of traditional European learning fitted

143

144

remarkably well into the other worldly and elite- 1
focused atmosphere of traditional native knowledge.

The dilemma of Indian post-independence higher edu-
cation is that it has expanded too rapidly, which militates
against the long-established position of higher education
in the country. After independence the demands of national
development by means of educating and utilizing the ener-
gies and abilities of great numbers of citizens have cre—
ated serious problems. In this chapter the writer will
first discuss the major obstacles to India's economic
achievement and then will analyze the expansion of techno-
logical and scientific higher education on which all hopes

for rapid development are pinned.

Obstacles to Development
The first problem is that of economic growth in
India, because economic stagnation has existed for centu-
ries in the past. The government is confronted with many
problems to move forward as Henderson describes:

. . . having inherited haphazard and inadequate tax
systems based upon impoverished economies, being
desirous of avoiding the ruthless measures used by the
Communist countries to secure rapid industrialization,
and being plagued with incompetent and often corrupt
administrative staffs, have been unable to supply money
or foreign-made equipment in the amounts needed. . . .

 

1Justus M. Van Der Kroef, "The Educated Unemployed
in Southeast Asia," The Journal of Higher Education, XXXI,
No. 4 (April, 1960), 178.

2A190 D. Henderson, "Asian Universities in Transi—
tion," The Educational Record, XXXVIII, No. 4 (October,
1957),‘366.

145

The process of economic growth is slow because India
cannot develop the modern technology for lack of capital
and thus achieve a rapid rate of economic development. As
regards adopting the new technology of the developed
nations, Indian circumstances are so different from the
West that it cannot be implemented successfully without
making some changes in it. The Union Education Minister,
Mr. M. C. Chagla, emphasized the role of the engineers in
the following words:

The future of India, he said, was tied with the
future of engineers, and it was their sacred and
patriotic duty to design all imported machines and
fabricate them in India. . . .3

In search of prosperity, many developing nations are

relying on their human resources. Both China and India
have enormous human capital, but China is in a different
position to form new capital by pushing its entire popula-
tion to work long hours and imposing on them her iron
discipline of forced saving. Indian democracy cannot use
dictatorial methods to expedite development at the cost of
human beings. Therefore, India's population has become a
drag on the capital and a serious problem for the country.

A sketch of India's population will help the reader gain

perspective.

 

3"Chagla on Role of Engineers," The Weekly India
News, IV, No. 17 (August 13, 1965), 2.

 

146

India's Population Problem
In 1901 India's population was 284 million. The
total population in 1961 was 439 million. Thus, in the

last sixty years India's population has increased 155

million.4

But the real problem in India is not the rate of
increase but the net addition to the existing population.
Every year India adds nine million mouths to gobble up the
margin of savings. According to economists some of the
effects of this tremendous pressure of population on the
limited resources of the country are, as follows:

1. Land per capita is decreasing steadily from Census
to Census. The land per capita is less than three-
fourths of an acre, whereas two-and-one-half acres
per capita is considered by expert opinion to be the
bare minimum for a decent life.

2. Owing to consequent sub-division and fragmentation
more than two-thirds of the agricultural holdings
have become uneconomic.

3. Manpower is surplus on the land estimated from 20 to
50 per cent of the total agricultural population.

4. All the industrial and economic development that has
so far taken place has not relieved the pressure on
the land, but has, by replacing hand power by mecha—
nical power, intensified this pressure.

5. Underemployment in rural areas and unemployment
among the educated classes are increasing, notwith-
standing the great increase in expenditure both in

the public and private sectors since independence,
1947.

 

4A. Nevett, Population: Ex losion or Control?--A
Study with Special Reference to IngIa (LondEn: Geoffrey
Chapman,I964), p. 32.

 

147
6. India's per capita income being the lowest in the
world, there is a great deal of malnutrition and
under-nutrition in the country.

7. Food production has not kept pace with the growth of
the population.5

India's other major problem is what Rostow calls the

stage of self-sustaining growth.

"Take Off" Problem

India gets the largest aid from the United States.
It also receives large amounts from the Soviet Union and
Western Europe. Unable to industrialize herself from her
own resources, India depends upon the support of the coun-
tries which have industrialized successfully. But popula-
tion pressure is so great in India that rapid industrial
progress cannot be sustained. Robbins concludes:

. . . When countries such as these do invest their
slim supplies of capital in heavy industry, they merely
establish uneconomic monuments to nationalism.6

As regards the portion of the national income

devoted to investment, it was under 5 per cent in 1951. It
has risen to 11 per cent through the first two plans and is

7

expected to reach 17 per cent in the 1970's. This

increase has hardly enabled the economy to provide for its

 

5P. K. Wattal, Po ulation Problem in India--A Census
Study (New Delhi: Minerva BooE Sfiop, I958), p.‘34.

6John Robbins, Too Many Asians (New York: Doubleday
and Co., Inc., 1959), p. I7I.

 

 

7Barbara Ward, India and the West (New York: W. W.
Norton and Company, Inc., 196i), p. 146.

 

148
2 per cent annual increase in population. The economists
suggest that in countries where population increases by
1-1/2 per cent per annum or more, an annual investment of
5 per cent of national income is not enough to raise the
standard of living. Only an annual net investment of 15
per cent of national income or more is associated with
economic growth.8

Thus the real problem is that India should find

capital for capital formation. The only way to accumulate
capital is to cut down consumption and contribute the sur-
plus as savings toward capital formation. But it is hard
to cut down consumption and provide more capital for
investment when people have low incomes and live at the
subsistence level. Frost remarks:

In backward countries, capital is the most scarce
of productive resources, precisely because savings are
small. And their savings are small because these
countries are poor. Saving means abstinence from con-
sumption. And it is very difficult for people to
abstain from consumption when they are consuming very
little. . . .9

Another obstacle to development is India's

bureaucracy.

 

8Eugene Staley, The Future of Underdeveloped Coun-
tries (New York: Harper and Brothers, 19547, p. 260.

9Raymond Frost, The Backward Society (New York:
St. Martin's Press, l96IT, p. I61.

149

Administration

India's bureaucratic administration suffers from
delay, corruption, and inefficiency. This administrative
system was developed by the British and has continued for
more than two centuries. Though India stopped sending her
administrators to England for training after 1947, yet the
administrative structure or attitude remains unchanged.
The structure devised by the British to suit their needs
does not help the free Republic of India. The old proce-
dures based on excessive and concurrent checks and counter-
checks need to be simplified to enable quick decisions to
utilize the available manpower and materials.

The writer of this thesis faces serious limitations
to present a rigorous analysis of the inner machinery of
the government due to lack of published material. This is
because the writers in India are mostly the employees of
the government and are not free to write and publish as
they do in the United States. The Indian writers have:

to seek approval of an administrative officer before
publication is possible. Dispassionate, objective
analysis which may be sharply critical of established

government policy is still not common in India.10

Therefore, the writer will limit his comments to a

 

loRalph Braibanti, "Reflections on Bureaucratic

Reform in India," Administration and Economic Develo ment
in India, ed. Ralpfi BraibantI and J. J. SpengIer (Durfiam:
Duke UnIversity Press, 1963), p. 14.

150
discussion of some of the phases of administration which,

in his opinion, need immediate reforms.

Red Tape.--Emphasis on rules and regulations has

 

increased the number of files. As a result, in India today
one finds in the administrators an enormous lack of per-
sonal initiative. This is one of the most frightening
things for a developing country. Even the greatest leader,
Nehru, failed when he wanted to minimize certain outdated
regulations to break the forces of stagnation. In a recent
popular article Hazard reports on the nature of the
problem:

. . . at one time Nehru had thought the hundred
regulations in the field, we were discussing, were too
many and appointed a commission. When the commission
finished its work, the hundred regulations had become
three hundred. . . .11

Another such story which amuses Westerners is told
by Jha:

. . . in a certain Government office, there was a
large accumulation of old documents and files, dating
back to decades . . . the Head of that office had a
bright revolutionary idea. If the old documents were
burnt, so much space would become free. So he wrote to
the Head of his Department in the far off State Capi-
tal. . . . After three years and nineteen reminders
. . . the sanction came. Yes, the documents could be
destroyed, but three copies of each of them should
first be made for future reference. . . .12

 

11Leland Hazard, "Strong Medicine for India," The
Atlantic (December, 1965), p. 47.

12L. K. Jha, "Mr. Red Tape," The Indian Journal of
Public Administration, XI, No. 4 (OchBer-December, 1965),
‘680.

 

151
India's administrative inefficiency has puzzled many
foreign visitors and scholars. They have found that it is
almost impossible to get anything done in India. It tends
to cause one to conclude, incorrectly, that the colonial
administrators were much better than the present native
administrators. Curle analyzes the situation as follows:
. . . Those who have taken over from a colonial
power are especially handicapped by the fact that as a
general principle expatriate administrators exercised
initiative in making decisions while the subordinate
natives were expected to adhere strictly to foolproof
rules. But now that the former subordinates sit in the
seats of the mighty they still keep to the book, with
the result that intelligent effort is more likely to be
strangled by red tape in the ministries of an under-
develoged country than anywhere else in the world.
1

Another great problem which confronts the present

administration is nepotism.

Nepotism.--No amount of education or training can
make the typical Indian individual adhere to honesty and
loyalty unless he detaches himself from favoring his own
caste and province. This seems tragic, but personal rela-
tionships, both friendly and hostile, play a significant
role in making decisions. This is the reason why many stu-
dents do not want to go back to India after they have
finished their education in the Western countries. They
feel that their merit will not be recognized either for

recruitment or promotion:

 

13Adam Curle, Educational Strategy for Developing

Societies (London: TavIsEockPfiincaEIons, 1963), p. 64.

152
Questions unasked but not out of mind of the
selectors are: Who is your uncle? Are you a Brahmin?
Are you a Madrasi? . . .14
Next I shall discuss another great cancer of Indian

society, that is, corruption.

Corruption.--In India corruption is a crucial prob-

 

lem. The pre-independence slogans for the reform of the
country have been brushed aside by the new administration,
and the country suffers from a woeful lack of leadership
and the whole atmosphere reeks with demoralization.
Appleby blames the government ministers for setting such a
tone:

. . . each minister sets a tone, good or bad, that
has a penetrating effect on his subordinates. A deci-
sion by a minister, overruling subordinate recommenda—
tions and seeming simply to favour some particular

citizen at the expense of the general public, does

demoralize staff and invite other acts of favoritism.
. . .1

The areas of administration most needing attention
are those where money is involved. And the deep-rooted cor-
ruption in the public life can be understood from a simple
example of a railway platform. Appleby illustrates:

. . . A purchaser of a platform ticket was given an

undated ticket. He was passed through the gate without
his ticket being torn in two as is required, and when

 

14"The Sad Case of Dr. Joseph," The Spectator, CCIV,

No. 6882 (May 20, 1960), 722.

15Paul A. Appleby, Public Administration in India-—
Report of a Survey (New DeIHI: Government of InaIa, 19535,
p. 51.

 

 

153

he left the platform his whole ticket was taken up,
ready :0 be returned to the ticket booth and resold.

Another important reason why India is showing little

or no economic progress is her administrative inefficiency.

Administrative Inefficiency.--At present India does

 

not have well-trained administrators to do the kind of job
required for dynamic growth. The Indian Administrative
Service, the successor to the Indian Civil Service, mostly
tests the intellectual attainment and needs overhauling,
because, to a great extent, administrative duties today
require practical intelligence and social aptitudes. By
"practical intelligence" the writer means that an adminis—
trator should be able to apply his intelligence in solving
concrete rather than abstract problems. Social aptitude
produces the most striking effects in public relations. A
city magistrate or a district collector has to come in con-
tact with a large variety of people. His social life has
to be covered by personal characteristics to make him
acceptable to the public.17
Indian administration must be efficient and creative

to save the plans from failure. The idea that their job is

to administer and not to serve demoralizes the entire

 

161bid., p. 52.

17W. T. V. Adiseshiah, "Psychological Criteria for
Administrative Services," The IndianJournal of Public
Administration, VII, No. 2 (ApriI—June, I96I), 169.

 

154
staff. Even the most publicized steel mills of India
reflect great mismanagement and produce less than their
capacity due to lack of cooperation and efficiency. A
press correspondent who visited the government-owned steel
mill at Rourkela, costing more than 500 million dollars,
reports his major findings:

. . . the plant has a rated capacity of 1 million
tons a year, it is producing only 55,000 tons a month.

Conditions at this plant are an industrial night—
mare. There are about 28,000 employees . . . it would
take only 5,000 workers in West Germany or the U.S. to
run the plant. . . .

Workers cannot be fired, because they are government
employees. . . .

. . . Workers come and go from their jobs without
permission. And during the night shift, they just
sleep. . . .18

That a government employee cannot be dismissed easily has
contributed greatly to stagnation. In Indian bureaucracy,
a select few do all the decision making. They dislike to
decentralize their power down the line and, as a result, it
retards development, reduces efficiency, creates delay, and
increases expense. Some shrewd politician once compared
Jawaharlal Nehru to a banyan tree under whose shade no
lesser foliage could grow. This tendency in administra-
tion——of exerting one's influence all around-—has checked
the growth of many able younger men of the nation.

The greed for power is the greatest roadblock to

India's progress. There is young talent in India, but the

 

18,,31g Country Adrift-—How Long Can Aid Save India,"

U.S. News and World Report, LVI, Part 3 (June 1, 1964), 66.

155
old bureaucrats would prefer to see India's plans fail
rather than permit the younger generation of modern think-
ing Indians to make some of the decisions and to help the
institutions work. Hazard describes India's failures and
recommends that foreign aid should be stopped unless India
breaks out of her "happy" bureaucratic prison:

. . . a country which has neither enough guns nor
enough butter and two of whose Five Year Plans failed
by large margins (as well as the Third Plan, now in
process of failing) must look for stronger medicine.

The next condition, if India 1 to have aid from the
West, would follow naturally from decontrol. Indian
administration must be simplified and modernized and
made more eXpert at all levels. This sounds easy
enough but involves the rolling of some high heads. In
the early years of Russian industrialization, Five Year
Plans failed just as they have failed in India; and
heads rolled, literally. If India were a multi-party
democracy, . . . the Congress Party would have been
voted out of office long since for failure to make pro-
gress in agriculture and industrialization. But today
in India's Cabinet and in her top civil service bureau-
cracy there is scarcely a name which has not been prom-
inent in Indian politics and public administration,
state or union, for the past twenty years . . . new
names are infrequent.l9

".ml'"A—- “IA—“’-

All the above factors, and others, greatly restrict India's
ability to bring about change through a scientific and
technological revolution. India's situation is completely
different from that of many of the new emergent countries,
as regards the trained personnel.

The writer of this dissertation maintains that a

great expansion of university education is not going to

 

19Hazard, op. cit., p. 46.

156
initiate a change on a substantial scale unless the above
factors have been taken care of. India is full of devas—
tating commission reports that she is suffering from an
acute shortage of trained personnel at almost all levels.
These reports have been written without taking into consid-
eration the job opportunities for the graduates. According
to this author, two poignant factors which would add to
India's poverty and misery are overeducation and unemploy-
ment of the educated. The main purpose of the remainder of

this chapter is to discuss briefly these two factors.

IBWI- 'm war up...
1 . r H

There is not enough space here for a full exposition of all
the features of India's serious difficulties responsible
for checking her economic growth through failure to make

good use of her educated personnel.

Is India Short of Skilled Manpower?

India has one million graduates and 220,000 post-
graduates, according to a recent survey published in the
"Yojana." Between 1950 and 1963, the output in the arts
and humanities increased 4.2 times, while in science and
technology it went up 3.8 times.20

India's tradition of higher education is centuries

old. Even the modern universities have existed for more

than a hundred years. Therefore India, unlike most other

 

20"A Million Graduates in India," The Hindu Weekly

Review, XV, No. 22 (May 30, 1966), 15.

 

157
developing nations of Asia and Africa, can produce a fairly
large number of educated personnel.

India has more than sixty universities and about two
thousand colleges with more than a million students. But
this expansion of education for modern industrialization
and responsible democracy requires a large capital invest-
ment. Advanced Western technology does not suit Indian
conditions. 'The technology developed in the West uses lit-
tle labor but a great deal of capital. An underdeveloped
country, like India, where personnel is abundant and capi-
tal is scarce, should employ a different technology; other-
wise it will face the problem of idle surpluses in unem-
ployed workers.21

No one questions India's need for speed and techni-
cal personnel, but scholars have seriously doubted India's
ability to use her thin resources efficiently without hav-
ing trained and skillful administrators. Hazard writes:

It takes more than resources and energy to make an
industrial economy. Management is a prime requirement.
And, like the professions of law, medicine, engineer-
ing, and others, management ensues from decades of
experience, training, technical writings, and scholarly
attention to the scope and confines of the managerial
discipline. Such decades were missing from India's
history when in 1948 Nehru's Congress Party decided
that India should industrialize. . . . There were no
schools of management education worth mentioning. . . .

Curiously enough, one of the roadblocks to indus-
trialization in India is its internationally respected

 

21Richard T. Gill, Economic Development: Past and
Present (New Jersey: Prentice-HalI, Inc., 19637, p. 86.

’fOrA‘nj-g‘m i-i-(Y- 1! new “mg—.1
I

158

Civil Service. This elite cadre . . . is imbued with

the cggviction that administration is an end in itself.

The most frequent and misleading suggestion given by
recent writers is that India should industrialize rapidly
by enlarging her facilities for technical education. The
author of this dissertation has traced the development of
higher education in the previous chapters to show that
India has made large investments in technical education
from both internal and international sources and thus has
created an unbalance. The need for trained people in India
is limited, because economic development has not acceler-
ated at the rate the university education has expanded in
the last two decades. Myint's comments may be quoted in
support of the position taken by the writer:

. . . after the first phase of filling up the vacan-
cies left by the expatriates, many of these countries
are in fact finding that, with their existing slow
rates of economic growth, they can create employment
only for a dwindling number of new university graduates
and that there may even be a considerable amount of
graduate unemployment or underemployment. Thus, while
all Southeast Asian countries "need" trained people,
only a few of them . . . have a really effective and
expanding demand for them at the moment. One of the
major issues is how to translate the need for trained
people into effective demand.23

The Government of India has made large investments

in industrial plants as can be seen in Table 24.

 

22Leland Hazard, "Mahatma Gandhi Was Wrong," The

Atlantic, CCXIV (July, 1964), 46.

23Hla Myint, "The Universities of Southeast Asia and
Economic Development," Pacific Affairs, XXXV, No. 2 (Sum-
mer, 1962), 119.

 

159

TABLE 24

INVESTMENT IN SELECTED INDUSTRIAL PROJECTS DURING
THE THIRD FIVE YEAR PLAN (1961-66)

-
T

Name of Industry RS. in Crores

 

Metallurgical industries (iron and steel,

aluminum and ferromanganese) 770.0
Engineering industries (heavy and light) 175.0
Chemical industries 140.0
Cement, electric porcelin, and refractories 60.0
Petroleum refining 30.0
Paper, newsprint, security paper 40.0
Sugar 56.0
Cotton, jute, woolen, and silk yarn and cloth 50.0
Rayon and staple fiber 34.0
Others 115.0
Replacement and modernization 150.0

Total 1,620.0

 

Source: Government of India, Planning Commission,
Third Five Year Plan (New Delhi: Government of India,
I9607, p. 456.

The unfortunate thing is that though in the long run
the industrial plants of the government may become success-
ful, at the present time they are retarding growth for lack
of efficient administrative and managerial staff, as was
pointed out above. Despite a steel shortage, Hindustan
Steel lost 45 million dollars in 1963, according to its

annual report.24 Steel is not an isolated example.

 

24nBig Country Adrift--How Long Can Aid Save India,"
OE. Cite, p0 66.

la‘

-'-.lls‘

'ffi' . ‘ui'hm'fiii a» My

160
The private entrepreneurs do not want to start up
their industries in India, because transportation and com-
munication facilities are meager and backward. For
instance, a fertilizer factory's production is meaningless
if the fertilizer cannot be moved rapidly from the factory
to the demand centers.25

The private entrepreneurs have to compete in market-

ing their products with the producers in the highly devel-

- ' ‘ ll-i'ifi".'rni_;:fl

oped areas. Knowing the obstacles in their way, they leave

the industrial enterprises in an underdeveloped country

 

like India to be undertaken by the government, since it
alone can sustain large losses for a long time. Letwin
says:

. . . How can a new steel mill in Iran compete with
Pittsburgh or a watch factory in Nigeria compete with
Geneva? As they could not, any private entrepreneur
foolhardy enough to set up factories in a backward area
would only succeed in going bankrupt. . . .26

All these factors have contributed to the unemploy-

ment of the educated in India.

Unemployment of the Educated
In the West, jobs are looking for people, while in
India the greatest task for the government is to abolish

unemployment.

 

253. Chandrasekhar, American Aid and India's Eco-

nomic Development (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965),
p. 148.

26William Letwin, "What's Wrong with Planning: The
Case of India," Fortune, LXVII (June, 1963), 121.

161
The bane of the university system in the East is the
failure of the graduate to get a job. It is estimated
in Japan that 25 per cent are without jobs, and in

India the rate must be as high.27

It is hard for Westerners to understand how a coun-
try needing trained personnel in almost every field can
have thousands of graduates unemployed. The Scientific
Man—Power Committee in 1947 calculated that India would
need 202,740 science teachers and unclassified scientific
and technical personnel. And yet thousands of science
graduates cannot find a job.28
The Ministry of Labor and Employment made a survey
of the unemployed graduates in 1958 and found that the num-
ber of unemployed graduates in 1953 was 20,543. It rose to
32,287 in 1957 and was expected to rise to 50,670 in June,
1961. Other factual findings reported by the survey were:

1. Eighty-four per cent of the unemployed graduates
held a bachelor's degree in arts, science or com-
merce.

2. A large number of unemployed graduates in science
had specialized in physics, chemistry and mathema-
tics.

3. Among unemployed graduates, 2.3 per cent had secured
first class degrees, 24.8 per cent second class

degrees, and the remaining 72.9 per cent third class
degrees.29

 

 

27Algo D. Henderson, "Asian Universities in Transi-

tion," Educational Record, XXXVIII, No. 4 (October, 1957),
362.

2BBhagwan Dayal Shrivastava, The Development of
Modern Indian Education (Bombay: Orient Longmans, I963),
p. 476.

291bid., pp. 475-76.

 

162
The problem of employment is acute for the graduates
of Indian universities. It also looms large before the

foreign educated Indians.

Employment of Foreign Educated Indians

 

An Indian intellectual who has been trained in the
Western countries wants to see India completely different
from what she is. His displeasure, according to Amar Kumar
Singh, is directed against nepotism and corruption in pub-
lic organizations and government, red tape and bureaucratic
delays, the discouraging and destructive attitudes of
senior persons in positions of authority, the general inef-
ficiency, and the absence of social justice and individual
dignity.30

The Useems in The Western—Educated Man in India give

 

striking examples of the above complaints:

. . . I like to work hard and get things done. Here
they ask you, "Why are you knocking your head against a
wall, . . . why not sit down and get used to things.

. . . I don't feel happy with inertia.

There a Cambridge man is esteemed, and here I am
nothing. . . . If I had not persevered on my own, I
would have been lost. It is intellectual suicide, an
uncreative life.

My foreign training has no use here and is not
appreciated. . . . I want to do the things in the way
we were taught to do them, but here it is hard to get
people to see the light.

Decisions are slow and constantly cross—checked.

. . . . Individual initiative is stifled and we do not
have teamwork. . . .

 

 

30Quoted in Mehdi Kizilbash, "The Employment of

Returning U.S. Educated Indians," Comparative Education
Review, VIII, No. 3 (December, 19647, 32IT

 

163
The calibre of the man and the quality of the work
is not recognized here as is the case in England. Here
it is politics and seniority. . . .31
Similar are the findings of Karve who quoted the

feelings of his former student returned from abroad with a

Ph.D. degree in the Times of India, December 17, 1963:

 

. . . people are judged even in the academic or
intellectual world not by the quality of research work
they have published, but by the official position they
occupy or by the number of universities in which they
serve as examiners. . . .32

Expressions of the preceding types underline a major
problem of wastage of human resources in the field of
higher education.

The arguments I have put forward emphasize that it
is not the human resources alone that will advance the
underdeveloped nation but the capacity of the nation's
economy to absorb them properly. India has overexpanded
technical education in a vague hope of showing impressive
achievements. She has not paid attention to the publica-
tions of researchers who warned the most highly industrial-
ized country, the U.S.A., not to flood the market in the
professional fields. In 1949 Harris presented his findings
in these words:

Despite the large deficiency of scientists, includ-

ing engineers, . . . the country will soon catch up
with the excess demand. The President's Commission

 

31John Useem and Ruth H. Useem, The Western-Educated

Man in India (New York: Dryden Press, Inc., 1955),
pp. 93-1020

3

 

2Quoted in Kizilbash, op. cit., p. 321.

164

itself admits an imminent surplus of engineers. Even

in peace times, under the most favorable economic con-

ditions, this country would not be able to employ

700,000 to 950,000 scientists and engineers despite

their significant service in the modern world. Should

economic conditions be unsatisfactory the demand for

scientists will suffer greatly. . . . During the thir-

ties, engineers suffered substantial reductions in pay

and widespread unemployment.33

Harris' forebodings, though not of great seriousness

at present, do not mean that surpluses will not appear in
the future as conditions change. This also does not mean
that everyone with a bachelor's degree in science has a job
as a scientist:

. . . The number of science graduates in the U.S.A.
who go into non-scientific careers . . . is estimated
to be as high as 70 per cent. In the case of engineer-
ing graduates, the figure is about 15 per cent. . . .34

Concluding Observations
It has been pointed out in the pages of this disser-
tation that the ancient Indian education and the imported
British education had some common characteristics. They
were isolated from mundane affairs, admitted students only
in limited numbers, emphasized classical and theoretical
knowledge, and paid no respect to professional or scienti-

fic fields. This pattern of higher education with minor

changes in the policy of the Federal Government prevailed

 

3Seymour E. Harris, The Market for College Gradu-
ates (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,‘I949),
pp. 29 and 31.

4Government of India, University Grants Commission,
Vice-Chancellors' Conference 1962 (New Delhi: University
Grants Commission, 1963), p. 17.

165
till India's independence, August 15, 1947. After this
began the age of science and technology. University
degrees in scientific fields from pharmacy to engineering
have become more common since then. This has created
serious problems, and there are loud outcries against
expansion or opening of new institutions:

The Indian Medical Council has suggested that the
mushroom growth of new medical colleges and the
unrestrained opening of post-graduate medical courses
should be stopped. . . .35

. . . a provision of 370 seats has been made at the
two technical institutions in Bombay--the Victoria
Jubilee Technical Institute and the Sardar Patel Col-
lege of Engineering. . . . Fourteen hundred applica-
tions had been received until TUesday evening and more
are pouring in. . . .36

The administration of some of the professional col-

leges has started taking undue advantage of people's
exaggerated expectations of improving their lot through
technical education. A press correspondent complains:

The government is understood to have permitted the
management of the Tirumala Devaswam Medical College at
Alleppey to realize a minimum of RS.7,500 from each
student as "admission fee." . . .37

This indicates that educational progress has been

faster than economic development. Advances in education

beyond industrial progress are destructive. The increasing

 

3S"Stop Mushroom Growth of Medical Colleges," The

Times of India (June 21, 1965), p. 3.

36"Heavy Rush for Admission to Technical Colleges,"

The Times of India (June 17,1965), p. 1.

37"Pay RS. 7, 500 and Get Admitted to College," The

Statesman (July 17,1965), p. 7.

166
numbers of college graduates with technical and vocational
training do not by themselves induce a revolution in a
society's technology. They expect the government to pro-
vide jobs for them. The masses want technical and scienti-
fic education not to use it in their own occupations but to
find white-collar government jobs and thus create addi-
tional problems for the nation's bureaucracy which is
already bursting at the seams.

My basic proposition is that India should not
attempt to copy the West. India needs to create a new
society, but the model does not need to be borrowed from
the West. The West had some of the essential elements
required for industrialization, such as the innovating
entrepreneur, the capital, the natural resources, and above
all it knew how:

to bring and hold together an able staff, to delegate
authority, to inspire loyalty, to handle successfully
relations with labor and the public, and a host of
other managerial talents.38
In the absence of all these essential components, if India
frames ambitious plans for rapid economic growth, she is
simply living in a dreamland. The nature of this dreamland
has been suggested by some Western writers. Despite the

numerous problems that have plagued her after independence,

Hazard suggests:

 

38Albert 0. Hirschman, The Strategyof Economic

Develgpment (New Haven: Yale University Press, I960),
p. I7.

 

167

Without industrialization India will sit in her
changeless villages awaiting the next conqueror . . .
improved agriculture and village life are not in them-
selves enough to save India. On the contrary, when
industrialists drive the snakes out of the paddies and
put up a steel, fertilizer, machine tool, or heavy
electrical plant, a whole new community of twenty,
fifty, a hundred thousand people is created in two or
three years. The housing is all new; there is a
spigot, a shower, and a flush in each dwelling. . . .
There is a clinic, hospital, school, shopping center,
and community center. Teachers, doctors, and social
workers are recruited. The plant executives organize
a club. After a while, a swimming pool is built. The
wives organize plays, dancing, and the arts. . . .39

For those who think, like Mr. Hazard, that India can be
industrialized like the U.S.A. or Western EurOpe, a brief
description of some of India's other obstacles will be a
revealing exercise. The foremost among these is the prob-

lem of foreign exchange.

Foreign Exchange

 

The foreign exchange crisis arises from the
increased need to import food, raw materials, components,
and machinery for the general needs of the economy. India
has utilized foreign credits totalling RS.1,597.01 crores
as of September 1, 1964, according to a statement on
foreign loans presented to Parliament in February, 1965.
Total foreign credit authorizations to India for the first
and second plans amounted to RS.2,921.75 crores. A total
assistance of RS.2,043.90 crores has been earmarked for the

third plan. Actual drawings amount to less than two-thirds

 

39Hazard, op. cit., p. 49.

168

of the sum committed by all sources. The gap between aid
commitment and its conversion to capital goods is most
pronounced in the case of the Communist bloc countries,
Japan, Canada, and the International Development Associ-
ation.4O

The total receipts from exports during the third
plan period (1961-66) are about RS.3,700 crores. Imports
are about a thousand crores of rupees, $2 billion out of
the $30 billion total national income. This means that 40
per cent of the imports are now being paid for by outside
assistance. It also suggests that if the outside assist-
ance stops, India's economic development would halt in its
tracks.41

Foreign capital plays a significant part in India's
development and is the only means to make the Indian plans
succeed. Assistance by the Western nations, though signi-
ficant, has not been enough to assure sustained economic
growth in India. Barbara Ward suggests that the minimum
aid to India should be about $5,400 million for the five
years of the plan period. The Optimum figure should be
fixed at $10,000 million. She condemns the high interest

rates of 6 to 8 per cent charged by the West on loans to

 

40$. Kesava Iyengar, Fifteen Years of Democratic

Planning—-Volume Two (Bombay: Asia Publishing House,
I965), p. 1058.

41Max F. Millikan, "The Economic Future of India--
Hazards and Promises," Asia, No. 2 (Autumn, 1964), p. 59.

 

169
India while the Russians provided over $250 million in
rouble credits at 2.5 per cent for twelve years to finance
the steel works at Bhilai. The Russian interest rates on
loans to finance other heavy industrial ventures likewise
are exceptionally low, some of them being repayable in
rupees. To check Communist infiltration she advises the

West:

Lanna-gm q
I

. . . If the Soviets can lend for 12 years at 2.5
per cent, why should not the West lend for 40 years at
two per cent? Four decades will give India the boost
of growth. . . .42

flint—73.1 fi.'£‘i.§§"-) .vi'r'"

.17

IF

Various Other Problems

 

Thus, it can be seen from the above analysis that
due to lack of adequate foreign assistance, India's eco- 1
nomic development could not proceed at a fast enough rate
to enable capital formation. To add to India's other prob-
lems, China attacked India in October, 1962, which caused
the finance minister to present a bill costing $1,820
million for defense in 1963. Before the attack (1961-62),
defense budgets were around $700 million. New taxes of

43 As a result

$630 million were imposed on the public.
there was a rapid increase in prices. Inflation is inevit-
able in a backward country when she plans expenditures

beyond her resources. The Pakistani aggression in 1965

 

42Ward, 020 Cite, p. 2190

43Henry C. Hart, "India after the Chinese Attack,"
‘The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social
Science, CCCLI (January, I964), 52.

 

170
followed by a drought aggravated India's economic problems
considerably, and today she finds herself in the grip of an
economic crisis of great magnitude.

As has been pointed out earlier, the population
growth of nine million a year wipes out per capita prog-
ress. Voluntary savings and tax proceeds are insufficient
to prevent a rise in the price level. As India depends for
her economic growth on imports of machinery and other capi-
tal goods, economic frustration is inherent in all her
plans.

The government conceived the plans for rapid indus-
trialization on too large a scale which led to inflation in
the absence of adequate resources. The foreign exchange
debt in March, 1964, was RS.9,364 crores whereas it was
RS.2,773 crores in 1950-51 and RS.7,996 crores in 1962—63.
The total debt obligation of the government at the end of
the third plan will be RS.13,600 crores.44

All this caused the value of the rupee to decline
tremendously, and ultimately on June 5, 1966, India had to
devalue the rupee from a rate of RS.4.76 to RS.7.5 as equal
to a U.S. dollar. The government has been cautioned by
many economists after the devaluation not to plan extrava-
gantly. On June 19, 1966, Iengar, former Governor of the

Reserve Bank, warned the government in these words:

 

44Sunil Banik, "The Third Plan and the Small Man,"

The Modern Review, CXVII, No. 2 (August, 1965), 101.

171

. . . a further dose of devaluation would become
necessary in two years, if extravagant plans, leading
to total illegitimate use of deficit finance were not
checked.

. . . An further devaluation will not only be
ruinous to this country, but will erase it like many
other countries in the world.

Another eminent economist of India, Dr. V. K. R. V.
Rao, said in Bombay on July 4, 1966:
. . . devaluation was an unmistakable warning that
the country could not afford any more to live beyond
its means. . . .46
The government is aware now that if the plans are
not curtailed, and the internal production does not go up,
the country will be in trouble.
Most of these difficulties lie in the failure of
agriculture which needs a complete reform. As the lack of
space does not permit inclusion of details, the writer will

discuss only briefly that major obstacle to growth, tradi-

tional agriculture.

Backward Agriculture

 

In an underdeveloped economy, land is still the
basic productive resource of the country. Raymond Frost

analyzes a backward society by giving an illustration:

 

45":[c-zngar Cautions Against Risks of Devaluationa"

The Overseas Hindustan Times, XVII, No. 26 (June 30, 1966),
87

46"Rao Feels Fresh Look at Plan Size Unavoidable,"
The Overseas Hindustan Times, XVII, No. 28 (July 14, 1966),
3.

172
When the late President Somoza of Nicaragua was
asked by a visitor, "General, where is your farm?" he
replied, "Nicaragua is my farm." These words were
intended to reflect the President's pride in the fer-
tile lands of his country; but they also happen to
define with some accuracy the nature of a backward
economy. . . .47
Prime Minister Nehru expressed the same feeling when he
said about the dams in a public speech, "These are my
temples." India, like Nicaragua, is still an agrarian
country. The 1951 census asserts the country by statisti-
cal definition to be 82.7 per cent rural, a decrease of
only 6 per cent in the 30 years after 1921.48
Agriculture engages 70 per cent of all male and
female workers--l30 million out of a total labor force of

188 million.49

The main problem before the government is
the transformation of agriculture. Without proper irriga-
tion and manure, production per acre in India is far less
than in the West. India is a hot country; therefore water
tops the list of agricultural needs. Irrigated land can
produce more, and more crops per year, than land which is

not irrigated. India has given high priority to the build-

ing of dams for irrigation since the beginning of her first

 

47Frost, op. cit., p. 121.

48Anthony Leeds, "Cultural Factors in Education:
India, Brazil, the United States, the Soviet Union--Some
Problems of Applied Anthropology," Contemporary India, ed.
Baidya Nath Varma (Bombay: Asia Puinshing House, I964),
p. 306.

49Pitambar Pant, "The Development of India," Scien-
tific American, CCIX, No. 3 (September, 1963), 191.

 

173
five year plan in 1951. Before that the peasants looked
toward the Himalayas and said:

. . . There . . . is one of nature's great ironies.

Up there, where nobody needs it, the rain falls in
torrents. The plain here . . . has the lowest mean
average rainfall of any place in the country. Once a
year the great Sutlej river hustles all the rainfall to
the sea where nobody needs it. In between, everybody
needs it. And nobody gets it. . . .50

A vast amount of material is available on the irri-
gation schemes of Indian planning in statistical terms, and
the writer does not want to include it here exhaustively.
But from Table 25 an idea can be had of the country's irri-
gation potential based on some of the major projects which
cost more than RS.4,000 lakhs each.

Taken as a whole, the accomplishments in building
dams have been considerable. But India is still short of
food, because during the first decade of planning agricul-
ture was not given the top priority. Moreover, the vast
irrigation schemes are of no use unless their water is
brought, at the right time and in adequate amounts, to the
thirsty land where the crops are to be grown. For this the
economists have suggested that at least 40,000 miles of new
channels must be dug each year, and the existing ones must

be maintained.51

 

50Quoted in I. W. Moomaw, The Challenge of Hunger-~A

Program for More Effective Foreign Aid (New York: _FrederiEk
A. Praeger, 1966), p. 62.

51Henry Maddick, "India's Battle for Food," Current
History, XLIV, No. 259 (March, 1963), 165.

 

174

TABLE 25

MAJOR IRRIGATION SCHEMES AND THE EXPECTED AREA OF
IRRIGATION BY THE END OF THE THIRD PLAN IN INDIA

 

 

 

Total Cost in Expected Area of
Name Of Scheme and Lakhs (Irriga— Irrigation to End
State (Costing More ti P ti f Thi d Pl 1
Than RS.4 ooo Lakhs) 0“ °r 0“ 0 r an n
’ Only) 1,000 Acres

1. Bhakra Nangal

(Punjab and

Rajasthan) 10,189 3,604
2. Chambal (Rajasthan

and Madhya Pradesh) 5,485 800
3. Gandak (Bihar and

Uttar Pradesh) 4,945 300
4. Hirakud (Orissa) 9,334 1,337
5. Mahi (Gujarat and

Rajasthan) 4,178 214
6. Nagarjunasagar

(Andhra Pradesh) 9,112 900
7. Narmada, Broach

(Gujarat) 4,309 . .
8. Rajasthan Canal

(Rajasthan) 6,647 284
9. Tungabhadra (Andhra

Pradesh and Mysore) 4,453 815

 

Source: S. Kesava Iyengar, Fifteen Years of Demo-
cratic Planning--Volume Two (Bombay: Asia Puinshing
House, 1965), pp. 472-73.

When India is short of foreign exchange, agricul-
tural development must occupy the top position. And there
is hardly any chance to be more optimistic about the food-
grain output unless India discards her red tape, cumbersome

bureaucracy, and administrative inefficiency. Estimating

agricultural problems, Spencer writes:

175
. . . In irrigation, huge investments were made in
projects with very long "gestation periods," vital food
benefits thereby being postponed. . . . Budgets for
canals have sometimes been placed in later periods,

still further postponing benefits, and claims have been

made Egat farmers frequently do not use the water.

To produce more food, India does not need to use the
heavy machinery of the West which would displace farm labor
and would be more expensive to operate. As India is short
of oil and the repairing workshops, the improvement of
facilities--providing better seeds, fertilizers, and irri-
gation--is itself able to create an agrarian revolution.

Lastly, farmers will produce more if their products
can be brought to the market. In the absence of roads,
villages can never join the cities and help India to indus-
trialize rapidly. Barbara Ward is very convincing when she
writes:

. . . Anyone who has watched the stream of bicy-
clists with tins of milk strapped on their handlebars
heading for Delhi market in the smoky dawn has seen at
first hand what the combination of road and market can
do for even the smallest entrepreneur. . . .53

India's current emphasis on heavy industries is
still premature. The importing of food products has con-

tributed to inflation and reduced the foreign exchange

reserves. The history of the industrialized nations

 

52Daniel L. Spencer, "India's Planning and Foreign
Aid," Pacific Affairs, XXXIV, No. 1 (Spring, 1961), 36.

53Ward, op. cit., p. 188.

176
indicates that agricultural surpluses have created a solid
base for industrial revolution. Mansoor Ali writes:

. . In England and other European countries indus-
trial revolution took place between 1750 to 1850 only
due to the existence of "Agricultural Surpluses. "
Japan's high rate of development in the last decade of
19th century and in the first decade of 20th century
was also mainly due to "Agricultural Surpluses" and so
was the case with Russia after the Great Revolution of
1917.54

To recapitulate, from the preceding brief analysis

it is apparent that there is no reason to be more optimis-
tic now about the production capabilities of the country.
Most writers use the national income figures to reject any
pessimistic statement. The total national income has no
doubt increased during the plan periods, but the inflation
and the population increases have been even more pro-
nounced. At the same time that a rise in costs of consumer
goods has increased the total national income, the general
condition of the people has become even worse than it was
two decades ago. The situation is summed up by B. R.
Shenoy, Director of the School of Social Sciences at
Gujarat University:

Per capita consumption of food grains averaged 15.8
ounces per day in 1958. . . . Since then the average
has fluctuated downward. Between 1956 and 1960 the
annual per capita use of cloth fell from 14.7 metres to
13.9 metres.

Further evidence of the plight of the bulk of the

population shows up in the wage rates of industrial and
agricultural workers. Although the output of each

 

54Mansoor Ali, "Deficit Financing and the Rise in
the Price-Level in India," The Indian Journal of Economics,
XLV, No. 180 (July, 1965), 61.

 

177

industrial worker has risen by two and a half times in
the past decade, wage rates on the average have gone up
by only 10 per cent. Agricultural wages have actually
declined. In the context of steadily rising prices,
both groups of workers in real terms, have done even
less well. Moreover, unemployment has increased.55

A letter from a common man sometimes tells a lot
more about the general conditions of the people than all
the commission reports of the government. S. K. Mukher-
jea's letter echoes the feelings of the masses:

Sir, human suffering is mounting daily in our
mother-land even after 18 years of independence. I
wonder if ever again we will see people with small
means getting the bare necessities of life. . . . The
Government is planning to forge ahead with gigantic and
expensive projects, while the man in the street though
slogging from dawn to dusk is still unable to secure
two square meals . . . not to speak of any luxury.

May I, therefore, appeal to our popular Prime Minis-
ter to consider sympathetically these difficulties of
millions of his country-men and direct his government
to invest . . . the maximum possible energy and
resources on food . . . rather than embark on oil-
drilling and other big experimental activities?55

Suggestions
The writer has discussed briefly the implications of

the government's policy for rapid development through
investments in heavy industries and technology. The pur-
pose of the remaining chapter is to offer some suggestions
for improving the situation on the basis of the information

presented in the previous chapters.

 

55Quoted in Robert Theobald, "Needed: A New Devel—
opment Philosophy," International Development Review, VI,
No. 1 (March, 1964), 22.

56S. K. Mukherjea, "People's Hardships," The States-
man, No. 20171 (August 14, 1965), p. 2.

 

 

178

Dedicated Administrators

As has been said in Chapter II, ancient Indian edu-
cation functioned to create a very small number of highly
educated persons. The existence of the educational insti-
tutions to a great extent depended upon the capacities of
the teachers who had renounced the world. The graduates of
these institutions were so trained in theology that the
spirit of renunciation pervaded their whole lives. They
felt that they owed no real responsibility to the commu-
nity. Their interests were unaffected by any political,
local, or family interest. The life of the spirit was to
them nobler than the life of external power and enjoyment.
The ancient Indian education considered the thinker greater
than the man of action, the spiritual man greater than the
thinker. To them the soul that lived in God was more
perfect than the soul that lived for earthly joys.

It is apparent that no country can build an indus-
trial economy with this type of educated personnel.

The dilemma of the ancient Indian education was that
it did not train people to be materialistic enough to cre-
ate economic growth in the society. The dilemma of modern
education is that it creates people too materialistic to
pay high regard to their duties and obligations to society.
For personal betterment they hinder the economic welfare of

the nation.

179

Today India has to revise her whole educational
system to start an economic and social revolution. The
ancient Indian system stands condemned today as does the
Western. India must produce more food and raise the mate-
rial standards of the people without falling victim to
materialism. Thus the task before Indian education today
is to conserve the best of the ancient education by turning
out honest, strong, humble, God-fearing individuals. India
must also adopt the technical efficiency of the West with-
out taking over its ever-expanding greed for material
things. There is nothing wrong with adopting Gandhi as a
model who lived a simple, honest life. No doubt, his
emphasis on basic education and home industries was short—
sighted, as it could not solve the food problem of the
nation. But his appeal for simplicity remains very attrac-
tive. Indians do not need to feel ashamed before anyone in
the world just because they do not have tables, chairs,
sofas, crockery, cutlery, cars, and television sets. India
can take warning from the industrialized countries of the
West that the cars, refrigerators, television sets, whis-
kies, and cigarettes do not promote spiritual and emotional

development.57

 

57Michael Young, "Fifty Million Unemployed," Stu-
dies in Education and Culture: in Honour of Shri D. C.
PEvate, ed. G. S. HaIappatTBanganre: Diamond JuBiIee
CeIebration, 1959), p. 330.

 

180

Thus the first suggestion is that the Indian admin-
istrators do not need to live like the great imperial
administrators of England. Today they must live with the
masses like the missionaries with their great qualities of
head and heart to introduce changes in the society. If
they retain their enthusiasm for tiger-hunting like the
colonial administrators, the rich men of the community will
cluster around them. The masses will desert them because
they do not represent their desperate poverty. A sense of
equality between the fortunate few and the innumerable poor
must emerge to make the great efforts of the government
successful. Without exceptional leadership characterized
by great administrative capacity, India is not going to
break her vicious circle of poverty.

I.A.S. Officers and
Community DeveIOpment

 

It has been pointed out in Chapter III how, after a
long controversy, the British decided to start three uni-
versities in India in 1857 on the model of the London Uni-
versity. This education was extraneous to Indian condi-
tions, and the great leaders of India, Tagore and Gandhi,
raised their voices against it. Unfortunately, education
could not get the undivided attention of the leaders
because they were chiefly fighting for freedom. -World War

II, India's independence, and partition are some of the

181
other great events of history which kept India's enthusiasm
for education at a minimum during all this period.

Chapters IV, V, and VI indicate the massive efforts
of the government after independence toward education for
rapid industrialization. But the task of changing the
whole society from agriculture to manufacturing is not an
easy one. Expansion of education is justified in those
countries where the increase of population is restricted
and where capital resources are almost unlimited. How can
India absorb her ever-expanding population with very thin
resources? Today the grim dilemma before the government
has appeared that there are no jobs either for the educated
or the uneducated.

In the absence of proper records and employment
exchanges, it is impossible to give exact figures. But it
is estimated that about 20 million people work for one hour
or less per day, 27 million for two hours or less, and 45

58 These are

million work for four hours or less per day.
the figures collected by the National Sample Survey in
1959. The total labor force was 160 million persons at
that time. How can a country develop when these people who
can produce are condemned to idleness? And another ques-

tion related to this arises: why must a country remain

underdeveloped if it can use all these people?

 

58Quoted in T. R. Sundaram, "Utilisation of Idle

Manpower in India's Economic Development," Pacific Affairs,
XXXIV, No. 2 (Summer, 1961), 132.

 

182

The staggering increase of population must be
restricted if the country wants to achieve economic inde-
pendence. Much has been written on India's population;
therefore the author does not need to suggest means to
check population growth in these pages. But he wants to
suggest means to utilize the unemployed to add to the
nation's prosperity.

The Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission
reported that enough water to cultivate 3.5 million acres
was available from the dams, but it could not be used for
lack of outlets from canals to villages.59 Here lies the
challenge for the administrators. If they have established
rapport with the communities, they can get the channels
made. Students and farmers will be glad to help them,
especially when they are free. A one-mile-long channel can
irrigate 100 acres. The village-level worker is paid RS.80
to RS.100 a month. His low salary, training, and heavy
responsibility check his effectiveness with the villagers.
The writer suggests that the I.A.S. (Indian Administrative
Services) officers should visit the villages frequently and
help the local authorities succeed in such projects as
irrigation and flood control, land reclamation, afforesta-

tion and soil conservation, road construction, construction

 

59Om P. Tangri, "India's Community Development

Program," International Develgpment Review, III, No. 3
(October, I96I7, 32.

183
and maintenance of field channels for irrigation, construc-
tion and repair of wells, tanks, and school buildings.

But these officers can come out of their offices
when the red tape that keeps them busy is cut short, and
when they have been trained differently. Today they think
that going to villages reduces their prestige. The admin-
istrators should be selected on the basis of their aptitude
to render services rather than their ability to deal with
the files. No doubt these suggestions will make them
resist because they have formed their attitudes under the
old regime, but new methods of selection and training must
be developed in order gradually to solve this problem. How
they should be selected and trained is a subject by itself

and too vast to deal with in this dissertation.

Charismatic Leadership

Much has been said by writers about the need for
democratic public participation to introduce change in an
underdeveloped country. However, it is the observation and
experience of the writer that it does not work successfully
in India. The majority of the people in India do not have
any opinion on many aspects of life. Therefore it again
comes back to the leader to make decisions for the people.
Murphy's attempt to modify intergroup attitudes through
group discussion among college students at Poona University
nullified his hypothesis that there would be more modifica-

tion of intergroup attitudes as a result of group

184
discussion. The students complied with the instructor, and
the greater the emotional force of his appeal the more they

60 The writer

felt the need to conform to his presentation.
discussed the ancient culture, the education, and the
traditions of India in the second chapter to help the
reader understand the basic foundation of the society. It
is the tradition of India that people learn the way of life
from someone who is already treading it. ‘In the past they
learned renunciation and how to search for the Eternal from
their teachers; today they need to learn to build and
prosper from their leaders. The leaders of today need to
have saintly qualities to inspire the whole country to cre-
ate a new era. In other words, charismatic leadership has
more appeal in India than Lewin's democratic leadership.

It can now easily be understood from the above analysis why
Gandhi and Nehru were so popular in India.

The root cause of all problems of corruption, inef—
ficiency, wastage of resources, economic stagnation, and
increasing violence is that people think the present admin-
istration is full of dishonest, corrupt men who plan every-
thing to enhance their wealth, power, and position.
Appleby, as has been described in the preceding pages of
this chapter, was right in his diagnosis that a government

minister can set the tone for a whole department.

 

60Gardner Murphy, In the Minds of Men--The Study of

‘Human Behavior and Social Tensions in_India (New York:
Basic Books, Inc., I9537, pp. II4-I5.

 

185

Balance betyeen Professional
and General Education

 

 

Another problem which has been discussed in this
dissertation is that of putting emphasis on science and
technology. It is true that in the age of science and
technology an emphasis on a scientific education is inevi-
table. But scientific education loses its meaning when
ever—expanding numbers of students want science education
only to secure attractive employment with the Indian
bureaucracy. It is a dangerous trend. The young genera-
tion has been so misguided by the prestige of pure science
that thousands of graduates in physics, chemistry, biology,
and mathematics cannot find a job. Today science needs to
have a broader meaning. The researches in the developed
nations in education, sociology, psychology, literature,
and economics indicate that findings in these branches of
studies are as novel and significant as in any field of
pure science. Researches in any field of knowledge are now
based on scientific principles and deserve attention. For
this reason the writer suggests that the government should
do all it can to maintain balance between general and pro-

fessional education.

_§xcellence in Education
Another major issue in the field of education in
India is the quality of education. Education has developed

so rapidly that universities are affected by the lower

186
standards of applicants for admission. The result, as has
been stated earlier, is that there are too many people for
too few jobs. The problem becomes intense when they do not
have abilities even for the jobs which are available.

University education cannot be improved without
improving primary and secondary education. Teacher train—
ing, accordingly, is the only solution to improve the poor
quality of teachers and pre-university education. Greater
emphasis must be laid on high salary, impartial recruit-
ment, teacher training, inservice training, and refresher
courses.

In India teaching has yet to be built up as a pro-
fession. And a dignified profession cannot be built when
recruitment in colleges and universities is based on
nepotism. Indian colleges and universities stand condemned
as regards the recruitment of faculty. Most of the teach-
ers in a college or university today are the graduates of
the same institution and belong to the same caste and pro-
vince which the institution represents. To substantiate
the preceding statement the writer submits a list of the
teaching staff of the Economics Departments of two univer-
sities in Table 26. These are not exceptional.

The writer suggests that the government should
appoint a commission to recruit teachers at all levels or

review all the applications and challenge the appointment

187

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188
or cancel the annual government grant if the best candidate
was not selected.

This will not solve the problem completely, but
favoritism will come to an end if the appointing authori—
ties know that there is some screening committee above
them.

The suggestion might seem bordering on the freedom
of higher institutions, but drastic measures have to be
taken if freedom is abused. There is no other way to main-

tain excellence in education.

Work and Study Program

A nation which is short of everything does not need
to keep her students ten months in the classrooms. The
writer suggests that there should be a one—month holiday,
four months of field work, and seven months of classroom
study. They should be sent to the places where their
capacities can be best utilized. Thus, the most under-
developed areas of the country can experience rapid

development.

Planned Enrollment

Figures on unemployment among the educated mounted

from 490,000 in 1961 to 780,000 in 1963.61

This suggests
that India must decide the number of students to be

admitted to various higher educational institutions and for

 

61Banik, op. cit., p. 99.

189

what branches of study. In view of the present chaotic
situation, it is necessary for the institutions of higher
learning to enforce strict rules for admission. Tests of
various types should be made in India to evaluate the
performance of each aspirant for higher education. And
those who do not succeed in these tests should be sent to
trade schools to prepare themselves for immediate employ-
ment.

The nation must feel an obligation to provide
employment opportunities to her intellectuals. There is no
use in sending students abroad if on return their talents

are doomed to remain unused in the bureaucratic structure.

Develppment in Small Doses

India should attempt to develop gradually to avoid
_failures of great magnitude. The expansion of university
education without a corresponding ability to absorb the
graduates in the underdeveloped economy of the country is a
matter of very serious concern.

In the previous chapters it has been pointed out
that the colonial rule did very little to raise the eco-
nomic level of the people. Its policies favored the Euro-
pean and destroyed the native businessman.

Economic independence is a product of decades of
planning and achievement. In this respect it is very dif-
ferent from political independence, which can be had some-

times within a very short time.

190

No doubt, big national plans have succeeded and
added glory to the nation in the West. But India is a poor
country and has massive domestic and international pro-
blems. Prematurely big plans in India may actually para-
lyze the whole economy.

The writer suggests that India should focus on small 21
productive schemes after carefully analyzing the total

situation. They must be productive to build capital which ;

is so scarce and whose lack restricts all developmental

 

activities in India.

<u— '

Conclusion

 

India today finds herself in a dangerous position ‘
created by the plans which have been too grand for the
country's capacities to absorb. Her developmental policies
in education have created a kind of rivalry between the
colleges to increase their size. In the annual reports,
heads of the colleges express the remarkable progress made
by their institutions in the last decade. A large number
of enrollments enhances their prestige. What happens to
the graduates when they go out in the market to seek
employment, no one seems to be much concerned about.

In this chapter several suggestions have been put
forward by the writer to develop the country's economy to
utilize the productive capacities of the educated. The

writer fully understands that a backward country has to

191
take many hazardous steps if it is to make its economic
organizations productive and efficient.

The writer has stressed leadership and capital more
than any other factors responsible for rapid development.
The values and attitudes of the leader have been considered
preconditions for development. And if the country does not 2“
have enough to invest, it would soon find all its plans
frustrated. Therefore India must depend upon foreign aid

and her increased exports.

The writer has also indicated in this chapter that

 

though disproportionately large population increase is a
great hazard to capital formation, this liability may be
converted into an asset if the labor of the people can be
used to construct dams, canals, roads, schools, and hospi-
tals which would increase more production in the future and
raise the national income.

As India has imported food grains amounting to

6,313,000 tons in 1963-64,62

the writer has suggested that
agriculture--being the main occupation--should be given the
top priority in all future plans. The emphasis on heavy
industries which has been the major cause of inflation and
devaluation was premature. In the future, India needs to
make its plans a little more practicable in all fields to

check growing misery, frustration, and unemployment in the

country.

 

621bid., p. 97.

192
If well—integrated short-range plans are prepared
and efficiently administered to stimulate growth, the
writer has full faith in India's capacities to break the
vicious circle of ignorance and poverty. But she cannot
make costly mistakes in planning or in implementation

without heading to her doom.

 

CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSIONS

The preceding review of the expansion of higher
education in India reveals that the government after inde-
pendence has been very enthusiastic about attempting to
modernize this field in order to develop the economy of the
country. It also points out that the British government
only partially modernized India and that the present admin-
istration was compelled to begin its operations with a
nineteenth century economy. The rapid educational expan-
sion has not been able to contribute much to the accelera-
tion of Indian economic development because there have been
many roadblocks in its way, such as the population explo-
sion, the lack of capital, and the outdated public admin-
istration.

A realistic assessment of the country's need for
trained personnel needs to be made in view of the country's
economy. If the economy of the country is not developing
at the desired level, then a further expansion of the pres-
ent pattern of higher education means more and more unem-
ployed graduates. The country cannot benefit from higher

193

 

 

194
education if the country's economy is unable to absorb the
trained personnel.

The main finding of this dissertation is that
India's higher educational developments are not coordinated
with the economic growth of the country. Earlier chapters
reveal that never before, in the whole history of the Pi
country, was there such a rush for college education which
would have created a serious imbalance between education
and economy.

The purposes of higher education in the ancient days

 

were other worldly. The graduates, mostly trained in
theology, did not look toward the society or the government
for employment. During the British period institutions of \
higher learning were limited, selective, and costly; there-
fore the rich alone could avail themselves of the educa-
tional opportunities. And in case they could not be
absorbed into the ruling bureaucracy, they went back to
their estates and thus the problem of unemployment never
baffled the government. But today, now that the masses
have awakened and the government has provided facilities
for their education, India has a surplus of trained college
graduates without jobs in almost all fields. The govern-
ment finds itself unable to accommodate them because the
country's economy is relatively stagnant. And thus unem-
ployment of the graduates is one of the most urgent pro-

blems confronting the government.

195

It is clear, then, that effective efforts to remove

economic stagnation should now receive the highest

priority. Attempts to increase the educational output

alone are unrealistic and premature.

summarized as follows:

1.

Summary of Findings

 

The preceding discussion of higher education can be

The ancient system of higher education was very

rigorous and selective. It put great emphasis upon

 

philosophy and the understanding of God. Therefore ;
it could never become popular and remained mostly
confined to the Brahmans.

There was no serious break between the Upanishadic
and the Buddhist educational philosophies. Both
emphasized salvation and spiritual life. The
remarkable change made by Buddhism was that it
admitted the Sudras to its educational institutions.
Muslim education did not flourish in India because
it laid great emphasis on the observation of certain
religious practices and worldly affairs.

The present university system was initiated by
Wood's Despatch of 1854.

The British introduced scientific and technical edu-

cation, but emphasized it to only a minor degree.

2.

196
After independence the Federal Government has
expanded higher education enormously by giving huge
grants to universities and colleges.
The state governments have failed to finance higher

education adequately due to their limited resources;

therefore it has become necessary for the Federal ...

Government to increase its contribution.
Since the Federal Government has put a preimum on

technical education, higher education in India is

l ..1.'_'_-..‘1-.II.‘.|.4 't' 114 t - . . 311w

changing from a literary to a technical pattern.

 

In absence of adequate facilities, the increasing
number of students in Indian universities and col-
leges is responsible for lowering the standards of
education. The number of unemployed graduates is

also climbing up.

Major Conclusions

 

In a poor country, like India, where the resources
are limited, the major problems before the govern-
ment are to maintain standards in higher education
and to provide jobs for the increasing numbers of
university graduates.

As the provinces cannot meet the growing costs of
higher education, the federal financing of education

will need to be on the increase.

197
3. For better utilization of its educated manpower, the
Government of India needs more realistically planned
development in the sphere of higher education.

Suggestions for Improvement of
Indian Higher Education

 

 

Though it is difficult, due to many cultural,
social, historical, and economic barriers, to formulate
foolproof suggestions, yet the writer of this study with
all due humility feels obligated to make the following
suggestions:

1. The progress of the country will require the imagi-
nation and energies of her researchers; therefore
the Government of India should aim at providing more
nearly adequate research facilities in the country.

2. India does not need to open new colleges and uni-
versities if they function merely to increase the
number of unemployed graduates. She should concen-
trate on raising the quality and increasing the
functional utility of existing institutions and
utilizing the services of the educated manpower more
effectively.

3. The Federal Government should increase substantially
its contributions to higher education to maintain
and enhance its quality.

4. Finally, the traditional values of the culture, such

as honesty, simplicity, and austerity, should be

 

198
properly understood, appreciated, inculcated, and
exemplified by leaders of higher education. If
these vital qualities are lacking in those who
receive the benefits of higher education, India's
vision of becoming a great nation will never be

translated into reality.

 

GLOSSARY

Apara Vidya--lower knowledge.

Asrama or Ashrama—-a hermitage, any of the four stages of
the Brahmanical scheme of life.

Atman--soul, self, or individual essence.

Bhikshu--a Brahmanical or Buddhist mendicant ascetic.

Brahman-~a person of the highest caste among the Hindus
whose chief duty is the study and teaching of the
Vedas and the performance of religious ceremonies.

Brahmacharya--celibacy.

Crore—-ten million.

Dharmashastra--a metrical law book.

Guru--a religious teacher.

Gurukula--family of the teacher, religious institution.

Kshattriya-—one belonging to the governing and military
caste, second of the four great Hindu castes.

Lakh--one hundred thousand.

MadrisSa or Madrasah--a Mohammedan college.

Maghavan-~the great national god of the Hindus who brings
down the rain, wields the thunderbolt, overcomes
enemies, and rewards his worshippers.

Maya-~illusion, magic.

Mofussil-—the provincial or rural districts.

Nyagrodha--fig tree.

Naya Paisa--equal to 1/5 cent, smallest coin in Indian
currency.

199

200
Para Vidya--higher knowledge.
Prajapati--lord of creation.

Rupee--the principal coin of India equivalent to .21 U.S.
dollar till June 5, 1966.

Samkara--expositor of the Vedic philosophy.

Sanyasi--a wandering, homeless, religious mendicant.

Shishya-—discip1e.

Sudra--the lowest of the four great Hindu castes.

Tripitaka--the three divisions of Buddhist scriptures.

Upanishads-~Hindu treatises concerned with the nature of
man and the universe, forming a late part of the
Vedic literature.

Veda--the most ancient sacred literature of the Hindus.

Yama--the lord of the infernal regions.

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