to listen to their teachings. However, when in 1706 some Danish missionaries came to Tranquebar in Southern India, things began to change a great deal. They studied the languages of India, these Danish missionaries, and established some schools for the purpose of teaching the Bible. In 1727 the first English mission founded in India a society for promoting Christian knowledge but it did not make any headway until the beginning of the nineteenth century, when the third missionary society of the English Baptists was established in Bengal. The names of Carey and Marshman are closely linked up with the pioneering efforts of Christian missionaries toward introducing Western education in India.

were

Even though the Christian missionaries anxious to impart education to the people along Western lines, the East India Company hesitated to encourage education of any kind at all. When in 1792, William Wilberforce proposed to add two clauses to the Charter Act of the next year for sending out schoolmasters to India, the Directors of the Company strongly objected to the proposal. "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; if the natives required anything in the way of education they must come to England for it."** This policy is at the bottom of the present educational system established by the British government in the land. This point is conclusively proven by the fact that until 1835 no appreciable progress was made in the promotion of education and when education began to spread, Lord Curzon obstructed its progress in 1904 by the passage of his notorious Indian Universities Act.

Educating the backward people, forsooth!—these, for instance, are the brilliant records of British Administration. In 1781, Warren Hastings established a Mohammedan College at Calcutta and in 1792 Lord

**J. C. Marshman's Evidence, Lords' Second Report, 1853.

Cornwallis established a Sanskrit College at Benares. In 1813 for the first time the British Parliament offered the sum of £10,000-what a munificent sum!— from the revenue of India to be appropriated for the education of the people of the three provinces of Bengal, Bombay and Madras. Over this proposition, however, the administration slept until 1823. In the meanwhile, under the leadership of Rajah Ram Mohan Roy, the Maker of Modern India, the energetic Mr. David Hare, the illiterate English watchmaker of Calcutta, established the Hare School in 1817. "It was the first respectable English seminary in Bengal, and was founded by the Hindus themselves before the British government did anything for education in India."

The findings of Sir Thomas Munroe, the Governor of Madras, whose investigation lasted from 1822 to 1826, showed that under the old Hindu system, in the Presidency (or Province) of Madras alone, the number of Hindu schools and colleges amounted to 12,498 among a population of something over twelve million. He further said in his report: "I am inclined to estimate the portion of the whole population who receive school education to be nearer one-third than one-fourth of the whole. The state of education exhibited, low as it is, compared with our own country, is higher than it was in most European countries at no very distant time." In 1823, according to Lord Elphinstone's findings, there existed in Bombay Presidency 1,705 Hindu schools and colleges, and in 1835 Lord Bentinck discovered that in Bengal among a population of seven million people, there were 3,355 schools. "In every village there was an elementary school where the village boys were taught reading, writing, arithmetic and the elements of mensuration. These elementary schools were called Pathasalas, or school-houses. Besides these, there were collegiate institutions like the Parishads for higher

education in grammar, mathematics, rhetoric, poetry, astronomy and other branches of science and philosophy, as they were known to the Hindus at that time.

The proportion of the latter to the former, that is of collegiate schools to village schools, was one to three.'

The years 1835 and 1854 are important landmarks in the history of India. In 1835 Lord Macaulay's famous note (which, however, indulged in unnecessary, notorious rhetoric), was passed by Lord Bentinck with the help and support of such progressive Indians as Rajah Ram Moham Roy, Sir Rajah Radhakant Deb Bahadur, Romoy Dutt and Takawa Jung, the Mohammedan Nawab of Bengal. Thenceforth English became the language of superior education and the promotion of European literature and science the chief aim of Indian education. And in 1854, the Lords' Committee recommended the establishing of Universities on the model of the London University in the three Presidency towns of Bombay, Calcutta and Madras, which came into being in 1857. The Punjab Universtiy was established in 1882, and in 1887 another was established at Allahabad. Thus by the end of the nineteenth century, England established five universities in a population of about three hundred million!

The efforts of the Christian missionaries toward spreading education in India have been very laudable indeed. They have studied the languages of India, translated the Bible into many of them and established elementary schools, English High Schools and even Colleges. Their work of uplifting the untouchable pariahs deserves an unstinted meed of praise. Unfortunately, however, this bright side is not without its dark counterpart. Not with the gentleness of Jesus, nor with the calvary of Christ do the missionaries approach other peoples. Their Savior's name they profess, but His principles they rarely, if ever, practice. They put on airs of superiority and with unequalled arrogance and narrow-mindedness criticize and abuse older-and in many respects su

*Quoted from "India and Her People" by Swami Abhedananda.

perior-peoples, cultures and civilizations. There are, however, fine exceptions, such as the English missionaries Andrews and Pearson and the American, Mr. S. E. Stokes, of Philadelphia Quaker parentage, who has married a Hindu lady and lives as a Hindu and is, like Andrews, committed to the Independence of India by Gandhi's methods of non-violent non-cooperation.

The record of the British government, however, is dark and dismal. Education is neither free nor compulsory-not even elementary education-aye, there are not enough schools to accommodate all the children of school-going age. The people's money is utilized toward maintaining the costliest system of administration in the world and the tax-payer is denied the elementary rights of a citizen, namely, free education, pure air and decent living. Rev. J. T. Sunderland's testimony deserves careful consideration: "Much credit has been given to the (British) Indian government for education. It has done some good work in this direction, for which let it have full praise. But how little has it done compared with the need, or compared with what the people want, or compared with its abilitv, if it would only use its resources primarily for India's good! Why has so little of the people's money been spent for education? In the schools of India, high and low, there are some 4.428.000 scholars (if we include the native states).* But what is this number in a population nearly as large as that of all Europe! How much does the Indian government spend annually for the population! The munificent sum of a penny and a fifth per head of the population! Think of it! * * * With their native industries so badly broken down, the Indian people have special need for industrial, technical and practical education. But their rulers are giving them almost nothing of this

*Proportionately there are more schools in some Native States than in British India. Primary education in Baroda is free and compulsory-both for boys and girls.-H. M.

kind. Britain's neglect of education is a dark stain upon her treatment of India.”** The picture is completed by the words of Mr. Reddy, an English friend of India: "England, through her missionaries, offered the people of India thrones of gold in another world, but refused them a simple chair in this world."

All told, more blood has been made to flow on the ensanguined battle-fields of the world by the Christians than by the followers of any other religion. They have inflicted severer injustice, cruelty and misery upon the world, and yet one feels that India's history would have been incomplete, had she not come in contact with Christianity. Neither churchianity nor the dogmatic narrowness of priest-ridden theology is needed in India: What she needs is a thorough acquaintance with the life and personality of Jesus. It were futile to exalt Jesus and run down Christna or Buddha-as Christian missionaries do. Jesus is the most illustrious star in the galaxy of those who transcend the bounds of race, country and creedneither to the Jews nor to the Christians alone does He belong: He belongs to the whole of Humanity. The life-stories of Christna and Buddha are almost identical with the life-story of Christ. The sublimity of Christ's teaching is not unknown to His predecessors Christna (1400 B. C.)* nor Buddha (547 B. C.) But while fully realizing the worth of their Avatars and Teachers, the Hindus can ill afford to ignore the greatness of Jesus the Christ, the embodiment of the Highest and the fountain-source of inspiration. Stripped of theological trappings, the pure teachings. of Christ would indeed bring the millennium, not only in India but all over the world.

During Christianity's career in India, or rather during the career of Christian theology, two great forces have been born in the land, superficially poles apart yet basically the same-namely, the Brahmo Samaj

**Paper on "The Causes of Famines in India" before the Canadian Institute.

*The date assigned to Christna varies from 3000 B. C. to 1400 B. C.-not to stretch it millenniums backward.-H. M.