In 1826 the British Counted 12,498 Schools in Madras. In Most Districts the Pupils Were Mostly Shudras. Sixty Years Later, Half the Boys Were Out of School

A Collector writes to Madras, 17 August 1823

Bellary, in the Ceded Districts of the Madras Presidency. The Collector — the Company's chief officer for a district of "nearly a million of souls" — is A.D. Campbell, and he is a year late with a return the Board of Revenue asked for in July 1822: how many schools are there in your district, and who studies in them?

His answer, dated 17 August 1823, counts 533 schools and, he says, "not 7,000" pupils. Then he explains why the number is so low. "In many villages, where formerly there were schools, there are now none; and in many others, where there were large schools, now only a few of the children of the most opulent are taught, others being unable, from poverty, to attend or to pay what is demanded."

The cause, he writes, is "the gradual but general impoverishment of the country. The means of the manufacturing classes have been, of late years greatly diminished, by the introduction of our own European manufactures, in lieu of the Indian cotton fabrics … The greater part of the middling and lower classes of the people are now unable to defray the expenses incident upon the education of their offspring."

And the money that used to keep learning alive? "Of the 533 institutions for education, now existing in this district, I am ashamed to say not one now derives any support from the state." The old grants of land and cash made "under the Hindoo Governments" for teachers who taught free had, "under our rule", "deteriorated … into the means of supporting ignorance" — paid on to heirs who no longer taught.

That is not an Indian nationalist writing in 1923. It is an East India Company Collector, in the Company's own files, in 1823. Two and a half years later his Governor, Sir Thomas Munro, added up every district's return and wrote the minute this Investigation is about.

At a glance

• 12,498 schools and "colleges" in the Madras Presidency, population 12,850,941 — "one school to every 1,000 of the population", or one to every 500 males. (Munro, Minute of 10 March 1826, para 1)
• 184,110 boys attending, which Munro reckoned as "little more than one-fourth" of boys aged five to ten, and "nearer to one-third" once home tuition was counted. (para 2)
• In the Tamil districts, Shudras and castes below them were 70 to 84 per cent of pupils; in Malabar 54 per cent; in Bellary 63 per cent; in Ganjam 63.5 per cent. Only in the Telugu districts were Brahmins and Vaishyas the majority. (Collectors' returns 1822–25, as tabulated in Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree, ch. II)
• Bengal and Bihar: "100,000" village schools, "closely interwoven … with the habits of the people", supported "by the Natives themselves". (William Adam, Reports, 1835–38)
• 1879–80: 12.58 per cent of school-age boys in primary school in the Madras Presidency — half Munro's 1826 proportion. (Madras education returns, as computed by Dharampal, ch. VII)
• Macaulay, 2 February 1835: "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia"; "I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books." (Minute on Education)

First, the words a beginner needs

The East India Company. A British trading company that, by 1800, ruled most of India through three "Presidencies" — Bengal, Madras and Bombay — each with a Governor. The Crown took over from the Company in 1858.

A Collector. The Company's chief officer in a district: he collected the land revenue, ran the courts of first instance, and answered the Government's questions. The Madras survey of 1822 was done by asking every Collector to count.

A Minute. A formal written opinion by a Governor or a member of his Council, entered in the record. Munro's minute of 1826 is his considered view on the returns; Macaulay's of 1835 is his argument about what the Government should pay for.

Endowments and revenue assignments. Before the British, rulers supported teachers and temples not with a budget but by assigning them the revenue of a village or a plot of land, or a cash grant (a yeomiah). Campbell's letter describes exactly this. When the Company centralised the revenue, those assignments were either resumed or paid on to heirs without the duty attached.

Shudra. In the four-varna scheme, the fourth and largest group — cultivators, artisans, herders. The 1822 returns asked Collectors to count "Brahmin", "Vysee" (Vaishya), "Soodra" and "all other castes"; the last meant castes ranked below Shudras, most of which are today's Scheduled Castes.

Adam's reports. William Adam, a Scottish former missionary, was commissioned by Governor-General Bentinck to survey education in Bengal and Bihar. His three reports (1835, 1836, 1838) are the only detailed British survey of village schooling in the east.

The claim we are testing

The popular version, on one side: "Before the British, India had a school in every village, open to all castes, and the British destroyed it." On the other: "Indian education was Brahmin-only Sanskrit rote until Macaulay gave India English." Layer by layer:

1. The Company's own survey found thousands of schools in Madras, mostly paid for by parents, in which — in most districts — most pupils were not Brahmins. True, from the returns and Munro's minute.
2. "A school in every village, open to all." Partly. Munro's own arithmetic says a quarter to a third of boys were in school and almost no girls; Adam estimated a school in "most" villages, not all; and the "all other castes" column, though present, is small.
3. "The British shut the schools down." Not what the record shows. No order closing village schools has been found. What the Company's own officers describe is starvation: the old endowments were not renewed or were paid to non-teachers; the peasantry was impoverished; and the Government chose to fund a different system. The schools died; nobody signed their death warrant.
4. "Macaulay created Indian education." Unsupported. Macaulay's Minute concerns one small budget line — the Charter Act's lakh of rupees a year — for higher education in Calcutta. It did not touch village schools, which it does not mention. It did, in its own words, "strike at the root" of state support for Sanskrit and Arabic.

Document one: the survey and the minute (Madras, 1822–26)

On 2 July 1822 the Madras Government ordered its Board of Revenue "to ascertain the number of schools and the state of education among the natives in the provinces". The Collectors were sent a form: number of schools and colleges; number of male and female scholars; scholars by caste — Brahmin, Vysee, Soodra, "all other castes", and Mussalman. The returns trickled in over two and a half years. Canara's Collector sent none, saying it would take too long.

Munro's minute of 10 March 1826 sums them. Its first paragraph: "the number of schools, and of what are called colleges, in the territories under this presidency, amount to 12,498, and the population to 12,850,941; so that there is one school to every 1,000 of the population; but as only a very few females are taught in schools, we may reckon one school to every 500 of the population."

His second paragraph does the sum the Board of Revenue had not: 12,850,000 people, halve for females, take one-ninth of the males as aged five to ten, "which is the period which boys in general remain at school" — 713,000 boys of school age; 184,110 actually in school, "little more than one-fourth". Add those taught at home — in Madras city alone 26,963, "about five times greater than that taught in the schools" — and he was "inclined to estimate the portion of the male population who receive school education to be nearer to one-third than one-fourth".

Then a sentence rarely quoted: "The state of education here exhibited, low as it is compared with that of our own country, is higher than it was in most European countries at no very distant period."

Munro's diagnosis of why it was low: not the teachers' caste or the books, but money. "The monthly rate paid by each scholar is from four to six or eight annas. Teachers in general do not earn more than six or seven rupees monthly … the main causes of the low state of education are the little encouragement which it receives, from there being but little demand for it, and the poverty of the people."

His remedy was a state system: a teacher-training school; two "principal schools" in each of the 20 Collectorates and one in each of about 300 tehsildaries; 48,000 rupees a year, "not … less than half a lakh". "Whatever expense government may incur in the education of the people, will be amply repaid by the improvement of the country."

Document two: who was in the schools

The interesting column in the returns is caste. Dharampal, who copied the returns from the Tamil Nadu State Archives and tabulated them in 1983, summarised what they show, language area by language area:

"in the Tamil-speaking areas … the twice-born ranged between 13% in South Arcot to some 23% in Madras, the Muslims form less than 3% in South Arcot and Chingleput to 10% in Salem, while the Soodras and the other castes ranged from about 70% in Salem and Tinnevelly to over 84% in South Arcot."

In Malabar, "the Soodras, and the other castes accounted for some 54% of the school going students"; in Bellary, "some 63%"; in Ganjam, "around 63.5%". "It is only in the Telugu-speaking districts that the twice-born formed the major proportion of the school going students" — Brahmins 24 to 46 per cent, Vaishyas 10.5 to 29, "and of the Soodras and other castes from 35% in Guntoor to over 41% in Cuddapah and Vizagapatam."

So the title's claim holds for most of the Presidency's districts and not for the Telugu ones. Dharampal's own summary sentence is careful: "It was the groups termed Soodras, and the castes considered below them who predominated in the thousands of the then still-existing schools in practically each of these areas." The returns were, he notes, "the sort of comment which the makers of policy in London wished to hear" only in their pessimism; in the "climate of that period" nobody had a motive to inflate the number of low-caste pupils.

Two limits should be stated. The category "all other castes" — the future Scheduled Castes — is present but small, and the returns do not separate it from "Soodra" in Munro's totals. And girls were almost absent: the few Hindu girls in school were, several Collectors reported, "dancing girls" destined for the temples; only in Malabar and the Jeypoor zamindari of Vizagapatam were girls numerous.

Read the actual document

From Munro's minute of 10 March 1826, paragraphs 1–3, as reproduced from the Fort St George Revenue Consultations in Dharampal's The Beautiful Tree, pp. 249–250:

"From these reports it appears that the number of schools, and of what are called colleges, in the territories under this presidency, amount to 12,498, and the population to 12,850,941; so that there is one school to every 1,000 of the population … the number actually attending the schools is only 184,110, or little more than one-fourth of that number … I am, however, inclined to estimate the portion of the male population who receive school education to be nearer to one-third than one-fourth of the whole, because we have no returns from the provinces of the numbers taught at home … The state of education here exhibited, low as it is compared with that of our own country, is higher than it was in most European countries at no very distant period."

And from A.D. Campbell's Bellary letter of 17 August 1823, paragraph 21: "Of the 533 institutions for education, now existing in this district, I am ashamed to say not one now derives any support from the state."

Document three: Bengal — Adam's 100,000

William Adam's survey for the Bengal Government reached the same picture from the other side of India. His first report (1835) made the estimate that has been quoted ever since:

"The estimate of 100,000 such schools in Bengal and Behar is confirmed by a consideration of the number of villages in those two provinces. Their number has been officially estimated at 150,748, of which, not all, but most have each a school. If it be admitted that there is so large a proportion as a third of the villages that have no schools, there will still be 100,000 that have them. Let it be admitted that these calculations from uncertain premises are only distant approximations to the truth, and it will still appear that the system of village schools is extensively prevalent; that the desire to give education to their male children must be deeply seated in the minds of the parents even of the humblest classes; and that these are the institutions, closely interwoven as they are with the habits of the people and the customs of the country, through which primarily, although not exclusively, we may hope to improve the morals and intellect of the native population."

Adam defined these "indigenous elementary schools" as "those schools in which instruction in the elements of knowledge is communicated and which have been originated and are supported by the Natives themselves". His later, door-to-door reports on single thanas — Natore in Rajshahi, then districts in Bihar — counted pupils by caste and found, in Dharampal's summary, that in "the two districts of Bihar" too it was Shudras and the castes below them who "predominated". Adam recorded that the teaching of the common schools in Bengal was "chiefly in the hands of the Kayastha or writer-caste".

The 100,000 figure is an extrapolation, and Adam says so. But the finding underneath it — that parents of "the humblest classes" were paying for schools without any help from the state — is the same as Campbell's and Munro's.

Document four: what the Company chose instead — Macaulay, 2 February 1835

Munro's plan died with him in 1827. In Bengal, the sum Parliament had set aside in 1813 "for the revival and promotion of literature, and the encouragement of the learned natives of India" — a lakh of rupees a year under the Charter Act — was fought over by two factions of the Committee of Public Instruction: those who wanted to keep funding Sanskrit and Arabic colleges, and those who wanted English. Thomas Babington Macaulay, the new Law Member of the Governor-General's Council, settled it with a Minute.

Its most famous sentence is the one everyone knows: "I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia." Its most consequential is less quoted:

"I feel with them that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern — a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect."

And its operative paragraph: "I would strike at the root of the bad System which has hitherto been fostered by us. I would at once stop the printing of Arabic and Sanscrit books. I would abolish the Mudrassa and the Sanscrit College at Calcutta." Beneath it Bentinck wrote: "I give my entire concurrence to the sentiments expressed in this Minute."

Read against Munro, the Minute is a decision about what a small budget would not be spent on. "It is impossible for us … to attempt to educate the body of the people" is the exact opposite of Munro's "whatever expense government may incur in the education of the people, will be amply repaid". The village schools are not attacked in the Minute. They are simply not there.

Document five: what happened to the count

Dharampal set the 1822–25 returns against the Madras Government's own later education statistics.

In 1879–80 the Presidency had 10,553 institutions of all kinds, 10,106 of them primary schools, with 238,960 male pupils — in a population of 31,308,872, two and a half times that of 1826. Using Munro's own method (one-ninth of the male population as school-age), the boys in primary school were 12.58 per cent of the age group; counting every kind of institution, 13.74 per cent. Munro's figure for the "decayed" system of 1826 had been 25 per cent in school and about 33 per cent educated in any way.

In 1884–85 the proportion rose to 22.15 per cent of school-age males in all institutions; in 1895–96 to 34.4 per cent; in 1899–1900, on the Director of Public Instruction's own count of 2,642,909 school-age males, 27.8 per cent. Dharampal's conclusion: "the proportion of those in educational institutions at the end of the nineteenth century was still no larger than the proportions estimated by Thomas Munro of the number attending the institutions of the decaying indigenous system of the Madras Presidency in 1822–25 … During this period, most of the indigenous institutions more or less disappeared. Any surviving remnants were absorbed by the late 19th century British system."

One number tells the story in miniature. In August 1823 there were 1,122 Muslim girls in school in Malabar. In 1884–85, with more than twice the population, there were 705.

The strongest case for the other side

The returns and Munro's minute do not describe a golden age, and the honest reading has to say so.

Munro himself calls the state of education "low", says it "has, no doubt been better in earlier times" and had been decaying for a century from "war and other causes" before the Company. A quarter of boys in school is not universal education; the schools taught "reading, writing and arithmetic" from verse texts children "committed to memory" without understanding, as Campbell complains; the teachers, on six or seven rupees a month, were in Munro's word "ignorant"; girls were essentially excluded; and "all other castes" — the people at the bottom — were a small share even where Shudras were a majority.

Adam's 100,000 is an estimate from village counts, and he says the premises are "uncertain". His door-to-door figures for single thanas were far lower than the extrapolation.

On the money: the Company did not resume the old grants; Campbell says it "continued all grants of this kind and even in many cases where it was evident that they were merely of a personal nature". The problem he describes is that it continued them to heirs who did not teach. That is neglect, not confiscation.

And the later figures rise. By 1895–96 the new system had reached Munro's proportion and was, unlike the old, teaching girls in some numbers and teaching a curriculum with a future in it. Whether the seventy-year dip was a price worth paying is a judgment; that the state system eventually outgrew the village one is a fact.

Finally, Dharampal was not a neutral compiler. He was a Gandhian who believed the pre-British order was better than the historians allowed, and he chose which documents to print. His tabulations of the returns have not, to our knowledge, been challenged; his conclusions have.

What we could not prove

• A Presidency-wide caste total. Dharampal's Tables 2 and 3 give district figures; the scans of the book available to us omit the table pages, so we quote the percentages from his text, district by district, and not a single all-Madras figure.
• That any order closed village schools. We found none, and the Company's own officers describe decline by neglect, not closure. The title's original wording, "Then They Shut Them Down", is not supported and was changed.
• The original returns. We read them as printed by Dharampal, with his archive references (TNSA, Board of Revenue Proceedings, volume and page). We did not consult the Tamil Nadu State Archives.
• What proportion of the 12,498 were "colleges". Munro's phrase is "schools, and of what are called colleges"; the returns distinguish them by district; we have not totalled the two.
• Adam's caste figures for Bihar are quoted through Dharampal's summary; we did not re-tabulate Adam's district tables.

Why it still matters today

The 1822 returns are why "one school in every village" is a sentence Indian schoolchildren have heard. The number behind it, 12,498, is real; the "every village" is Munro's ratio of one school to a thousand people; the "open to all" is true of Shudras in most districts and much less true of those below them or of girls. Each part of the slogan has a document, and each document has a limit.

The question the documents ask is still the one Indian education argues about: who pays. In 1823 the parents paid, four to eight annas a month, and the state paid nothing. In 1826 a Governor proposed that the state should pay for the people's schools. In 1835 a Law Member said the state's "limited means" should instead form "a class who may be interpreters". Every debate since — on the Right to Education Act, on English-medium versus mother-tongue, on private schools in villages — is a version of that choice.

Verdict

The Company's own survey found, in 1822–26, twelve and a half thousand schools in the Madras Presidency, paid for by parents, in which — outside the Telugu districts — most of the boys were Shudras and castes below them. Its own Collector at Bellary said, in writing, that not one of his 533 schools got a rupee from the state and that the country was being impoverished by the Company's trade. Its own Governor said the state should pay, and died. Nine years later the Company's Law Member wrote that it was "impossible … to attempt to educate the body of the people", and the money went to make interpreters.

Nobody shut the schools. The record shows something less dramatic and harder to forgive: a government that counted them, was told by its own officers why they were dying, was given a costed plan to save them, and chose to spend the money on something else. Sixty years later, half the boys who would have been in a village school in 1826 were in no school at all.