the adjacent British province; the Inspectors visit them, and their
statistics are included in the Provincial Report. Thus the Quinquennial
Survey includes over 150,000 square miles of Native State territory,
chiefly in the Bombay Presidency. In others, with which the Government
of India maintains direct political relations, the educational policy
depends entirely on the native ruler, and reflects his personality
and enthusiasm. A very striking instance of this is Baroda, a small
state with a population of about two million. A policy of stringent
reform was inaugurated there about 1875, during the minority of the
present Gaekwar, and has had its effect on the position of women. Two
acts, legalizing the re-marriage of widows and raising the marriage
age to twelve, have marked the tide of progress during the last
decade. The educational movement dates from 1871, and there is now a
complete system for boys from free Primary education to scholarships
in Japanese Universities. The scheme for girls is less ambitious, but
there are Primary schools in every village, teaching the ordinary
curriculum up to Standard IV., a fair proportion of Secondary schools
in which cooking is also taught by the teacher or by a Brahman cook,
and a central High school in the capital with a Training college
attached. Any girl of promise can secure a scholarship to it after the
fourth or fifth Standard, and after a five years’ course is certain
of employment. The curriculum is very thorough, including astronomy,
botany, mathematics, and the ordinary Normal course. There are at
present about fifty students in the college, and a steadily increasing
stream of applicants. My informant stated that there was no prejudice
here against widows as teachers, and that even Brahman widows who were
poorly off had entered the profession. The statistics are of special
interest as showing the effect of compulsory education within a limited
area. This experiment was introduced, for the first time in Indian
history, in one district of Baroda in 1893, and was extended to the
whole province in 1904. The age for girls is seven to ten, for boys
from seven to twelve. The numbers in the girls’ case rose from 9% of
school age at school in 1905 to 47% in 1910--an almost incredible rise
in comparison with the slow movement in other parts of India. There is
naturally a good deal to be said as to the wisdom of a policy which
is so far in advance of the desire of the people. Some are said to be
flying from Baroda into the adjacent British territory to escape what
appears to them a meaningless tyranny.[106] The people are very poor
and heavily taxed; they want the children to work, or to take charge
of the other children while the women work in the fields. The richer
parents, again, object to the girls leaving the house, as _parda_
is fairly strict. There are pathetic tales of school mistresses who,
in addition to their scholastic duties, must start an hour and a half
before the appointed time to compel unwilling feet into the path of
knowledge, and stories of children who manage to arrive half an hour
before the closing time in order to kindly swell the statistics of
attendance. Then there is the usual prejudice against the unpractical
nature of the curriculum, and its slavish similarity to the boys’
course. But after all discounting of statistics and allowance for
the undercurrent of revolt, there is evidently a good deal of honest
educational work being done in Baroda, with some measure of success.
There is even some talk of creating a Central Women’s Department, where
special needs might receive full consideration. One Inspectress, a
Parsi lady, is at present working there, and assistants are shortly to
be appointed.
In the great Mohammedan State of Hyderabad progress is naturally
slower. Though the greater proportion of the inhabitants are Hindus,
the Moslem influence, proceeding from the Nizam’s Court, is the
predominating one. The Wesleyan and American Baptist missions began
pioneer work in the Primary education of girls about 1880, and have
steadily developed it by tactful measures to higher stages. Effort on
the part of the Government has been made only in recent years, and is
not yet a very important factor, though the Nizam’s _parda_ school
at the capital is the beginning of better things. In 1905 there were
only 4467 girls under instruction out of a population of over eleven
million![107]
Mysore also owes its first movement towards female education to
missionary influence. In 1840 the first mission school for girls was
opened in Bangalore, and in 1868 the first Government school. As
in other parts of India, girls are to be found in the _hobli_
or local boys’ school, but the usual difficulties prevent this
method from being really effective. A great impulse was given to the
whole enterprise not only in Mysore but in all southern India by
the establishment, in 1881, of the Maharani’s Girls’ School in the
capital. The Maharani has also taken a close personal interest in its
progress. This school, raised to the dignity of a college, ranks
as a first-class institution; its Head is a student from Newnham
College, and the rest of the staff has proportional qualifications.
The education is entirely free, but entrance at first was limited
only to high-caste families, and its extension now to Christians and
respectable girls of low caste is under various restrictions. As a
result the college has done much to break the barrier which exists
between high-caste women and education. The curriculum includes the
Kindergarten stage and a department of domestic science. There are
at present some 400 pupils, including many Brahman widows, who are
being trained as teachers, and also some former pupils who return to
complete their course, bringing their children with them. Besides
this splendid effort in the capital, the Government has encouraged
the formation of local committees for the development of education in
the different districts. By 1904 there were 243 girls’ schools and
colleges, with a creditable percentage of four girls in the hundred at
school. The London Missionary Society and others have extensive work
here, and contribute considerably towards these statistics. Probably
the most striking feature in the educational situation in Mysore is the
introduction, in 1908, of definite religious teaching in the Government
schools. This subject is more fully treated in a subsequent chapter.
Next to Baroda, the southern State of Travancore has the highest
percentage of girls at school, namely, 23.3%. This is largely due to
the fact that 31% of the population are Christians, and to the thorough
work of the London Missionary Society; but the present Maharaj stands
for educational reform, and an official effort is also made for the
advancement of women. A somewhat similar impetus to that lent by the
Maharani’s College was given to the education of girls in Travancore
by the establishment there of the Maharajah’s College for girls under
a fully qualified English Head-mistress, who has since been succeeded
by an Indian lady. These two Indian institutions stand out beyond all
others as examples of progressive native policy on wise lines.
The great group of Rajput States in the heart of which the British
Government holds under its direct control the key lands of
Ajmer-Merwara, have a history of romance and chivalry which might
well have augured a leading place for their women in the modern
movement, and yet it is just this very chivalry which shields them
from its touch. The Rajput princesses of the ancient days were no
pale, languishing maidens. They sallied forth armed and on horseback
to lead a forlorn hope, or closed the gates of the castle against
a lord who returned without the spoil of victory from the field.
When the doom of their tribe was at hand and the Moslem hosts surged
round the sacred city of Chitore, they passed in solemn procession
to one common nuptial fire, while their lords perished in the wild
holocaust of _johār_.[108] What wonder that, where the women
were of this temper, their husbands and sons were able to defy all
odds![109] Children of the sun and of the moon with all the glory
of a mythic ancestry, the Rajputs have held apart from the seeming
decadence of literary culture. True, there is the story of Jey Singh
of the one hundred and nine virtues, whose mathematical calculations
in the seventeenth century rank with those of European scholars, but
he stands alone and reveals by contrast the prevalent conditions. The
character of the rulers has thus in modern times influenced educational
progress amongst their people, though only a very small percentage
of these are actually of Rajput descent. Alwar was the first State
to move in 1842, and three years later Jaipur. It was not till some
twenty years after that any official movement was made on behalf of
women. The first girls’ school was opened at Bharatpur in 1866,[110]
but the progress has been very slow with little headway. In 1901 only
two women out of every thousand could read. In 1905 there were, over
the whole group of States, only fifty-three girls’ schools, including
the mission schools, and some of these were in a very poor state of
efficiency. In Jaipur, which may be taken as the most advanced State
educationally, the Government supports some eleven schools for girls.
The principal one of these in the capital is supplied with splendid
quarters. What money can do apart from personality has been done. The
school, however, suffers most acutely from the prevailing difficulty
of an inefficient staff. Some of the assistant teachers themselves are
barely beyond the stage of being able to read and write, and thus the
school as a whole lacks the attraction which is necessary to popularize
education in a community where the hereditary tendency is against it.
The marvel, however, is not that the school is not thoroughly modern,
but that it is there at all; and if we remember the rapid strides which
have been made in other parts of India from even smaller beginnings,
it augurs well for the future of Jaipur. Mission-work in Native States
depends greatly on the personal relations which the pioneers succeed
in establishing with their rulers, and the United Free Church Mission
has, since its first entrance in 1866 to the Native State of Rajputana,
been exceedingly tactful in this matter. Its educational work for boys
has been well developed and has helped very considerably in the general
advance; on the women’s side a great deal of careful pioneer work has
been done by means of small schools and zenana-visiting. There are at
present sixteen of such schools with a total register of four hundred
in six different States, also in Jaipur and elsewhere there is a
considerable number of women under regular instruction in the zenanas.
The efficiency of the schools varies according as they are more or less
accessible to the regular visitation of an English lady worker. The
work is entirely Primary as the _parda_ custom is strict, and the
children are withdrawn at about eight years of age.
[Illustration: The Alphabet Class, Nasirabad]
The British District of Ajmer-Merwara does not, strictly speaking, fall
within the purview of this chapter, but as it is essentially the key to
all Rajasthan, its conditions have a reflex influence on the States,
and the relation of the educational problems is a very vital one.
The Government, while upholding the necessity of women’s education,
is greatly hampered in its efforts by financial considerations. The
office of Inspectress, held since 1871 by a European lady educated in
India, lapsed in 1892, and since then there has been no systematic
effort to train teachers or effectually to supervise and co-ordinate
the Government and independent schools. There are in all seven
schools directly maintained by the Government, all of primitive type,
quartered in rooms and courtyards rented in the bazaar, and of the
140 pupils only twelve are in the second Standard. The Government
Report frankly acknowledges the inefficiency of these schools and
urges the re-appointment of an Inspectress. The energies of the United
Free Church Mission have been largely devoted in the past decade to
the education of their famine orphans and the girls of the Christian
community. Their Girls’ Boarding-School in Nasirabad is a well-equipped
institution, and Normal work is under consideration.
The tradition of Primary schools for non-Christians, since the first
was founded in 1862, and of systematic zenana teaching, has been well
maintained, and there are now about thirteen such with over four
hundred pupils. There is, however, no really first-class education
provided for the women of the non-Christian community, nor any attempt
to meet the educational need of the changed times. The new spontaneous
element is to be seen in the educational scheme of the Ārya Samāj,
which has apparently a more religious aspect here than in other
provinces. They have two schools for girls in Ajmer: one an orphanage
with twenty-eight pupils under an honorary mistress; another, the Ārya
Putri Pathshala, is an excellent vernacular Primary school with some
provision for further instruction. The Head-mistress is a fully trained
teacher brought from another province, and the school throughout
showed evidence of order and system. There are over sixty girls on the
roll, and it seemed in every way the most efficient institution for
non-Christians in the district. The most striking testimony to the new
spirit and the new desire for progress was found in a private school
conducted in her own house by the widow of a former leader of the
Ārya community. It is true that in Ajmer the saying is still current
that there cannot be two pens in one house, meaning thereby that to
educate a girl is either to compass her own death or that of her future
husband; but here some thirty-five girls, drawn not entirely from the
Ārya Samāj but also from the leading orthodox castes, came daily at
their own expense to get such learning as might help to fit them for
life in its newer aspects. The Head-mistress, who had studied with her
former husband, was a highly cultured Indian lady with a beautiful and
attractive grace of manner, full of enthusiasm for her work, but almost
pathetically conscious of the failure of her school to attain the
ideals she had set before her. “I know geography ought to be taught but
I cannot procure a teacher.” “I have never even had an opportunity of
learning English.” “All my teachers teach for nothing; it is voluntary
work, and education should not be otherwise.” The school to a large
extent reflected the personality of the Head. The attendance nearly
equalled the number on the roll; far from reward being given, any
children who did not come were fined for absence; several older girls
were there, including some who were married, and whose husbands were
away from home also studying. The school is strictly _parda_, for the
Ārya community itself is only gradually advancing to freedom in this
respect, and in any case the older pupils from the orthodox families
would necessitate it. The education given is a thorough grounding in
the Hindi and Urdu vernacular, with a limited amount of Sanskrit and
careful instruction in needlework.
The whole situation in Ajmer, taken as an index to the future
development of the States of Rajasthan, points to the need for the
establishment there of a first-class girls’ school with an English
Head-mistress to set the standard for the whole district, and this is
strongly advocated in the Government Report, without, however, any
prospect of immediate action. The class from which its pupils would
be drawn would be at first a limited one, but its presence would to a
certain extent increase the demand which is slowly but surely coming
from men who realize the new need, and who know an efficient school
when they see it.
This very inadequate survey of the conditions in some of the leading
Native States will have served its purpose if the reader has gathered
from it that the modern movement for the education of women is felt
throughout the whole of our vast Indian Empire, varying in degree, but
commending itself to the best Indian thought of every phase. It is not
now a question of sporadic missionary effort or of a policy enforced by
Government, but of a stream which is influencing the life of the people
with an ever increasing momentum.
VIII
BOMBAY
“The true reformer has not to write on a clean slate. His work is more
often to complete the half-written sentence.”
--+RANADE.+
The problem of women’s education in the Bombay Presidency is to a
certain extent that of the whole of India in miniature. Nothing is
better calculated to impress the mind with the variety of races and
social conditions, the conflicting ideals and different stages of
progress throughout the whole Indian Empire, than a study of these in
a smaller area at close quarters. Under the rule of the Governor are
some 20,000,000 souls,[111] 75% Hindus, 20% Moslem, 1% Jains, rather
over 1% Christians, and some 81,000 Parsis, whose social influence is
out of all proportion to their numerical importance; a territory of
123,000 square miles, embracing the sun-beaten deserts of Sind, the
fertile plains of Gujerat, the Deccan districts ever subject to the
spectre of famine, the Carnatic regions with their glorious forests,
and the low-lying tract below the Ghāts with its well-watered, broad
reaches of alluvial soil--climates offering almost every variety of
Indian possibilities except perhaps that of extreme cold. About a third
of this territory belongs to Native States with a varying relation to
the Presidency Government, and politically linked, though not strictly
speaking attached, is the important State of Baroda with its 2,000,000
inhabitants. Linguistically considered, the province has four main
languages, Marathi, Gujerati, Kanarese, and Hindi, with numerous linked
dialects, and English will by no means take you everywhere, as some
Anglophiles fondly imagine. Like all the rest of India it is a land
of villages, only 19% of the people living in towns of more than 5000
inhabitants; a land of child-marriage, only 50% of the girl children
under ten being unmarried, and a land therefore of young widows. These
three facts involve a great difficulty in the distribution of schools,
a brief curriculum, and a dearth of teachers. From a historical point
of view the province presents stratum upon stratum; early records point
to an Aryan settlement on the Indus amongst a people of Dravidian
stock; Persian, Bactrian, and White Hun invasions have left their
mark, but always the prevailing element is the Hindu--absorbing and
Hinduizing the successive streams. The peaceful dominance of Asoka[112]
is felt, and the Buddhist establishments whose records are left in the
rock caves and temples must have been numerous and far-reaching. There
are tales of chiefs who honoured alike Siva, Buddha, and Jaina. In the
seventh century +A.D.+ trade brought the Parsis, a people of a
book and a faith which still preserves them as a unity. In the eighth
century came the first wave of the Moslem tide which was destined
in later centuries to overrun the Deccan. In the fifteenth century
came the Portuguese in search of “spices and Christians”; there are
caves to-day where the ruins of Catholic altars lie side by side with
Buddhist semi-reliefs, mingled with the ever-present Hindu forms and
figures. The romance of the province, however, lies in the history
of the Mahrattas, whose forts dominate the frowning eminences of the
Ghāts, memorials of the gradual consolidation of the scattered Hindu
chieftains, of prolonged struggle with Delhi, of internal strife, of
defeat, of victory, until finally a new power from the West came to
impose the dominance of the Pax Britannica upon the conflicting forces.
The Presidency assumed something like its present form between 1803 and
1827, and the history of Western education may be said to begin with
Mountstuart Elphinstone (1819-1827), in whose Governorship the first
schools were opened.
The same factors which we found to be present elsewhere, working in
favour of female education or against it, are felt in the Bombay
Presidency. In some places, especially in the country districts, there
is strong opposition to the establishment of any kind of schools at
all, and most of all to girls’ schools. To the zemindar or villager the
establishment of a school merely means that educational and revenue
officers will come round worrying him to support it. The children are
wanted for work in the fields, and where the margin of subsistence is
so small it is no wonder that every mite of labour is needed. In sixty
villages out of every hundred there is no school at all. The women are
conservative; they have not been educated themselves: why should their
daughters be educated? Above all it is not _dustūr_ (custom),
and with that the would-be recruiting agency strikes against a solid
argument which it will take decades to remove. But to set against this,
there is the fact that, speaking broadly, it is not a _parda_
country. Except for the Moslems, who are in considerable minority, and
a small proportion of the Hindus influenced by tradition and contact
with Mohammedanism, especially in the district of Sind, the women of
both high and low caste have a certain degree of freedom, and their
general position is greatly influenced by the presence of the Parsi
ladies, who mingle in society very much as do their sisters of the
West. To see an Indian lady walking on the streets of Bombay is no
strange sight, as it still is in Calcutta, in spite of the half-shy
efforts of Christian and Brāhma-Samāj women. The indigenous Indian
feeling in favour of education is stronger than in the district round
Calcutta, and there is more of the orthodox element in it. Poona, the
centre of the Deccan Brahmans and of cultured Hinduism, stands for a
certain well-defined attitude towards education in which women share.
The Prabhu Brahmans especially are noted for the many cultured women in
their ranks; they do not marry young, and as a rule afford almost equal
opportunity to boys and girls. The Prārthanā Samāj,[113] an unorthodox
meeting-ground for the “multitudes in the valley of decision,” throws
its emphasis on women’s education, and the general impression given is
that, while all educated India has talked about this crucial problem,
here much honest effort has been made to solve it. It is a very pure
form of patriotism which leads a Hindu student to give up two hours
daily of his college time to voluntary teaching in a girls’ High
school, yet this is by no means rare in Bombay. The Parsi element and
influence has also been a very potent one. The leading Parsi men in the
early days spared neither money nor personal trouble, with the result
that to-day out of 1465 girls receiving higher education, 1054 are
drawn from the Parsi community, and their contribution to the supply of
teachers is a very important one.
But this leads us to a detailed study of the early history of the
movement, and its present conditions in relation to the different
communities. Owing to the influences described, it is not surprising
that, at the last Quinquennial Survey, Bombay stood second only to
Burma in its percentage of girls at school, and a glance at the
gradually increasing number shows the steady upward progress.
1881--1.2 per cent. of girls of school age at school.
1896--3.75 ” ” ” ”
1901--4.74 ” ” ” ”
1907--5.9 ” ” ” ”
1910--7.2 ” ” ” ”
In earlier days it is impossible to get separate figures. Where girls
shared in education it was incidentally in the boys’ schools, or
separately in mission schools, and they owed nothing to any special
effort on their behalf; even to-day 21% of the girls at school are
studying in boys’ schools. The initial impulse came from Mrs Margaret
Wilson and other workers of the Scottish Mission, who from 1824
onwards gradually gathered together a few girls for instruction. The
first step taken by Indians was due to the Students’ Literary and
Scientific Society connected with the Elphinstone College in Bombay,
when five leading Indian members volunteered in 1849 to open schools
for girls in their own houses. One of these was Mr Dadabhai Nauraji,
India’s “Grand Old Man,” who may be regarded as the pioneer of women’s
education in the Presidency, if not in all India, and who still, in his
eighty-sixth year, advocates their cause by his pen. A description of
the celebrations in honour of his birthday organized recently by the
“Gujerati Stri Mandal,” a women’s society founded in 1909 to further
the educational and social progress of women, may give some idea of
the distance which has been traversed since these early days. Some
thousand women in their graceful Indian dresses, diaphanous draperies
and brilliant jewels, gathered together in a hall which they themselves
had garlanded and cross-garlanded with sweet-scented wreaths in his
honour, while on the platform the Rani of Gondal presided, surrounded
by all the leading Indian women in Bombay who were interested, either
as organizers or teachers, in women’s education. A short, terse
speech was made by Miss Cursetji, whose main interest and energy for
the last twenty-five years have been devoted to the Alexandra Girls’
High School, founded by her father in 1863; another by the Hindu
Head-mistress of the High School under the auspices of the Scientific
and Literary Society; another by a young Parsi B.A., Head-mistress of
the first Hindu Girls’ High School; another, in the general interests
of education, by a Saraswat Brahman lady, whose husband is Prime
Minister in an adjacent Native State--and the one European member of
the audience realized that India has initiative and purpose of her own,
and women of whom she may well be proud. The progress in the different
communities and the share which is borne by the Government and private
efforts respectively can best be seen by the accompanying tables.
Private effort divides itself naturally, as elsewhere, into the work
of Christian missions and of the Indian community, but a further
sub-division is necessary in the latter in consequence of the special
position of the Parsis.
1909-1910
+TABLE OF SCHOOLS FOR INDIAN GIRLS IN BOMBAY PRESIDENCY+