Makers of Modern India

by Ramachandra Guha

  Under Phule’s direction, the Satyashodak Samaj lobbied the government to promote policies that would benefit the farmers and labourers who came under the caste category of ‘Shudras’. As the samaj’s first published report put it, the organization was founded ‘in order to free the Shudra people from slavery to Brahmans, Bhats, Joshis, priests and others. For thousands of years, these people have heedlessly despised and exploited the Shudras, with the aid of their cunningly-devised books. This action was taken, therefore, so that through good advice and the spread of education, the Shudras might be got to understand their real rights, and freed both in religious and more general matters from the false and self-interested books of the Brahmans’. The British, believed Phule, had a historic mission ‘to liberate the disabled Shudras from the slavery of the crafty Aryas [i.e., upper castes]’.

  Jotirao Phule was a remarkable social activist as well as a gifted writer. By the time of his death in 1890, he had published polemics, plays, songs and ballads. Of the two excerpts from his oeuvre below, the first was written in the language of the rulers; the second in his mother tongue. The editor of the latter work, G.P. Deshpande, writes that ‘it is impossible to translate the vigour and ruggedness of his Marathi’. This seems unduly modest; for, as our reproduction of the translation by Deshpande and his collaborators demonstrates, the power and intensity of Phule’s ideas are by no means entirely lost when rendered into English.

  Educating the Masses

  Our first excerpt from Jotirao Phule’s writings is from his evidence to the same Education Commission of 1882 to which Syed Ahmad Khan also testified. Like Khan, he saw access to modern education as crucial to the advancement of his people, who were the peasant masses of western India. Khan, in turn, had been provoked and inspired by the work of Rammohan Roy. Roy thought that by means of modern education Hindus would come on par with the British; Khan hoped the same instrument would bring Muslims on par with Hindus; Phule, that it would bring non-Brahmins on par with Brahmins. The parallels are striking.2

  … I wrote some years ago a Marathi pamphlet exposing the religious practices of the Brahmins, and incidentally among other matters, adverted therein to the present system of education, which, by providing ampler funds for higher education, tended to educate Brahmins and the higher classes only, and to leave the masses wallowing in ignorance and poverty. I summarized the views expressed in the book in an English preface attached thereto, portions of which I reproduce here so far as they relate to the present enquiry:—

  Perhaps a part of the blame in bringing matters to this crisis may be justly laid to the credit of the Government. Whatever may have been their motives in providing ampler funds and greater facilities for higher education, and neglecting that of the masses, it will be acknowledged by all that in justice to the latter, this is not as it should be. It is an admitted fact that the greater portion of the revenues of the Indian Empire are derived from the ryot’s labour—from the sweat of his brow. The higher and richer classes contribute little or nothing to the state exchequer. A well-informed English writer states that our income is derived, not from surplus profits, but from capital; not from luxuries, but from the poorest necessaries. It is the product of sin and tears.

  That Government should expend profusely a large portion of revenue thus raised, on the education of the higher classes, for it is these only who take advantage of it, is anything but just or equitable. Their object in patronizing this virtual high class education appears to be to prepare scholars who, it is thought, would in time vend learning without money and without price. If we can inspire, say they, the love of knowledge in the minds of the superior classes, the result will be a higher standard, of morals in the cases of the individuals, a large amount of affection for the British Government, and unconquerable desire to spread among their own countrymen the intellectual blessings which they have received …

  It is proposed by men who witness the wondrous changes brought about in the Western world, purely by the agency of popular knowledge, to redress the defects of the two hundred millions of India, by giving superior education to the superior classes and to them only. We ask the friends of Indian Universities to favour us with a single example of the truth of their theory from the instances which have already fallen within the scope of their experience. They have educated many children of wealthy men and have been the means of advancing very materially the worldly prospects of some of their pupils. But what contribution have these made to [the] great work of regenerating their fellowmen? How have they begun to act upon the masses? Have any of them formed classes at their own homes or elsewhere, for the instruction of their less fortunate or less wise countrymen? Or have they kept their knowledge to themselves, as a personal gift, not to be soiled by contact with the ignorant [and] vulgar? Have they in any way shown themselves anxious to advance the general interests and repay the philanthropy with patriotism? Upon what grounds is it asserted that the best way to advance the moral and intellectual welfare of the people is to raise the standard of instruction among the higher classes? …

  One of the most glaring tendencies of Government system of high class education has been the virtual monopoly of all the higher offices under them by Brahmins. If the welfare of the ryot is at heart, if it is the duty of Government to check a host of abuses, it behoves them to narrow this monopoly day by day so as to allow a sprinkling of the other castes to get into the public services. Perhaps some might be inclined to say that if Government looks a little less after higher education which is able to take care of itself and more towards the education of the masses there would be no difficulty in training up a body of men every way qualified and perhaps far better in morals and manners.

  My object in writing the present volume is not only to tell my Shudra brethren how they have been duped by the Brahmins, but also to open the eyes of Government to that pernicious system of high-class education, which has hitherto been so persistently followed … I sincerely hope that Government will ere long see the error of their ways, trust less to writers or men who look through high-class spectacles, and take the glory into their own hands of emancipating my Shudra brethren from the trammels of bondage which the Brahmins have woven around them like the coils of a serpent. It is no less the duty of each of my Shudra brethren as have received any education, to place before Government the true state of their fellowmen and endeavour to the best of their power to emancipate themselves from Brahmin thraldom. Let there be schools for the Shudras in every village; but away with all Brahmin schoolmasters! The Shudras are the life and sinews of the country, and it is to them alone, and not to the Brahmins, that Government must ever look to tide over their difficulties, financial as well as political. If the hearts and minds of the Shudras are made happy and contented, the British Government need have no fear for their loyalty in the future.

  Phule now turns to what the state must do to improve education at different levels.

  Primary education

  … With regard to the few Government primary schools that exist in the Presidency, I beg to observe that the primary education imparted in them is not at all placed on a satisfactory or sound basis. The system is imperfect in so far as it does not prove practical and useful in the future career of the pupils. The system is capable of being developed up to the requirement of the community, if improvements that will result in its future usefulness be effected in it. Both the teaching machinery employed and the course of instruction now followed, require a thorough remodelling.

  (a) The teachers now employed in the primary schools are almost all Brahmins; a few of them are from the normal training college, the rest being all untrained men. Their salaries are very low, seldom exceeding Rs. 10, and their attainments also very meagre. But as a rule they are all unpractical men, and the boys who learn under them generally imbibe inactive habits and try to obtain [government] service, to the avoidance of their hereditary or other hardy or independent professions. I think teachers for primary schools should be trained, as far as pos
sible, out of the cultivating classes, who will be able to mix freely with them and understand their wants and wishes much better than a Brahmin teacher, who generally holds himself aloof under religious prejudices. These would, moreover, exercise a more beneficial influence over the masses than teachers of other classes, and who will not feel ashamed to hold the handle of a plough or the carpenter’s adze when required, and who will be able to mix themselves readily with the lower orders of society. The course of training for them ought to include, besides the ordinary subjects, an elementary knowledge of agriculture and sanitation. The untrained teachers should, except when thoroughly efficient, be replaced by efficient trained teachers. To secure a better class of teachers and to improve their position, better salaries should be given. Their salaries should not be less than Rs. 12 and in larger villages should be at least Rs. 15 or 20. Associating them in the village polity as auditors of village accounts or registrars of deeds, or village postmasters or stamp vendors, would improve their status, and thus exert a beneficial influence over the people among whom they live. The schoolmasters of village schools who pass a large number of boys should also get some special allowance other than their pay, as an encouragement to them.

  (b) The course of instruction should consist of reading, writing … and accounts, and a rudimentary knowledge of general history, general geography, and grammar, also an elementary knowledge of agriculture and a few lessons on moral duties and sanitation. The studies in the village schools might be fewer than those in larger villages and towns, but not the less practical. In connection with lessons in agriculture, a small model farm, where practical instruction to the pupils can be given, would be a decided advantage and, if really efficiently managed, would be productive of the greatest good to the country. The text-books in use … require revision and recasting as much as they are not practical or progressive in their scope. Lessons on technical education and morality, sanitation and agriculture, and some useful arts, should be interspersed among them in progressive series …

  (c) The supervising agency over these primary schools is also very defective and insufficient. The Deputy Inspector’s visit once a year can hardly be of any appreciable benefit. All these schools ought at least to be inspected quarterly if not oftener. I would also suggest the advisability of visiting these schools at other times and without any intimation being given. No reliance can be placed on the district or village officers owing to the multifarious duties devolving on them, as they seldom find time to visit them, and when they do, their examination is necessarily very superficial and imperfect. [A] European Inspector’s supervision is also occasionally very desirable, as it will tend to exercise a very efficient control over the teachers generally.

  (d) The number of primary schools should be increased—

  1) By utilizing such of the indigenous schools as shall be or are conducted by trained and certificated teachers, by giving them liberal grants-in-aid.

  2) By making over one half of the local cess fund for primary education alone.

  3) By compelling, under a statutory enactment, municipalities to maintain all the primary schools within their respective limits.

  4) By an adequate grant from the provincial or imperial funds …

  Higher education

  The cry over the whole country has been for some time past that Government have amply provided for higher education, whereas that of the masses has been neglected. To some extent this cry is justified, although the classes directly benefited by the higher education may not readily admit it. But for all this no well-wisher of his country would desire that Government should, at the present time, withdraw its aid from higher education. All that they would wish is, that as one class of the body politic has been neglected, its advancement should form as anxious a concern as that of the other. Education in India is still in its infancy. Any withdrawal of State aid from higher education cannot but be injurious to the spread of education generally.

  A taste of education among the higher and wealthy classes, such as the Brahmins and Purbhoos, especially those classes who live by the pen, has been created, and a gradual withdrawal of State aid may be possible so far as these classes are concerned; but in the middle and lower classes, among whom higher education has made no perceptible progress, such a withdrawal would be a great hardship. In the event of such withdrawal, boys will be obliged to have recourse to inefficient and sectarian schools, much against their wish, and the cause of education cannot but suffer. Nor could any part of such education be entrusted to private agency. For a long time to come the entire educational machinery, both ministerial and executive, must be in the hands of Government. Both the higher and primary education require all the fostering care and attention which Government can bestow on it.

  The withdrawal of Government from schools or colleges would not only tend to check the spread of education, but would seriously endanger that spirit of neutrality which has all along been the aim of Government to foster, owing to the different nationalities and religious creeds prevalent in India. This withdrawal may, to a certain extent, create a spirit of self-reliance for local purposes in the higher and wealthy classes, but the cause of education would be so far injured that the spirit of self-reliance would take years to remedy that evil …

  With regard to the question as to educated natives finding remunerative employments, it will be remembered that the educated natives who mostly belong to the Brahminical and other higher classes are mostly fond of service. But as the public service can afford no field for all the educated natives who come out from schools and colleges, and moreover the course of training they receive being not of a technical or practical nature, they find great difficulty in betaking themselves to other manual or remunerative employments. Hence the cry that the market is overstocked with educated natives who do not find any remunerative employment. It may, to a certain extent, be true that some of the professions are overstocked, but this does not show that there is not other remunerative employment to which they can betake themselves. The present number of educated men is very small in relation to the country at large, and we trust that the day may not be far distant when we shall have the present number multiplied a hundred-fold, and all betaking themselves to useful and remunerative occupations and not be looking after [government] service.

  In conclusion, I beg to request the Education Commission to be kind enough to sanction measure for the spread of female primary education on a more liberal scale.

  Poona

  Joteerao Govindrao Phooley,

  19th October 1882

  Merchant and Cultivator and Municipal Commissioner,

  Peth Joona Ganja

  The Condition of the Peasantry

  In 1883 Phule wrote Shetkaryacha Asud (The Cultivator’s Whipcord), a powerful and still resonant description of the plight and poverty of the majority of Indians who were agriculturists. This is a continuous saga of woe, the stream of consciousness style and the lack of paragraphs heightening the intensity and impact. I present three excerpts from a recent translation of the book. The first excerpt is an account of the daily life and troubles of the peasant.3

  One day a farmer was walking towards his village from the Collector’s4 tent in the breezy mangrove beside the river, striding in anger and grinding his teeth. He seemed about forty and a little demoralised. He had a white twisted turban on his head, which was tied down with a cloth, he was wearing a double half-shirt made of khadi and old curled Satara boots … The boot heels were strong and thick, but he was walking a little oddly because they had developed cracks in a few places. He had a beard and moustache, which were hiding his front teeth. The forehead and eyes were large and the pupils were grey. He was fair and reasonably pleasant to look at. The face was a little rounded though. After reaching home around two in the afternoon, he went to the kitchen and taking a sheet off the peg, he spread it on the ground and with a rolled up blanket under his head, lay down to sleep, covering his face with a handkerchief. But he could not sleep, thinking
of his meeting with the Collector—‘He was still busy with his breakfast and tea, and he did not listen to the truth that I was telling him, and did not allow me to pay my instalment later.’ He could not sleep, and putting his hands on his chest, as if a little crazed, he started talking to himself thus:

  ‘Unlike other villagers, I have not warmed the hands of the bhat [upper-caste] servants and so they have spoken to the white officer and doubled my tax, and in the same year the rain was indifferent and my fields and gardens were burnt out, and then suddenly Father died. There were a lot of expenses for the rituals. So in the first year, I assured the garden-plot to the Brahman moneylender, registered it in his name as well, for the money to pay the taxes with. Later he calculated the interest, doubling and tripling it, and took over my garden-plot. The moneylender’s uncle is a clerk in the revenue office, his cousin is the Collector’s secretary, his brother-in-law is the munsif and his father-in-law the taluk’s police officer, and moreover, most of the people in the government offices are his caste relations, so if I had argued with him, they would have troubled me no end and reduced me to a dry summer, on the smallest excuses. Thus in the second year, I sold off the few ornaments women of my house had on their bodies and put all that money into paying the taxes and later borrowed money every year from Gujar[ati] and Marwadi5 moneylenders to pay for that. Now they have filed suits against me, which have been lying in the court for so many years. I have paid so much in bribes to the court officers, peons, scribes, lawyers and all, that I am at the end of my tether. Now sometimes one finds government servants who do not take bribes, but they are even more useless than those who do, because they are nonchalant and do not care about the poor farmer at all, and the clever lawyers take money from us, in the name of these servants and put the bite on us regularly. And if we do not do that then we have to accept the orders secured by the moneylenders. Now no moneylender lets me stand at his door! I paid off the tax instalments last year with my newly-married elder daughter’s ornaments and now her father-in-law does not let her live in his house. Oh, how unfortunate I am that I sold off her ornaments to avoid a calamity and ruined her marriage in the process! And now, how do I pay this year’s tax? There is no money to buy new mot,6 the old ones are torn and the sugarcane is drying up. The corn has also gone to waste. The cattle-feed is about to finish, as is all the dried grass and fodder. The bullocks are weak because they do not get enough to eat. The women’s clothes are in tatters and they are forced to wear ancient bedsheets bought for marriage. The children have to go about half-naked and feel ashamed of meeting people. Because the grain in the house is nearly over, we are surviving on sweet radishes. I do not have enough money to feed our mother with good food as she prepares to die. What shall I do? How will I be able to till the land if I sell the bullock? I cannot think of starting a business because I cannot read or write at all. If I leave my province and go to alien places, I have no skill which will help me fill my belly. If I swallow a potion made of roots, the able children might be able to survive somehow, but who will look after the old woman and along with my little ones, look after my wife? At whose doors can they knock if they need help? Where will they beg?’ Thus finally sighing, he fell asleep weeping. Later when I come out, wiping my tears and look around, I see that his house is single-storeyed and tile-roofed. Beside the house, there is a covered shed for cattle. There are two or three bullocks, old and ruminating and a few large empty containers are pushed into a corner and outside, in the courtyard, there stands an old cart for eight bullocks. On it, there is a broken basket. On the left, a square platform is made … and beside it, there is place for storing water and on that there are a few clay pots filled with water and beside it, there is a crudely tiled bathing place, with a half-wall on three sides. Outside it, water has collected in a small ditch and it is filled with insects and worms. Beyond, under the white chafa tree, there are a few children dancing, half-naked, with all manner of stains on their bodies, noses running, sweating and stinking, playing with lumps of mud. One of them is playing at being a shopkeeper, with anklets of seeds on her feet, pretending to sell arrack [country liquor]. Many of the children giving her pebbles and seeds as coins … are shuffling about, falling on each other, pretending to be drunk. Behind the house stands a cattle shed made with wooden beams and pillars. In it lies a buffalo who has just calved and a wretched mare. There are all manner of insects sticking to the walls. In the cracks of the roof knots of hair are stuck all over, collected from the head while combing. Beside this, is a chicken-run … There is a waste-heap beyond and large green flies are buzzing over it because little children have been shitting there. Beside that, because the heaps of grass and fodder are finished, lie small heaps of leaves. In the other corner cow-pats are stacked, beside it, under the tree, there are broken implements lying about and a vilayati dhattura grows under them, and a mangy bitch who’s just littered lies there, growling at passers-by. Beside it lies a heap of waste fodder, and in the remaining area sits a youngish woman, with her back to the house, arranging cow-pats. She is upto her knees in the dung, pounding it with her feet. In the kitchen itself there is uneven flooring and one sees the waste from grinding and cleaning and cleaned vegetables lying about here and there. Here is a heap of pith thrown about, and there a heap of rotting onions. A stale stink rises from them. In the middle, an ancient woman is lying on a sheet, groaning. Beside her head lies a plate of food—a bowl of crushed bhakri softened in the liquid of the dal, and [a] jug of water. In the cradle a little baby is weeping loudly. Besides all this, at places one finds a line of a child’s piss, at some other place a patch of white ash where a child’s turd has been cleaned up. Several corners of the house are red and dark from tobacco spit. In one corner sits a large grinder, to be drawn by three or four women, in another there is a large mortar and pestle and in the corner near the door under the broom, all the dirt pushed there after sweeping the floor, and on top, a rag which was used to clean a baby’s arse. There beside the cooking fire stands a dirty frying pan and the milk pot. Beside it, the cat has covered up its shit with ash. The walls are covered with stains left from squishing bugs and insects on them, and fingers wiping off snot. In a small cabinet is the oil pot, tooth powder, a horn comb, a rickety mirror, and on a ledge three or four stone lamps are stacked for the night. An oil stain spreads from them onto the ground. Maybe once in a year all the grease is scraped away. In another cabinet beside the flour basket are placed pieces of stale bhakri, in a third cabinet there are green chillies, garlic, coriander, and baskets of mangoes, on which flies eat from one side and excrete from the other. And in the fourth stands a heap of old and torn footwear. A flintstone lies beside them. Old and worn bedsheets hang from one peg, and on another, bedcovers … If you look up you can see that the tiles of the roof have not been changed for three or four years, and with grass ropes rats have made holes in it. There are no windows or ventilators of any kind anywhere in the whole house to let in fresh air. The beams and corners and supports and pillars are tarred with black smoke, and in most empty spaces spiders have [woven] most artistic and delicate webs, like mosquito nets, on which a thousand baby spiders are playing. On the undergird of the roof, on the beams, on pillars the poisonous shells of insects and spiders are sticking, and especially on wooden spaces there are heaps of dust mixed with rat shit and cockroach shit and for years a broom has not touched them for lack of time. Suddenly, the kind of dust storm which rises because of the heat before the summer rains, swept through the house, and as the dust rose and filled the house with the wind streaming in through the gaps in the roof tiles, the poisonous dust filled the snoring farmer’s open mouth, and he woke up coughing. The poisonous cough so troubled him that he nearly fainted and he started moaning and thrashing about. His sick old mother somehow managed to stumble upto him, and putting a blanket roll under his head, cupping his chin, staring into his eyes, said, ‘Oh lord!, please open your eyes. So many times have I given money to [God] so that [the Devil] should not harm y
ou, and that too sometimes without your knowledge, selling off grain, and have made the Brahman sit with his rosary in front of [the deity] and fed so many brahman women!! Dear child, so many times have I spent money without telling you so that the gods will be pleased with you. Why did not that god speak through the Collector’s mouth today, and allow you to pay the taxes in instalments? … O you cunning brahmans, from the very birth of my dear child you have threatened me with ill-favoured stars and taken money from me, where is all the virtue that you collected? O, you have cheated me so much in the name of dharma that with that money I could have saved my child’s neck! …