.^•i , ''^^• .: \0^.. /■ -' 'K" ^c" '^o' ,,5 X, %^ ': A-' .-}. =^. .^' -A / 0*^ 'U V ,^^' '%^%' ,/ - ,^^ -n.. ,V^^ ^' -^ •x^" -^ .o :^'^^-^';:-^^ .0^ ■*K>^->' -^ "^/^ v^~ ' ■=*> ' * 9 1 ^ ' '^. vO CO H< M N 0^ M M M ^ 2 u: 2 •< -d •a ■3 c t3 ■^ 0, 1 ro H -d -a ■-5 ^ 00 C^ w M ^ C^ t^ M Tf- h Z w u c <; z <: u s D eu III 2 ID M 1 C< >0 00 >o 00 "3 .e-d 1=5 M 00 M s E c > N t^ rO «0 Training Schools High .... Middle English . Middle Vernacular Primaries 'c3 4-> (2 Historical Survey 49 T^ ro ro in o o> -^ Tt- o » O 0^ r^ N .— •n -^ i>~ CO ro J3 t-^ 0) ro ro ■B ■a O M o" 3 ro HI M lO O O .^ o N 0) 1 }-i ^ 00 VO 1 rt Ph IH ro o "nT r^ O O S c -rf- o ro r^ c- -5 TJ IH M 00__ 00 M 01 vo" O M M 01 N ui M VO ^ On 0^ 3 -a ro o ro q_ . ro -^ s H ro M o< 12 ID O o ro Tt- >.§ N CTi t^ O ^ C^ 00 l>. O 00 U 6 O IN HI c (>» M ^ l>- ro ri o M MD Tt- r^ a »o in in M o V4 3 HI M M W 0) xn tfi '>! i4 o K5! O is SI o V) o !-l o O o CO C/5 o % 1— 1 < H ?s 50 Education of Women of India schools under committees of Indian gentlemen representing different faiths. This indigenous movement is due in part to a desire to provide a good education without direct interference with the religion of the pupils, and in part to a reaction from the extreme secularism and the Westernizing influences of the Government schools. Missionary work in education during the modern period is marked by continued expansion. The former success of mission agencies in taking a proportion of their pupils beyond the elemen- tary stages is redoubled. Of the forty three High Schools for Indian girls, only five in 1907 were under Government management. " The bulk of female Secondary education is provided by missionaries." ^^ A glance at the religious classification table will show that out of some 17,000 Indian girls in the High and Middle Schools more than 10,000 are Indian Christians, while a large proportion of non-Christian pupils are also studying in mission schools and colleges. The Christian Primary schools in the villages have also greatly improved in type through the intro- duction in some places of modern eductional methods under the careful and regular super- vision of trained English managers. As we survey the situation as a whole, certain problems stand out as common to all India and as indicating how critical is the present period in relation to the ultimate development of her women. These are the extension of Primary ^T' Quinquennial Survey, 1907. Vol. I., p. 257. Historical Survey 51 education, the retaining of pupils in the higher stages, the nationalizing of the curriculum, the supply of teachers, and finally the place of the religious element in education. In spite of the recent rapid increase and the steady progress of the last twenty years, the percentage of girls of school age attending school is only 4.6,^^ and though the next Quinquennial Returns will probably show a marked increase, the desire for education has still in many places to be created. The proportion of girls in the Secondary stages is not shown by the number of those studying in High and Middle English schools, ^9 as many of these are in the Primary classes. Only 1208 girls were actually in the High School departments in 1907. In that year 178 girls passed the Matriculation examination. ^^ 28 Comparative Percentages. In 1886 — 1.6 per cent; in 1896 — 2.1 per cent. ; in 1901 — 2.2 per cent. ; in 1907 — 3.6 per cent. ; in 1910 — 4.6 per cent. ^ Schools are classified as {a) Primary, including Standards I to IV. (&) Vernacular Middle, including Standards I to VII. (c) Anglo- Vernacular Middle or Middle English, in- cluding Standards I to VII. English taught from Standard IV. {d) High, including Standards I to X. English taught from Standard IV and used as a medium in the higher stages. This classification varies somewhat in the different provinces, especially as to the age for using English as a medium. (&) is entirely absent from some returns, (c) and {d) are often grouped together as secondary schools. 3' Quinquennial Survey. Vol. I., p. 255. 52 Education of Women of India This small proportion indicates, apart from the social and religious customs which cause it, a lack of balance in the whole system. Are the circumstances under which higher education is given not such as commend themselves to the Indian mind ? Or is the course of studies pursued not of sufficiently practical and educational value to prove attractive to Indian women ? Is there any foundation for the popular belief that the physique of Indian girls is not strong enough for a prolonged school course ? These questions underlie much of the discussion in the following chapters. Two causes are apparently at work. In India as a whole 42 % of the girl pupils are studying in boys' schools. These naturally never proceed beyond the Primary stage, as co-education is not, except in the hill districts, in accordance with Indian ideas. There seems therefore a great need for increasing the number of Primary schools for girls only, whence the transition to the higher stages would be easy. In some districts there is practically an unlimited field for expansion in this way. Another cause may possibly be the difficulty of access to really first- class schools for non-Christian girls. The mis- sionary societies which have done so much for the higher education of boys have, with certain exceptions, concentrated their attention on the provision of excellent boarding schools for the girls of the Christian community rather than aiming at developing a parallel system for girls 3 o (J o '-M C s X -M c s > o O Historical Survey 53 which would attract the non-Christian element, as it has on the men's side. The new Middle and High schools which are springing up under Government and Indian auspices are an attempt to meet this need, but there is undoubtedly room for further development. The problem of the curriculum is a very subtle one. In the early days of the reform of girls' education in Great Britain, about 1862, ^^ the greatest need seemed to be the adoption of an adequate test of knowledge, and that test one already recognized, so that there might seem to be no lower requirement to suit the supposed lower capacity of the feminine mind. The same principle worked in the early days of girls' educa- tion in India and preparation for Matriculation ^^ seemed the only means by which the standard could be raised. Whereas in Great Britain the leading girls' High schools have developed a flexibility and variety of curriculum wherein many a " womanly woman " has found her train- ing, even if she did not prefer to seek her education in one of the numerous excellent private schools, the girls' curriculum for Indian girls has been stereotyped on masculine lines. If we assume that education should prepare for future life, it seems clearly wrong that the preparation for spheres so totally different as those of Indian men and women should be identical. A highly trained missionary educator sums up the problem of the ^1 Renaissance of Girls' Education, A. Zimmern. ^^ Cf. Appendix A. for curriculum. 54 Education of Women of India Secondary school as follows : — " In spite of the fact that less than i % go on to college, the whole plan of school education is made to lead up to Matriculation and instead of completing a school course, the aim is to prepare for a college course that is never entered upon." The Inspectress in Bombay writes in this connection : — " Such a course is harmful, and girls leave these schools with weakened physique and very little in the way of real culture to compensate for it." An Inspectress from Madras also writes : — " The examination shadow is to be seen in every room from the third form upwards, and it is only with the greatest difficulty that sufficient time can be snatched for the teaching of a little recitation, drawing and drill, in view of the annual inspec- tion." In the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay a departmental examination is offered as alternative to Matriculation for girls, and in this such subjects as botany, hygiene, drawing, dress-making, cooking, appear as substitutes for algebra and geometry, but the schools prefer to send up their girls for Matriculation." The further question arises not only of the differentia- tion of the girls' curriculum from that of the boys' but also from that of Western girls. How is Indian female education to be brought into close touch with Indian environment ? The spontaneous Indian movement is in part an attempt to meet this problem, while on the other hand it inclines to view as a racial affront any suggestion to adapt the curriculum to the special needs of girls. The Historical Survey ^^ Government Inspectresses are closely considering the matter and are eager to welcome any construc- tive policy which will lessen the danger of creating the " female Babu." Several missionaries are working hard against the denationalizing ten- dencies which in many cases were introduced before the reformed educational methods prevailed in the West. A conference of English educators and Indian missionaries was recently held in London to discuss Indian curricula and the relation of the educational problems of the East and West. It is true that the opinion of Indian missionaries is not yet unanimous on the need of any alteration, and as the bulk of Secondary education is in their hands their co-operation is essential. There is however good hope of a sound constructive theory being ultimately produced if women of sufficient courage, originality and ability can be found to plough for a while a lonely furrow. The curricula for the Primary schools is a different question. Some educators hold it to be the saner policy to accept the fact that the majority of the girls will only be at school for four years, and to adapt the whole course to this limitation. A correspondent of the Education Commission of the World Missionary Conference 1910, writes : — " Under such circumstances, therefore, the aim should be directed towards a sound elementary education in reading, writing and arithmetic, a knowledge of domestic economy and hygiene, and the formation of a strong moral character. The aim, that is, must be determined S6 Education of Women of India by the opportunities offered for education. It is better to reach a lower aim than to try for a higher aim and fail altogether. I believe the mistake that is made in regard to the education of Hindu girls is in attempting to do the impossible. There are many subjects which it is extremely desirable to teach, but the hmited time during which the girls are teachable makes it imperative to con- centrate on what is attainable. We should aim, therefore, at demonstrating to the people that the girls who have been to school become superior housewives and mothers ; that what they learn is of real value to them in the home ; and above all, that their moral character is improved and strengthened." ^3 The Primary curriculum has already been remodelled to a certain extent. In Bengal, Eastern Bengal, and the United Provinces separate schemes have been issued. In the two former the courses follow the method of the Kindergarten in the lower classes, and include much nature study, also hygiene, domestic economy and sewing. In the United Provinces and Bombay the reading-books in use for girls are different. These reading-books are often the only printed matter which a village girl may ever possess, and they are intended to impart a large amount of useful information. A reformed cur- riculum in the hands of untrained teachers becomes, however, a dead letter, perhaps hardly less injurious than the mere literacy of former '* World Missionary Conference Report. Vol. III. p. 51- Historical Survey 57 days, and thus the interdependence of the various educational problems is once again illustrated. Is it advisable to increase the number of Primary- schools, and to adapt their curriculum without an adequate supply of trained teachers ? The problem of the teacher can be traced since the first beginnings in 1820, recurring with the same baffling insistency. The modern situation shows little advance, except that the absolute necessity of having all teachers to some extent trained is gradually being recognized, and grants are influenced by the degree in which this ideal is kept in view. The sources of supply for teachers in Indian schools of all grades are women from English-speaking countries, Anglo-Indians or " country born " English girls from the Hill schools, members of the Brahma and Arya Samaj, Indian Christians, Parsis, married women of some education from the Hindu non-Brahman com- munity and lastly " women who have learnt to read and write at home." This last class is still astonishingly prevalent. Teachers from other sources are sometimes procured but, except in the case of married women, they are few in number. There are also a good many elderly pandits teaching in village schools. The trouble is that the demand enormously exceeds the supply. Here is a dilemma familiar to missions. A village school has no teacher ; there is at hand a mission pupil, who has finished her Vernacular Middle Examination, but has not been trained ; too often it ends in the appointment of the girl 58 Education of Women of India to the school, as the committee knows that the interval before she marries will be only too brief. This illustration applies throughout the mission field. The difficulties, moreover, attend- ing proper chaperonage of village mistresses are enormous. The employment of widows, where such are forthcoming, is subject to the same difficulty, but ultimately they may with proper training and care become a main source of supply. The hopes which early theorists have built upon the widows of India are to a certain extent already justified and may still be confidently cherished. As regards the opportunities for training, a special circular, issued by the Central Government, in 1901, has provided a needed stimulus to both official and private effort. It is difficult to dis- tinguish absolutely between Secondary and Primary training,^* as some institutions have a few students doing more advanced work than the others. On the whole there is a distinct lack of provision for the separate Secondary training of women teachers ; very few women graduates have taken it and the creation of the opportunity might create the demand. The students in training are mostly Anglo-Indian. The pro- vision for Primary training is more adequate, though there is still in some instances a lack of that co-operation between missionary societies which would lead to more efficient work. The details of management and religious classification of pupils are given on pages 48 and 49. The ^* Cf. Appendix B. Historical Survey 59 great difficulty in all the Primary training work is the lack of preliminary knowledge ; in some of the institutes for widows, indeed, this is a long forgotten minimum. The influence of the previous curriculum upon those who pass on to the proper Vernacular Course after the Middle Examination is also felt. An experienced teacher comments : — " The shadow of prescribed examina- tion which hangs over the school course before training tends to leave the girls quite unacquainted with the newer subjects, and they are not able to acquire these during their training course with sufficient thoroughness to teach them satisfactorily afterwards." The inter-relation of these problems needs to be borne in mind throughout. It seems in many ways as if the whole reform in women's education in India must begin from above downwards, namely in the High School and College stages combined with Secondary training, till the impulse imparted thence is felt throughout every grade. This subject is specially treated in the chapter on the University Education of women. Reform further can only come through closer co-operation, the need and opportunity for this will be apparent in the course of our study of conditions in the different provinces. Ill BURMA " Thou son of dewas ; to hear and see much in order to acquire knowledge ; to study all science that leads not to sin ; to make use of proper language ; to study the Law in order to acquire a knowledge of propriety of behaviour ; these are blessed things, Dewa, mark them well. " Thou son of dewas ; to be patient and endure suffering ; to rejoice in edifying discourse ; to visit the holy men when occasion serves ; to converse on religious subjects ; these are blessed things, Dewa, mark them well." The Mingala-thut. Buddhist Beatitudes. (Burma — Sir George Scott), IN Burma the ancient ideal of Indian woman- hood may still be seen in a somewhat purified form. The Buddhist faith which gives a touch of gentleness to every relation of life, has accentuated its best features and swept away many of the laws which hindered its develop- ment elsewhere. There is thus very little in the position of women in Burma at which even the most pronounced feminist could cavil. The woman is, if anything, the predominant partner and yet few realize that she rules. Gay, blythe and debonnaire, the sunniest spot in a sunny scene, 60 Burma 6i her rainbow-tinted tamein relieved by a short white jacket, a coloured scarf across her shoulder, and fresh flowers clustering in her dark lustrous hair, the Burmese woman is ready any day for any problem of life you may choose to propound. She is the bargainer, trader and financier of the family, and as such her legal and monetary position after marriage is well assured. Marriage is here an affair of the heart, and it is entered upon when young life flows strong in the later teens. A woman may not marry without her parents' consent before the age of twenty, but then if marriage is her wish, why should the parents not consent ? Why should anyone object to anything which promises to fulfil the heart's desire of another So runs a contented " laissez faire " policy. And life is not measured in terms of money by the Burmese. If education has a chance anywhere of being regarded not as a means of livelihood but as a leading forth of the mind to higher and nobler thoughts, it is here in Burma, in consequence of the mental char- acteristics of the people. Work beyond what is needed for the bare necessaries of life seems unnatural, and there is no perpetually rising standard of comfort, nor passion for accumulation to bind the Burmese to an unceasing wheel of toil. He pauses to be glad and to rejoice. The art of rejoicing is one of the chief arts of Burma, and there is perhaps no country in the world where it is carried to such a pitch of perfection. No generahzation can be made about any people 62 Education of Women of India unless long years are spent in their midst, but the first impressions made by the Burmese on a stranger generally confirm the writers who characterize them as modern hedonists. There are books which show another side of the picture, and many sad facts (notably the looseness of the marriage tie ^) bear them out, but leaving these aside, and turning to our particular problem, we find that the girls' schools of Burma are glad and happy places. There is an atmosphere of buoy- ancy and quiet zest in work which strikes the visitor at once, and this testimony is amply borne out by the teachers. It must, however, be remembered that not all girls in school in Burma are Burmese. A large proportion of them are drawn from the Karens, who occupy the tracts of hill country on the frontier of Lower Burma, in Tenasserim, and in the Delta of the Irawadi. The gradual civiliza- tion and raising of these tribes to the standard of the Burmese in general, is on all sides attri- buted to the excellent work of the missionaries, (the American Baptists and the Anglicans). Where Christianity comes its special social results follow. There is a Chinese community numbering over 40,000 and a strong Mohammedan section, not to speak of Hindu immigrants from South India, Tamils and Telugus, while the variety of the educational problem may be seen in the 1 " Marriage in Burma is simply concubinage, which may terminate at the desire of either party." Christian Missions in Burma. W, C. B. Purser. Girls at St Luke's Mission, Toungoo, Burma Burma 63 official enumeration of the other races under instruction : " Karens, Talaings, Chins, Shans, Danus and Inthas, Chinese, Indians, Palaungs and Taungthus." The interior of Burma is inhabited by about fifty-seven different tribes speaking forty different languages. Feminine education however is not as yet a matter of importance amongst the hill tribes ; apart from the Anglo-Indian (Eurasian) schools, which lie beyond the province of this book, it affects mainly the Burmese, Karen, Chinese and Mohammedan communities. As regards general literacy, Burma ranks high in the provinces of the Empire ; the proportion of girls at school to girls of school-going age was 9.6% in 1910,2 as compared with 4% in 1907 in British India as a whole. This distinction is however mainly in the Primary stages, for the women graduates of Burma can so far be numbered on one's fingers. It is also entirely confined to those areas which have come into touch with modern civilization. There are large tracts of hill country where the women are totally uneducated, for the Burmese and Karen women alone contribute to the high proportion. One would however naturally expect to find a well developed system of female education throughout the various stages, offering possibly an example to the other provinces, and it is surprising to find that this is not the case. On the contrary there is considerably less organization and no such 2 Public Instruction Report, Burma, 1910. 64 Education of Women of India definite policy in female education as in Eastern Bengal. The real reasons for the creditable proportion are the later age of marriage, the bright temperament and ability of the Burmese girl, the complete absence of parda, and the general social atmosphere, which permits girls to study un- hindered in boys' schools throughout all the stages. Thus there are more girls studying in boys' schools than in separate ones, viz. 73% as compared with 42% over India as a whole. The system seems in many ways to work well. Of the three contributing factors, which are found in every province, the work of Government, the spontaneous Indian movement, and missionary effort, the last overwhelmingly predominates in Burma, especially in the higher stages. The policy of the Government, more especially as regards girls' schools, has been to encourage, guide, and, to a certain extent, finance private institutions while undertaking little direct work of its own. As will be seen from the accompany- ing table, only four institutions are directly under the Central Authority. A certain proportion of girls may also be found in the Government and Municipal Secondary schools for boys ; the Primary schools for boys directly under public control only number fifteen and the pro- portion of girls in them is therefore a negligible quantity. No Inspectress or Assistant Inspectress has as yet been appointed, partly because funds are lacking and also because, apart from purely domestic subjects there does not. Burma 65 U-, N N VO Tl- (U •-* "w 3 M 00 >o fO o\ ^J2 >,S 10 Tf in >o t^' 5--ca o qj ro 00 2 3 j3 M M ro 0" vo" S c^ 0« u h ■< 13 > t> S ■u • • • • • • CM ■3 c • * " • * • b: D b) Q z ^ P -1 O^ ^ 00 0\ 0» M Tl- HI a\ ■a 4) UD ^1 H __ "^ . < 2 aw ■5 "2 o ^3 cJ CO O i^ -I-' Co QJ ^3 +^ bo O Pi 00 V d o H o tn I.W o (Si t-l ^ [2 03 •G 8 ^ pi § PhQ^ 66 Education of Women of India seem such a crying need for it as in other parts of India. The spontaneous Indian element may practic- ally be identified with the Buddliist educational movement, except for one small Mohammedan school in Rangoon where tiny girls learn the Koran. To Buddliism and the Buddliist monks may be attributed the high standard of literacy in Bunna as a whole. Practically every Burmese boy knows how to read and ^^Tite, and he has learnt it at the monastery.* In the nature of things girls are not admitted to these Kyauiigs, but there are apparently some parallel schools for girls, conducted by nuns. " Besides the monastic public schools, there are private schools kept by lajnnen and occasionally also by women, in which girls as well as boys are taught," ^ The private institutions which do not come under inspection ai"e mainly of this character. One fruit of the recent Buddhist re\'ival is the Empress Mctoria Buddhist Girls' School, which owes its existence and tone to the energies of MrsHla Oung. Her main idea is the combination of modern education with definite instruction in Buddliism and in this the school differs from all the other indigenous girls' schools, where little beyond bare literacy can be acquired. Excellent educa- tion up to " Anglo-Vernacular Standard VII " can be obtained here under competent mistresses or masters. An Anglo-Vemacular school has also * Missions in Burma, p. 13. W. C. Purser. " Burma. M. and B. Ferraxs. Burma 67 recently been opened through private generosity for the girls of the Chinese Colony in Rangoon. There is naturally no spontaneous and independent effort for girls' education among the hill tribes, though in many cases they are ready to meet the missionary more than half-way. The missionary influence in the education of girls in Burma is thus a most important one, and includes every stage from the Kindergarten to Normal training. The chief agencies at work are the American Baptist Mission, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and the Methodist Episcopal Church of America. The Roman Catholic educational schemes exist largely for the Anglo-Indians and the Tamil immigrants from South India. The American Baptist Mission dates from the time of Judson (1810), and has now in connection with it over 70,000 native Christians speaking eight different languages. The educational scheme for their Christian girls is very thorough, and leads up through a system of small village schools to their Burmese boarding school in Kemmandine, a suburb of Rangoon, and to an excellent mixed Karen school, also in Rangoon. There is a separate Normal school, and one or two especially clever girls are to be found in the Matriculation class of the Baptist Boys' High School preparing to go to the Mission College. A large proportion of the non-Christian girls are drawn into these schools by the efficiency of the education offered. The centre of the S.P.G. 68 Education of Women of India work is St Mary's School, Rangoon, which dates back to 1865, and is a first-class institution in every way. It is satisfactory to note that several of the staff are former pupils who have returned to teach here, after training in the S.P.G. Normal School. Some of the staff are Anglo-Indian, but a good proportion are Burmese Christians. Two English ladies are in charge. There are about one hundred boarders, mostly Christian, but including some Buddhists, and nearly an equal number of non-Christian day scholars. The school works under the Government Code, and earns an excellent grant. There are three other good S.P.G. schools for Burmese or Karen girls which lead up to St Mary's. Those at Toungoo and Mandalay have a considerable number of boarders. A few of these are drawn from the immigrant population — as Kansi, the little Ghurka girl in the accompany- ing illustration. Her father is a Christian, and contributes regularly to her maintenance. The poHcy of the S.P.G. Mission seems, so far, rather to concentrate on a few good schools than to develop much village educational work. The Methodist Episcopal schools, like those of the S.P.G., are partly for the Anglo-Indian com- munity, and partly for the indigenous population. In Rangoon they have two good High schools, one of each type, and other schools in the country. The educational work done by other societies in Burma is not extensive ; but, where every unit counts, it has its own contribution to make. There are arge tracts of hill country round Burma Ghurka Girl Boarder at S.P.G. Girls' School, Mandalay Burma 69 which are still waiting for missionary advance, and where the women are totally uneducated. The pioneer work to be done would be of the type usual amongst primitive peoples, and might produce the same magnificent results as amongst the Karens. Passing from the organizing agencies to the actual pupils, the religious classification as seen in the accompanying table is of interest. The Anglo-Indian pupils pass through the various stages of their education in the High School, hence their absence in the statistics of the Primary schools. The proportion of Mohammedan girls in the High schools is striking, and is possibly due to the fact of mixed parentage ; Buddhist freedom to a certain extent influences Mohammedan customs in Burma. By the new regulations only 15 % of the places in the " European " schools are available for Burmese or Indian girls, and these vacancies are eagerly sought after. The curriculum pursued in the various schools is laid down in the Government Code, and there are no schools of any importance which stand apart and develop an experimental curriculum of their own, as occasionally happens in other provinces. Burma has, as yet, no University of her own, and the curriculum of the schools with the corre- sponding departmental examinations is to a certain extent determined in relation to the Calcutta Matriculation. Schools are classified as " High " in which after a good vernacular foundation, the pupils are taken up to Matricula- 70 Education of Women of India 6 o o w w IS w o Q W W « « o w o Address on Female Education in India, 1839, delivered by Dr Duff at the First Annual Meeting of the Scottish Ladies' Association. "^ Percentage of girls of school age at school. 1881 . . . 0.87 1891 . . . 1. 61 1901 . . . 1.8 1910 . . .4-3 The total number of girls under instruction is now 171.569- Imperial Gazetteer. Bengal Public Instruction Report, 1910. io8 Education of Women of India pq o O o o W o m O H § W o h z u •d td fO tH C^ en in O M ro < c -^ Tt- z t^ s K h ■< > K ■6 t^ N 00 Tf 00 d, M o M U") Cti xi in lO Id ■-< N ci 2 & S rt W • . . IT) to Z .> • • • N c^ u s rt H ;z; O ■^ z •< i^ ^^ o rt K^ y.B-a y ■n-s 3 • • M • M ^ r: c .2 3D5 o:§ ^ a 2 c M . o M 00 > • 00 00 o O in • ;h • • • 1— ( 03 O o CO 3 o s & ;^ s 13 4-> O H Bengal 109 education of women, the Government, spon- taneous Indian effort, and the missionary societies, and a brief analysis of these with their varying types and functions may serve to throw light on the general situation with its problems and possibilities. The Government system is a somewhat different one from that employed in the newer province of Eastern Bengal and Assam, and may be taken as the normal one in the various provinces of India. The work is directly under the Director of Public Instruction, and forms a separate section of the ordinary Educational Department. There are two In- spectresses, who are members of the Indian Educational Service, but a large proportion of the inspection in the country districts is of necessity done by the ordinary Inspectors. Eastern Bengal has here the advantage of newer and more plastic organization. The Government policy is rather to aid voluntary schools than to launch out on schemes of its own ; its influence is mostly felt as a unifying agency by means of Code, standard of examination and inspection, and as presenting occasionally model types to which the voluntary schools may or may not think it wise to conform. Thus less than one in twenty-eight of all girls' institutions are entirely under public management, as may be seen in the accompanying table. A slight divergence from this policy may, however, be noted in the increase of Primary schools directly under 1 1 o Education of Women of India Government control from one in 1907 to eighty- six in 1910.8 The Bethune Girls' College and High School, Calcutta, founded in 1849, may be taken as a type of a model Government institution.^ Situated near Hadua Talau in the heart of the native city, like all city schools it suffers from lack of space. There is a fine pillared verandah through which one enters into an open court. Into this court open all the class-rooms. A characteristic feature is a very fine and spacious library well stocked with the classics of East and West. At the time of my visit several girls were sitting at work in it. A marked difference between Indian girls' High schools and those at home is that many of the former in the parda districts aim at having a College Department, which is affiliated to the University and in which girls are prepared up to the B.A. stage. The merits of this system will be discussed elsewhere.!^ In the Bethune College Department there are about thirty-five students, and in the school proper some one hundred and fifty, ranging in age from tiny girls of five or six to the Matriculation candidates of sixteen years and upwards. The lower classes are extremely crowded, and there is the falling off in the upper school which is so characteristic of India. This presents one of the most difficult problems in the education of Indian women. The aim being to fit the pupils for life, and to train them to think, 8 Imperial Gazetteer. ^ Cf. Chap. II, p. 36. 10 Cf. Chap. IX. Bengal 1 1 1 how can it possibly be accomplished in the three short years which in the majority of cases is all the time available ? In the High school proper the assumption is that the girls will stay on, and the Bethune curriculum is shaped accordingly. There is a good Kindergarten, and all the modern plant to make an efficient school ; the great drawback, as usual, is the lack of trained teachers, only one of the whole staff having full qualifica- tions. Indian music is well taught as an extra subject, and it was a pretty sight to see some half-dozen girls accompanying the harmonium with violin, escar, and zitta. The school owes its success to two factors, first the personality of its former Head-mistress, Miss Bose, the first woman graduate of the University of Calcutta, and secondly to the eagerness with which the Brahma Samaj welcomed this move on the part of the Government. The girls in the higher classes are practically all from the Brahma Samaj, so much so that perhaps this influence is almost too predominant. A little Moslem girl who had received a special Government " stipend " on account of her religion, had recently turned Brahmo, but the Head-mistress assured us that the change was due entirely to home influences. There is a good hostel in the school compound, for which there are always more applications than available vacancies, and arrangements are being made for the more complete separation of the school from the College department. The function of the Inspectress is important, 112 Education of Women of India and it is to be regretted that the word has come to suggest destructive rather than constructive criticism. " Training " is a more accurate description of the work, and in a country where a large proportion of the teachers are untrained, it well repays the money spent thereon. A visit often means three days spent in a village helping the teacher to a more scientific system. Sugges- tions as to improvements in the Code ought to come from the Inspectress, and she has every opportunity for studying the conditions of the people and the suitability of the type of educa- tion offered. To consider the relative value of European and Indian Inspectresses is at the present moment of purely theoretical interest. However great the advantage of the Indian in intimate knowledge of the environment and of the mental characteristics of the people, it is difficult as yet to procure any with the necessary scientific qualifications and gift of organization. The difficulties of travel are also accentuated for the Indian woman. The contribution of Indian thought should be in the meantime rather in the building up of individual schools, with ultimate constructive influence on the system as a whole. The indigenous and spontaneous effort of the Indian community towards the education of their women is of two types, that of the Brahma Samaj and reform societies, and that of the orthodox sections. The former is very much in line with the general system : the Code is used, and where Bengal 113 alternative subjects are possible there is more emphasis laid on Sanskrit than in mission schools, but as a whole it is not strikingly " National." The Brahma Girls' High School in Calcutta receives a monthly grant of five hundred Rupees and is a first class institution. Their Middle schools are mostly English in contrast to the vernacular mission schools. There are also a few Hindu Primary schools, which follow the Government Code. It is to the orthodox com- munities that we must turn to find the distinct- ively Indian note, the retention of which in any really educative scheme presents so baffiing a problem. Here in the " Mahakali Pathshala " is a genuine Indian attempt at self-expression in educational ideals. This school was founded in 1393, in Calcutta, by " Her Holiness Mataji Maharani Tapaswini," one of those strange women saints who flit across the pages of Indian history, freed by their mystical insight and rare wisdom from the shackles of ordinary Indian womanhood. Hither the dainty little Hindu maiden of the upper castes is brought in a closed gari with her hands full of marigolds and other blossoms, to learn that school is but a larger home where the mysteries and ritual of worship will become clear to her, where she too will lisp the monotonous chant to the glory of the gods, and sink her baby soul in meditation. True, there is a printed curriculum on the wall, which says that Sanskrit, Bengali, Moral Text Books and Arithmetic are to be studied in six classes, but what matter ! The effort which 1 14 Education of Women of India these subjects entail is ever and anon relieved by worship, and by the cooking which is part of worship. Then there is the picture of Saraswati Devi/i on whom " as the Wonder of all Wisdom one meditateth in the third watch of the night," and three hundred babies ranging from three to eight years of age will daily sway their little bodies before her in the morning puja}'^ What musical drill is in the Kindergarten so is puja to the Patshala pupils. There is a special prize for the best performer of piija — a sari and a silver pin for every little Kumari ^^ who has honoured the school with her presence. The teachers are mostly elderly pandits, to whom the visit of the Inspectress indicates the desire of Government not to improve them, but to copy their most excellent methods in the Government schools ! Regarded from a Western point of view the education is nil ; the children can hardly read and write their own language, geography and arithmetic are practically absent, and there is no attempt to develop the mental faculties ; from the point of view of the orthodox Hindu, however, it is probably ideal ; the girls have " the ancient and sacred lore of their country infused into them and their lives are modelled after the ideal Hindu female char- acters of old." Herein lies the real value to the student of education : there is no gulf between 11 The Goddess of Learning. On her festival, students will pile their books and inkpots before the shrines in their colleges for special blessing. 1* Worship. 1* Lady, a title of respect. Bengal 115 school and home, and the child's own environment and its hereditary instincts are utilized as a basis, but the trouble is that no superstructure is built thereon. Elsewhere we have superstructure but no basis. The school has no grant, no fees are paid, and the support is entirely obtained from subscriptions from the Hindu community. Extensively the influence of these schools is not great. There are nominally twenty- three branch schools in Bengal and Eastern Bengal, but a branch notified in the report is not always found to be in existence. That there is life in the move- ment is seen by the fact that the present Head, the Srimati Mataji, undertook a tour in the Mofussil and districts to organize branches. " She was everywhere well received, and there was evident sense of relief and sympathy of the public in the cause of female education under the Mahakali system." 1* To behold orthodox Hinduism sending a woman on tour in the interests of education is indeed to realise the Renaissance of the East ! But " relief " from what ? Is it from the non-religious character of the Government system ? The third and most potent factor in the educa- tional situation is the missionary one. As this was the first in the field one would expect their work to be more highly developed, and it must also be remembered that the Brahma Samaj is an indirect fruit of the leavening of Christian educa- tion. The doctrine of equal opportunity for man ^^ Report of the Mahakali Patshala. 1 1 6 Education of Women of India and woman is seen at work in the comparative religious statistics of girls at school. Primary . 5,360 Indian Christians to 126,897 Non- Christians. Middle . 1,382 Indian Christians to 1,430 Non- Christians. High . 448 Indian Christians to 667 Non- Christians. As the returns of the Bengal census i^ show only 319,384 Christians in a total population of 52,668,269, these figures referring to their daughters' education are striking. The aim of Christian education is twofold, the building up of the Christian community so that ultimately the Indian Church may be a strong social factor, and the education of non-Christians with a view to influencing them either directly or indirectly in favour of Christianity. These two aims are com- bined in most mission work except in the case of most of the girls' Boarding schools where a non- Christian girl is naturally the exception. Of the eleven High schools for Indian girls in the Province, six are imder mission management and two varying types may be noticed. The Diocesan High school — a Government-aided institution for girls under the management of the Clewer Sisters, has the reputation of being the best girls' school in Calcutta. The reason for this is easy to discover in the personality of its Principal, Sister Mary Victoria, whose aristocratic idealism (if the words may be combined) determines the tone of i» 191 1 Census. Statistical Abstract of British India. Bengal 117 the whole school. In India the personal element counts for everything, and without it, the best of institutions and Government plans are unavailing. Sister Mary Victoria and her English staff are constantly with the girls and when the school was first started they took their meals with the boarders until a tradition of manners was estab- lished. The school is well staffed with trained teachers both English and Indian, the former predominating. An English lady also who is interested in the school comes regularly to teach brushwork. There is an excellent College De- partment. The Government curriculum is followed, and in addition systematic religious instruction is given to all pupils. The ideal of this school is not, however, success in examina- tions only and their shadow does not lie heavily. As a small pupil remarked to the writer : " There are lots of girls in our school who don't love examinations, but who do love school." The pupils are drawn from various ranks and creeds ; the boarders are mostly Christian, and the majority of the day scholars Hindu and Brahma. The leading Indian families in Calcutta send their girls here, and to the Loretto Convent ,1^ rather than to the Bethune School because of the personal contact with English ladies. The daily religious lesson is not felt as a deterrent in any way. It is curious to watch these girls drive up to the school in handsome carriages and to realize that they 1" A school under the English Code, where only 15 per cent, of the pupils may be of Indian parentage. 1 1 8 Education of Women of India are only paying two shillings and eight pence a month for a really first class education. Many of the richer parents give donations as well, but the fee is kept low for the sake of the poorer. These fees and the Government grant practically cover the working expenses of the school apart from the support of the English staff. There are no separate schools for the wealthier classes worked on a system of full payment, partly because poverty is not so much a cause of separa- tion in India as in Britain and partly because there is not a sufficient number of girls ready for higher education who could and would pay fees that would cover expenses. Taken as a whole the fees in mission schools are higher than in Government institutions. Of a somewhat different and more usual type is the United Free Church High school, it exists almost entirely for the girls of this and other mis- sions who enter it as boarders from the country ; the school is thus predominantly Christian and has little contact with Indian life. Of 122 scholars about 90 are boarders, and accommodation is being built for more. The day scholars are mostly in the lower classes. The education given is ex- ceedingly thorough, and if the whole curriculum ending with a teachers' diploma is taken it ensures a girl a good post either in Government or mission service. There is no College Department, but a special feature since 1889 is the excellent Normal course from which most satisfactory results have been obtained. Miss Whyte may be rightly Bengal 119 considered the pioneer of efficient training for teachers in Bengal. The Government curriculum is followed, and in addition the customary Bibhcal instruction is given. The school suffers from two drawbacks customary to all of its type, the lack of space and the " Westernization " of the pupils. Situated in one of the most crowded parts of the city, the buildings resemble a huge bee-hive packed with class rooms and dormitories and redeemed only by the glorious flat roof so characteristic of life in Calcutta. Below is a pathetically small playground where the boarders walk or read or play, in so far as the latter is natural to Indian girls. A splendid effort has been made by the staff to bring the girls into contact with nature and the historic monuments of India in order to counteract the cramping influence of the surroundings. One year a large party of teachers and former and present pupils visited Agra and Delhi, the wonder and glory of which opened a new field of thought and imagina- tion to the Bengali girls. Another year the whole school was transferred for a short time to Deoghur. The material obtained on these expeditions served as a basis for nature study throughout the term. The students and elder girls are also taken once a year for a short mission tour, which serves not only to enlarge their horizon, but also emphasizes the primary purpose of the school. In spite, however, of the energy and originality of the staff in organizing these expeditions, the atmosphere of the school remains very much that of an 1 20 Education of Women of India ordinary secondary school in Scotland and has no distinctively Indian note. " Atmosphere " and curriculum are mutually dependent and their relationship is a problem that does not affect mission schools only. As a whole the mission High schools are doing a splendid work and their growing influence in the community is to be noted in the fact that occasionally Brahma-Samaj and even Hindu girls are found amongst their boarders. The Middle schools, teaching up to Standard v., have adopted the sound policy of excluding English, the object being to give a sound vernacular training to such children as will never have the chance of getting High school education. "It is these schools which supply the bulk of pupils to our training-schools for mis- tresses, and as such their importance in our system of female education • in this country is very great." 1^ The strong point of the mission schools, both Middle and Primary, is that they are under the direct and constant supervision of European workers. In one mission visited, all the Indian teachers were Christians and had had Normal training, and the schools were constantly visited by a lady holding the highest educational certificates. This is not the case ever5rwhere, but it is the ideal aimed at. A mission Primary school is a pleasant place full of promise and of future possibilities. Shadow and sunshine are mingled, but on the whole the sunshine predominates. Take for example one in the vicinity of Calcutta i*" Bengal Public Instruction Report, 1910. o o o Bengal 127 multiplication of schools and the acceptance of female education by pubhc opinion would create a condition more favourable to the ready supply of teachers. The new Code for Primary schools introduced in 1910, which is in accord with modern educational principles, may prove more attractive than the former. Finance is an important matter. Many villages are too poor to maintain separate pathshalas for their daughters ; there are at present 69,000 girls in boys' Primary schools as against 75,000 in Primary schools for girls only. The result is that in these villages the stricter castes do not send their girls to school and even the others are withdrawn after the infant stage. In the Second- ary schools in the cities many girls who can well afford to pay are enjoying a first-class education for two shillings and eightpence a month at the expense of Government and missionary societies. This looks as if a re-adjustment of funds might increase the Primary statistics. Here again is an unlimited sphere for private enterprise ; the mission school for girls only, staffed by Indian women teachers under European supervision is welcome and sure of success. The system of Zenana teaching both by missionaries and Govern- ment teachers is, as in Eastern Bengal, of great use in breaking down prejudice, and though apparently slow and costly work, it is invaluable. It might possibly prove to be for the good of the whole system if some small central Board or consultative committee were formed to promote 128 Education of Women of India co-operation in the development of future plans between the Government and the various private enterprises. The future of female education in Bengal is partly a question of administration, partly that of a greater number of European educators in sympathy with the genius of the country, partly that of a reformed curriculum, but more funda- mentally it is a question of religious evolution. VI INTERESTING INSTITUTIONS IN THE UNITED PROVINCES AND PANJAB " The world exists in order to grow souls under the eyes of a patient, tireless, yearning Teacher." From Hindustan Review. IT is not proposed to give in this chapter a detailed account of general organization and of the forces at work. There is a de- finite similarity in the system of administration throughout all India, though it varies in its adaptation to indigenous institutions : one policy underlies missionary efforts, though they differ remarkably in the personal factor ; the new Indian spirit is everywhere more or less articulate. But it is worth while to lay emphasis on certain phases of the problem of female education in the United Provinces, and on certain institu- tions in the Panjab which are typical of the complexity of the situation, or present unique characteristics. In the Quinquennial Survey the United Pro- vinces occupy an unsatisfactory position at the bottom of the list of comparative percentages, showing only 1.2 per cent, of girls of school -going age at school. This percentage has, however, risen 130 Education of Women of India in 1910 to 1.33, and the total number of institu- tions has increased from 1,067 ^o 1,266 — a credit- able advance in the face of the difficulties to be encountered. The " impatient idealist " must beware, however, of extravagant hopes of trans- formation in a country where progress must of necessity be slow and of an evolutionary nature. Under more stringent inspection and regulation, the rapid advance in the early part of the decade has proved to a certain extent fictitious, and due to an over-hasty desire on the part of the educa- tional authorities to move with the times. Local committees had apparently started schools for which there was no demand and for which they were unable to procure teachers. One Inspectress reports that in some cases, on a surprise visit, no teacher was found at all ; in others, though the teachers were present, no work was being done.i Artificial efforts to hasten the pace were attended only by a spurious success ; for example, a capitation grant of four annas a month was given in 1906 for every girl attending a boys' school, with a resulting increase of 4000 in the statistics of attendance ; but a careful inspection and subsequent removal of the grant proved that the girls had simply been procured to sit in the schoolroom without receiving any attention, and that they left in a year or two as ignorant as when they entered it. Quite possibly some of the annas had found their way into the pockets of the parents who had been so obliging as to lend 1 Public Instruction Report, United Provinces, 1910. Interesting Institutions 131 their girls. The latest statistics show a drop of 3000 in the total number of female scholars, but this is entirely among the girls attending boys' schools, and is due to the more efficient adminis- tration. The slight increase in the Secondary schools and in the girls' Primary schools is a sign of genuine progress and may be welcomed as such. The policy of the Government is one of slow advance after careful investigation and en- listment of local co-operation. About the year 1907, every District Officer was instructed to form a special committee to watch over the in- terests of girls' education in his district, and some of these committees have done excellent work, while others have been baffled by the difficulties to be faced and by lack of funds. Others, again, as indicated above, have tended to make haste too quickly. The fact that Indian non-Christian men of good social position have been found willing to serve on these committees is an indication of general advance and of growing sympathy with every effort for enlightenment and reform. 2 As regards Inspectresses, the United Provinces are better staffed at present than any other province excepting possibly Madras, and yet the overwork is no less, for the districts are very large, and in many cases the schools are quite inaccessible to the woman traveller. But in a country where parda is strict, and where registers ^ Cf. Young India and the Education of Girls, E, R. M'Neile (C.M.S.). 1 32 Education of Women of India may only represent fictitious girls, and where moreover the work of the Inspectress is much needed for the stimulus and sympathy she can give, the system well repays the necessary expense, and will probably admit of yet further expansion. An effort is also being made to secure voluntary co-operation on the part of both English and Indian ladies who are willing and able to help. One Indian lady has given a great deal of her time to the inspection of the Government Primary schools in her district ; another lady, a missionary with exceptional qualifications, is secretary of a local educational committee. Table of Schools for Indian Girls in the United Provinces.* Under Public Management. Under Private Management. Government. Local or Municipal Branch. -a 73, ■6 •a c High Schools 6 •• Middle- English . I 18 4 Vernacular 7 Primary . 57 355 499 17 Training Schools I 7 3 58 i 356 537 24 3 Formed from Statistical Tables III and I HA. in Public Instruction Report for United Provinces, 1910. Interesting Institutions 133 The problem of finding teachers is even more acute here than elsewhere. It seems hardly credible that a teacher could be found in regular employment who was unable to write words of three letters to dictation, yet such is a recorded fact. Her ignorance had been concealed by a memorized knowledge of the Koran. Of sixty- two Primary schools sanctioned by Government in 1909 it has only been possible to open twenty- one because of the entire lack of teachers with even the minimum of qualification. There are two lines of spontaneous Indian effort : the Arya Samaj , whose schools conform to the Government Code and regulations, and neo- Hinduism,^ which has produced Mrs Besant's school for Indian girls at Benares. The Arya Samaj have a good training-school for teachers at Dehra Dun, students from which may be found teaching in their schools in other parts of India. A High-school department has recently been added to it, and every effort is being put forth to make it a strong educational centre. The school at Benares is in connexion with the Hindu Central College, and poses as a definite revolt from the anglicizing tendency of Government and mission schools. It receives no grant, and as yet has not even applied for inspection. The Government is considered to " favour Christian and mission schools," and therefore, though there is the same lack of funds here as elsewhere, the promoters will have none of it or its money ! Freedom to '' C/. The Renaissance in India, C. F. Andrews. 134 Education of Women of India shape their own curriculum is also a dominant motive. To enter the school and see over a hundred beautifully dressed Indian girls, almost all of the Brahman caste, sitting in groups of six or seven, on bright carpets, the class-rooms well separated in the spacious airy building, was certainly to feel that here one might find a solu- tion of the curriculum problem and a construc- tive theory of Indian education. " A training in conduct and religion is what Indians, as a rule, value most for their women — the work for those going beyond the rudiments is too bookish in character." ^ Here the teachers are free to saturate the instruction throughout with the ethical elements of a religion acceptable to the parents, to edit their own text -books, to emphasize the study of the vernaculars and Indian classics without the strain of examinations. The pupils stay longer than in other schools : many " married " girls of fifteen and sixteen years are in the upper forms. One particularly bright child of fourteen told us she was to be there for four years while her husband studied in England. Thus there is time really to influence the character and mind of the girls. Yet, on analysis, from the purely educational point of view the school was distinctly disappointing. As regards the staff, the Head-mistress, an English lady, claimed no knowledge of the vernacular, and though her intercourse with the girls seemed most cordial and sympathetic, it was necessarily limited, and ^ Public Instruction Report, United Provinces, p. 34. Interesting Institutions 135 still more limited was her knowledge of their studies. An American with the degree of B.Sc., a Brahman, wife of one of the College professors, who had been educated in a convent, three mission-taught girls, and sundry other teachers of a nondescript character, completed the number. English was taught throughout, from class III. upwards, and used as a medium of instruction in classes VI. and VII., but the degree of fluency of the girls therein seemed hardly to justify this method. Many of the ordinary text-books were in use, and except for the moral catechisms and some stress laid on Indian art and Hinduism in the drawing lessons, the difference of the cur- riculum seemed more theoretical than actual. The theories are, however, suggestive, and when traced to the basal thought that education must be founded on the hereditary instinct and natural environment of the child they are not in reality revolutionary but compatible with the construc- tive system and ideals of the Christian religion. The Crosthwaite High School at Allahabad shows possibilities of a different nature. It was started privately in Lucknow city some eighteen years ago by a committee of Indian gentlemen and Government officials, and was afterwards removed for the sake of a larger site and fresher air. A long, low, roomy building, with deep verandahs, forms the central school, with two hostels attached to it, in one of which twenty Moslem girls were residing, in the other six Hindus. A considerable number of day pupils, 136 Education of Women of India without restriction as to creed, are drawn from Allahabad. Tuition and conveyance for day pupils are given free, but the charge for boarders meets the cost. The Government Code is followed throughout, and the knowledge of English, tested by recitation and questioning on subject-matter, seemed of a thorough quality. The school illustrated in miniature most of the usual problems. It was marvellous that Moslem girls of really good family should have been allowed to come to a boarding-school, some from far distant States, and there was a certain pathos in the sight of them being taught by any kind of woman who had " learnt to read and write at home," and who in some cases might almost have been their ayah. This description applies only to the lower forms, but in these classes girls are at the most formative age, and many would not stay for the whole course. One teacher of this type was actually engaged in nursing her baby while giving an arithmetic lesson, and one wondered which of the two suffered more — the lesson or the baby ! The Head-mistress was a young Indian Christian graduate from the Isabella Thoburn College, full of energy and enthusiasm for what seemed so difficult a task. She herself had to take three lessons a day, which left little leisure for the superintendence of the lower school with its double vernacular (Hindi and Urdu) standards throughout. A similar position in a school at home would have been occupied by a much older woman with many 1 i ■ ■ ^' ' #^s::'' ■ . ■ ■ .■ ■ ^ 4 ■ - ; >,_'^^^; '^^ ; _;,'^J, ~ \ ^ ; / ~?'„4;.S'^^^^^^ % ■ ~ ' *'^^ ■ ;| i^teii^i^^;' • u^^^ByH^H^H "k ^P^^^ 1 ^E unHHHHHH m .:: 'ill , |J- 1 ..^n^H '^^Sm^ : t:l . . 1 iW i>wmS9fu* "SIZl^^^^^ViakS^B S^^^^^H 1 p^'*S»f ^1 : ml i -ii " i i nil '^ SM ■- - - -..^11 o o oT 'o (J O a XJ rt (U Interesting Institutions 137 years' experience of life. A question as to the religious teaching given elicited the following reply : " The Mohammedan teacher has her own girls ; I teach the few Christians, and the Hindus look after their own bathings ! " There is no question here of Indianizing the curriculum. In turning to the specifically Christian institu- tions, it has again to be noted that the missionaries have been the pioneers of education, that an over- whelming proportion of the aided schools are under their management, and that a creditable proportion of Christian girls in the High stages (552 out of 759 Indian girls) is maintained. No account of women's education in India would be complete without a full description of the Isabella Thoburn College, or, as it is called throughout the Northern provinces, the " Lai Bagh " (Rose Garden). From a tiny beginning in 1870 as a bazaar school in Lucknow, with half a dozen Christian girls, it has grown by successive stages to a splendidly equipped collegiate institution, the portals of which may be entered by a child as a tiny " rosebud " for the Kindergarten, and from whence the full-blown B.A. may emerge some sixteen years later. The College and its latest additions stand as a memorial to two strong personalities, Isabella Thoburn, the founder, and Lilavati Singh, whose early death in 1909, when Vice-Principal of the College, removed one of the Indian leaders of women's education. The ideals after which they strove and the spirit of passionate sacrifice for others which dominated their lives 138 Education of Women of India form a strong tradition in the school. The American sense of community hfe which enters so markedly into their schools and colleges has been transferred with wise adaptation to the Indian environment ; and the former pupils of the " Lai Bagh," scattered throughout India, are still under the glamour of their school days and are working out its inspiration. Self-government in all that regards the common interest is the rule of the College and Normal departments, and the same principle is being slowly established in the High school in the hope of developing the sense of responsibility so greatly needed in the Indian character. The girls are practically all Christian, but occasionally a non-Christian girl is found taking advantage of the splendid education which she could obtain nowhere else. The Zenana school, opened in 1909, is attended by some Hindu and Mohammedan girls desirous of a simple course with domestic science, and it is expected that this department will gradually increase. There is also a special hostel for Hindu or Mohammedan girls which has not yet been much utilized. The staff consists of seven or eight American graduates and about fifteen Indian teachers, some of whom are graduates also. There are no untrained teachers. This proportion in a school of some 200 pupils, and a College and Normal department of about 40, is refreshing after other institutions, but it in no way satisfies the standard of efficiency aimed at by the directors. The Normal department is of special Interesting Institutions 139 importance, as teachers are supplied from it to all parts of Northern India. No student is admitted to the senior course who has not passed the Matriculation or equivalent examination, and the Government Report testifies to the thorough- ness of the training given. A lower qualification is accepted for the Kindergarten course. The Government Code is followed throughout, and there is thus no question of an experimental curriculum on Indian lines. The College is under a Board of Directors which includes two prominent Indian gentlemen, and is in connexion with the American Methodist Mission. The Church Missionary Society has an excellent boarding-school for Christian girls at Benares with about 100 pupils. The central schools for the Christian community form a very important part of the work of any mission, and it is entirely due to them that the creditable percentage of Christian girls in the Secondary stages is main- tained. Where a Normal department can be added, their influence on the non-Christian com- munity and on the general educational situation is very marked. Unfortunately some mission committees have still a tendency to appoint a pupil to a post too soon, and the numbers are not as large as they might be. The Benares class has at present nine students who entered it with Middle Anglo- Vernacular qualifications ; its special feature, in addition to the ordinary subjects, is an experimental attempt to give some concep- tion of the Hindu environment of religious 140 Education of Women of India thought to the students. The Indian Christian of the second or third generation tends to be totally isolated in idea and thought from other Indians, and this tendency is often accentuated in mission schools. It is therefore exceedingly important that those who are to influence Hindu life as teachers in mission or Government schools should, in the course of their training, form some clear and correct conception of the religious en- vironment of their future pupils. Experimental work of this type should prove most useful in any future developments of Normal training which missionary societies may be contemplating. There is throughout a pleasant spirit of co- operation between the various educational mis- sionaries, and between them and the Government authorities. There is a Missionary Educational Union for the Province which the Inspectresses attend offtcially. An annual Teachers' Confer- ence is held in February, and it is probable that in the future co-operation may pass from theory to actual fact in the development of further work. A striking lack in the missionary contribution is the absence of any school of really first-class character for non-Christian girls, such as exist in Bombay and Calcutta. The educational work for boys has been fully developed, but the parallel opportunity for girls which the changing times have created has yet to be seized. It may be argued that the Isabella Thoburn school has arrangements for non-Christian girls, but even in these changing times there are few non-Christians Interesting Institutions 141 who would be willing to risk their daughters in a boarding-school among such an overwhelming number of Christian girls, whereas first-class schools starting fresh with no tradition would be sufficiently in touch with the new movement to attract pupils by their sheer efficiency. In this direction and in the training of teachers the standard must be set by the missionary authorities if their reputation as pioneers is to be maintained. The situation in the Panjab differs again only in degree. While there has been no ebb in the increasing tide of pupils — an increase of 1328 in 1909, and of 3732 in 1910, making a present total of over 42,000 girls under instruction — the problem of administration and inspection in a strictly parda country is as difficult as elsewhere, and there are stories of the inefficiency of the teachers which surpass even those told of other provinces. The municipalities vary greatly in their enthusiasm for the education of girls — Amritsar, for instance, being well suppHed with thirty-five girls' schools, whereas Lahore has only one of this type. The missions have as elsewhere the system of boarding- schools for Christian girls, and carry on extensive work, chiefly of a Primary nature, among non- Christians of all races and creeds. Occasionally a non-Christian girl is found in a Christian boarding-school. Some of these schools are specially commended by the Inspectress for their teaching in domestic economy and sewing. " The Sialkot boarding-school divides the children into famihes of twelve girls who each do their own 142 Education of Women of India cooking, washing, and housework, even the little ones helping." « St Stephen's Girls' School (S. P. G.) has a special lace department where any girl who wishes to learn English may earn the money to pay the requisite fee. The lace produced is of a marketable quality, and not of the type which passes from bazaar to bazaar in Great Britain. The work of the Kinnaird Girls' High School, Lahore, is similar to that of the Bombay school '' under the auspices of the same society (Z. B. M. M.). It is intended mainly for Indian Christian girls, but contains a certain pro- portion of others. The average age of leaving is about sixteen. Its training class is of special interest. Women students in the Panjab are allowed to take the Junior Anglo-Vernacular training after matriculation, though, in the case of men the same examination is open only to graduates. In spite of this the girls generally stand fairly high in the lists, one of them recently taking the second place. The class, however, averages only some five students, though the school has over 160 girls. There is another excellent High school for Indian non-Christian girls in Lahore under the superintendence of an Indian Christian lady. Here, too, slowly but surely, the voice of Young India is making itself heard in a new desire and a new effort. Lawyers, doctors, Government servants, are seeking for their wives and daughters ^ Public Instruction Report, Punjab, 1910. 7 Cf. p. 178. o o < o o CJ CO 13 o m C o o }-. CJ Interesting Institutions 143 an education which, if not equal to their own, will a least be a sufficient compromise between the old status and the new ideas to which they give utterance from public platforms and in the press. The reform sects, notably the Arya Samaj, are ready with a definite educational policy of their own. They have a special orphanage at Feroze- pore, and a considerable number of schools ; the Dev Samaj, a new rallying-point, has two or more schools ; there is a Sikh boarding-school near Amritsar ; and, " in opposition to these reforming Hindu societies, at least one orthodox Hindu girls' school has been opened lately. Whether the activity of the reformers will force the ortho- dox Hindus to take an interest in girls' education and to start a network of schools in opposition remains to be seen." ^ The Maharani of Burdwar is noted for her efforts in this direction, and her schools, the Vedic Putri Pathshala and the Khatri Girls' School at Lahore, both aim at having High departments. Absolutely unique in its aim, management, and curriculum is the Victoria May Girls' High School, Lahore, now known as Queen Mary College. The idea of establishing a High school for Indian girls of good family was put forward by certain Indian ladies at the parda party held in honour of the visit of the then Princess of Wales in November 1905, and the possibility of putting this proposal into effect was 8 Female Education in North India. East and West, January 191 1. M. P. Western, Principal, Victoria May School. 144 Education of Women of India attained by the munificence of certain leading Native States in the Panjab. The school is under the management of five leading Indian gentlemen representing different creeds, and of two of the highest officials in the Province. Its curriculum is, so far as the writer's experience extends, the only one in which a definite constructive theory has been put forth for the education of Indian girls on such lines as combine excellent modern education with training suitable to their future environment.^ Its ideals are defined in the following extract from the prospectus. " The proposed education is to be first and foremost womanly, therefore pupils will not be prepared for Matriculation until alternative courses of study suitable for girls be framed by the Educa- tion Department. The Indian ideals of self- sacrificing motherhood and simplicity of life will be held sacred, and the education given, while conducted on the best modern methods, seeks in every way to guard the ideal of the Indian wife in her home. For this reason the curriculum includes lessons on the care of children's health, simple remedies for ordinary illnesses, ' first aid,' invalid cookery, and science as applied to the home, in the shape of the elementary laws of sanitation, ventilation, etc." Great attention is paid to the vernaculars and to the beautiful 9 The prospectus of the Conjeevaram School (South India) presents several unique features. The Hindus consider it their best school. A visit was, unfortu- nately, impossible. Interesting Institutions 145 Oriental scripts. Advanced pupils may study- Persian or Sanskrit. A speciality is made of colloquial English, but there is no study of it as advanced literature. Moral instruction is given from the beautiful stories and poems of all religions, no sacred book being excluded, and is as effective as can be in an institution necessarily limited in its religious life and instruction. A great effort is being made to attract pupils from the families whose sons attend the Chiefs' College in Lahore ; six or eight special suites of rooms are being reserved for rajahs' daughters and their necessary attendants, in new buildings attached to the Principal's house, and such facilities may do much to break down the barrier which has hitherto separated these classes from modern education. This school may serve not only as an inspiration to its actual pupils, but may have a reflex influence on the whole scheme of education. For instance, a course of lectures has recently been started in connection with it to demonstrate to Indian ladies the real needs of local girls' schools, and to induce them to act where pos- sible as helpers and advisers. To turn what has hitherto proved an obstructive force into a defi- nitely constructive one would surely be an excellent policy. The Land of the Five Rivers has ever been a land of romance and of stirring life, and the modern movement for the enlightenment of its woman- kind has still the same elements, and is full of the promise of the future. VII SIDELIGHTS ON SOME NATIVE STATES " Vulgarity is unknown in India. This alone is education and of the highest order. Reading and writing are minor to it." From the Indian Ladies' Magazine. TO the student of Indian problems the Native States present in many cases a survival of former conditions which elsewhere have been swept away under the more direct influence of British rule ; in others freedom from the criticism to which an alien rule is liable has allowed advanced rulers to experiment on the most modern lines. The term " Native State " is itself capable of very diverse interpretation.^" There are in all about seven hundred districts so called, with a total population of over 62 million, and varying in size from the great southern State of Hyderabad, with an area of over 82,000 square miles, to parcels of land about the size of an average country estate in England. The British Government takes direct cognizance of some hundred of these in varying degrees of relationship. Some States are entirely responsible ^^ Administrative, Problems of British India, book ii., chap. i. J. Chailley. 146 Sidelights on Some Native States 147 for their o^vn internal government with a British Resident tactfully fulfilling his difficult office ; in others the control is more direct, under an officer appointed as administrator by the Government till such time as the State finances or internal order may justify once more the revival of relative inde- pendence under an heir of the d3mastic family. There is thus every variety of ruler, from the rajah who holds the time-honoured doctrine of " L'etat c'est moi," and whose State recalls the prejudices, barbarities, and general practices of the Europe of the Middle Ages, to the virtuous chiefs who strive to rule on modern principles of order and justice for the welfare of their people. There are rajahs whose womenfolk are the strictest of parda-nashin and others whose daughters may disport themselves in English society at home to their hearts' content, a curious bye-product being the rani who is parda-nashin in her own State but not when she comes out into the world abroad. It is natural that only amongst the more pro- gressive States is any opportunity found of study- ing the question of female education ; in others even the first beginnings are totally absent. The present chapter is in no sense a complete survey, and only offers a few notes which may indicate the general trend. It is difficult in many cases to obtain exact information, as the British Government are wisely chary of giving too much. The official reports, as M. Chailley puts it, wrap up blame in velvet and distribute praise with a 148 Education of Women of India liberal hand, and a letter to a native diwan 11 will not always procure an educational report with the same promptitude as it would in British territory. There is also the never-to-be-forgotten fact that " All the world's a stage," and at times the temptation to play a part, to produce a sem- blance of things which speak of progress and yet lack reality, is too strong for the Oriental mind. Thus a school housed in a magnificent building with four hundred girls on its roll may prove to have less than two hundred in daily attendance, though each child is in receipt of a monthly " stipend " from the State for the honour of her attendance ; and " God save the Queen " may be cheerily sung in honour of the beloved Empress of whose death all India has not yet heard ! Some of the smaller Native States are closely linked educationally with 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 11 Chief minister. Sidelights on Some Native States 149 1875, during the minority of the present Gaekwar, and has had its effect on the position of women. Two acts, legaHzing 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 am- bitious, 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 employ- ment. 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, 150 Education of Women of India 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 .^^ 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 par da 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 un- willing 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 stat- istics 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. 12 Public Instruction Report, Bombay, 1910, p. 24. Sidelights on Some Native States 151 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 ! ^^ 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 hohli 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 1^ Imperial Gazetteer of India. 152 Education of Women of India dignity of a college, ranks as a first-class institu- tion ; its Head is a student from Newnham College, and the rest of the staff has proportional qualiiications. 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 cur- riculum 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 Travan- core has the highest percentage of girls at school, Sidelights on Some Native States 153 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 some- what 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 154 Education of Women of India of johdr}'^ What wonder that, where the women were of this temper, their husbands and sons were able to defy all odds ! i^ 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 calcula- tions 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 1866,1® 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 1* The great " war-sacrifice of honourable death " practised by the Rajputs. When resistance was un- avaiUng, they chose deatli in battle rather than surrender. 15 From The Land of the Princes, Gabrielle Festing. !•> Imperial Gazetteer. Sidelights on Some Native States 155 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 consider- ably 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 156 Education of Women of India 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. 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 educa- tion, 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 Govern- ment, 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 03 u a. < Sidelights on Some Native States 157 institution, and Normal work is under considera- tion. 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 Arya Samaj, 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 Arya 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 Arya 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, ijS Education of Women of India drawn not entirely from the Arya Samaj 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 oppor- tunity 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 Arya 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 Sidelights on Some Native States 159 Rajasthan, points to the need for the estabHsh- ment 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 commend- ing 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. VIU 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, ^^ 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-l3dng tract below the ^^ Statistical Abstract of British India, 191 1. Ap- proximate figures. 160 Bombay i6i Ghats 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 pro- vince has four main languages, Marathi, Gujerati, Kanarese, and Hindi, with numerous linked dialects, and English will by no means take you ever5rwhere, 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 diffi- culty in the distribution of schools, a brief cur- riculum, 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^ is felt, and the Buddhist establishments whose records are left Asoka, ruler of India, B.C. 272-231. He is known as the Constantino of Buddhisni, 1 62 Education of Women of India 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 Ghats, 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, ^^^ "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, Bombay 163 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 estab- lishment 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 sub- sistence 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 dustur (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 Brahma Samaj women. The indigenous Indian feeling in favour of education is stronger than in the district round Calcutta, and there is more of 164 Education of Women of India 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 Prarthana Samaj,^ 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 condi- tions in relation to the different communities. ^ A society similar to the Brahma Samaj, but less organized and not so strong numerically. Cf. New Ideas in India. Morrison. Bombay 1 6^ Owing to the influences described, it is not sur- prising that, at the last Quinquennial Survey, Bombay stood second only to Burma in its per- centage of girls at school, and a glance at the gradually increasing number shows the steady upward progress. 1 88 1 — 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 1 66 Education of Women of India 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 Bombay 167 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. Of the Hindu effort first : — the Scientific and Literary Society, after its initial private efforts, proceeded with a definite educational policy in the founding of schools, and, though at present only one school in Bombay is directly under its auspices, its influence in combating prejudice is considerable. This school is exceedingly popular, as the girls are passed quickly into the higher stages, thus earning a certain matrimonial pres- tige, though it is unfortunately true that a girl from the Matriculation class on transference to a mission school had to be placed three classes lower to find her proper level. In consequence of the amateur staff of voluntary teachers who supply the upper forms, this school does not rank as one of the eleven High schools. This feature is interesting, as it shows the earnestness of purpose in the members of the Society, but from an educational point of view the system does not seem very effective. As a whole the school presents no specially Indian features, except that French is excluded and Sanskrit is compulsory as a Matriculation subject. Religion is taught by a special teacher, and there are daily prayers. One Hindu school in Poona ranks as a genuine High school, and one other in Bombay hopes shortly to be classed as such. This Chanda-Ramji School owes its foundation to a legacy left for the build- 1 68 Education of Women of India M ^^ ON !z; M Q H S (4 •o H ."H N 'd- • 0> N t^ O 'rt HI (S ■>: a; P Is) H < t 13 0^ o . t^ lO M -a <^ . lO O < N CO Q » & V rt c/5 0» . ON M (S o ^ lO H .^ N N Z rt ;z; < i\ t^ TI < ° s . § -.S-TJ M , ro M in !3 .2 =03 • »0 CQ oS a, « M Q ■^ 2 5 tD c V > o o N • • ^ '^ 0) "o • • • • • o J3 • • w w u~< "o o a 01 u O >-. 'o o H O o CO 1 ^ g c3 to a K § c ^ H o ^ o M rt o 'd M fl HH o ^ a < '^ OJ •^-t ,ri -(-> ^ o P o cI t1 Oq rt K 4-' f3 o 0:; 4-1 o >. -N ^-l ^ o •^^ HH fj.-) s d (^ (ij •^ 42 1— 1 —t rn —I rt ^ (U ^ a; (rt rQ H rt 1 H 03 O r^ -M n H 03 .« ;d Bombay 169 Q W W o w o < o a m w s N w M ^ Oi ro CO M N '^ VO ^ N 10 C^ ro 'w ro >o 0^ 00 cl O; (N q^ r^__ (2 ro M »o oi t^ IT) n Th 1 ^ -n 00 ^ C^ M N M Tl- H 00^ 12, «• = oT . t^ 13 N t^ c> B CO M vq_ J3 n tn 10 M M V c > c3 10 M ro 10 ■o 10 00 O^ rt.2 0^ VO M t^ N H-t ^ 1/ ^ VO N 00 CO a^ HI Th rt -^ M 3 M C^ W "o 05 60 tn ^ ^ "o o, >, H ^ 6j0 oj :s a ^ r^ -d tuO 03 m (^ § ffi H X2 H 1^ 0^ 0. 170 Education of Women of India ing of a huge gilded idol. The idol was indeed built, but the times have advanced, and only some 10% of the funds were thus utilized. The school is excellently staffed with fourteen mistresses, four of whom are graduates, and with additional pandits for Sanskrit and mathematics for some two hundred girls ; there is a splendid hall for drill and games, a well-stocked science museum, and practically every modern apparatus. Religion is taught from a book of Hindu Moral Maxims by a special teacher. The Gujerati Stri Mandal, mentioned above, has its own functions in endeavouring to secure the attendance at its afternoon classes of young married girls and others from the parda-keeping sections. Educa- tionally, their influence is probably important rather in the direction of making the next genera- tion accessible to proper education than in much actual attainment on the part of the present pupils. They also organize regular lectures on such subjects as " The Aim of Life," " The Ad- vantages of a Spiritual Temperament," and " The Duties of Motherhood," from which may be seen the close connexion in the mind of the Indian woman between religion and education. The Prarthana Samaj, though they have a weekly women's meeting for the discussion of ethical subjects, and a " Sunday School," do not organize any separate secular education, and their girls are to be found wherever the best education seems obtainable. In Hyderabad there are five large girls' Primary schools, managed by the Hindu Bombay 171 Reform Association, which the Government Report notes as doing useful work. It will thus be seen that the actual Hindu contribution to organized education is not an extensive one, nor has it, as in Bengal, any special character- istic ; but it should be borne in mind that the Hindus take good advantage of the mission and Government schools, and are even found in some of the Parsi High schools. Though their per- centage of girls in the High school stage is small in comparison with their overwhelming majority in the community, it is probably true that every orthodox girl venturing to continue her school career beyond the Primary classes, does so in spite of the opposition, if not of her own immediate family, at least of her grandmother and cousins. The Mohammedan factor is numerically a small one ; the girls belonging to families of the better class are educated at home or in one of the mission " Eng- lish teaching " ^ schools, and it is interesting to note one Mohammedan lady of good social position guiding a school for poor Moslem girls in her own house. Two Mohammedan schools are also on the Government list of Primary schools, but the pupils are mostly in the lower Primary stage. The Parsi contribution is, as has already been indicated, a very considerable one, and in its extent, thoroughness, and modern character, it is '^ " English-teaching" schools form a special category in the Bombay Presidency. There is no limitation to the number of Indian pupils, and they are not bound by the Anglo-Vernacular Code. Cf. p. 179. 172 Education of Women of India quite what one might have expected of the " French of the East." A few notes on their general position are needed to show their attitude towards education. The Parsis are one of the most adaptable races of the world, and in Bombay, where 46,000 of them reside, they have been the leaders in women's education. Lady Frere speaks of a time in her remembrance when not a single Parsi lady could speak English, whereas to-day it is almost as much a com.mon tongue among the wealthy families as Gujerati, which they adopted on their original immigration to India. In 1842 Lady Arthur opened Government House for the first time to Indian ladies, and the Parsis were naturally the first to respond. To-day all the larger social func- tions in Bombay are attended by Indian ladies, the large majority of whom are Parsi.^ They are to be seen daily at the Princess Mary Gymkhana, a ladies' club, playing Badminton and croquet, and discuss- ing matters of interest with their friends, some wear- ing the orthodox sari and sacred shirt symbolic of their ancient faith, others in modern European dress. Socially they have been much affected by the hedonism of the West. Religiously their evolution has been rather negative than positive. Zoroastrianism as a cult had survived only in curi- ous forms and ceremonies, and the sacred language of its books was unknown even to the priests ; the educated Parsi inclined to agnosticism or theosophy while retaining his ceremonial adherence to a religion * Hindu ladies attended first about 1863 in response to special efforts made on their behalf by Lady Frere. Bombay I -73 which was the binding tie of his community. Under the influence of the modem Renaissance and general revival of the ethnic faiths, the sacred books have been translated ; brief extracts published in dainty vellum volumes, together with the Lord's Prayer and Christian hymns (with significant omissions), are used as manuals of devotion. When the Parsi girls' schools were first started no religious instruction was given, but now a special Zoroastrian committee exists for preparing literature and sending an instructor to each. Quick to perceive the general bearing of British rule and modern education on their position as a wealthy minority in an alien land, the Parsi leaders adopted, in 1857, a definite educational policy for their women. They sepa- rated from the Scientific and Literary Society and formed one of their own, the Parsi School Associa- tion, to which they gave most liberally both in money and personal service. Other leading Parsis founded special schools, and it is difficult when looking down the Government list to know which to select for description. Two perhaps may be taken as typical, one of the three Association schools and the Alexandra Native Girls' High School. The former owes its special character- istics to the Honorary Secretary of the Associa- tion, Khan Bahadur Chichgar, who visited the best schools in Europe in order to study the Herbartian principles of education in actual practice. He was the first to introduce 'this method in the Bombay Presidency, and has done 174 Education of Women of India so without imitation of detail, and with the most wonderful adaptation to the environment of Parsi children. The school is kept continually supplied with the latest appliances and the newest books, and Mr Chichgar has for many years visited the school on Saturday afternoons to train the teachers in the use of them. The result is that, though the teachers may hold no Normal certificates, the school is alert and keen, from the youngest baby rejoicing in plaiting its neighbour's hair, to the girls of the fifth form, whose curriculum is varied by ambulance work, cooking, and dress- cutting. On the occasion of the writer's visit every child had some practical handwork of its own to exhibit ; the action songs were definitely related to the subsequent lesson on weights and measures, while the mud modelling of the Bombay water-system done by one of the higher forms showed a thorough sense of neatness and propor- tion, with an intelligent knowledge of the principle involved. The shadow of an examination never falls upon this school ; it aims at providing a thorough training for life for middle-class Parsi girls, and its success in doing so in entirely due to the unsparing devotion and labour given to it by its founder — a man engaged in ordinary business. The Alexandra Native Girls' High School dates from the early days of pioneer work and of un- sympathetic criticism. Some 20 pupils were registered for its first opening in 1863, and to-day there are about 120, practically as many as the staff of the institution is meant to deal with. Its Bombay 175 aim is to give Parsi girls of respectable families the " blessings of an English education upon sound moral principles," and though the blessing may be a doubtful one, the school is certainly thoroughly English in every way. Since i8go, Matriculation candidates have been sent up with a good record of success. There is no higher teaching of the vernaculars, and French is taken as the alternative Matriculation subject. The Head- mistress is from England and is fully qualified, but the rest of the staff are Parsis, only one of whom had Normal qualifications. The school is managed by a committee of leading Parsis, and though it is under Government inspection it receives no grant, as the income from fees and the endowment is sufficient. This school may be taken as fairly typical of a first-class Parsi High school. Moreover, education has advanced so far in the community that private enterprise is no longer an impossiblity, and can even as in the case of the Girton High school, be made financially successful without the Government grant. The dividing line between business and philanthropy may at times be difficult to draw, but the spirit is much to be commended which keeps a school of this type alive and efficient, when in some cases the nett profit to the proprietress is barely a living wage. Taken as a whole, the Parsis have provided most thoroughly for the education of their girls, both rich and poor. Of the eleven High schools under private management in the Presidency, seven are Parsi ; of the Middle 1 76 Education of Women of India schools four, and of the Primary schools, whether separate or forming departments of the High schools, fifteen. Of this provision ample advan- tage is taken, and the proportion of daily attend- ance to the numbers on the roll is amazing in comparison with Upper India. Wherein, then, does the system fail, or is it perfect ? Criticism seems ungracious where so much energy and thought have been expended, but in the main there are two things which strike a visitor — the lack in the teachers of a sense of the dignity and responsibility of their profession, with the consequent effect of such a lack on the outlook of their pupils, and the de- orientalizing curriculum. These problems are, however, common to the whole educational situation, and one could hardly expect even the Parsi community to be quite immune. It is difficult to turn from the indigenous Indian element, which has naturally something in it very spectacular and attractive to the Western visitor, to the quiet record of the immense and steady contribution of Christian missions to education in the Bombay Presidency, and to realize that the main inspiration of the former came from the gradual and unconscious infiltration of the Christian ideal of womanhood. For more than twenty years the missionaries were the sole pioneers in the face of much opposition. The pupils were gained at first through the influence of Hindu and Parsi gentlemen interested in the Scottish mission. Progress was naturally slow, Bombay iy^ there was a lack of continuity in the British workers, and continuity is essential in a country where personality counts for so much ; but by 1827 three hundred girls, some of good caste, were attending school in the Konkan district, where the Scottish pioneers first started. After the transference of the mission Mrs Wilson had managed, by 1830, to organize six little schools in Bombay with 120 pupils, the story of the winning of each individual girl being almost a romance in itself. For some time the children were given weekly paisa ^ as a reward, and would demand their wage like weary labourers, a practice still extant in some of the Native States, and a great contrast to the sum of 407 rupees now received as fees in one of the mission institutions which traces its origin to these very schools. The Parsis in one street asked the mission to instruct all the children therein, including sixteen girls. The Beni Israel also proved an accessible community, and thus gradually the number of girls increased. The second stage of missionary education was reached when boarding-schools were created for Indian Christian girls who could be retained for a reasonable time, and some of whom could be utilized as teachers. About 1885 the first syste- matic attempt at Normal training is noticed, a line of work which is perhaps at present the most important missionary contribution to the whole scheme, and capable of further development. Mission schools, as might be expected, form an ^ Farthings. M 178 Education of Women of India overwhelming majority in the list of aided schools. Of the II High schools they have 2, of the 34 Middle schools 14, and of the 276 Primary schools, practically all except those indicated above and a few others. Certain societies educate, as yet, mainly the children of their own communities ; others, such as the American Board for Foreign Missions, the United Free Church of Scotland, and the Irish Presbyterian Mission, have a con- siderable number of schools, both in the cities and in the villages, for non-Christian children. The Zenana Bible and Medical Mission makes work of this kind a special feature.^*' The small pro- portion of High schools is partly accounted for by the fact that the Victoria High School at Poona, founded by Mrs Sorabji, and still carried on most effectively by her daughter as a Christian school, is classed as a boys' school. It is attended by the children of many of the leading Parsi families, and is a curious example of successful co-education up to an advanced stage. Also both in Bombay and Poona there is a consider- able number of good European schools in connec- tion with Roman Catholic and Episcopal sister- hoods, to which 15% of Indian girls may be admitted on payment of double fees. These places are always eagerly sought. The Girgaum High School, under the auspices of the Z.B.M.M., 10 Detailed information can be obtained in the reports of the various societies. There are 26 Protestant societies in the Presidency, most of whom have educa- tional work for girls. Bombay 1 79 may be taken as typical of a first-class " English- teaching " mission High school. About 150 girls can be seen gathered together at morning prayer, two-thirds of whom are non-Christian (Parsis, Moslems, Beni Israel, and a few Hindus) ; some have come in their motor-cars, others from quite poor homes. The curriculum extends from three Kindergarten classes to the seventh English standard, in which the girls go up for Matriculation. English is used as a medium throughout, which makes the school popular with Indians who desire purely English education, but it is naturally very difficult for the pupils in the early stages, in spite of the Government regulation that the teacher must be able to translate into Marathi. There are four English mistresses and several well-qualified Anglo- Indians. A new department has recently been added for the training of English Kindergarten students for the Froebel examination, but this is not yet sufficiently staffed to ensure good success. Two-thirds of the income are derived from fees and one-third from the Government grant. The Ambroli School of the United Free Church Mission is Hindu throughout, and at present takes its pupils only as far as the fifth Anglo-Vernacular standard. All the instruction in the lower forms is in Marathi, and it is a stiff battle that Marathi babies have to fight with their letters. There are three scripts to learn — one printed, one cursive, and one abbreviated — and it is no wonder that, with this task to master, Indian parents tend to look on Kindergarten expedients for " time i8o Education of Women of India wasting " as a diversion from the royal road to knowledge. The teachers here, with the exception of one Anglo-Indian for English in the upper forms, are all Indian, and some are non-Christians, but the school is continually visited by a fully trained Scottish lady, who divides her time between this and another school. Fees are paid regularly, and there is a good municipal grant. An interest- ing feature of the American Mission is the stress laid at their orphanage and boarding-school upon independence in character. Each pupil must do two hours' industrial work, and may in addition work longer for payment, which is credited to her account for payment of fees. Thus some of the pupils in the Matriculation class were beyond the usual age, but had contributed considerably to their own maintenance. The industrial training of this mission is very highly developed, both in Bombay and at Ahmednagar. The Primary schools in the villages have the usual character- istics which we have studied elsewhere, and it has only to be noted that this work is capable of practically unlimited extension. No account of women's education in the Presi- dency would be complete without reference to the work of Pandita Ramabai,^! which stands outside all mission control, and is the unique contribution of an Indian woman to the future victory of the Christian ideal among her own people. Since the Sharada Sadan (the abode of wisdom) near Poona was started in 1892, thou- 11 Cf. Life of Pandita Ramabai, Helen Dyer. Bombay 1 8 1 sands of Indian widows have been given the opportinuty of a self-supporting, self-respecting life, and a vision of what self-sacrifice may mean. The education given on strictly intellectual lines is naturally not carried to a High stage, but is thorough in type. The Pandita dreads the Westernization of her girls, and stands for all that is good in simple Indian life. Though mission education bulks so largely in the statistics of voluntary schools, and has been the pioneer, it must be realized that it does not hold the same position in this as in other provinces, nor influence the districts as a whole. A brief glance at the figures of Primary schools (Table, page i68) supported by other public bodies, both in British territory and in the Native States, will prove the contrary to those who imagine the mission factor still to be the dominant one. The Government function is here, as in the other provinces, largely a co-ordinating and directing one as regards the girls' schools. The six important Government institutions — two High schools with Primary schools attached, at Poona and at Ahmedabad, and four Training schools — are a direct outcome of the effort to standardize and raise the general tone of education in the Presidency. They are linked by the system of " stipends " to all the Primary schools. The institution at Poona under an Indian lady. Miss Bhore, is excellently housed, and had at the time of my visit 200 girls in the High school, 200 in the vernacular practising school, and about 88 1 82 Education of Women of India Normal students. The Inspectress regrets that there is not a Government High school in Bombay to raise the general standard. Apart from these institutions directly under the Central authority, a great deal has been done with public funds under the Municipalities and Local Boards, It has been impossible to ascertain exactly when these schools under public authority were first started, but the system must have grown up somewhere in the " eighties." At first the girls of the lower castes went, as they still go in many villages, to the boys' schools ; in other places separate schools gradually sprang up wherever there were enlightened Indian members of the Municipalities to welcome the official suggestion. In 1 90 1, the number of girls' Primary schools in Bombay necessitated the appointment of an Indian Inspectress to work under the Munici- pality, and shortly afterwards an English Inspectress was appointed from home to the Indian Educational Service, in order to develop women's education in certain portions of the Presidency. Her time was largely occupied in the inspection and examination of Training colleges and High schools (European and Anglo- Vernacular) and in dealing with questions of general educational policy as " expert adviser " to the Department. Since Miss Ashworth's retirement, no English Inspectress has been appointed in the Indian Educational Service to this Presidency. The value of the municipal and local board schools, if viewed from the numerical Bombay 183 standpoint of increasing the women literates in the district, is unquestioned, but when all allow- ance has been made for exceptions, the real gain to the community when the schools are not well staffed and lack constant supervision is very questionable. Miss Corkery, the present In- spectress, emphasizes the need for constant inspection. " I believe that if the Municipalities employed a trained supervisor to visit each school daily the work would be carried on more methodi- cally. From my twenty-five years' experience of the Hindu female teacher I have come to the conclusion that she has no power of initiative and no administrative capacity. She will work hard and faithfully under supervision, but as soon as that is withdrawn her natural apathy asserts itself." 12 When in addition to her own " natural apathy " the teacher has possibly had no Normal training herself, and suffers from untrained assis- tants, the spirit of the school is apt to flag. Adequate inspection of these schools would un- doubtedly necessitate the appointment of women Deputy-Inspectors. The question of premises is also a very vital one. The Indian child is accus- tomed to be one of a crowd, to eat and sleep, to live and die as one of a crowd ; but, in school, if it is to attain to individuality, it must learn the value of space. Yet in one of the best Bombay municipal schools which takes its brighter pupils up to the Anglo- Vernacular sixth Standard, I found some 300 girls crowded into the space 1^ Public Instruction Report, Bombay, 1910, p. 27. 1 84 Education of Women ot India really needed for about half that number. Several crowded pens were to be seen round a bit of fiat roof, too wet in the rains and too sunny at other times for drill, one of the pens so crammed with infants that it was almost impos- sible to step from one division to another, infants in different classes within touch of one another, and the whole pervaded with a pungent odour from the fruit market below — surely this is not for the good of the city or of the children. " In Ahmedabad the girls are compelled to sit amid insanitary and evil-smelling surroundings, to study the advantages of pure air." ^^ It would not be difficult to multiply instances. On the other hand some municipal schools are well housed and staffed, and the system must not be condemned when it is capable of improvement. The problem is partly a financial one, and partly once more the question of the supply of teachers and of the future Inspectresses. These children pay a few paisa, in fair proportion to the income of their parents, where- as in many High schools receiving a Government grant the fees might with advantage be raised. 1* When the situation in the Presidency is viewed as a whole the present need is seen to be not so much to secure more girls by artificial means or to induce more to stay to the higher stage, for there is a steady current in favour of education which is slowly acquiring momentum, but rather to raise the standard of teaching as a whole and 13 Public Instruction Report, Bombay, p. 27. 1* Ibid., p. 18. Bombay 1 85 so to adapt the curriculum that those children who do pass through the schools will, in intel- lectual attainment and character, commend the system and prove a force attractive to others. The problem of the teacher is one that is apparent throughout, alike in Indian, mission, and public authority schools. Taking the Primary teacher first, from what ranks is she usually drawn, and what are the attractions to the profession ? In consequence of the shortness of supply the school- mistress is very often found to be, in fact, an elderly man. This, however, is becoming less frequent. A glance at the table on page 168 shows that the majority of students in training are lower-caste Hindus, and that native Christians form about a fourth of the whole. Of the 1200 women actually engaged now in the teaching profession, I have been unable to obtain a religious classification, but presumably the proportion holds good. In the Ahmedabad Training College 15 of the students are wives or daughters of masters, 19 are wives of students, 15 are wives of other men, 42 are unmarried, and 36 are widows. Taking this college as typical, and assuming the certainty of marriage on the part of the spinsters, it means that in many cases teachers will be available in couples for the village schools. Those whose husbands are not teachers are often difficult to locate, and in many cases may drop out of the work. It is questionable whether the employ- ment of married women in the schools is advis- able : on the one hand, it seems at present the 1 86 Education of Women of India only method to secure the necessary female teachers ; on the other hand, the British Govern- ment is facing even at home the complications which the element of married women's work introduces mto the labour market. True, Indian life is different, for the babies come with their mothers to school, and a kind Government supplies the necessary cradles and ayah, but there are undoubted hardships. " The life of the \illage schoolmistress has not many compensations ; in addition to the long hom-s at school she has arduous home duties to perfonn. In man}' cases she is the sole breadwinner for five or six, none of whom consider it incumbent on them to help her \\"ith the household work. Rising at five in the morning or earlier, she has to begin her daily time- table, which extends over seventeen hours. It is marvellous that she is able to work as cheerfuUy as she does." ^^ The permanent hope is in the widow, and it is encouraging to see a better pro- portion of them here. The spinster is at best available in mission schools for a short period tiU her mamage. ]\Iany trained Christian girls teach for several years, often li\'ing under the super- intendence of the missionary, and make most efficient teachers. The supph- of such, however, is in no way equal to the demand. It is difficult for one not fuUy acquainted with the Indian standard of life to judge of the financial aspect, but the impression gathered from the Govern- ment Reports is that increased salaries might *^ Public Instructioti Report, Bombay, p. 29. Bombay 187 attract a better class. There is a proverb that when begging fails it is well to learn to be a teacher. The salaries paid by mission agencies are, as a rule, slightly less than those paid by municipal authorities, just as the salaries of educational missionaries are less than the cor- responding salaries at home. As regards training, a great effort is being made on all sides to secure that all the teachers either take a preliminary course or go up for the qualifying examination : at present the proportion is 44%. Any girl in a municipal school who shows any ability or desire can pass free of charge as a " stipendiary "to the Government Training Colleges with the stipulation that she shall teach thereafter with a salary for at least two years. Five mission schools have Normal divisions attached in which much the same condi- tions prevail. The city of Bombay has, however, no proper provision of opportunity. None of the Government Training Colleges are situated there, and, apart from Mr Chichgar's work, which is limited to the Parsi School Association, there is only a Satur- day morning training class under the auspices of a United Missionary Committee, which is not largely attended. Poona, on the other hand, has two if not three Training institutions, and the circumstances seem to point towards redistribution. A Hindu girl is much more likely to continue her education if it does not entail leaving her relatives. Miss Wilson, Head mistress of the Girgaum High School, in a paper recently read at the Bombay Missionary Conference, emphasized the need of more funds to 1 88 Education of Women of India aid existing institutions, and of fixing a definite rate of salaries and a date after which none but trained teachers would be allowed in any school receiving a Government grant. The latter sugges- tion is possibly somewhat premature, as it might mean the closing of many schools or letting them lapse into the worse state of " unrecognized " institutions. The training of the Secondary teacher is a different problem. The impression current in Great Britain a decade ago that only people who knew nothing, or who could not teach, went to training colleges, seems still to prevail ; moreover, there is no college where women teachers can receive a thorough Secondary training. The Inspectress' reply to an official inquiry as to the possibility of raising the general standard indicates the need of a central Government Training College with a graded system in the aided schools, and special salary grants to all Secondary schools staffed by trained teachers. ^^ There does not, however, seem any prospect of direct action, either on the part of Government or of missionary societies. There are few vacancies in the Government Normal College, and though one woman, a Goanese student, has recently been studying there, the course is not adapted to women students. A few of the teachers go up for the Secondary Examination without a quali- fying course or after attendance at a series of lectures given at the convent in Bombay. There is also a great lack of enthusiasm for the profession '" Public Instruction Report, Bombay, p. i6. Bombay 189 as such ; teaching is felt to bemore or less a trade finishing at certain definite hours and limited in its influence to these. A most attractive set of lectures on various educational problems arranged by the Principal of the Government Normal College, had an average attendance of some seven out of possible hundreds. In the case of the women this is perhaps largely due to the enervating influence of the climate and the consequent lassitude after a long day's work, but there is undoubtedly a lack of some unifying and inspiring influence which would have a strong reflex effect on the tone of the schools. The variation of the curriculum has to a certain extent been solved in this Presidency as regards the Primary stage. Bombay was the first province to issue a different set of readers for girls, and those now in use, comprising the study of heroes and heroines from a moral point of view, simple natural phenomena, domestic economy, etc., seem admirably adapted to them. The Code prescribes the usual elements with a study of forms, colours, familiar objects, drill, games, native accounts, and geography beginning in the third form, and Indian history in the fourth. The difficulty begins after the fourth Vernacular stage, corresponding to the first Anglo- Vernacular. After that stage the shadow of the Matriculation begins to fall, and so heavily that in the departmental schedule of studies, the highest Standard (VII. A.-V.) is left blank. Formerly this august portal could be passed very quickly by a well-crammed child. I met one 190 Education of Women of India Parsi girl who entered the University at the age of thirteen. The age was raised by the Univer- sities Commission to sixteen. A great contro- versy has recently raged round the place of the vernaculars in the University, and the question of the use of English as a medium of instruction in the school. In regard to the latter, the real educators argued the impossibility of the proper comprehension of a difficult subject through a foreign medium, and the tendency to parrot-like repetition of formula or fact, while the actively " Indian " party, failing to see the real point at issue, held that any other method would weaken the standard of English and handicap the Indian in public service. The Department have sanctioned the use of the vernacular till a later stage, but though some teachers spoke warmly in favour of this method, it has not yet gone beyond experiment. Certainly the teaching of history throughout the Matriculation forms seems exceedingly weak. The Code for the Anglo- Vernacular Standards in relation to the Matricula- tion, and the possible substitution for it of the School Final Examination, a more practical test, is, however, under Government consideration and the defects of the present Code need not be enlarged upon. The variation of the Code for girls is a further question, and the planning of a suitable curriculum is a matter which eminently lends itself to private enterprize. The de- orientalizing influence with Parsi girls is not so dangerous as with other Indian girls, but there is Bombay 191 surely something wrong when " once a certificate, no more books " is a not infrequent cry. Some schools already vary their curriculum for girls : one mission report speaks of an alternative course better calculated to fit the girls for home life, leaving advanced mathematics, etc., to such only as have the necessary mental ability and physical strength. This effort has met with the approval of the Inspectress and of the more thoughtful parents. Matriculation has, however, in certain circles a distinct matrimonial value, and it is pathetic to see older girls, struggling at a distance of two forms from the desired goal, who would bitterly resent a change to a curriculum more suited to their diverse but not inferior powers. It is here that the opportunity lies for English educators who can help Indian women through an exceedingly difficult transitional period to realize the meaning of modern culture, which, while possessing universal elements, must be evolved by every nation on the lines of its own genius and characteristics. In Bombay and in Poona there are Indian women who think deeply on these things, and who await as yet some con- structive policy in the success of which, though the energy and initiative must be of the West, their share would not be lacking. If this con- structive policy is to start from the Christian standpoint, if the Spirit of Christ is to dominate the new culture, the women of Anglo-Saxon countries must let their religion dominate them as never before, and win them out to the larger service. IX UNIVERSITY EDUCATION " Travellers all in the land of the living, In quest of the self it is best to be ; Comrades all in the getting and giving, Prythee, tell us, what else are we ? Girls who go hopefully forth to the morrow. In quest of the Women they wish to be, Friends who look down on the fair, flying present. Wistfully, lovingly — this are we." From the "Lai Bagh" Chronicle. A FIRM and steady step on the lower rungs of the ladder is a fair promise of the ultimate ascent, and after a time in- credibly short since the first beginnings of Western education for women in India, the girl graduate is found issuing from the portals of the University. Pioneer in many senses, with a world of ideal- istic possibilities surrounding her career, the Indian woman has proved the quality of her mental capacity ; she has successfully stood the most strenuous of tests, and is prepared to take her part as a leader of her sex and as a contri- butor to the Feminist Movement. The member of Congress sees in her a political factor ; the 192 University Education 193 papers which, advocate social reform hail her as a new force which will influence circles far beyond the reach of their propaganda ; the educator trusts that here at last is someone with the brain power and insight to indicate the true lines for the education of Indian women ; the missionary ponders on her possibilities for the Indian Church and the Indian home — ^while India, the real India, the silent multitude of India's women, knows little and cares less. This strange phenomenon seems no longer of their number ; she has stepped away with her new and dazzling robes from the old tradition, from the memories of the twilight and its tales to a new and untried world. And yet in a true sense she is still one with them, one with them in instinct, in thought, in hereditary traits, and fitted, as no Western could ever be, to act as the mediator betwixt the old and the new. The possibilities of the Indian woman graduate have to a certain extent been proved in subsequent careers ; on the other hand, the results of the whole system, as regards the average student, have not entirely justified the hopes built upon it. A brief examination of the actual facts and conditions will prove the best introduction to the problems which underlie them. The five Universities of India — Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Allahabad, and Lahore — the constitu- tions of which resemble that of the University of London, are open to any woman who can pass the qualifjdng entrance examination. Their subse- N 193 194 Education of Women of India quent studies must be conducted in a college duly recognized by Government and in affiliation with a University. These colleges vary as first and second grade according to the stage, Intermediate or Final B.A., to which they are able to take their students. Of the 175 colleges scattered over India 10 are specially women's colleges, but women are also found studying in mixed colleges under mission boards or Government. Of Government institutions it may practically be said that no sex barrier exists, except where a separate provision is made, as in the case of the Bethune College, Calcutta, and the same is true to a less extent of the mission institutions. Thus women students are found in the Elphinstone College, Bombay, in the Presidency College, Madras, and in the Government College, Rangoon, studying side by side with men under the same conditions. The Wilson College, Bombay, is an important example of the mixed mission college. The ten women's colleges in affiliation with one or other University 1 are as follows : — Number of Students.2 The Bethune College, Calcutta (first grade) . 40 The Diocesan College, Calcutta (first grade) . 32 The Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow (first grade) (A.M.M.) . . . .20 The Sarah Tucker College, Palamcottah (second grade) (C.M.S.) ... 6 The Maharani's College, Mysore ^ There are in addition three Training Colleges, 2 Approximate number only. University Education 195 Number of Students. The Maharajah's College, Trevandrum St Bede's Convent College, Simla (first grade) Auckland House School, Simla (second grade) European Girls' High School, Allahabad (second grade) ..... Woodstock Girls' School, Landour (second grade) ...... Of these, the last four are mainly for Eurasian girls, and fall outside the scope of our inquiry. With the exception of the Bethune and the two institutions in Native States, they are all under Christian management. The word " college " is highly misleading. The English reader pictures an institution parallel to Girton or Somerville, with a full staff of women tutors, supplemented by University lectures, whereas these colleges consist in most cases of small groups of girls, sometimes only one or two, who remain after Matriculation in their old school, studying for the most part under the same mistresses, and with little or no sense of any transition in their career. If no girls are fitted to proceed to the higher stages, the college as such may lapse for the time being ; thus only students in training as teachers are returned in the Panjab report for 1910, in spite of the two " colleges at Simla," whereas the Diocesan School appears ofhcially for the first time in the Bengal report as a college with a most creditable number of students and an efficient staff. The one outstanding exception is the Isabella Thoburn College, where the college 196 Education of Women of India department is rigidly separated from the school, and where the collegiate atmosphere and sense of corporate life are dominant. A similar arrange- ment is being made in the new buildings of the Bethune College. Even in these two cases there is the linked High School under the same Principal, sharing in the interest of the staff. A women's college in the English sense of the word does not exist. Passing to the students, the differences of creed, as indicated in the Quinquennial Returns of 1907, are seen in the annexed table. (See page 197.) This proportion is on the whole maintained to-day, with the addition of a few Buddhist girls studying in Rangoon, and an increased propor- tion of Parsis in Bombay. The actual numbers show a remarkably small fluctuation within the last decade, and have not justified the hopes of those who expected a continuation of the four- fold increase of the preceding decade. In 1891 there were 45, in'1901, 177 Arts students. Taking some figures from local returns, we find the following : — ^ Arts Students. 1901. 1906. 1910. Bengal .... 55 24 47 United Provinces . 49 38 45 Burma .... 8 2 12 Bombay 30 57 76 Madras .... ? ? 37 Cf. also Statistical Abstract, British India, Table 105. University Education 197 a w w Pi o « o O > n c sa ili § V .2 < < •o S P5 S c 1 1—1 c-3 ■2'H S S I ^ .Si's; o C V t>. 8ie <« ° o ° S -i rC « bio's "5 "OH S University Education 205 by enlightened Indians and by Europeans, the chief indictments being embodied in Lord Curzon's Universities' Commission Report of 1904, and we find tentative reforms in the subsequent Act. The " yattering " graduate who knows nothing and can decide nothing, but who can repeat yard after yard from any prescribed text-book, is the byword of those who wish to taunt India, and there is a germ of truth in the reproach. The effort to impart the highest Western culture through Indian teachers who have only partially assimilated it themselves, must prove to some extent unsatisfactory. Since the Public Service Commission in 1886, Indians have been admitted to the Educational Service in much larger num- bers : for example, the Presidency College in Calcutta had in 1880 a complete staff of English professors and Oriental specialists ; in 1911, only eight are English and twenty-three Indian, though in the meantime the number of pupils has increased from 350 to 700.^ It is possible that here real efficiency has been sacrificed from the commendable motives of economy and a desire to utilize the Indians in their own Universities. To command a supply of the best men from home would involve a heavy financial strain, and yet, unless the Oriental, who can live on a smaller salary, has spent some years in Europe, he is hardly fitted to guide a University where the curriculum largely consists of Western subjects. It is interesting to find Mr Gokhale emphasizing 8 Indian Unrest. V. Chirol. 2o6 Education of Women of India the need of studying in a foreign University as a preliminary to professional work in India.^ It is the presence of a fully equipped English staff (who are there for other reasons than the mere acquisition of a " living " wage) which forms the attractive force of a Mission college to the ambitious young Indian. The whole question is an exceedingly difficult one, and has been fully discussed recently by both Mr Chailley and Sir Valentine Chirol ; it is raised here only in so far as it affects the women who study in mixed colleges. It should also be noted that there is no English lady on the staff of Bethune College, the only Government college for women. The feminine counterpart of the typical graduate in- dicated above is apparently his decided superior, for the Indian feminine virtues of modesty and reticence come to her aid, and she does not air her acquired knowledge. Still her knowledge is only acquired, not yet assimilated, and there is a lamentable lack of books in her study. The library at Bethune College is not utilized to the same extent as one in a corresponding English institution. Actual personal contact with some of the Indian students is a pathetic experience, as we are forced to realise how little real grit there is behind their text-book knowledge. They have gained no broad outlook on life : a tired brain has struggled through so many hours a day of lecture work and book work, and no energy is left for thought ! Climatic and constitutional conditions ^ Administrative Problems. J. Chailley. University Education 207 account, to a certain extent, for this result ; lack of hereditary culture to a still greater degree ; but it is fostered largely by the conditions under which the girls have studied, and by the failure of Anglo-Saxon women to give them of their best. Where the women study apart in the additional classes of their former High schools they certainly receive individual attention, which results in creditable passes, and this is possibly the chief merit of a system which has little to be said for it from other points of view. The complete staff of the Isabella Thoburn College, the well-utilized library, and the reputation which its graduates have won throughout India, are facts which should be noted in this connexion. The Diocesan College is establishing a similar tradition. There is another side to University life than the purely intellectual, namely, the human and personal. This, with all its varied manifestations in the common pursuit of sport or of music, in the discussion of social problems and of mental difficulties, or still more in the gentle art of doing nothing, lends the charm to college days and is perhaps the more dominant factor in after life. The influence of certain personalities, men or women, who can be trusted, who can look at life's problems from the same point of view as their students, and are able to throw light on their difficulties with the ripeness of experience and to lead them to a new moral or religious outlook, is often in the long run more powerful than that of the actual literature studied. If 2o8 Education of Women of India the University or college fails as a school of character it has failed of its raison d'etre. Pre- cisely on this ground has the strongest indictment recently been made against the Indian system. " There has been no more deplorable feature in the recent political agitation than the active part taken in it by Indian schoolboys and students." ^^ A University course inevitably shakes the founda- tions of their thought, and in many cases has resulted in a revolt from all former moral or religious standards of conduct without providing a new basis for life. Under a stricter regime, with liberal grants and every possible encouragement of private hostels where religious instruction is possible, an effort is being made to combat this lack in the training of character. The case of women students presents certain parallel features, and also difficulties peculiarly its own. The larger proportion of women students in Bombay in attendance at the mixed classes are living in their own homes ; a few from the country are in residence at the Students' Hostel of the Mis- sionary Settlement for University Women,ii where, though the majority are Christian, students of other faiths can be received under special arrangements. A Jain lady was at one time in residence there. This hostel is in close proximity to both the Wilson and the Grant Medical Colleges, and supplies a real need, but its residents so far have not been 1" Indian Unrest. Chirol. " Cf. Report from Seer. M.S.U.W., 74 Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, London. (U >. e o o c 4-1 CO University Education 209 very numerous. The women students of Bombay as a whole have no corporate life of their own ; they may attend some of the joint debating societies and kindred meetings, but do not as a rule take part. Their common rooms offer rather a geographical pied-d-terre than a means of social unity. As regards athletics, badminton is pur- sued in a somewhat spasmodic way in one college, and by invitation to the Principal's house in another, but the question of exercise in relation to non-resident students is always a moot point in a tropical climate. Some attempt to develop social life is made by the women graduates from British or Colonial Universities who are in charge of the students' hostel ; they visit the common rooms of two of the colleges, and occasionally organize debates or kindred functions at the hostel, to which the residents may invite other students. The writer was present at one such debate on the question of educating men and women on similar lines, and the opinions expressed by some of the Indian girls are embodied in much of the foregoing. This influence is also of a religious nature, . being in connexion with the Students' Branch of the Young Women's Christian Association, and indirectly counts for much. It is, however, an extraneous one, and therefore many of the students, especially in the Government colleges, are beyond its reach. With their actual lecturers they can have, in the nature of the case, little or no personal contact, and the real need seems to be the introduction of women on the 2IO Education of Women of India staff of these colleges, together with the tutorial system, which has proved itself so useful in mixed non-residential universities in Britain. The case is very strongly put by Mr Covernton, who was till recently Principal of the Elphinstone College. "It is becoming a problem how to provide accommodation and adequate supervision for these girls. It is ridiculous to expect that young unmarried graduates, fresh from Oxford and Cambridge, can mould the minds and characters of Parsi, much less of Brahman girls ; while the training of Eurasian girls is still more difficult. Moreover, the close association of male and female involved in a mixed education is so totally opposed to the traditions of the East, as well as so fraught with possibilities of evil, that in my opinion the system is rather a barrier than an encouragement to female education. — A special lecturer and tutor of female students should be appointed to the Elphinstone College. She should be a British graduate, and a member of the Indian Educa- tional Service. Her subject should preferably be English, because it is very easy to get women well qualified to teach that subject. She would take complete charge of the girls' studies in that subject, and would in addition supervise their general reading, their games, and most important of all their manners and conduct." ^^ ^s regards conduct the general bearing and influence of these girls in the mixed colleges has been most credit- able in very trying circumstances, but there is ^2 Public Instruction Report, Bombay, 1910. University Education 211 certainly a need to relax the evident tension of the position, which is little in accordance with Oriental ideas. The condition of the women students in Madras who attend the mixed colleges is somewhat similar. There is an excellent hostel managed by the Students' Branch of the Young Women's Christian Association, where students of all faiths can reside, and former pupils of the mission schools can still remain in connexion with them. I understand that the same strain exists here, with the consequent lack of energy for any corporate life. An English woman graduate writes from Madras of the great need in South India of a first-grade women's college. In Calcutta conditions are entirely different ; there is a good hostel in connexion with the Bethune College, and the Christian girls who attend it are resident in their former schools. There are only a few non-residential students, but as the colleges attended by the Arts students are very small, the system assimilates to the tutorial, and there is ample opportunity for contact between student and lecturer. In the Bethune College, however, where the majority of teachers are men, the conflict with Oriental ideas arises again, and one is not surprised, apart from other reasons, at the absence of Moslem or orthodox Hindu girls. Here again it seems unfortunate that there is no corporate life or unity amongst the women students as a whole, or even in the Bethune hostel itself. In the latter it would depend entirely on Indian initiative, and though one 212 Education of Women of India would expect it to assume a different form from the customary Saxon one, its entire absence can only be accounted for by unfavourable conditions. The corporate life of the Isabella Thoburn Col- lege has already been emphasized ; a glance at the students' Lai Bagh Chronicle is enough to convince the reader of its reality, and of its characteristically Indian nature. The case of the Indian woman medical student must be considered apart from the life of the Arts colleges. As a rule few women, except an occa- sional Parsi, pass from the one to the other, and there is little contact. It is unnecessary here to emphasize the need for every possible encour- agement for Indian women to take up the practice of medicine. The sorrows and sufferings of Indian women behind the parda, who would rather face death than admit a male practitioner, are well known. If to some the statements made by missionary writers seem exaggerated, they have only to turn to the petition presented to the Viceroy in 1890 by the medical women practising in India to find evidence of the saddest facts. Indian medical students are divided broadly into two classes, those who study in one of the four Govern- ment colleges affiliated to one or other of the chief Universities, and those who study in the medical schools for a very much lower qualification.^^ *2 There are at present in hospital work in India 47 women medicals of the first grade (including English- women), 92 assistant surgeons, and 67 hospital assis- tants, practitioners, etc. Cf. Report of the Countess of Dufferin's Fund, 191 1. University Education 213 Of the first class again some are genuine University students going up for the degrees indicated on page 204, while others are content merely with the college diploma which qualifies for practice in India. The medical schools, of which there are twenty-seven in different parts of India, are " intended primarily for the instruc- tion of candidates for employment in Government Service as hospital assistants, but many of their pupils also go into private practice." 1* They confer the title of sub- assistant-surgeon. A few women students are to be found in the former class : in 1907 it included thirty-four Indian women in all, and there has not been any marked increase in recent years. An even smaller number of these take the highest qualification. All that has been said of the strained life of the women Arts students applies even more strongly to the medicals. It is a very hard and difficult life, and there is little in the environment to lessen the burden. The statistics of the medical schools on the other hand show a larger figure, 138 in 1907, with a considerable increase in recent years. It is in these schools that the administrators of the Countess of Dufferin's Fund,!^ which has done so much for the medical treatment of women, place most students, though some are also to be found studying in the Universities. Three of these ^* Quinquennial Report, vol. i. 15 Founded in 1884, the total value of hospital buildings connected with the Fund is now 50 lakhs. 90 students are in receipt of stipends. Cf. Report. 2 14 Education of Women of India schools are specially women's schools — the North India Medical School for Christian Women at Ludhiana, the female branch of the Agra Medical School, and one centre in the Bombay Presidency with some half-dozen pupils. The work of the former, as it illustrates by contrast the serious problem of the mixed medical schools and colleges, is worthy of special notice. This school, which is under the management of a private committee, including members of the Indian Medical Service, was originally founded in 1894 through the agency of seven missionary societies working in the United Provinces and the Panjab. Its aim was to secure " that the young Christian women who pass through a medical course, and then go out to Government or Native State or Mission Hospital work, should be so safeguarded and trained that they shall be worthy representatives of the religion they profess." 1^ The dangers of the joint-system of instruction in all subjects, with unlimited association in hospitals and museums, is apparent in every centre, with its con- sequent effect in some cases of bringing " female education and emancipation into discredit." A letter of application to the Ludhiana School throws some light on prevalent conditions : — " I require a Female Hospital Assistant for my Hospital, and am very anxious to get one who has been trained under Medical Women. As your ^^ A Problem and its Solution, E. M. Brown, M.A., M.D. (Procurable from 36 Fairfield Road, Bromley, Kent.) University Education 215 School is the only one in India of this sort, would you be kind enough to let me have one ? This is not a Mission Hospital but one for par da Moslem women only, under the Dufferin Fund, and it is essential that the Assistant be respect- able. (This I find rather difficult to get amongst the class trained under males.) It is perhaps against your rules to supply Dufferin Fund Hospitals, but I hope you will stretch a point and oblige me by letting me have one, as I have had a great deal of trouble for the past year with Assistants." The students of the Ludhiana School flock from all parts of India for the benefit of this tuition under qualified medical women. There are at present some twenty-seven Indian Christian students and five Eurasians, taking the four years' course, while some thirty others are training as " compounders." The linked women's hospital,i^ with a record of 1300 in-patients and 26,000 new out-patients in 1910, affords the necessary oppor- tunity for practice. The staff is drawn from India, Britain, and America, and consists of eight fully qualified medical women. The record of the school is one of slow and steady progress in efficiency and numbers, and the latest stage is the proposed affiliation to the Panj ab University, the negotiations for which are progressing favourably. Under these conditions the school would be able as a college to send students up for the M.B., B.S. ^7 Further hospital practice might be available in Ludhiana. 2i6 Education of Women of India examination, and the Government students would be transferred to it from Lahore. The hostel life of the students is under careful superintendence, and arrangements are being made for the accom- modation of non-Christian students. The con- trast between the life here and that of women medical students in Bombay or Calcutta is marked ; and if it be argued that the highest professional ability cannot be obtained with so limited a hospital roll, there is surely need for modifying in some way the conditions at these centres. Two Government hostels for women medical students exist in Calcutta in close proximity to the two hospitals ;i^ the question, however, concerns not only hostel life but pro- fessional training under circumstances which will not injure character. The complete separation in the London and Edinburgh Schools of Medicine for Women affords a striking contrast, A certain number of Indian students, perhaps one or two a term, come over for a full or supplementary course in British colleges, as this qualification secures a better post on return. To sum up, the problem respecting Indian women students, in both Arts and Medicine, arises, apparently, from the need of a numerical increase, from the lack of conditions so adapted to Oriental ideas that the highest courses shall be open without difficulty to women of all ranks, and from the lack of a curriculum calculated to raise the standard of the intellectual work done. Moreover, ^^ The Y.W.C.A. has student branches in these hostels. 03 Oh 3 O u O CD o o o m c 3 University Education 217 mental training must be combined with such opportunities for the development of character as shall ensure to Indian women the leaders they require. These needs interact, and affect one another ; the numerical problem depends, as we have seen, on certain conditions of Indian society, and also on the attractive force of the education offered and its appeal to Indian ideas, as well as on the possibility of pursuing it under conditions which shall not be too utterly opposed to the tradition of the country. With the increase in the numbers receiving Secondary education there has not been a corresponding increase in the college courses. Mr Covernton, in the quotation given above, further emphasizes this, and points to the real need of Bombay, for which the appointment of a woman tutor would only be a temporary ex- pedient. " If the conditions of University educa- tion were in accord with Oriental ideas of women's functions, the number would go up by leaps and bounds. I am confident that the time is ripe for the creation in Bombay of a women's college managed by a staff of Oxford or Cambridge women graduates." ^^ The spontaneous move- ment amongst Indian gentlemen to organize high-class schools, where, if desired, parda can be kept, points to further possibilities. At present, if a Mohammedan or Hindu girl of high caste, who had been educated in some such school, or privately, desired to take a University course, '^^ Bombay Public Instruction Report, 1910. 2i8 Education of Women of India there would be no opportunity for her doing so. A Mohammedan lady, whose daughter was being educated in one of the mission schools in Bombay, told the writer she could not think of letting her attend any college in that city, though she was anxious for her to have University education. The only possible course was an English college, such as Cheltenham. The migration to England of Indian women Arts' students has, so far, not been extensive ; about a dozen have studied at Cambridge, Oxford, and Cheltenham ; a larger number may have gone to America. The mis- sionary societies which struck out a bold policy for attracting men by their great Christian colleges have not made any corresponding move to meet the new situation in women's education. The one or two women's colleges which exist are created so predominantly for Christian girls that they attract only isolated pupils of other faiths, and these not of the most influential classes.^o It seems strange that in Great Britain the highest education for women should be to a certain ex- tent apart, with the necessary contact carefully chaperoned, whereas in India, with a very diffe- rent tradition of womanhood, one girl may sit alone in a class of over a hundred students. It may be argued that the best way to overcome this tradition is to ignore it, and that it should not be yielded to in any way, least of all in the case of Higher education, where the students have pre- -^ Exceptions exist in the Diocesan College, Calcutta, in the case of non-residents. University Education 219 sumably risen above it. Some English women of experience in India take this bold attitude. On the other hand it is of the highest importance in any transitional stage to secure leaders from every stratum of the population ; and if education be the only safe lever for the uplift of women in India, it seems a strategic mistake practically to close its highest stages to those whose families hold by a certain type of decorum which prohibits co-education. By adaptation of the curriculum is not meant in any sense the lowering of the intellectual standard nor the introduction of the element of domestic economy and so called " feminine sub- jects " which are necessary at a lower stage, but rather a re-arrangement of studies which shall ensure more individual research and a fuller com- prehension of the material studied. The revision of the curriculum is at present under consideration in at least one of the Universities, and is a matter for experts. The action of the University of Cam- bridge in permitting women candidates to go up for Honours courses only, and the success which has attended women candidates for the Triposes, suggest the advantage of specialized studies in the case of women. Mrs Satthianadhan's opinion of the effect of University education on women is illuminating. " It will make women more methodical, more orderly in their arrangements, more precise, and better able to weigh causes and results." 21 A three years' specialized course 2^ Indian Ladies' Magazine. 220 Education of Women of India would tend in many ways to develop these qualities, and would possibly produce the new and more thorough type of teaching which is so greatly needed in the schools. The intellectual strain which is so marked a feature at present might in this way be lessened without detrimental effect upon real intellectual development. Towards the end of last century, it seemed as if the goal of the women's educational movement in Great Britain might be reached by the formation of a Women's University with federal colleges. Various reasons have led rather to their taking a parallel place in the existing Universities, though still under somewhat anomalous conditions, so far as Oxford and Cambridge are concerned. The American solution is a different one. Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, Mount Holyoake, and others have their separate degrees and completely separated life. It is possible that the solution of the Indian problem will rather follow these latter lines, and there are indications of this ideal, some- what nebulously outlined, in the writings of leading Indian women. Such a Women's Uni- versity with affiliated colleges in the different large centres might establish a new era and a new tradition in the education of women. A com- petent staff of Indian women-graduates, whose presence would secure the students from de- orientalizing influences, and of English women- graduates competent to teach on specialized lines, would raise the educational standard. The complete separation of such colleges from the University Education 221 High schools would render a corporate life possible, and give to the Indian girl graduates the opportunity of carrying on their studies in con- genial and stimulating surroundings. " To them, too, college life might bring that joyous spring- time of youth, friendship, and unfettered delight of study and leisure which have hitherto been withheld from them." ^^ The Maharani of Baroda notes in her recent book ^^ the tendency of women's education in Europe to take a too exclusively literary form, and the consequent overcrowding of certain professions. While there is no danger that the teaching profession will be overcrowded in India for decades to come, the warning is not without its value. Such a University might have affiliated with it colleges of Indian Domestic Science and Economy, but the theory for this has yet to be worked out. It may seem to some readers, especially 'to those rightly imbued with the Eastern principle of festina lente, that the day for women's colleges in India has not yet come, and that all available strength should be concentrated on Secondary education ; and yet, on the other hand, the crux of the whole educational problem may be found here. Miss Emily Davies, who by universal consent stands as the chief pioneer of the movement in Britain, realized from the first that the reform 22 Alice Zimmern on the aims of the Girton pioneers in Renaissance of Girls' Education. 23 Position of Women in Indian Life, by Her Highness the Maharani of Baroda. 222 Education of Women of India in girls' education must begin at the top. The same principle is seen in the history of Cheltenham Ladies College (founded 1853), and the early efforts of Miss Beale to face the same problem of the need of teachers, which is felt in every Indian school to-day. " Her efforts show how hard it was to found a school before the reformation of the higher education had given the necessary stimulus from above. It was a case of making bricks without straw." 2* The proximity of cer- tain dates is suggestive. In 1869, the " Girton Pioneers " first met at Hitchin to read for the examinations of the University of Cambridge. In 1872, the Girls' Public Day School Company was founded, and in 1879 the Oxford Women's Halls were opened. The two movements are of necessity contemporaneous, and cannot be viewed as successive stages towards the same end. The beginning exists in India ; much excellent pioneer work has been done, and it now remains to raise the whole movement to a status from which its future development on Indian and womanly lines would be assured. 2* Renaissance of Girls' Education. A. Zimmern. X THE RELIGIOUS ELEMENT IN EDUCATION " Education, education — education about what ? Education about matter, mere raaterial things, thoughts and ideas. Education, according to the Vedas, is the opening of the petals of the mind-lotus to the rays of the spiritual sun, and that is what we now want first." — Swami Baba Pramanand Bharati. THE analysis of the religious element in education is a deep and subtle problem, and yet, at the same time, this element is the touchstone by which all systems of education are ultimately tested. The formation of in- dependent thought and judgment, and of an upright character, spontaneously moral, may lead in adolescent years to the attainment of some unifying philosophy of life which shall dominate and satisfy the religious nature. The successful quest of this during the " silent period," and the re-interpretation of it during a college career, must be the aim of all education. How is this aim to be achieved ? The separation of religion from education in a Christian country, where morality is under the corporate sanction of inherited religious tradition, may be a dangerous experiment, but it is made under the supposition 223 2 24 Education of Women of India that the influence of home and Church will supplement the teaching at school. In India, a country of conflicting faiths, all in a period of transition, and withal a country of deep religious instinct, the case is different. There is no cor- porate sanction : religion and moral principles are not necessarily kindred terms ; the influence of school and of home are often diverse, and thus the former, if it is in any sense to be the builder of character, must include religion as the only unifying educational factor. Theoretically, this statement is justified and endorsed, not only by missionary enthusiasts, but by official opinion and by Indian sentiment in so far as it is articulate ; its practical endorsement, on the other hand, is one of the most difficult problems of Indian administration. A brief sketch of the attitude of Government in the past, and of the modern desire for its modification may serve to show the relation which this question bears to the present development of women's education. The great educational Charter of 1854 estab- lished the Indian system on the only basis which seemed in accord with our whole Indian policy — that of religious neutrality ; but it was not, as is sometimes erroneously supposed, an endorsement of a wholly secular pohcy. The Government could not of itself undertake direct religious teaching in its own schools, but the system of " grants-in-aid " with which it endowed the voluntary schools was " based on an entire abstinence from interference with the religious The Religious Element in Education 225 instruction conveyed in the schools assisted." " The framers of this Despatch entertained the hope that under its provisions Hindu, Moham- medan, and Christian managers would supply, each class in its own particular way, what was already known to be a great defect of the course of instruction in Government institutions. The same hope was one of the chief reasons that led the Education Commission to make and the Government of India to adopt the recommenda- tion that ' the improvement and extension of institutions under private management be the principal care of the Department.' " ^ At the same time many of its members believed that even the more secular instruction given in the Government schools would remove ignorance and superstition, and ultimately pave the way to- wards the acceptance of Christianity. Moreover, definite provision was made for the inquiring mind. " The Bible is, we understand, placed in the libraries of the colleges and schools, and the pupils are freely able to consult it. This is as it should be ; and, moreover, we have no desire to prevent, or discourage, any explanations which the pupils may of their own free-will ask from the masters on the subject of the Christian religion, provided that such information be given out of school hours." The agitation of those who wished a more definitely Christian attitude to be adopted aimed at voluntary teaching of the ^ Unrest and Education in India. Wm. Miller, D.D,, LL.D., CLE. 226 Education of Women of India Bible, where a suitable teacher could be procured, and a suggestion of teaching the Indian religions parallel with it is scarcely found. The argument, as it might be presented to an Indian expostulating in favour of neutrality, is thus put in Sir John Lawrence's Despatches : — " We offer you the Bible in our Government schools because we believe it to be for your inestimable good if you choose to listen to it. We do not wish you to study it unless you do so voluntarily. But you cannot expect us to help in teaching your religion, which we do not believe to be true. That you can do for yourselves." 2 " The Indian religions ought not to be taught ; they have ample means of their own for doing this." It should be noted that at this time the Samajes had not arisen, nor the Hindu reform movement, and that the Western comprehension of things Indian and religious was much more limited than it is now. The Despatch of 1859, after reviewing the various arguments for the modification of the " secular " policy, finally sums up — " They [Her Majesty's Government] are unable, therefore, to sanction any modification of the rule of strict religious neutrality, as it has hitherto been enforced in the Government schools, and it accordingly remains that the Holy Scriptures being kept in the library, and being open to all the pupils who may wish to study them, and the teachers being at liberty to afford instruction and explanations regarding 2 Despatches on Christianity in India — Sir John Lawrence {Times Reprint). The Religious Element in Education 227 them to all who may voluntarily seek it, the course of study in all Government Institutions be, as heretofore, confined to secular subjects." ^ The emphasis on the place of the aided school and the Government school has varied in the different periods of Indian administration and in different localities, but in the main in the education of boys the Government or municipal school has pre- dominated. Its possible religious influence has been negative ; and while there is no record of the English teacher expounding the Bible to inquir- ing minds after school hours, as the Despatches fondly picture, there is ample evidence that the Western education introduced sapped the founda- tions of ancient belief and substituted no new positive sanction of moral principles. The Hindu and Mohammedan effort of the early days on Western lines was also, with the exeption of Aligarh College, largely on a secular basis. Thus, the place of definite religious teaching was confined to the schools under missionary manage- ment, and though their influence, especially in South India, has been enormous, it can in no sense be considered conterminous with Western education in India. A predominantly secular education has therefore produced its own fruits, and a discussion of it when so much literature already exists on the subject is superfluous. The modern reaction is manifest in popular speeches, in the Press, and in Government reports. An Indian writer pleads that the Durbar boon of 3 Despatch of the Secretary of State, 1859. 228 Education of Women of India additional grants for education is no boon, but a curse, if it perpetuate only the " nauseatingly materialistic, all - intellectual, and soul-killing system," and is not in consonance with the " natural ideals, national aspirations, and the world-old mental characteristics " * of the Indian people. It would be easy to multiply quotations in grandiloquent language, which, for all their quaintness, have a strong element of truth. Parallel with the plea for religious instruction, and to a certain extent confused with it, is the plea for moral instruction, either apart from or based on religion. The most trustworthy evidence as to the extent of this demand and its somewhat incoherent nature was given at the Government Educational Conference held recently in Allahabad, when a whole day was devoted to the subject of Moral and Religious Education. The preceding questionnaire inquired {a) how far moral lessons were included in the ordinary Primary readers, (b) whether special moral text- books were in use, (c) whether direct moral instruction was given and appreciated, {d) whether the trend of public opinion was really in favour of moral instruction in the schools, and finally (e) whether any divergent views thereon were based on differences of creed. Most of the provinces reported a certain element of moral instruction in the shape of stories and poetry in the readers, with the comment that these were * • • King George and the Hindoos," XIX Century, January 1912. The Religious Element in Education 229 mainly used as reading or grammar lessons, or else were too didactically taught to have any lasting effect. Certain moral text-books are in use, but these are mainly of a religious nature and found in the newer Indian schools. The " Sanatana Dharma " series, issued by the Central Hindu College, Benares, which attempts to deal only with basal principles of religion, is used by the Surat municipality, in Mysore, in Baroda and elsewhere, but is not generally acceptable to orthodox Hindus. The classic Bhaghavat Gita — an eclectic synopsis reconcihng different systems of Hindu philosophy and religion — is also taught as a class-book in the higher classes of certain schools in Bengal which were started as rivals to mission schools. The Anjuman-i-Islamia, Lahore, also prepares books for both Primary and Secon- dary classes in Mohammedan schools, and in these again moral instruction is imparted through religious references. Moral text-books pure and simple are not used except occasionally those of the International Moral League in some of the hostels in Baroda and elsewhere. As regards lessons in direct moral teaching, apart from religion, there seem to be exceedingly few. A few debating societies exist for this purpose. One school reports a weekly lecture thereon, but the boys of the school are credited with stoning a visiting cricket team which had defeated them ! Moral instruction combined with religion is more common than it is thought in the Indian aided schools, and various instances are on record. 230 Education of Women of India The old-fashioned Koranic schools and Sanskrit " tols " are steeped in religion. " To describe the system of moral training in such institutions would be to write an, account of the rites and tenets of the Hindu and Mohammedan religions." ^ With two exceptions the reports show in detail a general state of dissatisfaction with things as they are, and a desire for definite moral instruction combined with a strong preference for a religious basis where such could be made possible. The words " moral instruction " seem also to have become a sort of shibboleth. " People are also rather vague as to what comes under the head of religion or morality." A Brahman student is instanced as having devoted much time to religion, which was found to mean " breathing exercises." " There are a few of exceptional intelligence who hold that the teaching of morality must be based on religion. These would advocate the teaching of a religion, or rather a combination of religious truths that all men could agree on." " The public mind in Bengal is not ripe for the idea of moral instruction totally severed from religion." At the same time it is noticed that little advantage has as yet been taken of the opportunity to teach religion in the Government schools in the United Provinces and in Burma. The restrictions which surround it in the former and the recent date of the permission for it in the latter may possibly account for this. The bulk of the answers to the questionnaire s Allahabad Conference, Report, 191 1. The Religious Element in Education 231 issued by the Conference may be summed up in respect of moral instruction as follows : it is inefficient, unless impressed by the personality of the teacher, and unless based on religion ; a merely moral system can be accepted only in circumstances which completely prohibit the religious element. Combined with the desire for it is a certain healthy scepticism as to whether moral instruction can be imparted in small doses, and whether the more effective influence is not the general discipline and tone of the school. The discussions at the Conference, which represented every shade of oflicial and religious opinion, followed the same line. The emphatic testimony of Christian and Mohammedan dwelt on the need for the rehgious sanction, the Hindu testimony on the same need, but also on the impossibihty for Hindus of finding a common ground amongst themselves. " No teaching which rests merely upon the basic principles of religion will be ac- cepted by Hindus as taking the place of directly orthodox religion." ^ The incorporation of moral teaching in the Government system by means of a general text-book seemed at best only a makeshift, and did not meet with universal approval. The evidence of the Allahabad Conference reveals a need and a deadlock. The country needs morality taught under religious sanction, but how can a Government pledged irrevocably to religious neutrality provide this ? The granting of equal 6 G. K. Gokhale. 232 Education of Women of India opportunity in the Government and municipal schools for parallel instruction in the various faiths, as Sir Valentine Chirol suggests,' would not meet the special case of the Hindus, and might possibly complicate the position of the mission schools. The disintegration of a school where rival influences were at work would further render impossible the unity necessary to tone and discipline. The solution of the problem seems rather to lie in the religious influence of a single kind, and this is possible only in the aided schools. The development of these, and the allocation of a greater proportion of public funds to them, especi- ally now that the indigenous Indian schools of the newer type are developing religious instruc- tion, would be in historical continuity with the principles of 1854, and would not contradict the principles of neutrality. The problem of female education was not con- sidered separately at Allahabad, and there was no reference throughout the discussion to girls' schools. But though girls' education may be assumed to be some fifty years behind that of boys, a great deal of the report has a very direct bearing on our subject as indicating dangers to be avoided and a more profitable course to be pursued. The whole question is even more vital in their case, as the removal of religious and moral principles would be fraught with consequences even more serious to the community. How far is the education of women in India undermining ^ Indian Unrest. Sir Valentine Chirol. The Religious Element in Education 233 their religious beliefs ? How far is this influence being counteracted by moral teaching, or by definite instruction in the principles of their own religion or of Christianity ? As regards the vast proportion of girls who attain a mere literacy in the Primary schools, the disintegrating influence can scarcely be said to have begun ; on the other hand, in the Govern- ment and municipal schools there is a lack of con- structive influence guiding them towards that which is true, honest, and of good report. Ex- ceptional women amongst the few trained teachers may use the opportunity afforded by the moral lessons in the readers, but only the exceptional women. Schools started for girls by Indian societies have arisen mostly in the later period of religious revival, and some of their Primary schools are saturated with religion. In so far as an outsider can judge, this tends mainly to the abnormal development of the repetitive faculty. In the Christian Primary schools the influence of the Biblical instruction given naturally varie? enormously according to the method of the Indian teacher and according to the frequency of the visits of the English missionary. The writer has watched a Scripture lesson given by an Indian teacher to a group of Bengali girls aged about eight years ; their attention, response, and inde- pendent questions compared favourably with those of English children of the same age. It is also part of the ordinary experience of the zenana visitor to find the influence and memory of these 234 Education of Women of India school lessons still alive amongst those who have long left school. In the Secondary and Training stages, the question is totally different, and the beginning of the influence which has proved so disastrous on the men's side is already felt. The Head of one Government Normal school stated, " Our education cannot fail to imdermine their previous ideas," and then commented afterwards on the ineffectiveness of the moral instruction she was trying to introduce. In some of the Government schools where the Principal is a woman of special abihty and tact, moral instruction is given, but as a rule it is not attempted. In the Government mixed colleges there is naturally no influence of this nature. In the Indian schools religious instruction is the rule, its character, as indicated in the reports to the Allahabad Con- ference, differing enormously in different places. In some it is carefully thought-out moral instruc- tion, linked with those ideas in the particular religious faith which bear it out. The Benares school is a typical example of this ; the whole school join in morning puja to Sarasvati, the goddess of learning, and there are special times during the week for instruction from the Sanatana Dharma series. The new Hindu High school in Bombay is visited once a week for the purpose by a Brahman, and a small catechism of a more orthodox nature is in use. The only Buddhiot girls' Anglo- Vernacular school in Burma is marked by a strong religious tone. Instruction is given The Religious Element in Education 235 daily by an elderly priest to the whole school together, " in order that they may feel religion is the most important thing in daily life and therefore must be daily." A specimen of the catechism used is typical : — " What are the three things to seek daily ? Truth, Knowledge, Righteousness. " What will you do when you go home ? We will do salutation to our parents. " And afterwards ? We will do our work. " And in the morning ? Our first thought will be of righteousness." ^ Religious and moral instruction is now given in most of the Parsi schools of Bombay under the auspices of a special Zoroastrian Association. This is, I understand, an innovation of the last ten years. In the schools under committees of different faiths the same difficulty is felt as in the Government schools. It is solved in one case by carefully prepared moral intsruction on an eclectic basis, in another by parallel religious observances. There is no uniformity in practice, but the universal attempt is a clear proof that the Indian desire for education on a religious basis for their daughters is genuine. The Christian factor so far has been the pre- dominating one, for the " bulk of female Secondary education is provided by the missionaries." ^ The ^ The quotation is from a verbal translation given during the visit to the school. " Quinquennial Report, vol. i. p. 257. 236 Education of Women of India religious atmosphere is one of unity and simplicity. It is part of the wonderful tolerance of Hinduism and its desire to embrace other faiths in its per- vading atmosphere, that Hindu girls can share outwardly in Christian worship without apparent realization of its incompatability with their ancestral religion. The daily instruction is given in class groups, and where the non-Christian element enters largely there is usually a separate classification for this. Its bearing is stated in simple direct terms by a teacher, " The educa- tion of any child is not complete which has not led it consciously to realize the supernatural, and the revelation of God in Christ." In the few schools where a " conscience clause " exists, it is not as a rule taken advantage of. The girls in one convent who were thus exempted sat in the back row quietly and were not asked questions ; they also attended chapel, but might take their own books with them. Another curious instance of the working of the Hindu mind is seen in the case of an Indian gentleman who withdrew his daughters from the regular school lesson by virtue of the conscience clause, but sent them back voluntarily to a special Scripture class held once a week. Caste prejudice was possibly justified by this arrangement. The tone and influence of the Christian schools is greatly appreciated ; it is this which fills the Diocesan School in Calcutta with pupils, although a thorough education is available in the Bethune School. A high-caste Brahman lady in Bombay testified in The Religious Element in Education 237 the warmest tones to the wonderful character and spirit of the Catholic sisters who had educated her, and to whom she had sent her daughters. It is not only the English education which attracts, it is something more. It would be invidious to multiply instances, but the testimony is practically universal to the acceptability of educational work done in the name of Christ. The three factors contributing to the education of women in India have thus a varying contribu- tion to make to the most fundamental element in education, and it is this diversity which supphes the keynote to the whole problem, and indicates the line for Western action in the future. The share of the Government, as indicated by the present policy in Eastern Bengal, Madras,i° the United Provinces, and elsewhere will of necessity become an increasing one in the direct establish- ment of schools, if there is not a sufficient development of aided schools to meet the rising tide. Its contribution to religion will be a negative one. The spontaneous Indian schools which attempt to supply the need are at their best — and they are not always at their best — only an imperfect solution. It would be but a poor form of Christianity which failed to recognize the diverse manners in which God has revealed Himself to the world, and the truth of permanent value in the great ethnic faiths of the world which finds its final interpretation in That which 1° Unrest and Education in India. Wm. Miller, D.D., LL.D.. CLE. 238 Education of Women of India is Perfect. There is nothing more striking in the modern reform movements of India than the reflection in them of Christian thought and ideahsm, and this is specially seen in the instruc- tion given in the girls' schools. Christian hymns are used with certain specific verses left out, the Lord's Prayer is printed in a Parsi manual of devotion, verses from Watts and Charles Kingsley are in the Benares series, and the hope of Christ as the Lode Star of Indian thought can be read in many a school manual. Together with all this is the perpetual allegorizing of such facts in Indian literature as will not bear the pure ethical light. Principal Paranjpe of the Fergusson College at Poona, in arguing at the Bombay Educational Conference for a secular basis for moral teaching, held that to make morality depend upon religion is dangerous if the religious sanction comes to be no longer regarded as binding. His speech is so illuminating as to be worth while quoting in full : — " In times like ours where landmarks that were but yesterday regarded as perennial are being removed to-day and are likely to be forgotten to-morrow, it is best not to cling to too many rocks. The one solid rock on which we can rest is our own reason. If eating pork is a heinous sin with one set of people, beef with another, and any meat at all with a third, how can the alleged basis of morality be regarded as absolute ! Especiallv when, as in India, there are various religions, each religion divided into innumerable sects, and each sect divided into many separate The Religious Element in Education 239 sections ; when the feeling aroused by any religious question is of a pitch which can hardly be conceived in Western countries ; when the respectability of a man is in inverse ratio to the number of people he is able to associate with without coming into conflict with the prevailing religious ideas — it will be seen that the less we have to do with religion in moulding the character of young children the better for our national being. Let boys be taught to see that there are some principles which they can all believe irrespec- tive of the fact that they belong to one religion or several. It is only in this way that our various races can be brought closer together." n To bring morality into relation with a religion which is ethical to the core, and which has attained with modern science and historical criticism only a fuller and deeper content, is to place it on a new foot- ing and to endow it with spiritual power. While full sympathy must be extended to the Indian effort, the emphasis must fall on the Christian schools. They alone can supply in full the religious element so needed in Indian education. The present situation offers to them in increasing measure an opportunity for a voluntary contri- bution of the needed spiritual force and power to the educational development of India. Their contribution, as already indicated, has been great, but modern conditions demand something more. Old schools must be remodelled, new schools started ; independent work must be done 11 Allahabad Conference Report, 191 1, 240 Education of Women of India in adapting curricula to Indian ideas and the special needs of girls ; the whole educational machinery must be raised to the level of the standard required for men if the opportunity for imparting this spiritual power is to be retained. No social or religious problem can bear isolation, and if this book has treated the question of the education of women in detail and in its technical bearings, the relation of that question to the Christianizing of Indian life and thought is the main interest in its composition. The problem is a question of character, but of character built upon personal contact with the Christ-life in God — a question of environment and curricula, but also of showing that Christianity is of the East, and Eastern in its spiritual appeal ; a question of womanhood, but also of that more perfect human fellowship where Christ is all and in all. " Jesus Christ, by the ^^ilent action of a lifetime, laid the first emphasis on the identity of woman's humanity rather than on the difference of her sex, thus both dignifying her and man in his attitude to her." 12 The solution of India's social problem lies in the fulfilment of the Christian ideal, and the progress towards it must be a united one, in which both sexes share alike. The nega- tive influence of the home is often found to be the strongest in the student life of the great Christian colleges, and many an earnest man has fallen back from what he seemed to have gained because of a silent, unseen woman. The work of *2 International Review of Missions, January 191 2. Article by T. Gairdner. The Religious Element in Education 241 Christian education in leavening thought and producing the atmosphere in which there is hope of the ultimate acceptance of Christianity is regarded by many as the most potent influence for the Kingdom of God in India. The great majority of converts in later life, who belonged to the high castes, have been drawn from the ranks of those who have been educated in Christian schools, and in spite of intense opposition there are actually men to-day who seek for baptism during their college career. 1^ There is the further, and perhaps in the sure Providence of God the greater, result in the permeation of Hindu society by Christian thought and sentiment, which may yet pave the way for a movement of the higher castes to Christ. At the recent anniversary services of the Prarthana Samaj in Bombay, the sermon preached by a Justice of the High Court, on the present day as " The Age of the Holy Spirit, the Age of Education," throbbed throughout with the reverence of one who had studied at the feet of Jesus. The long open hall was packed from end to end with young men who had been touched by the new ideas ; in one corner sat some twelve Indian women whose sympathies were with them. The disparity of the two sexes in the audience indicated how the leavening influence of Christian education will be deprived of half its power unless it touches the family as the unit of civihzation. The " direct result " " The Aim of Educational Missions. East and West, January 1912. W. E. S. Holland. Q 242 Education of Women of India longed for by those who teach in Christian schools is not lacking. It is unnecessary in these days to contradict once more the impression that the baptism of children and girls of immature age is attempted. There are some cases of the baptism of mother and child together, where careful zenana visiting has followed up the school pupil ; others — and these are the majority — are secret disciples whose whole environment is massed up against an open confession. One Moslem girl in the higher classes of a Christian school is con- vinced of the truth of Christianity ; every vacation her parents inquire whether she is a Christian yet, and she knows that if she replies in the affirmative all the advantages which her younger sisters are enjoying in another Christian school will cease. The case is not an extreme one. There is a different story of a girl in Burma who was found teaching the children of her jungle village daily, and gathering them on Sundays for Bible stories and hymns, " until," as she put it, " some one comes who can do it better than I." Her former school knew nothing of it, and but for the chance visit of a Commissioner's wife the tale would never have been told. Surely this is direct result. Christian educational work has also its place in the problem of the Indian Church. Ultimately the interpretation of Christ to India must be through the Indian, and the building up of a strong Indiaa Christian community is strategically necessary. The power of the Indian Christian home is in proportion to the power of the woman. Yet only 43% of the Christian community are The Religious Element in Education 243 being educated. The dangers of mass movements and of illiterate, uninstructed Christianity on one side, of europeanizing the convert and educating him beyond his capacity on the other, show at the same time the necessity and the difficulty of action. The less romantic educational work of industrial orphanages has its place in the building up of a strong, true community. The training of Christian girls as teachers, through whom the leavening process will again worJi on the non- Christian village life, is perhaps the most definite and most direct form of influence. There is no more subtle problem than the lack of any characteristically Indian note in the Indian Christianity which is now assuming some numerical importance. " There is no doubt that the lack of vitality, the half dead and half alive spirituality which is the present characteristic of the Indian Church, is due to enforced conformity to Western standards of what is Christian and what is not Christian." i* It may be that this problem too has its relation to the education on Christian and Oriental lines of the women, who have been from all time the custodians of religion, the upholders of traditional custom, and conservative rite.^^ From whatever point the larger question of the whole country is viewed, it seems to attain per- spective and reality in relation to the education of its womanhood, and it is only thus as part of one great Christian movement that the feminist problem receives its right emphasis and value. ^* Student Movement, 191 1, Article by S. K. Rudra. ^5 Cp. on this The Renaissance in India, C. F. Andrews. XI CONCLUSION " Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Ephesians iv. 13. THE spiritual heritage of the twentieth century is marked by extreme diversity and yet by a deep inward reaUty. The march of science and commerce, and the develop- ment of international relationships have given a new content and width to the world's thought. Isolated life is powerless, and a larger synthesis links the human race together. All such relation- ship must inevitably have spiritual content. The social upheaval, the claim of the individual for re- cognition, have a determining influence on the in- terpretation of our faith. Pragmatism in modem philosophy tests religion by its results. The reli- gious evolution necessitated by the play of inter- national forces is all the more critical in that it is to a certain extent unconscious. There is a deep Christianity apart from the Church as it is, which has yet to make the Church its own. The demand is now for reality — an embodiment of religious prin- ciples in modern social conditions ; for charity — a sympathy with the ethnic faiths which is the surer 244 Conclusion 245 for belief in the finality of the Christian revela- tion ; for unity, since the modern mind cannot accept a Christianity which does not transcend and interpret all political, social, and intellectual life. "It is not our duty to-day to fight for a new religion ; we have but to awaken into fresh- ness of life the fathomless depths of Christianity. In so far as we succeed in doing this, we can completely satisfy the requirements of the new situation ; we can seek to realize a Christianity that shall be at once more universal and more active and intent on disengaging itself from its anthropomorphisms ; at the same time we shall view as our very own the wealth of religious profundity and inward experience which the older Christianity has gathered through its centuries of service, and shall seek to realize them in our own life." 1 The growth of the desire to make Christianity universal is perhaps the most wonderful phase in the advance of thought ; while in one sense it is very old and a return to the primitive times of the faith, its modern phase thrills with fresh content by the ever-present working of the Spirit of God. The fresh light which criticism has shed on the historical Jesus has thrown once more into relief His wonderful doctrine of the brotherhood of men in the Fatherhood of God. The desire is not so much to bring salvation to those whom a rigid theology long condemned as " heathen," as to give freely of the fulness received in clear ^ Christianity and the New Idealism, Rudolf Eucken. 246 Education of Women of India consciousness of the solidarity of the human race. The world's best thought must be in terms of Christian philosophy ; the Kingdom is conceived as present now in power ; Christ is seen as the Fulfiller of all that is true and eternal in the ancient Faiths, and essentially the Saviour of the corporate life. The appeal of this book is thus for the Christian- izing of every factor in the education of women in India. None of the three contributing forces need be alien to the Spirit of Christ ; their unity, their mutual relationship, and the necessity of their presence in a transitional period must be felt and realized. Can all this educational advance be made, if not directly in the Name of Christ, at least in the power of His Spirit ? The Government influence must determine the tone and character of the whole frame-work. Can the Educational Service be supplied in all its branches with women who, while absolutely loyal to the great principle of neutrality, yet seek through it the spiritual in the material, and whose whole work in Empire-building is consciously related to the Kingdom of Christ ? India has known men of this type in the Government Service, and has esteemed their strict neutrality the more because of the Christian conviction which lay behind it. The influence of Christian ethics in the Government schools behind such mored instruction as is possible is enormous, and it naturally enters into the teaching of secular subjects. The direct influence permitted out of Conclusion 247 school hours is a matter of great difficulty and calls for the utmost discretion. If the Govern- ment policy were ultimately modified so as to permit of parallel religious instruction, the direct opportunity would be present, but in the mean- time indirect religious influence has a very definite place. The spontaneous Indian element will have an important contribution to make in the determin- ing of the curricula. Will the Indian commi- mittees, who need the help of EngUsh women, be able to secure those of the highest talent and educational qualifications, who for the sake of Christ will give them of their best and remain, if silent, yet strong in the Faith ? This is hard and perplexing work, and calls for strong per- sonalities, but it is fraught with endless possi- bility. India will never be won if she does not behold Christianity in her midst lived in the lives of those who pursue their ordinary vocation in the Spirit of the Master. These suggestions are made with hesitation lest their attraction should weigh with those who could take the more definite Hne of associating them- selves with the educational work in India which is done directly in the name of Christ. The develop- ment of this work on sound lines by women of experience and of the highest educational quali- fications is, as has been indicated in the preceding chapter, the keynote to the whole problem. In no work is there such a magnificent sphere of influence as in this. A spiritual heritage involves 248 Education of Women of India responsibility and opportunity. Nearly a cen- tury of patient work for the women of India is written in the annals of the Church : the task of the present day is to enter into this work with the same earnest patience. The need for action is urgent. It is not only that there are endless opportunities for new work which are not being utilized, but that schools with an excellent tradi- tion are not being raised to the modern standard of efficiency. They are inevitably handicapped by shortage in the English staff. A young girl of little experience may find herself almost at once at the head of some most complex institution, long before she would ever have had such a position of responsiblity at home. The perpetual strain on those who work on at such tension prevents the due result. In other cases the needed and desired expansion is checked by lack of the trained educator who could supervise village schools and their teachers, or who could put her energy and talent into building up a first- class school for non-Christian girls in the centre of some district where the new spirit is manifest. Facts indicate the appointment in the future of women to act as Tutors or Directresses of Studies to the girl students in the mixed mission colleges. There is the possibility also of women's Christian colleges. On every side the need is apparent, and the power to meet it lies with the women of the English-speaking countries. It is work which makes demands on intellect, on character, and on the religious nature. The hesitation to respond Conclusion 249 to it springs in part from the sense of reverence for things sacred. There are women in educa- tional circles at home who hold the truth of Christianity and its sufficiency to meet the need of the whole world, but have not offered to share in educational missions lest their contribution be not of the required type. There is need in India for every type of worker. Christianity gains there, as at home, by interpretation through diverse personalities, and there is room for all who can reflect, it may be silently, its spirit and power in the daily routine of work. A sense of vocation is a sense of personal relationship to Him Who calls, and therein lies the motive power for all educational work done in the name of Christ. Appendix A Curricula Matriculation subjects of the five Universities of Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Panjab, and Allahabad: — English and Mathematics, compulsory in all. History and Geography, compulsory in all except Calcutta. Science, compulsory in Madras and Bombay ; elective in the other three. Classical language, compulsory in Calcutta, Bom- bay, Panjab ; alternative with vernacular in Madras ; elective in Allahabad. Vernacular compulsory in Calcutta and Bombay ; alternative with classical in Madras ; elective in Allahabad and Panjab. Drawing, elective in Allahabad and Panjab. Text-Books State Schools. — No choice. Aided Schools. — Choice among authorized alter- natives. Unaided but recognized Schools. — Abstention from books disapproved by Government. Text-book Committees. — In every case appointed by Government, and include official and non- 250 Appendices 251 o£ficial members ; in some provinces places are reserved for members of the staff of mission schools. From Analysis of Educational Codes in British India. Appendix B Courses for the Training of Teachers Training colleges and classes: — (i) Graduate Course — one year. ^ Both in (2) Undergraduate Course — two years. / EngHsh. (3) Vernacular Course — after Middle examination — two years. (4) Lower Vernacular Course— after Upper Primary examination (women only) — two years. Courses (i) and (2) are pursued in the Universities, in special EngUsh Training schools for men, or in the Training Department of some European schools. Courses (3) and (4) in Government or mission Vernacular Training schools for women. These consist frequently of very small groups in an ordinary Middle or High school. A few students are also found in mixed schools. 252 Education of Women of India Appendix C Diagram showing INCREASE OF FEMALE EDUCATION in India. -1433 'qpa iqyt t8