z:\ ambedkar\vol-02\vol2-06.indd MK SJ+YS 21-9-2013/YS-8-11-2013 425
EDUCATION OF DEPRESSED CLASSES 425
education among the Mahomadans. One feels righteous indignation against such criminal neglect on the part of the Government particularly when it is realized that the large grants given by the Government of India after
1913 were given by way of fulfilment of the declaration made by His most Gracious Imperial Majesty the King Emperor in replying to the address of the Calcutta University on the 6th January 1912 in which he said :
“It is my wish that there may be spread over the land a network of schools and Colleges, from which will go forth loyal and manly and useful citizens, able to hold their own in industries and agriculture and all the vocations in life. And it is my wish too, that the homes of my Indian subjects may be brightened and their labour sweetened by the spread of knowledge with all that follows in its train, a higher level of thought, of comfort and health. It is through education that my wish will be fulfilled, and the cause of education in India will ever be very close to my heart.”
IV. From 1923 and after
The Reforms Act came into force in 1921. Education was made a transferred subject in charge of a minister and a rapid advance in education was naturally expected at his hands. The Backward classes had, however, their doubts as to whether any benefit would accrue to them from the transfer of education to the control of the ministers. Already they had suffered in the matter of education at the hand of the bureaucracy. In the first period of existence the bureaucracy did not permit them to receive the benefits of education. In the second period the bureaucracy did not help them to get education. All the same the bureaucracy was too much enlightened to deny the principle that the Backward classes had a right to education. The Backward classes were not prepared to predicate the same enlightenment of the Indian intelligentsia which was struggling to replace the bureaucracy. As the Indian intelligentsia had its roots in the part in which the Backward class had no recognized rights, the latter were apprehensive that the past may again be made to live in the present.
Unfortunately their doubts came true and it may be truly said that under the Reforms the Backward classes in the Bombay Presidency have fallen from purgatory to hell. This may appear to be a very strong commentary on the existing situation. But the situation for in Backward classes of the Bombay Presidency created by the Compulsory Primary Education Act (Bombay Act No. IV of 1923) can hardly be described in any other words. The Compulsory Primary Education Act is in a very important sense a “fraud”. It was claimed for the Act, it was calculated to change the character of the primary education from being voluntary to compulsory. The Act does nothing of the kind. A reference to section 10 of the Act is sufficient to expose the “fraud”. The system is as voluntary as it was before and will remain so indefinitely. For, not only there is no obligation to make it compulsory, but there is even no time limit fixed within which to fulfil the obligation. Apart from this the Compulsory Primary Education Act has