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EDUCATION OF DEPRESSED CLASSES 427
entertained by the rural communities to the instruction of low castes on the ground that education would advance them in life and induce them to seek emancipation from their present servile condition. In his report for the year 1896-97 the Director of Public Instruction, Bombay quoted a case in which the action of the Local Officers of the Kaira District in requiring the admission of low caste pupils led to five or six large schools being closed for years and to the huts and crops of the low caste people being burnt in one village and to the imposition of a heavy punitive post on that village for two years.”
Such being the attitude of the rural communities, how can it be expected that the School Boards drawn as they largely will be from the rural communities will discharge, faithfully, their trust in the matter of the education of the Depressed classes ? To give the School Boards the control over the education of the Backward classes is to make the prosecutor the ruler. No wonder that Resolutions are passed by the Backward classes condemning the transfer of the control of Primary Education to the School Boards. It would have given some relief if the School Boards were manned by representatives of the Depressed classes in adequate numbers. But that is not the case. The representation of the Depressed classes in self-governing bodies from the Council down to the Local Boards has been planned by the Government after the manner of a curator who is not anxious to keep more than one specimen of each species in his Museum. Government nominates one member from the Depressed classes to the District Local Board out of some forty members and the School Board is directed to co-opt one member from the Depressed classes. In the principle of co-option there is always the danger of the wrong man being co-opted—a danger which the Depressed classes of East Khandesh have had to face in the recent School Board elections. But supposing the right man is co-opted, what can a single individual do in a hostile group of 15 which is the maximum strength of a School Board ?
If Government is sincere in the matter of promoting the education of the Depressed classes then there are certain measures which Government must adopt. The Sabha has its own convictions as to what Government should do in this connection and would like to state the same in the form of proportions as follows :—
(1) Unless the Compulsory Primary Education Act is abolished and the transfer of Primary Education to the School Boards is stopped, the Sabha fears that education of the Depressed classes will receive a great set-back.
(2) Unless compulsion in the matter of Primary Education is made obligatory and unless the admission to primary schools is strictly enforced, conditions essential for educational progress of the Backward classes will not come into existence.