THE UNTOUCHABLES AND THE PAX BRITANNICA 97
“Paragraph 10.—A uniform system developing itself spontaneously both in Bengal and Bombay. —We now proceed to give as minute a detail as comports with our limits, of the principal educational facts which have forced themselves upon our notice, and we think it will clearly appear, when those facts are duly appreciated, that many of the disputed questions, which arise in the Indian field of education, will be seen to solve themselves and that a system is generally evolving itself in other Presidencies as well as in Bombay, which is well suited to the circumstances of the country, and which, as the growth of spontaneous development, denotes that general causes are at work to call it forth.
“ Paragraph 11.—Statistics of education in Bombay .—In the return on the following page, a comparative view is given of the number of schools and of pupils receiving education under Government at the period when the Establishments first came under the control of the Board, in 1840 and in April 1850. It shows, in the latter period, an addition of four English and 83 vernacular schools and a general increase in pupils of above a hundred per cent. The total number receiving Government education at present is 12,712 in die following proportion :—
English Education .. .. .. 1,699
Vernacular Education .. .. .. 10,730
Sanskrit Education .. .. .. 283
(comparison from tables: in 1840 there were 97 schools, number of pupils 5,491 ;. number of schools 185 and number of pupils 12,712).
“ Paragraph 12. — Same Subject. —But the population of the Bombay Presidency is now calculated by the most competent authorities to amount to ten millions. Now on applying the rule of statistics deduced from the Prussian census as noticed in a former Report (1842-43 page 26) a population of this amount will be found to contain no fewer man 900,000 male children between the ages of seven and fourteen years and of course, fit subjects for school. It follows, therefore, that Government at this Presidency has not been able to afford an opportunity for obtaining education to more than one out of every sixty nine boys of me proper school going age.
“ Paragraph 13.—Same Subject .—Further, it is admitted that education afforded in the Vernacular School is far from efficient. A great portion of the strictures of Mr. Willoughby’s Minute is directed against the defective character and insignificant results of these schools. The Board, not only acknowledge this fact, but they have been studious to point it out prominently for many years past, and indeed, in the opinion of some competent observers, have drawn too unfavourable a picture of the vernacular schools. But what are the obvious remedies for the defects indicated ? Mr. Willoughby describes them very correctly :—“a superior class of school masters, normal schools, more efficient supervision, additions to the vernacular literature.” These are all subjects