भारतातील सार्वजनिक शिक्षण ४४५
the interest of the man on the street. Alberuni observes, “The language in India is divided into a neglected vernacular one, only in use among the common people, and a classical one, only in use among the upper and educated classes, which is much cultivated.”
केथरिन मेथो, दलितांच्या शिक्षण विषयक ब्रिटीश काळातील धोरणाविषयी
म्हणते,
The Queen's Proclamation of December 2, 1958 reads as under:
“We do strictly charge and enjoin all those who may be in authority under us that they abstain from all interference with the religious belief or worship of our subjects, on pain of our highest displeasure.
Nevertheless the immediate impulse of the Briton in India was to espouse the cause of the social victim. The Directors of the East India Company, as early as 1854, recommended that ‘no boy be refused admission to a Government school or college on ground of caste,’ and stuck to the principle until their authority was sunk in that of the Crown. Thence forward it was continually re-affirmed, yet pushed with a caution that might seem faint-hearted to one unfamiliar with the extreme delicacy of the ground. Little or nothing was to be gained in any attempt to eee a foreign idea, by force, on unready and non-understanding millions.
Nor must the workings of caste be confused with snobbery. Aman’s caste is the outward sign of the history of his soul. To break caste by infringing any one of the multitudinous caste laws brings down an eternal penalty. If, as a Hindu, in obeying these laws, you inflict suffering upon another, that is merely because his soul-history has placed himin the path of pain. You have no concern in the matter; neither will he, thinking as a good Hindu, blame you.. Forboth you and he are working out your god- appointed destiny.
Today almost all that can be accomplished by civil law for the Untouchable has been secured. Government have freely opened their way, as far as Government can determine, to every educational advan- tage and to high offices. And Government's various land-develoment and co-operative schemes, steadily increasing, have provided tremen- dous redeeming agencies and avenues of escape.
But for Provincial Governments to pass legislation asserting the rights of every citizen to enjoy public facilities, such as public schools, is one thing; to enforce that legislation over enormous countrysides and through multitudinous small villages without the co-operation and against the will ofthe people, isanother. Witness that paragraph in the Madras Govern- ment Order of March 17,1919 reading :
‘Children of Panchamas (Untouchables) are admitted only into 609 schools out of 8,157 inthe Presidency, although the regulations state that no boy is to be refused admission merely on the ground of caste.’
1, Pp, 352—353.