According
to British Writer’s Publication in 1882 by G.W. Leitner, Punjab was one of the Most Educated
Places in The World Before the British Arrived and took over in 1849.
The
notion that with the fall of the Sikhs in 1849 the British East India Company
ushered in the modern age in the Punjab, especially in Lahore, is one that we
need to revisit. What went wrong, and remained wrong subsequently, is a subject
that we all need to reconsider.
When
the Lahore Khalsa Darbar collapsed, the EIC,
thanks mainly to the Lawrence brothers, set about trying to win
over the Punjabis. There was a cogent reason for this. The EIC, after a survey,
discovered that education in Lahore , and the Punjab , was far superior to the
education the British had introduced all over `conquered India `. In Lahore alone, there were 18 formal
schools for girls besides specialist schools for technical training, languages,
mathematics and logic, let alone specialized schools for the three major
religions, they are being Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. There were craft schools
specializing in miniature painting, sketching, drafting, architecture and
calligraphy.
The
Company concluded that the Punjabis were years ahead in the field of education
than the so-called `enlightened` Europeans. Every village in the Punjab , through the Tehsilar, had an
ample supply of the Punjabi `Qaida` , which was compulsory for females. Thus,
almost every Punjabi woman was literate in the sense that she could read and
write the `lundee` form of Gurmukhi. To overcome this, and yet keep the
Punjabis `in line` , a deliberate campaign to burn all Punjabi `Qaida` was
planned. The events of 1857 provided them this opportunity, even though it was
because of the `loyalty and sacrifices` of the Punjabis that the British
regained India .
But
how did the British rulers, now formally under the Crown after the EIC was
dislodged after becoming bankrupt because of the expense incurred in 1857, gauge
the situation? Here we have an amazing book from the legendary G.W. Leitner,
the founder of Government College, Lahore, and the Punjab University and
undoubtedly one of the world`s greatest ever linguist, who studied `Indigenous
Education in the Punjab` in amazing detail in 1882. His conclusions make much
better sense today, for they were ignored by the British during the years of
their rule. Not that we today care for what the great man said then, yet it
seems sensible to bring the matter to our readers` attention.
In the
`Introduction` to his original 1882 publication, he starts off by stating: “…
in spite of the best intentions, the most public-spirited officers, and a
generous Government that had the benefit of the traditions of others provinces,
the true education of the Punjab was crippled, checked and nearly destroyed our system stands convicted of worse than official failure”. The Punjab has this tradition whereby the
“most unscrupulous chief, the avaricious money-lender, and even the freebooter,
vied with the small land-owner in making peace with his conscience by founding
schools and rewarding the learned . There is not a mosque, a temple, a dharmsala
that had not a school attached to it”.
This
network the British set out to destroy. In the carnage of revenge that followed
1857, the British made it a special effort to search every house of a village
and to burn every book. Even in the secular schools of Lahore which used
Persian or `lundee` as the medium of instruction, books formed the major
bonfire than the British troops `cleansed` the area. Leitner claims that before
1857 the Punjab had an estimated computation as he called it, 330,000 pupils
learning “all the sciences in Arabic and Sanskrit schools and colleges, as well
as Oriental literature, Oriental law, Logic, Philosophy and Medicine were
taught to the highest standard”. Leitner claimed that after the events of 1857
the Punjab, by 1880, had, again a computed estimation, just 190,000 pupils. He
says an entire tradition, far superior to what Europe had to offer, was destroyed.
To
explain his claim, Leitner quotes from the Punjab Administration Report for
1849-51, paragraph 377: “The Musalman schools are nearly all connected with the
village mosque, where the land is rent-free, the endowments are secular and
religious to support temples, mosques, schools, village-inns more of a monastic
character”. An extract of report No. 335, 6th
July, 1857 , reaches the conclusion: “That elementary, and sometimes higher,
oriental classical and vernacular education was more widespread in the Punjab before annexation than it is
now”. The report concludes that the events of 1857 destroyed the huge
endowments that kept this `magnificent educational system intact`.
Here
an amazing table brings the assertions of Dr. Leitner to the fore in his claim
that the Punjab, and especially Lahore, was better off educationally in the
days of Maharajah Ranjit Singh than in the British days before 1882, when his
research was published. It shows that the total revenue collected by Ranjit Singh
in his last years, say 1838-9 as equalling 1.85 million pounds. The British
managed 1.45 million pounds. Then comes the stunner. “The Sikh ruler, as a
percentage, spent more on education than the East India Company from the
revenues collected.”
In the
Lahore District report of 1860, we see that it had 576 formal schools where
4,225 scholars taught. This being the case, if Lahore had so many scholars (teachers)
in the year 2010, it could again become a `first world` educational city and
district. Dr. Leitner provides still more statistics. He says 41.3 per cent
learn the Quran, 37.0 per cent learn Persian and Urdu, 8 per cent learn Nagri,
6.7 per cent learn Gurmukhi and 7 per cent learn Hindi or debased Nagri. “The
teachers are all paid in grain by the local landlords, who also send in daily
rations .” Special mention has been made of the extra amounts of grain sent to
teachers in Sialkot . This probably explains the
qualitative edge that Sialkot education has always maintained.
Its manifestations in Iqbal and Faiz can easily be seen.
It
would be of interest for us today to understand the schools of Lahore of those days. Schools opened
from 7am and closed at midday . In no case was a class allowed
to exceed 50 pupils. If any report of this number came forward, the `Subedar`
would send soldiers to arrest the teacher for trying to `destroy the future of
our children`. Imagine! Can we ever imagine such care and love today.
Inside
the walled city all the schools have been described in great detail. For
example the Kashmiri Bazaar Mosque School had a teacher by the name of
Allah Jewaya who taught the Quran and all subjects in Arabic. The Kucha Chabaksawaran School had a teacher by the name of
Muhammad Abdul Aziz who taught in Persian and Arabic. In the nearby mosque of
Faizullah, the teacher was Mahmood the Eunuch, who excelled in Persian and Arabic,
and taught pupils how to learn the Quran by heart. In the advanced Arabic
school in the Anarkali Mosque taught Maulvi Nur Ahmed, who taught grammar,
logic, Muslim law and mathematics. In Suttar Mandi School taught Pandit Gauri Shankar, who
taught mathematics, logic, medicine and Puran literature.
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