CHAPTER IX.

Education in India.

ONE of the most remarkable features of British rule
in India has been the fact that the greatest injuries
done to the people of India have taken the outward form
of blessings. Of this, Education is a striking example ; for
no more crushing blows have ever been struck at the roots
of Indian National evolution than those which have been
struck, often with other, and the best intentions, in the
name of Education. It is sometimes said by fiiends of
India that the National movement is the natural result
of English education, and one of which England should
in truth be proud, as showing that, tinder * civilisation*
and the Pax Britannica, Indians are becoming, at last,
capable of self-government. The facts are otherwise.
If Indians are still capable of self-government, it is in
spite of all the anti-national tendencies of a system of
•education that has ignored or despised almost every ideal
informing the national culture.

By their fruits ye shall know them. The most
crushing indictment of this Education is the fact that it
destroys, in the great majority of those xtpon whom it is
inflicted, all capacity for the appreciation of Indian culture.
Speak to the ordinary graduate of an Indian University,
or a student from Ceylon, of the ideals of the Mahabharata
—he will hasten to display his knowledge of Shakespeare ;
talk to him of religious philosophy—you find that
he is an atheist of the crude type common in Europe
>a generation ago, and that not only has he no religion