EDUCATION IN INDIA.

every family so far as its baneful influences have
reached."

The real difficulty at the root of all questions of
Indian education is this, that modern c education/ this-
education which Englishmen are so proud of having
i given' to India, is really based on the general assump-
tion—nearly universal in England—that India, is a savage
country, which it is England's divine mission to civilize.
This is the more or less conscious underlying principle
throughout. The facts were more truly realised by Sir
Thomas Munro, when he wrote that " if civilisation were
to be made an article of commerce between the two
countries, England would soon be heavily in debt."

None can be true educators of the Indian people who
do not inherit their traditions, or cannot easily work in a
spirit of perfect reverence for those traditions. Others
can be, not educators, but merely teachers of particular
subjects. As such there is still room in India for English
teachers; but they should be, not in power, but sub-
ordinate ; they should be engaged by, paid by, and
responsible to Indian managers, as, in Japan, English
teachers are responsible to Japanese authorities. Professor
Kelson Eraser, in a valuable discussion upon " The English
Teacher in India,"* shows how little the English teacher
can know of the real life of the Indian people, and deduces
that—

" The Englishman is the last person to put forward any view
as to possible reforms in Hindu institutions."

To do so, should not, indeed, be conceived as part of
the English teacher's fixnction—a fact which most Englisli
teachers (other than missionaries) are in the end driven
reluctantly to admit. At first it is otherwise.

* 4 Indian Review,' April 1907.