Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/329

Rh be purely Hindu. We might silently omit all precepts of questionable morality, but the slightest infusion of religious controversy would insure the failure of the design. It would be better to call the prejudices of the Hindus to our aid in reforming them, and to control their vices by the ties of religion which are stronger than those of law. By maintaining and purifying their present tenets, at the same time that we enlighten their understandings, we shall bring them nearer to that standard of perfection at which all concur in desiring that they should arrive; while any attack on their faith, if successful, might be expected in theory, as is found in practice, to shake their reverence for all religion and to set them free from those useful restraints which even a superstitious doctrine imposes on the passions.” Mr. Elphinstone, when Governor of Bombay, reiterates the same sentiments in a Minute dated 6th April 1821 (Revenue and Judicial Selections, Vol. III., p. 695) on the Revenues and Survey of the Western Zillah north of the Myhee:—“In all discussions connected with the means of improving the situation of the people, our attention is drawn to the amendment of their education. This seems to be nearly in the same state here as in the Deccan. I should rather think there were more schools, but there are no books. The same plan I recommend in the Deccan may be adopted here, the circulation of cheap editions of such native books of those already popular as might have a tendency to improve the morals of the people without strengthening their religious prejudices. Passages remarkable for bigotry or false maxims of morality might be silently omitted, but not a syllable of attack on the religion of the country should be allowed.”

The late Mr. in his Notes on Indian Affairs, Vol. II., p. 1, asks —“Is a rational attempt to educate the people of this great country to be made? Or are they to be allowed to remain in their present state of ignorance? i. e., as far as relates to the assistance of their English masters. Is one great impediment to the due administration of justice to be removed? Or is it still to remain to the discredit of the British system of legislation? These, I grieve to say, are the two real questions into which this subject may be resolved. What has been, and what ought to have been, the course pursued by the British rulers? Certainly it was their duty first, to have ordained that the language and character of the country should be that of the courts of justice; secondly, to have established schools, or at least to have encouraged those that already existed, for the education of the people in their own language and character; thirdly to have promoted the translation of books of knowledge into the vernacular tongue; and fourthly to have afforded all who had leisure or inclination the means of acquiring that language in which the most general information is concentrated, the English. What has been the course hitherto pursued? We have actually imitated the example of a nation