Education in India in the early 19th century was largely distributed on the basis of caste system. The Brahmins who constituted the priestly class went through formal schooling in order to learn religious instructions through the study of religious literature. The Kshatriyas and Vaishyas were given vocational education in schools with very little emphasis on reading sacred texts. Since most of the local traders, Government servants and landlords came from these castes, they were taught to read, write and do the basic arithmetic needed for their work. The Shudras were denied religious education and were mainly trained in practical skills of the family occupation by the adults of the family (Naik & Nurullah, 2004). Formal school education was nearly inaccessible for the Shudras as well as women from all the castes; upper class women being an exception who were allowed to study classical literature and the religious texts. Girls from all the classes were trained in child-rearing practices, practical skills like cooking, sewing and other household arts. Muslim girls were able to read the Quran as was expected from them and some women were taught accounting in order to tackle property-related issues. The survey of indigenous education conducted by the British government in the Bombay presidency from 1823-1825 by Mountstuart Elphinstone, Governor of Bombay stated that there were no school for girls and the common schools catered only to boys (Naik & Nurullah, 2004). Similarly, the survey done by William Adam in Bengal Presidency from 1835-1838 showed that there was no formal female schooling except the home schools which taught household skills.
There were a number of reasons for which women were deprived from education. Child marriage was very much prevalent in the Hindu society which meant a girl was married to a middle-aged man before she attained puberty. There was a popular belief that if a girl is taught to read and write, her husband will die soon after the marriage leading to her widowhood (Forbes, 2012). The customs that a widow had to follow during that period were so harsh that widowhood was considered as a curse. Hence, it was believed that to lead a happy life, a girl should pray for her husband’s long life instead of causing his death by getting educated. From the autobiography of Rassundari Devi, Amar Jiban (1876), it is evident that even if the girls were supported by their parents to receive a little bit of formal education before marriage, they were denied to read and write after marriage. She narrates how at a tender age of fourteen, she was burdened with household activities and later got engaged in her children’s lives thus left with little time to study anything. Although her efforts to learn reading was due to her ultimate desire to read Chaitanya Bhagavata, a religious text, her story tells the difficulties that a girl had to face physically as well as emotionally because of the ill custom of child-marriage and deprivation of education which consequently made her dependent on the ‘educated’ males of her life: father, husband and son.
The Exercise Book, a short story by Rabindranath Tagore about a girl Uma who gets married at the age of nine brings out the reality of the orthodox society which oppressed girls to maintain the status quo of men. She had to hide her will to get education from the other women in her husband’s family as it was considered a grave offense and when the truth was brought in front of her husband, he ridiculed her and tore her book into pieces. It is interesting to note that although these girls belonged to Brahmin families, they were not allowed to have a formal schooling and were bound by the rules of the society.
This was the time when the Zenana system of education existed mostly in the middle and upper class Hindu families and the Muslim community. Zenana meant women apartments within the house causing their segregation from the social and cultural aspects of the patriarchal family (Shrivastava, 2002). The custom of Purdah restricted women from taking formal education outside home, girls were withdrawn from school before attaining puberty and also there were not many female teachers in schools. But, the elite middle class men who received English education wanted their wives to be educated so that they can efficiently run the household and guide the children in education. These all constituted a strong reason for the need of home education for girls and the Zenana served this purpose. It benefited both girls and adult women as they were taught to read, write, compose letter and do the simple accounting. In the 1840s, female Christian missionaries who came to India found that the Zenana system could be used to spread western beliefs in Indian society by training the women in English mannerism as desired by the western educated men. They believed that they may succeed in gaining converts to Christianity but later failed to do so. After this, a number of schools were opened for girls all over India by the Christian missionaries and the British Government.
As mentioned by Forbes (2012), in 1821, the Church Missionary Society opened 30 schools for Hindu girls in Calcutta but could not interest the higher castes pupils because of the religious instruction being given, while lower caste and Christian families got their children into these schools. The Scottish Church Society in Madras Presidency had 6 schools with 200 Hindu girls by 1840. J.E.Drinkwater Bethune opened the Hindu Balika Vidyalaya in Calcutta in 1849. Although the medium of instruction was Bengali and the school was secular, it failed to attract pupils from upper castes. All these facts tell that female education was not widely accepted by the upper caste Hindu society while Christians and lower castes put their faith in it.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the attitude of Government and the Hindu society towards female education had started to change. The Wood’s Dispatch of 1854 considered the Zenana system of education as important for women’s education and recommended that it should be included in the formal schooling through grant-in-aid. Social reformers and organisations too initiated their first step towards promotion of female education. Jotirao Phule with his wife Savitribai Phule opened the first school for girls in Poona in 1848. The Brahmo Samaj in Bengal set up an organisation for women to learn and share religious instructions, household skills and social issues in 1865. It was realised that to make Zenana work efficiently, female teachers were required and thus in 1862, schools for training female teachers were set up in Bombay, Poona and Ahmedabad by Mary Carpenter (Shrivastava, 2002). She also established a normal school in Calcutta in 1872 with Keshub Sen and Annette Akroyd. The Theosophical Society in Madras also promoted female education. Annie Besant, the President of this society condemned child marriage, widowhood and custom of Sati in the Hindu society. She went on to establish the Central Hindu College for boys in 1898 which now caters to both boys and girls. The Jullundar Samaj established an elementary school (1890) and a high school (1892) for girls in Punjab. The Hunter Commission’s Report of 1882 emphasised female education and promoted Zenana system in school for secular education of women who otherwise are confined in the religious boundaries of home. Following this, many schools and colleges were established all over India with the number of girls in Universities increasing from 6 in 1881-1882 to 264 by the end of the 19th century (Forbes, 2012).
While on the one hand there were social reformers like Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar, Jotirao Phule, Pandita Ramabai and many more who supported women’s education and went against the traditional society to provide education to girls, there were national figures like Balgangadhar Tilak and Vishnu Shashtri Chiplunkar on the other hand who voiced the opposition of the society to female education. Tilak asserted that education will be a hindrance for the women in performing their duties as a housewife and a mother and that English education will denationalise the women. He opposed the establishment of the first girls’ high school in Poona in 1884 started by M.G. Ranade stating that the curriculum for girls should be different from that of boys. It should consist of knowledge about vernaculars, needle work and sanitation instead of English, mathematics and sciences as given to boys. He stressed on giving moral and religious instruction through education and all these including household skills should be taught by native women and not the missionary women (Rao, 2007). He frequently cited the case of Rakhmabai. She fought a court case against her husband (to whom she was married in childhood) when he sought restitution of conjugal rights. The fact that she was educated and could articulate her troubles to gain public support and finally won the case became an instrument for Tilakites to elicit anger for English education of women from the conservative society. That Tilak was against English education for girls is evident from the following statement: “teaching Hindu women to read English would ruin their precious traditional virtues and would make them immoral and insubordinate” (Mahratta, 7 September, 1884, cited in Rao, 2007, p.309).
During the Home Rule, he proposed the scheme of National education which consisted of moral and religious education, theory of karma, existence of God while discarding the English language (Rao, 2008). For women, this scheme of education provided training of some technical skills and taught Dharmashastras since he believed that education for women should be home-centered. Tilak repeatedly articulated through Mahratta that if given education, women will become independent and not abide by the rules of society. He said that education should train girls in a way that they ensure a happy family life after marriage.
In 1896, Dondho Keshav Karve, a social reformer established a shelter for widows that later expanded in 1907 to become a girls’ high school in Poona. He believed that unmarried girls as well as widows should be independent in their thoughts as well as financially and so the curriculum of the school was to ensure their employability and self-sufficiency. In 1915, he proposed for the establishment of a women’s university in India at the annual secession of the Social Conference at Bombay (Rao, 2008) and opened the University in 1916 which provided courses in modern sciences and English. Later in 1920, this university was shifted to Bombay and was renamed as SNDT Indian Women’s University (Forbes, 2012). Therefore, higher education for women made an effort to enable them to be at equal level with men in terms of intellect and employment. It was once again opposed by the moderates and they demanded that the curriculum for women’s higher education should deal with religious literature, Hindu customs and way of living so that the girls become efficient in their role of a homemaker.
There were some women like Anandibai Joshee and Miss Anniee Jaganadhan who took to medical education fighting all the criticism and harassment by society. Anandibai graduated from Women’s Medical College at Philadelphia in 1886 and became the first Indian woman to obtain a degree in Western medicine. She could not pursue her career in it as she suffered from Tuberculosis which caused her death in 1887. This unfortunate incident became a reason for the opponents of women’s education to criticise it further, strengthening their claim that women are weaker and they should only study what is meant for them according to the household work they do. The Native Opinion in its obituary wrote:
Being no admirers of entrusting the education of our women to strangers in strange lands we may not be wrong in looking upon this sad event as one cumulative fatal result of foreign residence and its attendant wants, discomforts, and hard study.
(Native Opinion, 6 March 1887, cited in Kosambi, 2000, p.437)
In spite of all the opposition, the number of colleges in Bombay Presidency had increased and this showed that the people were becoming aware of the importance of education for women. The Table 1.1 below shows the growth of professional colleges.
(Shrivastava, 2002, p.44)
Now that we have a brief idea about the various phases that education for women in India went through during the 19th century, it will be interesting to know what views women themselves had about the society and education at the end of the century. I believe the classic work “Sultana’s Dream” written by Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain is an illustration of women’s realisation about men’s unjust oppression in the society and it also reflects that women were aware of the power of education and its efficient use for a progressive life.
Unlike Rassundari Devi who was not encouraged for education both by her parents and husband, Begum Rokeya (1880-1932) was born in a family where her brother taught her English and Bengali, while after marriage her husband Syed Sakhawat Hossain, encouraged her to study both English and Bengali. She started writing short stories and novels in Bengali mostly about women’s condition and how education can help them. Although in some of her essays like Sugrihini, she emphasised on women’s education so that they can play their traditional roles at home in a better way, she criticised the Purdah system which confined women for the sake of male honour and made them dependent on men (Forbes, 2012).
After her husband’s death in 1909 she established a school Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ School for Muslim girls in Bhagalpur, Bihar which was opposed by her in-laws. Thus she shifted it to Calcutta in 1911 (presently run by West-Bengal Government). The curriculum of the school stressed on literacy and practical skills in handicrafts, home science, etc along with physical fitness. The school confirmed to the Purdah restriction for Muslim girls even though she strongly criticized the practice. In her essay Sultana’s Dream (1905), she depicts a utopia ruled by women and where men are locked up. The religion is based on love and truth. All the political and social issues are addressed by women; all of them are educated and well equipped with scientific knowledge of storing solar energy and rain water for various purposes. The use of electrical technology in farming and aerial means of transport save time and even the work hours have reduced to 2 from 8 as men used to waste 6 hours a day in smoking. Crimes have reduced because men are not on the loose. It describes men as only physically powerful while women use their brains to solve problems without any violence.
This essay in a way was India’s first feminist science fiction and represented what women wanted and that they were finally in a position to decide for themselves. It is satirical in nature but brings to our notice the serious problems of a male-dominated society where women are thought of as symbols of culture and tradition, as purveyors of ethical and religious ideals (Minault,1998), as superstitious and ignorant of reality and as danger for the society if educated.
Evil practices such as child marriage, rules for widows, Sati and the Purdah system had made life miserable for women in India. This was because of lack of education of the population as a whole. But with the beginning of the 18th century, the change in perspective of the people towards role of women in society, the desire to transform the conservative society into a liberal one through education, the realisation of importance of educating women in nation’s progress and the increasing awareness of their rights by women led to the slow but concrete formation of formal education system for girls by the mid 20th century. This became possible with the combined efforts of the social reformers who emancipated women’s education, the British Government’s intervention through various reforms, the Nationalist leaders’ interest in education as a means of national development and last but not the least, endeavour of the women from all classes to receive education and improve their status in the society.
References
Devi, R. (1876). Rassundari Devi (1810-?) Bengali. (Chatterjee, E., Trans.). In Tharu, S.J., & Lalita, K. (Eds.), Women Writing in India: 600 B.C. to the early twentieth century (pp. 190-202). New York, NY: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Forbes, G. (2012). Education for Women. In Sumit Sarkar and Tanika Sarkar (Eds.), Women and Social Reform in Modern India (pp. 32-63). Ranikhet: Permanent Black
Hossain, R. S. (1905). A Celebration of Women Writers: Sultana’s Dream. Retrieved from http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/sultana/dream/dream.html
Kosambi, M. (2000). A window in the prison-house: women's education and the politics of social reform in nineteenth century western India. History of Education: Journal of the History of Education Society, 29(5), 429-442. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00467600050120342
Minault, G. (1998). Secluded Scholars: Women’s Education and Muslim Social Reform in Colonial India (pp. 1-13). New Delhi: Oxford University Press
Naik, J. P. and Nurullah, S. (2004). Indigenous Education in India at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. A Student’s History of Education in India 1800-1973 (6th ed.). Macmillan India Ltd.
Rao, P. V. (2007). Women's Education and the Nationalist Response in Western India: Part I--Basic Education. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 14(2), 307-316. DOI: DOI: 10.1177/097152150701400206. Retrieved from http://ijg.sagepub.com/content/14/2/307
Rao, P. V. (2008). Women's Education and the Nationalist Response in Western India: Part II--Higher Education. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 15(1), 141-148. DOI: 10.1177/097152150701500108. Retrieved from http://ijg.sagepub.com/content/15/1/141
Srivastava, G. (2002). Zenana system of education-Its impact on women's education in Western India in the 19th century. Social Change, 32(1 & 2), 39-45. DOI: 10.1177/004908570203200203. Retrieved from http://sch.sagepub.com/content/32/1-2/39
Tagore, R. (2000). The Exercise Book. (Chaudhuri, S., Trans.). In Sood, V., Prasad, I., Raghunathan, H., Sanyal, M., Sengupta, D., Siddique, S., & Verma, V.K. (Eds.), The Individual and Society (pp.76-84). New Delhi: Pearson Education India
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.