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Education for National Efficiency: Constructive Nationalism in North India, 1909–1916

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Carey A. Watt
Carey A. Watt
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University of Cambridge
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Extract

Nationalist activity in India between the years 1909 and 1916 has generally received an inadequate treatment from historians. It seems, quite simply, that this period is not sensational enough and historical accounts tend to skip from the excitement of the Swadeshi movement, the ‘Moderate’—‘Extremist’ split, the so-called ‘Extremist’ movement in general, and the Morley—Minto reforms of 1909 only to stop at the emergence of the Home Rule leagues or, even more likely, the serious political emergence of Gandhi after 1917. For example, despite writing of ‘continuities’ from 1885 to 1947, even Sumit Sarkar sees the nationalist movement expanding ‘in a succession of waves and troughs, the obvious high-points being 1905–1908, 1919–1922, 1928–1934, 1942 and 1945–46.’ Effectively, he is saying that the years from 1908 to 1919 were characterized by a ‘trough’ or lull.

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Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , May 1997 , pp. 339 - 374
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

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2 It is worth additionally noting that the Arya Samaj saw tremendous growth in its membership and organizational infrastructure from the 1890s through to 1920. Between 1891 and 1901 there was a 131% increase in membership with over 92,000 Aryas counted in 1901; between 1901 and 1911 the increase was 163%; from 1911 to 1921 the growth was 100% with almost 500,000 Aryas enumerated in 1921, and by 1931 there were almost 1,000,000. The Aryas were strong both in the Punjab and the United Provinces. Heimsath, Charles, Indian Nationalism and Hindu Social Reform (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), pp. 302–3. The Servants of India grew in numbers too and although it was never a large body its influence far exceeded that of its directly-administered programmes because Society members constituted a type of vanguard who worked through many other agencies. ‘It has from the outset been the general policy of the Society to work through independent organizations, either by joining existing institutions or by starting new ones. On account of this policy, the Society is at a disadvantage in writing fully about the work of its members, which cannot be separated from that of those institutions …’.Google ScholarA Brief Account of the Work of The Servants of India Society, Poona, second report, 1 January. 1917 to 30 June 1923, Poona, April 1924 (Poona: Printed at the Aryabhushan Press, January 1924, microfilm copy at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge), p. 4.Google Scholar

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6 Literally ‘of our own country’, but here it refers to a movement for selfsufficiency in opposition to British colonial government.

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8 His view of the Servants of India Society changed too. Use the indexes to scan comments made in vols. x to xiii (November 1909 to October 1917) of Gandhi, Mohandas K., The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Delhi: The Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1963).Google Scholar

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11 The Leader, 21 Dec. 1911, pp. 6–7.

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14 Ibid., p. 165.

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19 The Leader, 27 December. 1911, special supplement.

20 The Leader, 28 December. 1910, p. 3.

21 The Leader, 24 June 1910, p.3.

22 Prem, 24 December. 1913, United Provinces Native Newspaper Reports (henceforth UPNNR) 1914.

23 Musqfir, 15 March 1910, UPNNR 1910.

24 Trishul, 8 September. 1910, UPNNR 1910.

25 Abhyudaya, 3 January. 1914, UPNNR 1914.

26 Malaviya, , ‘The First Prospectus’, written in 1904, in Sundaram, (ed.), Benares Hindu University, p. vii.Google Scholar

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29 Lajpat Rai, ‘Social Efficiency’, published in 1908, in ibid., p. 158.

30 Speeches and Writings of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya, p. 113.

31 Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, The Webbs in Asia. The 1911–12 Travel Diary, edited and introduced by Feaver, George (London and elsewhere: The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1992), Poona, 8–10 04 1912, p. 327.Google Scholar

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33 Hailey, W. M. reply to Hardinge's ‘Memorandum by H. E. the Viceroy Upon Questions Likely to Arise in India at the End of the War’ (circulated in late August 1915 and submitted to the Secretary of State for India, Lord Crewe, in October 1915), Delhi, 17 September. 1915, Hardinge Papers 116, Cambridge University Library (henceforth CUL), p. 117.Google Scholar

34 The Leader, 10 April 1910, p. 6.

35 The Servants of India Society, report 1, 1905–1917, pp. 8–9.

36 Information about the British Indian population is from the Royal Commission on the Public Services in India [1913], pp. 11–16. Major north Indian cities include Cawnpore, Allahabad, Agra, Bareilly, and Meerut. These same cities saw slight decreases in population between 1901 and 1911 despite their long-term growth. Lucknow lost population during both periods although it was only a 1.6% decrease between 1901 and 1911 and an 8.8% decrease from 1872 to 1911. Lahore and Delhi saw tremendous growth in the two time spans—82% and 50% growth over the long term, respectively. ‘Population of Principal Towns’, Statistical Abstracts 1902–03 to 1911–12, P.P., Vol. XCVII—1914, Cd. 7078, p. 278, and ‘Main Statistics for Cities (including Cantonments)’, Statistical Abstracts 1908–09 to 1917–18, P.P., Vol. XLIX—1920, Cd. 725, p. 4.

37 Royal Commission on the Public Services in India [1913], ‘Changed Conditions of India’, pp. 11–16.

38 Ibid., pp. 13–14. See also ‘Minute by Abdur Rahim’ (who was a judge of the Madras High Court) dated 14 Aug. 1915, p. 397.

39 ‘Secret note’ on ‘Free Elementary Education’, 13 May 1911, Butler Papers, Vol. 68, Mss. F 116, India Office Library.

40 The Leader, 6 March 1913, p. 5.

41 ‘Summary of the Administration of Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, Viceroy and Governor-General of India, November 1910 to March 1916’, Hardinge Papers 131, CUL, p. 79.

42 The Webbs in Asia, Chandan Chowki, 4 February. 1912, pp. 237–8.

43 The Webbs in Asia, Allahabad, 11–16 January. 1912, p. 219.

44 The Webbs in Asia, Poona, 8–10 April 1912, pp. 326–7.

45 Ibid.

46 ‘Secret note’ on ‘Free Elementary Education’, 13 March 1911. See the longer quotation above.

47 Rai, Lajpat, A History of the Arya Samaj. An Account of its Origin, Doctrines and Activities with a Biographical Sketch of the Founder, revised, expanded and edited by Sharma, Sri Ram (Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, New Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1967), pp. 140–51, originally written by Lajpat Rai in 1914, and The Leader, 11 03 1913, p. 6.Google Scholar

48 The Webbs in Asia, Poona, 8–10 April 1912, p. 329. The Webbs' comments were based on knowledge gained in several meetings with Lajpat Rai, senior Aryas and others who knew him.

49 The Webbs in Asia, Lahore, 29 February. to 3 March 1912, p. 272.

50 The Leader, 5 June 1910, pp. 6–7.

51 A residential school that the orthodox or Mahatma's section of the Arya Samaj conducted along the lines of the supposed traditional schools of Hindu antiquity.

52 Rai, Lajpat, History of the Arya Samaj, p. 150.Google Scholar

53 The Leader, 4 January. 1912, p. 6.

54 Rai, Lajpat, History of the Arya Samaj, p. 142.Google Scholar

55 Jones, Kenneth W., Socio-religious Reform Movements in British India, The New Cambridge History of India, III. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 101–2.Google ScholarJones does not make it clear exactly which year the Kanya Mahavidyalaya became a college but J. R. Graham states that it was after 1911 in his ‘The Arya Samaj as Reformation in Hinduism with Special Reference to Caste’ (Yale University Ph.D. thesis, 1942, microfilm copy at the Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge), p. 439.Google Scholar

56 The Leader, 3 December. 1910, p. 7.

57 Graham, , ‘Arya Samaj as a Reformation’, p. 439.Google Scholar

58 Ibid., p. 437. Graham dates the commencement of the Stri Samaj at approximately 1912.

59 For Arya women literacy was 80 individuals per 1000 versus 6 per 1000 in the general population; among Arya men the numbers were 230 per 1000 as opposed to 63 per 1000 in the rest of the population. Cited in ibid., pp. 424 and 443.

60 The Servants of India Society, report 2, 1917–1923, pp. 59–61.

61 The Servants of India Society, report 1, 1905–1917, p. 12.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid., pp. 15–16.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid., p. 16. The year 1916 needs to be confirmed; I have assumed it was 1916 because the report was written in 1917 and referred to the conference in January ‘of the previous year’.

66 Arya Mitra, 16 July 1910, UPNNR 1910.

67 Abhyudaya, 21 July 1910, UPNNR 1910.

68 The Leader, 11 February. 1911, UPNNR 1911.

69 Abhyudaya, 8 December. 1912, UPNNR 1912.

70 Abhyudaya, 11 and 15 September. 1910, UPNNR 1910.

71 Abhyudaya, 11 September. 1910, UPNNR 1910.

72 Abhyudaya, 15 September. 1910, UPNNR 1910.

73 The Leader, 13 September. 1910, UPNNR 1910.

74 The Leader, 22 September. 1910 (the actual letter to the editor was dated 14 Sept.), p. 2.

75 The Leader, 27 December. 1911, special supplement, p. 8.

76 SirIsmail, M., Dewan of Mysore, ‘Madan Mohan Malaviya: Reminiscences and Appreciation’, Malaviya Commemoration Volume, organized by Benares Hindu University in 1932 (Allahabad: Indian Press Ltd, c. 1932—the exact date is not given but all of the commemorative papers were prepared for Malaviya's seventy-first birthday in 1932) P. 994.Google Scholar

77 Malaviya said this during a speech in the Imperial Legislative Council on 1 Oct. 1915 (the day assent for the university project was granted). Sundaram, (ed.), Benares Hindu University, p. 222.Google Scholar

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79 Ibid., p. 16.

80 Ibid., p. 27.

81 About the Congress speech see Speeches and Writings of Malaviya, p. 89, and regarding the Indian Industrial Commission see Akkad, B. J., Malaviyaji (A brief life sketch of Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya) (Bombay: Vora and Co. Publishers Ltd., 1948), P. 25.Google Scholar

82 ‘The Draft Scheme of the Proposed Hindu University’ in Sundaram, (ed.), Benares Hindu University, pp. 68–9.Google Scholar

83 Ibid., p. 68.

84 This passage and information in the preceding paragraph are from Malaviya, ‘The Benares Hindu University—Why it is wanted and what it aims at’ in Sundaram, (ed.), Benares Hindu University, p. 64.Google Scholar

85 The Leader, 19 December. 1911, p. 6.

86 The Leader, 4 January. 1912, p. 5.

87 The Leader, 28 December. 1911, p. 6.

88 Ibid. and The Leader, 19 Jan. 1913, p. 9.

89 The Leader, 8 December. 1911, p. 3.

90 The Leader, 24 March 1915.

91 The Leader, 1 March 1913, p. 7.

92 The Servants of India Society, report 2, 1917–1923, pp. 59–61.

93 Rai, Lajpat, History of the Arya Samaj, p. 148. The visitor was Myron H. Phelps. Lajpat Rai does not give the date that Phelps was at the Gurukul but it was almost certainly in 1911 since The Leader published some of Phelps' comments in December of that year.Google Scholar

94 Jones, , Socio-religious Reform, p. 198.Google Scholar

95 The Leader, 16 February. 1910, p. 4.

96 Abhyudaya, 5 February. 1911, UPNNR 1911.

97 The Leader, 26 December. 1912, UPNNR 1912.

98 ‘Summary of the Administration of Lord Hardinge’, Hardinge Papers 131, CUL, p. 77.

99 The Leader, 30 December. 1911, p. 6., and for a more detailed account of the Government of Bombay order see The Leader, 9 Jan. 1912, p. 9.

100 The Servants of India Society, report 2, 1917–1923, pp. 59–61.

101 The Servants of India Society, report 1, 1905–1917, pp. 15–16.

102 Ibid.

103 Ibid, p. 17.

104 The Webbs in Asia, Lahore, 29 February. to 3 March 1912, p. 265.

105 The Leader, 5 June 1910, pp. 6–7.

106 The Webbs in Asia, Ajmer, 19–21 March 1912, p. 306.

107 The Webbs in Asia, Baroda, 3–5 April 1912, p. 319.

108 Musafir (of Agra), 30 June 1910, UPNNR 1910.

109 The Leader, 22 December. 1910, p. 6.

110 A report produced by the Servants of Society in 1917 said that concern and agitation over indentured emigration reached its peak in 1913 ‘and threatened to set the whole of India ablaze’. Between 1900 and 1917 the United Provinces lost 107,327 individuals through the port Calcutta—a rather startling amount when you consider that in 1911 Moradabad had a population of 81,168 or Bareilly 129,462. The volume of indentured emigration from the United Provinces was higher than that of any other region of India by a significant margin. See The Servants of India Society, report 1, 1905–1917, p. 9; Statistical Abstracts 1902–03 to 1911–12, P.P., Vol. XCVII—1914, Cd. 7078, ‘Population of Principal Towns’, p. 278, and ‘Ports of Shipment and Districts from which the Emigrants were drawn’, p. 229; and Statistical Abstracts 1908–09 to 1917–18, P.P., Vol. XLIX—1920, Cd. 725, ‘Ports of Shipment and Provinces from which the Emigrants were drawn’, p. 203.

111 The Leader, 18 December. 1909, p. 5.

112 The Leader, 3 March 1910, p. 6.

113 The Leader, 6 January. 1910, p. 2.

114 Lajpat Rai was listed as the founder of the Servants of the People Society in a footnote in Gandhi, Collected Works, vol. xi (04 1911–March 1913), p. 457, and this corresponds to other information about the organization from a Leader article of 17 Jan. 1910, p. 5 (wherein a 1907 Punjabee story was cited) which unfortunately did not list the organization's name.Google Scholar

115 The Leader, 6 March 1913, p. 5.

116 Ibid., p. 6.

117 The Leader, 23 February. 1913, pp. 4–5.

118 The Leader, 7 April 1910, p. 3.

119 Malaviya, , ‘The First Prospectus’ in Sundaram, (ed.), Benares Hindu University, p. vii. This and the other words and phrases (from various newspapers) in the sentence were also citeri earlier.Google Scholar

120 Rai, Lajpat, ‘Social Efficiency’ in Joshi, (ed.), Writings and Speeches, pp. 152–3.Google Scholar

121 Akkad, , Malaviyaji, p. 51. Akkad also mentioned that Malaviya was a ‘mischievous child’ in his school days, p. 8.Google Scholar

122 Ibid., p. 51. This passage was written in Hindi although most of the book is in English. It was translated for me by Dr Bidyut Chakrabarti.

123 Rai, Lajpat, History of the Arya Samaj, p. 147. For the comment about bathing in the Ganges, see Heimsath, Indian Nationalism, p. 296.Google Scholar

124 The Leader, 9 March 1913, p. 6.

125 The Webbs in Asia, Hardwar, 24–26 February. 1912, pp. 259–60.

126 Ibid.

127 Students took two other vows as well: poverty and obedience.

128 The Webbs in Asia, Hardwar, 24–26 February. 1912, pp. 259–60. Indeed, of the school's first two graduates one became a professor in the gurukul college and the other became editor of his father's vernacular newspaper.

129 The Servants of India Society, report 2, 1917–1923, pp. 59–61.

130 Gandhi, , Hind Swaraj (1909) in Collected Works, vol. x, pp. 51–2. Satyagraha literally means ‘the way of truth’ but is generally equated with passive resistance or non-violent non-cooperation.Google Scholar

131 Alter, Joseph S., ‘Somatic Nationalism: Indian Wrestling and Militant Hinduism’, Modern Asian Studies, 28, 3 (1994), pp. 572–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

132 Alter, Joseph S., The Wrestler's Body: Identity and Ideology in North India (Berkeley, Los Angeles and Oxford: University of California Press, 1992), p. 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

133 Kumar, Nita, Artisans of Banaras. Popular Culture and Identity, 1880–1986 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 124 and 117.Google Scholar

134 Alter, , The Wrestler's Body, p. 229. Regarding Malaviya as a brahmachari, Alter cited a 1972 Kamala Prasad Singh article in the wrestling journal Bharatiya Kushti (Indian Wrestling).Google Scholar

135 The Leader, 12 July 1910, p. 2.

136 The Webbs in Asia, Lahore, 29 February.–3 March 1912, p. 272.

137 The Leader, 17 December. 1911, p. 5.

138 Rai, Lajpat, History of the Arya Samaj, p. 144.Google Scholar

139 Ibid., pp. 140 and 144.

140 ‘The Draft Scheme of the Proposed Hindu University’ in Sundaram, (ed.), Benares Hindu University, pp. 73 and 76.Google Scholar

141 Malaviya, ‘The Hindu University of Benares—Why it is wanted and what it aims at’ in ibid., p. 61.

142 Malaviya, ‘The First Prospectus of 1904’ in ibid., p. 1.

141 ‘Pandit Malaviya's Convocation Address’ of 1919 in ibid., p. 357.

144 The Leader, 9 December. 1909, p. 6.

145 The Leader, 24 August. 1910, p. 2.

146 The Leader, 24 April 1910, p. 2.

147 Ibid.

148 See The Leader, 16 October. 1910, p. 2 regarding the Hindi conference, and 2 Oct. 1910, p. 3, for the textbook committee.

149 Rai, Lajpat, History of the Arya Samaj, p. 143.Google Scholar

150 ‘Tne Hindu University of Benares’ in Sundaram, (ed.), Benares Hindu University, p. 24.Google Scholar