Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎525r] (174/238)

Proceedings of the East India Association. 387
Secretary of State all said that the assessments were very low, and quoted
figures. The trilogy, Messrs. Digby, Dadabhai Naoroji, and Dutt, all said
the assessments were high. They also quoted figures, and maintained that
the height of those assessments were one of the causes of the poverty of
Indian agriculturists. His own view was this: that the Government of
India was the Overlord of India, and the Land Revenue Assessment were
State rent. Indigenous Governments used to take elastically about two rupees Indian silver coin also widely used in the Persian Gulf.
to one that our Government took, but the difference was that we took it
rigidly, crop or no crop, whereas our predecessors took the lion’s share of
a crop when there was one only. As a result, our light rigidity was harder
on the people than our predecessors’ heavy elasticity. (Hear, hear.)
With reference to the remarks made about “ The Citizen of India,” he
had never seen the book, but, according the description given by Sir Roland
Wilson, that it dragged in dogmatically a number of points which were really
controversial, and that its aim and object was to glorify the British Govern
ment—why should it not ? As a matter of course, every civilized Govern
ment in the world had to introduce text-books into its schools, and among
those text-books there must be works on history, political economy, and on
the constitution of the State. Would not the Government of India be very
foolish if it did not do its best to impress on the young idea that its own
way of treating the subject was the best possible? (Hear, hear.) Take the
text-books used in French, German, and Russian schools. They were
misleading from an English point of view, but from the point of view of the
Governments concerned they were what it was necessary to teach.
Now, coming on to what the lecturer had called “ the religious diffi
culty,” it had twice recently been discussed before this Association, and
he had hoped it was dead and buried, but here it was coming to the fore
for the third time. With reference to Dr. Duncan’s statement, that in 85
per cent, of the schools of India the religious teachers had a free hand, he
(Mr. Thorburn) thought that the great bulk of that large percentage was
made up of merely infant rote-schools, attended by babes from two years of
age to seven, who were taught like parrots in some classical language
which they did not understand.
Coming to the question raised as to the utility of primary education, he
was really distressed to hear Sir Roland Wilson remark that there was a
great deal of unreality in the argument that, except by teaching the masses
of the agriculturists the three R’s, these masses would be unable to cope
with the wily usurer. His own conviction was that in the extension of
primary education among the masses lay the chief hope of raising them
from a position resembling that of bovine bipeds with the intelligences of
quadrupeds to that of human beings able to take care of themselves through
life. (Hear, hear.) As to what the educational system in India might be,
and what it should be, he held that it was the absolute duty of the Indian
Government to continue and extend a system of State-aided education for
the benefit of the agriculturists, who, it must be remembered, contributed
nine-tenths of the taxation of India. (Hear, hear.) Further, every rupee
taken from them and applied to education ought to be spent on those tax
payers who found the money. With reference to higher education, he was
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