The Problem of National Education in India

Considering the positions and the resources of the men who conceived the idea and worked hard to make it a success considering the general air of alround suspicion and distrust in which they lived and worked the story of the financial and educational success of the Dayananda Anglo-Vedic College Lahore is nothing short of a romance. [...] The scheme of the National Council was free from the sectarian tinge of the Upper India movements ; it took"INTRODUCTORY 25 no notice of denominational nationalism ; it took ample cognizance of the economic needs of the country as a whole and it frankly recognized the necessity of ignoring the official University curriculum on the one hand and State aid on the other. [...] But what is meant by " salvation " ? Is it the nirvana of Buddhism the merging of the individual soul in the supreme soul of the vedanta the temporary bliss of the Arya Samaj the mukti of the Christian or the paradise of the orthodox Moslem ? Or are these after all only delsions ? The real salvation lies in freedom 3 33"34 NATIONAL EDUCATION IN INDIA from misery poverty disease ignoran [...] It seems that the relations between the teacher and the pupil were possibly freer in the times of the Upanishads than in the period of the Codes. [...] The strict regulated life of the Shastras and the Shara the rule of the priest the lack of opportunities for education the constantly disturbed conditions of the country the philosophical pessimism of the creeds and the cults the belittling of life by centuries of monasticism and asceticism all had for some time combined to make life in India static rather than dynamic.