Dharampal

The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education in the Eighteenth Century

1. IDEA 1

   Schools flourished before British rule

   Dharampal, a historian and Gandhian, used British colonial records to argue that indigenous schools were widespread in India in the early nineteenth century. He believed this challenged the idea that British rule brought education to India.

2. IDEA 2

   Gandhi made a famous claim

   Dharampal begins with Gandhi's 1931 remark in London that British rule had uprooted India's beautiful tree of education. A British official challenged Gandhi to prove it. Dharampal sets out to test the claim by looking at the surviving records.

3. IDEA 3

   Surveys counted schools

   Dharampal presents British surveys from the Madras Presidency in the 1820s, which recorded large numbers of local schools and students. In his account, such figures suggest that schooling was far more widespread than many later writers assumed.

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