Alternatives to Educating the Empire: A Study of Colonial Education

and the Nationalist Response to it in Colonial Punjab, 1890-1930

In the latter part of the 18th century, influenced by the orientalist policy that dominated the

ideological positions of many colonial administrators, the colonial government in India aimed at

keeping intact the institutions of indigenous education already in existence. However, by the

nineteenth century, many colonial administrators began to argue for an Anglicist knowledge

formation, basing their arguments on the idea of western knowledge being the harbinger of

modernity. The knowledge of English as a subject as well as language and Western Sciences

began to be seen as the most important aspects of acquiring Western knowledge. As English had

become the language of administration by the 1830s, it had become important to teach that

language to the natives in order to create a pool of cheap labour in the lower clerical order. This

led to the creation of a colonial educational apparatus aimed at producing labour for its

administrative machinery.

In response to the adverse cultural impact such kind of western education made on the native

youth, colonial Punjab in late 19th century saw the emergence of one of the widespread social

reform movements, the Arya Samaj. It sought to make an impact in northern India primarily

through providing an alternative to the colonial educational systems: the Dayanand Anglo-

vernacular Schools and Colleges and the Gurukul Kangri, which were based on the ideas of self-

help and self-reliance. The DAV College of Lahore was established by the people, with the

money of the people, for the people1 as the founders of the DAV College refused to take

government grants or conduct the examinations under the aegis of the Punjab University.

1 Lajpat Rai, Letter to the editor, The Tribune, 5 February 1890

Another notable point was that the teaching was done exclusively by Indians. The DAV College

also aimed at giving free education initially. Though paucity of funds, and government and

university regulations rendered this principle ineffective yet the fees at the college was generally

50 percent less than those in force in government schools and colleges. 2 The institutions run by

the gurukul party remained completely immune from government interference from their very

inception. Both of these educational institutions of the Arya Samaj were experiments in purely

indigenous enterprise which helped in developing a spirit of self-help, self-confidence and self-

reliance in a community which had lost these in due course of time. Through these institutions, a

great impetus was given to the study of Hindi and Sanskrit, which created a spirit of Hindu

consciousness manifesting itself in varying forms and degrees.

My paper would, therefore, explore ways in which colonial hegemony was challenged by these

two educational institutions of the Arya Samaj in the context of the social and political structural

changes that were being brought about by colonial rule. It would also articulate the continuities,

if any, that existed between the two countervailing educational systems and seek to establish the

foundation that the Arya Samaj was able to provide to an incipient cultural nationalism.

2 Ibid.