If the mother belongs to a poor family, quite likely her boy will work to earn a few annas to add to the family exchequer, or if they are farmers, his days will be passed in the fields frightening the greedy crows from the ripening crops or driving away the animals that infest the fields which are near the jungles. In Baroda, education is compulsory; but many a mother gets around the law by paying the fine of two rupees a month, and selling her small boy’s labour for five rupees, thus gaining a livelihood.
England has established free schools in every town and village, and there is little excuse even for the boy or girl of poor parents not to have an education. Even members of the depressed classes, or, as they are called, the pariahs, have their schools. The question that is agitating the minds of the educators is what form of education should be given these sons of a people who have been practically slaves for many centuries. Many contend that they should have only a technical education, that the sons of the carpenter caste should be made better carpenters, and that they should not be made barristers. A lady said to me: “Said, my sweeper’s son, goes to school, and after getting an education he naturally feels himself better than his father, a sweeper, or his uncle, who is my groom. He cannot affiliate himself with a higher caste than that into which he was born, as they will not accept him, and he has outgrown his own caste. What is he to do? He puts on a foreign hat and leaves his home, and in the next census, drops his name of Said Faruki and becomes John James Jones, a half-caste, and the census-taker wonders why there has been such an increase in half-castes. The population of half-castes grows from the lower castes who wish to raise themselves, but it is kept down in the census returns by the half-castes who wish to better themselves socially, and call themselves Portuguese or subjects of some other dark-skinned race of Europeans.”
This question of the education of the Indian youth is a very serious problem with which those who have the welfare of India at heart have to contend. Many a boy when he returns to his home and his people says: “Why did they educate me?” There are few avenues of livelihood open to the Indian boy, as there is no Army or Navy or Church in which to enlist so many of the younger sons as in England or America. The main prizes are the Government offices, and failing these, the chief desire of all Indians is to be a lawyer. There are few places in the Government employ now, and the country is flooded with impecunious barristers.