From the opposite pole in politics, most of the ruling chiefs in their replies to Lord Minto's request for their opinions on the growth of disaffection call attention to this aspect of education, and the Hindu princes especially lay great stress on the neglect of religious and moral instruction. I will quote only the Maharajah of Jaipur, a Hindu ruler universally revered, for his high character and great experience:--
My next point has reference to the neglect there seems to be of religious education, a point to which I drew your Excellency's attention at the State banquet at Jaipur on the 29th October, 1909. I must say I have great faith in a system of education, in which secular and religious instruction are harmoniously combined, as the formation of character entirely depends upon a basework of religion, and the noble ideals which our sacred books put before the younger generation will, I fervently hope, make them loyal and dutiful citizens of the Empire. Such ideals must inevitably have their effect on impressionable young men, and it is perhaps due to such ideals that sedition and anarchy have obtained so small a footing in the Native States as a whole. In the Chiefs' College Conference, held at the Mayo College in 1904, I impressed upon my colleagues the necessity of religious education for the sons of the chiefs and nobles of Rajputana, and it should be one of the principal objects in all schools for the Pandits and the Moulvies to instil in the minds of their pupils correct notions as to the duty they owe to the community they belong to and to their Sovereign.
In this respect the ruling chiefs unquestionably reflect the views which prevail amongst the better-class Indians in British India as well as in the Native States. The Government of India cannot afford to disregard them. The Resolution of 1904, it is true, laid it down again definitely that "in Government institutions, the instruction is and must continue to be exclusively secular." But much has happened since 1904 to reveal the evils which our educational system has engendered and to lend weight to the representations made by responsible exponents of sober Indian opinion in favour of one of the remedies which it is clearly within our power to apply. Nor need we really depart from our time-honoured principle of neutrality in religious matters. All we have to do is to set apart, in the curriculum of our schools and colleges, certain hours during which they will be open, on specified conditions, for religious instruction in the creed in which the parents desire their children to be brought up. There is no call for compulsion. This is just one of the questions in which the greatest latitude should be left to local Governments, who are more closely in touch than the Central Government with the sentiment and wishes of the different communities. I am assured that there would be little difficulty in forming local committees to settle whether there was a sufficiently strong feeling amongst parents in favour of a course of religious instruction and to determine the lines upon which it should be given. Some supervision would have to be exercised by the State, but in the Educational Service there are, it is to be hoped, enough capable and enlightened representatives of the different creeds to exercise the necessary amount of supervision in a spirit both of sympathy for the spiritual needs of their people and of loyalty to the Government they serve. It may be objected that there are so many jarring sects, so many divisions of caste, that it would be impossible ever to secure an agreement as to the form to be imparted to religious instruction. Let us recognize but not overrate the difficulty. In each of the principal religions of India a substantial basis can be found to serve as a common denominator between different groups, as, for instance, in the Koran for all Mahomedans and in the Shastras for the great majority of high-caste Hindus. At any rate, if the effort is made and fails through no fault of ours, but through the inability of Indian parents to reconcile their religious differences, the responsibility to them will no longer lie with us.