Letter from Government of India to Government of Bengal, April 11, 1850
Letter, dated 11th April, from the Government of India to the Government of Bengal.
The attention of the Governor General in Council has been lately directed toward the subject of Female Education in Bengal. Thirty-five years have elapsed since the establishment of the Hindu College gave the first great impulse to that desire for European Knowledge which is now so general throughout the country. Under the influence of the new ideas which have been widely disseminated among large and influential classes of the community through the Government schools and colleges it is reasonable to believe that further attempts for improving the moral and social condition of the people may now be successfully made which at an earlier period would have failed altogether to produce any satisfactory result.
2. It is the opinion of the Governor General in Council that no single change in the habits of the people is likely to lead to more important and beneficial consequences than the introduction of education for their female children. The general practice is to allow them to grow up in absolute ignorance, but this custom is not required or even sanctioned by their religion, and in fact a certain degree of education is now given to the female relatives of those who can afford the expense of entertaining special instructors at their own houses. This method of imparting knowledge is impracticable as a general system but it appears to the Governor General in Council that it is quite possible to establish female schools in which precautions may be adopted for as close seclusion of the girls as the customs of the country may require. An experiment of a school of this kind in Calcutta has been tried by the Honourable Mr. Bethune since May of last year, which in the face of considerable opposition such as every novelty is sure to encounter in Bengal, at present contains thirty-five pupils, the children of persons of good caste and respectable connexions.
The success which has been accomplished in so short a time, far exceeding any expectation its most sanguine supporters would have been justified in entertaining at the commencement, receives a double value from the consideration that it has been achieved by the exertions of a private individual and cannot be attributed to the influence of the power of Government.
3. The example given by Mr. Bethune in his school has, His Lordship in Council is informed, been imitated by educated natives in other parts of Bengal.
4. The Governor General in Council considers that a great work has been done in the first successful introduction of Native female education in India on a sound and solid foundation and that the Government ought to give to it its frank and cordial support.
The Governor General in Council requests that the Council of Education may be informed that it is henceforward to consider its functions as comprising the superintendence of native female education, and that wherever any disposition is shown by the natives to establish female schools it will be its duty to give them all possible encouragement and further their plans in every way that is not inconsistent with the efficiency of the institutions already under their management. It is the wish also of the Governor General in Council that intimation to the same effect should be given to the Chief Civil Officers of the Mofussil calling their attention to the growing position among the natives to establish female schools, and directing them to use all means at their disposal for encouraging those institutions and for making it generally known that the Government views them with very great approbation.
I have &c.,
F. J. HALLIDAY,
Secretary to the Government of India
HOME DEPARTMENT,
The 11th April 1850
From: Bureau of Education. Selections from Educational Records, Part II (1840-1859). Edited by J. A. Richey. Calcutta: Superintendent Government Printing, 1922. Reprint. Delhi: National Archives of India, 1965, 58-60.