charity schools for the half-castes:race, education and the british empire
TRANSCRIPT
Talk given at a Workshop on ‘Empires of Charity’, University of Warwick,, 4 March 2017
Charity Schools for the Half-Castes:
Race, education and the British Empire
Rajesh KochharPanjab University Mathematics Department
The White man’s first burden in India was his illegitimate offspring. The first British educational concerns in India arose from genetic considerations rather than the administrative. They pertained to half-castes or Eurasians, the offspring of Protestant European fathers and local women who were either Roman Catholics of Portuguese extraction or low class/low caste Hindus and Muslims. The Whites despised the half-castes, but would not leave them either on the street or in the care of their maternal side.
Note on terminologyThe population, which had even a remote 16th century Portuguese paternal ancestor, was called Portuguese. Half-castes were referred to as such even in the British Parliamentary records. Their self-description was Indo-Briton or East Indian.
• At the time, the term Anglo-Indian was used to denote Europeans living in India. In 1911, the term was transferred to Eurasians ‘at their own request’.
Indian Constitution’s 1950 legal definition of Anglo-Indian includes the erstwhile Portuguese as well.
-1911: Anglo-Indian= Europeans in India 1911-1947: Anglo-Indian=Half-caste 1950+ : Anglo-Indian =Half-caste + Portuguese.
Because of the change in and expansion of meaning with time, one should be careful while backdating the term.
• -
The use of the term ‘native’ here should be seen as a technical term, conveying the spirit and the philosophy of the time. The word Indian implies collectivity and solidarity which was absent in earlier times. Its use should not be backdated.
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Purely trading days
In the early days, Madras was no more than an appendage to the nearby Portuguese settlement. Similarly, the Portuguese had substantial presence in Bombay and Calcutta.
The first women the British traders came into contact in India with were the Portuguese, who, under the influence of the ‘Popish priests’, insisted on bringing up the children in their own religion.
So acute was the problem that towards the end of the 17th century, an exasperated Court of Directors even suggested that Madras should encourage its men to take native wives, ‘as the children of Indian women would be much more amenable to authority than those of Portuguese Roman Catholics’.
Beginning of charity educationFrom 1674 till 1713, Anglican Church at Madras made arrangements for joint teaching of Eurasian, Portuguese and native children through the Portuguese language. Things changed with the 1714 arrival of the new chaplain Rev. William Stevenson. He declared, after consultations with SPCK, that ‘the children of European fathers’ should not be ‘boarded with ignorant mean people’ and that a charity school should be ‘erected after the model of those in England’.
This led to the segregation of half-castes from others and the beginning of English education in India. A ‘Child who is fatherless’ was officially designated orphan and declared to be the responsibility of the government, Anglican Church and the Europeans. Accordingly, the first ever English-language school in India, St Mary’s Church Charity School was opened at Madras in 1715. It was followed by Bombay (1719) and Calcutta (1729)
At Madras (and presumably elsewhere also), the boys were “taught to read, write, and cast accounts’ while the girls were ‘instructed in reading and the necessary parts of housewifery’.
For teaching English, Madras depended on a 1707 text book written by a master of a free school in Stratford Bow in Middlesex, and published from London. Thomas Dyche’s A Guide to the English Tongue, which paid particular attention to preventing Vicious Pronunciation [ital in original], was reprinted at Tranquebar Mission Press in 1716.
The Indian reprint is historically significant because it was the first ever English book printed in India.
Over the next 150 years, a number of free and
charity schools as well as military and civil asylums were opened. Superintendence and teaching were largely entrusted to chaplains and missionaries. Subsequently, mergers and relocations took place and words like asylum or orphanage were dropped from the names of the institutions.
Ironically, some of the most prestigious and expensive private schools in India today began life as free schools and orphanages for half-castes.
- A large number of European troops had to
be brought into India to accomplish the military conquest that took 60 long years 1757-1818. Increased warfare meant increased sexual activity.
There were far greater number of European men in India than women. The government encouraged its low-paid soldiers to form informal liaisons with local women, as a better option than visiting prostitutes and contracting venereal diseases. Military regulations however did not permit marriage. Marriage would have bestowed legal status on the native wife and the mixed-race children which was unacceptable.
The begetting of half-castes was seen as an undesirable but unavoidable corollary of Empire building.
Children of half-castes were also known as half-castes. In 1811, the European Protestants population was estimated to be about 40000 while the number of half-castes was placed three times higher, at 110,000.
Advent and growth of half-caste education can be understood in terms of an overlapping three-stage model
(i) Charity institutions of various kinds were opened with major support coming from government ,Church, and missionaries. Funds and support were received from England-based Anglican bodies like SPCK and SPG. In general, North America and Europe donated funds for missionary work with heathens in India. But I do not think funds for half-caste care were solicited . It would have been amounted to advertising the sinful life style of the British soldiery in India.
(ii) Missionaries and other educators opened academies and schools where relatively well-off parents sent their half-caste children for education on payment.
(iii) Finally, schools and colleges in the real sense of the word were established by the Eurasians themselves for their own children
Military asylumsIn the 1780s military orphan schools/asylums were set up first in Calcutta and then in Madras. Separate arrangement was made for boys and girls. Additionally in Calcutta children of officers were segregated from those of soldiers. The Upper School was largely funded through subscriptions from officers. Subscribers in turn could send their own children as boarders. Obviously there were military officers happily living with their native partners and willing to educate their children,
In 1786, the Court of Directors refused permission to permit half-caste children of the officers to be sent to England.. Even though it was said for form’s sake that ‘an English climate would be injurious to the children of Indian mothers’, the real reason for debarment was racial. It was feared that English stock would be damaged if it assimilated with the half-castes who inherited ‘vicious dispositions’ from their mothers.
While the mother’s genes were unwelcome in England, father’s genes could create trouble in India. Though there was ‘nothing to fear from the sloth of the Hindus’ or ‘the rapidly declining consequence of the Mussulman’, there were apprehensions that the ‘tribe’ of half-castes might ‘become too powerful to control’.
Government policy towards half-castes was based on two considerations. They should not be permitted to damage the government either from within or without.
The English administrators recalled an incident that had taken place in 1632. The Portuguese in Hooghly sustained themselves against the Mughal army for three and a half months ‘displaying ‘the most heroic bravery, worthy of the days of Albuquerque’, till they were betrayed by a Portuguese half-caste, De Mello by name.
The colonial attitude hardened further after the 1791 Haitian revolution which was inspired by the French Revolution and led by the Mulattos.
Standing orders issued during 1791-1795 debarred half-castes from service civil, military and marine service of the Company as also from working as sworn officers of the Company’s ships between India and Europe. The only opening available to them in the military was as fifers, drummers, bandsmen and farriers’. The Company reserved these posts for the sons of soldiers ( that is to the exclusion of sons of officers).
Half-castes were debarred from positions reserved for natives as well.
Standing orders issued during 1791-1795 debarred half-castes from service civil, military and marine service of the Company as also from working as sworn officers of the Company’s ships between India and Europe. The only opening available to them in the military was as fifers, drummers, bandsmen and farriers’. The Company reserved these posts for the sons of soldiers ( that is to the exclusion of sons of officers).
Half-castes were debarred from positions reserved for natives as well.
The policy that half-castes should be brought up in the religion of their father was another way of saying that they should not be permitted to mix with the vast populace of India.
Note that there were no legitimate half-caste children. When official orders, reports and contemporaneous records refer to legitimate and illegitimate children, they are merely using these terms as euphemism for all-white and mixed-race children respectively.
It was obligatory for soldiers to send their children to the Lower School no matter whether they were willing to raise them or not. As soon as a half-caste was born to a soldier, the father was given a monthly allowance. No altruism was involved, however. The allowance gave the government a right over the child.
Soldiers’ children were permitted to remain with their parents only till the age of three when they were ‘peremptorily’ taken away and placed in the Lower School. As a classical example of double-speak the snatching of children from the lap of unwilling mothers was called ‘humane’.
Even if no decent openings were made available to half-caste boys, they were taught well, if we go by the curriculum. Upper school boys were taught arithmetic, trigonometry, geography with the help of a globe, and rudiments of astronomy, mechanics and natural philosophy. ( What text books did they use?)
While boys at the Military Asylums were prepared for a suitable career, in the case of the girls, the Asylums’ aim was to marry them off. When the boys excelled they were rewarded with books, but for girls the reward consisted of a pair of ear-rings or a breast pin, a suit of ribbands, or a sash. To enhance their prospects, even a dance instructor was engaged!
Statistics shows that about half of the girls ended up getting married, chiefly to ‘Non-Commissioned Officers, and Privates, Drummers &c. in the King’s and Company’s Regiments, and to other persons of reputable character’. (What was the life of women who remained unmarried?)
The marriage market was heavily weighted in favour of girls who had their father’s complexion and features rather than the mother’s.
- To get a feel for actual numbers involved, it may be noted
that in the four-decade period 1783-1820 end, 750 students were enrolled in the Upper School and about 3000 in the Lower School.
Calcutta Free SchoolFor those not eligible for admission to the Military Orphan Schools, Calcutta Free School was established in 1789. It accommodated large number of boarders, day scholars and pay-students. Interestingly, in 1790 the school began admitting even ‘natives’ as paying day scholars. They would have enrolled to learn English. The arrangement however was discontinued in 1802. No details are available, however. Later, the Free School focused on education of ‘a plain practical character’. Eventually, Railways became a great employer of half-castes of all kinds.
Madras
Madras Male Military Asylum figures in the educational history of England as well. Its first superintendent, Rev. Dr. Andrew Bell, is well known in England for introducing the monitorial method of teaching which he had earlier noticed in South India and employed in the Asylum. In the Madras or Bell or Bell-Lancaster method, bright and senior students instructed other boys. Once England accepted the method, it was used in British India as well.
Closure of military asylums
Two Lawrence Military Asylums were established: at Sanawar, Simla Hills, North India (1847) and Ootacamund, Nilgiri Hills, South India (1858). Through a long drawn process, Calcutta and Madras military asylums were merged with the nearby Lawrence. The Lawrence asylums were meant only for legitimate children while the older ones at Calcutta and Madras had been open to illegitimate offspring as well.
So obviously, no further need was felt for care of illegitimate half-castes.
Interestingly, when Madras Female Orphan Asylum was shut down in 1904, all European-looking girls were sent to Lawrence Asylum while others were transferred to the local civil asylum. Surely an exercise in eugenics!
Bombay Half- caste education was an isolated
phenomenon except in Bombay. From 1665 till the 1818 defeat of the Mahrattas, the British remained confined to the island of Bombay where they had Parsees as well as Hindus and some Muslim sections for company. Accordingly, the relationship between the colonialists and natives was far more cordial on Bombay island than elsewhere.
Bombay Native Education Society was set up in 1822 as an off-shoot of Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor, established in 1815, with Bombay’s first Archdeacon as Secretary. . As a result, in Bombay and nowhere else, native education emerged as a corollary of half-caste education.
In the meantime, Hindu College (School Section) , came up in Calcutta in 1817.
Natives however could not have written modern textbooks by themselves. The task was undertaken by Calcutta School-book Society set up in 1818 under the joint management of Europeans, Hindus and Muslims. This was the first forum in colonial India where the British and the natives sat at the same table. Society books, largely authored by chaplains and missionaries ,were used throughout India.
Eurasian schools and colleges
The next stage in half-caste education was the initiative from within the community. Eurasians in Calcutta, preferring to call themselves East Indian, opened a ‘proper’ school in 1823 naming it Parental Academic Institution to signify that it would be managed by the parents and guardians of the students (boys) and not by charity.
Within the Eurasian community however there was open antagonism between Anglicans and Dissenters, which weakened the educational movement.
Ironically, the greatest bequest for Eurasian
education came from a Roman Catholic Frenchman, the Lucknow based nabob Maj.-Gen. Claude Martin (d. 1800) who left considerable wealth for ‘English education and religion’. Next, a former inmate of Madras Military Asylum, Capt. John Doveton (d. 1853), came to a large inheritance from his paternal uncle, an old India hand, which he left for Eurasian education.
La Martiniere in Lucknow and Calcutta and Doveton Colleges in Calcutta and Madras, 1836-1855, gave a great fillip to formal education for Eurasians. It is through them that large-scale education for Eurasian girls began in the real sense of the word. (Doveton Madras closed in 1916, but others are flourishing even today.)
Closing remarks
The British policy on half-castes was a success. Eurasians emerged as a separate entity , English-speaking, Protestant and largely Anglican, and completely decoupled from the natives and thePOrtuguese. Half-castes never thought of rebelling against the father’s side, only yearned for acceptance.
Now-a-days many persons of European/Eurasian heritage are taking interest in the institutions which their ancestors attended, grom the point of view of family history.
Half-caste education however forms an interesting part of early colonial history in India and merits a detached, detailed and rigorous study for its own sake.//
