UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

“Travellers all in the land of the living, In quest of the self it is best to be; Comrades all in the getting and giving, Prythee, tell us, what else are we?

Girls who go hopefully forth to the morrow, In quest of the Women they wish to be, Friends who look down on the fair, flying present, Wistfully, lovingly--this are we.” From the _“Lal Bagh” Chronicle_.

A firm and steady step on the lower rungs of the ladder is a fair promise of the ultimate ascent, and after a time incredibly short since the first beginnings of Western education for women in India, the girl graduate is found issuing from the portals of the University.

Pioneer in many senses, with a world of idealistic possibilities surrounding her career, the Indian woman has proved the quality of her mental capacity; she has successfully stood the most strenuous of tests, and is prepared to take her part as a leader of her sex and as a contributor to the Feminist Movement. The member of Congress sees in her a political factor; the papers which advocate social reform hail her as a new force which will influence circles far beyond the reach of their propaganda; the educator trusts that here at last is someone with the brain power and insight to indicate the true lines for the education of Indian women; the missionary ponders on her possibilities for the Indian Church and the Indian home--while India, the real India, the silent multitude of India’s women, knows little and cares less. This strange phenomenon seems no longer of their number; she has stepped away with her new and dazzling robes from the old tradition, from the memories of the twilight and its tales to a new and untried world. And yet in a true sense she is still one with them, one with them in instinct, in thought, in hereditary traits, and fitted, as no Western could ever be, to act as the mediator betwixt the old and the new. The possibilities of the Indian woman graduate have to a certain extent been proved in subsequent careers; on the other hand, the results of the whole system, as regards the average student, have not entirely justified the hopes built upon it. A brief examination of the actual facts and conditions will prove the best introduction to the problems which underlie them.

The five Universities of India--Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Allahabad, and Lahore--the constitutions of which resemble that of the University of London, are open to any woman who can pass the qualifying entrance examination. Their subsequent studies must be conducted in a college duly recognized by Government and in affiliation with a University. These colleges vary as first and second grade according to the stage, Intermediate or Final B.A., to which they are able to take their students. Of the 175 colleges scattered over India 10 are specially women’s colleges, but women are also found studying in mixed colleges under mission boards or Government. Of Government institutions it may practically be said that no sex barrier exists, except where a separate provision is made, as in the case of the Bethune College, Calcutta, and the same is true to a less extent of the mission institutions. Thus women students are found in the Elphinstone College, Bombay, in the Presidency College, Madras, and in the Government College, Rangoon, studying side by side with men under the same conditions. The Wilson College, Bombay, is an important example of the mixed mission college. The ten women’s colleges in affiliation with one or other University[127] are as follows:--

Number of Students.[128]

The Bethune College, Calcutta (first grade) 40 The Diocesan College, Calcutta (first grade) 32 The Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow (first grade) (A.M.M.) 20 The Sarah Tucker College, Palamcottah (second grade) (C.M.S.) 6 The Maharani’s College, Mysore The Maharajah’s College, Trevandrum St Bede’s Convent College, Simla (first grade) Auckland House School, Simla (second grade) European Girls’ High School, Allahabad (second grade) Woodstock Girls’ School, Landour (second grade)

Of these, the last four are mainly for Eurasian girls, and fall outside the scope of our inquiry. With the exception of the Bethune and the two institutions in Native States, they are all under Christian management. The word “college” is highly misleading. The English reader pictures an institution parallel to Girton or Somerville, with a full staff of women tutors, supplemented by University lectures, whereas these colleges consist in most cases of small groups of girls, sometimes only one or two, who remain after Matriculation in their old school, studying for the most part under the same mistresses, and with little or no sense of any transition in their career. If no girls are fitted to proceed to the higher stages, the college as such may lapse for the time being; thus only students in training as teachers are returned in the Panjāb report for 1910, in spite of the two “colleges at Simla,” whereas the Diocesan School appears officially for the first time in the Bengal report as a college with a most creditable number of students and an efficient staff. The one outstanding exception is the Isabella Thoburn College, where the college department is rigidly separated from the school, and where the collegiate atmosphere and sense of corporate life are dominant. A similar arrangement is being made in the new buildings of the Bethune College. Even in these two cases there is the linked High School under the same Principal, sharing in the interest of the staff. A women’s college in the English sense of the word does not exist.

Passing to the students, the differences of creed, as indicated in the Quinquennial Returns of 1907, are seen in the annexed table. (See page 197.)

This proportion is on the whole maintained to-day, with the addition of a few Buddhist girls studying in Rangoon, and an increased proportion of Parsis in Bombay. The actual numbers show a remarkably small fluctuation within the last decade, and have not justified the hopes of those who expected a continuation of the fourfold increase of the preceding decade. In 1891 there were 45, in 1901, 177 Arts students. Taking some figures from local returns, we find the following:--[129]

------------------+-------+-------+------ Arts Students. | 1901. | 1906. | 1910. ------------------+-------+-------+------ Bengal | 55 | 24 | 47 United Provinces | 49 | 38 | 45 Burma | 8 | 2 | 12 Bombay | 30 | 57 | 76 Madras | ? | ? | 37 ------------------+-------+-------+------

+CLASSIFICATION OF COLLEGE STUDENTS BY RACE OR CREED+

+----------+-------+--------+------+------+-------+-------+------+ | |Eura- |Native |Hindu.|Moham-|Parsis.|Others.|Total.| | |sian. |Chris- | |medan.| | | | | | |tians. | | | | | | +----------+-------+--------+------+------+-------+-------+------+ |Arts | | | | | | | | | Colleges | 48 | 43 | 31 | 1 | 33 | 4 | 160 | |Medicine | 40 | 19 | 4 | ... | 11 | 2 | 76 | |Teaching | 34 | 2 | ... | ... | ... | ... | 36 | |Law | ... | ... | ... | ... | 1 | ... | 1 | |Medical- | | | | | | | | | School | 30 | 110 | 15 | 12 | 1 | ... | 168 | +----------+-------+--------+------+------+-------+-------+------+ | | 152 | 174 | 50 | 13 | 46 | 6 | 441 | +----------+-------+--------+------+------+-------+-------+------+

A marked increase is shown only in the Bombay Presidency due to the influence of the Parsis. The students are drawn from varying ranks of society. Of the Hindu students about a quarter are Brahmans. Some are drawn from the new professional classes, who highly value education for their women, and can afford to pay for it; others from the poorer members of the Brāhma-Samāj, who see in college education a prospect of a career for their daughters more in accordance with their enlightened ideas. Of the system of stipends it is difficult to form a judgment. Whereas in Britain a scholarship indicates special ability tested by competition, in India a Government or private stipend is in most cases available, at any rate in Bengal, for any girl who can pass the required average test. With luck she may possibly also secure another stipend to cover her board. The “average” girl is therefore apt to predominate far more largely than in the early stages of college education in Britain or America. There is also a lack of the element of hereditary culture, which has a very definite contribution to make in Indian life, and which may be the inheritance of the daughter as well as of the son. But where it is impossible to secure a genuinely competitive system and the only alternative is the closing of the college career to the really brilliant girl of the poorer classes, the question is a difficult one. In Calcutta, practically all the Bethune students belong to the Brāhma-Samāj; in Bombay, where the line of separation between the Prārthanā Samāj and orthodoxy is very indefinite, and _parda_ almost non-existent, orthodox Hindu students are to be found. It must be remembered, however, that these are essentially pioneers, and that the custom of early marriage or secluded widowhood still practically prevents any marked Hindu element amongst women students. In 1903 two Brahman ladies passed the Madras B.A. from the Maharani’s College, Mysore, being the first of their caste there to do this.

The Parsi woman student needs no comment. Independent, bright, and alert, she holds her own in the mixed colleges of Bombay with the utmost equanimity, and has an unparalleled zest for examinations. In 1886, the first women students entered Wilson College, Ratanbai Ardeshir Vakil and her sister Meherbai, daughters of a leading Parsi solicitor. Several years before, the University had given women the right to go up for examination, but only one had made use of the permission. Ratanbai specialized in French, and was elected a Fellow in 1890. From then, till her early death in 1895, she taught French in the college, and warm testimony to her influence in the college and at home is borne by the Principal. “One could see how the education and culture of women, instead of creating a cleft in the life of the family, as is so often erroneously imagined by those who oppose the cause of female education in India, proves a means of strengthening its unity and elevating its whole character.”[130] Her sister, Meherbai Vakil, is a much-respected medical woman in Bombay, and is typical of a growing number of Parsi students who have entered professional life with great credit. The brilliant career of Miss Cornelia Sorabji, a Christian Parsi, who holds the post of Legal Adviser to the Bengal Government for women in _parda_, is too well known to need emphasis. Two of her sisters are Head-mistresses of important Indian schools.

The Indian Christian woman student figures largely in the returns, and the pioneers of the movement were drawn from their ranks. This is the natural result of the educational policy pursued by the various missionary societies, and of the later age of marriage among Christians. Some of them are mentally very well fitted for their studies; there are others again who are largely subsidized by public or private funds, and possess ability to pass the average standard, but not sufficient mental power to gain full benefit from their training. Here, for instance, are two girls, daughters of an Indian clergyman, both passing well, and taking employment, one as a Mistress in a Government school, the other as an Inspectress in the Provincial Service; contrast with them a trembling, shrinking girl from a Native State who has received a scholarship from her State because she has matriculated and because she is one of an impoverished family of twelve, a particularly urgent case! Throughout her career the fear of failure and poverty intensifies the strain already possibly too great for a delicate constitution, and a girl who might have made an excellent Primary teacher is sacrificed on the altar of so-called higher education. And yet, as has already been indicated, the system affords the needed opportunity for the clever girl, and possesses this justification. The Christian students are mostly to be found in the Isabella Thoburn College, in Madras, and a few in Calcutta, chiefly at the Diocesan School and College. Since the latter was founded, about fifteen years ago, five B.A.’s have passed out and several F.A.’s.[131] New college buildings have recently been added with boarding accommodation for forty-five resident students. It is managed by the Community of St John Baptist, known generally as the Clewer Sisterhood. Miss Chunder Mukki Bose, M.A.,[132] to whose guidance the Bethune College has owed much of its prestige, and the late Lilavati Singh, M.A., Vice-Principal of the Isabella Thoburn College, stand out as the most prominent Indian Christian graduates, while the dramatic episode of Mrs Nvimabala Shome’s graduation as B.A. at the same time as her husband in Calcutta, gave an object-lesson in matrimonial equality. She subsequently took her M.A. in England, and devoted much of her life to the organization of one of the mission High schools in Calcutta. Indian Christian graduates are to be found all over India undertaking responsible work with great credit.

The Mohammedan girl graduates cannot be discussed as a class, for even if we go back to the “glory of women,” the Sheikha Shuhda of the Middle Ages, who lectured at Bagdad on literature and rhetoric, they are only found here and there as isolated figures. One Mohammedan girl of a well known Bombay family passed first among girl candidates in the Bombay Presidency in 1910, and is now studying at Wilson College.

It will thus be seen that the women students of India are a very heterogeneous body, representing almost every shade of religious opinion, and varying possibly in their mental capacity to a greater extent than the women of other lands.

+UNIVERSITY OF BOMBAY+

-----+-------+---------+--+---------+---+---------------------------+ Engi-|Agri- | | | | L | | neer-|cul- | | | | a | | ing. |ture. |Science. | | Arts. | w.| Medicine. | -----+-------+---------+--+---------+---+---------------------------+ M.D. M.S. M.D. M.S. +---+ +---+ +---+ +---+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +---+ +---+ +---+ +---+ ^ ^ ^ | | | | | | M.B. B.S. | +----------+ | | | | | | | M.A. | | L.M.S. +---------+ +----------+ +----------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | B.Sc. | B.A. | | 2nd Exam.| | | +--------+ +---------+ +----------+ +----------+ | | | | | | | | |Inter- | | | | | | | |mediate.| | | | | |2nd L.M.S.| +--------+ +---------+ +----------+ +----------+ | | | | | | | | | | | Inter- | | Preli- | | | | | | mediate.| | minary. | |1st L.M.S.| +--------+ +---------+ +----------+ +----------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |Previous.| | | | | +--------+<--+---------+ +----------+ +----------+ | | | | | | | | | |------------------>| | +---------+ +----------+ Matriculation (age 16). -----+-------+---------+--+---------+---+--------------------------+

+NOTES.+--The course in the other universities is somewhat similar.

Calcutta offers a degree as Bachelor of Teaching.

The degree of L.M. and S. is abolished in Calcutta and the Panjāb, but retained in the meantime in Bombay and in Madras after a six years’ course.

Matriculation age in Madras and the Panjāb is fifteen.

_Quinquennial Review of Progress of Education in India_,