An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

by Shashi Tharoor

The British left India with a literacy rate of 16 per cent, and a female literacy rate of 8 per cent—only one of every twelve Indian women could read and write in 1947. This is not exactly a stellar record, but educating the masses was not a British priority. As Will Durant points out, ‘When the British came, there was, throughout India, a system of communal schools, managed by the village communities. The agents of the East India Company destroyed these village communities, and took no steps to replace the schools; even today [1930]… they stand at only 66 per cent of their number a hundred years ago. There are now in India 730,000 villages, and only 162,015 primary schools. Only 7 per cent of the boys and 1 per cent of the girls receive schooling, i.e. 4 per cent of the whole. Such schools as the Government has established are not free, but exact a tuition fee which…looms large to a family always hovering on the edge of starvation.’