JOIN USA long way from the aversion to ‘eating government salt’
As the saints – or rather swamijis -- come marching in on the city of Bengaluru, demanding their share of reservations for this or that category, to buttress their claims on education, employment and politics, there is no better moment to revisit the time when modern education in Mysore got off to a sluggish start in the 19th century.
The first attempt at bringing more children, especially of the hitherto neglected and marginalised groups, into a systematised form of learning (though, of course, there were indigenous schools of various descriptions), in specifically designed schoolhouses with equipment – mainly, blackboards, printed books and benches -- was made by the London Missionary Society and the Wesleyan Methodists. In fact, so successfully did the missionaries run their schools that the Mysore government wanted to hand them charge of the whole state in the 1840s. By the mid-1860s, thanks to the efforts of B L Rice, among others, education in Mysore was organised on a firmer footing.
But the Inspectors of Education complained that education was not among the most desired of qualifications for life. As opportunities for jobs in government opened up, hitherto learned classes, particularly Brahmins, seized the opportunity. They also crowded into the ‘engineering school’ started in 1863 to train men for the PWD department. However, since it included ‘manual’ skills, which were anathema to the upper castes, that first effort was a failure.
Meanwhile, the missionaries, while committed to advancing education for all, first evicted from the classroom those who had long valued learning, such as the children of Devadasis. Many inspectors and even “a very respectable and highly esteemed” teacher in 1879 found the presence of the bright young girls useful “in stimulating the other girls to learn as the latter were half afraid to go on with their lessons owing to shyness and the novelty of the whole thing.” But schoolmasters were under orders not to admit them, and they were soon sent out of mixed schools as well.
Such inclusions and exclusions made education a very unevenly accessible resource for social mobility in the 19th century. Generally, schooling was not the preferred choice of many castes and classes: as the Report on Public Instruction for 1870-71 said after the inspection at Chitaldurg (Chitradurga), the population was almost entirely Lingayat – including merchants, cultivators and artisans. Lingayats also filled every local office down to that of village watchman, but there was only one instance of a Lingayat accepting the appointment of hobli schoolmaster, and he was a tailor.
This, despite several indigenous ayyagalu who, as teachers, commanded high respect. What explained this extraordinary reluctance of Lingayats to become teachers (or for that matter to attend school in large numbers)? As the 1870-71 Report had it, this overwhelmingly landowning agricultural caste had an aversion to working for the government! “Why should we eat government salt?” was the response given to the baffled Inspector of Education.
Things changed dramatically by the early 20th century when not just schools, but hostels were built for the use of Lingayats seeking secondary education. After the establishment of the Mysore Lingayat Educational Fund Association in 1905, a dramatic expansion of secular education occurred in the Murugi and Suttur Mathas in the early 20th century, followed by the Sirigere and Siddaganga Mathas in the middle of the century.
At first, drawn into constructing hostels for their adherents who attended government schools in Mysore towns and villages, the Mathas soon established educational institutions themselves. In the 1930s, Dewan Mirza Ismail approvingly noted that the services of the Murugimatha went well beyond mere “denominational charity,” commending the many institutions that it supported for non-Lingayats as well. The efforts of Murugarajendra Swamiji in setting up “residential accommodation for students coming from the mofussil parts” won high praise from Second Member of Council K Mathan in 1930. “Now, there are hostels built for students of various communities, but I do not think that you see anywhere else such a large number of hostels as there are for Lingayats.” He also saw these hostels as an extension of democracy. Unlike those who believed that “communal hostels are a curse on the nation,” he said, “I have long thought that love of one’s community is very important.”
We have come a long way indeed, today, from the widespread “aversion” to schooling and government jobs, followed by the enthusiastic embrace of schooling, to the vigorous establishment of hostels for Lingayat and other castes. Today, just when the universal Right to Education has come into our statute books, finally entitling many who have enjoyed no other cultural or economic capital, those once averse to “eating government salt,” seek reservations and privileges, strategically forgetting this complex heritage.