Adam's Reports on Vernacular Education in Bengal and Behar/Report 3/Chapter 1/Section 2
Section II.
Plan of Investigation.
Some account of the plan of investigation adopted may be useful to future statistical inquirers, and it is necessary to explain the sources of error to which I deem the results still liable.
The first object to which I directed my attention was to prepare the forms in which I desired to embody the information to be collected; and in passing from district to district I continued to improve them according as experience, reflection, or local circumstances suggested.
The language in which the forms were prepared was Bengali, Hindi, or Urdu, and the character respectively Bengali, Nagari, or Persian, determined in part by the prevailing language and character of the district where they were to be used, and in part by the attainments of the class of persons in each district who offered their services to me. In the Bengal districts Bengali was chiefly used, but in the city of Moorshedabad I found it necessary to have recourse partially to the Urdu language and Persian character. In South Behar I deemed it advisable to employ the Hindi language and the Nagari character, and in Tirhoot the Urdu language and the Persian character. I believe that in the latter districts I should have experienced fewer difficulties if I had adopted both the Persian language and character, for those of my agents who were acquainted with Hindi only, although very steady and industrious, were peculiarly obtuse and unintelligent, and those who understood Persian were continually diverging into the use of that language in their weekly reports of work done, although this was contrary to my express injunctions.
The forms I prepared were adapted to ascertain—first, the state of school-instruction; and second, the state of domestic and adult instruction. For the former purpose a separate form was employed for each description of school, one for Bengali or Hindi schools, another for Sanskrit schools, a third for Persian and Arabic schools, &c., each embracing with modifications the following details, viz., the name of the town or village in which the school was situated; the description of place employed as a school-house; the name, religion, caste, and age of the teacher; the sources and amount of his receipts; the extent of his instructions; the number of his scholars, present and absent; their religion and caste; the age at which each had entered school, his present age, the probable age at which he would leave school, and the progress he had made in the course of instruction; and finally the books, if any, read in the school, and the works, if any, written by the teacher. To ascertain the state of domestic and adult instruction, another form was prepared including the following particulars, viz., the number of families in each town or village; the name, religion, caste, and principal occupation of the head of each family; the number of persons in each family, male and female, above fourteen years of age, the number, male and female, between fourteen and five, and the number, male and female, below five; the number of families in each town or village giving domestic instruction to the children, and the number of children in each such family receiving domestic instruction; the number of persons of adult age in each family who had received a learned education; the number who, without having received a learned education, knew something more than mere reading and writing, whether Bengali or Hindi accounts, the Persian or the English language, or any two or more of these; the number who could merely read and write; and the number who could barely decipher or write their own names.
Having prepared the necessary forms, my first purpose was to visit every village in person and ascertain its exact condition by actual inspection and inquiry in direct communication with the inhabitants. This course I found liable to several objections. The sudden appearance of a European in a village often inspired terror, which it was always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to sudue. The most influential or the best informed inhabitant was sometimes absent, and it required much labor to enable others to comprehend the object of my visit. Under the most favourable circumstances the time consumed in explanations for the satisfaction of the villagers caused such delays as would have ultimately constituted a serious objection to the efficiency and economy of the investigation.
The first measure adopted to facilitate and expedite the inquiry was the employment of waqifkars, or agents of intelligence and local experience, whom I sent before-hand into the surrounding villages to explain to the inhabitants the nature and objects of the inquiry, and thus to prepare them for my arrival. These agents were furnished with written forms which were fully explained to them, and which they were required in like manner to explain to those to whom they were sent. The effect of this arrangement was good, for I often found the inhabitants fully prepared to understand my object and to give me the information I sought.
Still the necessity I imposed on myself of visiting every village in person was a great drawback on the despatch with which I was desirous of conducting the investigation, in so far as that object could be attained consistently with efficiency. It next occurred to me that my pandit and maulavi, whom I had hitherto employed merely as assistants under my own eye, and the waqifkars, who had hitherto acted only as avant-couriers might be sent separately to different villages, or groups of villages, with the necessary forms to collect the information required, while I should exercise a general superintendence and control over their movements, and they should at fixed intervals report their proceedings to me. This was accordingly done, and thus increased vigour was infused into the operations.
Up to this point the forms I had employed were very imperfect, and a useful improvement of them was suggested by the people themselves, I found that while some were very careless about the correctness of the information they gave me, others were so desirous of securing accuracy and giving me satisfaction, that they made out a list of every house in the village, with the name of the head of each family and the number of its inmates of different ages. I took the hint, and thenceforth requested that such a list should be made out in all cases, with the addition of the caste and trade of the family and other details already mentioned. The particularity and minuteness of the forms constitute an important guard against mistake and error on the part of the agents employed, since the multiplication of details is the multiplication of the means of comparison and thereby of the means of checking oversight, culpable neglect, or intentional misrepresentation. It would be more difficult to invent such returns in any consistent form capable of bearing examination than honestly and diligently search out and record the real facts.
These were the modes of investigation I employed in the district of Rajshahi, of which the results have already been reported; and all that I was able to effect from the end of July to the middle of September in that district was almost wholly limited to one out of thirteen police sub-divisions. This was not equal to my own wishes and expectations, and yet I felt that I had done all that could be reasonably expected of me, having kept myself constantly in motion in the height of the rainy season in an inundated district. I immediately brought to the notice of the General Committee of Public Instruction the unavoidably limited local extent to which the inquiry had been carried, and in soliciting further instructions proposed that I should be authorized in like manner in every district I should visit to select one police sub-division as a sample of the whole district. This limitation was approved and sanctioned.
I next moved into the adjoining district of Moorshedabad; and as my attention was to be confined to one thana, it was important to select one that would form a fair specimen of the whole district. With that view, on the recommendation of those natives and Europeans who appeared to possess the best acquaintance with the interior of the district, I fixed upon the police sub-division of Daulatbazar for examination. The most improved mode of investigation to which I had attained in Rajshahi, in respect both of the agents and forms employed, was applied to this thana; but the result disappointed me, for I found at the close of the inquiry that there was not a single Sanscrit or Arabic School in the Daulatbazar thana, although the existence of such institutions in the district was undoubted.
The next district I visited was that of Beerbhoom, and there I adoped a modification of the plan of investigation which spread the inquiry over a much wider surface in an equal period of time, and with equal security for accuracy of detail. In Rajshahi and Moorshedabad, with the sanction of the General Committee, I had limited my investigations to one thana in each district; but it now occurred to me that, as I employed agents in that single thana under my own superintendence in collecting information according to prescribed forms, this plan admitted of simultaneous extension to the other thanas of the same district. Accordingly, having selected one thana as before for special investigation, the results of which would fulfil the instructions I had received from the General Committee, I extended a more limited survey by means of separate agents over all the remaining thanas. The difference was that in the latter the inquiry was confined to the state of school-instruction, whereas in the selected thana it embraced also the state of domestic and adult instruction. For the special and more minute investigation of the selected thana, four, five, and sometimes six agents were employed; and for the more limited survey of the remaining thanas, one agent each was found sufficient. I did not deem it necessary to refer this modification of my plans to the General Committee for their approval, because no part of their instructions was superseded, and the modification consisted only in the additional labour and expense which I imposed on myself. The result was highly satisfactory, for it enabled me to pronounce with confidence on the state of school-instruction not in one thana only, but throughout all the thanas of a district. This extended and comprehensive course of investigation has been pursued in Beerbhoom and Burdawn, South Behar and Tirhoot. In the city of Moorshedabad the plan of investigation was made still more comprehensive, the special and minute inquiry into the state both of school-instruction and domestic and adult instruction having been extended to all the nineteen thanas included within the city jurisdiction.
With the exception of four or five waqifkars whom I permitted to accompany me from district to district, and whose superior intelligence compensated in some measure for the want of local experience in the districts where they were strangers, I had to instruct a separate set of persons in each district in a knowledge of my forms of business and modes of investigation. Those whom I employed generally belonged to the class of office-expectants, numerous at every sudder station. Their objections to take employment were the smallness of the allowance I offered, generally seven and sometimes eight rupees a month; the shortness of the period allowed to do the work of one thana, viz., one month; and the severity of the labour in travelling from village to village, which was particularly felt in the rainy and hot seasons. The inducements I presented were the payment of half a month’s wages in advance; an ample supply of stationery at my expense; the promise of travelling expenses if the work was well done; every facility in the way of perwannahs from the Magistrate; and the assurance, if satisfaction was given, of receiving a testimonial of character and service which the Magistrate had sometimes the goodness to intimate he would take into favourable consideration when occasion should occur. The promise of this bit of paper, the testimonial, especially when accompanied by an expression of the Magistrate’s good feeling towards the object, and those who should aid it, generally removed all objections. Those who acceded to my terms, and whose general intelligence created a favourable impression in my mind, received copies of the tabular forms I employed, which they were directed to read with care and to copy correctly with their own hands. Every separate column was then explained to each candidate by my pandit, who, having pronounced him sufficiently instructed and qualified, brought him to me for examination. Generally I had occasion to confirm the decision of the pandit, sometimes to send the candidate back for further instruction, and occasionally to reject him altogether for stupidity and ignorance. Those who were finally approved always claimed and received a letter of appointment specifying their duties and their compensation, to which I added a warning against making any exaction or committing any oppression on the humbler classes of natives and an order to report progress weekly according to a prescribed form. They also received a perwannah addressed to the darogha of the thana by the magistrate requiring him to assist the waqifkars, and another from the same authority addressed to zemindars, talookdars, &c., requesting similar assistance. The waqifkars finally received ruled forms as models of those in which they were expected to make their returns, and they were then dismissed with every necessary verbal admonition and encouragement. During their absence a regular correspondence was maintained with each person; and when difficulties arose they were removed by advice or orders communicated by letter, or by personal supervision according to the nature of the case. When the waqifkars returned, their papers were minutely inspected; and if such discrepancies and inconsistencies were discovered as implied negligence, another person was sent to go over the same ground. When the returns made appeared satisfactory, a correct copy of them was made for record, of which I prepared a very full abstract in English to provide against possible accident to the native returns. The payments due to the agents employed were made in my presence and into their own hands.
One source of error to which the results are liable is inseparable from the nature of the investigation. I was instructed that the only mode in which the desired information should be sought must be with the full consent and good will of the parties with whom I might come into communication, and that the employment of authoritative or compulsory means was to be avoided. I was fully disposed to act up to these instructions, which were indeed given at my own suggestion and were dictated by the obvious spirit and intent of the inquiry. Adherence to them, however, made me and my agents dependent on third parties for the correctness of certain details; for instance, the number of persons, male and female, of the teachable age in a family. It was, of course, not permitted to enter the houses and count the females or the children, and on these and similar points the statements of heads of families and of the headmen of villages were necessarily received; but in such cases there was generally a check against inaccuracy by the presence of many of the villagers whose curiosity drew them together to listen, and who often corrected each other in the answers that were made. Notwithstanding this partial check, the discrepancy in the returns of males and females between fourteen and five years of age, that is, the much less number of females than of males of that age, seems to prove that concealment was systematically practised. I cannot adequately account in any other way for the difference that exist in the returns, and which will afterwards more fully appear.
Another source of error belongs to the plan of employing agents under me to collect information. I have already explained how I was induced to adopt this plan; and I am satisfied that by means of it the inquiry has been made far more extensive in its scope, and probably even more complete and accurate in its details, than if I had attempted to see every thing with my own eyes and do every thing with my own hands. The efficiency of such agency must depend on the efficiency of the supervision to which it is subjected; but although I laboured to render my superintendence vigilant and searching, and although I believe that the returns I received are in general worthy of confidence as far as they go, yet I have no security that they are not defective. In traversing a district, my agents could not visit all the villages it contained, amounting to several thousands. This was physically impossible without protracting the inquiry beyond ail reasonable limits. They were, therefore, compelled to depend either upon their personal knowledge, or upon the information that could be gathered from others as to the places possessing schools, every one of which was invariably visited and examined; but that in no instance a village-institution has been overlooked is more than I dare affirm, and in point of fact I have sometimes discovered instances in which such institutions had at first escaped attention, I have thought it right to show that this source of error did exist; but I believe that such oversights still remaining undetected are, if any, very few.
In undertaking and conducting this inquiry, a danger which I have kept constantly in view, is lest the agents and servants whom I have found it necessary to employ should be guilty of levying exactions in my name from the villagers. I, therefore, from the first had it fully understood by all whom I permanently or temporarily employed, that if I could discover any of them, from the highest to the lowest, in any act of oppression, violence of deed or of language, or assumption of authority over the villagers, I should instantly dismiss him from his situation. In consequence of this intimation, some of my servants stipulated for an increase of wages beyond what they had previously demanded. This claim I allowed, conceiving that I had a stronger hold upon them than upon others who were not so open and candid. The occasions have been very few on which I have had any reason to believe that oppression was attempted or exercised, and on such occasions the guilty parties were instantly displaced.
The rich were more difficult to manage than the poor, sometimes, for purposes of their own grovelling to the dust before me; at other times superciliously refusing all communication and demanding that a separate perwannah should be addressed to them individually before they would give or permit their dependants to give any of the information required. The difficulty from the selfishness and self-sufficiency of the rich was only greater than that arising from the extreme ignorance of the poor. Many villages did not contain a single person able to write, or even to count; and in such cases all the information had to be collected direct from house to house with very little aid from the villagers themselves. On one occasion I experienced open and pertinacious opposition from a single individual, a Government gomashta, who influenced a circle of villages by his authority; and when his objections were removed, those of the villagers also disappeared. On other occasions teachers both of common schools and schools of learning, from some misapprehension, have concealed themselves to escape the dreaded inquisition. On the other hand, I have had a message sent to me from a village, the inhabitants of which understood that I did not intend to visit them personally, requesting that I would not pass them by; and two pandits followed me to Calcutta from the Burdwan district to communicate the details respecting their schools; of which when in the district itself I had not been able to find any trace. Generally, wherever the object of the inquiry has been understood, the disposition of the people has been friendly.
It is only the recollection of this object that will give any interest to the dry and minute details on which I am now about to enter. The object is to improve and extend public instruction; and the first step towards this object is to know, with all attainable accuracy, the present state of instruction in native institutions and in native society. The instructions given by the French Government with a series of statistical questions addressed to its diplomatic and consular agents furnish both a useful guide and a just criterion of such inquiries:—“Le principal mérite des expériences consiste dans la precision; et si l’estime attachée á un travail est un premier encouragement á l’exécuter, vous devez être persuadés que le Gouvernement attache un grand prix á celui dont vous etes chargés; qu’il en connait les obstaclês, les difficultés; et qu’il sait d’avance, que telle réponse en deux lignes vous aura couté souvent un mois de recherches; mais ces deux lignes seront une vérité, et une vérité est un don eternel à l’humanité.”[1] In the spirit of these views I have sought to contribute some facts illustrative of the moral and intellectual condition of a branch of the human family; and in the prosecution of this purpose, I have endeavoured to keep constantly present to my own mind, to the minds of my native assistants, and to the minds of all with whom I have come into communication on the subject, the necessity of that rigid and undeviating adherence to accuracy of detail which can alone give to alleged facts the sacred and salutary character of truths.
- ↑ See Hemso’s Theorie de la Statistique, p. 78.