Deepa says colonial records are full of the schools and colleges the British opened, and there are…
Deepa says colonial records are full of the schools and colleges the British opened, and there are few Indian papers complaining, so the education policy was clearly welcomed. Farhan says think about whose records survive. Who is right?
Who do you think is right? Pick one.
The answer: Farhan is right
Why
Deepa is working from what the archive actually holds, which is an honest starting point. But an archive is not a neutral sample. The colonial state employed clerks to write reports and store them; most Indians then could not read or write, kept no filed papers, and had no office to keep them in, so their view is thin on paper not because they agreed but because paper was the rulers' tool. And the records themselves show the policy's real shape: the schooling was aimed at a small class meant to staff offices, not at teaching the mass of people, and older village schooling declined in the same years. Silence in an archive is not consent. Test: ask what each record was FOR, and who was meant to read it. Farhan is right: you have to ask who could write things down before you read an absence of complaint as approval.
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