NEW DELHI, INDIA, November 17, 2006: By meticulous research of the British sources over decades, Dharampal, a follower of Gandhi, has raised questions regarding the belief that India was backward educationally or economically when the British entered. Citing the Christian missionary William Adam’s report on indigenous education in Bengal and Bihar in 1835 and 1838, Dharampal established that at that time there were 100,000 schools in Bengal, one school for about 500 boys; that the indigenous medical system that included inoculation against smallpox.
He believes he has proven, by reference to other materials, that Adam’s record was not legend. He relied on Sir Thomas Munroe’s report to the Governor at about the same time to prove similar statistics about schools in Chennai. He also found that the education system in the Punjab during the Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s rule was equally extensive. He estimated that the literacy rate in India before the British was higher than that in England.
Long after Dharampal had established that pre-British India was not backward, a 2005 Harvard University Research, India’s Deindustrialisation in the 18th and 19th Centuries by David Clingingsmith and Jeffrey G. Williamson affirmed that “while India produced about 25 percent of world industrial output in 1750, this figure had fallen to only 2 percent by 1900.” The Harvard University Economic Research also established that the Industrial employment in India also declined from about 30 to 8.5 per cent between 1809-13 and 1900, thus turning the Indian society backward.