Education Feature from Frene Ginwala's Thesis

Originally no provision was made for the education of Indians. The Reverend Stott of the Wesleyan Mission established a school for Indian labourers in 1868 and four years later advised the Coolie Commission that he knew ?of nothing more likely to keep Coolies on estates and satisfied than the establishment of schools?. In that year the Government aid for education of Indian children amounted to £68 per annum.

In 1878 at the insistence of the Secretary of State for Colonies, Sir Michael Edward Hicks Beech, Act 20 of 1878 was passed to provide for education among Indian children. An Indian Immigrants School Board was set up with representatives of the planters joining the Colonial Secretary, Reverend Stott and the Protector. £ 1000.00 was to be allocated and the Board decided to recruit five teachers from India. The original plan was for the Board to pay £ 50.00 per annum for the teacher?s salary while the estate on which the school was situated was to provide a schoolroom with a house for the teacher. These plans had to be modified as a request circulated among the planters drew only three positive replies offering a ?rough school room? and teachers quarters. Several of the planters expressed the view ?that education would prove hurtful?. As a result only £80.00 of the allocation was spent in the first year of the Boar?s existence and £118 6s 8d in the second. When £35 was spent in 1881 the provision for education was reduced to £500.00. The burden of education fell upon churches and Governmental annual aid per student declined from £1 1s 6d to 17s 8d in 1886 and further to 14s 4d in 1888 12s 9d in 1893. Church schools were run for adults and children but the former were soon abandoned as in the rural areas were unable to operate due to the nine o? clock curfew.

The numbers of Indian children at school rose from 1480 in 1885 through 2141 in 1890 to 3351 in 1900. It was mainly the children of free and passenger Tamils that went to school. Gujerati Indians preferred to send their children to schools in India where they could also be schooled in the vernacular. The children of indenture parents were usually indenture themselves and did not go to school. A small number of Indian children who conformed to the dress and habits of Europeans were admitted to Durban Primary School and the Boys Model School in Pietermaritzburg. This was not permitted after 1899 and following pressure exerted by Indians, a Durban Higher Grade Indian School was set up. It is significant that the pressure for education did not come from merchants who were the leaders of the Natal Indian Congress. The initiative was taken by HL Paul, a former railway worker who was an Indian interpreter at the Law Court and whose son had no school he could attend after Standard four.
From 1868 to 1899 education for Indians in Natal was limited to standard four. Educated colonial born Indians, in particular, who in the twentieth century, provided education. The delegation of Natal Indians to London in 1909, listed the Policy on Education of Indian children (the other two being the £3 tax and the Dealers? Licences Act 18 of 1897) among their three grievances.

In 1894, Gandhi was instrumental in forming The Natal Indian Educational Association for the benefit of young Indians. In 1929 the first group of Natal Indian pupils wrote the Educational Department?s external examination for standard six. Such progress made in Indian education was at the instigation and initiative of the Indians themselves. Teachers were recruited from Natal and Mauritius, the majority of whom were South Indian.

In 1911, due largely to the efforts of HL Paul, an Indian Educational Institute was established to conduct a high school for Indians in Durban. Initially it was staffed by European teachers recruited in India. At the outbreak of World War I, the Institute ceased its activities due largely to financial difficulties, after having prepared 108 students for the Cape University Junior Certificate Examination.

Though the Union Government provided a subsidy for Indian education in Natal, the Provincial authorities diverted a large part of it towards general revenue. The Natal Association of Indians? Memorandum on Indian Education by Kailas P Kichlu, presented to the Natal Indian Education Enquiry Commission sitting in Pietermaritzburg on 17 April 1928 stated that between 1925 and 1928, £27215.00 had been misdirected in this manner. As a result, only 10000 of the 32000 children of school going age were receiving education and the main burden was borne by mission schools. According to a Natal Indian Congress to the Education Enquiry Commission of 1936 Indian teachers were reduced to ?starvation wages? and the Province maintained only nine schools, giving some grants in aid to a further 44.

In 1927, the Natal Commission on Indian Education was appointed to enquire into and report various aspects of Indian education in Natal. The Union Government, acknowledging ?the admittedly grave situation in respect of Indian education in Natal?, undertook to advise the Provincial administration. The Indian Government appointed the Indian educationalist, Kailas P Kichlu, former Deputy Director of Education in the United Provinces and Miss C Gordon, a lecturer in kindergarten methods, to the Commission. The Commission recommended the extension of grant aided schools throughout the Province and reassessment in methods of finances, that salary scales be improved and a teacher training college be established, that the Union Government subsidy be increased and utilised in full on Indian education and that the gift of the Agent General, Srinivas Sastri and the Indian community of a fully equipped training college be accepted.

Immediately following the Report, there was an upsurge in Indian education. The number of schools rose from 52 in 1928 to 78 in 1931.The number of pupils enrolled went up from 8520 in 1925 and by 1946, 35397 children were enrolled at schools in the Province.

Though Indians contributed between one-fifth and one-sixth of the Provincial revenue, the Province had not allocated any funds for Indian education while allocating £153090.00 and £20166.00 for European and Coloured education respectively. Once again, the full Union Government subsidy was not being spent and in 1934 over £4000.00 was diverted from Indian education. The Provincial authorities continuously failed to utilise the Union Government subsidy on Indian education. The chronic shortage of school places continued with over 30000 Indian children in Natal without places in 1948 and 1949. Many Indian schools were run on a platoon system, with the same teachers and premises serving to operate a morning and an afternoon school system that was still operating in Natal in the 1960s.

In the Transvaal, Indians were regarded as part of the Coloured population for the purposes of education. The only education originally available for Indian children on the Rand was at mission schools. In 1903, Milner had rejected an application by an Indian, Dr Pereira, for his children to attend a white school.

State schools had a definite Christian bias and the syllabus included Bible History. As a result Muslim merchants came together to establish an Indian school for which Government approval was given in 1912. Other groups also set up their own schools, with State paid teachers teaching Gujerati or Tamil and Indian religion as an alternative to the regular syllabus. Following his investigations in Natal, the Indian educationist Kichlu was invited to the Transvaal and recommended the closure of most of the sectarian schools and the development of education on South African lines, with English or Afrikaans as the medium of instruction. Most of his recommendations were implemented.
Much of the improvement in Indian education in Natal and the Transvaal came as a result of self help by the community; self help, which besides maintaining pressure on the authorities led to significant financial contributions for the provision of education. Of the 237 Government, Government aided and private registered schools for Indians in Natal in 1952, no less than 90% had been built on the initiative of the Indians themselves, assisted by grants on a pound for pound basis from the Provincial administration.

The first Agent-General, the Hon. VS Srinivasa Sastri took the initiative in raising funds for the establishment in Durban of a combined secondary school and a teacher training college, to which South African Indians contributed £18000.00. Six graduate teachers were supplied by the Government of India to replace the original white staff and with three local teachers; Sastri College was opened in 1930.

There was a marked increased in the number of Indians receiving secondary education thereafter , but the 70 years of neglect were reflected in the fact that no local Indian teacher could be found to replace the six from Indian when their 3- years contracts expired.

Indian Students in Secondary Schools*

*In 1946, there were five Government Secondary schools providing twelve years in Natal and in the Transvaal two providing for at least ten years catering up to standard VIII, and one providing twelve years including a final year which prepared pupils for a University entrance examination.

Outside of Durban and Pietermaritzburg the spread of secondary education was slow and again dependent upon local community efforts. In the Umvoti District, it took half a century from the commencement of primary education before a Standard VII class was started. In Northern Natal an aided primary school was established at Estcourt in 1899, it became a Government school after the South African War.

The Government of India pressed the South African Government during the 1927 Round Table Conference to establish agricultural and technical education facilities for Indians. The Minister of the Interior, Dr DF Malan, merely offered to assist the Agent General and Indians to raise the matter before any relevant Commission appointed in the future.

In 1942, a member of the Indian community in Durban, ML Sultan offered an initial donation of £12500.00 for the erection of a technical college. In 1946 the ML Sultan Technical College was given official recognition under the Higher Education Act 1923. The major part of the capital cost was donated by Indians, including a voluntary levy of 6d per ton of cane cut by all members of the Indian Cane Growers Association.

Sastri College was used as a temporary first home for other branches of higher education as the all white institutes refused to house them and the State would not provide premises.teh classes were used seven days a week throughout the day and evenings. Part time technical classes were held there from 1930 with a Union Government grant in aid of £150.00 per annum. The first university courses in Natal for Black students were also housed there from 1936. Prior to that Indians had to go abroad or attend Fort Hare College in the Cape for university education.

The Natal University part time courses for the BA Degree were first offered with Botany as the only science subject and later some law courses. In 1942 there were 90 students ? 1 Chinese, 70 Indians (a further 20 were studying at Fort Hare in the Eastern Cape), 14 Africans and 5 Coloureds.
The University Education Commission of 1942 reported that there were not enough students for a separate college for Indians in Natal because 40% of Indian children of school going age received no education at all and prohibitive university costs. The Commission spoke of the lack of an ?educational tradition? amongst Indians.