A new biography of David Hare examines how the educationist reformed schools in colonial India
An excerpt from ‘The Life and Times of David Hare: First Secular Educationist of India,’ by Sarojesh Mukherjee.
One of the most arresting sights of Calcutta during the last twenty-five years of Hare’s life was his daily travels across the busy and congested streets of central Calcutta. He would be
crouched, not too comfortably, in a palanquin stuffed with books, pencils, medicines and loose cash and taken from one native mohulla to another. To the refrain of the palanquin bearers would quite often be added that of a few urchins and poor boys running behind, “Me poor boy; me have pity; me take in your school.” For fame had spread throughout the city that here was a Sahib who in his daily round would arrange books or schooling for the indigent student…
The reason for which the clamouring boys ran behind Hare’s palanquin was that very soon after the establishment of Hindu College, which was an institution meant largely for the children of the Bengali elite, Hare took it upon himself to make modern education readily available to the masses. To that end, he co-founded the Calcutta School Society with a number of Bengali and European gentlemen, and ran several of the society’s schools, some even at his own expense. The boys who ran behind Hare’s palanquin wanted to be admitted to these schools, for more often than not there was no other alternative for them to secure a free modern education.
The Calcutta School Society
The Calcutta School Society’s origins can be traced back to a meeting held at the Town Hall on September 1, 1818, that was attended by several European and Bengali gentlemen. They resolved that an association be formed, with one of its principal objectives being “to assist and improve existing schools and support any further schools and seminaries which may be requisite, with a view to the more general diffusion of useful knowledge”. Hare was first appointed the Secretary of its Indigenous Department in 1821 and later became the European Secretary, a post he held for the rest of his life.
These designations mask the enormous role he played in the functioning and success of the schools. In 1818 itself he took charge of a pathshala, a Bengali-medium primary school, at Arpuli, opposite the Thanthania Kali Temple in central Calcutta of which it was reported that “having the advantage of his [Hare’s] personal superintendence, it prospers”. He was associated with the setting up of an English school in the vicinity, the Thanthania School in 1823. These two merged afterwards into the Arpuli Pathshala with two separate divisions, English and Bengali. He also set up and personally managed two other schools at Simla and Pataldanga in central Calcutta. In 1834, the Pataldanga School and the Arpuli Pathshala were merged and came to be known as the Colootolla Branch School and, finally, Hare School in his honour, posthumously.
Such was his keenness to have the poor educated that he did not just make schooling free for them, but even paid them to attend school. The Simla and the Arpuli schools were run by Hare at his own expense, as was the Pataldanga School. The Arpuli School was exclusively meant for those parents who could not afford to pay any tuition fees.
Referring to the English school at Pataldanga, a contemporary document notes just after the death of
Hare that
it appears that the pupils of this school have hitherto been admitted entirely by Mr Hare; that they have paid nothing for schooling, books or stationery, that the discipline was maintained by Mr Hare personally; and that he paid from his own funds any incidental charges in excess of the Government allowance of five hundred rupees.
In 1828, he donated a princely sum of Rs 6,000 to the Calcutta School Society to free it of its debts so that it could keep running schools.11 Hare frequently cajoled and persuaded the rich babus of Calcutta not to waste money by ostentatious displays of wealth on religious occasions like Holi or Durga Puja or on societal functions like funeral feasts and instead spend such sums on education and to aid the poor.
