the new movement in favour of “National Schools” advocate the maintenance of schools which purchase complete immunity from Government control by renouncing all the advantages of grants-in-aid and of University affiliation.  They have been started mainly under the patronage of “advanced” politicians, and have too often turned out to be mere hot-beds of sedition, but their raison d’etre is alleged to be the right of Hindu parents to bring up Hindu children in a Hindu atmosphere.

From the opposite pole in politics, most of the ruling chiefs in their replies to Lord Minto’s request for their opinions on the growth of disaffection call attention to this aspect of education, and the Hindu princes especially lay great stress on the neglect of religious and moral instruction.  I will quote only the Maharajah of Jaipur, a Hindu ruler universally revered, for his high character and great experience:—­

My next point has reference to the neglect there seems to be of religious education, a point to which I drew your Excellency’s attention at the State banquet at Jaipur on the 29th October, 1909.  I must say I have great faith in a system of education, in which secular and religious instruction are harmoniously combined, as the formation of character entirely depends upon a basework of religion, and the noble ideals which our sacred books put before the younger generation will, I fervently hope, make them loyal and dutiful citizens of the Empire.  Such ideals must inevitably have their effect on impressionable young men, and it is perhaps due to such ideals that sedition and anarchy have obtained so small a footing in the Native States as a whole.  In the Chiefs’ College Conference, held at the Mayo College in 1904, I impressed upon my colleagues the necessity of religious education for the sons of the chiefs and nobles of Rajputana, and it should be one of the principal objects in all schools for the Pandits and the Moulvies to instil in the minds of their pupils correct notions as to the duty they owe to the community they belong to and to their Sovereign.

In this respect the ruling chiefs unquestionably reflect the views which prevail amongst the better-class Indians in British India as well as in the Native States.  The Government of India cannot afford to disregard them.  The Resolution of 1904, it is true, laid it down again definitely that “in Government institutions, the instruction is and must continue to be exclusively secular.”  But much has happened since 1904 to reveal the evils which our educational system has engendered and to lend weight to the representations made by responsible exponents of sober Indian opinion in favour of one of the remedies which it is clearly within our power to apply.  Nor need we really depart from our time-honoured principle of neutrality in religious matters.  All we have to do is to set apart, in the curriculum of our schools and colleges, certain hours during which they will