Correspondence on the subject of the education of the Muhammadan community in British India and their employment in the public service generally (Calcutta: Government Printing India, 1886)

CORRESPONDENCE
REGARDING
THE EDUCATION AND EMPLOYMENT OF THE MAHOMEDAN
COMMUNITY IN BRITISH INDIA.

PART I.
CORRESPONDENCE OF 1870—1871 IN CONNECTION WITH THE CONDITION AND MANAGE-
MENT OF THE CALCUTTA MADRASSAH.
From Lieut.-Colonel W. Nassau Lees, ll.d., ph.D., &c., &c., to the Secretary to the Government of India,
Home Department—dated Calcutta, the 17th March 1870.
I feel compelled to solicit that you will do me the favor to call the attention of the Vice-
roy and Governor General in Council to an article headed the “Abuses of Warren Hastings’
Madrassah” in the Friend of India of the 17th ultimo, and to the direct charges and worse
insinuations a writer in that Journal has thought proper to bring against my professional,
moral, and official character.
2. 1 have further the honor to solicit that in laying these papers before Government, you
will appeal in my behalf to His Excellency the Viceroy and Governor General in Council to
extend to me that protection which the rules of the service prohibit me from affording myself
by replying to attacks of this nature in the columns of a newspaper.
3. As” the subject under discussion in the article referred to concerns my relations with
the Government of Bengal more immediately than those with the Government of India, I
should have appealed to the Lieutenant-Governor of that Province in the first instance; but
there are in this case many and cogent reasons for my not doing so. Firstly, similar attacks
appeared in the same newspaper last year when I was in Europe, and I then wrote from
Germany to the Lieutenant-Governor demi-officially on the subject without avail. Subse-
quently, on returning to India, I again addressed the Lieutenant-Governor privately, inform-
ing him’how deeply aggrieved I felt that the misrepresentations of unworthy persons should
not only have been listened to but encouraged, and statements prejudicial to my character made
in the public newspapers without any protection being afforded to me by the Education
Department, although I was absent in Europe; but His Honor shewed no inclination to inter-
fere in the matter. °It would be affectation, moreover, in me to pretend that my complaint is
not as much against the Government of Bengal itself as against any one else, as, if there is any
truth in a statement made to me by Mr. Smith, viz., that he had been offered a copy of the
Madrassah Committee’s Report, provided he would treat it confidently, it is plain that if he
did not say so in so many words, he clearly implied that the offer had been made to him by
some person in authority. It is well known that in India, in consequence of many circum-
stances peculiar to the organization of the public services, newspapers occasionally obtain access
to official documents notwithstanding the utmost endeavours of Government to prevent it;
but it can hardly be supp® that any clerk or copyist could make, or would venture to make,
such a proposition as that "sclosed by the Editor of the Friend of India, unless covered by
higher authority, especially as it is known that when under the orders of the Secretary of
State in Council these proceedings must be submitted to the Government of India befoie any
action can be taken upon them by the Local Government. But, under any circumstances,
endeavours ought to be made to ascertain how such reports reach Editors, and were I satisfied
that such had been, or would be done, I should not complain.
4. A copy of my/reply to the Committee’s Report is already in your hands, and it is
unnecessary for me to enter into any elaborate defence of all the charges and insinuations
made by the Friend of India. I have endeavoured, as far as lay in my power, to allude as little
as possible to mattery relating to myself personally. If there is anything in these personal
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