APPENDIX J (a)- PROCEEDINGS OF EDUCATION MINISTERS' CONFERENCE HELD AT NEW DELHI ON 19TH 20TH AUGUST 1949
A Conference of the Provincial Ministers for Education was convened by the Hon'ble Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Minister for Education, Government of India on the 19th and 20th of August, 1949 at New Delhi to consider the problem of Juvenile Delinquency in the country and also to determine the policy regarding the Medium of Instruction at all School Stages.
The following members were present:-
1. The Hon'ble Shri B. G. Kher, Premier and Minister of Education, Bombay.
2. The Hon'ble Shri Sampurnanand, Minister for Education, United Provinces.
3. The Hon'ble Shri K. Madhava Menon, Minister for Education, Madras.
4. The Hon'ble Shri Badri Nath Verma, Minister for Education. Bihar.
5. The Hon'ble Shri Rai Harendra Nath Chowdhury, Minister for Education, West Bengal.
6. The Hon'ble Shri P. K. Deshmukh, Minister for Education, Central Provinces and Berar.
7. The Hon'ble Shri Gopi Chand Bhargava, Minister for Education. East Punjab.
8. The Hon'ble Pandit Lingaraja Misra, Minister for Education, Orissa.
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The Hon'ble Shri Gopinath Bordaloi, Premier and Minister for Education, Assam, was unable to attend the Conference. Shri Mahendra Mohan Choudhury, Parliamentary Secretary, Assam, represented the
Premier at the Conference.
The Hon'ble Rajkumari Amrit Kaur and the Hon'ble Dr. S. P. Mookerjee attended the Conference by special invitation. The Ministry of Home Affairs was represented by Shri V. K. Ghoshal, Deputy Secretary of the Ministry.
As Dr. Deshmukh, member of the Constituent Assembly had prepared a bill for the protection of uncared boys and girls, it was thought desirable to invite him so that the Conference may benefit from his views on the problem of Juvenile Delinquency, one of the items on the Agenda (Appendix-I). The Hon'ble Member attended the Conference on both the days.
Some Hon'ble Members of the Constituent Assembly had evinced much interest in the question of Medium of Instruction in Schools and had invited the Government-of India's attention in this connexion. A deputation on their behalf had also met the Hon'ble Minister for Education. It was, therefore, thought desirable to invite a few of these Hon'ble Members so that they could place their views on the question of the Medium of Instruction before the- Conference and thus acquaint the Conference with all the aspects of this problem. As this Conference was especially for the Provicial Education Ministers and the decision about the Medium of Instruction lay with them, the programme of the Conference was so arranged as to enable the Hon'ble Members of the Constituent Assembly to express their views on the first day of the Conference, and the second day of the Conference was confined to the Provincial Education Ministers.
The following Hon'ble Members of the Constituent Assembly were invited :-
1. Shri G. S. Guha.
2. Mr. Mohamed Ismail.
3. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra.
4. Shri Kallur Subba Rao.
5. Shri Jaipal Singh.
6. Col. B. H. Zaidi.
Mr. Mohamed Ismail could not attend and requested that his views should be represented by Mr. Z. H. Lari, also a Member of the Constituent Assembly. Shri Jaipal Singh and Col. B. H. Zaidi were unable to attend be Conference, but Mr. Singh sent a memo. embodying
his views.
The following advisers from the various Provinces were also present :-
1. The Hon'ble Shri N. Dutt Mazumdar, Judicial Minister, Bengal.
2. Dr. Hem Chandra Baruah, Adviser of Juvenile Delinquency, Assam.
3. Dr. D. M. Sen, Education Secretary, West Bengal.
4. Shri J. C. Mathur, Director of Public Instruction, Bihar.
5. Mr. K. G. Sayidain, Educational Adviser, Bombay.
6. Shri V. D. Kulkarni, Chief Inspector of Certified Schools, Bombay.
7. Dr. V. S. Jha, Education Secretary, Central Provinces and Berar.
8. Shri K. C. Khanna, Education. Secretary, East Punjab.
9. Shri D. Sadasiva Reddi, Director of Public Instruction,Madras.
10. Shri Narayan Menon, Chief Inspector of Certified Schools, Madras.
11. Shri Mahesh Chandra Pradhan, Director of Public Instruction, Orissa.
12. Mr. I. R. Khan, Deputy Secretary to the Government of United Provinces
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Shri L. R. Sethi, Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Education acted as Secretary to the Conference.
2. The Hon'ble Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Minister for Education, Government of India, welcomed the members of the Conference.
He said:-
FRIENDS,
We have as one of the items for discussion today a problem which raises fundamental issues of law and justice. Till now, the State has looked upon an offence as a crime for which the offender must expiate. Such offences, whether you call them crimes or sins, were regarded as evil and attracted as their inevitable consequence punishment. Punishment was, therefore, regarded as a consequence of crime and justified in itself. The classic exposition of this view is in the principal "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
Later ages, however, raised the question of the utility or justification of punishment. Critics arose who asked how a murdered person benefited by the slaughter of his murderer. In fact, the only result was the loss of life of two individuals instead of one. Punishment was, therefore, sought to be justified on grounds of its deterrent character, but even this did not satisfy critics who pointed out that, as a matter of fact, punishment did not deter. A new school of thought arose, who approached the problem of punishment from the point of view of reform of the offender. Instead of a retributive theory of punishment, we thus find the emergence of a theory of punishment as educative and reformatory.
This dispute between the different theories of punishment has not yet been settled, but on one point there is almost unanimous agreement among both theorists and practical men of affairs. All are agreed that in the case of juveniles there must be a change of outlook with regard to punishment. For one thing, young persons, without maturity of judgment, cannot be held fully responsible for their actions. For another experience has shown that confinement of such juveniles in jails confirms them into criminals. In fact, children who may have committed some crime through want of knowledge or on the impulse of the moment, become habitual criminals if they are once sent to jail.
Recognition of this fact has led many countries to provide separate establishments for juveniles. In India we have had reformatories and houses of correction in different Provinces. but it must be admitted that even these have not fully met the purpose. Provision of such reformatories or juvenile jails has no doubt, separated the juvenile offenders from the confirmed criminals, but as they themselves have been miniature jails, the educative and reformatory aspect has not found a proper emphasis.
Apart from the inadequacy of existing institutions in India, we have to recognize that there is great inequality of their development in the different Provinces. Bombay, which has gone farthest in the matter, passed its Children's Act in 1924 and revised it in 1948. It
has 17 Remand Homes and uses a large number of Probation Officers to look after juvenile delinquents. 32 such officers have. been appointed by the Government in addition to 150 working on a voluntary basis and 7 appointed by non-official bodies. Bombay has 28 Certified Schools and 12 Associations which attend to the after-care of the children. No other Province has gone so far, though Madras, under its Children's Act of 1920, has set up 5 Juvenile Courts and six Certified Schools. The C. P. passed an Act in 1928 and have 32 Probation Officers and one Certified School. West Bengal has a Children's Act Passed in 1922, and recently the West Bengal Government
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has initiated action for changing the character of administration in respect of juvenile crime. The East Punjab has an Act before the Assembly, while the U.P. Government are drafting a bill for the purpose. We have no information of such bills in either Assam, Bihar or Orissa.
The position with regard to the care and management of Juvenile Delinquents is thus obviously unsatisfactory. In the first place, not all the provinces that have Children's Acts on their Statute Books are working them to the proper extent. The work is chiefly confined to bigger cities and even there it leaves much to be desired. The Probation Officers have not the requisite training ; neither have the magistrates of the Juvenile Courts the required qualifications. The Certified Schools are not working properly and after-care is all but non-existent.
A little consideration will show that in a matter like the problem of Juvenile Delinquency and the proper methods of dealing with it, there must be uniformity among the different Provinces. It is also desirable that the practice of this country-should conform, as far as possible,with ,hat in other enlightened countries of the world. In the U. K. the persons between the ages of 8 to 17 are regarded as juveniles and are tried by special Juvenile Courts. Panels of magistrates are selected from Justices of Peace and according to present regulations, these panels consist of two or three persons selected every three years. In metropolitan courts one of the magistrates must be a woman, while outside London, this practice is observed as far as possible. The administration of the courts is under the Home Office but special Advisory Committees were set tip in 1910 in order to make the attitude of the administration more progressive. In the past, punishment for the juvenile delinquents was
in proportion to the gravity of the offences but in recent times, the trend is towards the idea of reclamation of the future citizen rather than punishment of an offender.
The change-over from punishment to education is almost complete in the U.S.A. and in some of the European countries. In U.S.A. the upper age-limit for juvenile delinquents is 21. Uptil 18, the jurisdiction is exclusively of the Juvenile Courts, but from 18 to 21, these courts exercise concurrent jurisdiction with the ordinary courts. The trend of legislation is to have the Juvenile Courts independent of the ordinary system of criminal justice. In addition to the special magistrates, the U.S.A. provides for referees to assist in the hearing and disposition of the cases. Where the delinquent is a girl, it is the practice to associate properly qualified woman referee with the Court. The U.S.A. have no advisory bodies, perhaps because social service agencies play a big part in all cases before the Juvenile Courts.
One feature which is common to both the U.K. and the U.S.A. is the effort to retain the child in his or her own surroundings. U.S.A. has the largest provision for institutional care, but even there the trend of theory is away from institutional care to the education of the delinquent in his or her own home atmosphere. The following table gives an idea of the results of disposition of cases in Juvenile Courts in U.K. and U.S.A. :-
U.K. U.S.A.
Put on probation ... ... ... 51% 43%
Discharged after charge proved or bound over
with supervision ... ... ... 32% 29%
Committed to schools ... ... ... 9% 16%
Fined ... ... ... 6% 6%
Probation to non-official persons ... 2% 3%
Placement with board department or agency ... 2% 3%
Other care ... ... ... 1%
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The examples of the U.K. and the U.S.A., therefore, indicate that the most progressive opinion in the world today favours that the juvenile offender must be regarded as a subject for education rather than punishment, and where it is necessary to send him to a reformatory, the character of such juvenile institutions must change. They should be educational institution in the best sense of the term and not " houses of correction or penalty ". These progressive countries have also found by experience that the best method of dealing with juvenile delinquents is to provide for their instruction without removing them from their homes. This requires close co- operation with their families.
As I have already stated, there must be uniformity among the Provinces on a question like that of measures for dealing with Juvenile Delinquency. It seems that this can be best achieved by means of Central Legislation with an enabling clause which will permit Provinces to make such minor modifications as may be necessary. Notice of a private member's bill for dealing with some aspects of Juvenile Delinquency has already been given by Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh and is likely to come up during the next Legislative session of the Constituent Assembly. After this Conference has decided on the main lines which such legislations should. take, one of two procedures may be followed. Either we may accept Dr. Deshmukh's bill with such modifications as may be necessary or, in the alternative, we may introduce a more comprehensive bill as a Government measure.
I will briefly mention some of the points for consideration in, this context. I have already referred to the fact that the trend of progressive opinion in Western countries favours the retention of juvenile delinquents in their homes. We have to consider whether in the prevailing conditions in India, juveniles will benefit more by being trained at home or by receiving instruction in special hostels established for the purpose.
Another point which the Conference will have to consider is the question of institutions dealing with Juvenile Delinquency. While Juvenile Courts may remain in the administrative charge of the Home Department, assisted by the Education Department it appears to me that the homes and schools for the juvenile delinquents must be directly administered by the Department of Education itself.
The Conference should also advise on the nature of instruction to be provided in such schools and homes. It is obvious that in addition to instruction in letters, there must also be provision for training in some craft or trade. Provision of moral instructions seems to me to be equally important. This need not be narrow or sectarian, but
wide ethical teaching of a universal type that will help in building up the character of the inmates.
The final point for consideration is the question of setting up an Advisory Committee in every Province. These Committees should be small and compact and should include Education Ministers, representatives of the Law and Home Departments and some social workers.
The second big problem before this Conference is the question of medium of instruction at different stages of school education. The basic principle in this matter is not in dispute. The claims of the mother tongue are accepted by all but in spite of this, there are complaints that this
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principle is not always observed in practice but on the contrary, a language other than the mother tongue is sought to be imposed on the minorities.
India is a vast country with many languages. We must accept unreservedly that all these languages are Indian languages and deserve the same treatment. Where a province is linguistically homogeneous, there is no difficulty in acting on this principle, but even where languages transcend provincial barriers, this should not affect our attitude to the problem. Since all the languages are Indian languages, what objection can there be if a minority in a particular province speak or learn in a language other than that of the majority ? One thing is certain. Even if our aim is unity, it cannot be achieved by compulsion or imposition. Experience has shown that the only way to achieve unity in cultural or linguistic matters is to accept the existing differences. Any attempt to iron out the differences only leads to greater conflict and bitterness.
A constructive approach to this problem cannot but lead to an amicable settlement. It is, therefore, a matter for gratification that the C.A.B. of Education, which is representative of all the Provinces, has decided unanimously that primary instruction should, provided there is the minimum number of pupils available, be invariably given in the mother tongue, and that even in the Secondary stage, instructions in the mother tongues should be provided if a sufficient number desire. It is obvious that the mother tongue of the pupil means the language which is described as such by the guardian of
the pupil. How can anyone, except the parents, decide what is the mother tongue of the child ?
The conflict is not about the principle but about its application to concrete cases. Recently, the Congress Working Committee has discussed the problem in all its aspects and after a thorough examination of all the issues involved, passed a resolution which you have no doubt seen. I am myself convinced that the attitude adopted by the Working Committee is the right one, and I hope that you will be of the same opinion and approach this problem with clear vision and without any mental reservations. It am sure that if this is done, all causes for grievance will be removed. We can then solve this problem once and for all, so that there may be no future complaints from any minority.
A satisfactory solution of the problem of languages is the more important in the context of our newly won freedom. We have only now achieved our liberty and it is essential that every effort must be made to develop a sense of solidarity among the component units of the nation. If we allow grievances to grow over basic things like the question of the mother tongue, I am afraid that the consequences will affect all aspects of our national life. I need hardly stress this point before you as you are equally alive to the necessity of a satisfactory settlement of this question. I would only appeal to you that we should approach this question with large hearted generosity and try to meet the wishes of the minorities in a manner which will leave no ground for dissatisfaction or complaint.