Women's education and the nationalist response in Western India: Part II-higher education

Abstract

The nationalist attack led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak on women's education-particularly on the first girl's high school at Huzur Paga in Poona-was so strong that in the next 20 years no new girl's school could be established (see the first part of this article in Rao 2007). In 1904, R.G. Bhandarkar lamented in the Legislative Council that there were 71 boys' high schools and only seven for girls'. He pleaded for funds to start girls' schools throughout Bombay presidency. Tilak attacked the lone girls' high school in Poona 'for teaching secular subjects and housing high class girls as well as low class girls'. By 1900 the school had 230 girls of whom 128 were Brahmin, 73 non-Brahmin, and 30 Parsi, native Christian and Jewish. Tilak's objections were to what he called 'the cosmopolitan sprit of the school'.