Burma: Census of India 1901 Vol. I - Khamkoo

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02 REPORT ON THE CENSUS OF BURMA.
Table No. VIII. In 1891 the periods selected for exhibition in the education
table for that Census (Imperial Table No. IX) were three in number, namely, 0—15,
15— 25, and 25 and over. The age periods now adopted are four, so selected as
to divide the younger members of the literate population up into groups corresponding
approximately to primary, secondary and higher education. They are
o— 10, 10—15, 1
5— 2° and 2 ° and over -
The two first oi the I9° X age P enods
combined cover the same ground as the first of the 1891 age periods, but after
the age of fifteen has been passed a contrast by age periods of the figures for
the recent and for the previous Census is impracticable.
87. There is one more point of special importance in connection with the definition
of literacy, which should be kept in view when
Treatment of those only able to
a comTast of the returns of the last census with those
sign then- names.
oi previous enumerations is undertaken. In 1891 the
instructions for filling up column 12 of the Schedule for the enumeration of that
year concluded with the following passage :
"Enter as Illiterate those who are not under instruction and who do not know how
to both read and write, or who can read but not write, or can sign their name
but not read."
The last eight words are those to which I would draw special attention. They
exclude from the rank of literates all persons whose accomplishments with the pen
and pencil extend no further than to the scrawling of their name at the foot of a
petition or a receipt. This class was similarly denied admission into the literate
category in 1881. The principle underlying this distinction is indicated in one of
the earlier paragraphs of Chapter VI of the Census Commissioner's General
Report for India 1891 in the following words :
"Then, again, in the present day so many messengers, porters and other menials
find it to their advantage to be able to sign their names that they acquire
this amount of literature without ever advancing beyond it ; and it was held
advisable to specially exclude this class from the category of literate."
In the 1 90 1 instructions for filling up column 14 of the Schedule (" Literate or
Illiterate") no reference was made to the treatment of these illiterate signers and
the questions therefore arise ;
were they as a rule included among the literates at
to have affected the
the recent enumeration and, if they were, are their totals likely
aggregate of literacy to an appreciable extent ? I should on the whole be disposed
to answer both questions in the affirmative. If it were a question of omitting or
not omitting from the roll of literates a handful of bill collectors in the few mercantile
centres of the country, it would matter but little whether persons who could sign
their names and nothing more were treated as literate or not. In Burma, however,
it is more than a question of a few commercial menials, for a very substantial section
of the male indigenous community hovers on the border line between literacy
and illiteracy and it needs often but a trifle to turn the scale one way or the other.
High as is the proportion of the educated to the total population of the province,
it would be vain to suppose that the lettered Burman was removed by many degrees
from his unlettered countryman. The monastic curriculum is not severe and at best
the literacy of the bulk of the folk is a plant of shallow growth. A few years neglect
will often suffice to wither it, and it not infrequently happens that the only
remnant of his early teaching left to a man who would resent off-hand the imputation
of illiteracy, is found, when the matter is looked into, to be his power of appending
his own signature to a document. With a keen and conscientious enumerator
such an one would have been treated as an illiterate at the 1881 and 1891 Censuses,
while there is nothing to show that, provided he could laboriously inscribe the
letters of his name, he would not at the recent enumeration have been assumed to
be capable of spelling the result and, on the strength of this performance, have
been assigned a place in the dignified ranks of the literate. It is far from likely
that the number added to the literate population of the province by the omission
from the instructions of the eight words aforesaid is anything very great, but the
facts that that omission existed and that it probably had an influence of its own
upon the figures cannot reasonably be ignored.