British occupied Punjab in 1849, so you will be surprised to know that education was 100% in Punjab at that time. The British considered this education dangerous, so they brought a young professor Gottlieb William Leitner from King’s College London to Lahore. Leitner was also an eccentric character, knowing 50 languages He spoke Arabic, Turkish and Farsi like the natives, and had been a “Muslim” for some time. He grew a beard and named himself Abdul Rasheed Sayyah and traveled to all Islamic countries, he even used to read and teach prayers in mosques. The Viceroy called him to India and entrusted him with the responsibility of changing the education system of Punjab. Leitner visited Punjab and wrote to the Viceroy “It will take me 50 years to make educated Punjab ignorant”.
The Viceroy gave him 50 years and he was made Inspector General of Schools Punjab, Leitner was also made Principal of Government College Lahore. He went on to found the “Punjab University”, he was the initial head of both these institutions. In order to make the Punjabis unarmed and especially uneducated, the British “deposited arms” in Punjab and took three hundred thousand from the government. While giving a book of Arabic, Sanskrit, Urdu and Gurmukhi and receiving six comes” also introduced a scheme and collected books specially from all over Punjab. The British then made English the official and official language and separated schools from places of worship
He also gave the responsibility of suppressing the middle class by giving English medium education to the children of the landlords. The British were also started to be portrayed as sensible, law-abiding and just. The sundial was banned, while vernacular languages and books were condemned as a mixture of ignorance
William Leitner’s plan succeeded and he made entire Punjab uneducated and ignorant in 30 years instead of 50. Leitner wrote in his own hand “I visited the whole of Punjab, today there is no literate person here”. He gave the example of “Jawrian Kalan”, a village in Sialkot. He said, “when I came to Punjab, there were one and a half thousand literate people in this village”. Today only 10 people here can read Gurmukhi and one Urdu and even these will disappear in a few years. Leitner learned Urdu while living in Punjab and then wrote a two-volume History of Islam in Urdu, this book was published twice in 1871 and 1876. Leitner completed his work in the 1870s and returned to Britain. Like every major anti-Islam and anti-humanist, Leitner also belonged to a capitalist (Jewish) family.
The article is fantastic but why you write, capitalist(Jewis) ; it is absurd for me as a muslim & as an indian as well, dude