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This book is a very full account of an extraordinary missionary teacher,
and the school which he developed in Srinagar, Kashmir. The
missionary was the Revd Canon Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe (1863-1949), an
Anglican priest who was sent, on account of his poor health, to
Kashmir by the Church Missionary Society in 1890; he remained there
until 1947. The situation he found there was dire. The streets were
filthy and infested with pi-dogs. The schoolboys were the sons of the
ruling Brahmin families (Dogras), all bearded and many married; they
wore pherans (long shirts) which were not washed during the winter
months and stank. Underneath was a kangri (clay pot with hot coals).
They were anxious to learn. Tyndale-Biscoe was determined to
produce good citizens, not converts, and so he stressed personal
cleanliness, physical fitness, games, rowing and sailing, and climbing,
combined with social service. It was a version of a Victorian public
school ethos, reinforced by frequent beatings for misdemeanours. These
objectives involved overturning entrenched customs. The Brahmins did not want to touch leather footballs, and considered that rowing was the
duty of Muslim boatmen. Competition and coercion won the day for
football and cricket and the example of Hindu teachers ensured the
acceptance of rowing. Social service followed. There were frequent
house fires in Srinagar but no one tried to put them out, as that was the
job of coolies. Tyndale-Biscoe organised a line of boys with water to
extinguish the blaze. Care for sick and wounded animals followed,
together with help during frequent floods. These efforts produced a new
attitude in the school, as Staff supported these reforms. Numbers
increased, from 200 in 1892 to 1,100 at six schools in 1899; clearly
both Hindu and Muslim parents approved of the schools’ results.
There were, however, many critics who disliked the schools. Foremost
among them were the officers, local and national, of the Church
Missionary Society. Their grants met only a fraction of the schools’
expenses, and were cut from time to time. They deplored the lack of
converts, despite the record of daily services and compulsory Bible
lessons. Expenses were met only through constant fund-raising and
private donations. There were also attacks from the Hindu Dharam
Sabha, who supported an attempt by Annie Besant to open a rival
school, which was met with limited success. Tyndale-Biscoe did not
help matters by his hearty support of British rule, his dislike of
educated Indians (some were poor teachers) and opposition to Indian
nationalism. His son Eric helped to modify these prejudices when he
joined the staff in 1927, and this enabled the schools to weather later
political developments, communal riots, and the second world war. The
direction of the schools passed to other hands, and so Eric left in 1946
for a post in New Zealand, and his father in 1947, only to die two years
later in Salisbury, Southern RJiodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). Eric’s
son. Dr Hugh Tyndale-Biscoe, the author of this book, is an Australian
scientist who has maintained the family’s links with the Tyndale-
Biscoe schools, and has seen them flourish (4,000 pupils) under
Kashmiri leadership, and with the support of many old boys in high
places. He has constructed an enthralling narrative from a wide range of
sources, despite some awkward gaps and the occasional errors of fact
and spelling. Well worth reading!
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