A Nation in Making/Chapter 17

​17

The Universities Act

The Universities Act was passed in 1904, and a Committee was appointed to frame the regulations under the Act for the University of Calcutta. On the passing of the Universities Act I divested myself of my proprietory right over the Ripon College and made over to a body of trustees the college and the school, which is an adjunct to it, with the library, the laboratory and all property belonging to them, together with a sum of Rs. 5,000 in cash. I myself remained one of the trustees, reserving to myself no interest, pecuniary or otherwise, save the right of nominating my successor.

Having thus made over the college and the school to the public, I applied myself to the task of providing a permanent habitation for them. We had never had funds for so large an undertaking. So long as I was proprietor I could not appeal to the public for subscriptions in aid of an institution which was mine. But, now that the college was a public concern, no such scruples stood in my way, and I opened a subscription list for the college building, the foundation-stone of which was laid by Sir Edward Baker, Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, in August, 1910.

Sir John Rees attacked him for thus publicly associating himself with an institution with which I was so closely connected. Sir Edward Baker, having read the article, wrote to me, requesting me to see him at 'Belvedere '. He showed me the article. He said, 'I mean to give a reply to it'. 'My reply' he added, 'is a further grant of Rs. 5,000 to the Ripon College. Write to the Accountant-General and he will give you the money.' That was the character of the man: strong, generous, impulsive, he was one of the staunchest friends of the Ripon College; and it is no exaggeration to say—and I owe it to his honoured memory—that, but for his powerful intervention, the law classes of the Ripon College would not have been saved. Our law library was not well equipped. He made a ​present of law reports, the gift of the Bengal Government, worth several thousand rupees.

We were asked at one stage to show cause why the law classes should not be disaffiliated. Subsequently the attitude of the Syndi- cate was modified and the affiliation of the law classes was con- tinued on our complying with the requirements of the University. I was invited to a meeting of the Syndicate and was subjected to a rigorous cross-examination, which ended in a compromise acceptable to both parties, the Syndicate and the Ripon College authorities. In all these negotiations, in the change of temper that was manifest, the influence of the Rector (Sir Edward Baker) was throughout apparent.

The work of collecting subscriptions for the college building was one of no ordinary difficulty. To obtain money for a public purpose from the general body of the public, except when the feelings of the community have been deeply stirred, must always be a matter of considerable labour and trouble. In India the task is beset with peculiar difficulties. Our people are not rich. Those who are rich are not always willing or patriotic enough to pay. It is the same men who are every time called upon to subscribe. We have a limited circle from which to draw public subscriptions, and the yield is more or less unsatisfactory.

Sir Edward Baker having gone home on leave, I appealed to Sir William Duke, who was officiating for him, to help us with Government money and influence. He promised to assist, and very kindly came over to inspect the buildings. We had then made very little progress in paying off the contractors' bills. He said, 'Mr. Banerjea, you have been building upon faith'. I said, in reply, 'Your Honour, faith removes mountains'; and my faith was abundantly justified by the result. The estimates had originally been fixed at Rs. 1,14,000. They mounted up, as Sir Edward Baker had prophesied, to Rs. 1,44,000. Government contributed Rs. 60,000; and the balance I raised from the public and only a small sum from the college funds. I made an appeal to the ex-students of the Ripon College, some of whom had obtained their education free at the college. The response, however, was unsatisfactory and disappointing.

We have now cleared off the debt; we have added a fourth storey to the college building, and have laid by a reserve fund of over a lakh of rupees. The college, with the school department, is one of the largest educational institutions in the country, with ​students numbering about 2,500, and it is the only private college with a law department affiliated to the University. The financial control of the college is vested in a body of trustees, while the college and the school are administered by a council with me as President. The constitution of the Board of Trustees and of the College Council was settled by me in consultation with the Syndi- cate of the University.

I ceased to take part in professorial work in February 1913, when I was elected a member of the Viceroy's Legislative Council, and when my absence from Calcutta at Delhi and Simla made it impossible for me to be regularly associated with the work of teaching. It was with a wrench that I withdrew from duties that had been the pleasure of my life, and in which I had been engaged for over thirty-eight years. I look back with the utmost satisfaction upon my work extending beyond the lifetime of a generation, among the youthful section of my countrymen. I loved the students, and they loved me; and I claim to have had a considerable share in moulding their minds and stimulating their aspirations. I have been charged with diffusing political ideas among them, and so I have done, and they were political ideas of the right kind, the strongest safeguards against revolutionary principles.

I have preached patriotism coupled with orderly constitutional progress. I have preached self-government within the Empire as our goal, and constitutional and lawful methods as the only means for its attainment. If to-day revolutionary principles have found acceptance among some young men in Bengal (and their number is a handful) the fact is traceable to conditions economic and political, which are more or less independent of all propagandism. The teacher or the preacher may incite, but he cannot create the nursing-ground from which the revolutionary draws his inspiration and his support. The writings of the pamphleteers would have fallen upon barren soil, if the conditions in France, political and economic, had not prepared men's minds for the acceptance of revolutionary ideas.

However that may be, it was with me always a pleasure to be in the class-room with young men, teaching, guiding, inspiring them. In their company I felt rejuvenated, and now, if in the evening of my life my optimism remains unabated, I attribute it largely to my close and constant association with young men, and the living interest I felt in them and in their welfare. The class-room was to me a training-ground. If I tried to teach the young to be ​good and true and patriotic, they in their turn imbued me with their juvenescence, their youthful ardour and their radiant outlook on life. I always returned from the class-room with an added stock of youthful qualities, which, controlled and regulated by my contact with affairs, was a superb asset in the daily struggle of life.

Frederick the Great would not appoint a schoolmaster to any administrative post, and a Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal, as the great Vidyasagar once told me, followed the same rule. But a schoolmaster, in living touch with affairs, ought to possess the qualities that are most valuable in life. More than one President of the United States had been a school master. I can scarcely exaggerate the benefit I derived from close association with the young for a period of nearly forty years. As President of the College Council, I am in touch with the administration of the college, though I have ceased to be a teacher. My interest in the college and in the cause of education will only cease when I have ceased to take an interest in all mundane affairs.

For five years I was a member of the Senate. I owed my seat not to nomination by Government, but to the votes of my fellow- graduates. The new Universities Act had given to registered graduates the right of returning five members to the Senate, who should be graduates of not less than ten years' standing. I stood as a candidate and was returned at the head of the poll.

Before the enactment of the new Universities Act a modified sort of election was allowed, but it was only M.A.'s and B.A.'s who had graduated in or before 1867 who could stand as candidates for election. Why the year 1867 was fixed, why no one who had graduated in or after that year could stand as a candidate, is one of those riddles that the official sphinx has not chosen to solve, and which at the time evoked considerable comment and criticism. The graduates of 1868 were under no special ban. They could not by any means be considered an inferior set as compared with the graduates of previous years. Why then were they excluded from standing for the election? If the rule had been that only graduates of twenty or even twenty-five years could be eligible, there would be some sense in it as having in view the return of only experienced graduates. But such a rule, my friends said, would not have served the purpose of its framers; for their view was that the rule was especially framed to exclude me, the year of my graduation being 1868.

So unreasonable was the restriction that a public meeting was ​held at the Albert Hall, attended by many leading graduates of the Calcutta University, urging its modification, but all in vain. The rule continued in force until the Universities Act, which definitely conferred the right of election upon graduates of ten years' standing.

The most important work done, during the period I was a member of the Senate, was the framing of the regulations for the consideration of the Government. I was on the Committee. We had hard work. I cannot say that our recommendations were all accepted. In one important matter they were rejected. We recommended that the history of England should be a part of the curriculum for the Matriculation Examination. This recommendation was negatived by a committee of the Government, which finally settled the regulations. How it is possible for a student to study English literature without a knowledge of English history is one of those enigmas that the framers of the regulations and the Government of India must solve as best they can.

When I became a member of the Senate, Sir Alexander Pedler was Vice-Chancellor. He had a leading hand in the framing of the Universities Act. He engineered it in the Legislative Council; and in the fitness of things he was placed at the head of the University of Calcutta, for which the Universities Act was chiefly meant. He was succeeded by Mr. Justice Ashutosh Mukherjea. His long familiarity with the Calcutta University, his wide grasp of educational problems and his extraordinary capacity for dealing with them, made Sir Ashutosh the most commanding figure in the University. During the time he was Vice-Chancellor (and he held the office for several years) he ruled the University with a supreme sway; and it is but right to say that he enforced the regulations with a measure of discretion, a regard for all interests, that partly allayed the suspicion and anxiety they had created in the mind of the educated community of Bengal. It was during his Vice-Chancellorship that Sir Taraknath Palit and Sir Rash Behari Ghose made their princely gifts to the University for a College of Science. They had faith in his capacity, and they doubtless felt that under his able guidance the foundations of the institution, which they had contributed to build up, would be well and truly laid. A vice- chancellor with less devotion and capacity would not probably have inspired their confidence. University teaching in the higher departments made a great stride during his Vice-Chancellorship.

One of the features of his administration that provoked comment and criticism was the abolition of the law classes in the private ​colleges, with the exception of those of the Ripon College. His underlying idea perhaps was the creation of a central law college that would serve as a model of efficiency fit to compare favourably with the great law colleges in England and America, but this might have been done by insisting upon a higher standard of efficiency in the law classes in the private colleges, and without their actual disaffiliation. A healthy competition contributes to educational efficiency, and anything approaching a monopoly is injurious to the public interests.

It is impossible to leave this reference to Sir Ashutosh Mukherjea's work as a member of the University without lamenting the grievous loss which the cause of education in Bengal and India has sustained by his early death, almost immediately after his retirement from the Bench. He was a unique figure in the educational world of Bengal and it will be difficult to fill his place. The numerous demonstrations held in his honour, all over the province, bore testimony to the universality of the national sorrow.

In 1901 I ceased to be a member of the Bengal Legislative Council. I stood for a seat in the Imperial Legislative Council the same year. The rival candidate was the present Maharaja of Darbhanga. I was defeated. The circumstances that led to my failure were peculiar. There was a tie between the Maharaja and myself, each counting five votes. The matter went up to the Government of India. Under the Council Regulations, the Government was bound to pass orders within two months of the polling. The Government of Lord Curzon violated this rule. It did nothing for three months, and ordered a re-election when I had ceased to be a member of the Bengal Council and could not record my vote in my favour.

It was a piece of diplomatic strategy, opposed to the rules in force and to all considerations of fairness, the effect of which was to exclude me from the Governor-General's Council. I had stood for a seat in the Imperial Legislative Council several times before, but I had always been defeated; and I fear that official influence was exerted against me. A friend of mine, who came from Behar and whom I helped to be returned to the Bengal Council, assured me that he would have voted for me, but that he could not disregard the request of a high official who had spoken to him on the subject. I think the fact was published at the time in the newspapers, with- out, of course, the names of the parties concerned.