The Calcutta Review, 3rd Series/Volume 16/Calcutta University and its Critics

by Tripurari Chakravarti

THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY AND ITS CRITICS

The Teaching University of Calcutta, it seems, has fallen on evil days and evil tongues. Professor Jadu Nath Sarkar of Patna fame, the redoubtable champion of “efficiency, retrenchment and reform” in the University Education of Bengal, followed no doubt by several members of the Kartabhaja and Maharaja Sects (to use Prof. Sarkar’s own choice expressions), is again on the war-path. The acceptance of the Majority Report of the Post-Graduate Re-organisation Committee by the Calcutta University Senate has disturbed the nightly slumber and the appetite for daily meal of our valiant Reformer. The Professor speaks with a feeling of intense mortification that “realities are not as yet asserting themselves in the counsels of the present Senate” of the University, and he is dying to inaugurate in the affairs of the Calcutta University “the reign of law in the place of personal caprice and the enforcement of general principles instead of regard for particular individuals.” We should in all humility ask Prof. Sarkar, who waxes eloquent on “British peace, British administrative example and English education,” one significant question. Whose fault is it that “realities are not asserting themselves in the counsels of the present Senate”? One of Prof. Sarkar’s followers has suggested in a signed article written for the A. B. Patrika that the Senate is a packed body. But packed by whom? Under the Act of Incorporation, 1857, as amended by the Acts of 1876, 1904, 1911 and 1921, the Chancellor of the University is the “Governor of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal for the time being”. Under of the same Act the Vice-Chancellor is appointed by the Local Government of Bengal. Of the 100 Ordinary Fellows of the University 80 are nominated by the Chancellor and only 10 are elected by Registered Graduates. [Vide of the Indian Universities Act, 1904.] Under of the Act of Incorporation “the Local Government of Bengal may cancel the appointment of any person already appointed or hereinafter to be appointed a Fellow of the University and, as soon as such order is notified in the Gazette, the person so appointed shall cease to be a Fellow”. So, if the Senate has been a packed and subservient body at all, then it has been made so by His Excellency the Chancellor and the Local Government of Bengal. Nor can it be said that His Excellency the Chancellor does not ordinarily exercise his discrimination in the matter of nomination of Fellows, for during the recent years we have witnessed the most edifying spectacle of two Fellows being not re-nominated and their vacant seats being occupied by persons whose presence in the Senate has not certainly lent any weight or dignity to the academic discussions of that body. We really fail to understand how Prof. Sarkar, himself such an admirer of “British administration,” can be inclined to find fault with the present Senate of the University and be “disgusted with the perversity of the majority of its members”.

Again, Prof. Sarkar solemnly warns “our government and our people” against making any grants to this un-reformed and un-repentant University, which has “issued a defiant challenge to the public and the legislature, refusing to make any reform and demanding more money than ever before.” His arguments are two-fold : one, giving any financial assistance to the University will be only helping that institution and the student community of Bengal to enter “into a fool’s paradise”; and secondly, with the advent of democracy and rise of the Indian masses to political consciousness, “the demand for free primary schools and rural dispensaries will become irresistible”, and all this will naturally require large sums of public money. The illustrious author of Indian Economics has no doubt developed a great love for “the Bengali tax-payer and the Indian masses”, but how can he in all seriousness and with consistency ask the Government of Bengal to refuse any financial assistance to an institution whose affairs are solely managed by a Senate which consists mainly of Government nominees? The Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University is not a paid but an honorary official and he is a “fit and proper person” nominated by the Local Government of Bengal. Should it be proper for the Government now to reject the policy and measures thoroughly discussed and supported by such a Vice-Chancellor and such a Senate? For the Government to disapprove of the mature deliberations of the Senate in this respect would imply, to say the least, an unmerited slur on the fitness and academic judgment of the Vice-Chancellor and the Senators.

Prof. Sarkar has complained “against the waste of public money by the needless creation of new departments and new branches (optional groups) of subjects of instruction”, and he has quoted figures to show that some at least of the departments of Post-Graduate studies do not attract a large number of students. This is, in the opinion of our veteran educationist of Bihar, an intolerable state of things and the “Bengali tax-payer” should not find money to run this show. A great deal of controversy and too much of ill-informed discussion have no doubt recently centred round this question. The new line of criticism which has found favour with Prof. Sarkar requires that the University need not undertake instruction in all the subjects now taught, especially in subjects which do not attract a large number of students. We must confess that such criticism is quite unintelligible to us. The importance of subjects undertaken for Post-Graduate study and research in this University has never been considered to be absolutely dependent upon the number of students that those studies may attract. Such a narrow and superficial view of the scope of activities of higher teaching cannot certainly commend itself to men of judgment and wide academic experience. And this idea which has been advocated by Prof. Sarkar, if allowed to prevail, would sweep away most of the subjects which are peculiarly suited for study and research in an Indian University and would thus destroy the character of that institution as an oriental seat of learning. Prof. Sarkar says that the brief press report has misrepresented the speech of Mahamahopadhyay Haraprasad Sastri in the Senate in regard to the retention of Pali Studies in the University of Calcutta. But we know that Prof. Sarkar himself has given a most garbled version of the motion and the speech of M. M. Haraprasad Sastri, who moved an amendment expressly for the total abolition of Pali groups in the Post-Graduate Department. This is not an empty assertion but an open challenge which we are prepared to stand by to the very letter. We cannot in this connection overlook another criticism, that the University is providing instruction in too many subjects or subdivisions of subjects. We can only be astonished at the colossal ignorance of true University education and culture which criticisms such as these unmistakably betray. If we compare the scope of activities of some of the modern Universities in England with the sphere of work undertaken by this University, we shall find that the Calcutta University, even with its much-criticised and so-called numerous subjects of study, lags far behind the teaching activities of even the newly constituted Universities of Bristol, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester (vide the University Year Book of the British Empire, 1924). The Calcutta University Commission, which Prof. Sarkar quotes so often, however, recognised the extremely limited character of the branches of study already existing in this University and expressed the opinion that further development was desirable in some of those subjects where the facilities for study and research, according to the members of the Commission, were inadequate. The Commission further recommended that as many as 27 new departments of studies, at present not represented in the University of Calcutta or its colleges, should be established, and that teaching in those branches ought to be undertaken if funds permit (Vide University Commission Report, Vol. V. P. 286). Again, the University Commission further suggested the creation of chairs for subjects like Indian Philosophy and Religion, Vedic Language, Literature and Culture, Pali Language, Literature and Culture, and Indian Anthropology. The list is plainly not exhaustive and further recommendations on similar lines were made by the Commission for other branches of study as well. All over India there exist vast masses of unexplored historical material in many languages. We need only refer to the contents of the Government archive-rooms, the admirably kept archives of His Exalted Highness the Nizam at Hyderabad, and the large Maratha collections at Poona. The history of India cannot be fully explored until these collections are made available. They are not made effectively “available merely by throwing open the archive-rooms to scholars. What is necessary is that all the most valuable materials should be printed and translated into English. This work can only be carried out by the Universities, and the Calcutta University Commission suggested the production ‘of a great series of Monumenta Historica Indica like the Rolls Series and the Record Office publications in England. India needs nothing more than a wide diffusion of that sanely critical spirit in dealing with men and institutions which historical investigation should create. This is one of the greatest functions of a University : that of Stimulating and Promoting Research. Every University must see that its teachers and graduates have access to the means of independent investigation, if for no other reason, for the maintenance of its own intellectual vitality. The truth is that we require more education and better education and we have no doubt that the demand for the highest type of education will increase as the requisite facilities become more and more available. Finally, in disposing of the present topic under discussion we should take into account the considered verdict of the Calcutta University Commission in support of the existing Post-Graduate system. The Commissioners refer in eloquent terms to “the remarkable expansion of Post-Graduate Teaching and to new standards of method in University Teaching under the direct auspices of the University”, and they think that the system is calculated to “inspire solid hopes for the future ”, (Vide Report, Vol. I, p. 76.)

Prof. Sarkar has referred to “public cry for retrenchment and reform” and he has quoted figures from the “daily papers”, illustrating “the Calcutta University’s wasteful methods in the Post-Graduate Department”. We saw before the 1st of July only one daily paper, containing apparently an inspired article to discredit the University by quoting wrong and misleading figures. We do not know if Prof. Sarkar is suffering from the mental aberration of confusing the singular with the plural. But this much is clear that men, sincerely anxious to promote the welfare of the University, cannot be assisted by uninformed and prejudiced criticism abounding in sweeping generalisations of a condemnatory character. To quote only one instance. It is not true that a teacher here delivers only 5 lectures a week against 18 at Dacca. Both the assertions are equally incorrect. In History, for example, the number of average lecture hours per week is not less than 9 or 10 in this University, whereas the number of lecture hours at Dacca would be much less. We have been authorised by Dr. Rameschandra Majumdar, the head of the Department of History at Dacca, to challenge Prof. Sarkar’s figures so far as Dacca is concerned. Besides, the fundamental basis of Prof. Sarkar’s conception of the true function of a University Lecturer seems to us to be entirely wrong. He complains bitterly against a “huge army of young lecturers without enough teaching work for them”. We fail to distinguish which is the greater crime—to be young or not to have enough teaching work. It seems that in the opinion of Prof. Sarkar both are equally grave offences. We have already shown that his second charge at least, that is, want of sufficient teaching work for University Lecturers, cannot be substantiated. Prof. Sarkar no doubt thinks that a University Lecturer essentially exists for merely delivering lectures like a machine, irrespective of the difficulty and importance of the subjects of his lectures, or the value of the lectures themselves. It appears that he would base the numerical strength of the teaching staff for each department of Post-Graduate studies on the assumption that every University Lecturer must deliver at least 18 lectures per week (these are the figures that Prof. Sarkar has quoted on behalf of Dacca, though they are all wrong); he would then have an approximate idea of the number of lectures necessary for a particular department and then calculate on this mechanical basis the numerical strength of teachers that should be provided for the different branches of study. By the way, we learn from the Inspection Report of the Patna College during the session 1909-10, which finds a place in the Minutes of the Calcutta University for the year 1910, that even Prof. Sarkar had not to deliver more than 11 lectures per week although he always parades that he used to deliver 18 lectures per week besides doing research work. It should also be carefully borne in mind in this connection that the bulk of Prof. Sarkar’s work was under-graduate teaching, which is, as everybody knows, substantially different from Post-Graduate instruction.

The entire case of Prof. Sarkar is thus based on a narrow and erroneous conception of the scope and function of higher teaching in a modern and progressive University, and it postulates a state of things which can, or rather, which should never exist in any University of the world. In short, the spirit in which Prof. Sarkar has approached the question of University re-organisation and reform betrays, to say the least, a lamentable lack of appreciation of the manifold activities in the progressive Universities of Europe and America. He miserably fails to realise that in University education the most important thing is not the number of lectures that a teacher can deliver per week, but the capacity and fitness of a teacher to undertake the teaching in a particular branch of a highly specialised subject. The cause of higher education in a country is not certainly promoted by such baleful spirit of commerce as seeks to judge education by the maxims of the counter. In his anxiety to reduce a “costly superfluous teaching staff,” and to prevent its “spectacular expansion and rank luxuriance,” our veteran educationist entirely overlooks or ignores the subjects of study and their sub-divisions under a Board of Higher Studies in the Post-Graduate Department. Here the real difficulty of the Board does not arise from the number of hours of lecture work to be assigned to a particular teacher but the problem is something different. A lecturer who has done some amount of research work in a particular subject or subjects and who has been teaching such subject or subjects for several years, can very easily take upon himself additional hours of lecture work, because that does not involve on the part of such a lecturer any extra preparation at home. But if he is called upon to undertake the teaching of a subject with which he has little or no acquaintance, then he cannot certainly do the same amount of justice to his new undertaking, although he may undergo considerable additional labour at home. What we most emphatically maintain without any fear of contradiction is that the standard of 18 hours lecture work per week, to which Prof. Sarkar lends his support, is a most erroneous and misleading standard. For the real worth of a University Lecturer does not consist in his muscular or vocal capacity for putting forth so many hours of lecture per week, but in his ability and fitness for producing some amount of original work in a particular branch of highly specialised studies and imparting instruction to Post-Graduate students in that subject. In higher teaching it is not so much the quantity of lectures delivered by an indifferent and ill-prepared teacher that counts as the quality, substance and value of the lectures of a competent and able lecturer who has been able to make himself a master of the subject or subjects which he intends to teach. For good or evil, in these days of specialisation, it is impossible for one or two teachers, however learned and experienced, to traverse the whole field of their subject. The existing Post-Graduate organisation is therefore based on a system by which a student would be brought into contact with a number of teachers, each with his own point of view and his own special subject, and a teacher would not be expected to diffuse his energy but would confine his attention to making himself master of some portion of his work. Proposal for curtailment of the ranks of teachers without the abolition of some of the important existing teaching activities in the University can only proceed from the dilettanti without judgment and adequate academic experience.

The report of the Committee appointed by the Government of India in 1916 to consider the arrangements for Post-Graduate teaching in the University of Calcutta, expressly recognised “the necessity of providing a variety of treatment in the instruction offered to graduates, and of affording opportunities of specialisation on the part of the teachers”. “Students engaged in the higher courses,” they thought, “should draw inspiration and knowledge from a number of teachers and thus learn to study their subject from many points of view”. If this proposition laid down by the Post-Graduate Committee in 1916 be accepted as a sound educational principle so far as higher teaching is concerned, then we have yet to learn how far the opinion of Prof. Sarkar is tenable from an academic point of view. Again, it is essential to have some clear ideas of what is meant by the term Post-Graduate instruction and what are its objects. This is particularly essential as there has been some misunderstanding in the matter. It must be admitted, we hope, by critics, candid and impartial, that the M.A. and M.Sc. courses should not take the form merely of a more thorough undergraduate course conducted on very similar lines and methods. In his enthusiasm for “retrenchment” Prof. Sarkar has not made the slightest reference to the question of tutorial instruction. At present in the University classes, even with the existing “costly superfluous teaching staff,” it has not been possible for us to render any adequate and satisfactory tutorial assistance to the students. But if the re-commendations of Prof. Sarkar are to be given effect to, then the giving of any tutorial guidance to the students will become impossible. There can be no doubt that all students gain inestimably from an intimate association with a teacher of ripe experience and scholarly habits, a teacher who will not only assist him in solving difficulties but also inculcate in him the proper habits of study and thought. We can very well express our meaning in the words of the London University Commission’s Report—“It is the personal influence of the man doing original work in his subject which inspires belief in it, awakens enthusiasm, gains disciples............ ‘Any one,’ says Helmholtz, ‘who has once come into contact with one or more men of the first rank must have had his whole mental standard altered for the rest of his life.’ Lectures have not lost their use, and books can never fully take the place of the living spoken word. Still less can they take the place of the most intimate teaching in laboratory and seminar, which ought not to be beyond the range of the ordinary course of a University education.........”. Every possible effort, therefore, should be made to provide arrangements by which all students will receive, at least, some individual attention. This is also a mandatory requirement enjoined by Sec. 35 of Chapter XI of the Regulations. The supreme importance and value of a well-thought-out scheme of tutorial guidance in M.A. and M.Sc. teaching was recognised as early as 1913 by the Presidency College staff, headed by Principal James, in their memorandum on Post-Graduate organisation. This note has been printed in extenso as Appendix IV to the Post-Graduate Re-organisation Committee’s Report. Economy and efficiency cannot be measured by a mathematical standard; but, subject to the obvious reservation, namely, that an educational institution maintained for the Advancement of Learning cannot be run on commercial lines, the Post-graduate system of this University has been carried out with such economy as is consistent with efficiency. We have to realise that higher teaching and research need money, favourable surroundings and an intimate association among scholars, and these factors should not be neglected in any discussion of this nature.

Prof. Sarkar has spoken out bluntly that “the graduates of the Calcutta University are showing very poor results in the I. C. S., I. P. S., and Finance Examinations......where they are not examined by their own post-graduate lecturers but by an independent board.” In the first place the Calcutta University is not a workshop for manufacturing I. C. S., or I.P.S. people and no University worthy of its name should care to regulate its syllabuses or courses of study to prepare candidates for the Service Examinations. The distinguished member of the Indian Educational Service infected, no doubt, with the usual bureaucratic mentality, considers that success in the Indian Civil Service Examination is the highest ideal as also the measure of University education in India. But it is only recently that Sir Geoffrey Butler, who represents the University of Cambridge in the House of Commons, has described the British Universities after the use to which they have been put by Indian ex-Governors, as so many Keddhas where

“a stout old tusker in the shape of the Secretary of State, and gentle female elephants in the shape of certain ex-Governors and other officials, charged with prodding or alluring the young elephants to a corner where Sir Stanley Leaths, waving a torch and beating a tom-tom, has instructed the Civil Service Commission to lasso the bemused creatures.”

In India, on the other hand, we think that Universities cannot prove their usefulness better than in the success of their students in the Service Examinations! Secondly, and this is now the more important part of the matter, Prof. Sarkar’s insinuation is entirely baseless and mischievous. The I. C. S. Examination has been instituted in India since 1922. During the last 4 years there have been altogether 28 appointments from India as the result of open competitive examinations, and of these 28 appointments Bengal has secured as many as 8. Is this “very poor result” for Bengal? This year also two Bengalee students have been successful in the I.P.S. Examination. We have no desire certainly to flatter ourselves on these results, but Prof. Sarkar’s suppression of facts must not be allowed to pass unchallenged. It may not be irrelevant to point out here that even now the governing bodies of colleges and Universities all over Northern India prefer to recruit the graduates of this much-maligned University to their teaching staff inspite of a persistent campaign of calumny conducted by certain ponderous Professors with a perseverance worthy of a better cause. When the Professor, who is so much disgusted with the “sneaks, sluggards and sycophants of the Calcutta University and their methods”, wants serious and competent students as his research assistants, he invariably turns to youngmen of this University subjected, according to him, to a method of “intellectual and moral poisoning”, and cruelly ignores the claims of those generations of sound scholars whom the talented Historian of Aurangzeb has so laboriously and conscientiously trained for the last quarter of a century.

Prof. Sarkar, perhaps carried away by his zeal to advocate the “reform” of this University, has expressed his sentiments in language so choice that we cannot but include some specimens in this reply, though the assertions are indefinite and unsupported by any evidence :

“If the governing body of the University once makes up its mind to discourage sneaks and sycophants, it can get rid of sham scholars in a day.”
“the reckless creation of new posts in a spirit of megalomania”.
“Helping the University and the student community to enter into a fool’s paradise”.
“But the Calcutta Senate majority have not evidently succeeded in overwhelming the boards of examiners for all-India competitions like the I. C. S., I. P. S. and Finance service; there the examiners are not internal teachers and their notes have no charm”.
“The bad system of teaching and the ridiculous methods and standards of examination that now obtain at Calcutta have poisoned the very springhead of Bengali’s intellectual and moral life”.

This is academic Billingsgate of an unsurpassed quality and we do not propose to open out these veins of pure gold to further public scrutiny. The educated opinion of Bengal, or for the matter of that, all India will not, we are sure, need any further enlightenment in a case where the lights are so glaring and so flashy.

Finally, the Professor-educationist of Bihar, earning a very niggardly salary of over a thousand as a college teacher (a salary, every pice of which, by the way, comes out of the people’s taxes), has made a fervent and eloquent appeal to the Bengal Legislature and the Bengalee nation to check the mad pursuits and “poisonous” methods of the Calcutta University which has, as the Professor tells us, “issued a defiant challenge to the public opinion of Bengal”. Prof. Sarkar has also made a frantic effort to impress upon the “Bengali tax-payer” the huge extravagance of the Post-Graduate Department. In the opinion of Prof. Sarkar, so solicitious for retrenchment in University finance and so wonderfully neutral in the matter of administrative extravagances elsewhere, a demand for three lacs is, no doubt, a huge and unnecessary demand. But will it take the Bengalee people long to realise that the sum demanded by the University of Calcutta constitutes but a very small fraction of the entire revenue of Bengal which comes up to 11 crores annually? We leave it to cultured Bengal to judge if higher education in this province should be starved out of existence by the policy recommended by Prof. Jadu Nath Sarkar, who has of late developed into an expert in academic jugglery and political free-lancing.^[1]

Tripurari Chakravarti

1. Since this went to the press, the elected representatives of the “Bengali tax-payer,” in Council assembled, have without a single dissentient voice and in unmistakable terms, lent their support to the demand of the Senate for an annual recurring grant of three lacs. What does Professor Sarkar say now?—But we forget the Patna Censor was not represented at Town Hall.