Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 2/D. Sinclair, Esq., M.A.
THIRTY-SECOND CONVOCATION.
(By D. Sinclair, Esq., M.A.)
Graduates of the Year,—In accordance with the Bye-Laws of the University an address has now to be delivered to you by a member of the Senate exhorting you to conduct yourselves suitably unto the position to which by the degrees conferred upon you you have attained, and His Excellency the Chancellor has conferred on me the honour of discharging this duty to-day.
You have all of you for some years now been travelling along a straight and well-defined road, your intellectual horizon somewhat narrowed by text-books and syllabuses, and some-times I fear clouded by notes and annotations, compilations and compendiums; but though often brain-weary, often heart-heavy sometimes to some of you as I know, having the utmost difficulty in providing yourselves with the ordinary necessaries of life, you have struggled manfully on, and the end of this road you have reached to-day. In the name of the Senate I most heartily congratulate you. But you will have already discovered that this road along which you have been travelling, has but led you into an open country—the world; that you must still go on on life's journey, and as there may be in front of you pitfalls into which you may stumble, obstacles you will have to overcome, rivers you may have to wade through, hills you will have to climb, it is becoming that your Alma Mater, now that you are no longer to be under her immediate fostering care, should, in wishing you Godspeed, tender to you words of encouragement and counsel, it may be also of warning.
Fortunate have you been when compared with the great masses of your countrymen. Value of a knowledge of the English Language. Knowledge you have acquired of which they can form but little conception. Your acquaintance with the English language, has opened to you the treasury of English literature and the loftiest and noblest thoughts of England's greatest sons have become known to you. Her store-house of science has been unlocked for you and you have been taught and shown how to use the forces of nature for the relief and benefit of your fellow-countrymen. Through the English language you have learned something of the human race, how nations have risen to the highest eminence and the causes that led to their downfall. You have made the acquaintance of the heroes of the world, a Leonidas and a Washington,
- Whose every battle-field is holy ground.
Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone, and of others whose careers though less brilliant were no less noble a Hampden and a Wilberforce, names that will be held in grateful remembrance by a hundred generations. All this and much more you have learned, and under the personal influance and guidance of your professors you will have been able to draw from it the lessons therein taught. These will have elevated you morally as well as intellectually, stirred up within you new and loftier aspirations, a stronger longing after truth and goodness, a desire to follow after right because it is right and loathing of every thing that savours of the nature of mere selfishness.
How poor a thing is man!
Such being the lessons you have learned and the principles by which you are to be guided, it will be for you to walk up to them and demonstrate them in your lives. Demonstrate what you have learnt in your lives. Never have you been regarded with a more critical eye than now. Never perhaps with more suspicion. Prove by your unspotted lives, by your devotion to duty, by your unimpeachable integrity, your unquestioned honesty and your unflinching truthfulness, that the training and culture you have received have elevated and ennobled your natures, made you better men and better citizens, and thus your Alma Mater is doing the great work for which she was called into existence, a work that as time goes on will be seen more and more to be for the highest good of this great and historic land.
Students you have been, some of you perhaps at first with the sole object of being in the laudable position you occupy to-day. Be students through life. But your studies will have been of little avail, if they have not awakened within you a desire to pursue your search after knowledge and truth for its own sake, to learn and understand the thoughts and modes of action of the great of past ages, to make yourselves familiar with the current speculation of your own day, and to gather from them what your well-trained minds will readily turn to advantage for yourselves and your countrymen. Those of you who have selected Medicine or Engineering* as your professions will have to remain students for life. Science advances with rapid strides. It will only be by continuous and steady application you will be able to keep pace with it. Not to keep pace with it is to fall behind, to become inefficient practitioners in the professions you have adopted. You will, therefore, make yourselves acquainted with what the giants in your profession are doing, the discoveries they are making, the inventions they are introducing. But, while all of you will make a thorough acquaintance with your own profession or work, whatever it may be, your first duty, you will have many hours of leisure in which to use your knowledge for the benefit of the community amongst which you may be placed. You have received a liberal education. You know its value. You will know it still more. Do what in you lies to give to the masses of your countrymen that which you yourselves have so freely received, and, wherever you may be placed, be each of you a centre of light, illuminating and revivifying all around you. Government has done much, and no doubt will continue to do much, to promote education; but it is on you, on those who have received it in its highest forms, that will largely rest the responsibility of raising the intellectual as well as the moral condition of your country. Educate the masses. Educate the masses. Stimulate the desire for education where-ever it exists, where there is no such desire strive to create it. Without education you never will have national life, never become a great people influencing for good the history of the world.
You have received a liberal education yourselves. Give it to your women. Educate your women. Much has been done in this respect during the past twenty years, and all honor to those who have led the way. But much remains to be done. It is but the veriest fraction of the females of this country, that are under instruction. Further by your example this good work. Use your utmost influence to extend it. And as for generations', perhaps, the national sentiment is likely to insist on girls leaving school at an early age, a great opportunity is provided for you to supply them after leaving school with a healthy literature in their own language. I am glad to see one of the members of the Senate devoting the leisure of a ripe age to this most commendable work. Do you take it up. The education and training you have received pre-eminently fit you for it. Apply yourselves to it. Provide a vernacular literature of interesting and useful knowledge—a literature of romance too, if you will, breathing a lofty moral spirit—a literature that will brighten what might otherwise be many a weary listless hour, that will raise your women intellectually, and make them more and more true companions for you as wives—companions able to understand your labours and sympathize with you in them, and by their sure instincts help you in your difficulties. Those of you who have made Science a special study will have many opportunities of using your knowledge for the benefit of your less fortunate countrymen. You will teach them to observe those great laws that cannot be broken with impunity. That for them to preserve their bodily health and escape the ravages of such relentless avengers as cholera or small-pox, attention must be paid to the sanitation and conservancy of their homes and villages; that the water to be used for food must not be that green filthy liquid taken from the little tank into which the sewage of the village runs or percolates; but it must be pure and clear, carrying with it refreshing and life, not decay and death. You will use your influence to dispel many of the prejudices that prevail amongst your countrymen, such for example as that against vaccination, so that many a home may not be left desolate, many a lovely face not disfigured by the scars of a loathsome disease. Your scientific knowledge should enable you to help the manufacturer to produce a higher quality of goods, and if as the latest writer maintains, the country plough is the best suited to the requirements of the land and the climate, you can at least impress upon the ryot the importance of a rotation of crops, and that land, if it is to be a bountiful giver, must be treated generously and liberally.
Students you have been, students you must continue to be, and students of more than books.
You are going out into the world and will come into living contact with living men. Your lot may probably be cast in times when great social and, it may be, religious questions will have to be considered and faced. It will require of you the utmost caution, the most careful study of the questions themselves and of their apparent adaptability to the times in which you live, and from your knowledge of the history of the human race and human institutions, from your study of the great movements that have convulsed nations, at one time hurling them into darkness and despair, at another time carrying them on to a brighter and happier and more glorious era than had ever previously dawned upon them, you will have to determine for yourselves whether things shall remain as they are, or whether customs, consecrated by a hoary antiquity, and deeply rooted in the hearts of an ancient people, shall not be changed or done away with. You will have to make up your mind as to whether, for example, infant marriage and enforced widowhood is to be perpetuated, and every year the lives of thousands of young, bright and tender hearts to be blasted and reduced to wretchedness. And with the light which you have received, if you are persuaded that such customs are detrimental to the happiness of your country, that they are contrary to human nature and have no place in your ancient Faith, then you must have the courage of your convictions, and must make your voice heard and power felt. No more difficult duty lies before you. No duty more noble. Be brave, with the bravery of conviction. You must therefore be brave, not in the sense of what I am afraid we too frequently see in the present times, when young men mistake volubility for wisdom, and arrogance for manliness. But brave, with a bravery founded on conviction arrived at after the most careful study and reflection, a bravery that will be clothed with modesty, that will be free from selfish ends and untarnished by self-conceit.
But you are looking forward to taking a part in the politics of the day. Politics has become a popular subject. It is interesting. It is exciting. Above all, in this country, it is comparatively easy. Here you will have no national prejudices to battle against. No institutions,
Fixed to the people's pious nursery faith,"
to lay irreverent hands upon.
You, however, hold an important position in this country—a position I might say almost unique in the history of the world. Twenty years ago one of the most cultured and most distinguished statesmen that ever ruled in this land, addressing the graduates on an occasion similar to the present, called on them to remember that they were the adopted children of European civilization, the interpreters between the stranger and the Indian, between the Government and the subject, between the great and the small, between the strong and the weak, and he asked them whether they would carry a faithful or a deceitful message. Your numbers then were small, your influence much less far reaching than now. The responsible position you occupy may well be placed before you again, and the same question may not inappropriately be asked you to-day.
You have studied the history of your own country. Compare the past of your country with its present. You are acquainted with those dark days for this unhappy land, when the Afghan or the Mughal Sweeping down on her fair plains converted her fertile fields into a desert, levelled her most sacred shrines with the dust, and brought death and dishonor into a hundred thousand homes. You are acquainted with the later Mughal rule which, while it has left an imperishable name in the wonderful works of its engineers and in its magnificent buildings had no room in its policy for religious toleration, no room in its administration for aliens to its faith, no room for buildings such as that in which we are assembled to-day—fostering homes of light and learning. You will call to mind how even almost within the memory of the living, the quiet peaceful hamlet of your fathers might be roused from its slumbers by gangs of Pindari robbers, and the morning sun be a witness only to the desolation that had been made—the father dead—the children orphans—all property gone—nothing left for the survivors but misery and blank despair. These things you will call to mind and compare them with the condition of your country now, when every man has security in his possession, and the humble ryot may lay him down and sleep in peace and safety. Perfect freedom in religion, equality in the eyes of the Law, freedom of speech, and liberty of the Press such as few nations in the world possess. Education provided in the most generous spirit, and designedly intended to enable you to qualify yourselves for some of the highest judicial and administrative offices in the State, and, as time goes on, it may be, to enable you to have a larger share in the Government of your country. These and many more inestimable benefits you have had given to you with no grudging hand. What then, I would ask, is to be your message to your countrymen? Is it to be a message of peace and goodwill? Or is it to be a message of misrepresentation, of concealment, keeping out of view the many benefits you have received in the past, and presenting in false colours the work and intentions of the Government of your own day? Are you going to stir up hatred where there should be gratitude, distrust where there should be confidence? If so, better you had never been in the position you occupy to-day. You will be no true friends to your country. Interpret honestly between England and India. And while you must be the interpreters of England's rule to your countrymen, you must no less be the exponents of your country's wants to England. And here your responsibility is no less weighty. The great democracy of England is waiting to learn the needs of this ancient people. Its heart beats with generous impulses, and if you are enabled to bring a real and genuine message from the millions in this land, you may rest assured it will meet with a generous response. But on the other hand, if for narrow class ends you try to mislead, you take a spurious message and, keeping out of view the needs and wishes of your less educated countrymen, you aim only at the aggrandisement of self, then I believe you will meet with that rebuke which you will well merit; and, again I say, you will be no true friends of your country. But actuated by the purest patriotism, you will prove yourselves true interpreters between the Government and the people, The liberal power that has enabled you to occupy that position you are in to-day expects it. The fair name and honor of your Alma Mater demand the culture and moral training you have received will impel you towards it. And great as is your responsibility, no less great will be your reward, if, as highly influential members of this great people, you are enabled to carry joy and gladness into a million homes, and become a potent means in helping on the regeneration of your country. Then it may be, that that dawn of a better day for India which, is already gilding the hilltops of time shall, as the ages roll on, brighten into a glorious noon, when the Aryan of the West reunited with the Aryan of the East in a common brotherhood, with common high hopes and lofty aspirations, with truth, righteousness and peace as their watchwords shall carry their own life, and light and liberty into the remotest and darkest regions of the earth.