Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/504

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1925]
THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY AND ITS CRITICS
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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