to seventeen. This beats Falstaff’s “Eleven buckram suit men grown out of two”! But as soon as Mr. Rama Prasad Chanda’s son had been thus shoved up into the first-class (17th in the list), the fountain of Sir Ashutosh’s grace suddenly dried up, and no further declarations of indulgence were issued that year. [See M. R. April, 1922.]
How the sham results are produced.— Bengal has many really brilliant boys who honestly deserve a first-class; but it is an insult and injustice to them to herd them with several thousand artificially created first classes. Huge undeserved pass-lists at the Matric rising in one year to above 86 per cent!) brought popularity to Sir Ashutosh among the unthinking portion of the student community and some short-sighted parents. What was a more potent consideration, the more passes at the Matric the more money does the University gain by inducing a phenomenal rush to the undergraduate and post-graduate classes and in the University fee-fund and sale of text-books fund. The educational effect of thus commercialising the University was disastrous. Naturally the evil did not stop at the Matric. Such Matric-passed students are mentally unfit to do College work and follow lectures and write answers in the English language. (Vide consensus of evidence, Sadler Commission Report). But they cannot be kept back at the next higher stages,—intermediate and bachelorship, for fear of a public outcry against “a massacre of the innocents,” and also in no oblivion of the fee-fund and the filling up of the post-graduate classes. Thus, after the original sin against truth at the Matric examination, the Calcutta University by a vicious automatic process goes on promoting a huge number of unfit students to the B.A. and M.A. classes, with results which we see around us.
Since Sir Ashutosh gained control of the University, this “futility and sorrowful mockery” of sham degrees has attained to scandalous proportions. He himself presided over practically every board and his will was law to his subordinates. His agents in this work were mainly members of the post-graduate teaching staff, whose tenure and various emoluments depended on him and who have been familiarised with his examination methods and principles. These men hold a major portion of the head-examinerships and tabulator-ships and thus influence the “results” and pass the word to the assistant examiners. And these post-graduate teachers are still controlling the under-graduate examinations and perpetuating Sir Ashutosh’s system.
Reform of examinations long overdue.— This examination method (and through it the control of studies and training of the student’s intellect) has been publicly exposed for many years past. Among its critics have been educationists of such ripe scholarship and varied experience as Principal H. R. James and C. Russell, Indian leaders, like Sir Gurudas Banerji and Sir A. Chaudhuri,—and the Sadler Commission, if one will care to read between the lines.
The reforms needed have been clearly pointed out again and again in this Review.
They are: (a) To make the examinations a real test of intellectual capacity for the next higher stage, (b) To ensure that the examiners should not know the names of the candidates and to declare illegal all attempts to influence the examiners, tabulators and University authorities for passing individuals.
Marks should be kept strictly secret before the authoritative declaration of the result, so that it may be impossible in future for such a letter to be written by a friend of a candidate, “Mr.----- ’s daughter has failed by nine marks in Botany. Tell her relatives to do immediately what is needful.”
What is needful?
This scandal has raised its unblushing front and to such an extent that the manipulation of results is done by some examiners in the presence of students. The moral effect of the present-day Calcutta examination methods can be best judged from the frank conversation of the student community.
The question is whether the Calcutta University is going to make an honest effort to stop such frauds upon the public, now that it is no longer hypnotised by Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee. Facts will supply the best answer.
How the machine works.—Mr. Rama Prasad Chanda, “Head of the department of Anthropology at the Calcutta University” (his designation in the communique of the Midnapur Literary Conference, where he presided), from the intimate knowledge which his position and association gave him, has thrown light on the question. He writes (M. R. Vol. 29, p. 648):—
“Whatever position and authority Sir Ashutosh has depends upon votes. In order to keep his influence in the University intact, it is necessary for him to get his relatives and intimates [previously designated as ‘dependables’] into it. If Sir
