Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 2/Lord Napier
TWELFTH CONVOCATION.
(By His Excellency Lord Napier, K.T.)
Gentlemen,—If I had the honor to address an assembly of this character in The English Universities, their ancient origin and national growth. England, there is no doubt that a large portion of my remarks would have a retrospective turn. The audience would be, like you, an audience of youth and hope, but the place would be a place of age and memory. The thoughts of my hearers might naturally be pointed not only to the recent years of sport and study, of companionship and rivalry, of meditation, of aspiration, of trials surmounted, and of triumphs won; but the imagination would be directed far beyond the limits of personal recollection and individual life to the long tradition of a time-hallowed institution. First, the ancient founders would be invoked, grave and pious figures of a vanished faith, then the early benefactors, kings and men of fame in camp, or cloister, or court, or school, such forms as we find in painted chronicles or on alabaster tombs; then, as the darkness of the middle ages fades away, would be cited the authors of free thought, the revivers of classic taste, the legislators of knowledge, the parents of modern speculation, observation, and discovery. Then patriots, politicians, artists, prosecutors of useful science, of industrial inventions, of improved laws, of public liberty, in splendid array down to the fathers of the living and listening crowd. Nor would the scene be unworthy of the history, for in the midst of coeval trees. Halls and Colleges, Chapels and Libraries, Museums and Galleries would stand around, some touched with the traces of a cherished decay, some in the sober hues of maturity, some where the noise of the builders had scarcely ceased, but all testifying to an incessant inheritance of human attachment. Thus the hearers would be made to feel that they are at most an equal link between the generations that are gone and those that are to come, the present would scarcely appear of like value with the past; and while there would be the noblest incentives to emulation, the mind would be awed by the accumulated impressions of departed worth. I need not say how different is the theme and how different the auditory in the Convocation of Madras. The University here is not of ancient origin or national growth. It is not identified with the glory, the religion, the recollections, the greatness of the country. A single generation has seen its birth and life, it is a foreign graft, it has not even acquired a visible habitation. Though this incorporeal influence has already given an important impulse to intelligence and morality, I feel that in endeavouring to measure the significance of the University, that is of European teaching in its highest functions, I must appeal to your faith, I must lead you forward into the seductive regions of the future.
What then does the higher European education promise to the people of this country? The fruits of higher European education. To what aims and ends does the road conduct on which you have planted your footsteps, I trust, with constancy and ardour, on which you have reached to-day a memorable stage, and which you are prepared to follow out to a higher issue. It conducts to many things, to more, no doubt, than my vision can reach or my sagacity penetrate, to more certainly than I can here delineate and analyze. I shall only designate four objects which you seem destined by this method to attain, and which are certainly of no mean importance. The higher English education will give you 1. A new basis of national unity; 2. A better knowledge of your own country; 3. Self-government, the government of India by the Indians in a modified form; 4. A participation in the general intellectual movement of the world, now and hereafter.
There is probably no principle in the political system of a country more valuable than national unity, Want of national unity. that is, the prevalence among the whole population of one belief, one language, one extraction, and similar sentiments and attachments. But there is no region, which nature appears to have designed by physical conformation for political union or cohesion, which is more deficient in the elements of harmony than India. You have two capital religions, each commanding a hearty support on the part of its adherents. The Mussulman religion moulds its own disciples to a general equality within, but without it is intolerant and aggressive, and its characteristic dogmas are directly repugnant to the Hindu. The Brahminical system, less proselytizing and more patient of dissent, embodies in its ceremonial and social aspects every contrivance to fix its own votaries in impassable divisions. Each religion has a sacred language that no one understands. Over the whole surface of the Peninsula there prevails a variety and mixture of exotic and indigenous languages which are respectively the depositaries and instruments of polite literature, of written correspondence, of public or commercial business, of popular intercourse. I need not enlarge on the difference of origin which the numerous races of the land discover, and which are manifested not only by complexion, features, and physical constitution, but also by moral and intellectual inclinations and aptitude. Men who believe in antagonistic religions, who speak different languages, who betray different descents, cannot have much community of affections; all have had their vicissitudes of prosperity and suffering, and for the most part the ascendancy and glory of one race have been the oppression and shame of another. How far the resentments of other times have been continued I cannot judge, but this much I may affirm that few have ascended to the idea of nationality or country. The University-the mother of a new Commonwealth. There has been no standing ground which the confused and variegated multitude could occupy together. But the arena of reconciliation is now thrown open. The higher European culture will weave the bond of union. Those who have filled a common hall, those who have mixed on the same benches, those who have crowded to the same fountains of knowledge with the same thirst, those who have been fused together by the fire of the same generous ambitions, they can call each other fellow-countrymen, they can do a common work. In this way Universities in India are destined to a larger duty than they have exercised elsewhere, they are not only the nursing mothers of learning and virtue and intellectual delights, they are nursing mothers of a new Commonwealth.
European culture will help you to conceive and create a common country, Investigate the institutions of the East. but in directing your hopes to a new and better India in the future, do I ask you to despise and forget India as it was? As it is, do I invite you to forsake the memory and the works of your ancestors? Far from it. The first result of the introduction of a new learning, in a country possessing an indigenous and stationary civilization, is sometimes to breed a superficial contempt for what is old and past. But the maturer effect is quite different. The higher education will teach you to undervalue nothing but to admire with discernment. If it dispels some illusions, it will unseal your eyes to a variety of interests and pleasures to which you are now insensible. Many familiar objects will gain significance and charm, the dullest thing will quicken with vitality and meaning. In fact there is much in the ancient polity, art, literature, and manners of the Indians that Indians alone, armed with the powerful keys of European criticism, can fully open to the Western world. The zeal with which all the institutions and monuments of the East are investigated in Europe should be contagious here. I wish I could see public functionaries and persons of independent means in this country devoting their leisure to local history and archaeology, to the collection and preservation of manuscripts, coins and other relics of past ages, to an analysis of native science, treated from a critical European point of view, in fact to securing and placing on record many things of the highest moment which are rushing fast to oblivion and decay. Why should there not be, even now, in every province native gentlemen doing from motives of intelligent patriotism all that Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Nelson have recently done so well in their respective districts by the invitation of Government?
Gentlemen, those who possess a country and understand it have an undeniable claim to a share in the honours and emoluments of its government. Educated Indians and the Public Service. If this was not true, then the higher education would be a snare, a folly, a curse, and not a blessing. The University would otherwise be engaged in producing intelligences without duties, instruments without labour, ambitions without satisfactions, the worst things in an unhappy state. We have not established these manufactories of mind for selfish purposes, as the Romans taught philosophy to slaves. You will, perhaps, hear designing or visionary Englishmen on platforms or in Parliaments affirm that England is bringing up India for independence. Such illusions it is not wise to cherish. The English conquered India for the interest of England, they retain India for the interest and glory of England. But the glory of England is in the minds of her people indissolubly associated with humanity and justice. I do not say that in all times and in all places these principles have been uniformly respected, but I believe it may be deliberately asserted that in the management of her colonies and dependencies England has in the long run admitted the aborigines and the conquered to a larger share of political liberty, commercial equality, and public rights than any other State. In periods of tranquillity and social development there is, indeed, in the minds of the English people a kindly, almost a precipitate desire to raise the subjugated nations to like privileges with themselves. I call upon you therefore, Administrators, Magistrates, Physicians, Engineers of the future, to prepare yourselves for increased responsibilities and more honorable employments. The field of promotion will expand at least as fast as the qualifications to fill it. I have stated before that in my humble judgment it is only through native channels, enlightened by European education, that complete and correct views of native science, arts, manners, and institutions can be conveyed to Europe. Be faithful interpreters. I now affirm with the same conviction that it is only by native hands that the full benefits of European civilization can be naturalized in India among the vast mysterious numbers who live and suffer and labour under our benevolent but often blind and helpless sway. I have seen an old experienced and earnest member of the Civil Service closing his official career with the complaint, that he was leaving the land on which he had expended the strength of his hands and the warmth of his heart, leaving it still dark, undiscovered, impenetrable. We need the native to reach the native. Remember then, gentlemen, that you, the adopted children of European civilization, are 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 ; that you walk armed with a two-fold knowledge between two nations that do not know each other, that cannot know each other, except through you. Will you carry a faithful or deceitful message? If you are the ingenuous and careful representatives of England's good-will to India and of India's claims on England, then you will put your talent to a noble use; if, on the other hand, you hesitate, misconstrue, conceal, if you show the Government in false colours to the country, and the country in false colours to the Government, then you do a double wrong, a wrong to England and a wrong to India, you widen what you ought to close, you alienate where you ought to reconcile, you continue distrust and perpetuate misconception where it is your mission to spread mutual confidence and mutual light. I charge you to lay this feature in your position particularly to heart. Be true English-men to Indians; be true Indians to Englishmen, with rectitude and single-mindedness as becomes faithful interpreters. Within the territories of the Queen you are not destined to be servants, you are not destined to be masters, you will fill the office of auxiliaries and mediators; but beyond Her Majesty's dominions there lies a scene where there are none of the imperious necessities of a foreign authority. The peaceful consolidation of English power which we now witness is a guarantee for the preservation and regulated independence of Native States. Those States too are all launched, under English impulses and English control, on the course of civilization and progress. Cochin, Travancore, Mysore, and Hyderabad, with fifteen millions of inhabitants, are open to the educated youths of Madras, who by strength and knowledge and enterprise are enabled to reach them and rule them. Places, which were once valued as a convenient refuge for tarnished reputations and broken fortunes, will afford a conspicuous theatre for the superabundant intelligence and energies which the ancient Presidencies may throw off.
Having thus endeavoured briefly to define the relations in which you are placed by the higher European education to the State and to your countrymen, to England and to India, I cannot conclude without reminding you of the partnership which you have attained with the past, the distant, and the future, with minds and nations extinct, with the great circle of contemporaries, and with the prospective march of intelligence and knowledge. Superiority of the English language. And first I congratulate you that English is your avenue to the rest of mankind. I do not speak in a spirit of boastfulness. But it is a fact that, by the mere force of numerical procession and propagation, the future world must belong to the English race which possesses a preponderant share in it already. India might have become the prey of some other sea-faring and exploring people. The Dutch were a glorious and are still a respectable nation. They might have subdued and held India, and they would have taught you science and politics in Dutch. The Spaniards might have added India to America, and they would have taught you the same things through the Society of Jesus. But what sort of contact would Dutch or Spanish have given you with the outer world? What commerce of intelligence could you have enjoyed with such vehicles of utterance. Few valuable books are now written in those languages, and few foreigners make those languages their study. The Dutch and Spaniards learn other languages to make themselves understood and to gain a knowledge of what is going on. I wish to speak of the French with respect and even with admiration. They strove with fluctuating fortunes for the mastery of India, and at length on the humble field of Wandewash, Colonel Coote made you English subjects and English students. I contend that you have no reason to regret it. The merits of French. French is still the common language for men of culture in all countries. It surpasses all in lucidity. It is a perfect vehicle of exposition and argument. It contains many master-pieces in every province of literature. It is still used in my opinion with increasing beauty and power, and France vies with Germany and England in sending every^ year to the press works of science, fancy, criticism, and research. The springs of national genius and power are unimpaired. France thinks and writes, and creates and agitates. But this dazzling ascendancy must not blind us to the poverty of the future. The area of French activity, though brilliant, is circumscribed. England not only thinks and writes and works, but expands and multiplies unceasingly, embracing all the waste and empty places on the earth, filling them with a free healthy progressive population, rude it is true, at present, and absorbed in the conflict with material nature, but possessing all the slumbering instincts and elements of the highest culture. If India had received its European education from France, it would have remained attached to France, in contact and communion with France alone. Educated by England, India remains the political dependancy of a single European State, but it shares the intellectual fortunes of the United States and Australia, of more than half the civilized world that is to be.
In reference to the dead languages, I hold in the main the opinions which Mr. Norton has often expressed in public here. Latin and Greek. Latin and Greek falsely called dead, for they have long been our living tyrants, can only in exceptional cases be a proper study for the Indians. Most of what is beautiful and valuable in those languages has been poured into modern European literature. It is of the greatest importance that you should know what the Greeks and the Romans were, what they wrote, what they did, how they grew and fell, and what portions of their philosophy, poetry, jurisprudence and political institutions have passed into modern Society, but you can learn all this from English books or from books translated into English from German and French. The searching light of modern philology and criticism has dissolved the fables of the ancients. Standing on the vantage ground of distance and comprehensive knowledge, we know the Greeks and Romans better than they knew themselves. To learn Latin and Greek in order to understand them would be like learning the art of weaving to make a coat, when you can buy a better coat ready made.
What amount of satisfaction the educated Indians may derive from the perusal of works of imagination in modern languages, Works of imagination. it is difficult to anticipate. So much in poetry and fiction depends on nature, manners, traditions, and religion, that we may doubt whether the generality of men will ever find much real enjoyment in productions of the fancy belonging to a distant and different people. There will be, of course, the interest of analysis, comparison, criticism, but not much of tender and intimate participation. It amuses one to hear the boys in an Indian school repeating verses which celebrate the beauty of the snow drop, the comfort of the fireside, the affecting associations of the country church-yard, and the virtues of the ant. It does not seem probable that Shakespear, Scott, Byron, or Tennyson are destined to supersede in the affections of the educated Hindu the legendary epics, which contain the sources of national religion and history, or the fables, apophthegms, and tales in which popular humour and wisdom are condensed. The imagination and the heart of the Hindu will probably remain oriental, however much his reason may become European. But for the reason, gentlemen, how ample is the intellectual circle into which you are now admitted! The natural and abstract sciences, history, political, literary, social, and aesthetic, the study and practice of the fine arts, law and physic, the principles of agriculture, sanitary, penal and economic enquiries, all claim your attention, and all bear upon the phenomena and the interests of your own country. The means I know of prosecuting sustained and independent studies are still defective, but the least manifestation of a desire on your part to enter upon this course, the least exhibition of a liberal spirit in the native community in the pursuit of knowledge, for the sake of knowledge, would be met by the State with generous sympathy.
Now, gentlemen, I bid you farewell. I wish that my feeble voice could impel you fortunately and far on the various paths which are traced before you. His (Lord Napier's) advice to graduates. Do not forget your teachers. Do not forget the University which has ratified and stamped your efforts. Do not forget your fellow-students. Watch one another. Strive against one another with a friendly jealousy. Let every one be ashamed to do wrong before the face of those who have shared the same lessons of knowledge and virtue. If knowledge is not virtue as well as power, it is a bad power, the power of doing evil with greater energy, subtlety, and success. Animate yourselves with a passion for the public good. Resist deceit and covetousness. Be firm and frank but respectful and dutiful to those who are in power. Be long-suffering to the poor and weak. The cause of the higher European learning is entrusted to your keeping. You might bring it to disgrace. But I doubt not that you will carry it to higher honour.