think that secrets of the past of ancient India can be wrested by research in Calcutta alone? If the writer had an eye on the days before Aurangzeb he could have easily found out that ancient India has got distinct zones and problems of the Deccan or the Dravidian tracts lie wide apart from those of Bengal and Northern India. So all the Universities of India have got plenty to do in the sphere of Ancient Indian History alone and it is only after some progress has been made on research on independent lines and with different angles of vision that the question would rise of ‘pooling their resources.’ Indeed research cannot be successful at all if parcelled out among a lot of Universities and Colleges as was pointed out by the President of the trustees to the Carnegie Institute. And then to think of the banishment of biology to Lahore, when our country is in urgent need of agricultural improvement. The farmer of India has suffered as much as the small-scale industry-man and if India is once more to take her place among the nations of the world it can ill-afford to ignore what would develop more than half its whole wealth. There is also a higher appeal in Biology to our Caste-ridden country for it is not only extremely useful as a training of our faculty but its truths are no uncertain guides toward higher ideals of human welfare and improvement in social organisation.
However one breathes a sigh of relief when one finds Prof. Sarkar protesting against the old universities of the examining type and welcoming those like Calcutta with its recent assumption of direct post-graduate teaching in many and specialised branches and its organisation of research. Yet without pausing to enquire how this state of affairs could be brought alone he takes a chance cue from Fisher which was meant for the rugged little footnesses of Wales with all the resources of prospering England at her side and tries it at the only research University of India. It is a Vice-Chancellor Micawber always waiting for ‘something to peon up’ thinks he that has brought this about. He is probably right for it is doubtful how little could have been accomplished, say at Calcutta, if in the days of dire distress with relentless persecution of the people in power the sound optimism of Micawber had not deserted him and it needed but a congeniality of environment to make him flower into success. The truth is that in these days of progress, Mr Micawber as a Vice-Chancellor with such a sound optimism and ‘the capacity for forming plans in advance which Haldane points out to be the true essence of greatness’ is a welcome asset to India for the people thinks along with Mrs Micawber that ‘the probability is that this Mr Micawber will be a page of History.”
Reply.
I have tried to make the following point clear in my first article[1] on “University Problems of Today” —
(1) In a province which has one university already, or is connected with a university in a neighbouring province, there is no reason for creating a second (or independent) university which does not undertake teaching work or research, but merely acts as an examining board. It would merely duplicate the administrative machinery and double the “cost of production” of the graduates, their quality remaining the same as before, or (as I fear) growing worse. The only exception to this principle is the case of a province which has an unwieldy overgrown and inefficiently-administered university, or a province joined to a very distant university in another province.
(2) In a centre where the number of men highly educated in English is limited and the annual supply of under-graduates is only a few hundred, it is premature to establish a local university, because the place lacks the raw materials for Honours or research classes and has not enough local talent to work a modern university to a high standard of efficiency.
(3) If the general education imparted by our colleges (and what is of still greater importance, our High Schools) is not considerably improved, the higher teaching and research attempted by our universities will fail to bear fruit, or prove a sham, because the natural basis and indispensable preliminary conditions of such higher teaching and genuine research will be wanting. Our knowledge of English, in particular, is lower than what is required for such work, and in the case of Calcutta it has distinctly deteriorated among our graduates.
(4) In the present state of our national wealth, our lack of universal primary education, and the growing poverty and inefficiency of our secondary schools, no Indian university is justified in opening post-graduate classes (and still less in initiating research) in every possible branch of human knowledge at the expense of the taxpayer. The colleges and high schools, in India today, have a stronger moral claim on the public purse than universities afflicted with megalomania.
If I have followed Mr. Mitra aright—for I have had considerable difficulty in getting at his sense amidst his lofty generalisations, vague rhetoric, and cloud of detached quotations,—he holds (a) that the mere opening of fresh universities in India would create new centres of culture, and would be a desirable end in itself, whether these universities were teaching bodies or only examining boards, (b) that the teaching University of Calcutta [why
- ↑ Nothing said in this (second) article refers to the science Department of the Calcutta University.
