STATE OF THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY
By R. D. BANERJI
The University of Calcutta as constituted at present consists of three different inter-related bodies:—
I. The Senate.
II. The Faculties and
III. The Syndicate.
The Senate is the supreme authority in the Calcutta University and consists of:—
(1) Ten ex-officio fellows.
(2) Ten fellows elected by the registered graduates,
(3) Ten fellows elected by the faculties and
(4) The remainder nominated by the Chancellor.
The Viceroy and Governor-General of India held and now His Excellency the Governor of Bengal holds the Chancellorship of the University. According to a list printed by the Calcutta University on the 12th November, 1924, there were 108 fellows in all in the Senate, ten out of whom were ex-officio fellows, ten elected by the faculties, ten by the registered graduates and seventy-eight nominated by the Chancellor. The Calcutta University ought to have been therefore a semi-official body, because 82.4 per cent of the members of the Senate or the sovereign body are either government employees or the nominees of the Government. During the regime of the late Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, the Senate of the Calcutta University proved that, though the majority of its members were nominated by the Government, that body possessed a distinct independent opinion of its own. With the Senate at his back the late Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee defied the Governments of India and Bengal with impunity and carried all opposition before him. His administration of the Calcutta University, whether as Vice-Chancellor de facto or de jure, amounted to a benevolent despotism, the best form of Government possible. But towards the closing years of his life the great educationist of Bengal committed one serious blunder, which clouded and is still shadowing the horizon over the Calcutta University. This blunder was Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee’s reliance on “expectations” from a certain quarter and an enormous Increase in the expenditure on certain departments based on these expectation. The way in which Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee made the Senate totally subservient to him proved definitely that in spite of a series of Acts passed by the supreme and the Bengal Councils to improve the state of affairs, some grave defects have remained which have vitiated the entire system. The Senate of the Calcutta University as it stood on the 12th November 1924 contained some of the foremost educationists, brilliant scholars and ablest men in the country. Yet in spite of this fact, this august body was persuaded on the 27th September 1924 to appoint a committee to enquire into possible retrenchment and the re-organisation of the Post-Graduate Department of the Calcutta University, consisting of 18 members including the Vice-Chancellor out of which ten were salaried officers of the University itself. The manipulation of the votes proved that the successors of the late Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee in the leadership of the party in power are as astute as their predecessor. The tactics followed were exactly the same as those followed by the late Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee in packing “the Government Grant Committee” and a number of others.
It is perfectly clear from the constitution of the Senate that it is impossible for anybody to organise a party with the aid of the 20 elected members. The chronic absolute majority which the late Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee created in his favour and which maintained him as the dictator in the University, even when he had ceased to be the Vice-Chancellor, proved that he had succeeded in getting many such candidates nominated by the Government into the Senate as were absolutely his creatures. It would not have been necessary for me to review the entire situation in the Calcutta University at the present state, had if not been for the fact that the closing years of the late Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee’s administration were characterized by the introduction of some sham and puerile research work which had made Indian scholarship a bye-word of reproach outside India, by a total demoralisation of primary end higher education in Bengal and Assam by
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