The Modern Review/Volume 38/Number 5/Criticism and Defence of the Calcutta University
Criticism and Defence of the Calcutta University
Prof. Tripurari Chakrabarti has contributed an article to the Calcutta Review in defence of the Calcutta University against Professor Jadunath Sarkar’s criticisms of that institution. Mr. Chakrabarti’s article contains some irrelevant matter about which much need not be said.
He objects to the use of the words “Kartabhaja and Maharaja sects”.
The Kartabhajas are an Indian sect, the members of which surrender their judgment blindly to their leader or guru. When a body of educated men, elected or appointed to assist in the deliberations and to shape the policy of an academic institution follow a similar line of action, the result is that they prove false to the responsibilities of their position and they become helpless like children in the absence of their autocratic leader. The reign of law and the continuity of system and policy are impossible among such human sheep. See back numbers of this Review for instances, (esp. the inside view of the Calcutta University as given by one of its staff.) The words Maharaja sect have nowhere been used by Prof. Sarkar with reference to our academics. Its application elsewhere has been justified by the new Swaraj leader of Bengal.
Mr. Chakrabarti speaks of the “followers” of Prof. Sarkar and refers to what one of them has written in a daily paper. This Review has nothing to do with what is published in other journals. As for “followers”, what lucrative head-examinership or tabulator-ship, or soft job in the post-graduate department has Prof. Sarkar to offer in order to tempt other people to write in favour of University Reform? The public may rest assured that none of the reformers in his private conversation expresses an opinion about the Calcutta University diametrically opposite to that of another man’s article which a Boss may compel him to sign in his own name.
As to whether the Senate is a packed body or is really composed of the Government’s nominees, see pages 400, 489 and 490 of the last issue of this Review.
Mr. Chakrabarti speaks of Prof. Sarkar’s “new line of criticism.”—Prof. J. Sarkar’s proposals for Calcutta University Reform have been before the readers of the Modern Review for more than eight years past. They are quite clear, except to men who will wilfully remain in a world like that of “The Invisible Cloths.” He has repeatedly drawn public attention to the need of (a) efficiency of teaching, (b) reality of examinations, and (e) concentration of the University’s funds—and, what is still more important, its teaching strength (the qualitative inadequacy of which is incidentally admitted in Mr. T. Chakravarti’s article)—on a limited group of subjects which can be efficiently taught. No show of covering the whole field of human knowledge can benefit the nation nor pass undetected in these days of world-intercourse.
As regards the Pali studies they have been arranged in an ambitious spirit of exact rivalry with the Ancient Indian History and Culture department, i.e. with four alternative groups (of four papers each) plus a number of common papers. Such an amplified field requires an army of specialists (who cannot do justice to any other branch, if they have no student in their special papers in a particular year). Above all, a course of higher degree teaching tested by a written examination of the ordinary type (which the Calcutta M. A. is in reality) differs essentially from research work (which requires the production by each student of a highly specialised original thesis). The former requires a fairly large number of students in each class for discussion and seminar work without which the M. A. teaching degenerates into a bigger undergraduate teaching. In Pali M. A., Calcutta, there are only eight students in all,—in spite of its ambitious ramification of special “groups.” Is true M. A. teaching possible under the circumstances?
Regarding work in archive-rooms to which Prof. Charkrabarti refers, the reality of the research work under the plea of which many members of the Calcutta post-graduate staff claim only five periods of lecture work per week is best illustrated by the fact that though the Imperial Records office was thrown open to the public in 1919, not one of these professors has worked among the records (except Prof. J. C. Sinha, and he, too, on the eve of his migration to a chair at Dacca). And yet the name of research is being invoked and parallels cited from Europe! Mr. Chakrabarti admits that subjects have been opened at Calcutta for which no competent teacher is available and hence some youngmen have been given light work in order to enable them to read the subject up and qualify themselves to teach it! This exactly agrees with the principle of Fritz in Figaro, who on being asked why he became a school-master, replied, “In order to learn”! But such self-education cum light work on the part of a new teacher must have a time-limit and cannot be a normal state of affairs at Calcutta.
A concrete case will illustrate the method followed there. A young 1st class M. A. in General History is appointed to lecture on English Constitutional History as his chief work: then he is asked to teach the History of the Far East as an additional subject (during the preparatory stage?), and his private research is on the Maratha Military Administration. Can academic absurdity go any further?
The figures relating to the numbers of students, teachers, lecturers, etc., quoted by Prof. Sarkar, were published by the Englishman, 11th June, 1925. They are in full:—
| Subject. | No. of Post-graduate Students Calcutta. | No. of Whole-time Teachers | No. of Part-time Teachers | Calcutta Average No. of lectures per lecture per week. | Same in Dacca University. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | 285 | 10 | 2 | 6½ | 18 |
| History | 171 | 22 | 10 | 5 | 12 |
| Economics | 156 | 10 | 8 | 7.3 | 12-5 |
| Philosophy | 65 | 8 | 9 | 4.5 | |
| Pali | 8 | 7 | 7 | 16 |
It is significant that though these figures are now being challenged by the Calcutta University apologists, they have not ventured to produce the correct figures for the work actually done by the post-graduate staff. It should also be noted that the annual post-graduate department report, which is printed, has carefully omitted to give the time-tables of all the members of its staff, though every ordinary college inspection report gives such figures and they are also printed. The motive is obvious.
Secondly, it is not enough to have it on paper that every teacher must take so many tutorial classes every week in addition to 5 or 6 lectures. The question is, whether the students have actually been taken in all the tutorial groups that they ought to have according to the time-table. In one subject, Prof. Sarkar’s information is that one student met his professor in the tutorial class for actual work on only three occasions in two years. It should be remembered that the Calcutta University has no principal or whole-time Academic Vice-chancellor to see whether the scheduled work is being done on the day in question. In a College such omission is impossible.
Prof. Sarkar has nowhere, as alleged by Prof. Chakrabarti, contrasted 5 hours (in History at Calcutta) with 18 hours (in English at Dacca), but with 12 hours (in History at Dacca). This wilful confusion of two separate things will mislead no careful reader of our Review.
Prof. Sarkar has nowhere said that “every University lecturer must deliver at least 18 lectures per week”. He insists that every teacher in order to justify his salary must work for considerably more than five to seven hours a week. At Patna professors who take part in post-graduate teaching work for fifteen hours a week (lecture and tutorial taken together). This is reasonable.
Professor Chakrabarti is requested to cite the passage where Prof. Sarkar has claimed that he used to deliver 18 lectures per week. The charge is imaginary. Until recently he has actually worked for 18 hours a week with his classes[1].
As regards fitness of a university teacher to undertake the teaching of a particular branch of a highly specialised subject, Prof. Sarkar agrees that the Calcutta staff ought to be judged by the standard indicated in the extract from the London University Commission’s Report made by Prof. Chakrabarti. But when one of its members—the Head of a Department—takes up a stone scratched with the date 19-7-72, turns it upside down, reads the writing as an example of a neo-lithic proto-Brahmi script, and rushes to print this piece of “research” in three serious periodicals, he raises philosophic doubts among those who are not his subordinates.
The Calcutta University’s performances in All-India tests held in India are as follows:
| 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I.C.S. | 3 | 4 | 1 | nil |
| Finance Examination | nil | nil |
It has been said in justification of Calcutta’s comparatively poor success at these tests, that the University is not a workshop for turning out I.C.S.’s, etc.; but so is not Madras. Why then does Madras do better than Calcutta?
The I.P.S. is now being conducted as a purely provincial test as regards the selection of candidates, though they are all examined together. It affords no correct ground of comparison.
Re recruitment of Calcutta graduates in other provinces.—Do not be too sure. By this time the average quality of the graduates turned out by Mukherji’s creations (as distinct from men trained by an older breed) has been slowly found out in other provinces. There are definite instructions with regard to them in Bombay and the U.P., but these cannot for obvious reasons be made public.
The ruin of Bengal’s youth is effected by a vicious system of examinations, conducted, mostly by the post-graduate teachers, with their sham first-classes (see Professor Jadunath Sarkar’s article published in the October Modern Review). Professor Chakrabarti finds fault with Professor Sarkar for speaking of some post-graduates teachers as sneaks and sycophants. In support of Prof. Sarkar’s use of the words, see the true story of the discovery of the silver roll inscription, p. 490. M. R., October, 1925, and the dedications of some works by Calcutta University Professors.
As Prof. Sarkar wants retrenchment and economical expenditure of the people’s money, his critic has referred to the salary drawn by him in a vein of sarcasm. Though Prof. Sarkar entered Government service after passing the Premchand Roychand Scholarship Examination and with four years’ teaching experience in first grade colleges, his salary in a Government College was only six hundred after twenty years of public service from the very first of which he had to teach M. A. students. If it is now “over a thousand” after 28 years of public service, it is still much, less than the Rs. 1400 which a Calcutta University professor has been drawing as his total emolument. Nor has Prof, Sarkar been supplied with a furnished Ballyganj flat by the Calcutta University at a quarter of its proper rent.
The Calcutta University has already been allowed to bleed the students and guardians of the entire provinces of Bengal (minus Dacca) and Assam, to the tune of several lakhs of rupees annually, under the heads of enhanced examination fees from the Matric. upwards, price of University publications, selections etc. (compulsory text-books), and various charges which may be best described as abwabs. No residential non-affiliating university has resources of so vast a magnitude.
Any tall talk of what the University in England are doing must be futile mockery, when we contrast the average national income per head in England and India. Prof. Chakrabarti refers sarcastically to the fact that though Prof. Sarkar has criticised the education given in the Calcutta University, he takes his research students from that very university, who, by the by, are only three in number in five years. The reasons are quite simple. Professor Jadunath Sarkar does not enjoy the right of raising revenue in various ways from the students and guardians of two provinces, nor has the “free and independent” Calcutta University been so accommodating as to force any of his works like Mukherji’s conic sections, down the throats of thousands of Matriculation or Intermediate students annually for a number of decades in succession. He cannot, therefore, offer any scholarship to his research students (one or two), but must take those who are prepared to live in his house under the conditions of plain living, earnest work, and no earning during the period of training. Youths agreeing to these conditions can come only from a province where there is a glut of unemployed M.A.’s—which is the pre-eminent distinction of Calcutta. And it must be added that the cheap degrees of Calcutta have not deprived some Bengali students at any rate of their intellectual powers.
Professor Chakrabarti calls the use of the word “megalomania” in connection with the Calcutta University “academic Billings-gate of an unsurpassed quality.” The external indications of this megalomania are too many to recount here. Let us give an example or two. For years the Presidency College has possessed a well-equipped physiological laboratory with a quite competent staff. Yet the university unnecessarily opened classes in physiology with a very ill-equipped laboratory and teachers who could not stand comparison with the Presidency college staff. Classes for Zoology were opened without adequate laboratory arrangements and competent teachers and examiners. One of the paper-setters was so incompetent that he had to plagiarise questions from another University examination papers. Another asked which could have been properly put only to medical students of Zoology.
- ↑ Calcutta University Minutes for 1910, Pt. IV, p. 1509, clearly states, what Mr. Chakravarti has suppressed, that in 1909, Prof. Sarkar worked 18 hours a week.