The Modern Review/Volume 38/Number 4/The Calcutta University To-day
THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY TO-DAY
By PROF. JADUNATH SARKAR
Influence of the Calcutta University on higher education in Bengal—It is a quarter truth to call the Calcutta University a teaching University. Its most extensive and lucrative activity is as an examining agency fcr the whole of Bengal (minus Dacca) and Assam. The Matriculation examination conducted by it for these two provinces brings in three lakhs of Rupees in fees (when the candidates are 20,000). The Intermediate and Bachelorship examinations (each with several thousand candidates) enrich it with several lakhs more (as the rate of fees is double and treble). An additional source of income is the sale of highly priced selections and other publications of the University which every one of the vast student population of two provinces is compelled to buy.
The Calcutta University does no teaching for these three stages of study; it merely conducts an examining agency and influences provincial education by means of the text-books and courses of study it lays down and the principles it follows in valuing answer-papers. It has no means of inspecting the High Schools from which it draws three-lakhs a year in fees alone. Patna boys have been known to have entered their names in some of the schools at Calcutta, under the very eyes of the Calcutta University, and not to have attended any class there, and yet at the end of the year they have been Gazetted as Matrics of the Calcutta University! When the matter was brought to the notice of a responsible officer of the Calcutta University, he confessed his utter helplessness to prevent the fraud.
How the Calcutta University does its work of examination.—The way in which the Calcutta University has been conducting its extremely lucrative business of examining those whom it does not teach and cannot inspect, has excited the despair of all who have the best interests of the people of Bengal and Assam at heart and the laughter and scorn of the other provinces of India. As shown in the July number of M. R., at the last Matric examination 74.4 p.c. of the candidates were declared as passed, and among them the first-classes outnumbered the third-classes as eleven to one! The academic declaration that among young Bengalis there are eleven first-rate boys to every single duffer is of the same character as the famous declarations of indulgence sold by Tetzel [Query, for Rs. 15 each?]. Luther called them “a futility and a sorrowful mockery.” The Matric is at the bottom of the scale, but the same “sorrowful mockery” has marked the M. A. examination at the top. In 1921 only three candidates had passed the M. A. in English in the first division as judged by the original examiners; but a committee sat under Sir Ashutosh Mukherji and began to give grace marks amounting to thirty (in a paper of 100 marks only), till the number of “first class Calcutta M. A.’s by the grace of Saraswati” had been artificially increased 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 Ashutosh is to do any work in the University, he must be able to keep the majority of votes in the hollow of his hands. It is because he has been able to do this by various means that Sir Ashutosh has become a dictator in the University.
Four-fifths of the ordinary Fellows of the Calcutta University are nominated by the Chancellor, but always on the recommendation of the then Vice-Chancellor. Cases have been known in which names suggested by the Chancellor have been objected to by the V.C. and the Chancellor has bowed to ike latter’s wishes. As Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee was V.C. for ten years, he has been directly responsible for the nomination in the aggregate of nearly twice the normal number of Fellows, and many of his men have continued after his retirement (1922). Such a Senate must continue for some years more to echo his voice.
The independence of judgment possessed by those academicians who helped Sir Ashutosh to make himself “dictator of the Calcutta University” (as Professor R. P. Chanda found him to be) is quite obvious from their conduct. As for the spirit of self-respect and sense of decorum of certain of his men, examples have been given from their University lectures and dedications of works, in past issues of this Review. When a University Professor in an academic lecture delivered at the University (not birthday ode chanted at Bhawanipur) throws Sir Ashutosh’s portrait on the screen and bows to it, and declares that he has discovered an ancient silver scroll inscription stating that Saraswati would be incarnate in the 19th century at Bhawanipur (Sir Ashutosh’s residence) and that she (or he?) would have two demons for her enemies (meaning two independent Fellows of the Calcutta University)—Sir Ashutosh Mukherjee, with his characteristic sense of propriety, presiding at these performances and never once calling the speaker to order,—self-respecting people can draw only one conclusion as to the character of such academicians.
The question is, should such arts continue to be held up before the youth of Bengal as models of conduct for “getting on” in life.
The character of the research work done by such men cannot be examined for want of space in this issue.