Page:Calcutta Review (1925) Vol. 16.djvu/519

334 hopelessly bad, or he wants to deprive his readers of two columns of good reading matter. I still repeat that Minutes are available in the market and had he been seriously desirous of getting them he could have secured them after the Senate Meeting by sending a reporter. But it was only a handle against the University, and not its Minutes that he sought. Babu Ramananda knows that the Statesman by its superior journalistic enterprise secured a copy of the Report before it was released by the Senate. Had the University favoured a friendly journal, common sense points out that it would not wait for publication of the Report in the Statesman. But it is futile to expect common sense in an uncommon man. Babu Ramananda was once a school master, and like his famous prototype though vanquished he will argue still. He forgets that the onus of proving a charge falls on the party bringing it. Can he place before the public an iota of evidence that any editor got this report from any body connected with the University before it was made public property? He says that no paper acknowledged its indebtedness to the Statesman. They were simply following the example of the Prabasi. An article on the tame gorilla, Jolin Dalton, was translated from the Literary Digest by a sub-editor of the Prabasi, and published in its columns without any acknowledgment. Such journalistic enterprise is not unknown to Calcutta. Babu Ramananda glibly talks of bringing to light official secrets forgetting that while the University is absolutely defenceless in such matters the State can adequately protect itself by suitable legislation.

Babu Ramananda gives an additional reason for an increase in the sale of University publications. I have no quarrel with him. The book-sellers have a well-organised Association and they are all of them shrewd men of business. If they find their transactions with the University unprofitable they would not wait for Babu Ramananda’s advice. What probably hurts him most is that the University, which has so long been on the brink of bankruptey, has not broken down as yet.