Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/24

Rh deficit to be made good by Govt, is estimated at 2½ lakhs in 1925 and 3½ lakhs five years hence.

The Bengal Government may feel morally bound by Lord Lytton’s repeated promises, to clear the deficit which has hitherto accumulated. But if Government agrees to clear the deficit of this year and also make grants’ for future years unconditionally it will be pledging itself to fill the ever-increasing void of the post-graduate department’s deficits in future, without any guarantee for reform in the University management or reduction of its costly superfluous teaching staff.

The dangers of such a course should be clearly realised by our Government and public before they agree to foot the University’s bill. If no reform is made in the University’s administration and the post-graduate staff continues inflated as in the past, the deficit to be made good by Government will not stop at 3½ lakhs a year but will go on expanding with the natural increase of progressive salaries and provident fund contributions; and the Government, once it is publicly pledged to support the post-graduate department, unconditionally, will be morally bound to shoulder this financial burden regardless of its annually increasing amount and indefinite character.

The present Executive Member for Education or even the present M. L. C.’s may grant the University 2½ lakhs, but can they gua­rantee to make good the indefinite but ever-increasing deficit of the post-graduate department year after year in future? If not, they will by any unconditional grant this year, be only helping the University and the student community to enter into a fool’s paradise. It would be wiser to look carefully ahead. With the rise of the Indian masses to political consciousness, the demand for free primary schools and rural dispensaries will become irresistible, and the expenditure or large sums of public money for the highest education of the bhadralok classes will become harder to defend in any legislature elected on a broad franchise. Witness, how in Bihar a responsible minister like the Hon’ble Mr. Ganesh Dutt Singh has openly declared that no more money should be spent in developing the Patna University into a teaching body, but that the entire educational grant should be devoted to primary schools (and hospitals). Even an erudite research scholar and veteran teacher like Sir P. C. Ray called it a crime to spend 50 lakhs of Rupees in giving the Patna University a local habitation.

These are significant signs, and Government can blink them. It is conceivable that,—now that there is no popularly elected minister of Education in Bengal, and that department is managed solely by the Executive Government, our harassed officials, disgusted with the perversity of the majority of Senate may think that every people get University they deserve, and they may be inclined to leave the University to stew in its own juice by granting it the demanded subsidy. But our people cannot afford to take up such an attitude of indifference; the most vitally concerned in University reform and retrenchment; the future of their sons depends on sound education being given and academic sham being avoided by the only University for 46 millions of men.

Where stands Bengal today? The past ten years’ commercialisation of the Calcutta University and lowering of examination standards in order to pass more men and to get a larger “fee-fund” for the support of schemes of megalomania at Calcutta are now beginning to bear fruit. The graduates of the Calcutta University are showing very poor results in the I.C.S., I.P.S., and Finance examinations. There is no 74.2 p.c. of passes, no eleven first class men to every third class man for them there, for these are all-India competitions where they all are not examined by their own post-graduate lecturers but by an independent board.

M. M. Hara Prasad Shastri pointed out during the Senate debate in May last that post-graduate teachers there often merely dictate notes, examine their pupils on the same notes, and “pass a number of them the first class to save their own skins.” His allegation was vehemently contradicted, and, as the daily papers report, his resolution for academic reform was rejected by an overwhelming majority. But the Calcutta Senate majority have evidently not succeeded in overwhelming examiners for all-India competitions like the I.C.S., I.P.S., and Finance Service; there the examiners are not internal teachers and their notes have no charm. The failure of Calcutta graduates in these open contests has been deplorable, but Shastri’s vindication is complete.

The Bengali brain has not lost its cunning nor the Bengali character its steady industry in healthier atmospheres than that