Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/363

340 solely by the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee to impress upon the Senate the fact that a proposal emanating from this Council was an authoritative statement. from great scholars engaged in Post-Graduate teaching work among whom were the heads of thirteen first-class colleges in Calcutta. It has no real power, because its decisions are subject to revision by two other independent bodies, the Syndicate and the Senate of the University. Moreover, the Senate possesses the power of asking the Council to revise its decisions just as a higher tribunal can command a lower court to revise its judgment.

Just as the Post-Graduate Council in Arts is a miniature replica of the Senate, so the Executive Committee of the Post-Graduate Department in Arts is a miniature of the Syndicate, but possessing the special qualification of being packed with paid members of the teaching staff. The Executive Committee of Post-Graduate Department in Arts consists of:

It is thus apparent that by placing three outsiders among at least sixteen paid members of the teaching staff, the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee designed the Executive Committee of the Post-Graduate Department in Arts to be entirely under his thumb. It is very well-known that paid members of the staff of the University are not allowed to have any independent opinion. The fate of Messrs Tarakeswar Chakravarty and Charu Chandra Biswas are very clear illustrations of this point. Mr. Charu Chandra Biswas was at one time the trusted lieutenant of the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee, but simply because Mr. Biswas had had the audacity to differ from his patron he was hurled from his pedestal in a single day. Mr. Biswas was a lecturer in the Law College, a member of the Syndicate and the Senate. He is a rising Vakil of the Calcutta Bar and possesses independent means. His fate terrified the rest of the free-thinking members of the paid staff of the University into subservience. Not only is this Executive Committee packed with an absolute majority of the paid members of the teaching staff but outsiders were carefully excluded from it. The nominees of the Senate and the Faculty of Arts are to be selected from amongst its nominees on the Post-Graduate Council in Arts.

It is evident once more that the Executive Committee is the sole repository of executive power in the Post-Graduate Department. Consisting as it does of sixteen or more paid members of the teaching staff, it is solely designed by its creator, the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerji, to consider their personal interest only, both as regards expenditure and actual Post-Graduate teaching. The total exclusion of outsiders from the executive body made the executive committee the judge of its own work. Thus if it said that a particular work was original then it at once received the stamp of very original research work, though outsiders, specially scholars who have come to be recognised as authorities on that subject, declared such works to be mere copies or even fraudulent efforts to produce real research.

The Boards of Higher Studies in the Department of Arts consist of:—