Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/368

Rh after the death of Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee the members of the University party in the Council of the Asiatic Society of Bengal lost this artificial support and naturally failed to get re-elected. The result was marvellous, because the stream of “original research” stopped suddenly and the once voluminous stream has now dwindled down to a dry bed. What is the cause of this sudden stoppage? The only reason that I can find is that people who once contributed to the Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society of Bengal or the Indian Antiquary are afraid of being found out in the absence of a vociferous patron in the presidential or editorial chair to puff their writings.

I challenge the Senate majority to prove what substantial and original research work has been done by the lecturers of Ancient Indian History with the exception of certain papers by Professor D. R. Bhandarkar. Among the twenty-four paid members of the teaching staff of current year, the names of Messrs. Hemchandra Roychaudhury and Surendra Nath Sen stand out as notable exceptions, while some of the earned the title of Post-Graduate teachers.

The Post-Graduate Reorganisation Committee’s remarks about the interchangeability of the work between the sections of Ancient Indian History and General History, are also singularly untrue. They contemplate with perfect equanimity and expect the learned world outside to accept as natural such absurd arrangements of theirs as a raw graduate without any knowledge of Indian Numismatics teaching that subject in addition to Chinese history. If you want to teach properly, you must have experts and specialists. If you cannot have experts, do not maintain sham, but cut off your rank growth of branches and sub-subjects.

For the production of genuine weighty and durable research work by the members of the teaching staff of the Calcutta University, it has become absolutely necessary to compel these people to see themselves in the light in which other people see them. It is necessary to introduce members of the outside public into the Executive Committee, the Boards of Studies and the Boards of Examiners, so that these teachers may not remain the exclusive judges of their own work. If the Calcutta University wants to stand in the rank of first class Universities and to place its workers in the foremost rank of the world’s thinkers, then the Post-Graduate Councils, Executive Committees and Boards of Higher Studies must be purged of its packed majorities and entirely reconstituted. I cannot refrain from quoting a particular instance of sham in the examination of theses by that august body. Mr. Nalini Kanta Bhattashali, M. A., Curator of the Dacca Museum, submitted an Essay for a certain prize entitled “The Coins and the Chronology of the Independent Sultans of Bengal.” The essay is an original contribution on the subject and is based entirely on the coins of the Musalman kings of Bengal, written in the Arabic language and script. The Calcutta University appointed a number of examiners none of whom knows anything about Musalman Numismatics or can read a single letter in Arabic. The examiners awarded the prize jointly to three or four contributors without understanding even one of the theses. So long as the teachers of the Post-Graduate Department in Arts remain the sole judges of their own research work, in this mutual admiration society, I am sure, Mr. Bhattashali’s fate will remain as warning to outside scholars.