Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/392

Rh reports on matters still to come before the Lords?

In the affairs of the Calcutta Municipality, do not the reports, recommendations, decisions, etc., of committees often obtain due publicity, before they have been considered by the general body of municipal councillors?

We need not multiply cases. “Let the impartial public judge,” whether it would be the height of absurdity and unreason to desire to read or publish or discuss the Minutes of the Syndicate of the Calcutta University “before the Senate had considered the decisions of the Syndicate.” Of course, it may be impracticable or inconvenient to meet such a desire; but that would not necessarily make it unreasonable.

One word more on this subject. Supposing the bound volumes of the Minutes were available in the market, they could be available only at the end of an academic year, often long after the year had closed. Now, by that time the matters, discussions on which are embodied in the Minutes, would cease to be live issues. If we are to be content with commenting on what is merely old history, why not do away with journalism altogether and ask all journalists to better spend their time in debating, e.g., whether Cromwell was justified in getting Charles I beheaded?

The proceedings of provincial and all-India legislative bodies are sent to us, not at the end of each year in bound volumes, but in loose parts as they are printed; and newspapers publish and comment on them still earlier day by day.

As we consider the progress of Bengal dependent in many respects on the progress of the Calcutta University, we think its affairs deserve as much attention as many of those which are discussed by legislative bodies. For this reason we have always desired to have early and timely information about the doings of the University, in order that we may be able to comment on them, when necessary, for the public good. But our attempts have been rewarded with vindictive hostility.

“Ajax” and his friends or patrons “emphatically deny that friendly organs get such reports early.” He admits that The Statesman got such a report on a recent occasion before the Senate had “released” it, calls that paper “hardly a friendly organ,” and says, how it got that report “we do not know.” But some Indian-edited papers also published that report while it was still being discussed, and these have generally supported the University’s demands editorially. How did these friendly organs get it? They did not say that they liked their extracts from The Statesman. And this recent occasion is not the only one on which University documents have found their way to some newspapers “prematurely”. It would be too transparent a trick to consider every such newspaper named as unfriendly. Whenever anybody, masked or unmasked, is engaged in a controversy with the editor of this Review or its contributors, it has been generally seen that he has had access to the records of the University, even to the marks obtained by particular candidates, which are usually supplied to the candidates only on receipt of the prescribed fee. Ajax’s own article shows that he has had access to University records and files, which is irregular unless he is the Registrar or sore other authorised University official. When the Bengali weekly “Sanjibani” inaccurately wrote that the editor of the Prabasi had written an inflammatory article on some University matter, it was contradicted; on which it wrote that it was the editor of the “Modern Review,” who also edited the Prabasi, who had done it. There again it was wrong. Because no article on the subject had appeared even in the “Modern Review”; what had appeared was something written, not by the editor, but by a correspondent, and it was not inflammatory. However, in order that the editor of the “Modern Review” might be discredited, the “Sanjibani’” was supplied by the University with some documents which had not appeared in any published report.

“Ajax” writes :—

“, ... all Reports are considered confidential until they are accepted or modified by the Senate and the Modern Review knows best how it had access to our confidential papers in the past.”

In every country which possesses newspapers, even confidential State papers of great importance leak out on some occasions. Some of our vernacular and English papers which are “friendly” to the University have occasionally in the past obtained much applause from the public by bringing to light official secrets. Why does not “Ajax” apply to these ‘friends’ to learn how such things happen? They are more likely to oblige him. Why not require the red-faced Statesman to explain how it does the trick? Why consider the “brown” “Modern Review” alone especially fortunate in obtaining confidential papers? Why attack the “brown” editor alone? Is