Page:The Modern Review (July-December 1925).pdf/497

472 We have tried long to educate the public in taking adequate interest in University affairs. We cannot say that we have had sufficient success. But there is one welcome change. For a long time it was practically our monthly journals alone which dealt with University affairs. Then others were made to fake interest in them,the interest frequently taking the form of abuse heaped on our head. There is at present more general curiosity about University matters. But the curiosity should be more intelligent, and the interest better informed and more watchful. Even our legislators seem to think that if large sums of money be demanded and obtained from Government, it will automatically be all well with the University.

The anti-Government cry was Sir Asutosh Mookerjee’s most potent trump card, and he played it adroitly. The University clique hes cleverly kept up that cry. That cry has brought them strange bedfellows. Quondam non-cooperators, turned swarajists) who wanted to destroy the University, are hailed as the best friends of the University clique, because both gain by the anti-Government cry; whilst we who resisted and consistently and persistently criticized Mr. Gandhi’s propaganda against schools, colleges and Universities and have continued to do the same, and suffered much obloquy and loss in consequence, are the worst enemies of high education!