Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/137

Rh Indian administrators, Warren Hastings, who had planned it for the training of men for the Company's service and for the administration of the law as it then stood. It had thus become the very centre of Persian and Arabic study in the midst of the new Bengal that was gradually rising into existence, becoming as time went on, the great stronghold of conservatism and tradition as opposed to the spirit of progress and reform. But conditions were rapidly changing and with the strengthening of the British dominion in India came the necessity for widening and modernising the course of study and making the English language one of its principal features. It was thus while still at the Madrassa that Abdul Latif was first brought face to face with the problem which was to form the chief work of his life. The Muhammadan community, clinging to the old traditional forms of study, turned a deaf ear to the rising tide of modernism. Intensely conservative by nature, unaccustomed to competition and not understanding that the pre-eminence they had always held in legal and classical studies could ever be seriously threatened, they failed to realise what others were quick to grasp that conditions had changed irrevocably and that a knowledge of English had become a virtual necessity. It is extraordinary in the light of modern days to look back upon the rigid attitude adopted by the Muhammadan community in general and their long refusal to advance with the