Page:Twelve men of Bengal in the nineteenth century (1910).djvu/23

Rh Mukherjee and Dwarkanath Tagore, a meeting was convened on the 14th of May 1816 to carry out the scheme. It was held in Sir Hyde East's house, and Ram Mohan, probably divining that the animosity he had aroused in certain quarters might endanger the scheme if too prominently associated with his name, was not present and when it was proposed at the meeting to place his name on the Committee, several members threatened at once to withdraw if he was to be in any way connected with it. When this was communicated to him by his friend David Hare, Ram Mohan immediately insisted on the withdrawal of his name, anxious only that the scheme on which he had set his heart should not be endangered. If he could carry that through to a successful issue it mattered little that his name was not to be publicly associated with it. Yet that he was the moving spirit throughout, few were in doubt, and so energetic was the enthusiastic little band of reformers that the Hindu College was able to begin its work on January the 20th, 1817. Other schools were founded about this time by the London Missionary Society at Chinsura and the Baptist Missionaries at Serampore and with all these efforts to provide modern education on modern lines Ram Mohan heartily sympathised.

Meanwhile Government had still to be convinced of the advisability of departing from the old system of education on strictly classical lines. From the