# The Modern Review/Volume 38/Number 3/The Constitution of the P.G. Departments of the Calcutta University

See also, by the same author: State of the Calcutta University
THE CONSTITUTION OF THE POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENTS OF THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY
By R. D. BANERJI
The printed Regulations of the University of Calcutta with Amendments up to 13th August, 1924, give a detailed account of the constitution of the Post-Graduate Departments in chapter XI. These Departments have each of them the following three different parts all of which possess a certain amount of executive functions.
1. The Post-Graduate Council,
2. The Executive Committee and
3. The Boards of Higher Studies.
Each Department whether Science or Arts, possesses its separate council, executive committee and set of boards of higher studies.
The Post-Graduate Council
The Post-Graduate Councils are huge unwieldy bodies consisting of:
1. “All persons appointed teachers for Post-Graduate instruction. Such teachers being members ex-officio.
2. “Four members annually appointed by the Senate.”
3. “Two members annually appointed by the faculties of Arts or Science.”
4. “All heads of Colleges in Calcutta affiliated to the B.A. or B.Sc. standard.”
The Council, whether in Arts or in Science, was so constituted that the members on the teaching staff of the University would always form an absolute majority in it. Let us see in what proportion the members of the teaching staff of the University predominate in the Post-Graduate Council in Arts. According to the Report of the Post-Graduate Reorganisation Committee there are one hundred and thirty-five teachers in the Post-Graduate Department in Arts, including ten University professors and forty-eight part-time lecturers, of whom twenty-five are recruited from the affiliated colleges. Against this army of one hundred and thirty-five men the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee placed four nominees of the Senate, two nominees of the Faculty of Arts and the heads of the following colleges;—
1. Bangabasi College,
2. Bethune College,
3. City College,
4. David Hare Training College,
5. Diocesan College,
6. Presidency College,
7. Ripon College,
8. Sanskrit College,
9. Scottish Churches College,
10. Ashutosh College,
11. St. Pauls Cathedral Mission College.
12. St. Xavier’s College,
13. Vidyasagar College.
Thus, according to the scheme of the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee nineteen persons were pitched against a compact mass of one hundred and thirty-five teachers (of whom only twenty-five were outsiders, recruited from the affiliated colleges in Calcutta). It must be admitted therefore that the Post-Graduate Council in Arts was designed practically to exclude any exterior influence, whether good or bad. Let us now proceed to examine the functions assigned to this council:—
“The Council mentioned in Section 4 is vested with authority subject to the ultimate control of the Senate (communicated by the Syndicate), to deal with all questions relating to the organisation and management of Post-Graduate teaching in Arts in Calcutta.
“Proceedings of the Council shall be transmitted to the Senate through the Syndicate with such observations, if any, as the Syndicate may deem necessary, and shall be subject the confirmation by the Senate.
“The Council shall report on any subject that may be referred to it by the Senate. Any member, or any number of members, of the Senate may make any recommendation and may propose any regulations for the consideration of the Council. The Senate may, if necessary, direct the Council to review its decision in any matter.”
“Each Council shall meet ordinarily four times a year and on other occasion when convened by the President.
“A special meeting of a Council shall be convened on the requisition of six members.”
In addition to these functions the Post-Graduate Council in Arts passes the budget of that Department, with comments, if any, after receiving it from the Executive Committee or to the Senate, through the Syndicate. It possesses the power of suggesting amendments to the budget. In short, the Post-Graduate Council in Arts is an absolutely unnecessary body, packed with members of the teaching staff of the Post-Graduate Department in Arts, without any real power and was created ​solely by the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee to impress upon the Senate the fact that a proposal emanating from this Council was an authoritative statement. from great scholars engaged in Post-Graduate teaching work among whom were the heads of thirteen first-class colleges in Calcutta. It has no real power, because its decisions are subject to revision by two other independent bodies, the Syndicate and the Senate of the University. Moreover, the Senate possesses the power of asking the Council to revise its decisions just as a higher tribunal can command a lower court to revise its judgment.
The Executive Committee
Just as the Post-Graduate Council in Arts is a miniature replica of the Senate, so the Executive Committee of the Post-Graduate Department in Arts is a miniature of the Syndicate, but possessing the special qualification of being packed with paid members of the teaching staff. The Executive Committee of Post-Graduate Department in Arts consists of:
“Two representatives of each of the following branches of study:
(i) English.
(ii) Sanskrit and Pali.
(iii) Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and Syriac.
(iv) Mental and Moral Philosophy and Experimental Psychology.
(v) History.
(vi) Political Economy, Political Philosophy, and Commerce.
(vii) Pure Mathematics.
(viii) Anthropology.
“The representative of each subject or group of subjects shall be elected by the staff in the subject or subjects concerned from amongst themselves;
“Provided, that no member of the staff, except the University Professor, shall be eligible for election to the Executive Committee, unless he is a graduate of at least seven years’ standing.
“(b) Two members selected by the Senate from ite nominees on the Council.
“(c) One member selected by the Faculty of Arts from its nominees on the Council.”
It is thus apparent that by placing three outsiders among at least sixteen paid members of the teaching staff, the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee designed the Executive Committee of the Post-Graduate Department in Arts to be entirely under his thumb. It is very well-known that paid members of the staff of the University are not allowed to have any independent opinion. The fate of Messrs Tarakeswar Chakravarty and Charu Chandra Biswas are very clear illustrations of this point. Mr. Charu Chandra Biswas was at one time the trusted lieutenant of the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee, but simply because Mr. Biswas had had the audacity to differ from his patron he was hurled from his pedestal in a single day. Mr. Biswas was a lecturer in the Law College, a member of the Syndicate and the Senate. He is a rising Vakil of the Calcutta Bar and possesses independent means. His fate terrified the rest of the free-thinking members of the paid staff of the University into subservience. Not only is this Executive Committee packed with an absolute majority of the paid members of the teaching staff but outsiders were carefully excluded from it. The nominees of the Senate and the Faculty of Arts are to be selected from amongst its nominees on the Post-Graduate Council in Arts.
Functions of the Executive Committee
“The Executive Committee of the Council will receive and consider reports from the Boards of Higher Studies as to the progress made in their respective subjects and the results of the examinations, and will exercise such supervision and give such direction as may be necessary to ensure regularity of work and maintenance of discipline among the students.
“Proceedings of the Executive Committee shall be subject to confirmation by the Council.
“The University Board of Accounts shall, on the basis of such estimates and in consultation with the Chairmen of the several Boards of Higher Studies, prepare a consolidated Budget, which shall be placed for scrutiny before the Executive Committee, who shall report thereupon to the Council.”
“The External Examiners shall be appointed by the Executive Committee on the recommendation of the Board of Higher Study concerned”.
It is evident once more that the Executive Committee is the sole repository of executive power in the Post-Graduate Department. Consisting as it does of sixteen or more paid members of the teaching staff, it is solely designed by its creator, the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerji, to consider their personal interest only, both as regards expenditure and actual Post-Graduate teaching. The total exclusion of outsiders from the executive body made the executive committee the judge of its own work. Thus if it said that a particular work was original then it at once received the stamp of very original research work, though outsiders, specially scholars who have come to be recognised as authorities on that subject, declared such works to be mere copies or even fraudulent efforts to produce real research.
The Boards of Higher Studies
The Boards of Higher Studies in the Department of Arts consist of:—
“(a) Teachers of that subject or group of sub- ​jects appointed under section 3; such teachers shall be members ex-officio.
“(b) Three persons selected by the Council from amongst its members.
“(c) Not more than two members co-opted by the persons mentioned in clauses (a) and (b) from amongst those engaged_in Post-Graduate teaching in the subject concerned in places outside Calcutta”.
Let us take the example of the Board of Higher Studies in History. According to the report of the Post-Graduate Reorganisation Committee the paid teaching staff in History is composed of:
A. Six whole-time lecturers, and two part-time lecturers.
B. The Carmichael Professor of Ancient Indian History and Culture and fifteen other teachers, plus seven lecturers attached to other Boards and to honorary lecturers. Thus the Board is composed of eight teachers of the general history section, twenty-five lecturers from the section on Ancient Indian History, and three members elected by the Post-Graduate Council in Arts. If the members appointed by the Post-Graduate Council in Arts have any pretension to scholarship in any department of Indology and raise any objection to any proposal made by paid members of the teaching staff, they can be silenced at once by the absolute majority.
Functions of the Board of Higher Studies
The Regulations for Post-Graduate teaching were framed in such a manner that they really put a discount on sound research work being done by any of its members and inevitably prevent efficient Post-Graduate teaching from being imparted to the students in Calcutta. The Regulations lay down that;
“12. The Board of Higher Studies in each subject shall, for purposes of Post-Graduate teaching and Post-Graduate examination, initiate proposals regarding—
(a) courses of study;
(b) text-books or recommended books;
(c) standards and conduct of examinations;
(d) appointments to the teaching staff and the salaries attached thereto
(e) teaching requirements from year to year and preparation of the time-table;
(f) distribution of work among the members of the staff in that department;
(g) appointment of examiners; and
(h) such other matters as may, from time to time, be specified by the Council with the approval of the Senate.”
Thus it will be apparent once more that the merest baby of a graduate, say an M. A. of six months’ standing, becomes an ex-officio member of the Board of Higher Studies as soon as he is appointed a Post-Graduate lecturer. He will be impressed with a wholesome fear for the senior members of the Board and the party in power and he will become impressed with an idea that his future prospects will be determined by this Board's opinion of his “research work”. He will at once cease fo take an independent or indeed any part in the debate, other than silently voting with his “master”. The most dangerous of the functions assigned to the Boards of Higher Studies are:
1. The selection of text and recommended books; because the teachers who form an ​absolute majority in these Boards will select only such books as are:
(a) Possible for them to teach, including obsolete books or books by writers like Dr. Abinash Chandra Das or Dr. Gauranga Nath Banerji,
(b) Books favoured by the head of the department or the party in power, such as Sir R. G. Bhandarkar’s “Early History of the Deccan”, G. N. Banerjee’s “India as Known to the Ancient World”, Keene’s “Fall of the Moghul Empire”, which are hopelessly out of date and grossly erroneous.
2. The appointment of lecturers and the fixation of their salaries, which makes the applicant for a post;—
(a) compelled to support the system in vogue in spite of its defects and
(b) to accede to decisions of the head of the department in all matters, whether right or wrong. The applicant for or the incumbent of a post, knowing that his appointment will last for a number of years only and that his reappointment lies in the hands of this Board, must remain a silent spectator of the sham research work, fraudulent Post-Graduate teaching and the selection of unworthy text books by the members of this Board or he will be sacked at the end of his first term as an inconvenient dissenter who disturbs the harmony of the family compact.
3. The standards and conduct of examinations and the appointment of examiners. These powers assigned to the Board of Higher Studies are more dangerous than any of the two preceding. If the group of teachers in a particular subject have the sole power of fixing the standard of Post-Graduate examinations and the appointment of examiners, then in the interest of their own skins they will fix the standard as low as possible. It is well-known that out of twenty-five lecturers at present employed by the Calcutta University in teaching Ancient Indian History to the Post-Graduate students, the Carmichael Professor of Ancient Indian History and Culture and a few of his assistants, have any real right to teach Post-Graduate students.
Thus the lecturer in Fine Arts and Iconography—Archaeology—Group B does not possess any idea of the history of ancient schools of sculptures and the lecturer in Numismatics (Archaeology, Group A, Paper IV) fails to read an uncommon and rare ancient Indian coin. People of this type therefore prefer to fix the standards of examinations in such a way that students are able to answer the question from their lecture-notes only. In the second place they and their colleagues select such examiners as are favourable to them and are unable to deviate from the standard fixed by the teachers. In outward show and camouflaging the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerji was a past-master, and an outsider judging from the calendars and the printed regulations will not be able to judge the amount of sham existing in the teaching and examinations in the Post-Graduate Department in Arts of the Calcutta University.
An illustration of this was furnished by Prof. Jadunath Sarkar and the facts were admitted in the public press by even the University apologists. He had been appointed an external examiner in M. A. Islamic history—his special study, and, in order to test the modernity of the knowledge of the Post-Graduate classes had asked the candidates to examine the popular traditions that the Arabs had burnt the famous Alexandrian library and that Roderic, the last Gothic king of Spain, had outraged the daughter of Count Julian of Ceuta, who had invited the Saracen invaders in order to avenge his family honour. Now, though these myths had been disproved by scholars many decades ago, the Calcutta Post-Graduate teachers were still vegetating in the age of Gibbon’s Orientology. Not one student gave the correct answer! When Prof. Sarkar, in his report as examiner, pointed ont that the answers showed that the latest works on the subject had not been brought to the notice of the students in the Post-Graduate classes, these very teachers, who as internal examiners preponderated in the Board of Examiners, resented this legitimate inference as to their work, and decided to exclude Professor Sarkar from acting as examiner in future. Some softer external examiner has replaced him. Now as Prof. Sarkar is invited by nearly all the Universities of India to assist at their highest examination in his own subject, Calcutta’s boycott of this scholar could not have hurt him in the least, whatever light it may throw on Sir Ashutosh’s tactics.
The Regulations lay down that there will be two sets of examiners, internal examiners and external examiners. The internal examiners are appointed by the Board of Higher Studies in that subject according to para 12 (g) of part I, chapter XI of the Regulations, but the external examiners are selected by the “Executive Committee on the recommendation of the Board of Higher Studies concerned”. Therefore ​the selection of examiners both internal and external in a particular subject is vested solely in the teachers of that subject with a loose control by the Executive Committee consisting of an absolute majority of paid servants of the University. The result is already apparent. The external examiners appointed are generally such men as dare not or care not to protest against the present system of sham or dishonesty in teaching work and in research at Calcutta as revealed in the answer papers. People who have already made their mark in life in special subjects like Paleography, Numismatics, History of Sanskrit Literature, both in India and in Europe, are carefully ignored when external examiners are selected or text-books recommended. How many times have the Board of Higher Studies selected men of the type of Dr. F. W. Thomas, Jules Bloch, E. D. Barnett, E. J. Rapson, A. B. Keith, A. Foucher, Sir Aurel Stein or H. Lueders in Europe, aud Hoskote Krishna Sastri, R. Narasimhachar, Hiranada Sastri, Vishnu Sitaram Sukthankar, Rao Bhadur Hira Lal, Daya Ram Sahni, Sir John Marshall or R. B. Whitehead (to mention a few only)?
The Most Necessary Reforms
The unit of the present Post-Graduate system is a Board of Higher Studies. The Boards should be immediately purged of the majority of the paid teaching staff and its number should be reduced to reasonable dimensions. A certain amount of duplication of work is unnecessarily going on. The University possesses a Board of Studies in History according to Chapter V of the Regulation. The members of this Board are appointed by the Faculty of Arts at their annual meeting or in a special meeting annually. Paragraph 2 of Chapter V lays down that “The members of a Board shall be teachers of, or examiners in, or other persons who have a special knowledge of, the subject or subjects with which the Board is concerned. The best way of removing the present anomalous system and duplication is to ask the Faculty of Arts to co-opt one member from the teaching staff of each section of a Post-Graduate department and a specialist in each of these sections, who is not a paid servant of any University or has not been so. These two co-opted members in each subject are quite sufficient to impart the necessary special knowledge to the ordinary members of a Board of Studies, which they may lack. The Boards of Higher Studies should thus be abolished.
The unit in the Post-Graduate Department should be a committee of all the teachers in that section whose only function should be;—
A. Distribution of work among the members of the staff and
B. the election of a representative from that subject to the Executive Committee.
All other functions. such as;—
(a) The fixation of courses of study.
(b) The selection of text-books and recommended books.
(c) The appointment to the teaching and the fixation of their salaries, and
(d) The appointment of examiners,—
should be taken away from the Board of Higher Studies and placed in the hands of the ordinary Board of Studies in that subject. The University professor in a subject, or in the want of a professor, the senior lecturer in that subject should be made the ex-officio Chairman of this committee and he should be empowered to prepare the time-table in consultation with his colleagues.
The executive committee of each department of Post-Graduate teaching should consist of one representative from each section along with an equal number of outsiders who are specialists in particular branches of studies, plus four representatives elected by the Senate. The advantage of this method will be that the presence of outsiders will prevent the undue lowering of standards and ensure regularity and justice in the Post-Graduate examinations. The representatives of the Senate will see that the executive committee control their expenditure within the limits of the budget grants and conduct their work in accordance with the regulations and the orders of the Senate. The proceedings of the executive committee should, as at present, be confirmed by the Senate. It should elect its own chairman. In the place of the secretaries there should be a Director of Studies for each of the departments who should be the ex-officio Secretary in the executive committee of each department. The executive committee, thus divested of its absolute majority in the shape of representatives of the Boards of Higher Studies who are paid members of the teaching staff, will be able to conduct its work in a more dignified manner and will lose its present character of cringing submissiveness to the party in power and the Post-Graduate Department in Arts will lose its present evil reputation about make-believe examinations ​and sham research work, both in India and outside.
The totally unnecessary Post-Graduate Councils in Arts and in Science should be abolished altogether. The most important advantage from their abolition will be the removal of an unnecessary cog in the machinery. The members of the teaching staff who are now represented in their entirety on it, will have a certain amount of representation in the committee of their own section and will be represented in the executive committee by one of their members. It is not necessary for them to be present once more in a council to revise the comments of, or the action taken on, the measures initiated by them in the Boards of Higher Studies, in the shape of a Post-Graduate Council. The removal of this autocracy of the teaching staff of the Post-Graduate sections is a crying necessity. The present system was evolved by the late Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee to ensure the permanancy of the measures initiated by any board of higher studies. If a particular proposal is accepted by the Board of Higher Studies in History and is opposed by the executive committee in the Arts Department then the opposition is reconsidered by all members of the body from which it originated plus the entire teaching staff of the Arts Department. Thus the accused in a particular case form a part of the first court of appeal. It is true that the final court of appeal is the Senate, but while the number of teachers in a subject forming the Board of Higher Studies in that subject possess the advantage of being the initiators of a proposal and seconding it again in the Post-Graduate Council, the condemners can speak only once and the double proposal and advocacy with the single condemnation goes before the final court of appeal, which, as a rule, is impressed by the support given by the Post-Graduate Council in Arts to a proposal initiated by the Board of Higher Studies. Besides this, there are many other disadvantages resulting from the existence of this unnecessary body.
The plea has been advanced more than once that it is necessary to have a larger number of lecturers in the Post-Graduate departments than is ordinarily necessary for the purpose of Post-Graduate teaching, in order to allow the members sufficient time to be devoted to research work. The report of the Post-Graduate Reorganisation Committee emphasises this point while speaking about Ancient Indian History and says:
“We might here observe that this department labours under a disadvantage, because generally speaking, Lecturers in the department of General History and in the department of Ancient Indian History and Culture are not mutually interchangeable. The courses of study are also highly specialised and a specialist appointed, say for the teaching of Numismatics, or for the decipherment of Indian inscriptions, cannot possibly be asked to undertake instruction in other subdivisions of subjects included in history. This department offers boundless prospects for advanced studies and research, and the output of original work in this department is considerable.”—p. 51-52.
This statement is singularly untrue regarding its conclusion. With the exception of Prof. D. R. Bhandarkar and former members of the staff like Dr. Ramesh Chandra Majumdar and Surendra Nath Sastri, who have left, none of the remaining members except Dr. Hemchandra Roychaudhury have done any research in the true sense of the term, nothing better than compilation or rechauffe, nothing which will last. I am speaking of the teachers of the section on Ancient Indian History only. In the section of General History Dr. Surendra Nath Sen is the only professor who has attempted to do original work (on Maratha polity), Although this section on Ancient Indian History possesses a very extensive and well-chosen library, very few of its teachers have taken seriously to research work. Their work is entirely confined to the publication of books by the University and stray contributions to the party organ, the Calcutta Review.
A significant illustration is furnished by the contrast between now and a few years ago, when Sir Ashutosh Mookerjee was alive and Prof. D. R. Bhandarkar was the Philological Secretary of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and the joint-editor of the Indian Antiquary. A large number of papers, trumpeted forth as original, was contributed by the members of the teaching staff of the Post-Graduate Department in Arts of the Calcutta University to the Journal and Proceedings of the Asiatic Society, Bengal. The late Sir Asutosh Mookerjee as the defacto chronic President of that ancient institution possessed the advantage of booming the work of the University people in his annual presidential addresses to the disadvantage of other scholars. Professor Bhandarkar, as the joint-editor of the Indian Antiquary, published a number of contributions of the University teachers. As soon as Professor Bhandarkar left the Indian Antiquary, the contributions from the University teachers to that Journal ceased abruptly. Immediately ​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.