# The Modern Review/Volume 38/Number 1/The Calcutta University and Reform

THE CALCUTTA UNIVERSITY AND REFORM
By PROFESSOR JADUNATH SARKAR
People who give anxious thought to the future of Bengal have been asking themselves whether the Calcutta University is any nearer reform and whether realities are asserting themselves in the counsels of its present Senate. But as only one year has passed since the death of Sir Ashutosh Mukherji and there have been during this short interval the sad breakdown and death of one Vice-Chancellor and the inauguration of a second Vice-Chancellor new to its inner working, it would not be wise to form any large hopes.
As is well known to the public, the problems of Calcutta University reform pressing with increasing seriousness during the last few years, are four, namely,—
(1) How to rehabilitate the reputation of the University’s examinations as a real test of knowledge.
(2) How to arrest the steady decline in the efficiency of the education given in the colleges,—which do the entire under-graduate teaching work,—so as to provide the indispensable reliable basis for that post-graduate teaching which is now the monopoly of the University staff, and also to turn out really educated graduates for life’s work.
(3) How to stabilize the post-graduate department, so as to save it from perpetual alarms and excursions, alarms of long unpaid salaries and impending bankruptcy and shady excursions into non-academic fields, such as party politics and speculation in German marks and Calcutta land values. How to secure a balanced budget for the department and at the same time keep the best teachers from going away elsewhere to a better paid (at least securer) service.
(4) How to secure in the administration ​of the University as a whole, and particularly in the conducting of its examinations and academic discipline, the reign of law in the place of personal caprice, the enforcement of general principles instead of regard for particular individuals.
We may leave aside for the present the question of ensuring true research under the auspices of the University, because pseudo-research, if published, is sure to be exposed in the course of time and to cover the University which has patronised “scholars” of this type with the ridicule and scorn of the learned world. If the governing body of a University once makes up its mind to discourage sneaks and sycophants, it can get rid of sham scholars in a day.
II.
Bearing these problems in our mind, let us see where the Calcutta University stands to-day.
At its last Matriculation Examination 74.2 per cent of the candidates were declared as passed, and out of the 14,000 who were successful, eight thousand were placed in the first division and only 730 in the third division. That is to say, the most reverend, grave and potent Senators who ordain the affairs of the Calcutta University have solemnly declared that there are among young Bengal today eleven first-class men for every single third-class man! In life we never find first-class carpenters, mechanics, clerks, compositors, cooks, or bearers outnumbering third-rate workmen as eleven to one. But office-heads, business managers and other employers of educated labour should now expect eleven chances of a Calcutta-passed employee turning out a first-class hand to one chance of his proving a duffer. Happy Bengal—the envy of other provinces of India!
Benighted Madras, Bombay or Allahabad will naturally ask, how has this miracle been effected in Bengal? The answer is, by the grace of Saraswati,—for though he is dead, his spirit still liveth and worketh among the academic birds (probably swans) that haunt the lake in College Square. The daily papers tell us that ten grace marks were given to every Matric candidate in the English paper, in order to raise the pass level to 74.2 p.c. The wisdom and necessity of this action on the part of the Calcutta Senate will become evident when we remember that it is the universal complaint of college teachers and employers that the Calcutta Matric standard in English is now so low that nearly all the boys who pass it are unfit to follow college lectures in English or to give intelligent answers in that language either in the class or in the office. (See Sadler Commission Report.) And, therefore, in English, of all subjects, the standard must be lowered still further at Calcutta!
III.
The University lately appointed a Committee to examine the organisation and pay of the post-graduate teaching staff maintained by it. The need for economy was pressing; there was a general clamour against the waste of public money by the needless creation of new departments and new branches (“optional groups”) each with a large and very lightly employed staff; and within the circle of these teachers themselves there were discontent and anxiety at their position and prospects. The situation here was well known outside and alarming: the salaries of the endowed professors (except one) were lower than in several other Indian universities, and therefore the best men could not be contented to remain at Calcutta; there was no intermediate rank in pay and position (such as Readerships) for “University Professors in the making”—i.e. between the full-fledged and best-paid endowed Professors at the top (one for each subject) and the young assistant lecturers at the bottom (on Rs. 20 or less), so that very promising teachers were constantly migrating elsewhere at the first opportunity; at the bottom there was a huge army of young lecturers, without enough teaching work for them, but on a low pay and uncertain prospects.
None of them knew where he stood; every one below the occupants of the few endowed chairs could be turned out at the end of his two or five years’ term on the ground of financial difficulty. The consequences of the reckless creation of new posts in a spirit of megalomania and contemptuous disregard for the University’s resources were relentless but sure; the poor teachers salaries remained unpaid for months together and their extra earnings (as examiners) for more than a year, and there spread among them terrible whispers that any one of them might be next sacked in the name of retrenchment if he was suspected of lukewarmness in partisan pamphleteering or attendance at Court.
These evils were well known. A wise ​solution (which was recommended by many) would have been to divide the post-graduate staff into two distinct sections: (1) a moderate-sized permanent staff consisting of the irreducible minimum of men required for normal teaching work, each of them doing full work as in other Universities, and sure of payment from the Calcutta University’s permanent income and fixed Government subsidies, and (2) a varying body of temporary hands, consisting of young assistants on Rs. 200 or so, engaged during periods of inflation on the rolls and supported by special temporary grants from the public treasury and increase in the fees. In such a scheme, everyone would be sure of his future, and there would naturally be promotions from the second to the first class, as an incentive to honest work among the juniors.
The public cry was for retrenchment and reform, for combining genuine efficiency with wise economy at the sacrifice of spectacular expansion and rank luxuriance of staff which cannot possibly be maintained for long in such a country as ours. The Committee appointed in response to such a demand, however, reported by a majority in May last, and the Senate accepted its report (again in a divided house), that no retrenchment of superfluous branches should be made; on the contrary, the cost of the post-graduate teaching staff should go on increasing, creating an ever-increasing deficit,—of 2½ lakhs this year rising to 5½ lakhs five years hence, —which the Bengali tax-payer must supply, as the University could not provide it in spite of its normal income of 20 lakhs a year.
The die-hards forming the majority of the Committee have thus issued a defiant challenge to the public and the legislature, refusing to make any reform and demanding more money than ever before.
IV.
The daily papers have published some figures illustrating the Calcutta University’s wasteful methods in the post-graduate department. In English, each teacher delivers on an average 6½ lectures a week (against 18 lectures by the staff at Dacca); in History only 5 lectures (against 12 at Dacca), in Economics 7½, in Philosophy 4½, in Anthropology only 3½ lectures in the entire week.
In History there are 32 paid lecturers for 171 students, in Philosophy 17 lecturers for 65 pupils, in Experimental Psychology ten teachers for ten pupils. The climax is reached in comparative philology in which there are three lecturers on a pay of Rs. 1100 for two students, and in Pali fourteen lecturers for eight pupils!!! And the Bengali tax-payer must find money year after year to maintain this state of things, while unemployment is increasing in the land and the wages of our graduates are getting lower and lower.
As a writer in the Englishman has pointed out, these figures show that in several of the subjects the same amount of teaching work can be done by only one-half of the number now employed, and in some by a quarter of the present staff.
“The Minority Report contended that large savings can be effected without impairing efficiency if the unnecessarily large staff now employed be reduced, and instead of the low salary now given [to many] better provision be made (for a smaller staff)........ The Majority are not prepared for any reduction, while they recommend large increments of salary, often amounting to double..... It remains to be seen if the Government will agree to part with the tax-payers’ money for educational schemes which have obviously been planned without reference to the rudimentary principles of business.”
Quite apart from its financial wastefulness, the veteran scholar, Mahamahopadhyay Hara Prasad Shastri, c.i.e. has pointed out the educational absurdity of the artificially padded out Pali course in four groups. [His letter of 10th June.]
V.
The majority have rejected the wise proposal to recognise the post-graduate staff by forming a nucleus of a strong well-paid professoriate (at the top) plus a small permanent junior staff and a fluctuating number of temporary hands according to the university’s needs, and means,—or in other words, a re-distribution of the same expenditure so as to have fewer men but greater efficiency and more work per head, within a smaller circle of subjects,—i.e., to ensure depth in the place of surface.
Thus we have the strange result, that a Committee appointed to explore avenues to economy has ended by submitting a more extravagant demand than ever before. No reform is promised or even proposed. Only a challenge has been issued to public criticism and the keepers of the public purse to pay unconditionally an ever-increasing subsidy. The ​deficit to be made good by Govt, is estimated at 2½ lakhs in 1925 and 3½ lakhs five years hence.
The Bengal Government may feel morally bound by Lord Lytton’s repeated promises, to clear the deficit which has hitherto accumulated. But if Government agrees to clear the deficit of this year and also make grants’ for future years unconditionally it will be pledging itself to fill the ever-increasing void of the post-graduate department’s deficits in future, without any guarantee for reform in the University management or reduction of its costly superfluous teaching staff.
The dangers of such a course should be clearly realised by our Government and public before they agree to foot the University’s bill. If no reform is made in the University’s administration and the post-graduate staff continues inflated as in the past, the deficit to be made good by Government will not stop at 3½ lakhs a year but will go on expanding with the natural increase of progressive salaries and provident fund contributions; and the Government, once it is publicly pledged to support the post-graduate department, unconditionally, will be morally bound to shoulder this financial burden regardless of its annually increasing amount and indefinite character.
The present Executive Member for Education or even the present M. L. C.’s may grant the University 2½ lakhs, but can they gua­rantee to make good the indefinite but ever-increasing deficit of the post-graduate department year after year in future? If not, they will by any unconditional grant this year, be only helping the University and the student community to enter into a fool’s paradise. It would be wiser to look carefully ahead. With the rise of the Indian masses to political consciousness, the demand for free primary schools and rural dispensaries will become irresistible, and the expenditure or large sums of public money for the highest education of the bhadralok classes will become harder to defend in any legislature elected on a broad franchise. Witness, how in Bihar a responsible minister like the Hon’ble Mr. Ganesh Dutt Singh has openly declared that no more money should be spent in developing the Patna University into a teaching body, but that the entire educational grant should be devoted to primary schools (and hospitals). Even an erudite research scholar and veteran teacher like Sir P. C. Ray called it a crime to spend 50 lakhs of Rupees in giving the Patna University a local habitation.
VI.
These are significant signs, and (illegible text) Government can blink them. It is conceivable that,—now that there is no popularly elected minister of Education in Bengal, and that department is managed solely by the Executive Government, our harassed officials, disgusted with the perversity of the majority of Senate may think that every people get (illegible text) University they deserve, and they may be inclined to leave the University to stew in its own juice by granting it the demanded subsidy. But our people cannot afford to take up such an attitude of indifference; the (illegible text) most vitally concerned in University reform and retrenchment; the future of their sons depends on sound education being given and academic sham being avoided by the only University for 46 millions of men.
Where stands Bengal today? The past ten years’ commercialisation of the Calcutta University and lowering of examination standards in order to pass more men and to get a larger “fee-fund” for the support of schemes of megalomania at Calcutta are now beginning to bear fruit. The graduates of the Calcutta University are showing very poor results in the I.C.S., I.P.S., and Finance examinations. There is no 74.2 p.c. of passes, no eleven first class men to every third class man for them there, for these are all-India competitions where they all are not examined by their own post-graduate lecturers but by an independent board.
M. M. Hara Prasad Shastri pointed out during the Senate debate in May last that post-graduate teachers there often merely dictate notes, examine their pupils on the same notes, and “pass a number of them (illegible text) the first class to save their own skins.” His allegation was vehemently contradicted, and, as the daily papers report, his resolution for academic reform was rejected by an overwhelming majority. But the Calcutta Senate majority have evidently not succeeded in overwhelming examiners for all-India competitions like the I.C.S., I.P.S., and Finance Service; there the examiners are not internal teachers and their notes have no charm. The failure of Calcutta graduates in these open contests has been deplorable, but Shastri’s vindication is complete.
The Bengali brain has not lost its cunning nor the Bengali character its steady industry in healthier atmospheres than that ​of the present Calcutta University. A Bengali entered the I.C.S., by open competition from Bihar three years ago; another Bengali has entered it this year from the Punjab and a third (from Bihar) has missed it by two places only, while the Calcutta graduates have been nowhere. Even a small urban university like Dacca has passed two Bengalis for the I.P.S., and one for the Finance examination. What has the Calcutta University done proportionately with its past history, immense resources, and command over the whole student population of the largest province in India? The Bengalis are not inferior to any other race in India in brain-power, and Bengal has enjoyed the immense advantage of British peace, British administration, and European learning for a much longer period than any other province of India. Why, then, have they lost their former intellectual prominence in India and even equality with certain other peoples, during the last few years?
The bad system of teaching and the ridiculous methods and standards of examination that now obtain at Calcutta, have poisoned the very spring-head of Bengal’s intellectual (and moral) life.
It is for the Bengali legislators to decide whether their sons should continue to work under the blight of such a system, or national decay should be arrested by a determined reform of the Calcutta University.
* ↑ He has no objection to the teaching of Pali as a language with only one group assigned to it in the University curriculum. The brief Press report of his speech had misrepresented him
* ↑ Dacca is not an affiliating University: it is restricted to a small circle round the town.