# Vidyasagar, the Great Indian Educationist and Philanthropist/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII
CONCLUSION.
"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
We preserve the names of those who render their services useful to humanity at large. Vidyasagar's noble exertions to forward the cause of education, his never-ceasing endeavours to better the condition of society, his sincere efforts to mitigate the sufferings of people, and his majestic and magnetic personality have earned for him a fame that posterity would not willingly let die.
As an educational officer he strained every nerve to perform his duties faithfully. He was true to the students, true to the professors, true to his own self. A stranger to cold insincerity and patronising manners, ​he never played false with anybody; double-dealing was foreign to his nature. Great was his capacity for work. He was more than equal to every position he occupied. As Principal of the Sanskrit College he was largely instrumental in re-organising that institution during eight years of office. He earned a still higher title to our gratitude by the generous and strenuous support he gave to Bethune School. The Metropolitan Institution was a happy thought of his own, conceived and materialised at a time when the project of a first grade college entirely manned by Indian professors was generally scouted as a wild enterprise. It sprang fully armed and equipped as it were from his keen and versatile brain and was destined to certain and durable success. He loved the students committed to his care and took an unselfish interest in their progress. Though a rigid disciplinarian, he was indulgent and placable whenever possible. His impartiality was beyond suspicion. He would not examine ​the papers of the youths of Fort William College with undue leniency, even to win the favour of his official chief. He was the patron of struggling merit and unpretending worth. Possessing as he did a clear insight into the educational needs of his countrymen, he set up at his own charge many free schools both for boys and girls, and for the children of husbandmen started free night schools. In order that the lessons might be made easy and impressive he composed many useful books. Bengali translations of English and Sanskrit works, selections from standard English authors, editions, annotated or otherwise, of Sanskrit classics, formed the bulk of his literary composition. His Primers did immense service to the literature of the province. The classification of Bengali alphabet into vowels and consonants was of his own devising. The Upakramanika was a work of far greater originality; the method of treatment followed being quite new. It went far to popularise the culture of Sanskrit. The ​occasional pamphlets issued by him displayed wonderful command over language. Everybody who reads the papers on widow-marriage or on polygamy would be struck with the elegance of style, the idiomatic ease, the range and depth of his ideas. In an age when Bengali language was still in its infancy, when standard books for children were in great request, he thought that the writing of primers would bring about profound and lasting results. There were others to produce works of the highest ability and interest. The memory of authors like Bankim Chandra Chatterji and Dinabandhu Mitra would remain fresh through the ages. To do the greatest good to the greatest number was Vidyasagar's main object. He created a style of his own, lucid, chaste, sweet, laconic, and is regarded by qualified critics as the father of Bengali prose.
He was a man of letters as well as a man of action, taking an active and intelligent interest in the affairs of people around ​him. Had he spent his days in quiet and taken no part in public matters, his educational services alone would have undoubtedly kept his name alive. But he was not born to lead a recluse life. The clash of Eastern and Western ideas and ideals had already begun. Society was in a state of transition. People there were who fascinated by a civilisation entirely new to them were for breaking away from the past and making a clean sweep of all ancient and time-honoured customs of the country. To these iconoclasts nothing was sacred but crass materialism. There were others who ran into the opposite extreme and hated to inaugurate a new order of things. Intensely fossil, they venerated all old and mouldy usages. Side by side with these ultra liberals and conservatives, there was another party which attempted to follow the golden mean and work gradual reforms by wise and well-considered means. Vidyasagar was doubtless one of these conservative reformers. He wanted to readjust old institutions just ​to meet altered conditions. It would be an amazing perversion of truth to say that his policy was destructive. The customs, which though old were yet serviceable, he would retain. Even when he became Principal of the Sanskrit College he dressed himself in the scrupulously simple garment of an orthodox pundit. The food of Hindus accorded best with him and he strictly abstained from wines and spirits. The same rational conservatism permeated the higher concerns of life. Opposed as he was to the projected removal of the burning ghat from Nimtala, he supported the alternative proposal of effecting necessary improvements. He successfully contended against the alientation of Hindu religious endowment property; yet he believed that there was much room for reform in the management of religious trusts. He was in favour of educating the Hindu girls, but mainly in accordance with the indigenous system. As he was dead against their career of a professional teacher, he opposed Miss Carpenter's ​scheme of female normal school. The deepest thing in him was his reverence for womanhood and he devoted much earnest thought to problems touching their welfare. Even those who do not look with complacency on widow marriages, have nothing but the highest praise for his memorable efforts to suppress polygamy and his noble though belated exertions to banish child marriage. He fought an ineffectual fight, it is true; but his failure, besides throwing considerable light on the subject to guide and beacon future reformers, paved the way for the gradual abolition of the practices resulting from the wider diffusion of liberal education and enlightened views.
He did not simply chalk out for his countrymen a certain line of action. He could sympathise with the sorrows of others since he himself had laboured under afflictions. Possessing no extraneous advantages of wealth or family connections, he rose to the acme of note by dint of his unaided ​ability, but did not look with an eye of condescending favour upon his less cultivated brethren. Neither did he fail them in their supreme hour of need. He was a munificent donor and subscriber to many educational institutions. The monthly allowances he granted the poor students enabled them to prosecute their studies, thereby qualifying them for a noble and useful career. In times of dire distress and scarcity, when the country was visited by famine or malaria, he promptly held out a strong hand of help to the sufferers and gave them the comfort of his presence and active sympathy. In all practical measures of relief he took the lead. He fed the hungry, clothed the nude, watched and tended the sick with the utmost care and when occasion needed opened charitable foundations for their benefit. Liberal stipends were paid to many a poor but respectable family; but this was done in secret to avoid notice and remark. To the disinterested service of man he devoted his entire life. It would be an impossible ​task to recount all his benefactions; all that he earned with the honest sweat of his brow he spent freely in augmenting the wellbeing of his fellowmen. He never desired fame. Duty to all mankind for duty's sake was his guiding principle. All persons, without any distinction of colour, clime or creed, benefited by his gifts. He could have heaped up and left behind a princely fortune, but he preferred to live in voluntary poverty. His liberality was not posthumous. Giving away money with his own hands to the destitute he rendered his bounty most advantageous. Since he untied his purse strings with good-will, and not from a spirit of cold calculation, he really wiped away the tears from many eyes and experienced a feeling of expansion.
Behind these many-sided activities there lay the engaging individuality of the man. His broad and intelligent forehead, his beaming face, his open manners, always inspired confidence. He was affable, un​assuming, without a particle of conceit or affectation about him and possessed keen sense of humour. This rendered him a desired and delightful companion. A silent worker and a man of lofty patriotism, he shrank from the jangle of current politics and stood aloof from political meetings. Destitute as he was of oratorical power, he made no speech in public. Though he earned a large sum of money by literature, he was not softened by prosperity. Nor did he ever live in clover; his habits were austere and sober. Even in his palmiest days he would not waste a piece of thread. Necessity early taught him to work hard and live frugally; and he ever continued "to scorn delights and live laborious days." Though he could keep a coach and pair, he deemed it a luxury. Pressed hard by his friends he once purchased a gharry but soon disposed of it in disgust. Almost the whole of his income was dedicated to charitable purposes and this justly gained him the honourable title of Dayasagar (i.e., ocean of ​charity) and the abiding reverence of his countrymen. He was a father to the poor and many a time raised money by loan to aid them in their helpless and pressing need. His intimates grew alarmed at his heavy debts, but he was able to discharge all in time. The hand of God protects those that prop the unsuccessful in life's struggle. His personal integrity was unimpeachable; he had no price, and was above all corruption. Essentially a seeker of truth all his life, his sole aim was to bring the light of hope, the torch of knowledge, to the doors of the poor. To relieve the physical wants of his countrymen and to remove their mental darkness, he sacrificed his all. Worldly honour or power had no attraction for him. It was this stability of character that engendered in him a strong sense of independence and enabled him to hold his own against the first magnates in the land. But he seldom overstepped the bounds of courtesy. His unflinching sense of honour prompted him to respect others. He revered ​his parents and was ever eager to do all that would make them happy. Questioned by some Brahmins of Benares whether he believed in the god of the city, he candidly answered in the negative, adding that his living parents were the only deities he cared to worship. With him this was no blasphemy. He considered it a sacred duty to serve his parents. While that new-old doctrine of the sanctity of all work was writing in another land, in India there was at least one who was silently and unwittingly carrying out that principle in practice. No man more thoroughly understood the dignity of labour than Vidyasagar. That ancient tenet of Karma he followed by instinct. He was as much at home with the lowest as with the highest and took equal delight in being eminently useful to them all without parade of noble intentions. India mourns the loss of the son who embodied her spirit and glory. Can such a blameless life be without value in the sight of the Lord?