Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras

Front matter

CONVOCATION ADDRESSES

0F THE

UNIVERSITIES OF BOMBAY AND MADRAS.

First Convocation Address of the University of Bombay

CONVOCATION ADDRESSES

OF THE

University of Bombay.

FIRST CONVOCATION.

(By His Excellency Sir H. B. E. Frere.)

Mr. Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen of the Senate,—I am sure it is a subject o£ very sincere regret to the Senate and to every one here present that this meeting could not be presided over by the great statesman who has lately left these shores: to one whose heart was so full of sympathy with everything connected with the welfare of India—who loved India with a large and generous heart as Sir George Clerk did, the present would have been an occasion of no ordinary interest. But while I regret he is not here among us to-day, I cannot but feel grateful to Mr. Vice-Chancellor, for the arrangements he so considerately made, which have enabled me to be present.

I cannot help going back in memory to the occasion shortly after my arrival in this country, when I met Messrs. Bell and Henderson, who had then just landed, the two first oi the highly educated teachers who were selected by Mr. Elphinstone to commence his great system for the education of the youth of this presidency. I recollect, too, when Dr. Harkness, your present Dean of the Faculty of Arts, arrived here with Professor Orlebar in 1835, as the first Professor of the then infant College. Looking to the great difficulties with which they had to contend, I think we cannot but be surprised at the rapid growth of the educational system in this presidency.

I find that the first charter of this University was granted on the 18th July 1857. It was a time of darkness and discouragement, when all of us were thinking much more of immediate measures of material defence than of the more peaceful subjects connected with education. It has always seemed to me one of the almost sublime characteristics of that period, that when we were all absorbed in measures relating mainly to the immediate defence and security of the country, men were found who made time to calmly and deliberately carry out the measures connected with the grant of a charter to an infant University.

I find that in 1859 the first Matriculation examination was held, when 132 candidates presented themselves. Of these Only 22 passed. The cause of so small a proportion Succeeding will be fresh in the recollection of all who took an interest in the University at that period. It was found that a great number of the candidates who would have been well qualified for admission if judged simply by the progress they had made in those branches of learning which were to be the subjects of their University studies, were yet deficient in a complete and scholar-like knowledge of their own mother tongue. I for one, while regretting the disappointment entailed on many an anxious and zealous student, cannot regret the decision at which the examiners of that period arrived, that a knowledge of the student's own vernacular language should be required as indispensable in any one who applies for admission to this University. It is, I am convinced, one great security for the future prosperity as well as utility of the University.

Of the 22 students matriculated in 1859, 15 presented themselves in 1861 as candidates for the First Examination in Arts: of whom 7 passed; and six of these 7 presented themselves at the final examination for the Bachelor of Arts degree in the present year. Of these 4 passed, two in the First Division and two in the Second.

It is a circumstance worthy of note, and highly creditable to the successful candidates, that they have all intimated their intention of going up to the examination for the Master of Arts degree.

In all the old European Universities I believe the Degree of Master of Arts is conferred without examination on Bachelors of a certain standing; but it is not so in this University. Here the degree of Master of Arts is only granted after an examination of a very high standard, similar to that required for honours in other Universities, and it is much to the credit of these young men that they should voluntarily offer themselves to undergo such an ordeal. I would only offer them this one word of advice, that they should not attempt to grasp their academical honours by hurrying through their studies for the examination. The honour they will attain is substantial and permanent, and well worthy of being sought by patient and laborious study.

What I have said relates solely to the graduates in Arts. As regards the graduates in Medicine, I find many circumstances of peculiar interest. This is the first time that the Grant Medical College has surrendered its privilege of conferring diplomas to the University, and that the College duty of testing the attainments of the students has merged, in the examination for a University degree, I would beg the successful candidates to bear in mind the greater responsibilities as well as the higher honours which devolve on them by this change. They go forth to the world with the stamp, not of a school, but of a University; while they will find their abilities and industry tasked to the utmost to maintain the reputation of the school of Medicine in which they have been educated, and which boasts among its professors and graduates some gentlemen members of this Senate, who are second to none in their noble profession in professional reputation and scientific attainment. I trust that the young licentiates will not rest content with the lowest degree, but will aspire to the higher degree of Doctor, which can only be attained by laborious practical as well as theoretical study, and which will justly confer on them the highest honours the University can bestow.

While I cannot but congratulate the Senate on the great and rapid progress which the University has already made, I would venture to remind every one connected with it that we shall have a hard struggle to maintain a generous rivalry with the sister Universities of the other Presidencies. At an examination which took place shortly before I left Calcutta I was informed that nearly 1,100 candidates had presented themselves at the examination for matriculation, and the greatest enthusiasm appears to prevail on the subject of University education in Calcutta. The range of University studies there, too, is much wider than it is here. I can only hope that we may here make up in depth for what is wanting in expanse, and that when the time arrives for comparison, we may be found inferior to no University in India in thorough scholarship in all those branches which we profess to teach. And I would venture to express a hope that no attempt will be made to lower the University standard in any respect.

And, Mr. Vice-Chancellor, while congratulating the Senate on the successful result of this first examination for University Degrees, I am sure I only speak the sentiments of every member of the University present in offering the tribute of the warm thanks of the Senate to the highly respected Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Dr. Harkness, who is so shortly to leave us. As the first professor in Elphinstone College, it must be a source of sincere and heartfelt pleasure to him to witness a scene like this before us. He watched over the cradle of the University in its infancy; and now before he finally returns to the country where his own academical honours were gained, he has been permitted to see this University established in its maturity, and promising, I trust, to take its place amongst the great Universities of the British Empire.

I would, in conclusion, say a few words to you who have this day graduated, and are about to quit this University for the active pursuits of life. I would beg of you to recollect that you are no longer pupils of any single school, but graduates of a University. Your standard must henceforth be, not that of your masters, or even of the Government to whose service some of you may devote yourselves, but of the whole educated world. You have the character of this University to maintain. Wherever the studies of this University are known and appreciated, you have to establish its reputation, and I trust you will help to remove from the learned men of India the common reproach that we are now compelled to seek professors in every branch of learning, even in the ancient classical languages of your own country, on the banks of the Rhine or the Seine, the Isis or the Forth.

But while I trust that we may henceforward look for profound scholars among the educated Hindoos and Development Parsees, I trust that one of your great objects will always be to enrich your own vernacular literature with the learning which you acquire in this University. Remember, I pray you, that what is here taught is a sacred trust confided to you for the benefit of your countrymen. The learning which can here be imparted to a few hundreds, or at most to a few thousands, of scholars, must by you be made available through your own vernacular tongues to the many millions of Hindoostan. The great majority of your countrymen can only learn through the language which is taught them at their mother's knee, and it must be through such language mainly that you can impart to them all that you would communicate of European learning and science.

Remember, too, that not only the character of the University, but the character of your whole people, is to great extent in your hands. You have two classes of objectors to meet. One is to be found chiefly among Europeans, not, I trust, among those who have lived long in this country, but still so common among those who are not practically familiar with your countrymen, as to deserve your earnest exertions to remove it. They will tell you that the oriental intellect is worn out ; that it may possess great capacity to receive and retain knowledge, but that it has no power to analyse or combine; that it is no longer capable of producing those results of a high order of intellect of which your ancient literature contains such abundant evidence. I trust that no one connected with the Senate of this University, or who is really able to judge what native intellect is now capable of, will endorse this opinion; but yet you well know it is widely prevalent, and it rests with you to disprove it.

Again, you will find among members of your own communities a widespread and deep-rooted conviction that an education such as you have received, tends to sap the foundation of social morality, that it tends to make you presumptuous and self-sufficient despisers of parental and all other authority.

The conduct which will be the best answer to both classes of objectors is shadowed forth in a superstition almost Universally prevalent in the wild mountains of Germany and Scandinavia as well as in every nation in the East. The legend runs of a magic mirror in which may be imaged all things of the visible or invisible world, but the secrets which are there revealed are not visible to every enquirer; they are not to be seen by the seer himself, they are only visible to the eyes of a simple teachable innocent child. It always seemed to me that this old and prevalent superstition shadowed forth a great truth applicable to knowledge of every kind: you will find it taught by the philosophers of Greece, of Persia, and of China—in your own Shasters as well as by the example of all the great intellects of Modern Europe. It is this—that if you would seek the knowledge of Newton or Bacon, or hope to wield the intellectual weapons of Locke, you must learn in their spirit, lowly and reverently with a pure as well as with a humble and teachable heart. Remember the great University truth, that Arts rest on Morals, and that if you would be wise and learned, the pure heart is as necessary to the successful pursuit of Science and Art as the high and unclouded intellect.

SECOND CONVOCATION.

(By His Excellency Sir H. B. E. Frere.)

Mr. Vice-Chancellor and Members of the Senate,—I am glad to be able to meet the Senate in this their Second Convocation, and again to congratulate them on the progress which the University has made during the past year.

I find that of 143 caudidates who presented themselves at the Matriculation Examination, fifty-six passed, which is a far larger proportion than that of last year, when only thirty passed out of 134 candidates.

I am glad to see no less than twenty Parsees among the successful candidates, but I must remind them that they are still fewer in proportion than their Hindoo fellow-students, and that we must have more Parsee candidates, and they must be more successful before they can make good their claim to a full appreciation of the benefits of this University.

I am glad, to congratulate the. Directors of the Bombay Proprietary School on the appearance of their first successful students at the Matriculation Examination, but here I must qualify my congratulations by again reminding them that much more is justly expected of them than they have yet effected. The constitution of their school presents many admirable features, it numbers among its students the sons of some of the richest and most respectable Parsee gentlemen. It is I believe entirely self supporting, and the proprietors, with, as it appears to me, very sound judgment, retain its entire management in their own hands. We might justly expect from such a school, if not the largest numbers, certainly the largest proportion of candidates for admission to the University, and of competitors for University honors, and I trust that the young student who has now appeared among us will be but the first of many sons of our Parsee worthies who will vindicate by their career at this University their aspiration to be considered as one of the most enlightened communities in British India. In a greater or less degree what I have said of the Bombay Proprietary School applies to all the schools in the Presidency.

I find that of the passed candidates—

25 belong to the Elphinstone College.

18 to the Poona College.

9 do Elphinstone Central School.

2 do Poona College School.

1 do Bombay Proprietary School.

1 do Free General Assembly's Institution.

56

So that the schools of the Presidency furnished but thirteen students for Matriculation, while the Colleges furnished forty- three.

It is evident from this that the teaching resources of the Colleges must, to some extent, be diverted from their proper object, from preparing Matriculated students for their degree, in order to bring unmatriculated students up to the Matriculation standard. I would not have our Colleges do less, but I would urge our schools to do more, for they may rest assured that their excellence as schools for imparting a liberal education will be measured in no small degree by the proportion of students they may prepare for Matriculation at the University.

I am glad to congratulate the Poona College on the large number of successful applicants for Matriculation who were prepared at that institution. They are 20 this year against 6 in the last.

The facilities which the capital of the Deccan possesses for obtaining a liberal education have of late been greatly increased, and I trust that the Brahmins of the Deccan will take advantage of those facilities, and not yield without a struggle the palm of intellectual superiority to their brethren of Bombay.

I am glad to find that the Senate is satisfied that there is a marked and steady improvement in every branch of the examinations. A larger proportion of candidates has passed, while the standards of examination have been in no respect relaxed.

Fifteen out of twenty candidates passed their First Examination in Arts (or Little go).

Three candidates out of six passed for their B.A. degree.

In Medicine, five out of thirteen candidates passed their First Examination, and there were three candidates, who all passed, one of them with great distinction, for their L.M. degree. At the examination, the first that has ever been held, for honours in Arts, one Bachelor was a candidate, and obtained a high position in the 2nd class. The result of this examination entitles him, at the end of five years from his Matriculation to the degree of M.A., and I would warmly congratulate Mr. Mahadev Govind Ranade on being the first student of this University, indeed one of the first in India, who has passed his examination for his degree as M.A.

I would note with pleasure another signal mark of progress. One of the most respected and trusted of our fellow townsmen has, during the year, devoted the large sum of £10,000 to provide a suitable building for the Elphinstone College. This is not the place for empty compliment, and the act is only one in a series of deeds of public and private benevolence, but I would congratulate Mr. Cowasjee Jehangeer for being one of the first Fellows whose name will appear on what I hope will be a long and honorable roll of the Founders and Benefactors of this University.

The Senate has also accepted Mr. Munguldas Nathoobhoy's gift of £2,000 to endow a travelling fellowship, and I trust the University will not be tardy in furnishing candidates to take advantage of the enlightened liberality of their countryman.

During the year your second Vice-Chancellor resigned the office which he had ably filled from the time when the University was yet in its infancy, feeling that the pressure of his judicial duties did not allow of his devoting so much time and attention as he wished to the affairs of the University, and I am glad of having an opportunity of thus publicly expressing to Sir Joseph Arnould, the high sense which I am sure every member of the Senate entertains of the value of the services he rendered while he filled the office.

When I last addressed you I dwelt on the important part which this University seemed to me destined to play as the interpreter to India of Western thought and Western civilization. I believe that some of those who then heard me were disappointed that I said little on the bearing which the University would have on the formation of public servants, and through them on the administration of public affairs. You will perhaps see the reason of my having said so little on this subject, if I say a very few words regarding our English views on the connexion between our English Universities and our English public men, and the publicaffairs which they administer.

And first of all let me remind you that here in India you see but imperfectly, and you therefore can judge but imperfectly, of the men who influence our Government at home. You see the soldiers and the sailors, whose strong arms and stout hearts enable our writers and thinkers to write and think in peace. You see the active practical men, who throughout our Empire in hundreds of varying professions and pursuits, accumulate and distribute wealth, and deal with all that concerns the material prosperity of England ; but the classes you see here form but a small part of our social and political system and the Englishmen who administer affairs in this country are but a portion of the great administrative machine of the English nation. Part, and the most powerful part, of that machinery is rarely seen here, and can scarcely be sufficiently appreciated in this country. I refer to the great body of men who obtain in their youth the advantages of a liberal education, and of whom a comparatively small number even engage directly in what would be called, in this country, the affairs of Government, yet whose influence is most sensibly felt in the administration of public affairs, and has perhaps been more potent than that of any body of men in rendering our country what it is.

Now I need not tell you that an University education may be regarded as the highest type, and an University Degree the stamp Degree as the final stamp of a liberal education, and I would have the native members and students of the University compare for a moment the impression they have themselves formed of the value and effect of this stamp with our English ideas on the same subject.

I need not remind you how many of our leading and most honored public men in England were trained at the Universities. No one living in India in this generation is likely to forget that glorious galaxy of contemporary students, which at one University, and at one period of its history, gave to India three successive Governors-General, and to England a goodly number of her most eminent Cabinet Ministers. This is a fact which we are not likely to forget, but I would beg you also to bear in mind that along with these distinguished public men were hundreds of fellow stndents, their equals and in some few cases their superiors in academical distinction, who, after leaving the University, entered into almost every one of the numerous professions open to educated Englishmen. Some fought as soldiers in India and China and the Crimea; some became Lawyers, and Members of Parliament; some of the most distinguished applied themselves to teaching to others the knowledge they had acquired, and devoted themselves to learning, and science, and to the service of God in various ways, while a great proportion betook themselves to the management of their own estates, and affairs, their land, their counting houses and their banks.

The fact is that in England we consider a liberal education a necessary part of the claim of any man to prominent social or political position. It is true that many men do, by force of natural ability or by other natural and acquired advantages, obtain distinguished positions in society or political life without such education, but they are the exceptions, and, as a rule, the only one point which all prominent men, in society and politics, of all classes and opinions, have in common, is their liberal education.

But it may be said a man may be very happy and prosperous, and do great good and possess great influence and enjoyment in life, without a liberal education or indeed, without any education at all. I will not detain you to consider how far this is true in the abstract, nor to account for exceptional instances, which might be adduced to prove it; I can only assure you that this is not our English view, and that, practical hard-headed money-making race as the English are said to be, no man amongst us, as a general rule, aspires to political or social eminence without the advantage of a liberal education, and what is more, no family long maintains a high position, in the political or social scale, unless its members seek to acquire this advantage. This is a truth which I would wish the successful merchants and bankers of this island more particularly to lay to heart. If they go to England they will find our leading commercial men treated as equals by the most exclusive aristocracy in the world, and occupying a position of the highest influence in the administration of public affairs. You will soon find out your mistake, if you suppose that this position is due to their wealth. You will find that in England the possession of wealth, unaccompanied by that refinement of thought and manner which liberal education alone can give, makes the possessor simply ridiculous, and you will find, if you enquire into the history of particular families, that whereas new born wealth in the hands of men liberally educated or who rightly value a liberal education for their offspiing, has a tendency to consolidate and perpetuate itself, the most ample fortune entrusted to a man who does not possess and deliberately undervalues a liberal education, has a perpetual tendency to waste away, and leave the possessor far worse off than his industrious ancestor who first emerged from poverty by his own exertions.

I would beg the Native gentlemen of Bombay to bear in mind that what I have told them is mainly true of a liberal education. It is not simply reading and writing, it is not even what is called a good practical education highly valuable, if not indispensable, as such knowledge is to many of the most important classes of the community that I now speak of; no amount of mere reading and writing, nor even of purely practical signs properly so-called, can do what I have told you we expect in England from a liberal education. It must be an education which, whatever its subject, aims at training, purifying and strengthening the intellect, which seeks not merely to impress on men's memories, knowledge which may be useful and. profitable to them, but which aims at training them, to correct modes of thinking and reasoning, and to fill their intellects with the loftiest and most beautiful results of human thought. I cannot now attempt to discuss the reasons why such training must be useful to the student and profitable to the community of which he is a member; I can only beg you to receive my assurance of the fact, and to ponder over the reasons of it, that we English hold these views and habitually and deliberately act on them, at immense cost of personal labour and even privations, and that it is my deliberate opinion, shared, I feel assured, by every educated Englishman here present, that the adoption of the course I have indicated as that which Englishmen adopt by long habit, and as it were by instinct, affords the best chance of perpetuating that wealth which is now flowing into this community from every side, and of ennobling it by those attributes which in the opinion of civilized Europe can alone give to wealth permanent dignity and permanent influence.

Nor will I attempt to point out those branches of liberal learning which appear to me most likely to have such a permanent beneficial influence on those who study, not for immediate profit, but with a view to strengthen and elevate their own intellects.

There is, however, one branch for which the facilities have lately been largely increased, and which appears to me so important that I would say a few words regarding it, I allude to the study of your own classical languages.

Some discussion has arisen which must, I believe, bear useful fruit regarding the relative merits of the classical languages of this country as compared with the vernaculars, as objects of University study. I will not anticipate the results of this discussion. No one estimates more highly than I do the importance of vernacular education; no one has a higher estimate of the capabilities of some of our Indian vernacular languages; no one has higher hopes as to the space which they may one day fill in the literature of India. But I would remind you that the improvement of any vernacular language, which has but a scanty modern literature of its own, must depend mainly on the cultivation of classical languages. However great the natural capabilities of a language, it cannot become suited to the wants of a highly civilised people, except by the cultivation of those languages which already have a classical literature of their own. It was the men who learnt, and lectured, and examined in Latin and Greek, who matured the modern English and German, French and Italian, out of the illiterate dialects which served the purposes of our ruder ancestors, and it is only by a similar process that we can hope to see the vernacular languages of modern India occupy the same position of popular usefulness and permanence. You have now in this University, in the professors of Zend and Sanscrit, unrivalled facilities for the study of your own classical languages. I would beg you who value the usefulness of the University, to take good heed that the opportunity does not pass by unimproved.

I would in conclusion say to the graduates and under-graduates of this University that Government will every year look with increasing interest to the results of the University examinations, and I trust that we shall find in the tests here applied the same unerring touchstone by which to recognize who are likely to be fit for an impartial share in public offices.

The graduates of this University have now opened to them with a far better prospect of attainment than any other part of the educated youth of this country, the highest posts on the Judicial Bench, and an influential share in the most important functions of the public administration; but I need not remind you that no man who is indifferent to the advantages of a liberal education can hope to fill with dignity or efficiency a seat on the bench, which has been occupied by Macintosh or Sir William Jones. When England affords you the opportunity of filling offices hitherto reserved for her ablest and most experienced public servants, be assured it is not because she undervalues the office, nor will she continue the offer unless you on your part can furnish men who are fit to sit beside such men as an English University can furnish.

You will not, I am sure, suppose that I would make the University degree in itself a passport to the public service; it must be sought for its own sake, as the test and in itself the great reward of the best education we can give you. I cannot better illustrate the spirit in which I would have you seek it, than by an anecdote of the great statesman beneath whose statue we are now assembled. It was told me by an officer of our Bombay Army, who devoted his leisure during his furlough to attend the classes in the University of Edinburgh, that he habitually sat beside an old man whom he noted for his diligent attention to the lecturer long before he knew the name of his fellow student. It was Mountstuart Elphinstone, who had long filled the highest offices in this country, and was believed to have twice declined the Governor- Generalship of India. To the close of his life he sought as a privilege that knowledge, which this University here freely offers to you. Let the same spirit animate you, and you will be worthy of the high public employment which England offers you, if it can be said of you, as it was of one of the wisest and most learned Cambridge graduates of the last generation,