The Modern Review/Volume 38/Number 3/Bombay University Convocation Address
Bombay University Convocation Address
Sir Chimanlal Setalvad’s well-thought-out and suggestive address at the last Convocation of the Bombay University for conferring degrees deserves to be perused in its entirety. We will notice here two of his suggestions.
He is not for importing teachers from abroad for even the higher teaching in our universities, but wants that our own Indian men should be educated and trained for the purpose. This is the right view to take in the matter. Not that he or any other thoughtful man would not occasionally import a first-rate foreign scholar or savant for some special purpose. But the rule should be to rely generally on our own ablest, most original and most scholarly educators. The Calcutta University has shown the way in following this most wholesome and necessary rule, though its choice has not been unexceptionable in many cases.
The corollary, of course, is that not only should Indians be our highest educators, but that there should also be such facilities for the highest education in India itself that ordinarily our youth need not go abroad for the best liberal education. Here again we ought to explain that as no country can specialize in everything and do without the inspiration, instruction and information which can be had abroad, we are not against but for our students going to foreign countries after they have received the best education in this country. Germans, Frenchmen, Americans, Englishmen, Japanese, etc., go abroad for finishing their education, in spite of the ample educational facilities to be found in their respective countries. Such should be the ease with us also.
And in order that our educational equipment and arrangements should be up to date, adequate and progressive, large sums of money are required.
No province of India has so much cash as Bombay. Bombay can set the example to the other provinces of India, if only her many multimillionaires have sufficient cultural patriotism and enthusiasm. And as they are hard-headed men of business, they should be assured that such patriotism will pay both in the literal and the figurative sense.
The other point in Sir Chimanlal Setalvad’s address to which we wish to draw attention is that he is in favour of journalism being taught by our Universities. This is not a new suggestion but is nevertheless a good one. Already journalism is absorbing a few of our University men. It would be good if future journalists had a previous training for the profession.
Some of the subjects which a course in journalism must include, such as economics, political science and sociology, are already included ïn some of our graduate courses. Those who would go in for journalism might be asked to attend these courses, for which there are already professors and lecturers in some Universities. For other subjects, teachers will have to be appointed.
We believe the national University founded by Mrs. Annie Besant in Madras teaches journalism. Suggestions regarding courses may be obtained from its syllabus of studies. Then there is the London syllabus. Syllabuses may also be obtained from America.
Some of the regular lecturers in journalism will have to be drawn from the ranks of professional journalists; and there may be in addition occasional lectures or series of lectures by distinguished journalists.
The students will have to receive their practical training in connection with some periodicals and daily and weekly newspapers. Apart from party views, and differences of opinion, in choosing the journals in connection with which training is to be given, it may be necessary to discriminate between papers according to the principles or want of principles which govern their conduct. This may not be quite an easy task, but the difficulties which may present themselves are not insurmountable.
Sir Chimanlal concluded his address with the following message of Rabindranath Tagore to the students:—
“I feet sorely grieved when I find a considerable number of our young men of the present day ready to repudiate western culture, rendering themselves intellectually untouchable in the civilised community. They ought to know that only the mind that is crudely primitive suspiciously barricades itself against all contact of truth to, which, by chance, it is not accustomed. Such a mind may be compared, to the fiercely unreceptive desert which allows rain clouds from alien horizons to pass over it without drawing its due share of tribute from them. Men’s highest privilege is to be able to claim as his rightful inheritance all that is great and true, appearing in any part of his world and at any period of his history. It is a truism to say that our wealth of culture, attains its perfection through its free access to foreign contributions, just as the material wealth of a country reaches its greatness not merely from whatever it can produce within its own boundaries, but_also from what it can import from the larger world outside. It is because our inmost truth lies in the fundamental unity of man that we cannot properly know ourselves unless we know others, and, therefore, if, being afraid of losing the sorry distinction of our intellectual solitude, we closely shut our mind against the free ventilation of ideas that flow from shore to shore, we also shut out the only light that can reveal to ourselves the universal significance of our own culture”.