Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose, His Life and Speeches Part 9

83,648. If a foreign professor would not come and serve in India for the same remuneration as he obtained in his own country, the witness would certainly not force him to come.

83,649. (Mr. Abdur Rahim). Recruitment for the Educational Service should be made in the first place in India, if suitable men were available; but if not then he would allow the best outsiders to be brought in. In the present state of the country it would be very easy to fill up many of the chairs by selecting the best men in India.

83,650. The aim of the universities should be to promote two cla.s.ses of work--first, research; and secondly, an all-round sound education. Men of different types would be required for these two duties.

83,651. (Mr. Madge). Any idea that the educational system of India was so far inferior to that of England, that Indians, who had made their mark, had done so, not because of the educational system of the country, but in spite of it, was quite unfounded. The standard of education prevailing in India was quite up to the mark of several British universities. It was as true of any other country in the world as of India that education was valued as a means for pa.s.sing examinations, and not only for itself, and there was no more cramming in India than elsewhere.

83,652. The West certainly brought to the East a modern spirit, which was very valuable, but it would be dearly purchased by the loss of an honorable career for competent Indians in their own country.

83,653. The educational system in India had in the past been too mechanical, but a turn for the better was now taking place and the universities were recognising the importance of research work, and were willing to give their highest degrees to encourage it.

83,654. (Mr. Macdonald). The witness did not think it was necessary to have a non-Indian element in the service in order to stiffen it up, but he accepted the principle that there should be a certain small proportion of non-Indians.

83,655. The t.i.tle of professor at a college or University should carry with it dignity and honour, and ought not to be so freely used as at present. All he asked was that it should not be abolished at the expense of such Indians as were doing as good work as their European colleagues.

83,656. If the Calcutta university continued to develop its teaching side, there would be no objection to recruiting University Professors from aided colleges. This would have certain advantages.

83,657. (Mr. Fisher). The witness desired to secure for India Europeans who had European reputations in their different branches of study. If it was necessary to go outside India or England to procure good men, he would prefer to go to Germany. This was the practice in America where they were annexing all the great intellects of Europe.

83,658. The witness would like to see India entering the world movement in the advance and march of knowledge. It was of the highest importance that there should be an intellectual atmosphere in India. It would be of advantage if there were many Indians in the Educational Service. For they came more in contact with the people, and influenced their intellectual activity. Besides, on retirement they would live in India and their life experience would be at their countrymen's service.

83,659. There was very little in the complaint made in certain quarters that the work of the Professors in the colleges in India was hampered by the Government regulations as to curricula. A good teacher was not troubled by such matters.

83,660. (Mr. Sly). There was no scope for the employment of non-Indians in the high schools as apart from the colleges. It was in the professorial line that more help from the West was required.

83,661. (Mr. Gokhale). The witness knew of three instances in which the colonies had secured distinguished men on salaries which were lower than these given to officers of the Indian Educational Service. One was at Toronto, another was in New Zealand and the third at Yale university.

The salaries on the two latter cases were 600 and 500 a year. The same held good as regards j.a.pan. The facts there had been stated in a Government of India publication as follows: "Subsequent to 1895 there were 67 Professors recruited in Europe and America, of those, 20 came from Germany, 16 from England and 16 from the United States. The average pay was 384. In the highest Imperial University the average pay is 684. As soon as j.a.panese could be found to do the work, even tolerably well, the foreigner was dropped."

83,662. When the witness first started work in India, he found that there was no physical laboratory, or any grant made for a practical experimental course. He had to construct instruments with the help of local mechanics, whom he had to train. All this took him ten years. He then undertook original investigation at his own expense. The Royal Society became specially interested in his work and desired to give him a Parliamentary grant for its continuation. It was after this that the Government of Bengal came forward and offered him facilities for research.

83,663. In the Educational Service he would take men of achievement from anywhere; but men of promise he would take from his own country.

83,664. (Mr. Chaubal). He did not know whether the salaries he had mentioned as having been paid in j.a.pan, New Zealand and Yale were on an incremental scale or not.

83,665. There was a difference of kind between the way in which students were taught in schools and the way in which they were taught in colleges. He did not agree with the witnesses who had said that during the first year or two years at college the instruction given was similar to that given in a school. It was very difficult to disprove or to prove such statements. There would be no advantage in keeping boys to a school course up the intermediate standard and making the colleges deal with only those students who had pa.s.sed the intermediate examination.

83,666. (Sir Theodore Morison). There should be one scale of pay for all persons in the higher educational department. The rate of salary, Rs.

200 rising to Rs. 1,500 per month, was suitable, subject to the proviso that the man of great distinction, instead of beginning at the lowest rate of pay, should start some where in the middle of the list, say, at Rs. 400 or Rs. 500. He would make no reference in regard to Europeans or Indians in that respect. In effect this no doubt amounted to making Indians eligible for higher educational posts both by direct recruitment and by promotion.

83,667. He would not favour the handing over of all the Government inst.i.tutions in Bengal to private agencies; there must be one or two Government colleges in order to keep up the standard. He should be sorry to see the Government dissociating itself from one of its primary duties, which was education.

83,668. Privately managed Colleges paid less in salary than the Government Colleges. They paid about the same as was given in the Provincial Service, and they obtained fairly good men. It would not be right for a great Government to grant a minimum pay to Indian Professors and an extravagantly high pay to their European colleagues, for doing the same kind of work.

83,669. At the Presidency College the facilities for scientific work were now greater than in many inst.i.tutions in England. India was now becoming a great country for Biological research. Again, the Physical and Chemical Laboratories at the Presidency College were finer than many in England. If young men of science in England thought they obtained better opportunities in pursuing their subjects in New Zealand and Toronto than in India, the India office ought to remove that impression at once.

83,670. (Lord Ronaldshay). When an Indian graduate under the witnesses'

scheme was appointed direct to the higher service in India he would not compel him to go to England for a period of training. The person who would be appointed in India directly from the Indian Universities would have to have previously served with distinction in subordinate positions; a visit to Europe would be an advantage but not absolutely necessary.

83,671. (Mr. Biss). The cost of living in Calcutta to an Indian Professor or Lecturer would all depend as the style in which he lived.

In each service there is always a standard of living to which every member is expected to conform. An Indian Professor had to go to Europe from time to time to keep himself in touch with the developments of his subject. An Indian officer had to support a large number of relations.

The question of a man's private expenses should not be raised in fixing his pay. One might as well inquire whether the candidate for admission to the service was a bachelor or married, or as to how many children he had. He had known Europeans who had led a simple life, and had been all the better for it.

83,672. He could not understand why men went to j.a.pan and Canada instead of coming to India on better terms. It was a mystery to him. He thought it was either sheer ignorance or the spread of the commercial spirit.

83,673. All the students coming to his side of the University, were, as a rule, keen and anxious to learn; he could not wish for better students.

83,674. (Mr. Gupta). He desired one service, because he thought it was most degrading that certain men, although they were doing the same work, should be cla.s.sed in a Provincial Service, while others should be cla.s.sed in an Imperial Service. The prospect of the members of the Provincial Service were not at all what they ought to be, and that was the reason why the best men were not attracted to it.

PROF. J. C. BOSE AT MADURA

On his way back to Calcutta from the Fourth Scientific Deputation to the West, Prof. J. C. Bose visited Madura, 14th June 1915. The Tamil Sangam presented him with an address. In reply Dr. Bose made an important speech, in course of which he said:--

I am no longer a representative of Bengal nor have I come to a strange place, but as an Indian addressing the mighty India and her people. When we realise that unity of our destiny then a great future opens out for us.

It may be we may theorise and attribute to the plants all the characteristics of the animals; but that will be merely theory: there will be no proof. There are certain cla.s.ses of people who think that plants are utterly unlike animals and some hold that they are like animals. The mere theory is absolutely worthless in order to find out the truth. We have to find by investigation, by means of researches, by means of proofs, that one is identical with the other. We have not only to drop all theory but we have to make the plant itself write down the answers to the questions that we have to put to them. That was the great problem,--how to make the plant itself answer and write down answers to the question....

If the plants are acted on by various medicines and drugs like ourselves, then we can create an agent or a spokesman on which we can carry out all future investigations on the action of drugs. Then there is opened out a great vista for the scientific study of medicine. And let me tell you medicine is not yet an exact science. It is merely a phase of tradition. We have not been able to make medicine scientific.

Now by the data of the influence of drugs on the fundamental basis of life, as is seen in the plant, we shall be able to make the science of medicine purely scientific.

In travelling all over the world, which I have done several times, I was struck by two great characteristics of different nations. One characteristic of certain nations is living for the future. All the modern nations are striving to win force and power from nature. There is another cla.s.s of men who live on the glory of the past. Now, what is to be the future of our nation? Are we to live only on the glory of the past and die off from the face of the earth, to show that we are worthy descendants of the glorious past and to show by our work, by our intellect and by our service that we are not a decadent nation? We have still a great and mighty future before us, a future that will justify our ancestry. In talking about ancestry, do we ever realise that the only way in which we can do honour to our past is not to boast of what our ancestors have done but to carry out in the future something as great, if not greater than they. Are we to be a living nation, to be proud of our ancestry and to try to win renown by continuous achievements? These mighty monuments that I see around me tell us what has been done till very recent times. I have travelled over some of the greatest ruins of the Universities of India. I have been to the ruins of the University of Taxilla in the farthest corner of India which attracted the people of the west and the east. I had been to the ruins of Nalanda, a University which invited all the west to gain knowledge under its intellectual fostering. I had been all there and seen them. I have come here also and want to visit Conjeevaram. But are you to foster the dead honours or to try to bring back your University in India and drag once more from the rest of the world people who would come down and derive knowledge from India? It is in that way and that way alone we can win our self-respect and make our life and the life of the nation worthy. The present era is the era of temples of learning. In order to erect temples of learning we require all the offerings of our mighty people. We want to erect temples and "viharas" which are so indispensable to the study of nature and her secrets. It is a problem which appeals to every thoughtful Indian. It is by the effort of the people and by their generosity that all these mighty temples arose; and now are we to wors.h.i.+p the dead stones or are we to erect living temples so that the knowledge that has been made in India shall be perpetuated in India? I received requests from the different Universities in America and Germany to allow students from those countries to come and learn the science that has been initiated in India. Now, is this knowledge to pa.s.s beyond our boundaries to that again in future time we may have to go to the west to get back this knowledge or are we to keep this flame of learning burning all the time?

(_Modern Review, Vol. xviii, p. 22-23_).

DR. J. C. BOSE ENTERTAINED

PARTY AT RAM MOHAN LIBRARY

On Sat.u.r.day, 24th July, 1915, the members of the Ram Mohan Library and Reading room received Dr. J. C. Bose, the President of the Library in a right royal fas.h.i.+on, on his return to India from his Scientific Deputation to the West.

There was a large and influential gathering, and the s.p.a.cious hall was tastefully decorated.

Dr. J. C. Bose arrived at 6:15 p.m. and was received at the gate by Mr.

D. N. Pal, Secretary. Dr. Bose then went round the hall accompanied by the members of the Executive Committee while the Bharati Musical a.s.sociation played excellent Jaltaranga Orchestra.

Babu Bhupendra Nath Bose, Vice-President of the Library, made a brilliant speech welcoming Dr. Bose and detailing the great services done to the country by him.

DR. BOSE'S REPLY

Dr. Bose in reply expressed his thanks for the great interest shown in different parts of this country in the success of his work. This was the fourth occasion on which he had been deputed to the West by the Government of India on a scientific mission, and the success that has attended his visit to foreign countries has exceeded all his expectations. In Vienna, in Paris, in Oxford, Cambridge and London, in Harvard, Was.h.i.+ngton, Chicago and Columbia, in Tokio and in many other places his work has uniformly been received with high appreciation. In spite of the fact that his researches called into question some of the existing theories, his results have notwithstanding received the fullest acceptance. This was due to a great extent to the convincing character of the demonstration afforded by the very delicate instruments he had been able to invent and which worked under extremely difficult tests with extraordinary perfection. Even the most critical savants in Vienna felt themselves constrained to make a most generous admission. In these new investigations on the border land between physics and physiology, they held that Europe has been left behind by India, to which country they would now have to come for inspiration. It has also been fully recognised that science will derive benefit when the synthetic intellectual methods of the East co-operate with the severe a.n.a.lytical methods of the West. These opinions have also been fully endorsed in other centres of learning and Dr. Bose had received applications from distinguished Universities in Europe and America for admission of foreign post graduate scholars to be trained in his Laboratory in the new scientific methods that have been initiated in India.