Mother's Chronicles - Book Five

34

The National College

Sri Aurobindo had an abiding interest in education. He had himself passed through school and college in England. He was therefore amply qualified to evaluate the education as it was imparted in India. Its calculated poverty, its antinational character, its inculcation of loyalty to the British Government, proved that its aim was to churn out clerks and low-rung bureaucrats. Quite apparent to him were the disastrous effects of the system on body, mind and character of the Indians. These effects were apparent to others as well. To counter them Rabindranath Tagore established the Santiniketan School at Bolpur in 1901; B. B. Upadhyay was one of the first to help him. Satish Mukherji founded the Dawn Society in 1902 in Calcutta ; it sought not only to develop the students' personality and build up their character, but to awaken in them the nationalist spirit and a sense of patriotism.

The modern reader is most probably unaware that before the advent of the British every village had at least one school, larger villages several, and cities one or more in every divisions. Young people — Brahmins and non-Brahmins —were

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taught reading, writing and arithmetic. The indigenous educational system was so economical that it amazed the British. The new rulers quickly wiped out the native system.

As the Swadeshi movement gathered momentum and the youth were mobilised — they "proved to be the chief props and pillars of the Swadeshi and Boycott movement," noted R. C. Majumdar — the Government was worried. Indeed, it viewed the development with fear and resolved to crush it. To that end it sent out a secret circular to Magistrates and Collectors, under the signature of the Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal, R. W. Carlyle. The Carlyle Circular of 10 October 1905 asked the officers to ban schoolboys and college students from participating in the Swadeshi Movement: any disobedience was to be met with exemplary punishment. This was hideous enough. Then, close upon the heels of the Carlyle Circular came the 21^st October letter of Pedler, the Director of Public Instruction, to the Principals of certain Calcutta colleges, asking why the students who took part in the Harrison Road picketing should not be expelled. The publication of the above two brought a storm of indignation in the whole of Bengal. Then, adding insult to injury, P. C. Lyon, Chief Secretary of the newly formed province of East Bengal, sent two circulars to the Divisional Commissioner of Dacca, which let loose a ruthless repression. In the Lyon Circular of 8 November were orders such as:

a)'Bande Mataram' was not to be shouted on the streets or in public places.

b)Students must not crowd on streets for singing nationalist songs or for shouting slogans like 'Bande Mataram.'

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c) The police could arrest anybody guilty of discourteous conduct to an Englishman or a Muslim on the streets....

If the Carlyle Circular and the Pedler letter had brought resentment, the Lyon Circular brought revulsion to the whole country. Nor did the students take it all lying down. They raised their voice of protest with tremendous courage. As the newspapers published incident after incident of the administration's crackdown, an intense fire of discontent blazed forth. Almost immediately the public of Bengal took up the gauntlet. A public meeting was held on 24 October 1905, under the chairmanship of Abdul Rasul, in which eminent speakers like B.C. Pal suggested the inauguration of an independent system of National education.

Incidentally, another meeting was held at College Square on the same day, where about two thousand Muslims took the vow of Swadeshi.

Meeting after meeting were held by public-spirited men of Bengal. Rabindranath was there, as were B.C. Pal, K.K. Mitra, C. R. Das, Satish Mukherji, Monoranjan Guha Thakurta, and scores of eminent men. It was finally decided to establish a National Council of Education.

It was on 11 March 1906 that the National Council of Education, Bengal, was constituted. It was registered on 1^st June. There. were 96 Foundation Members of the Council. Among them were some of our acquaintances. Maharaja Suryakanta Acharya of Mymensingh was one of the vice-presidents. Then there were Subodh Chandra Mullick, Bepin Chandra Pal,

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P. Mitter, Surendranath Banerji, Gaganendranath Tagore, Rabindranath Tagore, Chittaranjan Das, Aravindo Ghose, Satish Chandra Mukherji, A. Rasul, Aswini Kumar Dutt, Radha Kumud Mukherji, etc. And Dr. Nilratan Sarkar, that enemy of death. Add a galaxy of eminent personalities of the then Bengal.

For his part, Sri Aurobindo who was never really interested in administrative work at Baroda State, was waiting for an opportunity to join the political storm then raging in the country and more particularly in Bengal. "As soon as I heard that a National College had been started in Bengal," he explained in 1938, "I found my opportunity and threw up the Baroda job and went to Calcutta as Principal." Thus he gave up his Rs. 750-a-month job for a pittance of Rs. 75-a-month, later increased to Rs. 150.

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He was not only motivated by politics to such an act of renunciation, but was genuinely indignant at the current education system. "He had been," as he himself put it, "disgusted with the education given by the British system in the schools and colleges and universities, a system of which as a professor in the Baroda College he had full experience. He felt that it tended to dull and impoverish and tie up the naturally quick and brilliant and supple Indian intelligence, to teach it bad intellectual habits and spoil by narrow information and mechanical instruction its originality and productivity." Already in 1894, in the series of articles he had written on 'Bankimchandra Chatterji,' he had characterized this system as "the most ingeniously complete machine for murder that human stupidity ever invented, and murder not only of man's body but of a man's soul, of that sacred fire of individuality in him which is far holier and more precious than this mere mortal breath."

On 9 November 1905 a big meeting was held at 'Panti's Math' in Calcutta to give birth to the National Council of Education. Subodh C. Mullick was in the chair, and very spontaneously announced a donation of one lakh rupees for national education. A great cheer broke out in the populous field, and the grateful people gave him the honorific title of 'Raja.' His gesture was later matched by Maharaja Suryakanta Acharya of Mymensingh who donated two and a half lakhs, and the Zamindar of Gouripore, Brajendra Kishore Roy Choudhury who donated five lakhs to the fund. Finally it was on 15 August 1906 that the Bengal National College and School (registered on 1^st June 1906) began to function, with Sri

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Aurobindo as its first Principal.¹ When he resigned the next year following the Bande Mataram Sedition Case, it was Satish Mukherji who became the second Principal of the College.

Raja Subodh Mullick (1879-1920) was one of Sri Aurobindo's collaborators in his secret action and afterwards also in Congress politics. "I mixed intimately with Mullick," said Sri Aurobindo. When giving a lakh of rupees for its foundation he had stipulated that Sri Aurobindo should be given a post of professor, in the National College. In July 1906 when he took a protracted leave without pay from Baroda, and went to Calcutta, he put up at 12 Wellington Square, the residence of Raja Subodh Mullick. It was not really out of the blue that Subodh Mullick had chosen him as the first Principal of the National College. This was his way of acknowledging Sri Aurobindo's ideas on education: "National education cannot be defined briefly in one or two sentences, but we may describe it tentatively as the education which starting with the past and making full use of the present builds up a great nation. Whoever wishes to cut off the nation from its past is no friend of our national growth. Whoever fails to take advantage of the present is losing us the battle of life. We must therefore save for India all that she has stored up of knowledge, character and noble thought in her immemorial past. We must acquire for her the best knowledge that Europe can give her and assimilate it to

1. Almost simultaneously, on 25 July 1906 to be precise, was established the Bengal Technical Institute. In 1910 the two institutions merged. After Independence they became part of the Jadavpur University. (History of Modem Bengal,

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Subodh Mullick's house at Wellington Square, Calcutta

her own peculiar type of national temperament. We must introduce the best methods of teaching humanity has developed, whether modern or ancient. And all these we must harmonise into a system which will be impregnated with the spirit of self-reliance so as to build up men and not machines."

The public interest in national education grew apace. In the second week of February 1908, a special conference was held at Pabna, attended by about ten thousand men. Rabindranath Tagore was in the chair. He delivered a stirring speech, in the course of which he said, "The control and direction by foreigners of education in India is a most unnatural phenomenon not to be met with elsewhere." He also said that the aim and end of national education in India was to realize the fulfilment of the country by "building up true sons of the country ... who will quietly organise the villages, the real seat of the India to be." In that Bengal Provincial Conference a resolution was passed "to establish and maintain national schools throughout the country." Reports R. C. Majumdar, "In moving this resolution Arabinda Ghose explained in a few words the object of maintaining these schools. 'The National Schools,' said he, 'will train and send out workers who will devote themselves completely to the service of the country and raise her once more to the old position of glory which she once occupied in the scale of Nations.'"

At another meeting, Sri Aurobindo once more explained the aims and ideals of national education. He pointed out that the University system "turned out machines for administrative and professional work, not men." He went on to add that "the

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National system of Education was intended to create a nation. It must produce men with all their faculties trained, full of patriotism, and mentally, morally, physically, the equals of the men of any other nation." Hardly had he finished his speech when a local pleader, Dinanath Biswas, leaped to the platform and promised on the spot a donation of Rs.500, a monthly subscription of Rs. 5, and two of his own children as aids to the foundation of the National School at Pabna. He had opened a floodgate, and donations poured in. Scores of such schools sprung up in the whole country, many under the aegis of the National Council.

National education was a sign of the times. It rode high on the crest of Swadeshi, then almost ceased, broken and spent.

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