by A K Bhagwat
The educational policy of Sir James Fergusson was liberal. He had shown great appreciation of the disinterested endeavour of the promoters of the New English School and as a symbol of his admiration had given a personal donation of Rs. 1,250 to it. It is interesting to note that the Kesari and Mahratta, while appreciating this sympathetic attitude to the cause of private education, at the same time strongly criticised his conservative policy in the sphere of local self-government. The editors of the Kesari and the Mahratta, never mixed up issues and therefore an appreciation of Sir James’s liberal policy in the educational sphere did not prevent them from lashing out at his reactionary policies in the political sphere. To some, it appeared a contradiction and to their more loyalist contemporaries it appeared almost as ingratitude. Tilak and Agarkar had, however, a deep understanding of the complexities of public life and in the expression of their views they discussed policies and not personalities. As promoters of an educational institution, they were keen to earn the goodwill of all, and as editors, they were always vigilant of the rights of the people. They would never have compromised their principles as editors in order to serve the interests of their educational institution. They were not proprietors who would try to ensure the success of their institution by any means, but life-members of a society, that had pledged itself to serve the nation through education. To them the cause was more important than the institution and they would never dissociate education from the entire plan for educating the people. They knew full well that a compromise in one sphere would deprive them of the right to work in the other sphere. This firm adherence to principles requires people of exceptional grit and Tilak and Agarkar proved that they were people of this stamp.
The formalities of securing the consent of Sir James Fergusson and recognition by the University of Bombay were gone through. The Senate of the University of Bombay on the recommendation of the Syndicate recognised the college provisionally for three years. A portion of the Gadre Wada, a building in the heart of Poona city, was to be temporarily used for housing the college classes until a new building was constructed. The Gadre Wada was at one time owned by Mr. Gadre, a well-known savkar of the days of the Peshwas. It was then bought by the Gaekwars of Baroda and in 1884 the owner of the wada was the Princess of Baroda who was married to the Prince of Sawantwadi. Tilak was delegated to secure it and in order to secure the good offices of an influential person, who enjoyed the confidence of the Maharani of Baroda, Tilak had to spend a number of days and use all his diplomatic talent. The mission was at last successful. As the preparations for the college went on, generous donations came from all quarters and by the end of 1884, Rs. 75,000 had been promised.
On the 2nd January 1885, the Fergusson College was inaugurated by Prin. William Wordsworth, grandson of the poet. It was indeed a great event not only for Maharashtra but also for India.5 The new college was a symbol of the growing aspirations of the Indians who, owing to the contact with the West, were growing conscious of the new values of life necessary for modern times. Sir William Wedderburn in requesting Prin. Wordsworth to do the Deccan Education Society “the honour of formally onening the new college” expressed the hope that “this college will ever prove worthy in spirit of the auspices under which it now commences, and that in future days it will become not only a centre of intellectual energy but also a home of sweetness and light”. Sir James Fergusson in a speech highly appropriate to the occasion, dwelt at great length on the significance of the new college and observed: “There is no social fact without its political side; and the opening of such a college as this under the present circumstances and prospects of India is unquestionably of great political importance”.
Gadre Wada in which Fergusson College was housed was rather an old-fashioned place for a college and did not look very in spiring. If stone wall do not make a prison, neither do they build an academic institution. The very stones can, however, imbibe the spirit of the inmates. The professors of Fergusson College, too, cared little for appearances. In keeping with Maharashtrian tradition, it was the spirit and not the form that they cared for. They dressed simply and never showed off their learning. Prin. Apte taught Sanskrit, Tilak taught mathematics and Sanskrit, Kelkar was a professor of English and Gole taught physics. Agarkar was a Professor of history and logic.
The change-over from school to the college was most welcome to these academicians as they were in their own element here. In his student days it was Tilak’s ambition “to start a college immediately after leaving college”. The ambition at last materialised with the difference that instead of a fresh graduate pouring out in his lectures what he had read for the last University examination, students found in Tilak a scholar with a sharp analytical mind, intent on taking the students to the fundamentals of the subject. He was always measured in speech and his treatment of his subject was very precise. He had, however, one defect, viz. he presupposed many things and was, therefore, always inclined to solve a problem quickly, sometimes even orally without mentioning the steps in between. The average student was, therefore, flabbergasted though for the more intelligent student, it was a treat to follow Tilak’s original method of solving many problems. G. K. Gadgil, Bar-at-Law, wrote: “My friends in Fergusson College complained that they found it difficult to follow the lectures of Prof. Tilak, whose memory was prolific and whose intelligence had a great sweep. He explained even the examples on the Binomial Theorem in Algebra orally while he asked some students to write the steps on the blackboard. We respected Prof. Tilak for his scholarship in Maths, even more than we did Professor Hathawornthwet.”
Tilak also taught Sanskrit, and his lectures on Bhartrihari’s Nitishatak, were very stimulating owing to his analytical faculty and preoccupation with the ethical problems of life. Prof. M. M. Joshi, who was a student of Tilak both at school and college observed: “Prof. Tilak was the best teacher for M.A. and not for lower classes. He cared little for presentation and more for fundamentals.”
Govind Sakharam Sardesai, the great historian, was a student of Tilak and pleasantly recalls memories of his teacher: “Tilak while teaching permutations and combinations gave illustrations from everyday life and made the subject very interesting. We were very much impressed with his minute observation. He was never reluctant to solve the difficulties of students. After the college was over, on his way home, he walked in the company of students, and had discussions with them on many subjects. He could easily identify himself with the audience while speaking on any subject. We never saw him lose his temper. There was never any light-heartedness in the class, and an atmosphere of scholarship prevailed.”
L. R. Pangarkar, a noted Marathi author, has recorded the following observations which Tilak made to him. Tilak said: “He who cannot take interest in mathematics, remains rather defective in his way of thinking. Owing to mathematics, one can develop the habit of having a sequence of ideas in an uninterrupted way. It is not true that there is no poetry in mathematics. The mathematics you learn in schools and colleges is only the first step. Mathematics cast a spell on me as poetry does in the case of some persons. All sciences are essentially one in their fundamentals though we divide them in different branches. There is poetry in mathematics and mathematics in poetry.” One can get some idea of Tilak’s love for mathematics from the follwing anecdote. Though Tilak was serious in disposition, he taught Sanskrit poetry - Meghaduta of Kalidasa, and some students recall how he showed how one stanza grew logically out of another. Though he seldom discussed the delights of poetry in conversation, he was a very good judge of poetry. Shri Khuperkar, a Sanskrit scholar, has told the following story: Once when Tilak visited Kolhapur, he was given a reception at the Sanskrit Pathashala. At that time some stanzas written by Khuperkar and some by another student, who often composed poetry, were presented to Tilak without letting him know their authorship. On reading them, Tilak overviewed, “One of these poets has used different metres, employed different figures of speech and has adorned his verses. His
scholarship and familiarity with the principles of literature are reflected in his poems. But these cannot equal the poems written by the other student. The latter show the inspiration of the poet and have a natural ease about them.” It may be recalled that Tilak in his student days wrote poetry, though of the conventional pattern.
Among the colleagues of Tilak, there was Prof. Kelkar who had a fine command over English. He was in the habit of speaking very fast, which earned him the nickname ‘Mail Train’. Agarkar was always lucid in the exposition of his subject and owing to his informal manner and smiling face, students felt perfectly at home in his class. Some of the students of those days have recorded their impressions of their college life. The most striking feature according to these records was the missionary zeal of the professors. Many of these students have described how Tilak always inspired in them a desire to study all the works of a writer, one of whose books was appointed, and thus grasp the subject comprehensively. This was for Tilak the happiest period of his life, as he had all the opportunities for his intellectual pursuits and lived in the constant company of the master minds of old. He maintained that a good teacher is always a student and he must have been delighted to plunge himself in the works of great scholars and enjoy the thrill of grappling with the most difficult and intricate of problems. All this was possible because the institutions of the Deccan Education Society were growing stable owing to the improvement in the financial condition. To quote the words of Tilak: “The first three years of the school may be said to have been spent in the struggle of asserting our existence. In the emphatic language of Vishnushastri, who unfortunately did not live to see even the end of this struggle, the papers and the school were now an accomplished fact, too, in the midst of a hundred difficulties-accomplished I say again in spite of desertion, death and incarceration, in spite of calumny, in spite of the little interested doings of little folk, in a word, in spite of all the mean devices of disappointed malice - our institutions triumphing over all these by the sheer force of innate energy and our indomitable resolution. Those that have joined the institution latterly may not fully realise the difficulties, but I have distinct remembrance of the struggle, and I sometimes wonder that we did not take a longer time to emerge out of it safe and sound. The next three years, 1883, 1884 and 1885, were spent in organising the institutions we had established....” The improvement in the financial position of the Deccan Education Society was only relative and Tilak and his colleagues, who were working as life-members, took only Rs. 75 per month as salary. Self-denial and self-reliance were the main springs of the actions of these dedicated young men, and it was for these moral reasons that their work came to be so much valued.
How this private college won the confidence of the people and consequently recognition from the government could be seen from the fact that after only a year of its existence the Bombay Government made a proposal to the Society to take over the management of the Deccan College in Poona and to amalgamate its own college with it. This was in keeping with the recommendation of the Education Commission that the government should wherever possible transfer its secondary and collegiate education to private bodies. Certain sections in the public who still believed in the orthodox tradition of government colleges and who, therefore, did not want the “Indianisation” of the Deccan College viewed this proposal with disfavour. Some persons from this section even reproached the Deccan Education Society for intriguing to take the Deccan College into its hands. The allegation had no basis in fact. The authorities of the Deccan Education Society were, as a matter of fact, reluctant to accept this new responsibility and they were about to accept it only because the government was determined to hand over the Deccan College to some private body or other. The Deccan Education Society deemed it its responsibility to safeguard the interests of higher education in Maharashtra and hence could not shirk any responsibility even if it was thrust on it. In the later stages of the negotiations, the government changed the terms of its offer and insisted that the previous class of the Fergusson College should be shifted to the Deccan College building, that two European professors with their former salaries should be taken up on the staff and that there would be three Government nominees in the special Board of Management of the Deccan College. The Council of the Deccan Education Society, therefore, rejected the offer of the Government in its meeting of the 23rd June 1887, while thanking the Government for the high honour done to the Society and the great confidence shown in its ability to undertake such a heavy responsibility. This breakdown in the negotiations was followed by a very unexpected event, viz the government’s refusal to pay the grant-in-aid of Rs. 3,000 to the Fergusson College on the ground that, “the Deccan Education Society refused to accept the very liberal terms offered by the government, and that money in Poona is being wasted which is urgently required for primary, secondary and technical schools throughout the country”. No better deal could be expected at the hands of an alien government, always thinking of its prestige, keen on asserting its authority even when such an assertion is least warranted and oscillating between liberal leniency and bureaucratic caprice. This injustice to the Deccan Education Society continued upto 1894. The young idealists who had taken a pledge to serve the cause of education could never be cowed down by such whims of the government. They had based their hopes on the support of the people and not on the favours of the government, which could any moment turn into frowns.
1The Maratha race, as their soil and their history have made them, are a rugged, strong and sturdy people, democratic in their every fibre, keenly intelligent and practical to the very marrow; following in ideas, even in poetry, philosophy and religion the drive towards life and action, capable of great fervour, feeling and enthusiasm, like all Indian people, but not emotional idealists; having in their thought and speech always a turn for strength, sense, accuracy, lucidity, and vigour, in learning and scholarship, patient, industrious, careful, thorough and penetrating, in life simple, hardy and frugal, in their temperament courageous, pugnacious, full of spirit, yet with a tact in dealing with hard facts and circumventing obstacles, shrewd yet aggressive diplomatists, born politicians, born fighters. (Shri Aurobindo: Bankim - Tilak - Dayananda p. 25.)
2The suggestion to have this stanza as the lead was made by Vasudevshastri Khare, the Sanskrit teacher in the New English School.
3History of Education in India, by Nurullah and Naik
4The Times of India, after calling the New English School “one of the most remarkable results of our English education” made the following comment on its founders: “They are men who have taken good degree and might be enjoying handsome salaries if they had entered government service. They, however, preach the doctrine— and they practise what they preach—that graduates of the University, if they possess self-respect and patriotism, ought not to look to a foreign government for place and pay, but it is their duty to achieve a name and place of their own, in education, in literature, in commerce or at the bar. No doubt these enthusiastic men will preach love of country to these disciples, but it is better after all to have patriotism preached by educated men than by wandering mendicants.”
This reference to the wandering mendicant is interesting and corroborates what Hume, the founder of the Indian National Congress, was to place later before the then Viceroy as the main reason for the establishment of the Congress. Hume had come into possession of voluminous correspondenc of seething revolt incubating in various districts based upon the communications of the disciples of various Gurus to their religious heads. Like their enlightened and liberal English rulers, the founders of the Deccan Education Society were also anxious to avoid a violent outburst against British power.
5(1) Lala Lajpatrai in his contribution to the reminiscences of Tilak says that when in 1896 they wanted to establish a memorial college in honour of the founder of the Arya Samaj they heard of the Poona patriots, among them of Ranade and Tilak. “In our search for finding workers, for whom national work would be a labour of love
rather than a mere mercenary engagement, we were anxious to follow the example of the Mahratta patriots who had dedicated their lives to the education of their fellow-countrymen on a small subsistence allowance much below their market value. Such an example, we found in the life members of the Deccan Education Society, who were known to have established the Fergusson College of Poona.”
(2) Srinivasa Sastri observes in his Life of Gopal Krishna Gokhale: “That College stands still as a monument of patriotic self-sacrifice in the cause of education. I hardly know of any institution similar to that in tin’s province (Madras).”
(3) Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya refers to the fact that “a life member of the Society bound himself to serve the institution of the Society for a period of twenty years on the small salary of Rs. 75 per month, after which he could retire on a pension of Rs.30 a month. This simple scheme of putting one’s patriotism to practical test , of deliberately choosing a life of self-denial for the service of our fellow-men, which has given the country a most honourable band of patriotic workers who have built up and maintained the Fergusson College, and more recently the New Poona College, naturally commanded admiration”.