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Now that the 34-year rule of the Left Front government led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) over West Bengal (pop. 91 million), is fast becoming a bad memory, efforts are being made in right earnest to restore Kolkata’s Presidency University (earlier Presidency College, estb. 1817) to its former status as West Bengal’s pre-eminent institution of higher education. A ten-member mentor group, headed by renowned Harvard professor Sugata Bose and guided by Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, is devising ways and means to restore Presidency’s reputation and pride before its 200th anniversary in 2017. The group submitted its recommendations to the newly sworn-in Trinamool Congress government last month (August) and will also monitor their implementation.
In consonance with Communist orthodoxy, during its three-and-a-half decades rule from Writers’ Building, Kolkata, the CPM leadership infiltrated its half-baked intellectuals into the faculties of all higher education institutions, including Presidency College/University which — the opinion is unanimous — has been transformed from a centre of academic excellence into a run-of-the-mill varsity whose degrees don’t command any respect in industry or academia beyond Bengal borders. But following appointment of the Presidency mentor group, thanks to chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s paribartan (transformation) drive which gives top priority to health and education, the process of restoring Presidency College which as one of the last initiatives of the Left Front government, was upgraded into a university in July 2010, has begun.
Established in 1817 as Hindu College by a group of 20 eminent scholars led by the legendary social reformer Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833), it was in the forefront of the 19th century Bengal Renaissance and was christened Presidency College in 1855, when it opened its doors to non-Hindu students. The first college in India to admit women students in 1897, it steadily developed into a world class institution in the mid 1960s attracting nationally and even internationally renowned faculty, despite abysmal working conditions and low wages provided by the Left Front government.
“It was a privilege to learn from brilliant academics such as Tarak Sen (English), Ashin Das Gupta (history) among others, during my student days at Presidency. The intellectual atmosphere was highly charged and we studied in an ambience of excellence and fraternity. Student politics was not absent from campus but our differences were ideological rather than purely political,” recalls Dr. Bikash Sinha, nuclear scientist and alumnus of the college.
However, after the Left Front swept into power in 1977, Presidency College experienced the brunt of the wrath of Marxist cadres as an ‘elitist institution’. Professors were randomly transferred to colleges of lesser repute with the justification that all colleges of the state should profit from their expertise. “The Left’s policy of democratising brilliance hindered the nurturing of excellence. CPM-inspired student unions system-atically dumbed down education, and faculty confronted with unchecked student militancy, left Presidency — and West Bengal — in droves,” adds Sinha, a member of the Presidency University Council.
Now under the new Trinamool Congress era, Presidency alumni and academics are determined to set things right. “Our top priority is to attract world class faculty. We have plans for a unique search and selection procedure which will draw the best scholars in each discipline to Presidency. The mentor group has requested special status for Presidency University which enables us to pay higher salaries. Moreover, now that Presidency has university status, we are determined to provide a conducive atmosphere for research studies. Another idea is to raise funding from alumni to begin the re-building and restoration of Presidency’s pride and prestige,” says Dr. Sugata Bose, the grand nephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, who chairs the ten-member mentor group which includes Dr. Isher Judge Ahluwalia, chairperson of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
Despite a new spirit of optimism which pervades the now quiet campus of Presidency University, weeding out and/or reforming die-hard Marxists from the faculty and student unions while simultaneously repairing the sustained damage to its academic processes and reputation for over three decades, is likely to prove a formidable task. But clearly, the task of cleansing the augean stables of Presidency University has begun and pervasive enthusiasm for paribartan may well prevail.
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)