Introduction
Western ideas of modernity, like networks of global mercantile exchange, urbanism, liberalism, secularism, centralised bureaucracy, aesthetic ideas, and nation-states, spread into the colonised worlds starting from the 17th century onwards. These values of the modern West affected all colonised nations, especially India and Africa. However, the acceptance of these ideas was not always an abject surrender, says the author at the beginning of this thought-provoking book. Scholars such as Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Gandhiji, and Ananda Coomaraswamy challenged each of the aforementioned values.
The coloniser-colonised interaction resulted in various responses from the colonised side. Despite the deformation and reframing of Indian cultural self-understanding, there was often a “dialogical” and complex process involved in the formation of Indian modernity. One of the leading Indian universities, Banaras Hindu University (BHU), emerged from this dialogic process between “traditional” India and the “modern” West.
This book explores the first five decades of Banaras Hindu University. After the near-total destruction of the Indian indigenous education system, which began with the East India Company, the book explores the efforts of notable leaders such as Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861–1946) and Annie Besant (1847–1933) to establish a university aimed at regaining a portion of the country’s civilisational heritage. The story of this university, initiated in the colonial times as a private-government enterprise, is largely unknown to most Indians. The book also demonstrates how the ill-formed ideas of secularism played havoc a few decades after independence when the name “Hindu” was sought to be removed by a proposal in the Parliament by the ruling Congress. The students emphatically resisted this, and the efforts of many parliamentarians ultimately led to the proposal’s collapse.
Fighting the Distortions in Small Portions
Saumya Dey, a professor of history at Rishihood University, is a prolific writer on subjects related to Indian culture and its colonial past. He has a wonderful style of writing, characterised by relatively short books focused on important subjects that are equally accessible to academics as well as laypersons. More important is his keen engagement with many ideas shaping some particular event. This book on Banaras Hindu University serves as a prime example, its effortless flow akin to a thriller.
His previous books were: The Cultural Landscape of Hindus, Narrativizing Bharatvarsa, The Seedbed of Pakistan, Being Hindu, and Becoming Hindus and Muslims. Each one of them takes up specific aspects of Indian history. His simple language and clarity are indeed a rare quality for a historian, and even rarer (though the tribe is growing and may always grow) is his rebuttal of many dubious and agenda-driven narratives, unfortunately entrenched into public conscience, established by the colonial and agenda-driven Marxist historians before and after independence, respectively.
This positions him as a crucial voice in challenging the predominantly negative and distorted intellectual narratives surrounding Indian culture. We now have historians presenting something more rational and realistic and giving Indians a sense of pride without requiring jingoism. Regrettably, our school textbooks for a large period after independence have failed us in this regard. They concentrated solely on chronology and portrayed India as a perpetual target for invasion, beginning with the mythical Aryans, followed by the Islamic invaders and later all sundry European nations, with the English finally winning.The history always focused on the invaders and not the invaded, rarely telling us why India needed to be invaded in the first place or how India resisted and responded to the invaders.
The Century Before BHU
The highest ideal of Indian culture is knowledge, represented by Goddess Saraswati. Any knowledge is a step towards the Supreme Divine or Brahman. This regard for knowledge was the impetus for the colossal knowledge production in both the material and spiritual domains. Five groups of texts (with many sub-groups)—the Vedas, Upaveda, Vedanga, Purana, and Darsana— lay the foundation for Indian knowledge systems. There are thousands of texts in Sanskrit as well as the vernaculars. Importantly, this knowledge production was purely indigenous, reflecting on our experiences, without much foreign influence.
Scholar David Pingree speaks of at least 30 million surviving ancient manuscripts in India dealing with every conceivable topic: philosophies, yoga, grammar, language, logic, debate, poetics, aesthetics, cosmology, mythology, ethics, literature of all genres, arts, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, metallurgy, botany, zoology, geology, medical systems, governance, water management, town planning, civil engineering, ship making, agriculture, and many more.
There is increasing evidence that knowledge in many domains, like physics and mathematics, was imported to the West, where it was appropriated without accreditation. The Arab world was the initial conduit, and later the Jesuits from Kerala took it to Europe. Two colonialisms—Islamic and then European— hit India, which then transitioned to a state of only knowledge protection. Islamic rule retained the structures, but India largely ceased knowledge production except perhaps in the South, like the Kerala School of mathematics. The British colonisation, however, was the greatest blow when it destroyed the entire educational structure and replaced it with an English-based Western curriculum with only a partial allegiance to the vernacular and Sanskrit.
The first chapter is a poignant summary of the many events and players in the century before the BHU. The author documents how the East India Company, the Parliamentarians sitting in England, and the Charter Act of 1813 (which allowed missionaries to run freely in the educational field) were responsible for dismantling Indian education. This was in collusion with committed colonials, whether they had an evangelical attitude or not, like Halhed, Alexander Dow, William Jones and his Asiatic Society, Charles Grant, Wood, Wilberforce, and finally Macaulay.
One significant impact of colonialism was the alteration and complete degradation of our education system. This degradation continues to permeate our culture, manifesting as “colonial consciousness”, a phenomenon explicated in great detail by SN Balagangadhara, in nearly every narrative about India. An already existing system of education with the least evidence of “Brahmanical” domination was carefully documented from the British records themselves by Dharampal (The Beautiful Tree). This book is unknown to most Indians.
By the 19th century, a Western curriculum; English and Indian languages (depending on practicability) as mediums of instruction; a Department of Public Instruction; and a university system on top of a tiered network of irregularly run schools became the prevailing norm in the country. However, this did not signify a total surrender. Missionaries were not very successful in mass conversions; government initiatives were failing in mass instruction; and there was a gradual increase in Indian initiatives to re-establish Indian education. At this time, Malaviya formulated a plan to establish a Hindu university that would combine traditional intellectual heritage with a contemporary Western curriculum.
Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861–1946)
Malaviya, a moderate Congressman, was respectful to the authority, though strongly rooted in traditions. Born into an orthodox family, he received early training in Sanskrit traditions from his father but was later educated in Western formats when he obtained his BA and later LLB. Interestingly, AO Hume, the founder of the Indian National Congress, motivated Malaviya to become a lawyer.
Malaviya, after a reasonably successful legal career, entered politics. Dey writes, “Bereft of rigidities and dogmas, he was a mean between opposites and extremes.” He was an active member of the Indian National Congress from a young age of 25 and rose in the ranks to become its president four times (1909, 1918, 1932, 1933). As a politician, he was a liberal constitutionalist and stayed within the constitutional framework, not resorting to agitational politics. He was a Victorian gentleman, too, harbouring an instinctive admiration for some aspects of English culture and its institutions. He was a product of his times, and the 19th-century Congress was largely composed of Western-educated professional elites who looked up to Great Britain, writes Dey.
Malaviya critiqued the colonial administration whenever the need arose. He served in various legislative councils, articulating strongly for many Indian causes, like freedom for journalists, land reforms, decentralisation, reducing government expenses, demanding the abolition of the indentured labour system, improving women’s education, abolishing dowry, banning early marriages, and the rights of untouchables. Though he was not in favour of agitational politics, as a classic liberal, he spoke in favour of Annie Besant, who launched the Home Rule League. Despite initial misgivings about Gandhian Civil Disobedience, he later supported them and even courted arrest.
His moderate principles never compromised his love for India. He advocated for replacing Urdu with Hindi. Malaviya pointed out that Urdu’s inconsistent Persian script made it extremely difficult to detect criminal manipulation in legal documents by the mere placement of a stroke or a dot. At one point, he veered towards Hindu Mahasabha because he became unhappy with both the colonial and Congress bias towards appeasing the Muslims. Following the Lucknow Pact and the Moplah riots, Malaviya drew even closer. However, the association ended after he developed serious differences with its new president.
A social democrat as an educationist, he battled for education as a tool for national regeneration. He favoured the vernacular and Sanskrit as mediums of instruction and wanted free, universal, and compulsory elementary education. He strongly advocated Ayurveda and traditional sciences, yet he was simultaneously favourable to students travelling abroad to get an education. He vociferously supported the need for technical and industrial education as well as scientific agriculture. All through his fantastic public life, he finely balanced the two contradictory approaches: liberal constitutionalism and Hindu activism. Sometime in 1903, Malaviya hit upon the idea of a Hindu university. He formulated the first “Malaviya prospectus” catering to only Hindu interests. This was the seed for the BHU. Malaviya proposed the idea in 1905 at a Banaras meeting where it received wholesome support from all quarters.
The Inception (1911-1915)
Annie Besant (1847-1933), a phenomenal lady with a passing mention in our history books, deserves a better look for her contributions to the cause of India. She was one of the key members of the Theosophical Society (loosely inspired by Eastern thoughts). She was an educationist and also an activist advocating women’s rights and self-rule for India. The seed of the BHU was the Central Hindu College, which she established in 1898. This college, affiliated with Allahabad University, had the idea to revitalise India’s cultural and civilisational heritage. Besant embraced Hinduism but was accepting of other religions, a characteristic of the Theosophical Society. Saumya Dey brings out well the frictions between the Theosophical Society and the orthodox groups during the formative years of BHU.
Annie Besant had planned for a “University of India” which taught Western technical subjects but rooted in Indian heritage. This, however, did not materialise. In the meantime, Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898) established the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in 1875. Annie Besant joined hands with Madan Mohan Malaviya and decided to form a university at Banaras around the already existing college.
Malaviya resumed activism regarding the university in 1911. He was generously supported in these efforts by the Maharaja of Darbhanga, Rameshwar Singh. The author describes how differences cropped up with Annie Besant regarding the exclusive Hindu nature of the university. A revised prospectus in 1911 by Malaviya finally came into being for a Hindu university in the image of the Taxila and Nalanda universities.
Malaviya’s prospectus, seeking to integrate Western sciences and Indian curricula, was a university teaching Sanskrit, Indian arts, music and literature, Western science and technology, modern scientific agriculture, commerce, and Ayurvedic medicine. The university aimed to serve the entire Hindu society. With regard to the medium of instruction, after a debate, they chose English to make it pan-India in scope with the gradual implementation of vernacular languages.
In 1911, Malaviya initiated a fundraising drive known as the Hindu University Society, and the government, princes, and common people contributed to the donations. There was extensive touring by Malaviya and the people involved in raising the funds. Harcourt Butler, the Governor General, played an important role during these initial years. Annie Besant consented to merge her college, and she was a part of the Hindu University Society. The Imperial Legislative Council introduced the BHU Bill on 22 March 1915 and finally implemented it on October 1, 1915. Saumya Dey writes that the establishment of the first denominational university, primarily through private initiative, marked a unique intervention in colonial higher education.
The Initial Years Till Independence (1916-47)
Controversy clouded the beginning. The Viceroy came for the foundation stone ceremony on February 4, 1916. Eminent personalities like JC Bose, Annie Besant, Hari Prasad Shastri, and CV Raman spoke. Gandhiji, who had just returned from South Africa, struck a jarring note with his irrelevant and unstructured political speech. Leaving aside academic activities or the BHU’s mission, he talked about the insanitary conditions in Banaras and the need for the country to self-govern. He also condemned the use of violence to achieve independence while critiquing the pomp and display of royalty against the stark poverty of the masses. Saumya Dey says that this speech was extraordinarily out of place. The colonial authorities were angry but refrained from taking further action, keeping the university in view.
The first academic session, started on 1 October 1917, had five faculties to start with: theology, oriental learning, arts, science, and law. The first two were civilisational projects. In keeping with the orthodox view, Oriental learning was for all Jatis, but theology (or learning of the Vedas and various rituals) was restricted to Brahmin males. Theology and Oriental learning were the least preferred, though. The general lectures on religion, despite the curriculum’s Hindu nature, drew poor attendance, writes Dey. The campus had strict requirements for a vegetarian diet and abstinence from alcohol and smoking.
The university faced troubles initially for lack of funds and the frequent changing of the top brass. The worldwide depression and austerity measures by the government, Malaviya becoming a part of the Civil disobedience movement angering the colonial officials, and a frosty attitude of the princes to remain on the right side of the British authorities were the reasons for financial woes. This initiated an appeal for a second crore from every “prince and peasant” of the land. The university remained cash-starved until Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan took charge in 1939 and hired the services of NV Raghavan to manage the finances. There was a turnaround in the fortunes due to some strict financial monitoring.
Despite the strict Hindu background, the university students were not averse to taking diverse political strands, including Marxism. Malaviya did not approve personally but did not interfere officially. Malaviya was keen to shield the BHU from all Indian politics because he thought education was a greater priority. Malaviya asked the students to prioritise their intellectual, moral, and physical education. On 19th August, the police raided the campus when many joined the Quit India campaign.
Gandhiji disapproved of BHU because the colonial regime established it and provided an annual endowment. In 1920, just three years after the university started, Gandhiji declared in a speech that Hindu education is impossible in a government-sponsored university. He demanded that BHU refuse government grants and forfeit its charter. He urged the students to discontinue studies altogether. Two hundred students left the university after Gandhiji’s call. Acharya Kripalani, as a teacher, quit too and later joined Kashi Vidyapeeth, an initiative of Gandhiji.
The BHU After Independence
Radhakrishnan was serving his third term as the VC at independence. Following his shift to Oxford, the university had difficulty in replacements, and several people followed with quick resignations. However, the BHU continued to grow academically with the establishment of newer colleges. In 1961, the birth centenary of Madan Mohan Malaviya was celebrated with enormous enthusiasm. Various associations and unions were formed at the BHU, including the students association in 1962. There was indeed a proclivity for agitation at the BHU.
The author ends the book with perhaps the most tumultuous episode in Indian higher academia after independence. This was the BHU Amendment Bill introduced in 1965 and proposed by MC Chagla, the education minister of that time. The amendment sought to remove the denominational word “Hindu” from the name and to rename the university with the mouthful “Madan Mohan Malaviya Kashi Mahavidyalaya.” Various members, mainly from the Congress, including GS Pathak, Narotham Reddy, Shyam Sunda Narain, and Tara Chand, supported this. The Communists also supported the amendment. The reasons offered were many: it meant a real homage to Madan Mohan Malaviya; Kashi’s importance would be highlighted; and some argued that it would be an example of true secularism while taking a moral march over Pakistan in its secular credentials.
There were strong counterarguments, too, from the likes of Prof. Wadia, Thengari, and CP Ramaswami Aiyar (the VC of Annamalai University), who argued that there was nothing narrow about the name “Hindu” and that its removal would actually be a dishonour to Malaviya. A massive agitation by students in the BHU erupted on 15th November. The Jana Sangha party supported this agitation led by the students of BHU.
The All-India Hindu Mahasabha and Jana Sangha mobilised 10,000 people on November 17th for a mass agitation. Stalwarts like C. Rajagopalachari, Dr Singhvi, Harvani, and Acharya Kripalani, some belonging to the Congress itself, argued against the renaming strongly. Secularism became a point of debate, and the argument was that this kind of selective secularism targeted only Hindu institutions. At that time, Aligarh Muslim University had already established itself. The proposal ultimately failed, resulting in the cancellation of the agitation on November 29th of that year.
The author signs off by saying that the colonised native wasn’t a passive observer of colonialism. Though there were complete “Brown Sahibs”—Indian in body and English in mind—a vast majority retained their traditions and nativities. A modernity emerged that resembled a dialogue. The author calls this a “dialogic modernity” to describe the interaction between the East and the West. No doubt, it was a distortion and deformation, but it also meant something continuing from the past, a native agency resisting colonialism through a kind of “war of position” challenging the influence of a ruling class over society’s beliefs and values.
Gandhi and the Congress, both pre- and post-independence, clashed with BHU due to their incomplete understanding of its implications. The author writes, “The central govt failed to understand the uniquely Indian iteration of modernity that BHU represented through its denominational identity.” The notions of secularism, a manifestation of Western universalism, hindered the complete development of the university, which began with ambitious goals.
Concluding Remarks
This is a remarkable book about a premier institute in the country, prompting us to consider many broader issues. The post-independence historical narratives crafted by the victors primarily emphasised the Congress Party and a select few prominent figures, such as Nehru, Gandhi, and, to a lesser extent, Sardar Patel, for India’s independence. Not taking away anything from them, these narratives downplayed the contributions of the revolutionaries, Bose, and the Indian National Army, as well as significant events like the Red Fort Trials and the Bombay Naval Mutinies. The portrayal of Gandhian non-violence as gently expelling the British was convenient for the colonials, allowing them to evade the guilt associated with their destruction, looting, and mass genocides during the famines and partitions, in comparison to which even Hitler pales.
There were equally great, if not greater, people like Balagangadhara Tilak, Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai, Ananda Coomaraswamy, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Sri Aurobindo, and Swami Vivekananda who were relegated to the background. The profound and distilled views of Sri Aurobindo and Ananda Coomaraswamy regarding India remain unknown to most Indians. This book remarkably resurrects Madan Mohan Malaviya and Annie Besant, who are notable additions to this list. In hindsight, Malaviya, as a moderate, seemed to follow a non-agitational path. However, his love for India and the Hindu Dharma was more structured and organised than that of many of his contemporaries.
This book is also a graphic demonstration of the perennial problem of secularism, unlikely to resolve in the near future unless there is a radical understanding of both Indian traditions and secularism. Secularism was a solution for a purely Christian European world at a specific point in its history when the various denominations were fighting each other. When the state separated from the Church, everyone knew in the background what religion, Christ, Christianity, or religious symbols meant. Secularism worked for a non-plural culture well, but it was never meant to be a universal solution for all cultures across all times to handle any form of multiculturalism. The influx of Islam into Europe and increasing polarisation of Hindus and Muslims in India show the failure of the secularism model imbibed enthusiastically by our leaders fascinated by the West.
In India, the constant understanding of Gandhiji, Congress since inception until date, and the present BJP ruling too, regarding secularism, meant appeasement of the Muslims at the expense of the Hindu cause. The division of the land into three groups based purely on religion was extremely painful. Yet, it is perplexing that an Islamic theologian served as our first education minister for nearly a decade post-independence, especially in a nation striving to reconnect with its Sanatani heritage. The fact that many of the leaders shaping our destiny were primarily Western-trained lawyers, largely disconnected from traditional India, compounded the dilemma. The attack on our education systems became a self-attack, perhaps.
In a Supreme Court decision, nine judges provided different interpretations of secularism. India handled its multiculturalism far better than the rest of the world at any point in history without breaking down. The solution to Indian harmony was not secularism, and the problems it had were not due to the absence of secular values. The state and its traditions blended deeply to create one of the most advanced cultures in the world. There is a need to urgently rediscover the solutions already existing in our culture instead of resorting to poorly understood secularism.
In one grand sweep, the author captures the loss of our rich educational systems by the British, pays tribute to Indian intellectuals who strived to recapture this lost heritage while navigating the colonial framework, discusses the problems faced by a country to reclaim the indigenous knowledge systems, and addresses the problems and even shame of applying the word “Hindu” to its institutes for the sake of secular values. The book is a poignant narrative that captures the essential facts and forces us to reflect on many larger issues, too.
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