VS

Feb. 10: Hindu School, one of Calcutta's heritage educational institutions, is celebrating 200 years alongside Presidency, its more famous sibling across the street. But while Presidency is grabbing all the eyeballs and the bouquets, few seem to know about the other double century.

An even lesser known fact is that the seeds of the erstwhile Presidency College were sown in what is now Hindu School. Presidency's bicentenary is, in a way, the 200th anniversary of the foundation of what used to be Hindoo College.

On January 20, 1817, a batch of 20 students from some affluent families of Calcutta had met at the rented house of Gorachand Basak at Garanhata (304 Chitpore Road), marking the birth of Hindoo College. The campus had a school known as Hindoo Pathshala and a college called Hindoo Mahapathshala.

On June 15, 1854, the upper section of the school (the Hindoo Mahapathshala or Hindoo College) split from the school. The college came to be known as Presidency College - there was one in each of India's four then presidencies - and the junior section became Hindu School.

From producing some of the brightest minds of the Bengal Renaissance to pioneering academicians like Satyendra Nath Bose and Meghnad Saha, Hindu School has had an enviably glorious past. But things are different now.

While Presidency University has hosted high-profile alumni, scholars and even the President and a former Prime Minister on the campus, Hindu School has been struggling to put up a celebration befitting its bicentenary.

To the east of College Street, the event that should have been a celebration of scholastic excellence and tradition has turned out to be little more than a podium for a show of strength by middle-rung political leaders.

Metro highlights how Hindu School's halo dimmed over the years.

Left legacy

Alumnus Ashok K. Lahiri, who was chief economic adviser to the NDA and the first UPA government, attributed the fall in reputation and standards to the shortage of high-calibre teachers created by the Left when it started compromising the interest of so-called elite institutions in a bid to raise the quality of lesser schools and colleges.

"There is nothing wrong if an institute wants to thrive as an elitist school. But in their bid to impose equalisation, the Left regime transferred bright teachers elsewhere without giving it much thought. This reduced the standard of Hindu School, although I doubt whether the standard of the schools these teachers were transferred to improved," Lahiri said.

This happened in 1982, when more than 180 teachers were transferred from 42 government schools at the behest of the CPM-backed government school teachers' union. Many teachers were transferred from Hindu School. Ajit Kumar Ghatak, the celebrated mathematics teacher, was sent to a madarsa. It kicked up a storm in academic circles but the Left did not budge.

On January 21, 2016, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said during a programme at Presidency: "I don't think there is anything to be apologetic about being an elitist college."

No English, please

First, the better teachers were transferred. Then, the better students followed. The Left Front's no-English policy, introduced in 1981, dealt the knockout blow.

A generation of children grew up without properly learning the language that the world speaks, reads and writes. Beyond school, most of these students struggled to compete with those more proficient in the language, and not necessarily more meritorious.

Soon, many parents who would have otherwise put their children in Hindu School started opting for middle-rung English-medium schools.

Course incorrect

In 2002, the Left brought back English in Class I, but this did not restore Hindu's reputation as a cradle of merit. By then, Hindu, like many other government schools, had a generation of teachers ill-equipped to teach English at the primary level.

It took the Left almost three decades to realise that parents who had an option were avoiding government schools because of the decline in standard.

In 2006, the CPM tried to introduce a parallel English-medium section in schools like Hindu to arrest the growing interest in private school education even among parents with limited means. But the Left partners vetoed the move after two years of fruitless deliberations.

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee pushed through the plan four years later in a last-ditch attempt to rescue failing academic institutions. But Hindu refused to be among the 11 schools with parallel English and Bengali-medium sections.

Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, vice-chancellor of Rabindra Bharati University and an alumnus of Hindu School, said his alma mater made a big mistake. "The last chance (at redemption) went abegging."

Education lottery

Many blame the introduction of the lottery system in place of admission tests for the fall in standards of government schools like Hindu.

The lottery system had been introduced in 1996 to spare children the burden of joining coaching centres to crack admission tests.

Another objective was to bring in first-generation learners within the fold of government schools. Quality soon became the casualty in the quest for new goals.

Rupak Hom Roy, who has been the headmaster of Ballygunge Government School for over a decade, blames the lack of committed teachers for the failure to maintain quality after entry standards were eased. "The teachers were reluctant to work harder and the government did not focus on fixing accountability," he said.

Pranab Bardhan, professor of economics at the University of California and an old boy of Hindu School, recently underscored the lack of accountability among teachers while discussing the causes for education standards deteriorating across government schools in Bengal.

"Schoolteachers used to get a meagre pay in the past. But that has changed now. The pay has increased substantially but the corresponding accountability has not," he said during a visit to Presidency on January 13.

Flagging support

The state government's contribution to Presidency's bicentennial programmes is Rs 10 crore. "We got just Rs 11 lakh," said Priyajit Mitra, member of the Hindu School Alumni Association.

The government contested the figure but not the mismatch in grants. Education minister Partha Chatterjee said: "Because Presidency is a university and Hindu is a school. Still, we have given them Rs 50 lakh for the celebrations. This is in addition to Rs 3.5 crore for developing infrastructure in phases."

Headmaster Tushar Samanta said he had heard that Rs 50 lakh had been sanctioned but the school was yet to receive it.

Minister Chatterjee passed the ball. "Chief minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to pay a visit to the school. The school authorities can then plead for more funds."

Inactive alumni

According to many, the primary difference between the Presidency bicentennial celebrations and that of Hindu school is alumni involvement.

Presidency has also showcased its events better, putting up posters and banners across the city for the series of programmes starting January 5.

Although the bicentenary programmes of the school had started a year ago, there has not been any attempt by the alumni association to run any campaign. Mitra, a founding member of the school's alumni association, said: "The Presidency Alumni Association could publicise the bicentennial celebrations because they received funds from the government."

Bivas Chaudhuri, general secretary of the Presidency Alumni Association besides being an alumnus of Hindu School, said former students got together to generate funds on their own. "We raised Rs 5 crore for the Presidency bicentenary."

Political stage

Many Hindu School alumni apparently distanced themselves from the bicentenary of their institute because Trinamul MLA Nirmal Maji, also an old boy, "made the celebrations his own".

Maji, a doctor by training, is the executive convener of the school's bicentennial celebration committee.

"We don't want to associate ourselves with Maji, who is always in the news for the wrong reasons," said an alumnus now associated with a state university.

Maji disputed the allegation that his involvement in the celebration had pushed away others. "It is because of the presence of political figures like us that Rs 2.5 crore has come for the development of the school's infrastructure of the school," he said.

Postscript: So high were the expectations from Hindu School during the glory days that alumnus Partha Pratim Das was rebuked by his teachers for not doing better than the 13th rank he earned in the state secondary exams in 1978.

"Hindu's first boy ranked 13th? Sad," one teacher told Das, now professor of computer science and engineering at IIT Kharagpur .

"I keep going back to my school, but with a heavy heart," said Das. "It's not the same anymore."

Illustrious Alumni 

Michael Madhusudan Dutt 
Satyendranath Tagore
Jyotirindranath Tagore

Taraknath Palit
Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee 
Satyendranath Bose 

Pratap Chandra Chunder
Pranab Bardhan
Ashok K. Lahiri