David Sinclair

“ Your acquaintance with the English language, has opened to you the treasury of English literature and the loftiest and noblest thoughts of England's greatest sons have become known to you. Her store-house of science has been unlocked for you and you have been taught and shown how to use the forces of nature for the relief and benefit of your fellow-countrymen. Through the English language you have learned something of the human race, how nations have risen to the highest eminence and the causes that led to their downfall. ”

“ The education and training you have received pre-eminently fit you for it. Apply yourselves to it. Provide a vernacular literature of interesting and useful knowledge—a literature of romance too, if you will, breathing a lofty moral spirit—a literature that will brighten what might otherwise be many a weary listless hour, that will raise your women intellectually, and make them more and more true companions for you as wives—companions able to understand your labours and sympathize with you in them, and by their sure instincts help you in your difficulties. ”

“ Educate the masses. Educate the masses. Stimulate the desire for education where-ever it exists, where there is no such desire strive to create it. Without education you never will have national life, never become a great people influencing for good the history of the world.
You have received a liberal education yourselves. ”

“ But your studies will have been of little avail, if they have not awakened within you a desire to pursue your search after knowledge and truth for its own sake, to learn and understand the thoughts and modes of action of the great of past ages, to make yourselves familiar with the current speculation of your own day, and to gather from them what your well-trained minds will readily turn to advantage for yourselves and your countrymen. Those of you who have selected Medicine or Engineering* as your professions will have to remain students for life. Science advances with rapid strides. ”

“ You have all of you for some years now been travelling along a straight and well-defined road, your intellectual horizon somewhat narrowed by text-books and syllabuses, and some-times I fear clouded by notes and annotations, compilations and compendiums; but though often brain-weary, often heart-heavy sometimes to some of you as I know, having the utmost difficulty in providing yourselves with the ordinary necessaries of life, you have struggled manfully on, and the end of this road you have reached to-day. ”

“ But on the other hand, if for narrow class ends you try to mislead, you take a spurious message and, keeping out of view the needs and wishes of your less educated countrymen, you aim only at the aggrandisement of self, then I believe you will meet with that rebuke which you will well merit; and, again I say, you will be no true friends of your country. But actuated by the purest patriotism, you will prove yourselves true interpreters between the Government and the people, The liberal power that has enabled you to occupy that position you are in to-day expects it. ”

“ Do what in you lies to give to the masses of your countrymen that which you yourselves have so freely received, and, wherever you may be placed, be each of you a centre of light, illuminating and revivifying all around you. Government has done much, and no doubt will continue to do much, to promote education ”

“ You will call to mind how even almost within the memory of the living, the quiet peaceful hamlet of your fathers might be roused from its slumbers by gangs of Pindari robbers, and the morning sun be a witness only to the desolation that had been made—the father dead—the children orphans—all property gone—nothing left for the survivors but misery and blank despair. ”

“ And with the light which you have received, if you are persuaded that such customs are detrimental to the happiness of your country, that they are contrary to human nature and have no place in your ancient Faith, then you must have the courage of your convictions, and must make your voice heard and power felt. No more difficult duty lies before you. ”

“ Whose every battle-field is holy ground. Which breathes of nations saved, not worlds undone, and of others whose careers though less brilliant were no less noble a Hampden and a Wilberforce, names that will be held in grateful remembrance by a hundred generations. ”

“ You are acquainted with the later Mughal rule which, while it has left an imperishable name in the wonderful works of its engineers and in its magnificent buildings had no room in its policy for religious toleration, no room in its administration for aliens to its faith, no room for buildings such as that in which we are assembled to-day—fostering homes of light and learning. ”

“ These things you will call to mind and compare them with the condition of your country now, when every man has security in his possession, and the humble ryot may lay him down and sleep in peace and safety. ”

“ You must therefore be brave, not in the sense of what I am afraid we too frequently see in the present times, when young men mistake volubility for wisdom, and arrogance for manliness. But brave, with a bravery founded on conviction arrived at after the most careful study and reflection, a bravery that will be clothed with modesty, that will be free from selfish ends and untarnished by self-conceit. ”

“ Those of you who have made Science a special study will have many opportunities of using your knowledge for the benefit of your less fortunate countrymen. You will teach them to observe those great laws that cannot be broken with impunity. ”

“ How poor a thing is man!
Such being the lessons you have learned and the principles by which you are to be guided, it will be for you to walk up to them and demonstrate them in your lives. Demonstrate what you have learnt in your lives. Never have you been regarded with a more critical eye than now. ”

“ Your scientific knowledge should enable you to help the manufacturer to produce a higher quality of goods, and if as the latest writer maintains, the country plough is the best suited to the requirements of the land and the climate, you can at least impress upon the ryot the importance of a rotation of crops, and that land, if it is to be a bountiful giver, must be treated generously and liberally.
Students you have been, students you must continue to be, and students of more than books.
You are going out into the world and will come into living contact with living men. ”

“ You will use your influence to dispel many of the prejudices that prevail amongst your countrymen, such for example as that against vaccination, so that many a home may not be left desolate, many a lovely face not disfigured by the scars of a loathsome disease. ”

“ You will have to make up your mind as to whether, for example, infant marriage and enforced widowhood is to be perpetuated, and every year the lives of thousands of young, bright and tender hearts to be blasted and reduced to wretchedness. ”

“ These will have elevated you morally as well as intellectually, stirred up within you new and loftier aspirations, a stronger longing after truth and goodness, a desire to follow after right because it is right and loathing of every thing that savours of the nature of mere selfishness. ”

“ And as for generations', perhaps, the national sentiment is likely to insist on girls leaving school at an early age, a great opportunity is provided for you to supply them after leaving school with a healthy literature in their own language. ”

“ That for them to preserve their bodily health and escape the ravages of such relentless avengers as cholera or small-pox, attention must be paid to the sanitation and conservancy of their homes and villages ”

“ Educate your women. Much has been done in this respect during the past twenty years, and all honor to those who have led the way. But much remains to be done. It is but the veriest fraction of the females of this country, that are under instruction. ”