Pundi Runganadha Mudaliar

“ In regard to the University to which you and I belong, and are, I trust, proud to belong, I may be permitted to say that humble as its aims and limited as its functions are, it has done the work it has set to itself with creditable success. It has indeed no monumental buildings, no ancestral trees, no galleries and museums, nothing of a romantic or picturesque character to captivate the imagination by, no proud reminiscences linking it with names illustrious in the past for genius or heroism. ”

“ It is obvious that a University degree will cease to be of any value if the undeserving gain it as much as the deserving, and it is in every sense a more desirable thing that you should fail once, twice, thrice, and then succeed, only if you deserve to succeed, than that the value of a University degree should fall in men's esteem.There never was a greater necessity than at present for the University keeping a jealous watch over the standards of its examinations. ”

“ Graduates of the University, I wish I can, by any words of mine, make you feel what a vast field of useful labor lies before you in imparting to your fellow-countrymen the rudiments of natural knowledge. You know the saying that he who makes two blades of grass grow where only one grew before, is a benefactor to his country. Judge then what immense benefit you will confer on the generation to which you belong and through them to succeeding generations, if through your exertions men learn to lead healthier lives and to suffer less from the maladies that flesh is heir to. ”

“ I am sincerely convinced that real progress is possible, in this as in other directions, only if the guiding spirits of the movement are men of enlightened views, sound moral impulses, and a living religious sentiment, —men capable of looking before and after, —men not so blindly attached to the past as to oppose every thing new nor so rashly bent on reform as to despise every thing old. Never lose sight of the fact that you have to carry the masses with you, and that in consequence some of the social and religious changes that the educated few may be ripe for will have to be postponed ”

“ The Western ideas and sentiments that you have imbibed in the course of your education will and must urge you to advance, but as in human affairs good and evil are inextricably blended together, and the desire to obtain a thing is no guarantee of fitness to use the thing desired wisely and well, I would solemnly entreat you to look before you leap, and to make sure by observation, by study, and by reflection that in your impatient unwillingness to bear the ills you have, you do not fly to greater ills you know not of. ”

“ Is there ground to hope that the masses will, in their present state of ignorance, find out what it is that makes human beings fall like grass beneath the mower's scythe, and hasten to adopt the remedies that science has devised for alleviating human suffering and prolonging human life? ”

“ While I feel nothing but respect in regard to the intentions and motives of those among us who would fall back on the Shastras for working out a new social scheme for the people of India, I must take the liberty to say that that method seems to me to be inadequate, —nay more positively injurious. The Shastras are worthy of all reverence as handing down to us the traditions of a by-gone civilization. No social reformer can afford to despise them, or to neglect their study. ”

“ It may well be that you are not content with what you have already got, but remember that you owe this very sense of a better condition of things than the present to that wise generosity which prompted our rulers to raise us from a state of ignorance and moral stagnation to a state of comparative clearness of intellectual vision and moral activity. Ask by all means for what more you may want, but ask in such a way that there may be no doubt or misgiving in regard to your loyalty and obedience to established authority. ”

“ It has begun not only in the sense that you have to go on adding to your stock of knowledge to keep yourself abreast of the times in which you live, but also in the sense that you have to reflect on what knowledge you have already gained, and make it a part of your intellectual furniture. Most, if not all of you, will have to discharge professional duties of one kind or another. Your education up to this point has been intended to fit you for every path of life. ”

“ You enjoy a security of person and property, unknown to your fore-fathers; you have received the precious gift of British Literature and Western Science; the countless ways in which the genius and industry of man have compelled the forces of nature to minister to his material wants have been placed within your reach. In addition to these great blessings, you enjoy a freedom of thought and speech which it cost your rulers centuries of painful struggle to win. ”

“ How can you better evince your grateful appreciation of the honor the University has conferred on you than to prove by the zeal and ability, the good sense and integrity with which you discharge your public and private duties that you are worthy sons of your Alma Mater and that be the temptation to evil never so strong, you will not consciously stoop to do any thing that will cast the slightest slur on the fair reputation of the fraternity to which you will from this day forth belong ? ”

“ I have often noted a desire to produce sensational effects, a proneness to exaggerate, a warping of the judgment due to defective knowledge, and a tendency to make intemperate invective do duty for sound and sober criticism. Permit me to urge that the plainest mode of saying a thing is almost always the most effective mode, and that no criticism strikes so vigorously home as that which bears the evident impress of a careful study of facts, and of a desire to judge without fear or favour. ”

“ Of the Hindu boy, it will be truer to say that all work and no play makes him a feeble boy. Hindu boys, all but a few excepted, need still to be taught the art of "losing time wisely." With a variety of examinations to pass, with the high-pressure methods of imparting instruction in vogue, and with a hereditary aptitude for conning things by heart, the Hindu youth is sorely tempted to pore over his books day and night, forgetting that he has a bodily frame to build up as well as a mind to stock with knowledge. ”

“ I trust the Press is destined to become as powerful an organ in India as in England, but that this high destiny may be accomplished, the writers to the native papers should be imbued with a fitting sense of responsibility, and should endeavour to reflect public opinion faithfully as in a mirror. ”

“ You who have received a liberal education are peculiarly bound to guide your fellow-countrymen with wise and moderate counsel. It is at once your duty and your privilege to act as interpreters between the rulers and the ruled. See that you interpret aright to the ruled the motives and intentions of the rulers, and help the governing authorities by faithfully making known to them the wishes and feelings of the people. The task that a Government like that of British India has to do is a rough and trying task. ”

“ Tot hose who failed to pass the recent University Examinations, I would say, do not lose heart. Work with greater zeal and method than you have yet done, and if you deserve to succeed, succeed you will. Painful as it must be to you that you have failed, you will not be surprised to hear that there is a point of view in which your failure is a thing to be glad of. ”

“ This unsatisfactory result is, I have no doubt, in some measure due to the vicious methods of teaching necessitated by the demands of the long series of examinations that our young men have to pass, and the small scope allowed for the free play of the intellect when its whole energy is spent on the mere acquisition of knowledge, and there is little power and less inclination for assimilating and organizing the knowledge acquired. You do not need to be told that your education has but just begun. ”

“ Much the greater part of human misery is due to ignorance, —ignorance in regard to the properties of the things around and about us, —ignorance in regard to the character of physical forces, —ignorance of the invariable sequences of cause and effect in the realm of nature. ”

“ The teachings of our religion and philosophy, the traditions of the past, and the best interests of the present are all on the side of loyalty and fidelity, and approving as I do all reasonable desire on your part to make yourselves useful in the sphere of political administration, I call upon you as the inheritors of an ancient civilization to steer clear of courses of conduct that will do no good, but may do much harm by rousing into activity such unhealthy feelings as jealousy and disaffection. ”

“ And the University, before setting the seal of its approval on you, has wisely obtained from you solemn promises that you will so conduct yourselves in every relation of life as to be an honour to the University, and a blessing to the country that gave you birth. ”

“ Such utter disregard of physical health out of excessive anxiety to cultivate the mind must produce the most disastrous results, —feebleness, want of spirits, functional derangement, premature arrest of bodily growth, if not death itself. "This over-education," says Herbert Spencer, "is vicious in every way, —vicious as giving knowledge that will soon be forgotten; vicious as producing a disgust for knowledge; vicious as neglecting that organization of knowledge which is more important than its acquisition ”

“ The University to which you belong will watch your career with anxious solicitude, and expect you not simply to do the best you can, each for himself,—but also to do the best you can for your fellow-men and your mother country. ”

“ How is it possible for people to be healthy when they are ill-washed and ill-fed, —when their houses are ill-drained and ill-ventilated, —when their towns have narrow streets reeking with noxious odours from accumulated garbage, —when the water they drink and the air they breathe contain the germs of disease and death? ”

“ The numbers of candidates for the Matriculation Examination and the First Examination in Arts have gone on increasing by leaps and bounds, —increasing of late years to such an extent that it was felt that the time had come for directing the attention of the youth of the country to courses of study and branches of knowledge that the University omits, and rightly omits to include in its curricula. ”

“ Allow me to say a few words next on social reform. It is said that human opinion has to pass through three phases, —"the unanimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring, and the unanimity of the wise." Having after long ages emerged from the state of unanimity of the ignorant, we are now passing through the necessary transition stage of the disagreement of the inquiring. The fault will be ours, if we do not so order things in this second stage, as to make the nearest approach possible to the third stage, the unanimity of the wise. ”

“ I know that in India public opinion has to be educated as well as represented. This makes the responsibility all the greater. The native Press should keep steadily in view the cardinal requisites of progress, —a desire to find out what is true, just, and beneficial, and to avoid what may secure temporary advance at the cost of more or less permanent injury; an ever-present feeling that large masses of men can move but slowly onward, and that the true secret of success is "to hasten slowly;" ”

“ I count it superfluous to advise you that professional success cannot be attained without a careful study of principles, and without that skill in the application of principles which is to be gained only by constant practice. ”

“ The men that the University has given have been found to be superior to their predecessors in "method and regularity and also in the tone of morality" If these are all the benefits that the University has conferred, and I shall not pause to inquire what more it has, it must be acknowledged to have done a great and useful work, and to deserve the lasting gratitude of those who have profited by its labors. ”

“ Every teacher knows how difficult it has become to make the majority of students in the First Arts classes pay due attention to their mathematical studies, and this difficulty arises, I believe, less from natural inaptitude or the preponderating claims of other subjects of the course than from a capricious distaste born of the intention to give up mathematics altogether after passing the First Examination in Arts. ”

“ What is peculiarly painful is that the higher the academical standard attained, the greater is the rate of mortality, indicating that the physical energies have collapsed under the strain of the higher studies. When this high rate of mortality is coupled with the fact, that a good proportion of those that have ceased to exist were in their day men of bright promise with a prosperous career before them, the loss must be felt to be very considerable. ”

“ Acquire a sound knowledge of the laws of human well-being and 34 progress, endeavour to lead pure and blameless lives, strive to control the lower passions of your nature, and, by constant practice o£ self-denial, learn the luxury of doing good. Of this be sure that, to the extent to which you become wise and virtuous men, to that extent only will you be fit to exercise political power, and the fitness to exercise such power must, as history sufficiently proves, be followed sooner or later by the attainment of it. ”

“ According to some, the people of India will never be fit to govern themselves; according to others they possess already the necessary fitness, let a jealous bureaucracy deny it as stoutly as they may. Let me advise you to reflect on one aspect of the question. Self-government ordinarily means the governing of a people by themselves, but it may also mean the governing of one's self by one's self. The true measure of the people's fitness for self-government in the former sense is to be found in their fitness for self-government in the latter sense. ”

“ If a great majority of the individuals composing a community are characterized by weakness of purpose, error of judgment, blind adhesion to custom, and ill-regulated desires, it is idle to expect such a people to possess in a collective capacity the intellectual and moral virtues required for a wise and beneficial management of their own affairs. Your first duty then is clear. Raise yourselves individually. ”