When a friend told me that HRD minister Dharmendra Pradhan has suggested that the name of Ravenshaw University (College until 2006) be changed, I thought it must be a joke and Pradhan has a wonderful sense of humour.
Soon I realised he wasn’t shooting the breeze but was deadly serious. I concluded that either Pradhan never entered the portal of Ravenshaw College or was ignorant of its history. Or both. The statement is so asinine that it is below contempt to debate. But rather than doing that, I will crack a joke. And my way of joking is to tell the truth. I’ll say what ‘Ravenshaw’ signifies and how redolent it was – still is – in academic circles and beyond.
Disclosure: I am a proud Ravenshavian (demonym). I studied for four years, also taught for more than a year.
No sooner had we joined the college, Biju Patnaik, (the Original Chhappan-Inch-Ki-Chhati fame), the champagne leader whether in or out of power, told us, “Anyone who is someone in Orissa is a Ravenshavian!”
It wasn’t hyperbole, it was the truth. In the 1960s-1970s, anyone who mattered in Orissa in any field was a Ravenshavian – be he a doctor, engineer, academic or civil servant or anything remarkable. It’s very likely most civil servants in India were from or off this college. They might have crossed over to Delhi University for their Master’s but their college career mostly began in Ravenshaw.
I recall my dear friend Arun Mohanty (later Professor of Russian Studies at JNU) who came from a village close to Puri and topped the Pre-University examination from SCS College, Puri, moving to our college the next year. When I asked him the reason, he smirked and said, “SCS’s fine but Ravenshaw is Ravenshaw with a name and fame known the world over!” It warmed the cockles of my heart. Ravenshaw is to Odisha what St. Stephen’s is to India.
“Orissa is full of ancient temples, forts and statues… the home of the most bigoted, Brahmin-ridden Hindus in all India,” writes John Beames, an ICS officer and scholar, and author of Memoirs of a Bengal Civilian.
Beames, a no-nonsense man, was collector of Balasore and Cuttack in the 1870s, and loved Cuttack. How difficult it was for this backward, feudal-riled, riparian state (where travelling to Calcutta took 12 days with literally no roads) to kick start higher education could be conjectured.
I’ll narrate a story from the 1870s that speaks of people’s mindset. Medical students dissect human corpses in anatomy class. This wasn’t acceptable to Janardan Mohapatra’s father. He studied in Calcutta, Orissa’s closest place for higher studies. Brahmin society insisted such actions are unworthy of Brahmins. His father stopped remitting money!
T.E. Ravenshaw, the bellwether of modern western education
Amid these all-encircling reservations, T.E. Ravenshaw, then Commissioner of Orissa Division at Cuttack, became the bellwether of modern western education in the state (it was then a mere Division).
It is true that the Na’Anka Durbhiksha, the Great Orissa Famine of 1866, was one of Orissa’s most tragic events. It was an era of unsurpassed callousness and heartlessness under British colonial rule. It serves as an inflection point in modern Orissan history.
A conflation of factors – official apathy imbued with flawed laissez-faire philosophy made worse by Malthusian pessimistic economic thinking that geometric population growth will notch higher than the arithmetical production of food, hence the need to invoke nascent Social Darwinism that two decades ago had decimated the Irish population in a poor colony; pathetic road and inland communication created havoc.
Union Minister Pradhan has said that Ravenshaw was in charge during the famine, and suggested that the university named after him be renamed, citing Ravenshaw’s alleged inaction at the time of the famine.
But Ravenshaw, Commissioner of the Orissa Division, wasn’t alone in neglect. There was the heartless Cecil Beadon, Governor of Bengal, on a higher perch whose remit covered Orissa, who was more guilty than Ravenshaw. After a quick visit in February 1866, his words were stunning: “Such visitations of providence as these no government can do much either to prevent or alleviate.”
Not to speak of masterly insensitivity of Viceroy John Lawrence, who merrily administered from remote Shimla and enjoyed life. The market failed to find equilibrium resulting in a million deaths from starvation in Orissa Division – one in three people! Cuttack was the hardest hit, outdoing Irish potato famine casualty numbers.
Colonial government even admitted failure due to its lackadaisical attitude, which was inhuman and gross. After the Orissa Famine Commission submitted its report on 6th April 1867, Stafford Northcote, Secretary of State for India, confessed: “This catastrophe must always remain a monument to our failure, a humiliation to the people of this country, to the Government of this country and to those of our Indian officials of whom we had perhaps been a little too proud.”
Ravenshaw’s fondness for Orissa
Let me say something about Ravenshaw’s fondness for Orissa that most Odia people may not know. Madhusudan Das (1848-1934), the first Oriya graduate, post-graduate and lawyer, legislature and minister (virtually the first in everything in Orissa) and the Father of Modern Orissa, met Ravenshaw while he lived in retirement in London during his first trip to England in 1897. Surendra Mohanty in his magisterial biography “Satabdi ra Surjya” has captures this moment. [English rendition of excerpts by Abanikanta Misra and Sudhansu Mohanty].
Before leaving India, Madhusudan wrote to Ravenshaw. When Ravenshaw was commissioner in Orissa, Madhusudan didn’t know him, they didn’t meet. He returned to Orissa after Ravenshaw’s departure. Madhusudan visited his Sussex home. No sooner he alighted from the train at Sussex, a short, bearded old Englishman spotted a turbaned Madhusudan and asked in an uncertain tone, “Mr Das?”
Then, he shook hands with Madhusudan as if they knew each other for ages.
That old man was Ravenshaw.
Madhusudan recorded his first meeting with Ravenshaw:
“I said, ‘Ravenshaw Sahib, I’m extremely sorry you took the trouble to come all the way. It wouldn’t have been difficult to find your home.’ He replied, ‘I thought it would be my pleasure to welcome you here.’ …After a while, Ravenshaw asked, ‘Please don’t mind my asking you: are you truly an Oriya?’
‘Every drop of my blood is Oriya.’
‘I love the Oriya race,’ Ravenshaw exhaled. ‘I can’t speak to anyone else in an unbridled manner the way I can speak to an Oriya.’ (Utkal Dipika 28.04.1900).
Ravenshaw conversed in Oriya. Madhusudan was thrilled hearing Oriya from a pucca Englishman in London. Offering Madhusudan a cigar, Ravenshaw asked after Orissa. Even after retirement, his fondness for Orissa didn’t dim. He had only one worry: spread of higher education in Orissa.
‘College education is spreading, Madhusudan said. ‘Ravenshaw College you established is now a full-fledged college. Education is spreading, though qualified Oriya youth aren’t finding suitable jobs.”
Madhusudan gifted him a filigree artwork matchbox as a memento.
The following letter Ravenshaw wrote to Madhusudan reveals his sympathy and goodwill for Orissa, especially on the education front:
South Hill
South Sussex
30th November 1898
My dear friend,
I enclose you a X’mas card and my hearty and best wishes will be with you not only yourself but with all my dear old Oria friends. Will you kindly let every of them who remember me know that my heart is still in Orissa and though I am growing old they are not forgotten.
I shall be very pleased to hear from time to time how the country is getting on. I pray you may enjoy peace, plenty and prosperity especially in education.
Remember me most affectionately to the Rajahs and Chiefs of the Garjat States… May God bless and prosper Orissa is the fervent prayer of your ever sincere and affectionate old friend.
T.E. Ravenshaw
I still have the little silver matchbox you so kindly sent me. It is now before me and reminds me of Oriyas. Is there any probability of you coming again to England? If so you will not fail to come and see me.
T.E.R
This was Ravenshaw, the man who loved Orissa and did for Orissa what no colonial administrator did in the field of education. He began the school in Cuttack and it slowly grew into a college that wasn’t named by him after him, as done by man/men in India today. It was named after him by the grateful Oriyas of those days as a tribute to Ravenshaw’s contribution to Orissa’s education.
Pradhan’s suggestion to rename the university has already resulted in a political storm and even led to violence in one instance. The police in Cuttack have registered a case against three BJD leaders including party MLA Byomakesh Ray over a clash outside the Ravenshaw University gate between students and ex-students protesting over the proposed renaming of the institution.
A last word before I wind down. Remember the well-known historian E. H. Carr’s warning, “Read the historian before you study the facts!” Not just history. It’s all-embracing.
If you think something is pure political jumla, remember Carr’s prescient words.
Sudhansu Mohanty, a former civil servant, is the author of the book Anatomy of a Tumour: A Patient’s Intimate Dialogue with the Scourge (Hay House India).
