Ashutosh Mukherjee

Sir Asutosh Mookerjee ( _bn. আশুতোষ মুখোপাধ্যায়) 1864-1924, CIE, PhD, DSc, LLD was an Indian educator and Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta from 1906 to 1924. He was also responsible for the foundation of the Bengal Technical Institute in 1906 and the Calcutta University College of Science in 1914.

Early life

Mookerjee's father was the well known doctor Ganga Prasad Mookerjee. He was born in the Bowbazar area of Calcutta and showed an early aptitude for mathematics. In 1883 he came first in the BA examination at Calcutta University and was awarded the Premchand-Raichand scholarship to complete a postgraduate degree in mathematics. Two years later he also acquired an MA in physics, making him the first student to be awarded a dual degree from Calcutta University. However, he turned down an offer of a job in the Department of Public Instruction in favour of completing his Bachelor of Law degree. Nevertheless, he continued to publish scholarly papers on issues in mathematics and physics, and was elected to the Senate of Calcutta University in 1889.

Career in law

Mookerjee dabbled in politics while practicing law, but gave it up when he was appointed as a judge of the Bengal High Court in 1904. He approached different people to raise funds for the establishment of the Calcutta University College of Science, which became the foremost institute of scientific education and research in the country. In 1906 he was appointed Vice Chancellor of Calcutta University

Contribution to education

Ashutosh Mookerji had a vision of the kind of education he wanted young people to have, and he had the acumen and courage to extract it from his colonial masters. He set up several new academic graduate programmes: comparative literature, anthropology, applied psychology, industrial chemistry, ancient Indian history and culture and Islamic culture. He also made arrangements for postgraduate teaching and research in Bengali, Hindi, and Sanskrit. The diverse range of subjects offered by Calcutta University is largely a result of his labour. Scholars from all over India, irrespective of race, caste, and gender, came to study and teach there. He even persuaded European scholars to teach at his university. He was one of the first persons to recognize the worth of Srinivasa Ramanujan.

Lord Curzon's education mission in 1902 identified the universities, and Calcutta University especially, as centres of sedition where young people formed networks of resistance to colonial domination. [Aparna Basu, "The Growth of Education and Political Development in India, 1898-1920", (New Delhi: OUP, 1974).] The cause of this was thought to be the unwise granting of autonomy to these universities in the nineteenth century. Thus in the period 1905 to 1935 the colonial administration tried to reinstate government control of education. In 1923, when Lord Lytton tried to impose conditions on his reappointment as Vice Chancellor, Mookerji indignantly refused the post. For his intransigence and academic integrity he was known as the "Tiger of Bengal".

Other positions held

Mookerji was a member of the 1917-1919 Sadler Commission, presided over by Michael Ernest Sadler, which inquired into the state of Indian education. He was three times president of the Asiatic Society,and in 1910 of the Imperial (now National) Library Council. He donated his entire personal collection of 80,000 books to the Library and it is arranged in a separate section. He was the president of the inaugural session of the Indian Science Congress in 1914. He was learned in Pali, French and Russian, and was awarded the titles of Saraswati and Shastravachaspati by the pandits of Bengal for his service to Indian education.

The epitaph beneath his marble bust at the Ashutosh Museum of Arts at the University of Calcutta reads:

"His noblest achievement, surest of them all/"A place for his mother tongue --- in stepmother's hall".

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