83,671. (Mr. Biss). The cost of living in Calcutta to an Indian Professor or Lecturer would all depend as the style in which he lived. In each service there is always a standard of living to which every member is expected to conform. An Indian Professor had to go to Europe from time to time to keep himself in touch with the developments of his subject. An Indian officer had to support a large number of relations. The question of a man's private expenses should not be raised in fixing his pay. One might as well inquire whether the candidate for admission to the service was a bachelor or married, or as to how many children he had. He had known Europeans who had led a simple life, and had been all the better for it.
83,672. He could not understand why men went to Japan and Canada instead of coming to India on better terms. It was a mystery to him. He thought it was either sheer ignorance or the spread of the commercial spirit.
83,673. All the students coming to his side of the University, were, as a rule, keen and anxious to learn; he could not wish for better students.
83,674. (Mr. Gupta). He desired one service, because he thought it was most degrading that certain men, although they were doing the same work, should be classed in a Provincial Service, while others should be classed in an Imperial Service. The prospect of the members of the Provincial Service were not at all what they ought to be, and that was the reason why the best men were not attracted to it.
On his way back to Calcutta from the Fourth Scientific Deputation to the West, Prof. J. C. Bose visited Madura, 14th June 1915. The Tamil Sangam presented him with an address. In reply Dr. Bose made an important speech, in course of which he said:—
I am no longer a representative of Bengal nor have I come to a strange place, but as an Indian addressing the mighty India and her people. When we realise that unity of our destiny then a great future opens out for us.
It may be we may theorise and attribute to the plants all the characteristics of the animals; but that will be merely theory: there will be no proof. There are certain classes of people who think that plants are utterly unlike animals and some hold that they are like animals. The mere theory is absolutely worthless in order to find out the truth. We have to find by investigation, by means of researches, by means of proofs, that one is identical with the other. We have not only to drop all theory but we have to make the plant itself write down the answers to the questions that we have to put to them. That was the great problem,—how to make the plant itself answer and write down answers to the question....
If the plants are acted on by various medicines and drugs like ourselves, then we can create an agent or a spokesman on which we can carry out all future investigations on the action of drugs. Then there is opened out a great vista for the scientific study of medicine. And let me tell you medicine is not yet an exact science. It is merely a phase of tradition. We have not been able to make medicine scientific. Now by the data of the influence of drugs on the fundamental basis of life, as is seen in the plant, we shall be able to make the science of medicine purely scientific.
In travelling all over the world, which I have done several times, I was struck by two great characteristics of different nations. One characteristic of certain nations is living for the future. All the modern nations are striving to win force and power from nature. There is another class of men who live on the glory of the past. Now, what is to be the future of our nation? Are we to live only on the glory of the past and die off from the face of the earth, to show that we are worthy descendants of the glorious past and to show by our work, by our intellect and by our service that we are not a decadent nation? We have still a great and mighty future before us, a future that will justify our ancestry. In talking about ancestry, do we ever realise that the only way in which we can do honour to our past is not to boast of what our ancestors have done but to carry out in the future something as great, if not greater than they. Are we to be a living nation, to be proud of our ancestry and to try to win renown by continuous achievements? These mighty monuments that I see around me tell us what has been done till very recent times. I have travelled over some of the greatest ruins of the Universities of India. I have been to the ruins of the University of Taxilla in the farthest corner of India which attracted the people of the west and the east. I had been to the ruins of Nalanda, a University which invited all the west to gain knowledge under its intellectual fostering. I had been all there and seen them. I have come here also and want to visit Conjeevaram. But are you to foster the dead honours or to try to bring back your University in India and drag once more from the rest of the world people who would come down and derive knowledge from India? It is in that way and that way alone we can win our self-respect and make our life and the life of the nation worthy. The present era is the era of temples of learning. In order to erect temples of learning we require all the offerings of our mighty people. We want to erect temples and "viharas" which are so indispensable to the study of nature and her secrets. It is a problem which appeals to every thoughtful Indian. It is by the effort of the people and by their generosity that all these mighty temples arose; and now are we to worship the dead stones or are we to erect living temples so that the knowledge that has been made in India shall be perpetuated in India? I received requests from the different Universities in America and Germany to allow students from those countries to come and learn the science that has been initiated in India. Now, is this knowledge to pass beyond our boundaries to that again in future time we may have to go to the west to get back this knowledge or are we to keep this flame of learning burning all the time?