A Mahomedan gentleman, Mr. Ali Imam, has been appointed to succeed Mr. Sinha as Indian member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council.  He too is a leading member of the Bengal Bar, and, like Mr. Sinha, will take charge of the Legal Department.  Though the selection of a Mahomedan in succession to a Hindu cannot fail to gratify Indian Moslems, Mr. Ali Imam’s appointment should not be altogether unacceptable to the Hindus.  For when the details of the reforms’ scheme were being worked out in India, he adopted, on the subject of separate electorates for the Mahomedan community, a line of his own which was applauded by the Hindus, but was very much resented by the vast majority of his co-religionists.  The Government of India seemed inclined to favour his proposals, and he proceeded to England to press them upon Lord Morley.  But the Secretary of State wisely decided that the pledges originally given by Lord Minto to the Indian Mahomedans must be scrupulously and fully redeemed, so as to secure to them substantial representation in the new Councils.

NOTE 16

The first Indian Member of the Bengal Executive Council is expected to be Mr. R.N.  Mookerjee, a partner in the well-known Calcutta firm of Messrs. Martin and Co., to whom I have referred (page 258) as “the one brilliant exception” amongst Western-educated Bengalees, who has achieved signal success in commerce and industry and has shown the possibility and the advantages of intelligent and business-like co-operation in those fields between Englishmen and Indians.

NOTE 17

THE WASTAGE IN INDIAN UNIVERSITIES.

The most striking feature about the number of graduates at the Indian Universities is not the magnitude of their total or any increase in it, but the very high proportion of wastage.  It takes 24,000 candidates at Matriculation to secure 11,000 passes, it takes 7,000 candidates at the Intermediate examination to secure 2,800 passes, and it takes 4,750 candidates for the B.A. degree to secure 1,900 passes.

There are 18,000 students at college in order to supply an annual output of 1,935 graduates.  This means that a very large number fall out by the way without completing successfully their University career.  The phenomenon, peculiar to India, of candidates for employment urging as a qualification that they have failed at a University examination (meaning that they have passed the preceding examination and added thereto some years of study for the next) is due to two causes, the large number of students whom the University rejects at its examinations before it grants the B.A. degree to the remainder, and the dearth of graduates. (Quinquennial Report on the Progress of Education in India for 1902-1907, by Mr. H.W.  Orange, Director-General of Education.)

NOTE 18