In 1916 Abhay enrolled at Scottish Church College, one of Calcutta's two most prestigious institutions of higher education. Four years later he passed his final examinations with distinction in English, philosophy, and economics -- and then refused to walk into the hall to collect the diploma he had earned, choosing instead to make a quiet political statement at the very moment his formal education was supposed to conclude.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| College | Scottish Church College, Calcutta |
| Founder | Rev. Alexander Duff, Christian missionary |
| Enrolled | 1916 |
| Subjects | English, philosophy, and economics |
| Graduated | 1920, B.A., diploma refused |
| Notable classmate | Subhas Chandra Bose |
A Missionary College for Bengali Sons #
Scottish Church College had been founded in 1830 by the Reverend Alexander Duff, a Scottish missionary who believed that a Western, English-medium education delivered through mission institutions would draw educated Indians toward Christianity. By Abhay's time the college's founding evangelical purpose had softened into a reputation for producing well-rounded, morally serious graduates, and many Vaishnava families in Calcutta sent their sons there without much anxiety about religious interference. Bible study was compulsory, and each morning began with scripture readings and hymns, but the Scottish professors -- most of them ordained ministers of the Church of Scotland -- were remembered by Abhay less as missionaries than as strict, courteous, occasionally eccentric teachers.
Professors, Poetry, and the Gita #
Abhay studied English and Sanskrit in his first year, then Sanskrit and philosophy, and finally philosophy and economics, the combination he carried through to graduation. He joined the college's English Society, where he recited Keats and Shelley to classmates, and its Sanskrit Society, where he was known for his eloquent recitation of the eleventh chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, describing Krishna's universal form. One professor taught English literature by comparing Dickens and Walter Scott to the Bengali novelist Bankim Chandra Chatterji -- a small gesture of respect for Bengali letters that Abhay remembered fondly. Less fondly remembered was an economics professor who, frustrated with his students, would tell them outright that Indians should never expect independence and were fit only for menial labor.
Subhas Chandra Bose and Talk of Swaraj #
One year ahead of Abhay at Scottish Church was Subhas Chandra Bose, already a committed nationalist who had been expelled from Presidency College for organizing a student strike against an abusive British professor. At Scottish Church, Bose served as secretary of the Philosophy Club and quietly drew fellow students, Abhay among them, into discussions of Indian independence, or swaraj, and the leaders associated with it: Gandhi, Bipin Chandra Pal, Surendranath Banerjee, Lala Lajpat Rai. Open agitation was forbidden on campus, so these conversations happened informally, among friends. Abhay was not, by his own account, drawn to political organizing as such; what appealed to him in the independence movement was its insistence that India's civilization and scriptures deserved to be taken seriously rather than dismissed as primitive.
Gandhi's Non-Cooperation Movement Arrives #
The movement's tenor changed sharply after 1919. In April of that year, British troops fired on an unarmed crowd gathered at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, killing hundreds. Gandhi, who had until then hoped that Indian loyalty during the recent war might be rewarded with self-government, abandoned that hope and called for complete non-cooperation with British institutions: a boycott of British schools, courts, titles, and goods. Students across India were urged to leave government-affiliated colleges rather than complete degrees that Gandhi described as producing loyal subjects rather than free citizens. Wearing homespun khadi cloth instead of British mill cloth became, in this climate, a small but unmistakable political statement, and Abhay adopted it.
Refusing the Diploma #
Abhay completed his fourth year at Scottish Church in 1920, sitting for and passing his final B.A. examinations. His name appeared on the list of students cleared to receive their diplomas at the graduation ceremony. He did not attend. As a gesture of support for Gandhi's non-cooperation movement, he declined to appear and collect the diploma he had earned, forgoing the credential that would have opened doors to a career built, as he saw it, on British terms.
I joined Gandhi's movement in 1920 and gave up my education. Although I had passed my final examination -- B.A. -- I gave it up and did not appear.
His father did not reproach him for it; Gour Mohan had never staked his hopes for his son on a British degree. But a livelihood still had to be found, and it was Gour Mohan, not Gandhi's movement, who arranged Abhay's next step: a position at a Calcutta pharmaceutical firm, the beginning of the working life described in Marriage and Household Life.
A Country in Ferment #
Abhay came of age inside a very particular Bengali moment: a British-run college teaching Bible study and English poetry to the sons of a colonized culture, a classmate who would go on to lead an army against the empire, and a citywide undercurrent of nationalist sentiment that had to be discussed in whispers on a campus lawn. He absorbed all of it without becoming, in temperament, a political man. What the years at Scottish Church left him with was not a party affiliation but a settled instinct -- one that would resurface, transformed, two years later on a Calcutta rooftop -- that India's spiritual inheritance was worth more than its colonizers were willing to credit.