This one is from the archives of an aunt of mine - Shaiqua Murshed, daughter of the eminent IAS officer Mr. SYed Mushtaque Murshed. The article was penned in 1985 by Mr. Murshed who was a member of the first committee of the old boys association of our school, ALSOC, or Alumnorum Societas, as it is known, and was involved with it for many years till constraints of age took their toll.
He shared the following with some of his fellow Xaverians:
"I am perhaps the seniormost Xaverian in the world today -- Std. 1 to B.A., 1940 to 1952.
I helped organise the 125th. Anniversary of our alma mater in 1985. Fr. Huart was then the Rector.
The Statesman commissioned me to write an article on our great institution. I attach a copy of the resultant magnum opus.
The 125th Anniversary was followed the following year by the visit of His Holiness Pope John Paul II to Calcutta. The Catholic community elected me as the Master of Ceremonies for the Holy Father."
I am sharing the article that was published in the Statesman on the occasion of the school's 125th anniversary.
It will, perhaps, rekindle some very warm memories of an institution that is immortalised in the heart of many a Xaverian.
The Testament Of A Xaverian
-- S.M. Murshed
(Published in The Statesman dated Sunday, 10 February, 1985 on the occasion of the 125th. Anniversary of St. Xaviers College, Calcutta)
St Xaviers College, Calcutta completed 125 years of fruitful existence on the 16th January, 1985. This event is being celebrated with some élan. His Excellency the President of India will inaugurate the celebrations; a special postage stamp will be issued commemorating the anniversary; and Xaverians, including the present Chief Minister of West Bengal and his immediate predecessor, will debate on a public platform issues which are vital in the field of education.
Which school do you go to Sonny, used to be the question; St. Xaviers would be the reply. Thought as much, would be the comment that followed. There is something about St. Xaviers which for more than a hundred years successive generations of students have cherished. There is a certain mystique which the Xaverian has acquired.
It will not be possible, within a restricted perimeter, to explain fully that something or the mystique of the Xaverian. One can therefore at best merely delineate necessarily with some misgivings some aspects of the total picture without drawing it either in great detail or in depth.
At the outset a small but pertinent question, which may appear to be one of semantics only, may be disposed of. In common parlance the term College is reserved for the institution where one prepares for a university degree after completing the primary and secondary stages of ones career in school. But the term suffixed to St. Xaviers embraces both the school and the college, and, as a matter of historical record, the school was founded in 1860, the college being appended to it five years later. It is in the school that the true Xaverian of yore spent about eight or nine years of his educational life, reserving three years for the college, if he at all went there. Therefore, if the mystique of the Xaverian is to be explored, attention for the most part will have to be focussed on the school.
Great things would appear to have their origin in fire. The introduction of roast pig to the cuisine of the civilised world (except the part dominated by Islam) is ascribed by Charles Lamb to an accidental act of conflagration in a shepherds cottage in China. It is to certain accidental acts of conflagration that St. Xaviers College, Calcutta owes its origin, at least as far as its mural aspect is concerned.
On July 27, 1826, the celebrated Esther Leach descended on the Chowringhee Theatre in Calcutta and for more than a decade remained its presiding deity. On May 1, 1839, while she was on a short holiday in England, a fire reduced the famous theatre to ashes.
One supposes that Ms. Leach was inconsolable in her grief, but loyal friends helped her to raise funds and on March 8, 1840, she found a new home at the Sans Souci Theatre at 10, Park Street. The Theatre was distinguished by a majestic façade a portico with magnificent Doric pillars and a grand flight of stairs.
Ms Leach was presumably more suited for a role in a Sophoclean tragedy. Her new found bliss in her new home was short lived. Those were the days of oil lamps, presaging the fate of modern Calcutta, and it was such lamps that served as footlights for the stage. A tongue of flame from one of these lamps licked the petticoat of Ms Leach as she waited in the wings for her cue to go on stage. I do not believe that episode provided the inspiration for Christopher Frys ‘The Lady is not for Burning’. The celebrated Ms. Esther Leach was impelled to the stage engulfed in flames, although the stage directions did not call for this pyrotechnical entry. The flames were soon extinguished; so was the celebrated Ms. Leach. With the presiding deity thus consumed, the altar of Sans Souci was in need of new Gods that would not fail.
By a happy coincidence, at that time, waiting in the wings, as it were, was an astute Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church in the person of Mgr. Carew. With considerable foresight he purchased Sans Souci Theatre with the intention of setting up a school for Catholic boys. The school was named St. Johns.
Stones, however, do not deliver sermons. There was a need, therefore, for imparting life to St. Johns at Sans Souci Theatre. An institution called St. Xaviers College was at that time functioning on Chowringhee Road under the aegis of certain English Jesuits. The latter were apparently not making a good job of it. Mgr. Carew felt that perhaps a change of environment would impel them to greater things. Accordingly, on the invitation of Mgr. Carew, the English Jesuits moved to Sans Souci Theatre. Unfortunately, the spirit of the late lamented Esther Leach failed to inspire them. They, therefore, retired from the scene. Mgr. Carew was then summoned by his Maker; and St. Johns College became defunct. Into the void caused by the exit of the English Jesuits walked on the 28th November, 1859, seven of their Belgian confreres under the leadership of the redoubtable Father Henry Depelchin. The calculations of Divinity may sometimes appear strange, but they do have an eternal validity, for who but a Divine Being could have dared to think, particularly at that stage of Indias history, that where the English had failed, the Belgians could succeed.
Father Depelchin addressed himself to the task of revitalising the defunct school with some zeal and zest. To begin with, he changed its name from St. Johns to St. Xaviers. The name and the institution were destined to endure.
The portals of St. Xaviers College were opened to the first batch of forty students in Standards V, VI and VII on the 16th January, 1860. It was thus the school that first came into existence. The initial years were difficult. By the end of 1863, although affiliation to the Calcutta University had been gained, the number of students on the rolls of the College stood at 90 only and the institution lost money in its running. Students had not come in the numbers that had been expected.
In Father Depelchin, however, resided a spirit that was indomitable. In a grand reversal of proverbial roles, since Mahomet had refused to come, the mountain went to him. Unwittingly, in this process the priest was once again helped by the English. A public transport service that they had tried to run with a number of horse drawn buses ended in disaster for lack of passengers. The zealous priest purchased the buses and sent them out to fetch students. They were vehicles which proclaimed the faith of the Jesuits, provided -- seemingly without design -- valuable publicity for the College and started bringing in students who had eluded the Jesuits during the preceding four years. From that time onwards, S. Xaviers has not looked back.
Great and rapid strides were made in all spheres of human endeavour. The second Rector of the College, the successor of Father Depelchin, was Father E. Lafont, a scientist of considerable eminence. He was one of the founders of the Indian Science Association and he is hailed as the father of Indian Science. Under him, St. Xaviers College came to be accepted as a shrine of scientific knowledge and learning. And in the fullness of time this great institution produced great scientists, including Sir. J.C Bose. In humanities also the College was not to be outdone: there emerged from its precincts, among others, the poet Rabindranath Tagore.
The peace of the ancient world has often been disturbed by the vandalism of the modern in its quest for progress and development. In defence of such sport the much flogged cliché is used that the old order must change, yielding place to the new. It was thus that in the year 1932 the Doric pillars of Sans Souci Theatre were pulled down along with the grand flight of stairs and the hall of the theatre itself to make room for a larger building and a larger number of students. In extenuation of that painful decision it must be said that, according to contemporary expert opinion, the ravages of time had taken their toll of the venerable pillars and sooner or later they would have to be sacrificed. One cannot but observe with a tinge of regret that there did not then emerge an architects genius who could have saved the venerable pillars. The portico, the stairs and pillars are now preserved in photographs of that era. Bits of property were added from time to time to the premises that emerged from the ruins of Sans Souci till the College attained in the main the proportions which it commands today on Park Street.
It was then to such an institution, already beginning to acquire a certain timeless quality, that in the year of Our Lord 1940 I was taken, not by my parents -- for that was not considered necessary but by my cousin and left to my own devices. Such devices operated till I emerged from the College in 1952 with a B.A. degree of sorts and they have operated ever since in my bureaucratic career. That is the essence of the matter: in the course of ones progression along corridors of different floors of the Crohan school building, from one standard to another, one was surely and steadily, if imperceptibly, being moulded in such a way that one was always able, even late in life, to rely on oneself, to study a theme from first principles and to contend with the heaviest of odds against oneself. In school and college there was no need to consult commercial commentaries in order to understand any text, no need to anticipate examination questions through any theory of probability based on questions set in preceding years -- for one was always prepared for any eventuality -- and above all, no need for parental or tutorial supervision at home. Lessons taught in the classroom were complete; practise at home on ones own was all that was required. Therefore, private tutors at home were not only not necessary, but were discouraged. How different it was elsewhere, and how different it all is now.
It is a matter of singular good fortune that at the time of which I speak an institution like St. Xaviers was in existence, for my parents were then steeped in onerous public duties, my father as a Civil Servant and my mother as Parliamentary Secretary to the then Premier, the great Fazlul Haq. To make matters worse, my mother was a good cook and Fazlul Huq (who happened to be my grandfather and who was then sans wife) was fond of eating and entertaining. Thus the duties of official hostess devolved on my mother with the result that in the early formative years parental supervision over my studies was not possible; nor was it necessary. In the mid-forties my father was transferred to Dacca (now in Bangladesh). There he showed me St. Gregorys School. A Xaverian neophyte is not easily converted to an alien faith. So I remained in Calcutta and once again my parents were forced to leave me to my own devices.
We may recall some details of life at school in the forties. To begin with, there was what we called Model Copy Writing. It was based on the belief that there was only one way of forming letters of the English alphabet; and it was that way which we soon learnt after assiduous drilling in exercise books containing double narrow lines which regulated the size of the characters and their loops and slants. I think I shall today be able to forge the handwriting of any Xaverian of my time. Our exercises had to be superscribed by the letters AMDG. We did not comprehend their import till later when we began our Latin studies. It was not for us to reason why; we did as we were told, reposing a strong, if childlike, faith in the mystical abracadabra. In Standard IV, when we started Latin, we learnt that the magical words stood for the Jesuit motto: Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam, which, translated, means for the greater glory of God. The Jesuits believe that whatever one does in life, no matter how big or how small, must be for the glory of God and for nothing else, least of all for ones personal glory. How does one reconcile this to the creed of the atheist or the agnostic? In my submission, it is not necessary to believe in any God to derive meaning and strength from the motto.
Soon in standard II or III we were introduced to parsing and analysis of sentences. Starting from its simplest form, this exercise, over the next few years, assumed rather complex dimensions. At the end of it all, through daily drilling in the class room and at home, we acquired complete control over the most complex of sentences and we could take each clause, each phrase and each word apart and define its exact position and its relationship to the other components of the structure. I think the late Winston Churchill, writing about his early life, remarked that if he learnt nothing else at school, he learnt at least to write the correct British sentence, which he described as a noble thing. It might have surprised Sir Winston to learn that the early Xaverians could show much nobility.
Then there was the daily writing of an essay in English and readings from the Bible, for which we used the Authorised Version. Since the time of King James, there has been considerable exegesis on the origins of the Bible and there has been much delving into Hebrew texts. Based on such exegesis, various versions of the Bible have been published. I shall not, however, even for my life, part with the Authorised Version. It is indispensable for a proper study of the English language; if in the process one learns something about the ways of Christ and acquires some of the eternal verities, I see no great harm done. I think it will be appropriate at this juncture to refute the charge sometimes levelled against schools like St. Xaviers that they are intended to serve as proselytising outposts of the Roman Catholic Church. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The word catholic has a meaning in the dictionary which has nothing to do with religion. St. Xaviers produced a catholicity of outlook in us without making Roman Catholics of us.
Finally, there was the teaching of Latin from Standard IV to Standard IX (or Senior Cambridge, as it used to be called in those days). We began with declining nouns and conjugating verbs. From there Fabulae Faciles and ultimately to Caesar and De Bello Galico. The discipline of Latin was wholesome and invigorating: it chastened the mind without chastising it. Its benefits extended far beyond the immediate one of not having to consult the dictionary for knowing the meaning of worlds like genuflexion. It was not till much later that we fully comprehended those benefits (and, as regards genuflexion, it was not till I joined the Civil Service that I could observe it in practice). It is a great pity that they do not teach Latin any more.
One must not forget certain quaint practices. One could not, for instance, leave the school premises before the scheduled closing hour without producing before the durwan a document signed by the Prefect saying in Latin: EXEAT, meaning Let Him Go Out. The school durwan, one conjectures, must have had the rudiments of Latin in those days. Similarly, if one had absented oneself from class on any day, one could not gain admission the next day without producing before the Master another document signed by the Prefect and saying ADMITTATUR, or Let Him Be Admitted. These ingredients in their own way added to the distinctive flavour of St. Xaviers.
Mens sana in corpore sano. This dictum was taken somewhat seriously and the task of translating it, or rather the corpore sano part of it, into practise was entrusted to a British Sergeant Major of a fierce aspect, to wit Sgt. Edwards. His cockney marching refrain still rings in my ears: eff;eff, eff-ight-eigh, eff; eff ....
In school we remained, I think, for the most part untouched by the great upheavals all around us in the country. For us, the only portent of the demise of the British Raj was the departure of Sgt. Edwards with his marching refrain. His place was taken by Sgt Ronny Moore. The latters proficiency in pugilism was well known and that, I think, in some measure helped Tom Humble to maintain a peaceful posture, notwithstanding that he was, by the consent of all men, the largest among us and also British to boot. The fact that Richard Mendietta tried conclusions with Humble is of no relevance now. Sgt. Moore was destined to become Deputy Commissioner of Police in Calcutta and in that capacity he became quite an institution He is now in retirement in Australia.
Corporal correction could sometimes take a different form also. A weekly test measured the progress made by us in our studies and every Monday the results of the test would be announced by means of cards of different hues. The gilt card was excellent, the mauve was good, the pink was average, the grey was poor and the white very poor. The two last mentioned cards involved a visit to the office of the Prefect, Father Tant, and brought us there into sharp conflict with his leather strap.
Our class Masters were a dedicated lot: C. Bampton, T.D. Bellety, E. Rebeiro, M.W. Pires, H. Gilbert, Fr. Lepour, C. Deefolts, Fr. Mairlot and Fr. Dobinson. Their mastery over the subjects that they taught was complete and absolute, and their exposition of the subjects in the class was also masterly. There was a virtuosity in their teaching which is rarely seen nowadays. If they made heavy demands on us, they made even heavier demands on themselves. Their devotion to their profession, and to us, was pure, and there was no mercenary element in it. They were rightly -- in loco parentis as far as our studies were concerned. And, visually, my remembrance of them is one of sartorial elegance the priests in their black or white cassock (depending upon the climate) and the lay teachers in their jacket and tie and always immaculately shod and groomed. It was our privilege to have been taught by them.
` Brother Picachy used to be the Sub-Prefect of discipline on our first floor corridor. He is now to be encountered in the person of His Eminence Cardinal Lawrence T. Picachy, Archbishop of Calcutta. I have been in regular touch with him (as with the other priests at St. Xaviers), but every time I meet him I tend to forget, notwithstanding my terrible reputation abroad, that I am no longer in Standard IV.
Nihil Ultra is the motto given to the School by Father O Neil. It is borrowed from the family of St. Francis Xavier. Rendered literally into English, the expression will mean ‘Nothing Beyond’. But by an ellipsis which is peculiar to aphorisms in Latin, the expression means that there is nothing beyond human endeavour, that is to say there is nothing that cannot be achieved by effort and striving. That is the lesson that was taught with thoroughness at school and that was the lesson learnt by us to be remembered throughout our life. But early in our career we interpreted the motto to mean that there was nothing beyond St. Xaviers. I am happy to say that the faith and zeal of the neophyte have not deserted the apostle of later years.
The years at school passed, and with them the procession of Masters. Soon the Senior Cambridge was done. The days of Caesar and De Bello Gallico were left behind. Then came the transition to the college, and all of a sudden everything seemed different. The language and the idiom changed, the mood was more relaxed.
Of course all of us did not join college. For instance, Ashok Bir thought it more prudent to join Messrs. Stewarts and Lloyds. The faith that he reposed in himself was vindicated. He has risen to be the Managing Director of the Company.
College opened a new window for us. To begin with, the coils of school discipline were loosened and one had more liberty and more time to oneself, for one was no longer bound to a rigid 9.30-3.30 routine. During the interludes of freedom, one usually parked oneself near the main gate and observed the passing show. In those days, in ones adolescence, there was much to be observed on Park Street.
Our College Prefect was Father Schepers. He held that office for two decades - from 1939 to 1959. He was a remarkable man. The administration of the College was always firmly in his grip. Years later, if he saw an Old Boy, recognition of name, face and other particulars would be instant. One retains considerable affection for him. On one occasion, he confiscated my yo-yo, refusing to be impressed by my explanation that with the help of that instrument I was simply trying to investigate the Laws of Gravity.
In college I recall the sudden awakening of a literary spirit. A band of like minded souls got together and we decided to publish a magazine. Father Fallon suggested the name Elans for it. The first mimeographed number was duly circulated. It immediately proved popular. In it, under a chapter entitled Generalities, I recorded my reflections on life, such as they were at that adolescent stage. They included the following definition of lecturing: a process whereby the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the heads of either. The next day there appeared a terse notice on the board of the college: Further publication of Elans stopped By Order of the Prefect. A promising career in journalism was thus cut short in its incipient stage.
An outstanding personality at the College was Father Goreux. He had a Doctorate in Mathematics and in that branch of learning he was a genius and, though lightly built, he was intellectually a colossus. It was widely believed in our time that he was one of the six men in the world who fully understood Einstens Theory of Relativity.
One eventually passed out of college and embarked good and proper upon the adventure of life. The Xaverian chapter was at least in a formal sense closed.
I feel the time has now come to deal with a question about which there may be lurking suspicions in many minds. I have no hesitation in confessing that in our pursuit of the quintessential Xaverian, we developed inevitably a culture which was peculiar to us and others of our ilk brought up in missionary schools, a certain mannerism in speaking English, a certain shyness about conversing in the vernacular and a tendency to be insular with reference to boys brought up in vernacular schools. It was this culture that in later years meant evening dress for cocktails. I do not now bat an eyelid about going to dinner in my shirtsleeves or in my kalidar kurta and P Lal, the contemporary prophet of Vedic Transcreation, is always seen in diplomatic parties in his flowing kurta.
The Jesuits were not responsible in any way for this culture. They did nothing to encourage it. In fact, they themselves did not speak the English that we spoke. Our culture was perhaps an inevitable product of the prevailing milieu, a necessary outcome of the intermingling of English and Indian mores. It was a part of a historical and a social process.
Perhaps a part of our Indo-Anglian culture was the only thing to be regretted in retrospect, although it was quite thrilling at the time in question. For instance, speaking for myself, I regret not having acquired my fathers mastery over Persian or my mothers spiritual devotions. Possibly because the blood of the Syeds flows strong in my veins, I was in later years able to repair to some extent my initial privations. Each of us was able eventually to work out a solution of the problem. Although I cannot quite see Bobby Basu (sometime Secretary of the Royal Calcutta Turf Club) chanting vedic hymns, yet I do feel that his heart is in the right place.
The term elitist was not in vogue in our time. It was not, therefore, used for describing the culture that I speak of not that it could have been used with any justification; for the cleavage in the scholastic field in those days was not between the patrician and the plebeian or between the haves and the have nots. The cleavage was basically between English and the Vernacular. Votaries of the latter of course reserved a pejorative epithet for us: tansh. The wheel, however, eventually came a full circle and those who had come to scoff remained to pray. After the departure of the British from India and the recession of the Anglian culture, those who regarded us as tansh themselves began to send their sons and daughters to Missionary schools in the hope that they would lean the things we learnt and speak the English that we spoke. Fate can, however, play cruel tricks. The milieu changed and a new wind began to blow at St. Xaviers and elsewhere.
My son has just completed ten years at St. Xaviers. I perceive in him a tinge of regret as he talks about other pastures, for he has to prosecute further studies under the Delhi Secondary Board and St. Xaviers at that stage is not affiliated to that Board. Twenty-five years hence our common alma mater will be celebrating its 150th anniversary. I wonder in what vein, if called upon to do so, he will record his reflections then. His will certainly not be a nostalgia born of aphorisms in Latin; but there will be some kind of a nostalgia, and a certain wistfulness.
Such then is our great alma mater. My debt to it is great. Whatever I have achieved in life is attributable entirely to the days that I spent at school. The priests who have made what St. Xaviers is today and who continue to guide the destiny of this great institution are, individually and collectively, exceptional men. They have steadfastly lived according to their motto: Ad Majoram Dei Gloriam, for they have all, without exception, surmounting tremendous odds, served a worthy cause in a climate and an environment which, physically and otherwise, has not always been hospitable, sacrificing in the process material prosperity and preferment in their native country. It must be a strong inner spirit which moves them. Many of them have dedicated their entire lives to us without the expectation of any material return; some among them returned home and could have died, if so they wished, peacefully in their own country, but, sensing that death was near, came back to Indian shores to be buried in Indian soil.
The story of St. Xaviers then is essentially the story of a procession of priests: Father Depelchin, Father Lafont, Father O Niel, Father Crohan, Father Power, Father Van Neste, Father Briot and, closer to our times, Father Antoine. Et. al. Their spirit, though not visible or tangible, pervades the immemorial air of St. Xaviers. It will forever stride the corridors of the venerable institution. Yes, the priests are dead and gone. But who was it who said that to live in hearts that are left behind is not to die?
It is not always that one is given to an effusion of the literary spirit in print. But there is a duty to acknowledge a debt and one must be grateful for an opportunity to attenuate its burden somewhat by recording a personal testament to the greatness and heroism of priests who sacrificed so much for us and to whom so many of us owe so much. Laudamus viros gloriosos: Sing we then in praise of glorious men.
(Courtesy: The Statesman)
