The Case for Ravenshaw Name-change Doesn’t Have Legs to Stand On

Union Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has set the proverbial cat among the pigeons with his comment on the need for a change in the name of the iconic Ravenshaw University. Maybe that was the whole idea because it came completely out of the blue, without a context or a proper backdrop that would justify such a highly controversial statement. His attempt to cloak his comment as a ‘personal view’ that needed a wider debate fooled no one because everyone knows politicians, especially someone as seasoned as Mr. Pradhan, don’t make off-the-cuff remarks just like that. There is always a scarcely veiled political agenda in everything they do and speak in the public arena.

Going by the heated exchanges since he made the statement, Pradhan appears to have succeeded in his design; of dividing the state between the pro and no changers.  But let us not get into the politics of it and discuss the issue strictly on merit. Is there really a good enough case, based on historical evidence, for changing the name of a prestigious university that has produced the virtual Who’s Who of Odisha? The evidence presented – and the argument built around them – by the pro changers doesn’t really back their contention that Thomas Edward Ravenshaw, the then commissioner of Odisha, was a mass killer who condemned about a million people to death with his acts of omission and commission during the Great Famine of 1866, immortalised both in history and legend as the Na’Anka Durbhiksha. Of course, it is nobody’s case that he was not responsible for the mass deaths in any manner – and he was the first person to admit and own up his mistakes before the Campbell Commission set up by the British government. Equally, it should be no one’s case that he knowingly and deliberately sent lakhs to their deaths in doing what he did – or not doing what he didn’t. His failures were an honest error of judgment at best and gross inefficiency and lack of foresight at worst. Using the same logic, shall we demand the change of name of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) next because Nehru’s gross error of judgment led to the loss of countless lives and thousand of acres of Indian land in the war with China in 1962 – and deny his immense contributions to nation building?   

Some people in favour of the change of name claim that he was ‘severely indicted’ by the Commission without bothering to cite the exact para or the page from the Commission’s report where the alleged severe indictment occurs. In any case, they fail to explain how the British government kept the officer ‘severely indicted’ by a Commission appointed by itself as the commissioner till as late as 1878?

Let us, for a moment, accept that the charges against him are true. But the point is: is the pioneering role he played in setting up the first higher education institution in the state – and then followed it up with a series of equally important institutions that laid the foundations of modern education in Odisha – fiction? For those who don’t know, he was the person who personally took it upon himself to allay the apprehensions of financial viability expressed by his bosses in Calcutta and enlisted the support of many kings of princely states to raise funds for the first college. He was also the person who played the troubleshooter-in-chief during the highly challenging formative years and groomed the newly founded college with love and care. And it was not Ravenshaw who engraved his name to the college that was initially known simply as Cuttack College. It was the Maharaja of Mayurbhanj Krushna Chandra Bhanjadeo, the principal donor for the setting up of the college (upwards of Rs 20, 000, a princely sum in those days) who insisted on a change of name – and that too after Raveshaw had gone back to England after serving his term for well over a decade. In crucifying Ravenshaw posthumously, thus, we are also demeaning the contribution of the Mayurbhanj Maharaja but for whose generous monetary support the college would never have been set up in the first place. But so desperate are the people bent on name change that they even accuse Bhanjdeo of ‘buying’ peace with Ravenshaw with his contribution to quell an alleged tribal uprising in his kingdom. Two questions for them. First, why didn’t the Maharaja insist that the college be set up in his own kingdom - rather than in faraway Cuttack – since he was the principal donor? Second; what was his compulsion in proposing the naming of the college after Ravenshaw when the latter had already laid down office and gone back to his native country?

There is another point we must ponder. Why did none of the stalwarts of our movement for a separate state and recognition of Odia as a separate language – starting from Utkal Gourav Madhusudan Das and Fakir Mohan Senapati to Utkalmani Gopabandhu and Dr Harekrushna Mahatab or any of the leaders who followed them – never objected to the name of Ravenshaw being lent to the premier higher education institution in the state? Were they all also ‘stooges’ of Ravenshaw?

Last but not the least, what about the hurt feelings of lakhs of former and present students for whom the name ‘Ravenshaw’ is a badge of honour to be worn proudly, a brand name recognized across the country and even outside? And they include some of the best that this state has produced in fields as diverse as academics, administration, politics, journalism … you name it. To brush their collective outrage as vestiges of a colonial mindset is downright laughable.   

Is the name change even necessary? What exact purpose will it serve (other than making political brownie points? If it’s a question of wiping off the ‘vestiges of colonialism’, why can’t start with the mushrooming ‘Oxford’ and ‘Cambridge’ schools all over the state? Or the glitzy malls bearing fancy English names? In any case, will a change of name make people address the first college in Odisha as anything other than as Ravenshaw College/University? To take just one small example: how many people call the road from AG Square in Bhubaneswar to Acharya Vihar square ‘Lok Seva Marg’, the name given to the erstwhile Sachivalaya Marg by the previous government? So why go for a name change when it’s certain that the people would continue to use the old name? Changing names is the favouite pastime of those who lack the intention or ability to usher in real, tangible change.

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As the famous Spanish philosopher George Santayana said in his seminal work ‘The Life of Reason’ published in 1905; “Those who cannot remember history are condemned to repeat it”!