Page:A Nation in Making.djvu/28

of the result of the examination, an advertisement (supposed to be the work of an Indian) appeared in the newspapers to the effect that if the fifty-first candidate (he was the first among the unsuccessful candidates) would communicate with a person whose address was given, he would hear something to his advantage. Among the Indian colony in London at that time there was no doubt as to who had published that advertisement.

The discrepancy was brought to the notice of the Civil Service Commissioners; and it so happened that there was this difference between the University record of age and that before the Civil Service Commissioners in the case of two other successful Indian candidates, namely, Behari Lal Gupta, who rose to high office in the Indian Civil Service, and Sripad Babaji Thakur, who became a District Judge in the Bombay Presidency. We were requested to furnish explanations. Our explanations were practically the same and we reconciled the discrepancy by pointing out the difference between the English and the Indian methods of reckoning age. Our explanations were deemed unsatisfactory. My name and Thakur's were removed from the list of successful candidates. Mr. Gupta escaped the same fate, because, even if he had been sixteen according to the English method of reckoning when he went up for the Matriculation, he was still within the prescribed limit.

I was not prepared to take this decision lying down; and, what is more, the removal of our names from the list of successful candidates evoked a universal outburst of indignation throughout India, especially in Bengal. The great leaders of the Indian community, among whom I may mention Maharaja Romanath Tagore, Maharaja Jotindra Mohon Tagore, Pundit Iswar Chunder Vidyasagar, Raja Rajendra Lal Mitter and Rai Kristo Das Pal Bahadur, joined in an affidavit testifying to the Indian method of reckoning age to which I have already referred.

The Indian newspapers of the time were full of articles condemning the decision of the Civil Service Commissioners. At the head of the Commission was Sir Edward Ryan, who for many years had been Chief Justice of the High Court of Bengal; and it is curious that he should have been ignorant of the method of reckoning age usual amongst us, or, knowing it, failed to have recognized its obvious application to our case.

We decided to move the Queen's Bench for a writ of mandamus upon the Civil Service Commissioners. Our friends in England