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Resolution I moved in March, 1916. I recommended that the University should be autonomous and that the Chancellor should be the Governor of the province, instead of the Viceroy, the Calcutta University being thus placed upon the same footing as the sister universities of Madras and Bombay in respect of its relations with the head of the local Government. The Resolution was accepted by Sir Sankaran Nair on behalf of the Government.

As Education Minister, Sir Sankaran Nair was a success, at any rate from the Indian standpoint. From the judicial bench he was transferred to the Executive Council of the Viceroy. He had no practical familiarity with educational problems or those of Local Self-government. But in dealing with them he shewed capacity, judgment and firmness. Once again he has proved the truth that our best men, taken from whatever positions they fill in life, are equal to the highest executive offices. That has been the experience of all free countries. It has been repeated in India. Sir Sankaran was not an educationist, but to him we owe the Behar University Act, which breaks new ground and is one of the most advanced of its kind. Sir Sankaran Nair resigned owing to differences with his colleagues in regard to the Punjab disturbances. Whatever the merits of the controversy may have been, his resignation was evidence of the readiness of Indians in high office to retire from it for the sake of principle. Lord Sinha, when Member of the Viceroy's Executive Council, is reported to have resigned over the Press Bill in Lord Minto's time, and withdrawn his resignation only in order not to add to the difficulties of a situation created by the assassination of a Deputy Superintendent of Police. In the case of several whom I knew, the acceptance of office as a member of the Executive Council was a real sacrifice.

But while I was congratulating myself on having done a service to my university, some of those who were my colleagues were up in arms against me. They held a meeting of the Committee of the Indian Association, and I narrowly escaped censure by the adjourn- ment of the motion, which was never taken up. And now the reform that I had pressed for, and for which I was blamed by my colleagues, is an accomplished fact. The Governor of Bengal is now the Chancellor of the University of Calcutta and the University is none the worse for it.

Such are the rewards of public life in India; but it was only a foretaste of what was to come, when no language was sufficiently strong to condemn one, the head and front of whose offence was