THE Oxford of the East', nowadays, seems to become only an empty phrase overburdened by the so-called intellectuals and pandits. And Its gravity is determined, as the Halley's Comet did for Newton, by the unfortunate act of the teachers — Igniting students in arms'. The political fractions of the Blue-White-Pink have radiated the 'ever green' with the very ardent colour of life — the red. The teachers appealing to the students in the name of Tagore's verse: Adh moradef gha mere tyi bancha (liven up the half-dead by the blow), and thereby pull Nazrul to flash humiliation upon their own face funraclng the blood-stain: Jouboner hom-kundo pashe brlddha bos he agun pohabe (the old comforts by the 'burn at stake' of the youth).

One of the recent gunfires at the campus marked the beginning of an end'. For the first time one teacher was slightly Injured by the splinter. The apparent action of Chhattra Dal and Chhattra League on behalf of the Blue and White panels dawned a morning with a different sunshine : that the horse behind the wheel came out front. The 'backbone of the nation', in all its meaning, focused itself as the 'backbone of disaster.'

From the cradle of the modern academic institutions, the powerhouse' of civil service. a Chinese philosopher remarks: 'Abandon wisdom, discard knowledge, and the gang-star would stop'. Eventually, moftern universities have had their role providing lives for the state machine: namely bureaucracy, army and politics. While bureaucracy and army have their own institutions. politics becomes the 'heart and soul' of the university — like a hot-house fashion. And. within this very vicinity of pen and ink', 'the civilian's blood made the civilian's hand unclean.

"Virtue is the luxu'ry only the poor can afford . Though this verse never matches Tagore, the celebrated sufferer Kazi Nazrul Islam, the rebel poet of Bengal, certainly admired "darlddra" or hardship for his achievement. Yet. Tagore and Nazrul were akin to conventional education. While Nazrul had to earn his living as child labourer. Tagore remarks on conventional education with a sorrv tone that he never received any prize In his life but the Nobel Prize. The world poet never had a pleasant affair with his school: hide .and seek' from school was the game of the day for him. Reading the boundless nature within the very boundary of one man's (teacher) idea never satisfied his thirst; "for he who has access to the fountain does not go to the waterrpot". as Leonardo da Vinci felt indeed.

Karl Marx had the vision to view Italy and Indi^on a same platform, as these two countries have had suffered the pain of survival of ruthless plunder. It is also true that these two countries have Illuminated the Earth with their gifted talents, and thereby, marked the two different epoches with a single phrase called Renaissance (or the new birth). But the new birth was. in fact, the rebirth of the golden past. And with Italy, it was the revival of the mighty and holy Roman Empire with the delicacy of Athens, the sit of wisdom, where even Aristotle ("the master of those who know" proclaimed Dante in 'Inferno') dressed up in a saintly cloak. The battle between God and man reached its peak, and from the high of the Everest the Earth came out with its slightest’ details and the nature as natural — human vision acquired the falcon look detecting the smallest prey from the mountain top. The two Renaissance in Italy and India presupposed the cosmopolitan atmosphere . in which talents grew like mushrooms. Dante Alighieri was the common verse to the Florentines, and Tagore and Nazrul led language movement with mastery; while Italy saw Machiavelli. Leonardo. Michelangelo and Raphael. India, in the like manner, had the opportunity to gift the world with Chandrasekhar, Sattendrariath Bose. Jagadish Chandra, Tagore. Nazrul. Mahatma Gandhi, and so on. ■Master minds were, in virtue, the "Jack of all trades'". Unlike the modern professional man. Marx’s man echoed within the walls of Renaissance — “We need another Dante" — ridiculing idiocy of rural life. Indeed, the two Renaissance had produced great men as common as peaks tn the Himalayas, leading one to believe that the ability to draw or carve is no rarer in man than mathemati cal skill and only requires the appropriate social circumstances to call it forth in abundance.

The prince of Machiavelli and the princely states in British India played the vital role for Renaissance to advance. The merchants of Venice won their independence by playing off tire two greatest powers of medieval Europe — the Papacy and the Empire; and. therefore. It was only a matter of shuffling cards to them to lift the Renaissance prince to power. On the other hand, in India, "praising the British yoke the Princes hurry to bow their heads just to drop their Jewels of the crown’, remarks the grandson of a Bengali prince. Rabindranath Tagore. Though Tagore was knighted by the British In1915. he rejected the honour in protest against British suppression of Indians.

Like the Prince of India, the professional middle class was created by the British to meet her administrative demand. It was not possible to staff the huge state machine by bringing in educated people from Britain other than to 4ill the upper post. Consequently, the British aimed at creating an educated class of imitators (an ape man) rather than a Renaissance man. an originator of new values and methods. (And the powerhouse, the educational institutions, still remains within that very colonial mood. Ironically, even our lawyers still advocate "Right of Citizens" from the old pages of the British law). But Minerva’s owl sets its wings at dusk”. The bourgeoisie learned nationalism in the market and constituted a political element in the Indian body-politic. As the very Prince enjoys in Gttpnjali (song offerings) : All things rush on. they stop not. they look not behind, no power can hold them back, they rush on. Keeping steps with that restless, rapid music, seasons come dancing and pass away — colours, tunes, and perfumes pour in endless cascades in the abounding Joy that scatters and gives up and dies every moment.

The revival of the golden past, as well. New values and methods spring up like the fountains .of nature. Men of letters lose control within their arrogance of book-learning. Mahatma Gandhi sweats his brows experiencing Machiavelli on the Indian soil;

■ Tagore seeks refuge in nature under the vision of Lalon (the baul of Bengal): and Nazrul evaporates with Biddrohi'' from the crumbles of the street. Like Leonardo, the Renaissance men of India took experience as their mistress and to her tn all points made thetr appeal

Tagore seems to be the pioneer of Bengali literature and culture, caging two generations. bridging the gap in between. within his enlivened eighty years. The man empowered by his own confidence and independence, from the riddle of -ages, prides himself in being Bengali, pronouncing: What Bengal thinks today the whole of India thinks tomorrow. The world-poet had the vision to conquer the heart of the universe; astonishing Plato and Aristotle, who criticized poets for their emotional works without reasons, and engulfing Dante. Shakespeare. Milton within his "verse of the verses . And therefore, while lecturing tn the Unfted States In 1913. the world paid tribute to him with the Nobel Prize worth about $40,000 Throughout his life Tagore clung to everything straight at ease, as natural as nature. though not ad hoc, to create a standard for Bengali literature and culture: the hills appealed more to him. than the pyramids.

Yet. imitators have only imitated. The educated next generation bred under the ' shades of the Grey" could not go beyond Tagore. Despite all their efforts, they (the men like Buddho Dev Bose Bishnu Dey. Jibanananda. Sharatchandra. Tarashankar and so on; while Manik Bondapaddhay magnified the lanterns on the Padma in his "Padma Nadir Majhi" only to calm, the anxiety of Tagore's query, who detected the absence of Bangladesh in Bengali literature, which was at best a college' literature", but 'where is the college itself?") rotated around his elliptical orbit. Yet. from the same cohort. Nazrul enlightened himself by the luminous path of Tagore, as he wrote condoling the death of Tagore: Akasher Rabi kemone ashilo Banglar kunreghare? (How did

the Prince of sky' came down to the hut of Bengal?). The apparent reason is: the standard of the original mind goes directly. to nature, without intermediaries. In the words of Leonardo. The painters would produce pictures of little merit if they take the works of others as their standard, but if they , apply themselves to learn from the objects of nature they will produce good results." This we see was the case with, the painters who came after the time of the Romans, for they continually imitated each other, and from age to age. their art steadily declined... it Is safer to go direct to' the works of nature than to those which have been imitated from her originals with great determination and thereby to acquire a bad method. And the colonial educators delight their courteous heart by the calling: Come some music, come the recorder.

Until then, on our educational fnstitutions which breed unemployment, risking enor-

mous burden of national debt. Inspired by th? "banana backbone of the nation", one sore note would perhaps continue to slash its tongue for blood: "Their own bodies shall be made the tomb and the means of transit of all the living bodies which they have slain." (A Florentine maxim from Leonardo on the'cruelty of man).

Therefore, the policy-makers must notice the crisis in education, within its very system: estranged from nature, piling the books only to be swarmed by the book-worms of Imitators. And to liven up the youth, to save the young price Hamlet, the prince of philosophical speculators — "the model of youth and the delight of the world", as rejoiced

Goethe — from his tragedy, now as aforetime the maxim of the great Bengali poet is mine: “The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It Is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves

and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked In the oceancradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment". The silence In campus. has probably favoured us to listen the Siren that virtually deafened Odyssey.