30 HIS MAJESTY’S OPPONENT
“the harm done by the occasional use of tactless expressions by cer-
tain European professors in addressing students.” It cited the example
of professors’ employing the phrase “barbarian peoples” (“those who
need to be civilized”) without explaining “the literal Greek sense” of
“non- Hellenic,” in which the term might have been used.^39 During
1916, there was much commentary in the Indian press on the break-
down of the old paternalistic social norms. Perhaps the most astute
intervention came from Rabindranath Tagore, in essays he wrote in
En glish and Bengali. To his mind, the incident was a symptom of the
rebellious spirit of Bengali students engendered by the arrogance of
British professors and perceptions of unfair treatment meted out to
Indian professors. The British demanded a relationship based on fear
and hatred, rather than aspiring to a rule of love, and for Indian stu-
dents this meant that “the least insult pierce[d] to the quick.”^40 The
government, for its part, disbanded the recently instituted system of
having elected class representatives to articulate students’ grievances
and interests. Those elected had been, in the government’s view, “the
demagogue type who are not necessarily the most desirable members
from an intellectual and moral standpoint.”^41 The authorities may have
been jus ti fied in punishing students suspected in a case of physical as-
sault. Yet by deeming democracy to be antithetical to the colonial im-
perative of maintaining order even in the field of education, they did
away with a possible channel of communication with a new generation
of students unlikely to be as deferential as their predecessors.
Subhas was clearly dismayed at the time to see his studies cut short,
and hoped for a reprieve. His father and elder brother Sarat tried their
best to use their family connections in high places and their access to
the dictatorial vice- chancellor, Ashutosh Mookerjee, to get Subhas ad-
mitted elsewhere, but their efforts were not immediately successful. For
the moment, they thought it prudent to put the expelled student on a
train back to Cuttack. In retrospect, the Oaten affair looked like a de-
fin ing moment in Subhas’s life. “Lying on the bunk in the train at
night,” Subhas would write in his autobiography three de cades later, “I
reviewed the events of the last few months.” The “inner sig nifi cance” of
“the tragic events of 1916” would emerge only later, when he realized
that his expulsion from college had given him “a foretaste of leadership