Patna: Even as the recent posting of principals in Patna University (PU) colleges through a draw of lots has stirred a hornet’s nest in the academic circles because some incumbents are not from the same faculties with which the institutions concerned are associated with, it is interesting to note that the institutes have witnessed a similar phenomenon in the past also.When the lottery system was not in vogue for appointments, the colleges used to have principals from different faculties. Records show that in the good old days, even school headmasters were appointed college principals and even vice-chancellors of PU.When Patna College, the oldest institution of higher education in Bihar, was founded on Jan 9, 1863, J K Rogers was appointed its founder principal. He was the headmaster of Patna Collegiate High School at that time. Another headmaster of Patna Collegiate School J W McCrindle (who served from Feb 1867 to Dec 1979), also joined Patna College as its principal in 1980.Educationists like A Ewank, A C Edwards, C R Wilson, H R James and C Russel had all served as headmasters of Patna Collegiate School and later appointed as principals of Patna College till 1908.The most interesting case is that of V H Jackson, who served as the headmaster of Patna Collegiate school and principal of Patna College simultaneously. He was also appointed the vice-chancellor (VC) of PU in 1920. Similarly, K S Caldweel, who was the headmaster of Patna Collegiate School during 1918-19, served as the principal of Patna College from 1917 to 1921 and that of Patna Science College from 1927 to 1935.Established in 1939, the College of Arts and Crafts, a constituent unit of PU, holds the record of having the maximum professors-in-charge (principals) from entirely different faculties. Between 1993 and 2012, this 86-year-old institution had more than a dozen principals from faculties other than fine arts. Teachers of humanities, pure science, social science and commerce faculties like S M Raj, Fullara Sinha, Anunaya Choubey, D N Sharma, Ezaj Ali Arshad, Kriteshwar Prasad, Arun Kumar, Shankar Dutt and Atul Aditya Pandey served as its principals during the period. Still, none of them belonged to the fine art faculty, said the college’s former principal, Ajay Kumar Pandey.Even in recent times, senior teachers or heads of some departments served as heads of different departments not belonging to the same faculty, as they did not have a single teacher appointed by Bihar State University Service Commission.It is also interesting to note that geography teaching in PU was started by a teacher of physics. PU’s former VC and geography department’s former head, Rash Bihari Prasad Singh, said that the teaching of the subject was started at Patna College in 1927 by a physics teacher, Shard Chandra Sinha. He continued to teach geography till 1937 when the college got a full-fledged subject teacher in S C Chatterjee. Incidentally, even Chatterjee later shifted to PU’s geology department.
