Alexander Duff
1806-1878

Alexander Duff was born in Moulin, Perthshire in Scotland. His father was a crofter or small farmer and Alexander’s early years from 1806 were spent in the family home a small cottage on open ground, flanked by mountain streams and with woodland of birch, ash, larch and oak as background. It was attractive and impressive countryside.

The visit of Charles Simeon of Cambridge to that area in 1796 had had a profound effect on many in the area. Duff’s father and the parish minister were amongst them and the religious life of the district was strengthened. Alexander Duff was introduced to the teachings of the Scriptures, to the life histories of those who had suffered persecution and to the Gaelic poetry of Dugald Buchanan, known as the John Bunyan of the Highlands.

Three experiences influenced Duff deeply. The reading of one of Buchanan’s poems, the ‘Day of Judgement’ had a profound effect on young Alexander Duff and from the impact of the experience he came to assurance of peace with God through the death of Christ.

Almost drowned in a stream near his home, he shortly afterwards had a vision that confirmed his understanding of special service in which he would be engaged.

A third experience illumined God’s loving, providential care for him. As a boy of thirteen, he was returning from school in Perth one winter weekend, accompanied by a school friend. Darkness fell when they were some distance from home; snow was falling and there was no sign of habitation. Exhausted, they tried to remain awake and prayed for help. Suddenly in the darkness they saw a light. Making their way towards where it had been, they discovered a garden wall and soon found warmth and shelter in a hospitable cottage.

In 1821 he went to St Andrews University, having been dux of Perth Grammar School. He was energetic and enthusiastic. Research carried out by Stuart Piggin and John Roxborogh for their book, The St Andrews Seven shows that Duff was a most assiduous reader. From the University Library during his years at university he borrowed more books than any other student - 334 titles (413 volumes) quite apart from those he may have consulted in the Library. He was an outstanding student, one of those who were enthused by Thomas Chalmers when he took up the position of Professor of Moral Philosophy there in 1823. He and other students of that time were to have great influence in Scotland, but extraordinary impact in India.

In 1843, after years of difficult labour there was in Calcutta an educational work and associated church development that was a credit to the Church of Scotland. Far from the scene of activity in Scotland and the commotion surrounding the Disruption, Alexander Duff had established principles for working amongst the 130 million people of India and means that were effective in opening Indian thought to an intelligent understanding of Christianity. In August 1843, Duff and the four other missionaries with him in Bengal indicated their adherence to ‘the Free Protesting Presbyterian Church of Scotland’.

In May 1829 Duff had been formally appointed as its first missionary by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. In September the missionary and his wife left Leith for London and sailed from Portsmouth on the East India Company’s ship ‘Lady Holland’ a month later. In February of the following year, the 22 passengers and the crew were shipwrecked on Dassen Island near Cape Town in South Africa. All survived the disaster, but the cargo was lost. Duff had taken with him a library of 800 books, his journals, notes, memoranda and essays, of which 40 books were washed up in very poor state - only his Bible and Psalter surviving in reasonable condition. The second part of the voyage from South Africa to the Bay of Bengal ended in a second shipwreck in the estuary of the Hooghly. A May cyclone drove the ship aground and again the Duffs and other passengers reached safety, sheltering in the village temple until they were rescued. Help was sent from Calcutta and the passengers were conveyed to the city. The ship was later refloated and its cargo safely disembarked.

Duff had been charged to set up an educational institution, but not to do so in Calcutta. He resolved to ignore the advice in view of the advantages that he saw in Calcutta as a centre in Bengal from which to reach 500,000 people.

The difficulties of missionary work were exemplified by the lack of Christian converts after many years of labour. Those that existed were often of the lower classes and did not form a lively Christian witness. Duff chose to work amongst young people and his aim had a future as well as present purpose.

‘While you engage in directly separating as many precious atoms from the mass as the stubborn resistance to ordinary appliances can admit, we shall, with the blessing of God, devote our time and strength to the preparing of a mine, and the setting of a train which shall one day explode and tear up the whole from its lowest depths’.

Education, saturated with the teaching of the Scriptures, was the means to be used in bringing change. While religious instruction was of special significance, he aimed to teach every branch of useful knowledge - elementary forms at first, advancing to the highest levels of study in history, literature, logic, mental and moral philosophy, mathematics, biology, physics and other sciences. These aims were very different from those of other Christian educational institutions.

After consulting with a wise Indian adviser, Duff resolved not to teach in Bengali, Persian, Arabic or Sanskrit but to use English as the medium of teaching. This meant that students using these other languages were all learning English on an equal basis, were taught the Scriptures in English, were introduced to English literature - much of which was permeated with the spirit of Christianity - and studied the sciences in English, freed from the focus of the ideas that permeate Hindu thought.

Duff, with the assistance of a young untrained Eurasian spent six hours a day teaching 300 Bengali youths the English alphabet. His evenings were spent preparing a series of graduated school-books called ‘Instructors’. The first books dealt with interesting everyday subjects, the second with Biblical themes, especially those which were historical.

Word study was a key to discussion of the properties and uses of objects, drawing on information known to the boys and stimulating their powers of observation. The boys were encouraged to think. Their delight in gaining understanding was infectious and the school acquired a very favourable reputation in the community. His pedagogical style was in very marked contrast to the mechanical and monotonous style of teaching prevalent in India.

Within the first year the size of the school was expanded, as also its scope, in that no student was allowed to begin to learn English until he could read with ease in Bengali. These students were enriched with vocabulary and spiritual ideas derived from English literature. Alexander Duff was able to carry forward his own studies in Bengali in friendly rivalry with his students.

Since Duff’s approach had been rejected out of hand by the European community, he tested the results of his first year’s work through a publicly-announced examination of his students in the Freemasons Hall. He invited an Anglican Archdeacon to preside. The boys responded with such effect that reports in the three daily English newspapers of Calcutta were totally favourable to the new venture.

In the second year hundreds of students had to be turned away because of lack of space. Saturdays were set aside for European visitors to view the school since they came in such numbers during the week as to interrupt classes. Visitors from all parts of India came to review what was being accomplished and returned home to establish educational centres on the same principles.

Duff also concerned himself with the education of girls, supported those who were involved in it and encouraged the younger generation to consider the importance of the education of women and girls.

After 3 years of labour the work of the school was fully recognised. In correspondence, Dr Duff wrote, ‘The school continues greatly to flourish. You may form some notion of what has been done, when I state that the highest class read and understand any English book with the greatest ease; write and speak English with tolerable fluency; have finished a course of Geography and Ancient History; have studied the greater part of the New Testament and portions of the Old; have mastered the evidence from prophecy and miracles; have, in addition, gone through the common rules of Algebra, three books of Euclid, Plane Geometry and logarithms. And I venture to say that, on all these subjects, the youths that compose the first class would stand no unequal comparison with youths of the same standing in any seminary in Scotland’.

Work of a similar sort was set up in Bombay and Madras.

After the Disruption, preliminary letters from Dr Brunton of the Church of Scotland and Dr Charles Brown of the Free Church of Scotland reached the missionaries in India declaring that each church would continue Foreign and Jewish Missions. In contrast to the East India Company’s Presbyterian chaplains, all fourteen missionaries to India gave their support to the Free Church of Scotland. They well understood that they might forfeit the College provided for them, with its library, its apparatus and other furnishings. Morally and in equity these were the fruit of personal legacies and gifts made to Dr Duff. The honourable solution would have been to make these available for the missionaries of the Free Church of Scotland to continue their work and allow for the purchase of these buildings from the Established Church in as far as that was deemed necessary.

The committee of the Established Church rejected their approach. The work, however, had to continue and search was made for new premises in the vacation of 1843-1844. ‘From all sides, Hindus as well as Christian, Anglican and Congregationalist as well as Presbyterian, in America no less than in Asia and Europe, came expressions of indignant sympathy’. By early 1844 £3,400 had been received as spontaneous gifts.

The second College having been organised Dr Duff set about establishing branch schools in Baranuggui, Bansberia, Chinsurah, and Mahanad. Culna was retained. Some ten years later Dr Duff was invited to answer a question posed by Lord Stanley of Alderley.

‘Will you state what you would propose the Government should do towards the further improvement and extension of education in India’. Duff responded by recommending:

1. The gradual abolition of oriental colleges for the educational training of natives, liberating funds for the purposes of sound and healthful education.

2. The relinquishing of pecuniary control over primary or elementary education by the Government, thus achieving considerable saving.

3. That lectureships on high professional subjects such as law and civil engineering should be established on a free and unrestricted basis allowing attendance of qualified students from all other institutions and that, in Calcutta, a university might be established on the general model of London University, with a sufficient number of faculties in such a way as to stimulate and foster studies in Government and non-Government institutions.

4. The use of the Bible as a class-book in English classes in Government institutions, under the express and positive proviso that attendance on any class, at the hour when it was taught, should be left entirely optional.

5. The Government ought to extend its aid to all other institutions where sound general education is communicated.

These ideas formed the basis of the Educational Despatch of 9th July, 1854 signed by 10 directors of the East India Company and sent out to the Marquis of Dalhousie.

The College continued to grow. New buildings were provided and the school roll reached about 1,200, the students receiving instruction in literature, science and the Christian religion.

Duff was nominated by the Governor General to be one of those who drew up the constitution for Calcutta University. For the first six years of its history, Dr Duff led the senate. Of his leadership Dr Banerjea wrote, ‘To his gigantic mind the successive Vice-Chancellors paid due deference, and he was the virtual governor of the University. The curriculum he promoted for the university was broad in its extent. Against the trend of the time, Dr Duff insisted on education in the physical sciences and urged the establishment of a professorship of physical sciences for the University’.

Sir Charles Trevelyan strongly recommended that Dr Duff be appointed Vice-Chancellor of the University. In a letter to him he stated, ‘It is yours by right, because you have borne without rest or refreshment the burden and heat of the long day, which I hope is not yet near its close’. However, at the age of 57, it became obvious that the ill- health that had limited his activities from time to time required him to return to Britain.