The St Xavier’s and Presidency teams with the governor at the centre (back). Picture by Bishwarup Dutta

Calcutta, Nov. 11: Trust a Xaverian to promote Jyoti Basu to Parliament, trust a Stephenian to put him in his place, and trust the Presidencians to make the most of the moment.

Governor Gopal Krishna Gandhi — an ex-student of St Stephen’s — had to be called in to referee a war of words between the old boys of St Xavier’s Collegiate School and Presidency College on Saturday evening.

There was no better neutral mind in the city, with just about everyone who could have been called in to moderate the 3rd ALSOC Challenge Debate (organised in association with The Telegraph) owing their allegiance to one — or both — of the city’s premier institutions.

And it proved to be a well-calculated move. The motion, “In the opinion of the house, the cultural superiority of Bengal is a myth”, proved as explosive as the rivalry between the titans, calling upon the governor’s wit — and non-partisan stature — a number of times.

Not least when a speaker from the Xavier’s team dwelt on Jyoti Basu’s utterances on the Left Front’s English policy “in Parliament”, only to be told by the governor that the former chief minister must have made the point in the Assembly.

But the Presidencians could not score big on that, as the governor had at the very outset dispelled any hopes of reaching a verdict on which institution reigns supreme. “I understand that democracy has reached such a high level of maturity in this gathering that there will be no need for voting,” he smiled. So, applause was the only measure of success at the St Xavier’s College auditorium.

This did nothing to dull the bristling rivalry between the Xaverians who proposed the motion (doctors Kunal Sarkar and Sandip Chatterjee, actor Dhritiman Chatterji, director Ashoke Viswanathan and professor Subhoranjan Dasgupta) and the Presidencians opposing it (professors Swapan Kumar Chakravorty and Anup Kumar Sinha, students Milinda Banerjee and Surma Guha, and Rudrangshu Mukherjee from The Telegraph).

Compelling arguments were made on both sides. Sandip Chatterjee stressed that a state featuring a “government inspired by Beijing and economy inspired by Rajasthan” could hardly make a case for cultural supremacy. Surma Guha, a second-year Presidency student and the youngest speaker on stage, spoke of the number of educators around the world with roots in Bengal as “our” claim to nation-building.

Although the hosts graciously awarded the trophy to the visitors from Presidency, the governor put the evening into perspective. The “faculty of self-criticism” should be applied to conclude that “no culture is superior to others”.

If this sounded like he was agreeing with the motion, he was quick to clarify that if one possessed true self-criticism, cultural superiority may, in fact, be inherent.

The stage was, therefore, seamless. There could be no winner or loser. And so, the Xavier’s-Presidency war rages.