Dhaka, July 5 -- Dhaka University will be a hundred years old next year. The enthusiasm that will go into the celebrations of its centenary are already being felt, a broad hint of it being the manner in which current and former alumni cheerfully observed its 99th founding anniversary on the first day of July.

The university, for all the impediments which have come its way in recent times, remains the nation's premier institution of higher learning. Indeed, there are people who fondly refer to it as the Oxford of the East, even if that reputation has taken a good deal of battering over the years for reasons that ought to be obvious.

Certainly the greatest tribute which can be paid to Dhaka University comes associated with its past. And o...