Birth of a New India: Fresh Light on the Contributions Made by Bentinck, Dalhousie and Curzon in the Nineteenth Century

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Based on archival and other sources at Edinburgh, London, Nottingham, Calcutta and Delhi, Birth of a New India consists of four articles on Bentinck, Dalhousie and Curzon which appreared in the learned journals abroad in the past three decades. Each one of the four articles either corrects an error or rediscovers the truth in the specific contribution of a Governor-General to the creation of a New India in the nineteenth century.

Because of the difficult inaccessibility in India of these journals which carried these articles in the past, they are now put together in a monograph for the use of the graduate and the post-graduate students of history, sociology and education in Modern India.

Birth of a New India consists of four articles on Bentinck, Dalhousie and Curzon which appeared in learned journals abroad in the past two decades and a half. Each one of the articles either corrects an error or rediscovers the truth in the specific contribution relating to the creation of a New India and as such they are highly useful and relevant for researchers on Modern India. Since these articles were published abroad, they were not easily accessible to the learned audience in India as very few universities and learned societies in India subscribe to these journals. Three of the four articles form the basis of my lectures delivered to the students at the M.Phil/Ph.d. programme at the Zakir Husain Centre every year but because of their difficult inaccessibility, students face tremendous difficulties in locating them. Once these articles are easily available, say, in a monograph, they will not only enrich the knowledge of our students and scholars but also dispel many a myth such as Macaulay as the harbinger of English education or Wood as the father of the modern education system, which prevails both among the specialist and the non-specialist audience in the country. With that end in view, I have decided to bring them out in a monograph after obtaining the necessary permission from the concerned journals which carried these articles in the past and I shall deem my endeavour highly rewarded if the work meets the appreciation of those for whom it is meant.

Briton Martin, Jr., has identified the birth of the Indian National Congress in 1885 with the birth of a New India' but the creation of this New India is not complete till the first post-natal outbursts of her nascent nationalism as expressed in the protests of educated Indians against Curzon's programme on university reform between 1899 and 1905. The protests of the educated Indians have been overlooked by the historians of the freedom movement who have mostly and largely concentrated on Curzon's act of partitioning Bengal in 1905 as an event of enormous significance giving a shape and direction to our struggle for freedom through the Anti-Partition Movement which followed Coming closely in the wake of Curzon's university reform which culminated in the Indian Universities Act of 1904-5, one can argue that the ground for the depth and the extent of the Anti Partition Movement was largely prepared by the already existing anger and the frustration of the educated Indians against Curzon at his programme on university reform.