Dalhousie In India, 1848-56- A Study of his Social Policy as Governor-General (An Old and Rare Book)

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The research upon which this work is based was undertaken THET at Edinburgh as a Fellow of Edinburgh University during the aca- demic years of 1968-70. I am grateful to Professor D. Hay, Chairman of the Department of History (since retired) and Professor George Shepperson for recommending me for a fellowship of the University to the Senatus Academicus and to Professor Geoffrey Best and Professor V.G. Kiernan who took keen interest in my work and made my stay at Edinburgh pleasant and purposeful. My thanks are due to the Keeper of the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, and his staff, the Librarians and staffs of the National Library of Scotland, Edin- burgh, the India Office Library, the British Museum and the University College Library, London, who gave me every facility during the period of my research.

An earlier version of the work was read and commented upon by J.B. Harrison, my former teacher at London and a later version of some chapters by Professor Tapas Majumdar, my former teacher at Calcutta, and by Dr. Mallar Ghosh and Amaresh Bagchi at New Delhi. I am grateful to all of them. None of them, however, is responsible for any error and omission of fact, or for any opinion expressed in the work.

Finally, I gratefully remember the valuable and pleasant assistance rendered to me, first, by my wife, Dipika, in the collection of materials for the work at Edinburgh and secondly, by P.R. Malik and Devendra Jain, in seeing it through the press at New Delhi.

The nineteenth century British social policy in India started as IN a cautious conservative approach to the Indian social problems. The researches of Jones and his associates had revealed the past glories of the Indian society and the British attitude towards it was coated with the admiration of a Jones, Wilkins and Wilson. There was much admiration and little criticism of the values of the Indian society.

It was James Mill, the faithful lieutenant of Jeremy Bentham, who first questioned them in his History of British India which he under- took in 1806 and finished in 1817.3 The work obtained for him not only his reputation as a historian but also an appointment in the East India House which led to the establishment of his influence there on Indian affairs. He found nothing to praise in the Indian institutions, nothing to admire in the values of the Indian society and religion and saw almost nothing which appeared to him worth preserving. He considered Indian society to be static and stagnant.4 And so he suggested its reform on the Benthamite principles and pointed out that the key to progress lay in the introduction of Western science and knowledge.

James Mill and his utilitarian school were backed by the evangelicals who shared their humanitarianism but repudiated their scepticism. By the late twenties of the nineteenth century they had become a force, almost a factor, in shaping the British social policy. In 1829 Sati was banned, in 1835 English was introduced, in place of the Oriental languages, as the receiver of all official favour and this "opened the flood gates to European thought and literature and subjected the best brains of India, from their childhood onwards, to the powerful influence of English liberal and scientific thought." This Westernising policy of reform and innovation reached its apogee during the administration of Dalhousie in India. He reformed the educational system of India, improved the position of women in the society and introduced railways, electric telegraph, and uniform postage which he described as "the three great engines of social.

improvement."3 In studying his social policy I have been careful to touch those aspects which Dalhousie introduced rather than those such as his measures to abolish Thugi, Sati and the Meriah human sacrifice which he completed by following his predecessors's policy. I have also left aside some of his humanitarian reforms such as those of the prison which may be expected of any benevolent administrator at that time, in order to contribute to the compactness of my study. It is hoped that by a careful examination of the Dalhousie Papers at the Scottish Record Office, Edinburgh, the Wood Papers at the India Office Library and the Bentham Papers at the University College Library, London, the present work will be able to throw some fresh light on Dalhousie's social policy.