Delving Into The Past

In 1984 the Indian National Trust (INTACH) was set up with a munificent donation from an Englishman, Wallace. In 1784 the Asiatic Society of Bengal had been instituted, to which the Indian rulers of Awadh and Tanjore and others made generous grants. Both are examples of the continuous Indo-British collaboration in the great task of discovery and cata¬loguing the wonder that is India.

The people of a city which is coming to terms with its British past has renamed a street after William Jones, the founder of the Asiatic Society. He was a European of the Enlightenment, who realized that there was more to the civilized world than Europe. ‘We (are) like the savages, who thought that the sun rose and set for them alone, and could not imagine that the waves which surrounded their island, left coral and pearls upon other shores’.