universities

Lytton Report into Indian Students

Date:

14 Sep 1922

About:

In 1921, the Secretary of State for India appointed a committee to look into the adequacy of arrangements and relations with Indian students in Britain. The committee was chaired by Lord Lytton, the son of the former Viceroy of India. Despite intentions to visit India as well (the trip was cancelled because the Indian Legislative Assembly voted against releasing funds for their travel), the committee visited and interviewed a number of representatives from British universities, including Indian students themselves.

The Report estimated that there were 1450 Indian students in the UK in October 1921, with approximately 550 arriving each year. The three main reasons for Indians to study in Britain were (1) for a better chance of employment in India, particularly in the government services; (2) because educational facilities were more extensive in Britain; and (3) for lawyers to be called to the Bar.

The Report concluded that the development of education in India was crucial, and suggested creating an Indian Bar. They also agreed that more information needed to be provided in India to potential students before they travelled to Britain, as many students arrived in Britain without a place at any university. The committee explained that difficulties between British and Indian students were not a result of 'racism' but political barriers and wanted to encourage Indian students to get more involved in university life, particularly through sports. The committee also advised that an official organization needed to be created for students of technical and industrial subjects to insure adequate practical training and experience was provided for them when they were in Britain.

People involved:

Committee:- Lord Lytton (chair, son of former Viceroy of India), S. Aftab, L. M. Brooks, S. K. Datta, A. P. M. Fleming, M. Hammick, C. E. W. Jones, M. Ramachandra Rao, Deva Prasad Sarvadhikary.

People interviewed include:- Indian students at Birmingham University, representatives of Cambridge Majlis (including Subhas Chandra Bose), representatives of the Crocodile Club (an athletic club for Indians/Asians at Cambridge), Indian students at Edinburgh University, Indian students at Glasgow University, representatives of the Indian Students' Union and Hostel, Indian students at Leeds University, Indian students at Liverpool University, Hardit Singh Malik (Balliol, Oxford), Manchester Indian Association, representatives of Oxford Majlis (including M. C. Chagla), Indian students at Sheffield University, and other Indian students in London.

Published works:

Report of the Committee on Indian Students 1921-22 (London: India Office, 1922)

Secondary works:

Lahiri, Shompa, Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880-1930 (London: Frank Cass, 2000)

Mukherjee, Sumita, Nationalism, Education and Migrant Identities: The England-Returned (London: Routledge, 2010)

Symonds, Richard, Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (London: Macmillan, 1986)

Archive source:

Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Tags for Making Britain:

Bertrand Russell

About:

Bertrand Russell was a philosopher, journalist and political campaigner. From 1890 to 1893, Russell studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1914 he took up a visiting lectureship at Harvard University, where he befriended T. S. Eliot. Russell’s opposition to Britain’s participation in the First World War played a key role in his politicization. Russell supported the No-Conscription Fellowship, which led to his sacking from his lectureship at Cambridge.

In 1932, he became Chairman of the India League, presiding over meetings and regularly chairing India League events. He was heading the organization at the time of the India League’s delegation to India in the Autumn of 1932. He wrote the introduction to the delegation’s report published under the title The Condition of India. By 1938 Russell had moved away from political activism and back to philosophy and academic life, accepting a temporary lectureship in Chicago in 1938 and moving to the University of California in 1939. He remained in the United States for most of the Second World War. He returned to Britain in 1944 to take up a five-year fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1950. In 1958 he became one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He died in 1970.

Published works:

German Social Democracy (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1896)

An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry (Cambridge: University Press, 1897)

The Principles of Mathematics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903)

Philosophical Essays (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1910)

(with Alfred North Whitehead) Principia Mathematica , 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910-13)

The Problems of Philosophy (London: Williams & Norgate, 1912)

Principles of Social Reconstruction (London: Allen & Unwin, 1916)

Justice in War-Time (Chicago: Open Court, 1916)

Political Ideals (New York: The Century Co., 1917)

Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays (London: Allen & Unwin, 1917)

Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism (New York: Holt, 1919)

Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1919)

The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1920)

The Analysis of Mind (London: Allen & Unwin, 1921)

The Problem of China (London: Allen & Unwin, 1921)

(with Dora Russell) The Prospects of Industrial Civilization (London: Allen & Unwin, 1923)

The ABC of Relativity (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1925)

What I Believe (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1925)

On Education, Especially in Early Childhood (London: Allen & Unwin, 1926)

The Analysis of Matter (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1927)

An Outline of Philosophy (London: Allen & Unwin, 1927)

Why I Am Not a Christian (London: Watts, 1927)

Sceptical Essays (London: Allen & Unwin, 1928)

Marriage and Morals (London: Allen & Unwin, 1929)

The Conquest of Happiness (London: Allen & Unwin , 1930)

The Scientific Outlook (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931)

Education and the Social Order (London: Allen & Unwin, 1932)

Freedom and Organization, 1814–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1934)

In Praise of Idleness (London: Allen & Unwin, 1935)

Religion and Science (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1935)

Which Way to Peace? (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936)

(with Patricia Russell) The Amberley Papers: The Letters and Diaries of Lord and Lady Amberley, 2 vols (London: Hogarth Press, 1937)

Power: A New Social Analysis (London: Allen & Unwin, 1938)

Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (London: Allen & Unwin, 1948)

Authority and the Individual (London: Allen & Unwin, 1949)

Unpopular Essays (London: Allen & Unwin, 1950)

New Hopes for a Changing World (London: Allen & Unwin, 1951)

The Impact of Science on Society (London: Allen & Unwin, 1952)

Satan in the Suburbs and Other Stories (London: Allen & Unwin, 1953)

Human Society in Ethics and Politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1954)

Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories (London Allen & Unwin, 1954)

Portraits from Memory and Other Essays (London: Allen & Unwin, 1956)

Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901–1950, ed. by Robert C. Marsh (London: Allen & Unwin, 1956)

Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects, ed. by Paul Edwards (London: Allen & Unwin, 1957)

Common Sense and Nuclear Warfare (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959)

My Philosophical Development (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959)

Wisdom of the West, ed. by Paul Foulkes(London: Macdonald, 1959)

Fact and Fiction (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961)

Has Man a Future? (London: Allen & Unwin, 1961)

Unarmed Victory (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963)

War Crimes in Vietnam (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967)

The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell, 3 vols. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967-9)

Dear Bertrand Russell...A Selection of his Correspondence with the General Public 1950-1968, ed. by Barry Feinberg and Ronald Kasrils (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969)

Date of birth:

18 May 1872

Connections:

Horace Alexander, C. F. Andrews, H. N. Brailsford, Reginald Bridgeman, Fenner Brockway, Rajani Palme Dutt, Richard A. Harman, Agatha Harrison, G. Hicks, H. F. Horrabin, Atma S. Kamlani, Fred Landon, George Lansbury, Freda Laski, Harold Laski, D. H. Lawrence, James Marley, Leonard Matters, Krishna Menon, Syed Mohamedi, Mrs Brij Lal Nehru, S. L. Polak, A. A. Purcell, S. Radhakrishnan, Shapurji Saklatvala, Krishnarao Shelvankar, Wilfired Wellcock, Monica Whately, Tom Williams (MP), Ellen Wilkinson (MP).

Archive source:

L/PJ/12/448, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

L/PJ/12/356, India Office Records, Asian and African Studies Reading Room, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with the Soceity of Authors, British Library, St Pancras

Correspondence with Rajani Palme Dutt, Labour History Archive and Study Centre, Manchester

City of birth:

Ravenscroft, Trelleck, Monmouthshire

Other names:

Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Date of death:

02 Feb 1970

Location of death:

Plas Penrhyn

Tags for Making Britain:

Indian independence movement

Bonamy Dobree

About:

Bonamy Dobrée was a literary scholar and university teacher, best known for his works on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama. In 1925-6, he taught at London University, and he became Professor of English at University of Leeds in 1936. He was educated and trained as a professional soldier, and fought with distinction during the First World War. He is also famous as a Kipling critic.

During his lectureship in London, Dobrée became a part of the Bloomsbury Group. He was a close friend of T. S. Eliot, whom he met in 1924 in Leonard Woolf’s house in Richmond, and with whom he regularly met up for lunches in London. The two men shared a love for Kipling as an artist, and in 1926 Eliot commissioned him to write an essay on Kipling for the Criterion. Among Dobrée’s other friends was Herbert Read, with whom he collaborated to edit The London Book of English Prose (1931) and English Verse (1949).

Dobrée was, in Richard Hoggard’s words, a ‘teacher and patron of young men’. Mulk Raj Anand, in his Conversations in Bloomsbury, presents a similar picture. Anand met Dobrée through his fellow student Nikhil Sen shortly after his arrival in London in 1925. Anand records a lively conversation he had with Dobrée, Sen and Gwenda Zeidmann in Museum Tavern, and a relaxing evening together with Dobrée, his wife Valentine, Sen, and Irene Rhys at Francis Meynall’s flat in the summer of 1926. In 1925, Dobrée introduced Anand to T. S. Eliot, and helped him to set up a meeting with the poet. He proved to be a good friend and mentor, despite the fact that his views on British India and admiration of Kipling occasionally offended Anand.

Published works:

Restoration Comedy, 1660-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924)

Essays in Biography, 1680-1726 (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1925)

(ed.) Comedies of Congreve, The World’s Classics (London: H. Milford, 1925)

Histriophone: A Dialogue on Dramatic Diction (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1925)

Timotheus: The Future of the Theatre (London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1925)

Rochester: A Conversation between Sir George Etherege and Mr. Fitzjames (London: L. & V. Woolf, 1926)

Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (London: Gerald Howe, 1927)

(ed. with Geoffrey Webb) The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh (Bloomsbury: Nonesuch Press, 1927-8)

Restoration Tragedy, 1660-1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929)

The Lamp and the Lute: Studies in Six Modern Authors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929)

Essays of the Year (1929-1930) (London: Argonaut, 1930)

(ed. with Herbert Read) The London Book of English Prose (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1931)

Variety of Ways: Discussions on Six Authors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932)

(ed.) The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1932)

Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt (London: Peter Davies, 1933)

As Their Friends Saw Them: Biographical Conversations (London: Cape, 1933)

John Wesley (London: Duckworth, 1933)

Modern Prose Style (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934)

(with G. E. Manwaring) The Floating Republic: An Account of the Mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in 1797 (London: Geoffry Bles, 1935; Penguin, 1937)

(ed.) The Letters of King George III (London: Cassell & Co., 1935)

English Revolts (London: Herbert Joseph, 1937)

(ed.) From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands (London: Cassell & Co., 1937)

The Unacknowledged Legislator: Conversation on Literature and Politics in a Warden’s Post, 1941 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1942)

Arts’ Faculties in Modern Universities (Leeds: E. J. Arnold & Son, 1944)

(with Herbert Read) London Book of English Verse (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949)

Alexander Pope (London: Sylvan Press, 1951)

The Broken Cistern (London: Cohen & West, 1954)

John Dryden (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1956)

(ed. with Louis MacNeice and Philip Larkin) New Poems, 1958 (London: Michael Joseph, 1958)

English Literature in the Early Eighteenth Century, 1700-1740 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959)

(ed.) Algernon Charles Swinburne: Poems (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1961)

Three Eighteenth Century Figures: Sarah Churchill, John Wesley, Giacomo Casanova (London: Oxford University Press, 1962)

(ed.) Shakespeare: The Writer and his Work (London: Longmans, 1964)

Rudyard Kipling: Realist and Fabulist (London: Oxford University Press, 1967)

Milton to Ouida: A Collection of Essays (London: Cass, 1970)

Example:

Mulk Raj Anand, Conversations in Bloomsbury (Delhi: OUP, 1995), p. 50

Date of birth:

02 Feb 1891

Content:

Anand met Bonamy Dobrée and T. S. Eliot for lunch in the Etoile.

Connections:

Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, Clive Bell, Francis Birrell, Jean Cocteau, Valentine Dobrée, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, Philip Larkin, D. H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Louis MacNeice, Francis Meynall, Harold Monro, Alfred Richard Orage, Ezra Pound, Ananda Vittal Rao, Herbert Read, Irene Rhys, Nikhil Sen, George Bernard Shaw, Leonard Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Gwenda Zeidmann.

Kipling Society (Vice-President)

Contributions to periodicals:

Egoist (‘Impression’, 3.6, 1 June 1916, p. 95)

Egoist (‘Court-Martial’, 3.7, 1 July 1916, p. 111)

New Statesman (‘Drama and Values’, 14.344, 1919, pp. 161-2)

Nation and Athenaeum (‘Young Voltaire: A Conversation between William Congreve and Alexander Pope, Twickenham, September 1726’, 15.5, 1926, pp. 179-80)

New Criterion (‘The World of Dean Inge’, 5.1, January 1927, pp. 109-14)

New Criterion (review of Rudyard Kipling, Debits and Credits, 5.1, January 1927, pp. 149-51)

Monthly Criterion (review of Wyndham Lewis, The Lion and the Fox, 5.3, June 1927, pp. 339-43)

Monthly Criterion (‘Rudyard Kipling’, 6.6, December 1927, pp. 499-515)

Monthly Criterion (review of D. H. Lawrence, The Woman Who Rode Away, 8.30, September 1928, pp. 139-41)

Spectator (review of Leonard Woolf, After the Deluge, 147.5393, 7 November 1931)

Spectator (review of Sacheverell Sitwell, Spanish Baroque Art, 147.5378, 25 July 1931, pp. 132-3)

Spectator (‘Travel in Egypt’, 29 October 1932, p. 592)

Criterion (review of Col. P. G. Elgood, Bonaparte’s Adventure in Egypt, 11.44, April 1932, pp. 557-60)

Criterion (‘Macaulay’, 12.49, July 1933, pp. 593-604)

Spectator (‘Mr. Bernard Shaw’, 152.5512, 16 February 1934)

Spectator (‘The Shavian Situation’, 153.5533, 1934, p. 46)

Criterion (review of Ananda Vittal Rao, A Minor Augustan, 14.55, January 1935)

ELH (‘Milton and Dryden: A Comparison and Contrast in Poetic Ideas and Poetic Method’, 3.1, March 1936, pp. 83-100)

Southern Review (‘The Plays of Eugene O'Neill’, 2, 1937, pp. 435-46)

Criterion (review of T. H. Wintringham, Mutiny, 14.64, April 1937, p. 573)

Spectator (review of Ahmed Ali, Twilight in Delhi, 165.5863, 8 November 1940)

Spectator (review of Mulk Raj Anand, Across the Black Waters, 165.5865, 22 November 1940)

Spectator ('Virginia Woolf: Her Art as a Novelist', 174.6088, 2 March 1945)

Sewanee Review (‘Mr. O’Neill’s Last Play’, 56, 1948, pp. 118-26)

Sewanee Review (‘The Confidential Clerk, by T. S. Eliot’, 62, 1954, pp. 117-31)

Sewanee Review (‘The London Stage’, review of T. S. Eliot, The Elder Statesman, 67, 1959, pp. 109-17)

Sewanee Review (‘Durrell’s Alexandrian Series’, 69, 1961, pp. 61-79)

Kipling Journal (‘Rudyard Kipling: Poet’, 32.156, 1965, pp. 33-41)

Sewanee Review (‘T. S. Eliot: A Personal Reminiscence’, 74.1, January - March 1966, pp. 85-108)

Shenandoah: The Washington & Lee University Review (‘W. H. Auden’, 18.2, 1967, pp. 18-22)

Malahat Review: An International Quarterly of Life and Letters (‘The Poems of Thomas Hardy: Lyric or Elegiac?’, 3, 1967, pp. 77-92)

Malahat Review (with Herbert Read, ‘Beauty - or the Beast! A Conversation in a Tavern’, 1969, pp. 178-86)

Reviews:

The Times, 19 August 1925, p. 10

Richard Aldington, New Criterion 4.2, April 1926, pp. 381-4 (Restoration Comedy: 1660-1720; Essays in Biography, 1680-1726; Comedies of Congreve; Histriophone; Timotheus: The Future of the Theatre)

Mario Praz, Criterion 8.30, September 1928, pp. 153-6 (The Complete Works of Sir John Vanbrugh)

Sherard Vines, Criterion 11.44, April 1932, pp. 529-32 (The London Book of English Prose)

Williard Thorp, Criterion 11.45, July 1932, pp. 749-51 (Variety of Ways: Discussion of Six Authors)

Keith Feiling, Criterion 12.46, October 1932, pp. 118-21 (The Letters of Philip Dormer Stanhope)

M. A., Criterion 13.50, October 1933, p. 172 (Giacomo Casanova, Chevalier de Seingalt)

T. C. Wilson, Criterion 14.55, January 1935, pp. 337-40 (Modern Prose Style)

John Garrett, Criterion 15.59, January 1936, pp. 137-9 (The Floating Republic)

Michael de la Bedoyere, Criterion 15.60, April 1936 (The Letters of King George III)

Extract:

‘I don’t agree with defiance of law,’ Eliot said. ‘The British have done much good in India.’

I looked at him, then bent my head down. After a while, Dobrée said: ‘That is what I have told this rebel. Look at the unity we have given you. And the railways.’

I was perspiring under the collar, through the humiliation of having been flogged by the police. I had been cultivating the will to decide on the struggle against, what Gandhi called, the satanic British.

And now I wanted, even through my bluff and bluster, to cultivate the vision of freedom for India – freedom against all the enemies, the family, the brotherhood, the stupid lazy people and the conformists.

‘I am going to rewrite Kipling’s Kim,’ I said at last, ‘from the opposite point of view.’

‘Some hopes!’ Dobrée said.

He sensed my discomfiture and offered us more coffee.

Secondary works:

Butt, John (ed.) Of Books and Humankind: Essays and Poems presented to Bonamy Dobrée (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964)

Morrish, P. S., ‘Bonamy Dobrée, Theatre Critic of The Nation & Athenaeum’, Notes and Queries 29 (1982), pp. 344-5

Sherbo, Arthur, ‘Restoring Bonamy Dobrée: Additions to the Canon of His Writings’, Notes and Queries 49(247).1 (March 2002), pp. 96-7

Relevance:

The extract gives insights into Dobrée’s relationship with Mulk Raj Anand, and his views of the place of India in the British empire and of Indian nationalism.

Archive source:

Papers of Professor Bonamy Dobrée, Leeds University Library Special Collections

Correspondence, Hogarth Press Archives, University of Reading

Correspondence, King’s College Archive Centre, Cambridge University

Involved in events:

First World War

City of birth:

London

Country of birth:

England

Date of death:

03 Sep 1974

Location of death:

London

Location:

East London College, University of London (lecturer, 1925-6); The Egyptian University, Cairo (Professor of English, 1926-9); University of Leeds (Chair of English Literature, 1936-55); City University, London (Gresham Professor in Rhetoric, 1955-6).

Tags for Making Britain:

Diwan Tulsi Das

About:

Diwan Tulsi Das taught Hindustani at the University of Aberdeen. Das arrived in Britain in 1900 as a student in medicine. He eloped with the daughter of Dr Charles Maxwell Muller and settled with her in Aberdeen. He took up a number of professions, including taxi driving, and served in the army during the First World War, before being appointed Lecturer in Hindustani at the University of Aberdeen in the 1920s.

Date of birth:

01 Jan 1882

Precise DOB unknown: