Growse, Bulandshahr

F.S. Growse, C.I.E.
Bulandshahr: or Sketches of an Indian District; Social, Historical and Architectural
Benares, Medical Hall Press, 1884.
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A local official’s report on civic development may not sound like a gripping
read, but F.S. Growse’s study of his work in Bulandshahr is an absolutely
compelling work of social observation. Its remoteness in time adds a valuable
historical dimension that makes it a perfect window on colonial India.
Sir Frederick Salmon Growse (1837-93) was not only a devoted civil servant
but also a knowledgeable and gifted scholar of India and her languages. His
translation of the Rāmcaritmānas of Tulsidas is a landmark work, and his
sympathetic (if critical) engagement with Indian tradition is evident in
everything he wrote. The title page of his Bulandshahr book has a telling
epigraph from [J.R.] Seeley, set in small capitals: “OUR WESTERN CIVILIZATION
IS PERHAPS NOT ABSOLUTELY THE GLORIOUS THING WE LIKE TO IMAGINE IT”.
Growse served as District Magistrate and Collector of Mathura District for
some six years in the 1880s, during which time he founded the Mathura
Museum, which to this day remains one of the richest collections — especially
of Buddhist material — in northern India; while there he wrote Mathurá: a
District Memoir, which served as the primary gazetteer on Braj culture and
sectarian history until the publication, more than a century later, of Alan
Entwistle’s brilliant Braj: Centre of Krishna Pilgrimage in 1987.
Bulandshah[a]r is a town lying a little way beyond today’s Greater Noida to
the southeast of Delhi, in the Doab. Growse was transferred there from
Mathura in or before 1884, and threw his energetic enthusiasm into
developing the amenities and architecture of his new hometown. He
reasoned, passionately, that a repeat of the massive upheavals of 1857 (still
much in mind after just three short decades) could only be avoided by a
sympathetic process of well-informed local government, and almost every
page of his work complains bitterly of the folly and intransigence of
centralized power; as a second epigraph (from [H.] Taine) has it, “NOTHING IS
MORE DESTRUCTIVE THAN THE UNRESTRICTED INTERMEDDLING OF THE STATE,
EVEN WHEN WISE AND PATERNAL”.
Growse uses Bulandshahr to voice his strongly-held opinions about what ails
the governance of India. On the other side of the coin, he is also strongly
critical of local Indian mores, and is motivated by an enlightened paternalism
in his wish to improve the lot of the populace. Recognising that the poor
conditions of local life and culture are not necessarily caused by poverty as
such, he says (p. ii):
His efforts to improve conditions combined a vision of the needs of hygiene
(well-aired houses, well-drained streets) with an aesthetic vision that involved
encouraging local craftsmen in the construction of effective engineered and
aesthetically pleasing architecture. His reflections on public health derive
directly from his own observations (p. 6):
As I write this note I am tempted to quote passage after passage, but
fortunately I don’t need to because the whole text is available online through
Google Books. But Growse’s observations on language are worth noting here
(p. 17):
Such opinions would find little favour today, and Growse was very much a
child of his time, reflecting colonial attitudes and suppositions at every turn;
political correctness was not even a glimmer in anyone’s eye in the 1880s, and
colonial paternalism can be painful to read. And yet Growse’s insistence on
promoting local arts and crafts, and guiding the wealthy aristocracy in the
development of public works, while always staving off the dead hand of
government, is truly heart-warming to read. Bulandshahr is both typical of
benevolent colonialism as a whole, and also uniquely characterised by
Growse’s passionate vision of what can be achieved by enlightened
government in concert with public philanthropy. Reading this book in the
1970s led me towards new understandings: frustrated by historical surveys
that seemed to privilege data over attitudes, I found Sir Frederic to be the
ideal guide in a direct encounter with colonial India of the late nineteenthcentury.
Rupert Snell — HINDIDOX