South Asia
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948)
Most popularly known as Mahtm (Great Soul) Gandhi and fondly addressed as Bapuji (Father of the Nation), Gandhi was the leading moral force in India's long struggle for independence from British colonial rule. He was a strong advocate of non-violent political activism, non-cooperation with unfair legal fiats, and the abolition of caste and racial discrimination.
Gandhi studied in England, was called to the Bar, and practiced law in South Africa, where he frequently faced arrest for his anti-apartheid activity. He traveled regularly between the west coast of India and South Africa before joining the Indian National Congress and spearheading India's freedom movement. He was a strict vegetarian and took a vow of celibacy in 1906, advocated religious brotherhood, eschewed most material comforts, and embraced physical hardship in his personal life. His innumerable fasts unto death, imprisonments without trial, protest marches, rousing speeches, and essays, aphorisms and other writings are testimony to a life lived according to the principles he espoused.
Numerous biographies and photographic journals of Mahtm Gandhi exist in many different languages. The moral tenets that governed his public and private life have inspired other world leaders, politicians, activists—and ordinary citizens throughout the world.
Gandhi: His Life and Work. Published on the occasion of his 75th birthday, October 2, 1944. Bombay: Karnatak Publishing House, 1944. Gift of Jawaharlal Nehru.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Letter to Professor George P. Conger, June 12, 1934.
George Conger (Cornell '07) was a specialist in comparative religion. He was particularly interested in Eastern religions and cultures, and visited Asian countries many times. Conger joined the University of Minnesota faculty in 1920, and retired in 1952. After his retirement he taught at the University of Calcutta, India.
From the George P. Conger Papers, #2660
The caption on the back of this photograph, taken during George Congerís visit to India in the 1930s, reads:
Mr. Gandhi, speaking at the first public meeting of his tour of India on behalf of the untouchables. Seated in front of the daïs, at the left, are Mrs. Gandhi and one of their grandchildren. In front of the platform at the right is Seth Jamanlal Bejag, the banker who has been among his most faithful followers. The man standing at the right, indistinct in the photograph, is the "loud speaker" (shouting Mr. Gandhi's speech, sentence by sentence, to the crowd). The inscription overhead reads: "Hail to Mahtm Gandhi. Welcome to All."
Indira Priyanarshini Gandhi (1917-1984)
Jawaharlal Nehru's only daughter (and no relation to Mahtm Gandhi), Indira Gandhi served as Prime Minister for three consecutive terms and was re-elected to a fourth term in 1980. Mrs. Gandhi had many admirers and many critics. During her third term in office, she declared a national emergency—revoking all freedoms of speech, assembly, and the press. In addition, she authorized curfew restrictions, arrests without warrants, the jailing of critics and opponents without habeas corpus, and surprise searches of offices and homes by tax and investigation bureaus. Throughout this time, however, trains, buses, and government workers came and went on time.
In 1984, Mrs. Gandhi's personal bodyguards assassinated her at her residence. Retaliatory killings, as well as burnings and riots in Delhi and surrounding areas, broke out after her death—exacerbating the tension between Hindus and Sikhs in India and overseas.
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi. Letter written from Parliament, New Delhi, to Mrs. A. W. W. [Lucile] Kyle, July 23, 1968.
Lucile Moore Kyle, director of an importing business based in Montreal, dealt with Indian businesses and people.
From the Lucile Moore Kyle Papers, #6340. Gift of Lisa Baskin.
Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi. Holiday card to Mrs. A. W. W. [Lucile] Kyle, December 1972, depicting a tiger from the Kanha National Park.
From the Lucile Moore Kyle Papers, #6340. Gift of Lisa Baskin.
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
Tagore hailed from a wealthy, aristocratic Bengali family whose members were remarkably unorthodox, eclectic in their tastes, well traveled, artistic, and ardently in favor of social reform. He became a poet, playwright, thespian, songwriter, painter, composer, choreographer, novelist, educator, and world traveler. He wrote virtually every day of his life, and was equally eloquent in Bengali and in English.
In 1910, Tagore won the Nobel Prize for literature for Gitanjali, a collection of verse songs from his vast and varied writings. Knighted in 1915, he returned his title in 1919 in protest against a government that had opened fire on thousands of innocent unarmed civilians, many of whom were infants and children, at the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre.
Tagore was an elegant, imposing, and revered personage. He was the first person to address Gandhi as the Mahtm, and the appellation stuck. Although they were close and each admired the other, Gandhi and Tagore strongly disagreed on political and ideological issues.
Blending the best of Eastern and Western traditions, Tagore opened a school at 'Sntiniketan (Abode of Peace). Although it had a slow and rocky start, the school became the foundation for the Vi'svabhrat University—a flourishing and unique world university remarkable for its serenity and genuine respect for study.
Rabindranath Tagore. Gitanjali (Song offerings). Translated by the author; with an introduction by W. B. Yeats. London: Printed at the Chiswick Press for the India Society, 1912. Gift of James A. Healy.
Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964)
India's first Prime Minister and a close collaborator and partner of Gandhi in India's freedom struggle, Nehru came from an old privileged, wealthy, and aristocratic family. When he was a young boy, European governesses and tutors schooled him at home; later he went to Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied Natural Sciences. He became involved in student politics at the university, and rapidly plunged into the independence movement upon returning to India.
Influenced by socialist ideology, secular in outlook, and favorable towards western scientific progress, Nehru advocated modern industrialization, working class democracy, and a strong centralized government to oversee social reform. Nehru's positions contrasted sharply with Gandhi's promotion of pre-industrial rural self-sufficiency, cottage industries, regional crafts, and smaller, local units of self-governance.
Jawaharlal Nehru. The Discovery of India. Calcutta: Signet Press, 1948. Signed by the author in three languages—English, Hindi, and Urdu—on January 14, 1949.
The Opium Trade
Western nations, mainly Britain, transported opium grown in India to China in the 18th and 19th centuries—despite the Chinese government's ban on its sale and use. The East India Company developed a method of cultivating the product cheaply and abundantly, and soon established a trade monopoly in the eastern province of Bengal. The Company subcontracted with small country traders, who shipped the contraband to smugglers along the Chinese coast, collected payment, and returned the gold and silver to the Company representative in Canton. Profits from opium sales went towards the purchase of items desired in the West, such as tea and silk. The illegal opium trade finally led to the outbreak of two trade wars—the Opium Wars.
Walter S. Sherwill. Illustrations of the Mode of Preparing the Indian Opium Intended for the Chinese Market. From drawings by Captain Walter S. Sherwill. London: J. Madden, 1851. Gift of Charles Wason
Travelogues and Sketchbooks
With increased trade among European nations, more frequent and safer sea travel, and expanding European settlements, greater numbers of travelers journeyed east. While some were intrigued by the sheer strangeness of things, others had a more intellectual and scientific curiosity about flora, fauna, and folklore. And some were simply lured by wanderlust to the remote unknown. Numerous journals and sketchbooks—belonging to adventurers in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries—record what they saw and experienced. These first-hand accounts give us a glimpse of how the world viewed the peoples and places of Asia.
Giovanni Pietro Maffei. Historiarum Indicarum libri XVI. Antverpiae: Ex officina Martini Nutij, 1605. Gift of Andrew Dickson White.
João Ribeiro. Histoire de l'isle de Ceylan, presentée au roy de Portugal en 1685, tr. du portugais en françois. Trevoux: E. Ganeau, 1701.
Freiherr Eugen Ransonnet-Villez. Sketches of the inhabitants, animal life and vegetation in the lowlands and high mountains of Ceylon. Vienna: The author, 1867.
East India Company (1600-1874)
On December 31, 1600, Queen Elizabeth I signed a royal charter giving a group of London merchants the exclusive right to trade in the Indies. With 30,133 pounds in hand, five sailing ships left England in February 1601, arriving on the western shores of India in June 1602. Fifteen months later, they returned home with silks, spices, and indigo. In its first fifteen years, the Company's profits averaged 200%, attracting more investors with assurances of handsome returns to its shareholders. Britain's prominence in the Indian peninsula continued through the mid-19th century. Then, in 1857, a massive rebellion ensued in which many different segments of the Indian population, civilians and military, joined forces against their British officers. After a year and a half, the battle subsided, and on November 1, 1858, Her Majesty Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India. The British crown assumed all governmental responsibilities in its newly acquired colony, incorporated the Company's soldiers into the British Army, and finally dissolved the East India Company in 1874.
Jean Amable Pannelier. L'Hindoustan; ou, Religion, moeurs, usages, arts et métiers des Hindous. Paris: A. Nepveu, 1816.
Eugène Burnouf. L'Inde française, ou collection de dessins lithographiés. Paris: Chabrelle, 1827-1835.
Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Sleeman, of the Bengal Army. Rambles and collections of an Indian official. London: J. Hatchard & Son, 1844.
Gift of Bertram F. Wilcox.
Kālidāsa (375?-415?)
Little is known about Kālidāsa, court poet and dramatist associated with the reign of Emperor Chandra Gupta II, but legends abound. A princess married him for his physical beauty, but despised his ignorance and lack of refinement. The young man appealed to the goddess Kālī for help, and was granted both wit and eloquence (hence his name, which means Kālī's devoted slave). He was considered the most brilliant of the "nine gems" at the fabled court of King Vikramaditya of Ujjain.
Kālidāsa belonged to the post-Vedic period of Sanskrit literature, when royal patronage supported secular drama and poetry, and writers were no longer anonymous. His three surviving verse dramas celebrate romantic love. 'Sakuntalā, the most famous, tells of an innocent forest maiden who secretly marries a handsome prince and is so distracted during his absence that she incurs the curse of a visiting sage towards whom she has been less than fully attentive. Curses can never be fully retracted, but the sage softens his by saying her husband's memory will revive when he sees the ring she wears on her finger. 'Sakuntalā promptly loses her ring, but it miraculously makes its way to the royal court. After years of trial and tribulation, 'Sakuntalā's fidelity and courage are amply rewarded at the story's end, when her husband recognizes and embraces her.
Both Eastern and Western traditions of literature, art, and music have drawn inspiration from Kālidāsa, and his works have been translated into many languages.
Kālidāsa. Sákoontalá, or The Lost ring. Translated into English prose and verse from Sanskrit by Monier Williams. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1885. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Noyes.
Franz Bopp (1791-1867)
In the spring of 1868, Cornell's first President, Andrew Dickson White, traveled to Europe with a long list of books and apparatus he wanted to bring back to the university. During this expedition, White acquired the library of Franz Bopp, a famous German Indologist and Sanskritist. Faculty who taught literature, language, history, anthropology, Sanskrit, and linguistics all used this valuable collection, which eventually gave rise to a rapidly growing interest in South Asian studies.
Franz Bopp. Glossarium sanscritum. Berolini [Berlin]: Libraria Dümmleriana (Grube & Harrwitz), 1847.
From the library of Franz Bopp, with manuscript notations.