Bentinck and the Taj

Abstract

For many years the official folk-lore of British India has included a story that Lord William Bentinck once contemplated the demolition of the Taj Mahal in order to sell its marble. The point of the story has varied with the mental climate of the time: at first it was an illustration of Bentinck's supposed meanness; the arch “clipper” would even lay hands on the Taj in order to make money. Later it became evidence of the supposed vandalism of the British in early nineteenth-century India; even Bentinck, the otherwise praiseworthy economical reformer, saw nothing in the Taj worthy of preservation. For many years, after the circumstances of its origin and its early expressions had been forgotten, the story lived on in the realm of verbal folk-lore, but more recently it has been revived in print and its truth largely taken for granted. The story, if true, would be a serious reflection on Bentinck according to the standards of any civilized age, and it is therefore worth asking with some particularity upon what basis of fact it rests.