Indian Cultural Studies

Abstract

Notwithstading the assurance that the Indian collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, were not to be dispersed and that space would continue to be provided for them in the galleries of that Museum, which followed Mr. de la Valette's lecture before the Indian Section of the Royal Society of Arts (see NATURE, December 25, p. 1108, and January 29, p. 177), the critics of the methods of the ethnographical sections of our national collections are still of the opinion that less than justice is done to requirements for the study of the cultural history of India, compared with what might be attempted with the resources at command. A joint committee accordingly has been formed, consisting of representatives of the five bodies more intimately concerned in the study of India and her peoples. These are the Royal Society of Arts (Indian Section), the India Society, the Royal Asiatic Society, the East India Association and the School of Oriental Studies. Although the joint committee has as yet, it is understood, arrived at no decision as to its precise amis and methods of procedure, in principle the general purpose is to secure provision which in scope and display, dignity and standing, will be worthy of so great a dependency as India, with its tradition of advanced civilization stretching back thousands of years, and as the place of origin of at least one of the religious systems of the world's history. The traditions of the Victoria and Albert Museum, though it included 'industry' in its original purview, are not such as to foster a treatment of Indian culture in which technology and the humbler arts of life have no less claim, if not indeed a stronger claim, to treatment than fine art. But while the Indian collections continue to be merely a department of a larger unit, they must be subordinated to the purpose of the whole. The joint committee has been criticized, notably by the writer of a letter in The Times of March 23, as academic ; but surely if its purpose is rightly understood, it is precisely the academic spirit which it aims to avoid. What could be more closely in touch with modern India than a comprehensive museum of Indian culture, which should cover both past and present?