Governors-General of India, Part II: Dalhousie
S. Gopal describes how, in the course of eight years, Dalhousie greatly extended the territories of the East India Company. Today his memory is respected by Indians not as one of the builders of the British Empire but as one of the architects of the Indian Republic.
A revealing, and in a sense the ultimate, test of the work of a proconsul is the memory that lingers in the country where he once ruled. In India it is now also a fair test, for her people, since they attained freedom, have begun to assess the British Governors-General by standards unswayed by crude emotion or bitter prejudice.
One curious reflection of such judgments is to be seen in the fate of the various avenues and works named after these men. Clive Road in Calcutta, for example, has been re-named to commemorate an Indian nationalist leader, and the great bridge thrown across the Ganges at Benares no longer bears the name of Dufferin. But the heart of Calcutta is still Dalhousie Square.
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