A recent post by Amardeep on the work of (with the related debates on) historians of, and more importantly for, the Empire, such as Niall Ferguson brought to my mind those odd statues of two Englishmen in topcoats and hats moored next to bare chested, dhoti clad, and in many case ascetic, Telugu luminaries such as Vemana, Potanna, Thygaraja, Krishnadeva Raya etc on the Tank Bund Road, which bounds that cesspool of a lake in the middle of Hyderabad, India. In a recent discussion on translating Telugu poetry, I was telling a friend how because of the vagaries of my education, the closest I have come to imbibing any of the literary output in Telugu, my mother tongue, is al most limited to reading the captions etched on the pedestals of those statues honoring those poets, writers, kings and statesmen.

As an aside, I also have a curious experience regarding the installation of these statues themselves. I remember very distinctly being stuck in a traffic jam on the Tank Bund, as I was riding in a convoy of trucks requisitioned from the Indian Army by the school for an excursion to the Hyderabad Zoo, precisely the day these statues were unveiled to the public by N.T. Rama Rao. Apart from the spillover from his highly successful movie career, another of the drivers in N.T.R's path to political power was his espousal of resurgence in Telugu pride.

Given this, the case of C.P. Brown’s induction into the “official” or state sponsored cannon (as my friend pointed out to me in that conversation) of Telugu luminaries is very curious indeed; curious because it highlights the ambiguities in the debates on empires, their evils, and most importantly their benefits. C.P. Brown, born of polyglot English missionary parents (one desirable side effect of wanting to save heathens by bringing them the Gospel, is that Christian missionaries have made important contributions to the preservation and propagation of languages; see this article detailing earliest Tamil types, circa 1578, used to print Doctrina Christam) is widely regarded as the modern day messiah who saved Telugu language from the sorry state it had fallen into by early 19th century, with the decline of Hindu kingdoms such as Vijayanagar in South India. This extensive article on Brown’s life details some sixty years of work that he put into collecting old manuscripts on palm leaves, compiling and codifying the language in the form of a Telugu-English dictionary (still considered to be a very high achievement by lexicographers and linguists), grammars, treasties on prosody such as this one, and finally translating works of poets such as this translation of epigrammatic and sonorous Vemana into English.

Then we have the case of Sir. Arthur Cotton, who can very easily be a poster boy to Ferguson’s Empire hosannas for the impact he had as he led the construction of irrigation works pretty much across every major South Indian river, starting with the Cauvery, and ending at the Godavari. Prof. Bret Wallach, whose monster geographical photo album The Great Mirror provided much enjoyment to me in the past, has written a very accessible article detailing Cotton’s work, and his Madras, or cheap, school of civil engineering. Wallach also details how mismanagement under the British causes a famine in the Godavari delta in 1842, and subsequently how Cotton hit out against the critics, notably the governor-general Lord Dalhousie, of his irrigation plans because of their seemingly large cost by writing, “"If it be asked how is this great sum of money to be obtained, the answer is simply, by converting the water of the Godavery into money instead of letting it run into the sea." You may also want to read Wallach's <a href=""ags.ou.edu">other article on British Irrigation in India as well.
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Now I could add my own hot air to the Empire debates, but since neither am I a historian nor have I read critically any of the source material driving these debates, I will desist other than adding the data points of these two Englishmen, celebrated as statues on Tank Bund, which get to breathe that noxious air and get shit upon by desi “kabootharaa” (pegions).

... to protect their 'subjects' even in their death :)..haven't see all those love birds snuggling behind the statues hiding from 'public gaze'. redefining morality under the gaze of the 'patriarchal'elders.

u missed an experience if u haven't done it...try it some time.. :)

and broadcast the holy fact to the entire city because over there everyone's business is your business. :)