Links Lord Beveridge

Rev. Herbert R. Barton, S. Knox Cunningham, MP L. F. G. Anthony Henry Durant Beverley Cross Mrs. Winifred Cummings

Bomb T. Crowe F. S. Black, D. I. Davies Naomi Mitchison Frank Machin

A Plea For Cultural X Marks the Spot Civilisation Bar Public Opinion Polls 'One More River' Telling the Patient The Scientists and the The Slim Fein Vote Fraternisation Images A PLEA FOR CULTURAL LINKS

SIR,—I understand that the Governments of India and Pakistan have made a request for the return to their

countries of manuscripts and other documents which came from them originally and arc now in London, either in the India Office Library or in the Oriental Section of the British Museum Library. May I through your columns make a plea to these two Governments to reconsider their request, and to strengthen the cultural links between their countries and the rest of the world, instead of weakening these links as action on their request would certainly do.

I cannot claim to be impartial on this issue of cultural links between East and West. For I owe my generally happy existence in this world to such a link forged in India nearly ninety years ago. In 1870 a distinguished Indian, Keshub Chunder Sen, in a long tour over England, made, among other things, a call to English women to help their Indian sisters by giving them education without trying to change their religion. He caught Annette Akroyd, an adventurous young woman of twenty-eight, happily not needing to earn a living. She went to Calcutta, established a

school there, and through that alone met my father- to-be Henry Beveridge; he had sailed to India round the Cape of Good Hope in 1857 to join the Bengal Civil Service. I have told the story at length in India Called Them.

India called them both indeed. After their years together in India physically, bringing children into the world, they continued to live in India culturally till they died, studying her history and languages, producing one book after another about the great Mogul period — Babur-Nama. Humayun-Nama, Akbar-Nama, in MS. facsimile and translation. They did this, as addicts of the India Office Library and the British Museum; they could not have done it otherwise.

After six years in England. my father, who was strongly pro-Indian in his views, went out to see India again, on the excuse that he must look for more MSS. and books bearing on Indian literature and history which Annette and he and others .would need; he came back with about £100 worth for the India Office Library.

My parents did not confine themselves to books of the scale mentioned above. There was an Indian lady who about 180 years ago married William Brooke, of the East India Company, bore children to him, and wrote for them in Persian a book of stories which

she called The Key of the Hearts of Beginners. The book caine into the hands of an Anglo-Indian friend

of my parents, who suggested to my mother that she should translate it into English. She did so fifty years ago, and printed a few copies for personal use. The stories are highly original in themselves, but even more moving than the stories are two short prefaces: one by the author, Bibi Brooke, as she became, pouring out her loVe to her husband and gratitude for his helping her to learn Persian; the other by the translator, my mother, giving the background of this happy union between Briton and Indian a hundred and eighty years ago.

I have a later experience of the benefit of cultural links,, through my seventeen years at the London School of Economics, where, as the school grew. the inrush of students from overseas rose even more. Today there are more than 910 students from overseas at the school, drawn from practically every country in the world. They do not come because they have no universities of their own; the better their universities at home, the more they come to us. to enjoy new teachers, new methods, new meetings with other students. They come, in a word, to make cultural links.

This brings me back to my plea. My case for it is not that the libraries and librarians of Britain arc better than those of India and Pakistan. They are not My case is simply that the London libraries are more accessible to the scholars of most countries that are likely to study the material, from Europe, from America, even from most of Africa. All serious learning is world-wide.

There are two special experiences of mine at the School of Economics apposite to the issue that I am raising now. One relates to the history of English Wages and Prices. and one to the teaching of Social Science.

In addition to many rare books, the Huntington. Institute in California contains many unique accounts and records of mediaeval England, bought by Henry, Huntington. When I wished to see these and make extracts for my History of Wages and Prices (which I still plan to complete) I obtained without difficulty funds from the Institute itself and from other American sources for going to California with a staff of researchers. I have now only to find time and perhaps a little money to make available to all the superb original material that I was able to gather there.

The story of the London School of Economics includes endowments by a wealthy and generous Indian, Ratan Tata, of one of its essential depart. ments, for Social Science. Much help is given for students of universities to come to London from all over the world. If no Government will come in to help researchers from a distance to use such treasures of Indian History as are still in London, it would be a trifle for a big foundation to meet the need.

Hardly any money could be put to better inter' national use today than in maintaining and developing cultural links between the nations of the world.—Yours faithfully.

REVERID4