INDIAN ART, INDUSTRY & EDUCATION

BY E. B. HAVELL.

Late Principal, Government School of Art,
and Keeper of the Government Art Gallery, Calcutta,
Author of “Indian Sculpture and Painting;”  “Benares: The Sacred City;” “A Hand-Book to Agra and the Taj” etc.
 

CONTENTS.

 

PAGES

THE TAJ AND ITS DESIGNERS

1

THE REVIVAL OF INDIAN HANDICRAFT

24

ART AND EDUCATION IN INDIA

87

ART AND UNIVERSITY REFORM IN INDIA

139

INDIAN ADMINISTRATION AND ‘SWADESHI’

155

THE USES OF ART

177

PREFACE.

The various Essays on Indian Art, Industry, and Education which are here reprinted, though mostly written some years ago, all deal with questions which continue to possess a living interest. The superstitions which they attempt to dispel still loom largely in popular imagination, and the reforms they advocate still remain to be carried out. Only last year Sir Henry Craik, M.P., in his book on India, revived the familiar Anglo-Indian legend that the Taj Mahal was the creation of a European architect. Hardly any serious attempt has been made in the last twenty-five years to make the departmental machinery of Government effective for the revival of Indian art and handicraft. Officialism in the Calcutta University has lately barred the way to further progress in art education over-riding the deliberate vote of the majority of the members of the Senate. Swadeshi politicians, with regard to India’s industrial problems, have been content to follow behind commercial Europe, and multiply the evils which the factory system has already inflicted upon India.

Knowing that the best artistic opinion of Europe is wholly on my side, and believing that the removal of departmental impediments to the progress of Indian art and industry are urgently called for, both for the sake of British prestige and in the interest of India herself, I offer no apology for putting my arguments before the Government and the public again and again, in season and out of season.

I have to thank the Editors of The Nineteenth Century and After; The Calcutta Review; and of East and West, Bombay, for the permission they hare kindly given to reprint the Essays which originally appeared in those Reviews.

E. B. HAVELL.