Destruction or conservation? Some aspects of monument policy in British India (1899–1905)

This chapter examines some aspects of the monument policy of the British Raj during the viceroyship of George Nathaniel Curzon (1899-1905), an initiative which has almost unanimously been hailed both by the viceroy’s contemporaries and by subsequent scholars. Consider what John Strachey had to say as early as 1900:

Few things in these troublous times when there has been so much to make one unhappy, has given me so much pleasure as the knowledge that India has found a viceroy who has resolved that the British Government shall become a more faithful guardian of her ‘priceless treasure-houses of art’.