ABSTRACT
In 1884 a distinguished ex-Indian civil servant, Sir John Strachey, 1 delivered a series of lectures on India at the University of Cambridge. He began by telling his audience: ‘This is the first and most essential thing to learn about India—that there is not, and never was an India....’ 2 Nor need it be feared, Strachey added, that the bonds of union fashioned by British rule could ever ‘in any way lead towards the growth of a single Indian nationality’. 3 ‘However long may be the duration of our dominion,’ he remarked, ‘however powerful may be the centralizing attraction of our government, or the influence of the common interests which grow up, no such issue can follow.’ 4 To Strachey it seemed ‘impossible’ ‘that men of Bombay, the Punjab, Bengal and Madras should ever feel that they belong to one great Indian nation’. 5
