LKE India

DATE: c1911-1974

LEVEL: Series

Records in this series were collected by Leonard Elmhirst during more than 50 years of concern for Indian arts, agriculture and social well being. Materials consist of reports, letters, and publications of Bengalis, Indians, and Europeans. There are letters from scientists, missionaries, politicians, poets and artists. Major topics include the British in India and Iraq during and after World War I; the scientific development of agriculture in India, with an emphasis on agricultural education; administration of Indian charitable trusts; and consulting for the governments of India and Bengal. Visva-Bharati, an international university founded by Rabindranath Tagore in Bengal in 1918 is also a major topic. The correspondence dates from 1915, when Leonard first arrived in India working for the British Army YMCA during World War I.

By 1918 Leonard was working as the private secretary to Sam Higginbottom, the director of the Allahabad Agricultural Institute. Leonard's letters at this time are suggestive of Higginbottom's early mentoring influence. Other early influences on Leonard's life are revealed in letters from K T Paul of the YMCA to Leonard during World War I. Both Paul and Charles Freer Andrews were active in the Student Christian Association of India and Ceylon. Andrews' letters to Leonard have survived here. At least 20 letters written in 1923 and 1924 by Andrews, are addressed directly to Tagore and some contain first hand accounts of the actions of Gandhi.

The India series also includes correspondence with Indian scientists including Dr Basiswar 'Boshi' Sen, a researcher, married to the American geographer Gertude Sen, whose laboratory in Almora was supported by grants from Dorothy Elmhirst and the Whitney Foundation. Other Indian and Bengali correspondents include members of Rabindranath Tagore's family including artists Abanindranath and Rathindranath Tagore.

There is much correspondence with dancer and film maker Uday Shankar. The Elmhirst family first endowed the Uday Shankar India Culture Centre in Almora in 1937. Subsequent records relate to the re-establishment of the Centre in Calcutta after World War II.

Leonard continued his involvement with Visva-Bharati throughout his life. Letters often relate to the administration of the university. There are many letters about Visva-Bharati and Tagore from the viewpoint of Indian scholars (for instance, Krishna Kripalani), who were associated with the University. Early correspondence with Indians associated with Visva-Bharati also reflects the educational and cultural goals of Rabindranath Tagore.

There is correspondence, usually on specific administrative matters, with the India Office in London, British Viceroys, and later, with Indian Prime Ministers Nehru and Indira Gandhi.

Early irrigation projects are mentioned in correspondence with Sir William Willcocks. There are letters from American administrators and flood control engineers such as David Lilienthal and Arthur E Morgan. Leonard also worked with architect Albert Mayer, and the Damodar project secretary, economist Dr Sudhir Sen.

Personal letters in this series include Leonard Elmhirst's letters to family, written during World War I, and in the early 1920's. There are also letters from Gretchen Green, a friend of Dorothy Straight, who worked with Leonard in Sriniketan between 1921 and 1923. Letters from Margery Melcher Holmquist in 1917 and 1918 are biographical. Financial records in the series reveal the extent of financial assistance that both he and the Institute of Rural Reconstruction received from his future wife, Dorothy Straight, an American living in New York at that time.

At Sriniketan, Leonard claimed to be working against the 'four 'M's'; malaria, monkeys, and mutual mistrust. There is considerable information about irrigation, control of mosquitos, and suppressing the monkey population. Correspondence with the American Quaker missionary, Dr Harry Timbres, a malaria specialist, discusses his work in villages around Sriniketan in the 1920s. Other medical conditions, especially leprosy and dengue fever are mentioned.

Other valuable Sriniketan records discuss the Siksha-Satra schools founded by Tagore and directed by Leonard Elmhirst. Leonard brought Tagore's ideals to England in 1925 and they were embodied in the founding of Dartington Hall and the Dartington Hall School.

Additional correspondence with and about:

Leonard Elmhirst first travelled to India in late 1915 while serving with the Army YMCA. He was posted for a time in Basra, Mesopotamia (now Iraq). In 1916 he returned to India where he eventually became the private secretary to a Presbyterian minister and agriculturalist, Sam Higginbottom. After World War I, Leonard studied agricultural economics at Cornell University. He returned to India in 1921 as the director of the Institute of Rural Reconstruction at Sriniketan, a village near Santiniketan, in the Birbhum District of Bengal, where Visva-Bharati was located. The Institute at that time was nothing more than a name. Despite periodic illness, Leonard and his assistants established the school at Sriniketan and began training agriculturalists. They also began a system of schooling (Siksha-Satra) for the children of surrounding villages emphasizing practical experience.

In 1923, Leonard travelled to New York, and also returned briefly to England before travelling on to India again. In March 1924, he accompanied Rabindranath Tagore on his cultural mission to China and Japan. They also travelled in late 1924 to Argentina where they stayed with the writer Victoria Ocampo.

After his return to Britain in 1925, Leonard continued working to strengthen Visva-Bharati and other Indian institutions. He quietly campaigned for Indian civil rights, providing unsolicited advice to a succession of British viceroys, until Indian independence in 1947.

During World War II, Leonard spent ten months in India as an agricultural adviser to the Government of Bengal (1944-1945). This work led to his publication, 'Collected Notes on Agricultural Problems in Bengal.'

Leonard also served as a consultant in the 1950's, to the Damodar Valley Corporation, a major public works project in the states of Bihar and West Bengal, that was modelled after the Tennessee Valley Authority in America.

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