Foreword It would be a great pleasure to thank, by name, the many persons, both Indian and English, who have so courteously facilitated my access to information, to records, and to those places and things that I desired to see for myself. But the facts that it was impossible to forecast the conclusions I should reach, and that for these conclusions they are in no way responsible, make it improper to embarrass them now by connecting them personally therewith.
Introduction Calcutta, second largest city in the British Empire, spread along the Ganges called Hooghly, at the top of the Bay of Bengal. Calcutta, big, western, modern, with public buildings, monuments, parks, gardens, hospitals, museums, University, courts of law, hotels, offices, shops, all of which might belong to a prosperous American city; and all backed by an Indian town of temples, mosques, bazaars and intricate courtyards and alleys that has somehow created itself despite the rectangular lines shown on the map. In the courts and alleys and bazaars many little bookstalls, where narrow chested, near-sighted, anaemic young Bengali students, in native dress, brood over piles of flyblown Russian pamphlets.
Book's Contents and Sample Pages
