In the late Fifties, on a cold and grey autumn morning in Oxford, the former British prime minister, Clement Attlee, came down for breakfast to Nuffield College Hall. Attlee was then an honorary fellow of Nuffield. The Hall was empty except for two students from the Indian subcontinent. Attlee joined them and asked them where they came from. One replied India and the other said Pakistan. Attlee cracked open his hard-boiled egg, looked at the two students and said, 'Gave independence to both countries, I did''. Even by Attlee's standards (Winston Churchill had once said of him, 'But for the grace of Attlee, there goes Attlee''.), the statement was breathtaking in its arrogance. But this was the prevalent view of Oxford - and Britain - towards India for as long as one can remember. Indians, according to this view, have no agency of their own. Others, more specifically the British, did things for them. To borrow and alter what Karl Marx wrote in a different context, Indians cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. The Indian minister for external affairs, Jaswant Singh, would have done well to remember this attitude when he made an endowment of Rs 12.1 crore (£ 1.8 million) to set up a chair in Oxford on Indian history and culture. From all accounts, knowledge about Oxford's links with Indian history and culture is not Singh's - or more correctly, his speech writer's - strong point. Singh's speech in Oxford contains some howlers that would have done Rajiv Gandhi proud. He said that this was the first chair of its kind being set up in Oxford. This is wrong on many counts. There already exists in Oxford, at Balliol College, the Boden professorship of Sanskrit. This was set up in 1833 with the help of a sumptuous legacy of Colonel Joseph Boden who hoped to encourage indirectly the evangelization of India. The first incumbent of this chair was H.H. Wilson. There is also the Spalding chair of Eastern Religion and Ethics at All Souls College. This was endowed by H.C. Spalding in 1935. Spalding had heard Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan's Hibbert Lectures at the universities of London and Manchester in 1930 and had been won over by Radhakrishnan's personality and teachings. It was fitting that Radhakrishnan was the first to hold the professorship. There is also a readership in modern South Asian history at St Antony's College. This has been in existence since the Thirties. There is also a Curzon Memorial Prize for an essay on a specified theme of modern Indian history. Moreover, the Beit Professorship on the History of the British Commonwealth at Balliol also covers modern Indian history. Singh's generosity is by no means the first to open up India to Oxford. Scholarship in Oxford has always had an eye on the Orient. Warren Hastings, an important figure in encouraging an interest in Indian history and culture among Britons in the 18th century, said that in the University of Oxford, 'oriental learning had never since the revival of letters been wholly neglected'. As Edward Said has noted, the West's interest in the Orient 'commenced its formal existence with the decision of the Church Council of Vienne in 1312 to establish a series of chairs in Arabic, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac at Paris, Oxford, Bologna, Avignon, and Salamanca'. Sanskrit was a late comer into the field of Oriental Studies and Oxford was a pioneer in this area. What goes by the name of Oriental Studies - we know today by way of Said's outstanding book, Orientalism - is a particular way of organizing knowledge about the West's Other. Said has shown very sharply that through this corpus of knowledge 'European culture was able to manage - and even produce - the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically and imaginatively during the post-Enlightenment period'. Orientalism, Said argues, makes the Orient a subject which is not capable of free thought or action. It will surprise nobody who knows Oxford, that the new chair for Indian history and culture is to be housed in the Faculty of Oriental Studies. The thrust of this chair, it is clear from its location, is not going to be modern Indian history but ancient and medieval India. The new chair will be confined to what is defined as Oriental Studies. The limits of this definition will be clear from a listing of the other professorships in the same faculty: Arabic, Armenian Studies, Chinese, eastern Religion and Ethics, Egyptology, Hebrew, Persian Studies and Sanskrit. In 1935, when Radhakrishnan was appointed the Spalding professor, his term was only for five years. In 1937, Spalding provided funds to maintain the chair for 15 years and Radhakrishnan's tenure was correspondingly extended. What is significant is that for the first five years of his appointment, Radhakrishnan, despite holding a chair, was only made a member of the common room of All Souls. The chair and the professor were thus given step-brotherly treatment by Oxford's most exclusive college, which elected Radhakrishnan a fellow only in 1940. It will be interesting to see which college claims the new professorship and how it treats the new incumbent. It is not unfair to voice such a suspicion because things change slowly in Oxford and attitudes die hard. Indian studies have never been Oxford's top priority. The University had no compunctions in appropriating the spacious building at the corner of the Broad and Catte Street and Holywell Street which housed the Indian Institute. It was given over to the Modern History Faculty and the Indian Institute was removed to the top of the New Bodleian. Within the Modern History Faculty, Indian history occupies a small position and is driven, in terms of syllabus, towards a particular orientation. For many decades, the Oxford History School offered a special subject on 'Warren Hastings and the Administration of Bengal'. There was no other ostensible reason for offering this subject save the fact that it was the chosen field of C.C. Davies who held the readership in modern South Asian history for nearly three decades. One suspects, that this paper was not changed for such a long time because of the influence of Dame Lucy Sutherland, the principal of Lady Margaret Hall, who was a specialist on the English East India Company and 18th century politics. Dame Lucy was a major power figure in the Oxford Modern History Faculty in the Fifties. Her power was derived largely from her closeness to Lewis Namier (cloister gossip in Oxford says she was in love with him) who then advised Harold Macmillan on matters relating to history. (In fact, when the Regius Professorship in History fell vacant in 1957, Namier first recommended Sutherland's name. It was when she refused - because she wanted the professorship and to remain principal of LMH - that the battle royal between A.J.P. Taylor and Hugh Trevor-Roper ensued.) The special subject was changed in the Seventies and it is now called 'Constitutional Changes and Indian Nationalism'. The coupling is extremely significant. The underlying theory is that doses of constitutional reforms introduced by the British in India produced Indian nationalism as Indian elites fought over limited resources being doled out by the Raj. The author of this theory was Jack Gallagher, who held the Beit professorship in the late Sixties and early Seventies, and argued that 'Government impulse had linked much more closely the local and provincial arenas of politics; and the general trend among Indian politicians, constitutionalist or not, was to react to this initiative by copying it''. Indian nationalism thus became nothing more than a mere echo of imperialism which produces it. Indians have no agency of their own. To supplement the special subject a further subject was offered on 'Imperialism and Nationalism' which elaborated this theory. The appropriation of agency is important. In an interview for the post of readership in South Asian history one of India's finest young historians was asked by a very distinguished historian of 17th century England, 'How would you teach Indian history as a part of British history?' The question harks directly back to James Mill who had asserted in History of British India that 'The subject forms an entire, and highly interesting, portion of the British History.' Indians have no history of their own, it is created for them by the white man in his academic institutions. No wonder Attlee believed he had given independence to India and Pakistan. The government of India, in its wisdom, has decided to gift to one such institution a large sum of money to tell us about our own history and culture. Forgive us, Mr Singh, if we fail to applaud your magnanimity.