“Medical knowledge is not communicable to the natives of this country.” With these words, James McAdam, Secretary of the Medical Board of Bombay, sounded the death-knell in 1832 of the pioneering medical school set up in Bombay by Governor Mountstuart Elphinstone. Sir Robert Grant, appointed Governor of Bombay in 1834, disagreed, however. He aimed at ‘the general improvement of medical and surgical science and practice among the native practitioners’. With Dr Charles Morehead, he created a medical college superior to those in Calcutta, and Madras. Parsi philanthropist Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy single-handedly donated an entire hospital to complement this college. Graduates from these institutions, trained in scientific medicine of the highest standards, went on to serve their fellow countrymen with distinction. This book narrates how against great odds, Grant Medical College went on to rival medical colleges in Europe and America, and Dr Morehead was invited to help improve medical education at the University of London.

Guiding the reader on a tour of the sights and sounds of an emerging city struggling to shake off colonialism and wrestling with the formation of its own budding identity, Narayan’s beguiling book offers descriptions of Mumbai’s daily life, its people and its institutions: the parts of the whole that come together to create this diverse and vivacious place. This valuable text is a rare and enthralling glimpse into a fascinating period and place otherwise lost to time.

Robert Knight, the principal founder and the first editor of Times of India, Mumbai and Statesman, Kolkata has hardly ever been mentioned in accounts of British India and omitted from biographical dictionaries. Using remote letters, crumbling newspapers, and obscure official archives, this book presents the first historical biography of the pioneering editor. It also outlines the history of two of today's leading newspapers. Knight fought for a press free of government restraint or intimidation. An ardent critic of colonial rule, he made the press—the 'fourth estate'—a part of the political process in India. This volume documents the making of the reformer editor, taking us through his London background and start in Bombay; the first editorship and creation of the Times of India; the ill-fated move to Calcutta, the launching of the Statesman; the London venture; and finally the mature editor coming to terms with the empire. Against a backdrop of key events of Indian history from 1857 onwards, Robert Knight's editorial responses, and his personal life are all lucidly intertwined in this biography. Edwin Hirschmann elaborates on the connections of the world of newsprint with the colonial establishment and Indian people. He also provides a fresh approach to the Orientalism debate by deploying the narrative of an Englishman, involved in the age of the emerging public communication system.