The almost 200 year old Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain has undergone a major facelift recently. The Society, to very few people's knowledge was founded in the UK by the eminent Sanskrit scholar Henry Thomas Colebrooke on the 15th March 1823. It received its Royal Charter from King George IV on the 11th August 1824 ‘for the investigation of subjects connected with and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia‘.
Many distinguished scholars have been members of the Society, including Sir Richard Burton (1821-90), the noted explorer and translator of One Thousand and One Nights and the Kama Sutra; Sir Aurel Stein (1862-1943), the renowned archaeologist of the ‘Silk Road’ and Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), the famous Bengali writer and poet.
Royal Asiatic Society disseminates information worldwide about the history and culture of Asia, especially India. It is constantly supplying knowledge to schools and universities, and hopes to give it a much higher profile. Prince Charles is an active patron and so is Michael Palin, renowned author William Dalrymple, Colin Thubron. In the words of HRH Prince Charles: “There is no doubt that the pace of globalisation is bringing people around the world inexorably closer together.”
“I have taken great interest in the many important ways in which the Society has been working to enhance our knowledge and understanding of Asia.”
Dr Gordon Johnson, who has taken over the President's role recently, in an exclusive interview told Asian Voice that the Society has undergone a transformation in recent years, with new premises and state of the art audio-visual facilities. Johnson is a renowned historian who has written seven books, mostly about Indian history, has been the Deputy Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, and President of Wolfson College.
Educated at Richmond School, Yorkshire, and Trinity College, Cambridge, he became a historian of India, and later of Cambridge. He taught at Trinity and Selwyn Colleges before joining Wolfson. He was the Director of the Centre for South Asian Studies from 1983 to 2001. He has served on several University committees, including the General Board and the University Council. He was a Syndic of the Press from 1981 to 2010, chairing the Syndicate 1993-2009. He continues as a Trustee of several Cambridge and other educational Trusts.
Speaking about the transformation in the Society, Dr Johnson in an exclusive interview told Asian Voice, “The Society has been on trajectory for the last 10 years to make things better. We have a small but dedicated staff. As we head to being 200 years in 2023, we will attract more and more people to our events and thereby hope to raise the profile of Asia and India and interest and its relevance in the present day. In sum, we need to do more of what we are already doing and reach out to more people with interest in Asia. The Society has wonderful collection of manuscripts, arts and scholarly papers, and hosts book launches, cultural events that have engagement for all kinds of people.”
But he is not unaware of the fact that the Society has not been able to penetrate into the Asian community as well as it should have been. “That's a question that is tough to address,” said Dr Johnson. “We are located in the Euston area, near all those wonderful Indian restaurants and grocery stores at Drummond Street, in London borough of Camden which has many British restaurants with South Asian ownership or clientele. We are beginning to make attempt to engage more with the community, present the society as it is and not as a stuffy old imperial outfit, which it never was.
“The Society is a very open and welcoming place, that is genuinely interested in the culture of Asia, there are lot of opportunities for young British South Asians in professions who are not academics, to use our facilities and gain access to our collections. We are doing quite a bit, main bit is through academic institutions engage with those South Asians who are doing researches in London. We have not figured how to get better to engage with the community but we are doing more and moire by social media, conserving and digitising the collection freely available. There is a lot going on but there is still a lot do,” he added.
Their Cambridge Digital Library has recently updated online, the digitised version of the Shahnama of Muhammad Juki, copied in Herat between 1440 and 1445 and considered to be one of the finest Timurid manuscripts of the 15th century; the Gulistan of the poet Sa’di completed in 1583 in Fatehpur Sikri; and an autograph copy of Kitab-i Mathnawiyyat-i Zafar Khan copied in Lahore in 1663.
The Society that provides a forum for those who are interested in the history, languages, cultures and religions of Asia to meet and exchange ideas, was first founded in Kolkata in 1784. Its founder Sir William Jones (1746-1794) began his work with a dream, that visualised a centre for Asian studies including almost everything concerning man and nature within the geographical limits of the continent. Most of the mysteries of this vast land, like its old inscriptions in Brahmi, were still undeciphered, and Comparative Philology as a discipline or science was not yet born.
William Jones was, however, not the earliest among the Orientalists of the East India Company to arrive in India. About a decade earlier came Charles Wilkins (1770), Nathaniel Brassey Halhed (1772) and Jonathan Duncan (1772)- Warren Hastings's "bright young men",who had paved the way for the two future institutions- The Asiatic Society and the College at Fort William. All the Orientalists who became famous in history clustered around either the Society or the College or both. The Society, of course, was the pioneer and first in the field.
With a root in British-ruled India, does growing Indian nationalism affect The Society's current reputation among the diaspora? Dr Gordon told the newsweeklies, “The Society's role is to provide information to give perspectives. It is not in the business of giving a line on Asia, and it is trying to engage people in a neutral way with varieties.”
