The first English language play in modern India: How Amir Khan became the Nawab of Tonk

The tutor to the princes of Travancore was in trouble. It had been four years since he had been put in charge of educating Swati and Uttaram. The princes were excelling in every subject he was teaching them, but the East India Company was growing ever more unhappy. It had reluctantly agreed to Travancore importing him all the way from Tanjore because of his mastery over the English language. But what was the point of hiring the famed “English” Subba Rao, British examiners fumed, if he kept the princes so busy with Euclidian geometry and Carnatic music that they never read enough English to “correct their idiom”?

The British examiners could not see what Subba Rao saw. From his perspective, the true purpose of the princes’ “English studies” was intellectual rather than social; what he cared about was “improving the mind” rather making pleasant conversation and exhibiting refined diction. The subject he wanted the princes to master was niti shastra (or ethics), but the contemporaneous English literature on the subject of “moral improvement” was of a “crushingly moral character,” frequently taking the form of sermons. There was only so much he could give them to read that was not boring or worse – dangerously...

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