Through Subaltern Eyes: Shivaprasad at Simla, 1846-1852

Abstract

ëIt was the best part of my lifeí,1 Raja Shivaprasad, C.S.I, wrote in his memoirs in 1894. The seventy-one-year old was referring to the years 1846 to 1852, which he had spent in Simla as a munshi working for the East India Company government. These were his formative years in education, preparing him for his future role as a peopleís educator and mediator of imperial education policy. Raja Shivaprasad of Benares (1823-95), eminent Indian educator, man of letters, and public intellectual, was an influential presence in the colonial public sphere of north India after 1857