Warren Hastings

Warren Hastings FRS (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was a British colonial administrator, who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and so the first Governor-General of Bengal in 1772–1785. He and Robert Clive are credited with laying the foundation of the British Empire in India. He was an energetic organizer and reformer. In 1779–1784 he led forces of the East India Company against a coalition of native states and the French. Finally, the well-organized British side held its own, while France lost influence in India. In 1787, he was accused of corruption and impeached, but after a long trial acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.

Quotes

• The writers of the Indian philosophies will survive, when the British dominion in IndIa shall long have ceased to exist, and when the sources which it yielded of wealth and power are lost to remembrances.
  • Galav, Philosophy of Hinduism: universal science-religion: ([11 introduction [S.1.: s.n.], c1992. ISBN: 0964237709 p 19. quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

• I hesitate not to pronounce the Gita a performance of great origmality, of sublimity of conception, reasoning and diction almost unequalled; and a single exception, amongst all the known religions of mankind.
  • Keay, John India Discovered: the achievement oj the British Raj; photographed by Clive Friend; designed by Philip Clucas ; produced by Ted Smart and David Gibbon. Leicester: Windward, 1981. p 25 quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.

About

• [Hastings] recognizes that in public he is taken to be Christian but then, he admits, in "hipocricy [sic], . . . prudence or rather necessity imposed silence." But, "I am unable not unwilling to receive and understand. What my inability is founded on I cannot to a certainty determine." To me, though, it is very clear. He cannot see anything that distinguishes Christianity from the other religions about which he knows. "Is the incarnation of Christ more intelligible than . . . those of Bishen?" Europeans prevail over non-Europeans not because of the superiority of Christianity but for secular reasons: "a free government, cold climate and printing and navigation." Christianity does not make people "better." "Let those who know the lower uneducated class in England . . . say how much more rarely crimes are committed in England than in India."
  • P. J. Marshall about a notebook of Warren Hastings in the library of the University of Minnesota (Ames MS B.114).
  • quoted from Trautmann, Thomas R. (2008). Aryans and British India. page 72