India, July 25 -- On October 15, 1857, a havildar and a sepoy were marched onto the Esplanade in Bombay. Each was tied to the mouth of a cannon. The verdict - that they were guilty of plotting a "rising" against the British - was read out. A few moments later, before a large crowd, the guns were fired. As fate would have it, an arm, torn from one of the men, flew into the air and landed on the head of a young Englishman who promptly collapsed in shock. His name was JP Hughlings - and though he did not know it at the time, he was going to help the natives standing in the maidan mount a very different challenge to British rule. Born to a working-class family in 1831, Hughlings had decided early in life to serve others, electing to attend Kneller Hall, a training college whose graduates were expected to administer schools for the children of paupers. However, the principal at Kneller Hall soon decided Hughlings deserved a better education and sent him to see Benjamin Jowett, the celebrated Oxford don.Jowett helped Hughlings into Oxford and subsequently recommended him to the East India Company when it sought faculty for the newly-expanded Elphinstone College. And so, only a few months after graduating in July 1856, Hughlings found himself aboard a ship to India, with the title of Professor of English for company. When Hughlings arrived in Bombay, hisplebeian background stood out in an environment populated by unhurried "gentlemen" who owed their positions to family connections. He was, a colleague sneered, "ill-made, splay-footed, short in stature, and endowed by naturewith irregular and unhandsome features". Worse still, he was much too "industrious", spending his free time "sat at home reading Sanskrit andcorrecting the lecture books of the pupilswho studied under him". This backbiting in Anglo-Indian society had no effect on Hughlings' standing at Elphinstone where he quickly became "exceedingly popular". To his students, he was the embodiment of virtues - past and present. Like the Hindu sages in their epics, he was selfless - a man who could have spent his weekends hobnobbing at Whites-only clubs but chose to spend them teaching his dark-skinned students the art of essay-writing. At the same time, like the Victorian sages in their textbooks, he did not live apart from the world. Not only was he an avid contributor to the press, he swept his students along too, setting up a reading room for them and then paying hefty subscription fees for newspapers and periodicals such asThe Times and The Economist out of hisown pocket, in the hope that understandingthe "questions of the day" would cultivate in them the "spirit of citizenship". As a result, even though he was only a little older than his students, Hughlings came to have an extraordinary influence upon them. By his own example, he taught them how to combine intellect and activity in the service of society - how words could remake worlds. It was a roster that generations would envy: RG Bhandarkar, MG Ranade, NM Parmanand, KT Telang, VA Modak, and DE Wacha, to name only a few. Because of his "enormous capacity for hard work", Hughlings also went on to play a "leading" role in the establishment of the University of Bombay, which celebrated its 169th anniversary this past week. His toil was not always appreciated, however. He was passed over for the role of principal at Elphinstone, faulted not only because he was too modest to "project" himself, but also because his students discomfited British officials who began describing these worldly characters as "professional traitors" on account of their unsparing criticism of British India's administrative failures. In 1870, Hughlings suddenly succumbed to dysentery, the ailment that carried away many of his compatriots. But the "professional traitors"he had groomed at Elphinstone continued to grow in stature: Their ranks eventually included editors of newspapers, judges of the High Court, vice-chancellors of the University of Bombay, and presidents of the Indian National Congress - and they sang paeans to him to the end of their lives. Wacha, for instance, who went on to serveas president of the Congress in 1901, described Hughlings as the "ideal teacher" who hadnurtured in him "a thirst for economics"and helped him become a prominent critic of British India's finances, through speechesand writings that drew attention to theembarrassing contrast between its generous expenditure on imperial projects and its paltry expenditure on social welfare. Hughlings' short but productive life is worth recalling because it complicates our understanding of colonial rule. We mourn the men blown away at the Esplanade, and should recall, too, the shaken spectator who helped educate the generation that would challenge the Raj. We should also ponder what has become of institutions to which men like Hughlings devoted their lives. Even now, decades after Independence, tour guides usually list colonial-era colleges and libraries as among the most notable sites in towns and cities of repute. But the condition of these historic structures, which housed teachers who, like Hughlings, made it their mission to show "kindness and friendship to the natives", is pitiable. Designed to convey the ennobling nature of education, their often-crumbling facades now symbolise bureaucratic apathy. In 2012, the University Grants Commission (UGC) inaugurated a scheme to grant colonial-era colleges "heritage status" and award them funds for preservation and restoration. Available reports indicate that only 19 colleges ever benefitted from the scheme, and even in these cases, the funding offered was minuscule, amounting to about Rs.11 crore in total. What can one hope for when the Archaeological Survey of India's (ASI) expenditure on conservation and restoration amounted to a mere Rs.313 crore in 2024 and when nearly a third of its positions are vacant per a recent report? This leaves vitalorganisations like INTACH (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage) having to do much with little. A great deal comes to depend onphilanthropic organisations - such as Tata Trusts, which has contributed twice towardthe restoration of the Cowasji Jehangir Convocation Hall in the University of Bombay's iconicVictorian-era campus. After Hughlings' death, his students, led byTelang, contributed generously from theirstill-paltry incomes to procure a handsome oil painting of their beloved teacher. The portrait's whereabouts are now unknown, leaving us with no trace whatsoever of Hughlings's visage. This disappearance is a metaphor for our time: We have come to the point where we have started to forget that we have forgotten....