Two giants of American philanthropy, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, have had a complicated history in South Asia. The sources are considerable, but mainly on the grant-giver side, with little attention to the impact of the grants. The Rockefeller Foundation started its grants to India in 1916 and through 1947 worked mainly in the field of medicine. Later it broadened its interests to include agriculture and humanities. It curtailed most of its India interest in 1973. The Ford Foundation entered India in the 1950s. Douglas Ensminger, its representative, became the most powerful foreign representative of the foundation, calling himself a “change agent” and enjoying unusual access to Prime Minister Nehru. He presided over the expansion of Ford Foundation technical assistance, with over 100 foreigners working for it in India by 1970. Thereafter it decided to cut the number of foreigners working in India and change its mode of operation to one of grant giver. The golden age of the foundations was in the 1950s and 1960s, when they played a most important role; thereafter significant changes occurred.
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References
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1. See Government of India, Home Department, Medical, A, Feb. 1916, nos. 67-68. The tensions, even this early, between testy British officials jealous of their Indian preserve, and American “interlopers,” as they saw them, are evident in this file.
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A most useful study is George Rosen, Western Economists and Eastern Societies: Agents of Change in South Asia, 1950-1970 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).
3.
“Granthakar” is a pseudonym and may be Binoy K. Roy, since several passages in the article also appear in a book by the latter, US Infiltration in Indian Education (New Delhi: Perspective, 1973).
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4. L. C. Jain with B. V. Krishnamurthy and P.M. Tripathi, Grass Without Roots: Rural Development Under Government Auspices (New Delhi: Sage, 1985).
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5. Ian Martin, “The Ford Foundation in India and Pakistan, 1951-1970,” report no. 001970, Oct. 1971, Ford Foundation Archives (hereafter cited as FFA), New York.
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6. The foundations make the rules of access to their records. Files on touchy matters may be excluded, and there may be limitations on the number of files that may be consulted.
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7. See John 8:31.
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8. The literature on Christian missionaries in India and, more specifically, American missionaries is immense. Sushil Madhav Pathak, American Missionaries and Hinduism (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1967), is a useful starting point.
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9. Woman's American Baptist Foreign Mission Society 1919-29, Jubilee Fund, Folders 84-88, Box 7, Series 3, Lucy Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Rockefeller Family Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center (hereafter cited as RAC), North Tarrytown, NY. The general literature on the Rockefeller family and foundation cannot be cited here.
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10. W. S. Carter Survey of Medical Education, Boxes 7-10, Series 464, Record Group 1.1, Rockefeller Foundation Archives (hereafter cited as RFA), RAC; All-India School of Hygiene and Public Health, Boxes 5, 6, 7, Series 464, Record Group 1.1, RFA, RAC.
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11. When I visited the school on 17 Jan. 1997, I learned from Professor P. Chatterjee, in charge of the public health section, that about half of the sanctioned positions at the school are currently not filled, and a fuller explanation was not forthcoming.
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12. Paul Russell Reports 1934-41, Box 11, Series 464, Record Group 1.1, RFA, RAC.
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13. Memo of Interview, and Immediate Reactions to Conversation, Dean Rusk with Mr. Desai, Indian Minister of Finance, 12 Sept. 1958, Folder 2, Box 1, Series 460, Record Group 1.2, RFA, RAC.
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14. See Vellore-RF correspondence 1955, Folder 468, Box 51, Series 464, Record Group 1.2, RFA, RAC. In the same series, there are extensive exchanges with Vellore officials in Boxes 51, 52, 53.
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15. See Arthur A. Goldsmith, Building Agricultural Institutions: Transferring the Land-Grant Model to India and Nigeria (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), esp. pp. 49 ff.
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16. The files on Gilpatric's humanities work in India are Folders 713-79, Boxes 73-80, Record Group 464, Series 1.2, RFA, RAC.
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17. Douglas Ensminger, Oral History, 1972, FFA. Not only did Ensminger dictate long thematic accounts, but he appended many relevant documents that enrich his accounts.
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18. See Goldsmith, Building Agricultural Institutions, pp. 56 ff, for a succinct review of the problems and the literature.
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19. See Staples, Forty Years, pp. 23 ff and passim.
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20. This is evident in the Ford Foundation Grant Files 58-58, University of Delhi; 59-05, University of Baroda; 59-16, Aligarh Muslim University. See also F. Champion Ward, Oral History, FFA. All this is not to say, however, that efforts at broadening Indian education should not have been made.
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21. The endless Ford Foundation Grant File on the Calcutta Metropolitan Planning Organization is 61-217, and there are numerous reports on the project as well in FFA. I discussed the achievements and shortcomings of the project with S. K. Roy, Calcutta, 21 Jan. 1997, and Nirmala Banerjee, Calcutta, 19 Jan. 1995. Both were Indian participants in the project.
22.
22. Dean Rusk to Ellsworth Bunker, 22 July 1960, excerpts from letter, Folder 3, Box 1, Series 460, Record Group 1.2, RFA, RAC.
23.
Although I agree with Bird's account, there is a problem with some of the documents he cites since no author is indicated on them. See Peter Coleman, The Liberal Conspiracy: The Congress for Cultural Freedom and the Struggle for the Mind of Postwar Europe (New York: Free Press, 1989), pp. 220-225, 246-247.
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24. Discussions with Francis X. Sutton, Dobbs Ferry, New York, 15 Aug. 1996, and Eugene Staples, Washington, D.C., 8 Aug. 1996. The former knew more about these contacts, the latter only about what happened after the public revelations. The Ford Foundation Grant File for the CCF is 57-395 and contains extensive documentation about this tale from the 1950s to the 1970s. See also Ensminger, Oral History, Box 1, A, 17, “In What Ways Did the CIA Issues Affect the Ford Foundation's Work in Its Relations in India,” 9 May 1972. Ensminger mentions the Asia Foundation and Massachusetts Institute of Technology connections to the CIA, but not the CCF. He does sound somewhat disingenuous in this part of his account.
25.
25. A famous shot across the American bow was an issue of Seminar (New Delhi), no. 112, Dec. 1968, entitled, “Academic Colonialism.”
