On August 9, Dr. Zareer Masani passed away. An eminent historian, he dedicated much of his later life to providing a holistic view of the British Empire in India, countering many of the post-colonial culture-war perceptions of British imperialism.

Born in India three months after independence from Great Britain into a family, or rather as he called it, “two families, as proud of their services to empire as of their resistance to it.” he was the son of the key independence movement politician, Minoo Masani—a confidant and rival of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru—and the grandson of Sir Rustom Masani, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bombay and the first Indian to hold the position of Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai.

Moving to the United Kingdom in the 1970s, Zareer achieved a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford and spent several decades working as a current affairs producer for the BBC.

He published four books in his lifetime, including a biography of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi and a 2012 memoir entitled And All Is Said: Memoir of a Home Divided. His seminal work, a biography of Lord Thomas Macaulay, was published the following year. Dedicating it to his “History teachers in Bombay, who were proud to be Macaulay’s children,” the book provided an insightful analysis of the life of Lord Macaulay, the Victorian administrator primarily responsible for introducing Western education to India.

The British Empire was, as Zareer saw it, a mixed bag: full of good as well as bad. As he told the prestigious Cambridge Union during a debate:

Looking back over the last several millennia, Empire has been the default mode of governance for all aspiring peoples, tribes, nations—and some empires have been more benevolent; more inclusive than others…the British Empire has been probably the most benign and most inclusive.

Dr. Masani fundamentally pushed back against much of the modern, skewed, and one-sided historiography of the British Empire. One example of this is the bestselling book by Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India. As the title suggests, it paints the British as singular and unspeakable villains on the Indian subcontinent. Zareer, in fact, deconstructed its highly selective and misread sources during a talk with Shashi Tharoor at the Times Literary Festival in Mumbai. He also recognized and publicized how the British saved India’s classical history, the strides in women’s rights made during the Raj, and much more.

Additionally, Dr. Masani—having come to the same conclusion as myself and many eminent academics like Lord Roberts and Dr. Tirthankar Roy contributed to exonerating Sir Winston Churchill from the ahistorical accusation that the great British statesman had engineered or worsened the Bengal Famine of 1943.

Nonetheless, Zareer never wavered from highlighting the evils of British rule in India as well. For example, he presented BBC Radio 4’s documentary on the Amritsar Massacre of 1919. 

In another attempt to provide a balanced analysis of the British Empire, Zareer joined the Ethics of Empire project at the McDonald Centre, a research institute at the University of Oxford, in 2019. Founded by Dr. Nigel Biggar, the Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at Oxford, two years earlier, cancel-culture from many academics (including those from Oxford, Cambridge, and King’s College London) tried to have the project shut down.

As Dr. Biggar told me of Zareer: 

Because of the campaign to ‘shut down’ the ‘Ethics & Empire’ project in December 2017, the two historians involved—including the one who had co-designed it— jumped ship. This threatened to sink the project altogether. Zareer was the first of four new historians to get on board and keep the endeavour afloat. I am enormously grateful to him for his support at a time when I felt beleaguered.

Zareer subsequently published his paper, “The British Raj: An Assessment,” for the 2022 conference of this project republished by History Reclaimed. His work there summarised his contributions to the analysis of the British Empire in India: the legacies of both the Raj and the previous East India Company rule were complex. In his own words:

India exemplified a model of indirect governance that the British Empire perfected and which lingers on in UK multiculturalism today. The key was the collaboration of local elites, who ran most of the administration and graduated to its uppermost circles. Their support was crucial to the survival of empire, despite serious challenges like the 1857 Mutiny, and was based on the self-interest inspired by stable governance, the rule of law, efficient, uncorrupt administration, protection for property rights, economic modernity and representative institutions.

I first met Zareer in February 2023 when we met for tea at his home in London. We discussed and planned to coauthor a biography of Robert Clive. Unfortunately, due to health complications on both sides, this project was put on hold indefinitely. 

Dr. Masani had a profound impact on my career and very much acted as a mentor. It was he who introduced me to Richard Langworth, Senior Fellow at Hillsdale College. From there, my first piece of work in the academic world was published, in large part thanks to Zareer.

He was well published in many outlets, including The Telegraph, The Spectator, History Today, and more. His research and biographies stand out in their insightful analyses. Often outspoken, he was never afraid to speak his mind and the findings of his research. 

Goodbye, my dear mentor—but more importantly, my dear friend.

Andreas Koureas is an aspiring economist and historian. He is currently studying Political Economy at King’s College London. His main research focus is on Winston Churchill and the British Empire. He has written for publications such as The Spectator and academic institutions like Hillsdale College. He is writing a paper on the 1943 Bengal Famine for a peer-reviewed journal later this year. Follow him on X: @AndreasKoureas_.

Image:  Paul Prescott / Shutterstock.com.