The importance of dissent

The authors tell us, in some detail, about Mahmood the educationist, whose experiences at Cambridge shaped the manner in which learning was imparted at MAO College

Syed Mahmood: Colonial India’s Dissenting Judge

Author: Mohammed Nasir & Samreen Ahmed

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages:  274

Price: Rs 699

The problem with biographies is that they either tend to be hagiographies or hatchet jobs. In Syed Mahmood: Colonial India’s Dissenting Judge written by Mohammad Nasir and Samreen Ahmed, however, the authors make it clear that their book is neither a hagiography nor an apologia, and a hatchet job it certainly isn’t.  It is, to my mind, a well-balanced biography of a man, who was a judge, educationist, teacher, philanthropist, linguist and poet — a polymath of the kind that the 19th century produced in