James Thomason

Who was James Thomason?

James Thomason was a British colonial governor. He was British Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces in India and founder of a system of village schools.

The son of a British clergyman stationed in Bengal, Thomason was educated in England, but he returned to India in 1822. He held numerous positions there, including magistrate-collector and settlement officer in Azamgarh and foreign secretary to the government of India. In 1843 he was named Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, and for the next 10 years he served in that post, improving communications, police protection, and social services. By 1853 he had also established a system of 897 locally supported elementary schools in centrally located villages that provided a vernacular education for children throughout the region. It was he who offered Mirza Ghalib a position of Urdu lecturer in a local college in Delhi in the times when the famous poet had hardly any work to survive. However he did not accept the offer as Mr. Thomason on the day of the interview made him wait for a while outside his office due to some unfinished work he was doing.