Charles Bruce is patron of the Scottish Centre of Tagore Studies. He manages an historic family property in Scotland which includes an internationally significant archive relating to British colonial history in India and South East Asia in the nineteenth century.
He is descended from James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, who served as Viceroy of India (1862-63) at the time of Tagore’s birth; and from his son, Victor Bruce, 9th Earl of Elgin, who was also appointed as Viceroy (1894-99), and who met MK Gandhi in London in 1906 while serving as Secretary of State for the Colonies.
Charles Bruce has maintained his family connections with India. He is Chairman of the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust which is overseeing the restoration of the Scottish Cemetery in Kolkata. In 2009 he represented the City of Edinburgh at the Kolkata International Book Festival where he gave the British Council Lecture on the Scottish origins of the Bengal Renaissance.
He has subsequently lectured on the historic connections between Scotland and India at Presidency and Calcutta Universities. He is currently participating in a UKIERI research programme on the development of Calcutta as Asia’s first globalised city, Narratives of Migration and Exchange, led by the University of St Andrews and Presidency University, Kolkata. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the International Academic Forum (IAFOR).
Background
MA in Economic and Social History, University of St Andrews.
MSc in Spatial Planning and Sustainable Urban Design, University of Dundee.
Article on the ScoTs website