and completed in 1898. When Monier-Williams died in 1899, no financial provision had been made for running the museum. Gradually, the collections were dispersed: entomological and zoological collections to the University Museum; and many pieces to the Pitt Rivers Museum and the Ashmolean Museum. A summary catalogue of the museum was prepared by Mr. A. Rost (for a short handbook to the Institute, by Professor Arthur Macdonell, 1922, but never published). Accusations of racism The building was financed entirely by private donors in India and Britain, for the sole purpose of constructing an edifice to house study for and on the Indian sub-continent. There was consequently great controversy in 1968, when the University's governing council evicted the Indian Institute from the premises without compensation, and then made a gift of the premises to the History Faculty, which specialises in European history to the exclusion of Indian history. The government of India filed a formal protest on behalf of the families of the original donors, who felt defrauded by the University's actions. The Oxford University Student Union went further still, accusing the University administration of racism in the decision. The Institute's aim The aim of the Indian Institute was: The work of fostering and facilitating Indian studies in the University; the work of making Englishmen, and even Indians themselves, appreciate better than they have done before the languages, literature and industries of India. See also University of Oxford Departments of the University of Oxford Buildings and structures in Oxford Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies Hertford College Oxford Martin School (currently housed in the old Indian Institute building) Further reading A Record of the Establishment of the Indian Institute in the University of Oxford: Being an Account of the Circumstances which led to its Foundation (Oxford: Compiled for the Subscribers to the Indian Institute Fund, 1897) Symonds, Richard, Oxford and Empire: The Last Lost Cause? (New York: St Martins Press, 1986) The Oxford Chronicle and Berks and Bucks Gazette, 5 May 1883 Indian Institute Archives, Bodleian Library, Oxford Monier Monier Williams, 'Notes of a long life's journey', unpublished memoir, Indian Institute Library, Oxford. Evison, Gillian, 'The Orientalist, his Institute and the Empire: the rise and subsequent decline of Oxford University's Indian Institute', unpublished paper, December 2004. References External links Old Indian Institute, Broad Street, Oxford (including photographs) Indian Studies at Oxford from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies Indian Institute Library now