 Wheeler arrived in Bombay in the spring of 1944 . There , he was welcomed by the city 's governor , John <unk> , before heading by train to Delhi and then <unk> , where the headquarters of the Archaeological Survey of India were located . Wheeler had been suggested for the job by Archibald Wavell , the Viceroy of India , who had been acting on the recommendations of the archaeologist Leonard Woolley , who had authored a report lamenting the state of the archaeological establishment in the British @-@ controlled subcontinent . Wheeler recognised this state of affairs , in a letter to a friend complaining about the lack of finances and equipment , commenting that " We 're back in 1850 " . He initially found much to dislike in India , and in his letters to friends in Britain expressed derogatory and racist sentiments toward Indians : he stated that " they feed wrongly and think wrongly and live wrongly ... I already find myself regarding them as ill @-@ made clockwork toys rather than as human beings , and I find myself bullying them most brutally . " He expelled those staff members whom he deemed too idle , and physically beat others in an attempt to motivate them . 
