George Christopher Molesworth Birdwood

Sir George Christopher Molesworth Birdwood KCIE, CSI (8 December 1832 – 28 June 1917) was an Anglo-Indian official, naturalist, and writer.

He was the son of General Christopher Birdwood. He was born at Belgaum, then in the Bombay Presidency, on 8 December 1832.

He was educated at Plymouth Grammar School and Edinburgh University, where he took his MD degree. Entering the Bombay Medical Service in 1854, he served in the Persian War of 1856-57, and subsequently became professor at the Grant Medical College, registrar of the university, curator of the museum, and sheriff at Bombay, besides acting as secretary of the Asiatic and Horticultural societies.

His work on the Economic Vegetable Products of the Bombay Presidency reached its twelfth edition in 1868. He interested himself prominently also in the municipal life of the city, where he acquired great influence and popularity. He was obliged by ill-health in 1868 to return to England, where he entered the revenue and statistics department of the India Office (1871–1902).

While engaged there he published important volumes on the industrial arts of India, the ancient records of the India Office, and the first letter-book of the East India Company. He devoted much time and energy to the encouragement of Indian art, on various aspects of which he wrote valuable monographs, and his name was identified with the representation of India at all the principal International Exhibitions from 1857 to 1901. That notwithstanding, while chairing the Indian Section of the annual meeting of the Royal Society of Arts in 1910, he declared that there was no "fine art" in India. When a particular statue of the Buddha was adduced as counter-example, Birdwood is said to have responded: "This senseless similitude, in its immemorial fixed pose, is nothing more than an uninspired brazen image. . . . A boiled suet pudding would serve equally well as a symbol of passionless purity and serenity of soul."

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