Treatment of History in William Dalrymple's Works

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TREATMENT OF HISTORY IN WILLIAM DALRYMPLE’S WORKS

THESIS

SUBMITTED FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF

Doctor of Philosophy IN ENGLISH

BY SHEIKH SANA MARIYAM

UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF DR. RUBINA IQBAL

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH-202002 (U.P.) INDIA

2016

CANDIDATE’S DECLARATION

I, Sheikh Sana Mariyam Department of English certify that the work embodied in this Ph.D. thesis is my bonafide work carried out by me under the supervision of Dr. Rubina Iqbal at Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. The matter embodied in this Ph.D. thesis has not been submitted for the award of any other degree.

I declare that I have faithfully acknowledged, given credit to and referred to the research workers wherever their works have been cited in the text and the body of the thesis. I further certify that I have not willfully lifted up some other’s work, para, text, data, result, etc reported in the journals, books, magazines, reports, dissertations, thesis, etc., or available at web-sites and included them in this Ph.D. thesis and cited as my own work.

Date: (Signature of the candidate)

Sheikh Sana Mariyam

(Name of the candidate)

Certificate from the Supervisor/ Co- Supervisor

This is to certify that the above statement made by the candidate is correct to the best of my/ our knowledge.

Signature of the Supervisor

Name& Designation: Dr. Rubina Iqbal

Associate Professor

Women’s College

Dept. of English

Aligarh Muslim University

(Signature of the Chairman of the Department with seal)

COURSE/COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION/ PRE-SUBMISSION SEMINAR COMPLETION

This is to certify that Mr. /Ms. Sheikh Sana Mariyam, Department of English has satisfactorily completed the coursework / comprehensive examination and pre-submission seminar requirement which is part of his/her Ph.D. programme.

Date: (Signature of the Chairman)

Title of the Thesis : “Treatment of History in William Dalrymple’s Works”

Candidate’s Name : Sheikh Sana Mariyam

The undersigned hereby assigns to the Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh copyright that may exist in and for the above thesis submitted for the award of the Ph.D. degree.

Signature of the candidate

Note: However, the author may reproduce or authorize others to reproduce material extracted verbatim from the thesis or derivative of the thesis for author’s personal use provided that the source and the University’s copyright notice are indicated.

Acknowledgement

First of all, I would like to thank “Allah” the lord of the Alamin, the most gracious and most merciful, who gave me potential and courage to accomplish this work. I would like to dedicate this study to my parents, my husband and my lovely daughter.

I would like to pay deep reverence from the bottom of my heart to my supervisor Dr. Rubina Iqbal for her constant supervision. Her research acumen and motivation has always supported and enlightened me. I always feel free in her company. With her guidance and constant encouragement, I accomplished this work with success. Her moral support and masterly guidance was a constant inspiration for me throughout my research work.

It gives me immense pleasure to express my deep sense of gratitude and sincere thanks to Prof. Seemin Hasan, Chairman, Department of English, AMU; Aligarh who was gracious enough to furnish facilities to me to accomplish this work .Other teachers of the Department were available for valuable suggestion, advice and guidance.

I would like to mention here especially the name of my teacher Prof. Asim Siddique for his advice and guidance. I can never ever repay the debt I have incurred.

I acknowledge my thanks to the staff of the Seminar Library, Department of History, Seminar Library, Department of English and Chief Librarian, Maulana Azad Library, and his team of colleagues for their promptness in rendering their valuable help.

I would also like to acknowledge the fund granted by University Grants Commission in order to conduct my research.

Words fail me for the appreciation and support that I received from all my dear friends particularly Sumbul, Atiya, Ariba. They were very supportive throughout my research endeavor and helped me in overcoming all those gloomy phases which I encountered during my research work.

I find it my pleasant duty to express my extreme gratitude to my hostel colleagues and friends Farhat, Sadaf, Farah, Saika, Samina.

With profound sense of gratitude I take this opportunity to express my thanks to my beloved parents Zafar Mehmood and Masooda Khatoon . This academic venture would have been impossible without their constant, kind and generous support. They were source of inner strength for me. Their blessings have remained a constant source of enlightenment in my entire academic endeavor. Whatever I am today is because of their fervent prayers, loving care and sincere endeavors. They were the main source of my happiness and progress. The role of my maternal aunts Dr. Khalida Sheikh and Sajeeda Khatoon is also immense. Their affection and support continuously flowed throughout my research work.

It gives me immense pleasure to express my special thanks to my husband Zeeshan Talat for his remarkable patience, continual support, and understanding. He was always by my side during the critical phase in which this thesis was written. So he is worthy of the special gratitude.

I want to thank my grandparents Asghari Begum, Afroz Jabeen, Vakil ur-Rahman and Mehmood bin Mohammed for their blessings and support.

It is pertinent to acknowledge the role of my loving sisters Fatima and Hadiya and my younger brothers Mohammed, Umar and Bilal who encouraged and provided emotional support me through their love and affection. I will take the opportunity to thank especially my younger sisters Fatima and Hadiya who helped me by looking after my daughter at the time of my study and helping me by giving valuable suggestions and also other miscellaneous help. I can blindly trust them in any phase of my life.

I would thank my aunts Sameena Afroz and Mehmooda Bano for their care and support during my stay in Aligarh. I am really thankful to my cousins Anam, Madeeha, Sania and Zainab for their continuous motivation and support.

My work is incomplete if I do not mention the name of my daughter Khadeeja who was deprived of motherly attention and care during my study. My little angel was also one of the driving forces and strength in completion of this work.

Sheikh Sana Mariyam

ABSTRACT

William Dalrymple is a popular writer and art historian. He is known for his travelogues and historical narratives. He is also very active in the field of journalism. Dalrymple’s major publications include: In Xanadu: A Quest (1989), City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1993), From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (1997), The Age of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters(1998), White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (2002), The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 (2006), Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (2009), and Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan (2012).

Dalrymple has written articles, reviews, and commentaries that have been published in The Times, The New Statesman, The Guardians, The New York Review of Books and The Washington Post. He has successfully hosted various television shows and has done many radio documentaries. Besides, he is a regular organizer of the popular DSC Jaipur Literary Festival. Hence, Dalrymple is known not only because of his published historical works, but also for his active involvement in other literary fields.

This thesis Treatment of History in William Dalrymple’s Works aims to explore the strategies employed by the author in writing the history of Colonial India. His writings are the result of thorough combing of archival materials which he has found in various libraries of India. He keeps himself abreast with the trends of writing academic history as well as art history.

The thesis examines Dalrymple’s three works: City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1993), White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (2002), and The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty Delhi, 1857 (2006).This study critically analyses Dalrymple’s style of narration, use of rhetoric devices, his intention and strategies in writing the history of India. This proposed reading also studies these texts from the point of new historicism and subaltern historiography.

Dalrymple’s texts are fine examples of multiple genres intersecting each other. His works attract all kinds of readers whether they are lovers of history, romantic tales or travelogues. He shifts his works between genres, modes, and medium, hence, the structure of his work becomes very complex. His texts show an engagement with colonial discourses and his attempt to rewrite history from a new perspective.

Dalrymple’s style of writing history can be categorized as narrative history. It is different from the academic style of history writing. Narrative history writing allows the writer to present factual details in an interesting and enthralling manner. Dalrymple attempts to write the kind of history books that he himself admires and enjoys. They are based on

1 years of primary research. He projects serious and genuine historical details in an appreciative literary style. This presentation of raw facts of the past in a novel and lively manner is commendable. Dalrymple’s narratives draw attention of historians and literary critics alike.

The present study also focuses on Dalrymple’s treatment of the colonial past. Because of his British origin, his reading of the British colonial history in India becomes a challenging task. This reading highlights the author’s objective in writing Imperial history and looks at how consciously or unconsciously his personal prejudices and affiliations colour his narration. The study refers to various critical perspectives such as new historicism and subaltern historiography to prove its point. The writer is the byproduct of the culture and society of his time, thus his works are irrefutably influenced by those ideologies. The reference of subaltern historiography is also important in the study as it focuses on Dalrymple’s method of writing history. He uses various individual narratives to construct his meta-social and political narrative.

This thesis is divided into six chapters.

The Introductory chapter gives an overview of the concept of history and how it has been defined by scholars and historians. The word history has been derived from a Greek word “historia” which means inquiry, and knowledge acquired through the investigation. The historian J Anderson defines history as a series of past events which are connected with a particular person or thing. E. H Carr defines history as a dialogue between the present and the past.

The thesis takes into account various philosophies of history to prove its point. The traditional school of history suggests that the task of the historian is to give factual details. It advocates objectivity in writing history. A nineteenth century historian Leopold von Ranke says that divine providence will take care of the meaning of history and the task of the historian is only to present the details as he encounters them in his observations and readings.

The German philosopher Signor Croce says that all history is contemporary history, which means that the historians enquire, analyze and synthesize past events from the eye of the present. On the contrary, the post-modern historian Hayden White rejects the traditional idea of writing history. White believes that history involves narratives. After enquiring the past events, historian plots the whole events through narration to suit his purpose. He gives a formal explanation of the causes and consequences of those historical events after plotting their episodes.

This chapter also takes into account biographical information about the author and his works. His travel books and journalistic writings are also part of the corpus of his written 2 works. His books The Age of Kali and Nine Lives are result of his involvement with journalism. This chapter also contains a brief introduction of Dalrymple’s recent book The Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan which deals with the British attempt to conquer Afghanistan as its colony in the medieval time. It also incorporates small details of his upcoming book The Anarchy: India Between Empires 1739-1803. This chapter also talks about Dalrymple’s contemporaries such as Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth and V.S Naipaul and shows how he is different from or similar to his contemporaries.

Chapter two is Review of the literature. It is a review of existing literature available on Dalrymple in the form of articles, books and interviews. This is an attempt to summarize the studies conducted on Dalrymple and his works so far. It also takes into account those materials which have been consulted in the course of this research on William Dalrymple’s texts. The details of websites are also included which have been accessed in the course of this research.

Chapter three deals with Dalrymple’s book City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1993). This travelogue has won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and The Sunday Times Young British Writers of the Year Award for brilliant portrayal of the past and the present of the historic city Delhi. This study highlights Dalrymple’s masterly narration and his controlled way of exploring and unraveling hidden and suspended stories of the past.

According to Dalrymple, Delhi is one of the oldest cities of the world and has passed through many tumultuous phases since the time of Mahabharata. The writer shows two faces of Delhi-- Old Delhi and New Delhi. Both are totally different from each other. He discovers untold tales in every nook and corner of Delhi. This book can be studied at two levels- as a travelogue when the writer shares his observation about Delhi as a traveler and then as a historical narrative when the writer unveils many concealed layers of Delhi’s history from ancient to modern time. He starts his narration of Delhi as a mythological place called Hastinapur as narrated by Vyasa in Mahabharata. He talks about the reign of Mughals and also about the period of British rule in India. This city has witnessed the rise and fall of Mughal Empire and has looked at how Delhi was overpowered by the British regime. All these incidents have transformed the face of Delhi beyond recognition. Instead of retaining its grandeur as a great center of civilization, today it has metamorphosed into a metropolitan city.

As a narrator Dalrymple talks about his visit of Delhi along with his wife Olivia. He recounts his lodging at Puri’s place and writes about his bitter sweet experience of Delhi through his interaction with various individual characters. He meets local people such as a taxi driver, a Persian scholar, Dr. Jaffery, a eunuch, a courtesan and joins their narratives to write the history of Delhi. Dalrymple conveys his experiences through a series of stories which connect the past and the present of Delhi. The writer shows his 3 special attraction towards various old buildings of Delhi and appreciates Mughal as well as British architecture. He highlights different shades of Delhi by taking into account the lives of the eunuch, dancing girls, and courtesans who are an integral part of Delhi’s history but have never been given importance. He uses their individual narration to retell their story from their perspective.

The study highlights Dalrymple’s fascination with Indian myths, legends, and monuments. City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi is replete with the gendered and sexual portrayal of Mughal court and its decadence. Western travel writers usually give a stereotypical presentation of India in their travel books. This is a common trait among western writers who visit their former colonies. They adopt a superior approach and convey the colonial ideology of British benevolence and superiority and Dalrymple seems to be no exception here.

The fourth chapter of the book deals with Dalrymple’s book White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India (2002). It is Dalrymple’s first attempt at narrative history. The book shows the historical background of Hyderabad of the eighteenth century. The tale revolves around the relationship and marriage of a British Official James Achilles Kirkpatrick with an Indian lady Khair un- Nissa. She is a young Muslim woman from a noble family of Hyderabad. The story opens in Hyderabad and covers a span of 8 years from 1797 to 1805. Dalrymple found this romantic story in the archives of Hyderabad and gave it a subtitle “the story of love and betrayal”. This story highlights the power of love which can transcend the boundaries of culture, tradition, race and class. It shows how love can surmount all hurdles. Kirkpatrick converts to Islam and becomes a white Mughal by adopting the Indian life style for sake of Khair un-Nissa. His motives are suspected and he is charged of betrayal against the British.

The text also highlights the historical relationship between the British and the Indians in the eighteenth century. This period is known for the British attempt to familiarize themselves with Indian culture and tradition and their initiative to build friendly relationship with Indians. The association of Kirkpatrick and Khair-un- Nissa is symbolic of the relationship between the British and the Indians.

In White Mughals, the author involves the first person narrative but he does not figure as a character here. An attempt has been made to view this book in the light of post-modern perspective of writing history. Hayden White calls it narrativising history. It is a result of selection, emphasis, and interpretation of the events of the past. The text explores the relation of imperialism and its legacy to its former colonies.

The chapter focuses on those historical writings that have studied the details of the intimacies between British and Indians through these types of relationships during the

4 eighteenth century. These European writers capture narratives of closeness and celebrate them in their writings.

They commemorate the eighteenth century as a period of multiculturalism. Feminist historian Ann Laura Stoler in her article “Tense and Tender Ties” published in Journals of American History questions these “sentiments of private nature”. These emotional approaches have helped not only in the ambitious plan of empire building and expansion but also in creating a ground for sustaining Raj on an alien land by entangling with the roots of India.

The second historical narrative written by William Dalrymple is The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 (2006). It becomes subject of the fifth chapter. The book is about the end of the Mughal period and the emergence of the British Raj in India. The period of 1857 in India is known as a period great political upheaval when natives had rebelled against imperialists and their ruthless administration. As the title The Last Mughal signifies, it also takes into account the last days of the Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar II. The whole plot has been beautifully woven to give a complete picture of the scenario before and after the revolt of 1857. It gives details of bloodshed and violence between the Indian and the British for their own vested interests. The writer connects with his readers by sharing with them his trouble in collecting material for this book. He highlights the originality and rarity of his resources. Those original Urdu and Persian manuscripts have never been utilized by any British or Indian historian whom Dalrymple has used in this text.

This chapter throws light on views of other historians about the Revolt of 1857. These historians express different opinions regarding causes of the mutiny. These interpretations sometime contradict each other. While historians like Veer Sawarkar define it as the War of Independence other discusses it as the religious war or Ghadr. Jawahar Lal Nehru describes it as a Peasant Revolt. Dalrymple also explores possible reasons of mutiny but endorses the religious nature of the war. He utilizes available materials to ascertain the fact that the revolt of 1857 was not a sacred war against any tyrannical rule but the barbarism of Indian sepoys. Dalrymple portrays them as outsiders who entered Delhi to jeopardize the life and property of British and natives alike. The cartridge issue added fire to the whole episode. It ended a golden period of love, trust and multicultural interaction between the two communities which had existed before 1857 uprising.

This chapter studies The Last Mughal in the light of new historical perspective. New Historicism emphasizes the parallel reading of literary and non-literary text of the same historical period. Dalrymple utilizes both literary and non-literary text in the process of writing history. New historicists argue that the hegemony of the place and period in which a writer is born and bred affects his work. This section reads Dalrymple’s attempt 5 to write colonial history in the same light and shows how his covert sympathies go with the British.

The writer tries to bring the history of the common people which is another trait of new historicism. The Last Mughal has been put in the framework of subaltern historiography because of its reliance on the narration of common people to write history from the margin. The historian focuses on the subjugated class such as peasants, oppressed women, workers and other marginalized sects of the society falls under the discipline of Subaltern Studies.

It is a new trend of historical research in modern Indian historiography which had developed during the 1960s. The pioneers of this approach are historians like Rodny Hilton, E.P Thompson, and Eric Hobsbawm. They have directly influenced the field of history writing by placing common people at the center of their studies. Here, the historian unravels the history of the ordinary people which has been pushed to periphery by the elite histographers. Subaltern studies have started as a critique of two schools of history: Cambridge school and the nationalist historiography. They have written about the history of nationalism by focusing on the history of elite classes. Thus subaltern studies start with an anti-elitist approach to write history from people’s perspective.

Like a postmodern writer, Dalrymple uses picture and maps to familiarize his British readers about an unknown place which was their former colony but they had never been there. This chapter also analyzes the rhetorical strategies used by the author to write history of imperial violence, bloodshed and to defend British presence in India. It studies the author’s style of narration which involves first person narration and autobiographical elements. There are diverse ways in which Dalrymple projects his character which includes: the protagonist, autobiographical character, and the narrator. The thesis analyzes Dalrymple’s representation of the relation between Indians and the British in a nostalgic and positive framework.

The concluding chapter summarizes the endeavors made in the previous chapters. It reiterates the important points discussed in the early chapters and asserts that William Dalrymple experiments writing history. Instead of confining himself to the traditional method of writing history, Dalrymple has evolved a new style of writing history which combines characteristics of serious research with the elements of literature. As a trained art historian his works retain an interest in history along with a zest to rewrite the past. But at the same time, his literary bent of mind breathes life in his historical characters. They seem to come alive on the black and white pages of chronology and add colour through their presentation. They appear to enact the whole drama with an assertion on the veracity of facts and events.

6 CONTENTS

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION 1-13

Chapter2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE 14-28

Chapter 3

CITY OF DJINNS: A YEAR IN DELHI 29-51

Chapter 4

WHITE MUGHALS: LOVE AND BETRAYAL IN EIGHTEENTH-

CENTURY INDIA 52-73

Chapter 5

THE LAST MUGHAL: THE FALL OF A DYNASTY, DELHI 1857 74-92

Chapter 6

CONCLUSION 93-99

BIBLIOGRAPHY 100-112

iii

Introduction

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

William Dalrymple is a highly accomplished travel writer and a widely read historian. He was born in Scotland in 1965 and was brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He received his education at Ampleforth and Trinity College, Cambridge. Here, he was initially a History Exhibitioner then a Senior History Scholar.

The writer is married to artist Olivia Fraser and has three children. They now live on a farm outside Delhi. William Dalrymple‟s popularity is not confined to history and travelogues. He shows his genius by handling multiple genres simultaneously, which makes his work complex. He shifts from travelogue to narrative history with marvelous ease.

Dalrymple is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Asiatic Society, and founder and co- director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. He is a regular contributor to the New Yorker, the Guardian, the TLS, and the New York Review of Books, besides being the Indian correspondent of the New Statesman. His inspiration for writing travelogues comes from British travelers Eric Newby, Robert Byron, and Bruce Chatwin.

Dalrymple wrote his first book when he was twenty-two years old. It was entitled In Xanadu: A Quest (1989). This book narrates Dalrymple‟s journey on foot through the outward route of Marco Polo from Jerusalem to Mongolia. He also narrates the problems faced by him and his companions en route and records his observation about countries and people. This book won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award.

Dalrymple‟s next book is City of Djinns: A year in Delhi (1993), which has won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year. This book is a joint representation of travel writing and historical narratives. It focuses on the historical city Delhi and narrates its past and present which includes the period of the Mughals, the British raj, the Partition of India and even the Sikh riots of 1984.

1 Introduction

From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (1997) is a study of the demise of Christianity in its Middle Eastern homeland. This book has been awarded the Scottish Art Council Autumn Book Award for 1997. It narrates the journey through the Middle East undertaken by two monks John Moschos and Sophronius. It is an extraordinary journey which is headed more towards spiritual growth than the journey depicted in In Xanadu.

The author‟s fourth book The Age of Kali : Indian Travels and Encounters (1998) is a series of essays based on Dalrymple‟s travel across the Indian subcontinent. It deals with controversial issues of „sati‟, „caste‟, „political corruption‟ and „terrorism‟ and connects these ideas with Hindu belief of a time called “Kali Yug”.

After four books on travel, Dalrymple shifted his focus to writing of history in White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India. It was published in 2003 and was awarded the Scottish Book of the Year Prize in 2004. It was made into a motion picture, directed by Academic Award Winner, Ralph Fiennes.

Another historical narrative by Dalrymple is The Last Mughal: The Fall of Dynasty, Delhi 1857 (2006). It was described as „a masterpiece‟ in the New York Review of Books. It won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for History and India‟s leading literary award, the Vodafone/ Crossword award for Non- fiction.

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India was published in 2009. It won the Asia House Literary Award. Wendy Doniger wrote about this book in the TLS, “A glorious mix of anthropology , history and the history of religions , packaged in writing worthy of a good novel…Not since Kipling has anyone evoked village India so movingly. Only a brilliant writer like Dalrymple could bring off this astonishing and unprecedented revelation of the humanity of people on the farthest extremes of religious ecstasy” (web).

His latest text Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan 1839-42 (2012) is about the first Anglo-Afghan War.

Dalrymple himself states in one of his interviews that “I read travel writing when I was kicking off, as a student … Initially, I really liked British colonial writers like Robert Byron and Eric Newby and the comic element in British travel writings.

2 Introduction

Byron was also into history; his Road to Oxiana (about travels through Persia and Afghanistan) is to travel writing, what Eliot‟s Waste Land to poetry and Joyce‟s Ulysses is to the novel” (web).

In the history of travelogue writings, Robert Byron‟s travelogue The Road to Oxiana (1937) is considered as the first example of travel writing by a modern writer. This book is written in the form of a diary and gives an account of Byron‟s journey to the Middle East in 1933-34 in the company of Christopher Sykes. Another travel writer who has influenced Dalrymple is Eric Newby. He is considered one of the best authors in the canon of English travel writing. His works include A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush and Love and War in Apennines .

Newby‟s style of writing is inspired by the comic portrait of the Englishman abroad presented in the writings of Alexander Kinglake and Robert Byron. Newby‟s Short Walk is based on his arduous journey through the remotest parts of Afghanistan. It culminates in a dangerous assault on Mir Samir or Simirdar, an unclimbed glacial peak of 20,000 feet. Dalrymple‟s travelogues are artistic pieces that spring from the impulse to give shape to the past and to recreate the past in the present. A historical study of various travel texts helps to understand history as well as the personality of the individual travel writers; their attitude towards life and people , and the ways of governance in those periods among various other things. Travel literature can be studied to analyze and verify factual details and also to look at the experiences and the degree of subjectivity or objectivity in their writings .

In the contemporary situation, while writers are experimenting with the new style of writing, generic differentiations are becoming blur says , Linda Hutcheon. Fiction, history, autobiography, biography are intersecting to create hybrid forms, “fictionalised dialogues, memory, confession, therapeutic narrative, testimony, obituary, biography, autobiography, history, all these different modes jostle together self-reflexively in the postmodern space opened up by the mass market”(8). The contemporary writers attempt to indulge in historiography in fiction writing began with Salman Rushdie‟s Midnight’s Children . It was followed by writers like Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry, and Vikram Seth etc.

In Rushdie‟s Midnight’s Children, the protagonist Saleem is the first person autobiographical narrator who is „handcuffed to history‟ as he was born on the stroke

3 Introduction of Independence. This raises the idea of the relation of Saleem to his Nation. Rushdie questions the historical representation by foregrounding the underlying narratives of historical knowledge.

Rushdie employs allegory, metafiction, parody and magic realism to highlight certain Indian historical events. The historical elements present in the novel are The First world War, Jallianwallah Bagh massacre, Quit India movement, Partition of India, General Election, Indo-China War, Indo-Pakistan-Bangladesh War and the Emergency Period. Rushdie‟s history is arranged in time and space “abstracted, modified, enriched and made realistic through the portrayal of the corresponding setting and psyche of the human world” (210).

Amitav Ghosh is another contemporary whose fiction deals with the history of India. His novel The Shadow Lines is about the partition of India and merges history and literature. The writer depicts nationalism during colonialism in his novel. Ghosh‟s approach to history is inclined toward grasping facts and chronology and blending it with his creativity and narrative skills.

Vikram Seth‟s A Suitable Boy is set in post- partition India. The novel offers a satire on National politics in Post- independence national election of 1952. It also focuses on Hindu-Muslim conflict, the status of lower caste people such as the jatav, land reforms, abolition of zamindari system and many more issues of that time. These writers adopt a method of writing history which intersects with private lives; a blend of realism and fantasy.

Dalrymple, on the contrary, does not employs fiction while handling history. His writings are known for intersecting history with his personal experiences. He figures as a character and narrator in his texts. He experiments with various genres which include: travelogue, history, and collection of essays. Dalrymple is involved in writing narrative history. He leaves no stone unturned to get as many details as possible on the subject he is writing about. His works White Mughals and The Last Mughal are a result of his thorough research.

The proposed topic Treatment of History in William Dalrymple’s Works cannot ignore oriental readings of Edward. W. Said who points out “the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate theories, epics,

4 Introduction novels, social description, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, „mind‟, and destiny and so on”(2) in his book Orientalism .

Dalrymple‟s main focus is not orientalism but its traits are still visible in his works. Gramsci says that a set of ideology and institution always influence the people who live it. A person‟s identity is formulated in the context of his surrounding political, social and cultural atmosphere. It is called cultural hegemony. Said argues that this hegemony gives durability and strength to Orientalism. These sets of ideologies silently creep into the writings and are represented by the writer.

William Dalrymple‟s works can be classified as Non- fiction as his writings are more informative than fictional. Chris Anderson has used the term “literary non- fiction” which includes the essay, new journalistic writings, personal and informative write ups. Non-fiction is based on real life situation and experiences and it connotes truth for the general readers. But in literary analysis, it can be subjected to different critical approaches.

The writer‟s oeuvre is also marked by the characteristics of self- representation. It is unique in the sense that it helps the writer to connect with his readers. In In Xanadu: A Quest, he exhibits himself as a narrator who becomes an important link to describe the journey undertaken by the author on foot to Marco Polo. This art of self-representation is a common feature of almost all travelogues. It shares the writer‟s experience of travelling to distant lands. Dalrymple‟s self- representation in the field of travel and history can be compared to V.S Naipaul as both of them maintain their authority by means of self- fashioning in their works.

Rob Nixon‟s book London Calling: V.S Naipaul Postcolonial Mandrain projects the fact that Naipaul‟s prestige as a novelist has definitely assisted him in sustaining his position as interpreter of the Postcolonial world. His venture into travel writing and journalism has earned him a reputation of a “mandrain possessing a penetrating, analytic understanding of Third World Societies. In short, he has grown into an “expert” (4).

Dalrymple‟s endeavors in the field of journalism are reflected in his published works. In City of Djinns, he gives reference to his presence in Delhi as a

5 Introduction

“correspondent”. His expertise in journalism brings to fore the contemporary relevance of the author‟s knowledge and keeps his name in the public consciousness.

Dalrymple‟s text The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters negotiates with travel writing and journalistic reporting. It opens with an introduction and describes the work as a collection of peripatetic essays of ten years. It is based on his travel around the sub-continent. That is the product of journalism is evident from the acknowledgment of the text where Dalrymple writes, “Commissioned article from [him], and/ or have generously given permission for them to be reproduced,” (XV). Through The Age of Kali, Dalrymple compares the troubles of modern India with the beauty and erudition of the past.

This work has been divided into four great epochs. At present, India is in the throes of the Kali Yug, the Age of Kali. This work highlights the degeneration of India due to the end of British rule. Dalrymple writes, “ In Britain, there may have, been widespread celebrations marking fifty years of Indian Independence, but in India, there has been much less rejoicing” ( 83). This tendency of “raj revivalist” representation is manifested in The Age of Kali.

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India is a collection of essays. Each essay focuses on an individual and his connection with different religion in modern India ranging from Jainism, Tibetan, Buddhism, Sufism, to various facets of Hinduism. These essays are concerned with conflict between religion and modernity in contemporary India.

Before discussing the treatment of history in the works of William Dalrymple it is significant to give a brief overview of how the concept of history has evolved into an intellectual discipline and how it has been defined by various scholars and historians.

The word history has been derived from a Greek word „historia‟ which means inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation. Oxford English Dictionary explains the term as “the study of past event, particularly in human affairs”. A Manual of general history written by John .J. Anderson in 1876 defines history as “the whole series of past events connecting with a particular person or thing” whereas E.H. Carr suggests, “history is an unending dialogue between the present and the past” (55). The above

6 Introduction definitions give a clear insight into the fact of history and affirm that history is about recording of the past of human affairs with an inquisitive mind.

One of the greatest political leaders of world history, Napoleon Bonaparte proclaims that “history is a fable agreed on” (18).This definition emphasizes on the fact that history is nothing but a creation of a writer or historian as fable or story and it denies the possibility of objective truth in history.

A 19th century historian Ranke remarks that the task of the historian is “simply to show how it really was” (E.H Carr 3). He believes that divine providence will take care of the meaning of history if a historian take care of the facts . While Ranke emphasizes on the factual details while writing history, Voltaire announces that “history is nothing but a pack of tricks we play on the dead” (285). Voltaire‟s definition challenges the notion of truth in history and questions its authenticity. It indicates the problem of truth in history. He believes that history is written on the basis of documents written by various people of past which may not be correct.

Acton in Cambridge Modern History proclaims that “History is a unique opportunity of recording in the way most useful to the greatest number” (1) and adds that “history is tailored for its audience refashioned in each generation or after two generations”(1). In other words, he feels that history is a unique way to record human affairs of past for the sake of the people of the present; so that they can understand the causes and consequences of past events. He shifts focus from truth to its representation in the historical documents to appeal to the readers.

Another great philosopher Signor Croce says that all history is contemporary history because a historian is a product of the present and he witnesses past with the eyes of the present. It means that a historian belongs to the present and he enquires, analyses and synthesizes past facts from the eyes of the present only.

In the view of Carus, history is a critique, a means of projecting a different point of view where by assumptions both ethical and factual can be criticized.

Therefore , in spite of endless endeavor to define history throughout the ages, a comprehensive and all-inclusive definition of history is missing. History is related to human affairs, hence, there will always be room open to review the definition of history and rewrite its new significance. Each decade comes up with a new approach

7 Introduction to history by working on previously neglected sources and gives an entirely new significance to facts.

The recent postmodern approach to history writings employs narrative in history. In 1970, historian Hayden White had come up with the idea of narrative involved in history writings. He points out that it is not merely about the representation of facts and events but about its selection and arrangement. He emphasizes that the same historical event serves differently to various historians.

In other words, an event can be utilized by the historian as a beginning or the end depending on the intentions of the historian. He calls it the mode of emplotment. It is followed by formal argumentation where historian seeks to explain „the point of it all‟ or „what it all adds up to‟ in the end which he calls the formal argument.

Carus claims that human beings are inclined towards the artistic element and enjoy it. He finds a persistent tendency in children to play and says that children desire to see significant image in all sort of shapes. He explains this point by referring to the constellation where human beings discover different images such as dragon, scorpion because of imagination. Hence, imagination is fundamental to human nature. Curiosity also drives man to take interest in accidental happenings to people who are remotely connected and this is called „history‟. Thus, it is found that history moves to and fro between poetry (as a product of imagination) and the desire to know the past.

The historian is expected to tell a lucid story and most people want history to be interesting rather than a dry subject. Carus says that the temptation to tell a fascinating story introduced imaginary elements into history writings .The historian differs from the fiction writer because his synthesis is like a scientist based on evidence whereas a fiction writer is free to create or invent his story. The historian is not only submissive to facts but also keenly interested in searching them. This quest involves scientific investigation and verification. Terence Hawkes says:

The world does not consist of independently existing objects, whose concrete features can be perceived clearly and individually, and whose nature can be classified accordingly. In fact, every perceiver‟s method of perceiving can be shown to contain an inherent bias which affects what is perceived to a

8 Introduction

significant degree. A wholly objective perception of individual entities is therefore not possible; any observer is bound to create something of what he observes. Accordingly, the relationship between observer and observed achieves a kind of primacy. It becomes the only thing that can be observed. (437)

Hawkes gives a great structural insight into the writing of history. He says that every perception of an object is inherently biased. Hence, historical facts and events are perceived by a historian according to his will and colored by his discernment and insight. His every attempt to give impartial representation of facts and events are defeated because of his preconceived notion. Thus, Hawkes asserts that unbiased treatment of history is impossible.

Laurence Lerner believes that any piece of work whether it is history or fiction is governed by the ideologies and strategies of the author of the text. A text can have the influence of three contexts: its ideology, its strategies of writing and social reality. If any of these elements are eliminated its result will be over implication. A total rejection of positivism would be naïve- and as fanatical as it total acceptance. This means every person is affected by the ideologies of the time and place to which She/he belongs and this is reflected in her/ his works.

The second object which is important to learn is the strategies of writing. It means to enquire the reason as to why a writer has undertaken certain piece of work and how it fits into the social reality.

Lerner refutes the historian‟s claim to portray the actual picture of the past as his narration will always be guided by the free play of arbitrary imagination like a fiction writer. He finds history a picture which is partly a narration of events, a description of situations, exhibition of motives, and analysis of characters. And in the process of writing history Lerner finds Collingwood‟s view appropriate.

The first difference which Collingwood finds between the two (history and fiction) is that the historian is supposed to write about the true event which happened in past; it involves careful examination of the incident which is narrated by him whereas a fiction writer is free to create his story. Collingwood suggests that the

9 Introduction historian must use those materials which he finds useful and authentic. He says that a historian‟s picture must be confined to the space and time to which he is writing.

About the second difference, he says that all history must be consistent with itself and the only difference lies in their ideologies and selection of events by historians. Thirdly, a historian is allowed to say anything only on the basis of evidence. He must always question the authenticity of the inquiry and evidence.

Collingwood does not focus on difference between history and fiction like a skeptic. Instead, he draws a distinction between a skeptic and critic. He says that a critic will analyze and re-enact the historian thoughts to see if they have been well done. He queries the data and reopens a problem which the historian has initially accepted as settled. He has the reason to question that work which clearly shows that the historian has ignored or left certain data. On the other hand, the skeptic has a much easier task. He makes general observation and says that any of the problems reopened should not be regarded as settled. Collingwood says that history strives to be true and discusses the hurdles in writing any piece of history as Dalrymple has done in almost all his historical writings.

Dalrymple‟s style of writing is governed by post-modernist characteristics. He explores a new style of writing history rather than the traditional one. From the present study, it becomes clear that though he keeps himself abreast with the trends of academic history by employing various primary and secondary source materials, his approach to historical facts and his manner of presentation is different . He goes with the new style of writing history which employs „narratives‟. In other words, Dalrymple writes history in the style of a fiction writer who narrates the plot of a story. In doing so, he owes to the historian Hayden White.

In White‟s view, narratives have been viewed as a form of discourse, rather than a product of theory or as the basis for a method. The narratives are used to represent historical events. It depends on the primary aim of the author how he describes a situation, analyzes a historical course, or tells a story. The amount of narrative in a given piece of history will differ and its function will change depending upon how the event has been conceived; as an end in itself or only as a means to attain some other end.

10 Introduction

The amount of narrative will be greatest if one aims to simply tell the story and least if he intends to provide an analysis of the events. If history aims at telling a story, there arises a problem about the narratives and truthful representation of the historical events. The process of telling a story is common in “imaginative discourses” such as fiction and history. The distinction between history and fiction lies in their content rather than their form. The subject matters of historical stories are real not imaginary events. These incidences are not created by the writer rather explored and researched. Hence, White finds that the task of a narrative historian is to investigate the documents to determine what is true or the most plausible story that can be narrated with evidence. In such condition, the narrative is not a byproduct of a historian‟s creative talent rather an outcome of proper application of historical method.

Narrative discourses are the artistic portrayal of true events and add nothing to the content of the representation. Hence, it is a projection of the structure and process of the real events. This representation resembles the events which it is narrating; hence it can be taken as a true account. The story narrated, is the “mimesis” of the real story. White opines that if the narrative historian is faithful to details of the historical facts and has written it after thorough research, then his work must be considered equivalent to the works of academic books of history.

In the light of above arguments of Hayden White, it has been concluded that Dalrymple‟s narratives are based on intensive combing of archives in libraries and museums. There is no doubt about his research and method of verifying facts which he also shares with his readers. He has evolved a new style of writing history which infuses first person narration based on serious research with the elements of literature. His works keep alive interest in history with his zest to rewrite past as an arduous researcher. But at the same time, his literary bent of mind breathes life in his historical characters. They seem to come alive on the black and white pages of chronology and fill them with colour. They appear to be enacting the whole drama in front of readers with an assertion on the veracity of facts and events.

Dalrymple‟s approach to history is that he enjoys and admires writing history in the form of a story which gives it a literary touch and at the same time, his books are based on years of primary research. Dalrymple in an interview with Times of India

11 Introduction correspondent Lata Srinivasni says that, “ I try to write the kind of history books that I enjoy and admire- which is based on years of primary research but which is written with a lightness of touch and a literary style which reads as well as any literary novel. To be able to take history and turn into a work of literature is a wonderful thing” (web). Dalrymple lays emphasis on a kind of history book which provides knowledge of the past events in an artistic style which makes history interesting for the reader. And his works are the fine amalgamation of history retold in a new artistic style. (Web)

12 Introduction

Work Cited

1. Carr, Edward Hallet. What is History? 2nd ed. London: Penguin Books, 1987. Print.

2. Dalrymple, William. The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters. India: Penguin Book, 2004. Print.

3. www.williamdalrymple.co.uk

4. Durant, Will. The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the Great Philosopher. 2nd ed. New York: Simon& Schuster,1999. Print.

5. Haweks, Terence. Structuralism and Semiotics. California: University of California Press,1977.Print.

6. Hutcheon, Linda.“Postmodern Provocation: History and „Graphic‟

7. Literature.Web: tspace.library.utoronto.ca, 2nd Feb 2012.

8. Joshi, Rita.“Travel in History and Geography: An Interview with William Dalrymple. World Literature Today, 87.2, 2013, 14-18. Print.

9. Nixon, Rob. London Calling: V.S. Naipaul, Postcolonial Mandarin. USA. Oxford University Press, 1992. Print.

10. Rushdie, Salman. “John Berger”, Imaginary Homeland: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. Random House, 2012. 210.Print

11. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Press, 1978. Print.

12. Srinivasni, Lata. “William Dalrymple on Turning History into Literature”. Web: m.timesofindia.com. Jan12, 2013.

13 Review of Literature

Chapter 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

William Dalrymple is an acclaimed writer and a historian who is known for his extraordinary ability to evoke the lost worlds of past in a powerful and readable style. As a scholar of history, he has written many award winning books on a variety of subjects. His works include: In Xanadu: A Quest(1986), City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi(1993), White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India (2002), From The Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium (1997), The Age of Kali: Indian Travels and Encounters (2005), The Last Mughal: The Fall of Dynasty 1857 (2006) and a recent one Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan1839-42 (2012).

The peculiar feature of the work of William Dalrymple is his handling of multiple genres and making even most recondite historical issue alive with his treatment of history. Darlymple‟s texts show a marked shift between genres and modes. He transposes from travelogue to narrative history with remarkable ease. The author involves himself in the two genres simultaneously and they intersect each other in his works. For a critical study of Dalrymple‟s works, his travel writing, narrative history, and collection of essays may appear little but when taken together for research, it engages in the crucial questions of power dynamics, politics of representation and cultural encounters.

Not much research has been done on Darlymple‟s works, although there are series of reviews and interviews which have followed his publications. The scarcity of available material was the biggest problem and it made the task in hand quite challenging. Online articles and interviews were great resources. Dalrymple has been lauded by scholars and critics for his interesting way of writing history. He is primarily known for writing narrative history about his interaction with Colonial and Post Colonial India. It was interesting to investigate his treatment of history as a British historian was exploring one of its former colonies.

To begin with the first chapter of this thesis entitled “Introduction”, Edward Hallett Carr‟s What is History? was indispensible. It helped in understanding the concept of history and its evolution and development in different ages. It is a study of

Review of Literature popular historiography of nineteenth century written by English historians. These historians give an “empiricist” view, which claims that objectivity in the process of writing history is possible.

Carr‟s first chapter, “The Historian and his Facts” points out that historian and facts are inseparable from each other. To prove this point, Carr begins by a question, “What is history?” He gives various definitions of history provided by different school of thoughts. Ranke is a nineteenth century historian who says that divine providence will take care of the past and our job is “simply to show how it really was”. The positivist historians claim history is science. But on the contrary, Carr deviates from the objective approach to history and asserts the presence of subjective element in the treatment of historical truth.

Carr says that “History consists of a corpus of ascertained fact” (7) and these facts are available to historians in the form of documents and inscriptions. The task of the historian is to collect and use them according to his will. He proceeds further by raising another important question, “What is historical fact?” And argues that there are some basic facts which are the same for all historians and all historians agree to. He calls it a skeleton of the historical body. The flesh and skin may vary according to perspective, aim and mission of different historians.

The basic facts of the past speak for themselves only if a historian chooses them for citing them in his work. In other words, according to Carr it is the historian who creates historical facts as history is a constant process of interaction between a historian and his facts.

Dalrymple‟s historical representations are categorized as narrative history. The works of Hayden White are instrumental in understanding the concept of narrative history particularly his work Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth century Europe. Like a new historicist, White rules out the possibility of objective or scientific history and focuses on the role of narrative in making history meaningful. He provides a new perspective on nature and function of historical knowledge as he believes that history writing involves narratives.

The book has been divided into three parts: “The Received Tradition: The Enlightenment and the Problem of Historical Consciousness”, “Four Kind of

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“Realism” in Nineteenth Century Historical Writing”, and “The Repudiation of Realism in Late Nineteenth Century Philosophy of History”.

But the introductory part of the book is very significant. Here, White gives an insight into his investigation of the deep structure of the historical works. He says that his goal is to ponder over the historical works and analyze their verbal structure; to explain what these structures have represented. His approach is closer to a formalist than a historian.

White conceptualizes the process of writing history into four different steps which include: “chronicle or story”, “mode of emplotment”, “mode of formal argumentation” and “mode of ideological implication”. In the process of writing history the historian identifies the chronicle or the story which serves as the “primitive element” in the process of writing historical events. After determining the story, he plots the story. White says that every historical work even the most “synchronic” will be emplotted in some way.

There are four ways of emplotment: romance, comedy, tragedy and satire. To illustrate this point, White says that if the historical work has been represented in the form of a “romance”, then it will be “fundamentally a drama of self-identification symbolized by the hero‟s transcendence of the world of experience, his final liberation from it- the sort of drama associated with the Grail legend or the story of the resurrection of Christ in Christian mythology” (8-9).

White says that a historian explicates his story of the past by giving formal argumentation. It provides an explanation of what happened in the story. A Historian explains his point by constructing a “nomological-deductive-argument” or scientific argument. In other words, a historian explains his views by providing a scientific argument which can be analyzed into a “syllogism” or it can be said that historian has to prove his view logically. He further adds that a historian here serves both arts and science as he is engaged in both “investigative operations” and “narrative operation[s]”, in the process of representing “what happened” and “why it all happened”(8-9).

In chapter one of the first part of the book “The historical Imagination between Metaphors and Irony”, White begins by giving the details of historical

Review of Literature consciousness in the nineteenth century Europe. He discusses the problem of historical knowledge and offers an account of the development of various modes and theories of history during a specific period. White believes that the figurative devices and discourses which are used in literature also influence the whole mode of historical thought.

In the second part of the text, White discusses four kinds of “realism” practiced in historical writing during the nineteenth century Europe. He focuses on the historical works of eminent historians like Jules Michelet, Leopold Von Ranke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Jacob Burckhardt

In the discussion of French historian Michelet‟s Histoire de la revolution, White analyzes Michelet‟s intention and his understanding of the historical role of the French people in French Revolution. White says that Michelet romanticized the role of the people of France who had fought for the sake of their country. This is also the case of Ranke whom White attributes a “comic” plot. Ranke has visualized history as a process in which all the tensions are gradually harmonized. Hence, we can say that in both the cases, White is not interested in the plot of historical text but keen to observe the perspective of these historians.

This research has also taken into account the studies done in the field of subaltern historiography. Another important book which has been consulted in the course of writing this research work is Ranajit Guha‟s The Small Voice of History edited by Partha Chatterjee. It was instrumental in developing an understanding of subaltern perspectives which was essential in the discussion of Dalrymple‟s works.

Guha‟s essay “The Prose of Counter Insurgency” highlights how the “elitist bias” accounts colour all research and academic work in a particular field. It rejects uniform account of any movement because it suppresses many divergent voices inherent in any social, political movement.

His essay “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India” provides a thorough understanding of different types of historiography practiced in the academic study of the past. It talks about primary, secondary and tertiary historiography and shows how events of the past are interpreted and manipulated in the interest of the author and present political and social system. His essays

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“Nationalism reduced to official nationalism” and “The Small voice of History” are also very important to understand the tenets of subaltern studies.

Guha‟s book Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India is very informative in the course of studying subaltern studies. It is based on data collected from various peasant revolts in the colonial period to evoke a theory of subaltern resistance. Guha begins by saying that the history of peasant insurgency in India is as old as colonialism itself. He proceeds further by describing the “discourse on peasant insurgency” and “discourse of power”.

Besides these primary sources, various articles and books on Dalrymple‟s works have been consulted to place his works in the larger critical perspective. The academic article by Antara Datta on Dalrymple‟s travelogue was published in the special issue of the Yearly Review, Texts Travelling Text. Her article “Dalrymple in the Eye of the History Storm” is an awe-inspiring appraisal of City of Djinns and The Age of Kali, and applauds them for their contribution to literature. She writes “[Dalrymple] is aware of colonial baggage that the [travel] genre carries, and he redeems, apart from history, the genre too, which has been doomed to academic pigeonholing since Said. Through his writing and references, Dalrymple exposes cultural hierarchies that are more equitable” (145).Datta finds that Dalrymple “use[s] the travel form to address some of the most crucial debates of our times” (135), particularly in relation to history in a “politically recuperative” project (136).

The other articles are directed towards examining his text as narrative history rather than travelogue. Karen Armstrong, a well – known historian of Britain appreciates White Mughals for its brilliance and calls it a poignant and compassionate story. Armstrong says , “White Mughals is not only a compelling love story , but it is also an important reminder , at this perilous moment of history , that Europeans once found Muslim society both congenial and attractive , and it has always been possible to build bridges between Islam and the West”(Web).

A. Savitri in her article, “William Dalrymple‟s The Last Mughal” published in An International Referred E-Journal of Literary Explorations focuses on the new- historical perspective of The Last Mughal. She finds that Dalrymple utilizes both literary and non-literary discourses in writing history of the 1857 revolt. He uses the new historical trait of parallel reading of both literary and non literary texts. In writing

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The Last Mughal Dalrymple uses material from newspapers such as Dihli Urdu Akbhar, Siraj ul Akbhar published during the revolt of 1857 along with The Mutiny Papers. The literary material used by Dalrymple is Shikastah (literary broken writing), Dastani-Ghadr by Zahir Dehlvi, Mirza Ghalib‟s Dastanbuy etc. written during 1857, they also give an insight into the revolt of 1857.

Savitri defines this text as a rare history book on Delhi which mourns the loss of heterogeneous culture and tradition of Delhi which was destroyed by the 1857 mutiny, “the usage of both literary and non-literary texts and his zeal to continue the search for the real historical past turns him as a historian who reinforces the theory of New Historicism” (436).

Another important article on William Dalrymple is “Post Orientalism and the Past- Colonial in William Dalrymple‟s Travel Histories” written by Paul Smethurst. He explores the “themes of hybridization, transculturation and boundary-crossing” in Dalrymple‟s travel writing. He examines Dalrymple‟s subject position as a western traveler writing travelogues on India which was once a British colony. Smethurst points out that Dalrymple‟s books such as City of Djinns are about the reconciliation of colonizer and colonized.

Bhavesh Kumar in his paper “Rediscovering Historical Narratives of Delhi: A Postmodern Reading of William Dalrymple‟s City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi” published in an online journal Third Front intends to examine the histographical representation of Delhi in City of Djinns. He says that this book is a non- chronological unfolding of Delhi‟s history, culture and tradition. Kumar also locates postmodern features in this book.

According to Kumar City of Djinns is a “non- chronological unfolding of the narrative of Delhi- its history, social life and customs , this prose piece not only digs deep in its past but also leads to an interesting exploration . . .”(91) . He examines critically the post modern characteristics in various narratives of Delhi.

Kumar begins his paper by giving an overview of history of Delhi and shows how Dalrymple explores the various facets of Delhi. He also pinpoints that Dalrymple in his journey of exploration of Delhi‟s history highlights and questions the discrepancy in periodization of history and its archaeological evidences.

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To illustrate his point, Kumar elaborates upon the narratives of Delhi focused by Dalrymple. The epic of Mahabharata proclaims the existence of Hastinapur bearing resemblance to ancient Delhi and the settlement of Indraprastha is similar to ancient Delhi. But the archaeological survey partially supports the evidence provided in the narratives of Delhi.

The history of Delhi is found in the writings about Tomar Rajputs but Dalrymple finds those evidences insufficient and unconvincing. He finds discrepancies in the periodization of the past of Tomar Rajputs and their archaeological details. Tomar clan had been displaced by the Chauhans which is evident in history. But the written material available in the account of historian Chand Bardai is exaggerated as facts have been sacrificed to highlight the heroic characteristics of the place, protagonist and events. His loyalty to Prithviraj Chauhan is evident as he was part of his court.

The establishment of Delhi Sultanate and the arrival of Islam is marked by Tughlaq‟s dynasty. But Dalrymple is interested in Sufism rather than Islamic fundamentalism as Sufism has focused on humanistic aspect in religion. Ibne Battuta‟s version portrays Tughalq in the positive light to get a reward from the sultan. Dalrymple highlights the paradoxical account of the personality of Mughals. Dalrymple calls Tughlaq a „tyrannical sultan‟, „the blood thirsty parricide‟ and he disapproves the regime of the sultan. He also condemns the Mughal Empire by focusing on the account of the travelers Francois Bernier and Niccolao Munucci. Kumar appreciates Dalrymple‟s portrayal of the history of Old Delhi of three thousand year which is a challenging task.

Another informative article was by Huma Yaqub “William Dalrymple‟s City of Djinns and the Hegemonic strategies of Travel Writing”. It lays emphasis on Dalrymple‟s use of oriental tropes and western hegemonic strategies to negotiate history and travelogue. It focuses on his projection of British colonialism in the positive light and the writer‟s biased description of Mughals as decadent and cruel rulers.

Yaqub begins her article by giving an introduction to travel writing and shows its popularity among readers. She develops the idea that travel writing plays a vital role in understanding distant and remote lands because human beings are fascinated to

Review of Literature know about other and distant lands and so she encourages the travel writers to explore new land for alien readers. Yaqub develops her point by referring to writers like Debbie Lisle who writes in her book The Global politics of Contemporary Travel Writing, that “All travelogues are based on a journey metaphor that expresses the common affliction of wanderlust- the need to go elsewhere…” (91).

Yaqub asserts that Dalrymple brings to the readers “an interesting slice of Delhi history through his travelogues, City of Djinns (1993)” (92). She finds that this book is an outcome of Dalrymple‟s research and stay in the historic city of Delhi where the author celebrates the unique features of this city which has witnessed many hardships but has not turned to ashes.

The critic compares City of Djinns with Twilight in Delhi written by Ahmed Ali. Yaqub says that both the writers have used the device of nostalgia but with a difference. For instance, Dalrymple has used „imperial nostalgia‟ to glorify the colonial past of Delhi whereas Ali holds British colonialism responsible for the ultimate ruin of the city of Delhi.

The book City of Djinns moves back and forth into history of Delhi and Dalrymple‟s present experiences of Delhi. It exhibits the writer‟s fascination for India and particularly for Delhi. Yaqub proves her point of usage of oriental tropes by providing instances from the text. In the description of medieval architecture, Dalrymple compares the tomb to an ageing courtesan.

Another example of the use of oriental trope can be seen in projecting voices of former British resident of colonial period such as Iris Portal and the Haxby sisters. They find India an exotic and exciting place and long for their stay in India. Dalrymple‟s complete submission to oriental trope is visible when he represents Old Delhi as a symbol of a decayed Mughal past. He describes colonial buildings with a sense of awe for its grandeur and superiority. Yakub emphasizes that Dalrymple captures the reader‟s imagination with anecdotes and helps to reformulate opinion about the British and the Mughals by giving a positive image of British and negative one of Mughals.

Yaqub claims that Dalrymple‟s City of Djinns is a discourse which attempts to justify imperial presence in India as he seems to be biased against the Mughal regime.

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He employs the western hegemonic strategy which represents British rule in India as a period of exchange of ideas and fusion of culture and architecture.

Amardeep Singh reviews Dalrymple‟s City of Djinns in his article “The Layers of History: William Dalrymple”. He finds this book more interesting than Sarah Macdonald‟s book Holy Cow. Singh appreciates Dalrymple for his art of making history interesting while writing about Muhammad bin-Tughlaq and referring to historical writings of Ibn Battutta which are dry accounts of history. The arrangement of chapters seems to be spiraling down in the consciousness of history from recent events to a distant past.

Singh is especially moved by the chapter based on incidence of 1984 when Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Dalrymple brings forth the condition and experiences of the survivors of various historical events to develop his narratives. The episode, where he interviews a Hijra [eunuch] is also very moving and gives a deep insight into their lives, emotions and struggle. Singh finds similarity in Dalrymple‟s description of Fraser‟s bungalow and Forster‟s description of Fielding‟s house in the novel A Passage to India. He finds Dalrymple‟s conversation with an Indian archaeologist in the book provocative and interesting while he discusses about the possible reality of the events described in Mahabharata.

Eminent historian Gyan Prakash‟s review on Dalrymple‟s The Last Mughal in The Nation was very useful in writing this thesis. Prakash starts his discussion by referring to E.M Foster's novel A Passage to India which highlights the relationship of an Indian Aziz and a British Fielding, a “ Briton sympathetic to Indians”. Prakash highlights the last line of the novel by quoting it “No, not yet” and the sky said “No, not there” (27) which negates the possibility of friendship between East and West.

Prakash writes that the British historians understand the chasm created among humans by dominance of one culture over another. He talks about those revisionist historians who reject Edward Said and the other post colonial critics who talk about French theory and argue that the British empire established Orient verses Occident, or East versus West oppositions in politics and knowledge. Prakash finds that these revisionist historians are uncomfortable with the political passion and theoretical languages of the post colonial critics. They try to justify the utility of one of the oldest

Review of Literature and practical forms of governance. They work towards lowering the “anti-imperial temperature” and favor old narrative history. They write

The Romans did it, the Spaniards did it, the Russians did it, the Chinese did it, and even the newly independent nations have done it. Everybody oppressed everyone else. Pax Britannica may have ruled over one-fifth of humanity, but the conquerors, soldiers, administrators and scholars were also human. Why bring in such abstractions as Orientalism and colonialism? Underneath it all, the story of the British Empire is a narrative of individuals caught up in human encounters between cultures. (26)

Prakash highlights revisionist historians‟ claim that Britons went to distant land to profit and conquer. But they were outnumbered by the local public and pitted against powerful adversaries in the 18th century India. As the Mughal Empire was powerful, the Britishers were not in the position to treat the natives as low. East India company‟s military position was not very strong; hence, they started mingling with the local population. They started adopting Indian style of dressing such as wearing native pajamas, grew moustaches and beards. They married native women and kept concubines. They started collecting indigenous texts and artifacts. Such interaction and immersion in other culture, language and artifact paved the way for the expansion of British Empire.

Prakash asserts that the revisionist historians attempt to reconstruct the portrait of the British rule. They were eager to maintain a distance from their imperial past but at the same time try to get some cultural benefit from it for their present. Prakash defines William Dalrymple as a revisionist historian whose The Last Mughal is a narrative centered on the events surrounding natives uprising of 1857 against British rule in India. According to Dalrymple this event marks the end of an epoch, “relatively easy relationships of Indian and Britons” and the onset of “hatreds and racism” during the nineteenth century Raj. Prakash quotes Dalrymple, “The Uprising, it is clear, was the result of the change, not its cause”(9).

After giving brief introduction of The Last Mughal, Prakash informs about the history of the nineteenth century when the uprising of 1857 started. At that time, British rule in India was already a century-old. The East India Company acquired effective military and political control over India. The Mughal king Bahadur Shah

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Zafar was no longer a ruler in the true sense of the word rather a puppet in British hands. All his powers were snatched by British administration. The activities of British Empire such as annexation of territories, establishment of court, institutionalization of settlements were causing restlessness among natives. British officials were engaged in spreading Evangelic Christianity which also created a sense of religious distrust. The issue of “greased cartridge” widened the gulf between the two communities. The Hindu and Muslim sepoys were part of British army and to open the cartridge, it was necessary to bite it which was greased by cow and pig fat which was meant defiling both Hindu and Muslims. By 10th May 1857, the mutiny took place.

The historian condemns Dalrymple for over simplifying the whole issue of 1857 Revolt such as clash of religious fundamentalism by referring to spread of Evangelic Christianity and cartridge issue. Dalrymple elaborates on the individual experiences of revolt. He writes that both Indian and British faced consequences of the revolt. It was the barbaric behavior of the sepoys who displayed their savage nature at that time. He quotes profusely from the mutiny papers the views of the common Delhiwallahs about 1857 uprising and says that even the elite class of Delhi did not support the mutiny.

Prakash says that Dalrymple tells this story with an eye on the current phenomenon of clash of civilization, where American led western world has waged a war with jihadi Islam. He sees the ghost of the past in the present good versus-evil war where innocent people are dying. Prakash finds that Dalrymple is impatient with current ideological war and is equally impatient with Edward Said and the post colonial critics. He sees these theories of orientalism and post colonialism as abstract concept but Dalrymple forgets to see that colonialism was fundamentally and inherently a violent system of governance, impregnated with the possibility of resistance and challenge.

Prakash feels it is wrong to regard the period of The Last Mughal as the end of cultural exchange and beginning of an epoch of cruelty and distrust because of the clash of religious fundamentalism. On the contrary, it is a result of imperial arrogance and evangelical influence that forced the sepoys to indulge in a life-death struggle for independence.

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The Interview of Dalrymple by Amrita Ghosh was also of great help in understanding works of the author. Not only , did he speak about the use of „mongrelized‟ language with mix influence of Urdu and Hindi in the English text with reference to City of Djinns but also about his perception regarding evolution of modern Delhi from Old Delhi. He treats Delhi as an onion and starts peeling its layers from modern Delhi to the history of British colonialism and the decline of Mughal period. He says that this book is an attempt to find fragment of each period and give voice to those who are marginalized for e.g. calligraphers, eunuchs and Sufis in modern time without any political power or wealth.

Dalrymple also spoke about White Mughals in this interview. He made Khair un- Nisa an important character of the novel but he was sorry to find that though these women were literate, they never spoke for themselves and record on them are available from male perspective.

He says that The Last Mughal is a sequel of White Mughals but not a direct one as it centers on the British-Indian relationship during the regime of last emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and the outbreak of the mutiny of 1857.

On the question that, “Do you think East and West really mingle?”, Dalrymple replies, “I think clearly a clash of the civilizations is not impossible, it can be brought about if the west strictly, America and Britain inflict their will and flex their muscle and insult and degrade the Islamic world enough, then a backlash of the sort that has happened once is certainly possible. (Web)

Another important book to understand Dalrymple‟s point of view is Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility, and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire edited by Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton who focus on those history books which explore the possibility of cross cultural relationship by exploring the past. Ballantyne and Burton find that this cross racial sexual relationship was a way to “connect” and “anchor” with native subjects, both “creolized and mestizo workings of Europeaness” (5).They assert that “the possibility of cross cultural emotional relationships has begun to be viewed as emblematic of imperial social formations that were unproblematically cosmopolitan comparatively innocent of imperial power and even more instructively, putatively “pre- racist” (6).

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Dalrymple tries to reconstruct the world of late eighteenth century Hyderabad where a British Official James Achilles Kirkpatrick embraces Islam and marries a Muslim noble woman Khair un-Nissa. Ballantyne and Burton find that, “Dalrymple‟s study has been enthusiastically received especially in England, where the book has been read variously as a genealogy of imperial cosmopolitanism, a celebration of multiculturalism, and, in some sense a recuperation of possibilities fashioned by empire building- again, apparently innocent of sexual violence and coercion of empire” (6).

Randolf G.S Cooper‟s review of White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century published in Modern Asia Studies explores about Dalrymple‟s love for research and appreciates his enthusiasm to tell an untold story to the world.

Narayani Gupta in Biblio is full of praise for Dalrymple‟s interesting way of writing history. Gupta suggests that The Last Mughal must be recommended for the students of history in India as supplementary reading. The student of history in India should know that there can be interesting ways of revisiting the past and there is more to the subject of history than to study revenue settlement and constitutional changes. Nicholas B. Dirks in his book The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain talks about British imperial past in India and says that historians and writers are now recreating a new picture of Empire by self-legitimizing and justifying British presence in India.

Another article which throws light on the intimate relationship of East and West was written by a feminist historian Ann Laura Stoler. Her article “Tense and Tender Ties” published in Journals of American History questions sexual relationship between east and west communities. Their relations helped not only in the ambitious plan of empire building and expansion but also created a fertile ground for sustaining Raj through entangling with the roots of India. Vincent Rafael called it “white love for brown affection”(56).

Rafael showed that this desire to marry Indian women was not motivated by personal emotions but with lust for power to dominate the social, political and economic order of the colonized country. Once they succeeded in attaining their desired goal, Indian were pushed to the periphery. They had been relegated into the

Review of Literature powerless role of savage subjects who were in desperate need of these enlightened white administrators as depicted in The Last Mughal.

The “intermarriage” plays a vital role in gaining access to the resources and lands of local communities. Hence, the era which Dalrymple celebrates through the medium of his book White Mughals was strategically constructed not spontaneously noticed.

In order to understand Dalrymple‟s works in subaltern and new historicist perspective, it is essential to understand its theories and practical applications. Horald Veeser‟s edited book, The New Historicism contains some excellent essays on new historicism by some eminent scholars like Stephen Greenblatt, Catharine Gallagher, Thomas Brook and Louis Montrose.

The present study will focus on Dalrymple as a historian and his treatment of history of India and especially British colonial past in India. It is very common with the British writers to give historical account of former British colonies such as India. And while writing about the British colonial past, their approach remain nostalgic and patronizing. These writers create the hierarchal order, and consciously or unconsciously place British at the top of the hierarchy. Dalrymple also represents British colonial past in India from a positive perspective. He joins hands with those British historiographers whose writings demonstrate the way to legitimize the barbaric image of the Indians who are in need to be guided and governed by enlightened West. Dalrymple talks about the primacy of religious factor while talking about the 1857 uprising and asserts the point that mutiny was the result of barbaric behavior of soldiers not a war of independence waged by masses. He failed to see the British policy of conquest, expansion and exploitation of India as a colony.

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Work Cited

1. Ballantyne, Tony. Antoinette M. Burton. Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Print.

2. Carr, Edward Hallett. What is History? Ed. RW Davies. 2nd ed. London: Penguin Books, 1961. Print.

3. Datta, Antara. “Dalrymple in the Eye of the History Storm.” Texts Travelling Text. Ed. Rimli Bhattacharya. Spec. issue of Yearly Review12 (2004): 135-47. Print.

4. Ghosh Amrita, In Focus: An Interview with William Dalrymple. Web. 20 Jan, 2012.

5. Kumar, Bhavesh. “Rediscovering Historical Narrative of Delhi: A Postmodern Reading of William Dalrymple‟s City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi.” Third Front Journal of Humanities and Social Science. 1. 1. 2016.

6. Prakash, Gyan. Inevitable Revolution : The Nation. 2007, 25-30. Print.

7. Savitri, A. “William Dalrymple‟s The Last Mughal‟ ” in An International Referred e- Journal of Literary Explorations. Vol. 2.3. Aug, 2014.

8. Stoler, Laura Ann, “Tense and Tender Ties” “Journal of American History 88”, 3(2001): 829-65.

9. White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. USA: John Hopkins University. 1973. Print.

10. Yaqub, Huma. “William Dalrymple‟s City of Djinns and The Hegemonic Strategies of Travel Writing”. International Journal of English and Literature. Vol 4.1, 91-96. 2014.

City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

Chapter 3 CITY OF DJINNS: A YEAR IN DELHI

City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi (1993) is a travelogue by William Dalrymple, which narrates his encounter with the historical city Delhi. ―From the very beginning I was mesmerized by the great capital, so totally unlike anything I had ever seen before‖ (Djinns 7) says Dalrymple. This statement sets the tone of this text.

Dalrymple was so fascinated by this old city that he made it a subject of study not only in City of Djinns but also his later work The Last Mughal. He masters the narration of the travelogue like a novel to unfold many hidden and suspended stories of the past of Delhi. Behind the apparent exploration of historical events, he narrates his personal experience of living in the modern city of Delhi. Hence, this book works like a bridge to connect present Delhi with its past.

The very title City of Djinns suggests Dalrymple‘s inclination toward the mythological, mystical, unreal and mysterious facet of India which is evident in the lines ―Moreover the city-I soon discovered – possessed a bottomless seam of stories: tales receding far beyond history, deep into the cavernous chambers of myths and legends … but for me, Delhi always exerted a stronger spell. I lingered on‖ (Djinns 8). Thus, we can say that the words like ‗myth‘, ‗legends‘, ‗spell‘ as used in the above excerpt connote a sense of enchanting, spiritual and fantastical side of India which has interested Dalrymple like any other colonizer.

This text is an outcome of a year‘s stay in Delhi, as the sub-title of the book suggests. He takes the advantage of his experience over four years to create a ―notional year‖ spent in the capital as he tells in one of his interviews with Tim Young. This makes the narrative structure of the book more complex. The theme of the book as Dalrymple mentions in the prologue is ―a representation of a city disjointed in time, a city whose different ages lay suspended side by side as in aspic, a city of djinns‖ (Djinns 9).

The very idea of writing about Delhi came to his mind from the story narrated by a priest Pir Sadr-ud-Din. According to this priest, Delhi has witnessed many holocausts and dangers. It has been burnt by the invaders but still this city stands

29 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi intact because the djinns also love Delhi. They cannot see the place deserted and ruined. Djinns are supernatural beings with extra ordinary powers. Dalrymple finds special delight in delving deep into the suspended consciousness of legendary, mystical and mythical Delhi in its different phases.

He discusses Delhi as depicted in the epic tale Mahabharata; History of Mughal Empire, and colonial discourses. Dalrymple opines, ―All the different ages of man were represented in the people of the city. Different millennia co-existed side by side. Minds set in different ages walked the same pavements, drank the same water, returned to the same dust‖ (Djinns 9). That gives a sense of unity and continuity to different aspects of time from past to present.

This book is written in first- person narration. Dalrymple introduces himself as narrator William in the book. The text begins with a brief account of William‘s visit to Delhi and his lodging at Puri‘s household. The writer connects his narrative with various historical events of contemporary political and social life for e.g., the anti- Sikh riot of 1984.William is an enthusiastic, entertaining, practical, competent, and dynamic person whose presence and point of view make the text interesting. William is different from an individualist portrayed in In Xanadu.

Dalrymple has been praised by various eminent scholars and critics for his style of writing which is quite entertaining and enlightening at the same time. He has done thorough research before embarking on the task of writing history. Tarun Tejpal appreciates City of Djinns in the literary magazine India Today for its enthralling and enigmatic features. Tejpal praises Dalrymple for his efficiency in bringing out the rich culture, civilization and history of Delhi to the front. And writes ―… [The book is] a stationary travelogue that moves more through time than space, looping and whirling in circles and parabolas of past and present. Dalrymple performs this acrobatics of storytelling with the ease of a trapeze artist…‖ (web).

Emma Duncan the Deputy Editor of the magazine Economist writes ―Unlike much of modern travel writing [City of Djinns] is informative, learned and funny… a lively and sometimes profound book‖ (web). Iain Weatherby in Literary Review, appreciates this book for its all-encompassing approach and for simultaneously being an enlightening and entertaining book. Jan Moris a transgender historian and travel writer reviewed City of Djinns in her article, ―Book Review/Swashbuckle and Decay

30 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi in an Ancient City: ‗City of Djinns’ ‘‘ published in 1993 and praised Dalrymple in the following words:

Dalrymple is anything but a voyeur, though. Even his excursions into the worlds of the eunuchs are conducted with courteous and engaging sympathy, and he surveys the multitudinous religious rites of Delhi, so esoteric to alien eyes, sometimes indeed so repulsive, with a grave kind of innocence. He is more a pilgrim than an observer, trying always to understand, and if at the end of the book he seems no nearer enlightenment, perhaps that is the fate of most pilgrims. He rounds the work off with another improbable experience, this time a historico-mythical insight of his own supposed to have occurred to him on the very day he was leaving for Britain; but the suggestion of fiction that attaches itself to this concluding tale, unjustly - perhaps it really did dawn on him that last morning? - only adds to the effect of an earnest and somehow childlike quest. (web)

City of Djinns is categorized as a travelogue with a tinge of history but it seems to be more of a personal memoir. The complex structure of the book holds together an unusual blend of history and travel experience. Dalrymple‘s other texts are more confined in their structure and can be neatly categorized as a travelogue or history book. For instance, In Xanadu is purely a travelogue whereas The Last Mughal and White Mughals are the result of his in-depth research of historical sources (primary and secondary) and are a concentrated study of history. These history books are based on sources discovered from the Indian and English archives.

Unlike these texts, City of Djinns is not a serious academic work rather narrates events and episodes in an interesting way like a story. It uses the element of travelogue and history and does not fail to charm readers with its ease of narrating history. It is an echo of early colonial encounters and its charm lies in its anecdotal treatment of Indian history. It combines the elements of a story and characteristics of a travelogue. Footnotes are absent, and a few direct quotations are used in City of Djinns unlike his other historical writings but a glossary of unusual words and index are appended in the text.

Nicholas Wordsworth in Financial Times opines that this book represents facts after thorough research but it lacks academic tone as adopted by other writers. He

31 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi writes that the peculiarity of the text lies in Dalrymple‘s sense of historical adventure and his ability to recreate and relive the past with his treatment of history.

The historical events in City of Djinns are organized in reverse chronological order. Dalrymple in his conversation with Tim Young which is mentioned in the edited book by Giselle Bastin, Journeying and Journalling Creative and Critical Meditation on Travel Writing, says,

―I spiral down into the history of Delhi. Each chapter takes you back a stage…. It was very difficult to write, particularly putting the history going backwards because often so much of what happens in history is found by what has happened before it ….‖(4-5). It is like walking down a ladder in the historical consciousness.

Dalrymple writes history in the backward chronological order. In an interview with Tims Young , the writer says , ―Delhi does seem to act like a sort of fly paper on time. Time doesn‘t seem to have its destructive power in Delhi in the way it does in some other places‖(42). He writes that the travel book gives him an opportunity to tell the story of a past through the remains of it that are still alive but he does it in reverse chronological order. But it is noteworthy that Dalrymple does not fail to give lengthy representation of British colonial history in India especially in Delhi and the context seems to justify colonial presence.

The critics of travelogues such as Justin D. Edward and Rune Graulund in the introduction of the book Reading Post-Colonial Travel Writing: Critical Explorations argue that ―travel writing disseminate discourses of difference that were then used to justify colonial projects‖(1). Douglas Ivison in his article ―Travel Writing at the End of Empire: A Pom Named Bruce and the Mad White Giant‖ writes that ―the genre of travel writing … was the cultural by product of imperialism, often written by those actively involved in the expansion or maintenance of the empire (explorers, soldiers, administrators, missionaries, journalists), and dependent upon the support of the institutions of imperialism in order to facilitate the writer‘s travels‖(200-201).

Another aspect through which we can study Dalrymple‘s City of Djinns is through Orientalist perspective. Edward Said writes in his book Orientalism, ―The Orient was almost a European invention, and had been since antiquity a place of

32 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences‖ (3). Similarly Dalrymple projects Delhi as an exotic place where many layers of mythological, mystical and spiritual narratives are buried beneath the debris of the past.

Said argues that, ―Anyone who teaches, writes about, or researches the Orient and this applies whether the person is an anthropologist, sociologist, historian, or philologist—either in its specific or its general aspects, is an Orientalist, and what he or she does is Orientalism. Hence we can say that Dalrymple is also an ‗orientalist‘ who writes about ‗orient‘ (India). Said adds:

Orientalism, is also a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in European Western experience. The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe; it is also the place of Europe's greatest and richest and oldest colonies, the source of its civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images of the Other. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe (or the West). (2)

Said points out in Culture and Imperialism that ―in our time, direct colonialism has largely ended imperialism as we shall see lingers where it has always been in a kind of general cultural sphere as well as in specific political, ideological, economic and social practices‖ (8). The western travel writers still manage to give stereotypical representation of India through colonial nostalgia.

Bill Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin write in their book The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practices in Post Colonial Literature that, travel literature is ―one of the most important vehicles of colonial representation‖ (28). They refer to Mary Louise Pratt‘s book Imperial Eyes, which sees ―travel writing in relation to transculturation that has been influential in suggesting in very complex nature of all colonial interaction‖ (207). It finds that transculturation is one of the most important concepts by which ―the idea of simple hierarchical structure of imperial power has been questioned‖ (208).

The reading of City of Djinns in the light of the above argument will make it clear that Dalrymple‘s assertion on objectivity in his perspective is misleading. His efforts are defeated by his positive portrayal of British regime. The narrator William,

33 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi is representative of British Empire. His sense of humor has been highlighted in the following excerpt:

―How do you know I‘m a Britisher?‖ ―Because,‖ said Mr. Singh, ―you are not sporting.‖ ―Actually, I am a quite sporting,‖ I replied. ―I go for a run every day, swim in the summer…‖ ―No Britisher is sporting,‖ said Mr. Singh undaunted. ―Lots of my countrymen are very keen on sport,‖ I retorted. ―No, no,‖ said Mr. Singh. ―You are not catching me.‖ ―We are still a force to be reckoned with in the fifteen hundred meters, and sometimes our cricket team…‖ ―No, no,‖ said Mr. Singh. ―Still, you are not catching me. You Britishers are not sporting.‖ He twirled the waxed curlicues of his moustache. ―All men should be sporting a moustache because all ladies are liking it too much.‖(19)

This short excerpt highlights Dalrymple's art of self-fashioning which is a common trait of modern travel books. The instance of self-fashioning is at its best in the following lines, ―Actually, I am a quite sporting,‖ and also seems to mock at the style of English spoken by an Indian Mr. Singh and praises his countrymen. Here, the writer sets a hierarchy of English language usage and competence of British, thus placing West at the top. The above passage is written with a view to create humor at the expense of an Indian character.

Dalrymple tells Youngs in an interview, ―most notably the kind of comic relief whenever I am worried that I‘m getting too boring about medieval history. For example Balvinder Singh, the taxi driver, who is a real character and who also, appears as the link in a documentary we made. He is an utterly fabulous character‖ (43).

The perception of west about non-western culture has gone through radical transformation in the postcolonial era. Paul Smethrust in ―Post-Orientalism and the Post- colonial in William Dalrymple‘s Travel Histories‖ explores the theme of hybridization, transcultural and boundary- crossing and find them present in Dalrymple‘s travel writing. He finds that the text City of Djinns : A Year in Delhi (2005) disorientates and de-Occidentalizes the readership by questioning historical narratives through which the West has acknowledged itself rationally against its others. Smethrust asserts that Dalrymple‘s travelogue acts as a medium of

34 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi reconciliation between colonizers and colonized through the recovery and actualization of historical crossings; while also challenges historical divisions and cultural differences.

Dalrymple romantically treats Delhi as an exotic place where the mythological and supernatural characters such as ‗Djinns‘ live. He is fascinated by the romantic description of the Delhi by Vyasa. In his treatment of Delhi, Edward Said‘s idea of ‗Orientalism‘ is clearly perceptible. Said argues that this is the common trait of the western writers to present the oriental countries as an exotic place which was once inhabited by their ancestors.

Another important article which focuses on the City of Djinns was published in Yearly Review by Antara Datta. Dutta opines that Dalrymple is aware of the colonial baggage that the travel writings carry with itself. He tries to redeem it through presentation of equitable cultural hierarchies. His historical narrative is free from being too academic pigeonholing since Said.

A similar idea is emphasized by Tarun Tejpal. He appreciates the text for its ability to present issues without prejudice and bigotry. He finds that Dalrymple explores Delhi without any racial baggage and he is not trying to be nice or nasty to anyone.

But this reading finds the above approaches to Dalrymple‘s treatment of history misleading. From the very beginning of the text, he is constantly preoccupied with the notion of defending British presence in India. This is clearly perceptible in his meeting with Iris Portal, a friend of his grandmother, before his visit to India. She had spent her youth in colonial Delhi and was the eye-witness of that period. He questions her about her stay in India under colonial regime and tries to focus on the human side of Britishers in the colonial time. ―In retrospect,‘ I said. ‗Do you think British rule was justified?‖ (Djinns 80) and utilizes the conversation to highlight British longing for the time spent in India and how they still feel India as a home.

You must give my love to dear old Delhi,‘ said Iris. ‗Ah! Even now when I close my eyes I see…‘ For a minute she left the sentence incomplete, then: ‗Pots of chrysanthemums!‘ she said quite suddenly. ‗Rows and rows of chrysanthemums in little red pots! That‘s what I remember best….. ‗Dear,

35 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

dear, dear old Delhi,‘ she said. ‗How I envy you living there.‘ ….. ‗I thought nothing else. India was home.‘ She shrugged her shoulders. ‗All I wanted was India, a horse of my own and a dashing cavalry escort. (Djinns 76)

Dalrymple insists that Britishers have contributed to the progress and development of India by introducing new ideas and building beautiful monuments. He seems to be captivated by the magnificent surrounding of Lutyen‘s bungalow and gives a detailed account of the British architecture. Thus, indirectly he shows the contribution of British to the architectural development of the country.

When I first saw Delhi it was still a low- rise colonial capital, dominated by long avenues of white plaster Lutyens bungalows.The bungalows gave New Delhi its character: shady avenues of jamun and ashupal trees, low red-brick walls gave on to hundreds of rambling white colonial houses with their broken pediments and tall Ionic pillars. (Djinns 23)

The description also gives insight into imperial nostalgia of the writer‘s colonial forebears. ―One of my strongest memories from my first visit was sitting in the garden of one of the bungalows, a glass to hand, with legs raised up in a Bombay Fornicator (one of those wickerwork planter‘s chairs with extended arms, to essential colonial veranda…)‖ (Djinns 23).

Dalrymple also converses with Haxby‘s sisters about the memory of old Delhi. They give the following remark about Delhi:

Oh, it was such a fun. We were young and blond and had admirers. The Delhi season lasted from October until March. At night we went to dances and drank champagne – real champagne – and by day we would sit outside and watch the soldiers riding past, four abreast. Those were the days. (Djinns 88)

This remark projects that British were in love with India and the people of that generation still felt connected to this place where they had spent their youth. And as far as the justification asked by the author to the character Portal about British colonialism, her answer is quite diplomatic, ―Well, at the time we certainly didn‘t think of ourselves as wicked imperialist,‖ and added further:

36 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

But you see although people of my generation were very keen on Gandhi and Indian Independence, we were still careless. We didn‘t give much thought to the question of what on earth we were doing to that country and its people. ‗That said, I can‘t forget the sacrifices made by the ―wicked‖ imperialist over the centuries- the graves, so many very young, the friends I have had, and what good people many of them were‖(Djinns 80).

From the above extract, it is clear that Iris tries to relocate the position of British in India who were basically good people though little careless. She says that Britishers have always been regarded from negative angle and are called ‗wicked‘. She feels sad because of such misconception. Britishers sacrificed so much for the betterment of India but were still regarded as intruders only. In a very casual tone, she informs that British introduced new ideas, made good buildings. The character of Iris Portal is used as a narrative device to represent a positive and compassionate image of the British as a whole and attempts to justify the British governance of India. These Britishers emerge as figures who promote new ideas of cultural evolution and also pave the way for the development of India.

Various critics support the idea that travel writings for long have been instrumental in understanding the west‘s relationship with non-western countries and cultures. Patrick Hollan and Graham Huggan define the traveler as ―an avid student and consumer of other, mostly non-European culture whose impressive erudition affords another reminder of the imagined superiority of his own imperial national culture‖ (28).

They find that ―it energized the myth of Empire (29)‖ and legitimized western perception of superiority. The role of travel narratives has become anachronistic in the twentieth century. ―In an age of specialization, the travel writer is shorn of the dignity of significant exploration or of returning with the imperial knowledge‖ (Thubron 124).

Dalrymple uses various devices to depict western relationship with India for eg. the trope of ―Imperial Nostalgia‖. It was a term coined by Renato Rosaldo to express the idea of British Empire and its past glory. Dalrymple never forgets to keep in mind, his readership . In an interview with Sanjay Austa in Spectrum, he says, ―I write for the British audience. It demonstrates in how much I explain …‖(web).

37 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

He finds Indian bureaucracy and politicians inefficient and corrupt in discharging their duties. He puts himself at the top of the hierarchal order by narrating the inconvenience caused to him while seeking such basic requirements as telephone in India. He says:

I left Mr. Lal‘s office at noon. By four-thirty I had queued inside a total of nine different offices, waiting in each for the magic letter, seal, signature, counter signature, demand note, restoration order or receipt which would, at some stage in far distant future, lead to my being granted a telephone. (Djinns 22)

The analysis of the histographical aspect of the text reveals that Dalrymple is delving into the depth of Delhi through his interaction with people who have witnessed that period and share their experiences and memories with the narrator.

Antara Datta values this text for its historical narration and praises it for addressing some of the most crucial issues of the time, ―stating that it ―use[s] the travel form to address some of the most crucial debates of our times.‖ (135), in a ―project [that is] politically recuperative.‖ (136). She says that the travel aspect of the text allows Dalrymple to present a range of historical perspectives.

Dalrymple‘s historical narration offers the possibility of ‗heteroglossia‘ within historical narratives. His interaction with people and places and his in depth reading lead to the ―possibilities of heteroglossia‖ in his writings. Datta is keen to observe the projection of multiple voices in his text. She praises the author for his personal interaction with characters and depiction of universal humanism.

The author in the last chapter of this book discusses the legendary place mentioned in Mahabharata. The place is so beautiful that, the chief of Kauravas Duryodhana is filled with bitter jealousy after seeing it. He has never seen this type of a city before, even Hastinapura the city of Elephant was not that beautiful. Dalrymple quotes:

One time the prince came, in the middle of the hall, upon a crystal slab and thinking it was water he raised his robe; again, seeing a pond filled with crystalline water and adorned with crystalline lotuses……Another time he

38 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

tried a door which appeared to be open and hurt his forehead [on the trompe l‘oeil]… (Djinns 325)

The writer‘s fascination for the city as described by Vyasa breeds in the author a desire to verify the truth of this description. It was not an easy task. An archaeological report partially supports the fact of its existence. The writer grows apprehensive of the details given in the Mahabharata, ―The more I read of the Mahabharata – especially those sections dealing with Indraprastha- the more I longed to know how far the descriptions were factual or if they were simply the product of vyasa‘s imagination‖ (Djinns325). He highlights the fact that there are discrepancies in dividing the period of the Mahabharata and the settlement of Indraprastha.

The first historic evidence of the existence of Delhi is found in narratives of Tomar clan. According to a bardic historian Raja Anangpala Tomar ,the fort of Lal Kot was found in the year 1020, ―the enigmatic metal pillar which still stands, gleaming and unrusted, beneath the Qutub Minar‖ (Djinns 321). This information is supported by the findings of archaeological team which discovers the ruins of the pillar of Lal Kot . But still, the dispute lies about the accurate date of the periodization of the settlement. Dalrymple writes:

Near the structure, heavily over grown, lie pillars from long-destroyed temples and a few barely-visible ramparts of a primitive hill fort. But of the purpose of the dam or the character and qualities of its builder, nothing is now remembered and scholars dispute happily among themselves the value if different piece of mutually contradictory evidence- ambiguous references in late, highly corrupted religious texts; the evidence of place names; stray finds by archaeologists; the odd almost unreadable inscription. (Djinns 321)

After Tomar clan, Delhi was occupied by Chauhans. The only evidence which supports their existence is the Epic text Prithvi Raj Raso , authored by the Rajasthani bard Chand Bardai. Dalrymple doubts the authenticity of this text as it gives an illusionary and mythical description of the King Prithvi Raj, places, and events. ―In the epic, Chauhan is depicted as the archetypal heroic gallant‖ (Djinns 320). And Chand Bardai narratives serve as the only reference to the history of Rajputs in Delhi.

39 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

Dalrymple explores the history of Delhi before the advent of Muslims and finds many hidden passages and corridors that are still unexplored. But in the absence of proper evidence, he encounters the difficulty of verifying the facts. In the words of Dalrymple, ―It soon becomes clear that trying to disentangle the history of pre- Muslim Delhi was like penetrating deeper and deeper into a midsummer dust storm: the larger landmarks stood out, but the details were all obliterated‖ (Djinns 320).

The history of the establishment of Islam in India is recorded by Dalrymple in the form of building up the first mosque in India, ―The Qu‘ watt-ul-Islam. It was raised from the shattered masonry of Delhi‘s sixty-seven Hindu temples; thus was Islam brought to sub-continent‖ (Djinns 321). The history of Islam can be associated with the arrival of the Arab Sultan Mohammad bin Tughlak who married Hindu women. But Dalrymple seems more interested in the arrival and growth of Sufism than spreading of Islam as an institution.

Dalrymple writes that along with orthodox Islam, liberal Sufism was also spreading side by side. Sufism was becoming popular in India and Pakistan but banned in other Islamic countries. The writer seemed to be impressed by Sufi mystic Ghiyas ud-Din, Shaykh Nizam-ud- Auliya who preached the doctrine of universal brotherhood and humanity. He stressed on reconciliation, religious pluralism, and tolerance. Hazrat Nizam-ud-Din was popular not only among Muslims but also among Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians as ―all found echoes of their own faith in his teachings‖ (Djinns 275).

Sunil Kumar in his essay, ―The Pirs Barakat and the Servitors Ardour: Contrasting History of Two Sufi Shrines in Delhi‖ also records the rise of Sufism in 13th century India. In the article, he emphasizes the fact that Sufi mystics are remembered for the simplicity of their grave and for the intense spiritual emotion they bring to mind. These resting places of the Sufis provide the believers guidance and assistance and thus, turn the grave into a place of pilgrimage. Dalrymple along with Kumar suggests that Sufi tradition of faith is a blend of different faiths which advocate acceptance and respect for all religions and finds humanity as its supreme virtue.

Another historical focus of the text is Arab sultan Muhammad-bin-Tughlak and his regime which was largest and most powerful based on the accounts of a

40 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

Moroccan traveler and historian Ibn Battuta. But Darlymple finds Battuta‘s narration lopsided. It is an exaggerated and biased account of his reign contrary to the version of the Moroccan traveler. Battuta praises Tughlak as a generous man who treats foreigners magnificently and showers his utmost favors on them. Dalrymple writes that Battuta penned his narration with an expectation of reward for the positive portrayal of Tughlak.

Tughlak‘s regime has been represented in the contradictory light in the Moroccan travelers account. He was a strange ruler and a controversial figure who was appreciated by some scholars for his idealism and intelligence but others found him a failure. Girish Karnad‘s comment on Tughlak in his play Tughlaq is worth noting:

What struck me absolutely about Tughlaq‘s history was that it was contemporary. The fact that here was the most idealistic, the most intelligent king ever to come on the throne of Delhi… and one of the greatest failures also. And within a span of twenty years, this tremendously capable man had gone to pieces. This seemed to be both due to his idealism as well as the shortcomings within him, such as his impatience, his cruelty, his feeling that he had the only correct answer. (Prasad 61)

Tughlak‘s decision to shift capital from Delhi to Devagiri, which he named Daulatabad was one of the most contentious decisions in the history of India. On group finds this decision extremely eccentric and intimidating whereas some historians appreciate this well-thought plan. The Sultan took this decision with multiple motives. Firstly, this gave him a chance to establish control over Deccan and Gujarat and secondly, the transfer to a new capital helped him face the Mongols from a venue that was safely located far away from the northwestern frontier.

Dalrymple condemns the regime of the Sultan and portrays him in negative light. He does this by emploting those passages which delineate him as boorish and inhuman. Hayden White says that the narration depends on the intention of the author. Through the ―mode of emplotment‖, he highlights his perspective. The positive narration of the reign of Muhammad-bin-Tughlak is found in the writings of Anthony Welch and Howard Crane in their article ―The Tughluqs: Master Builders of the Delhi Sultanate‖. They write:

41 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

Intellectually gifted and quixotic in personality and politics, he inherited an empire extending over most of the subcontinent, and he was the first of India‘s Muslim rulers to try to rule it in pan-Indian terms… Hostility towards him crystallized around his establishment in 729-38/1328-37 of a second capital at Daulatabad in the Deccan. Crucial to his plan to assimilate the Deccan into the Delhi sultanate were the Chishtiyya and Suhrawad Sufi orders, which had been notably successful in converting large numbers of low-caste Hindu. Chaghatai raids in northern India forced the sultan to return to Delhi, and in 736/1335-36 he permitted former Delhi residents to return home. Daulatabad continued to function as a second administrative center until the end of Mughal regime. (125)

Dalrymple consciously uses expressions like ‗tyrannical Sultan‘, ‗the blood thirsty parricide‘ Muhammed bin Tughluk‖ (Djinns 255), to give a negative image of Tughlak. His condemnation of Muhammed bin Tughluk‘s regime is based on the popular historical narratives like Ibn Battuta and Isami. He also relies on the account of two Morrocon travelers with a view to find objectivity there.

The period of the Mughal Empire is marked by the establishment of Babur‘s rule in India. The Mughals are still known for their architecture, culture, courtliness, etc and that period is known as time of great prosperity.

Dalrymple calls the period of Shah Jehan as a golden age, ―In all of Delhi‘s history, at no period was that thin dress of civilization more beautiful- or more deceptively woven- than during the first half of the seventeenth century, during the Golden Age of Shah Jehan‖ (Djinns190). Dalrymple appreciated Mughal Emperors for their fine courtly mannerism and code of conduct in the public but found their sophisticated appearances deceptive. They were in reality savage that killed their own siblings for the sake of power and tortured their own father. Dalrymple highlighted the naked reality of Mughal politics which was coarse, brutal and avaricious.

Dalrymple uses two travel writings Bernier‘s Travels in the Mogul Empire and Manucci‘s Mogul India to give deep insight into this period, ―The two books may thus have been peppered with little fiction, but no sharper or livelier pictures of Mughal Delhi with all its scandals, dramas and intrigues,…‖ (Djinns 191). He finds Shah Jahan Nama ―sycophantic official court chronicle‖ hence rejects it. Dalrymple

42 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi felt disturbed with the idea that the sophisticated Mughal rulers had made cruel plan against their own relatives.

The writer compares the tragedy of Shah Jahan with the tragedy of King Lear, one of the Shakespearean tragic plays' heroes. The fall of Lear was due to a flaw in his own character. He was swayed by fattery and suffered at the hands of his own daughters. Similarly the flaw in the character of Shah Jahan led to confrontation among his own his children. Dara Shukoh, Aurangzeb, Jahanara and Roshanara were fighting for power and position, ―Just as Aurangzeb was angered by Shah Jahan's obvious preference for Dara, so Roshanara was alienated by the affection lavished on her more attractive sister Jahanara Begum‖ (Djinns 197). He further writes, ―Like Aurangzeb, Roshanara grew bitter and vengeful, a Regan or a Goneril to Jahanara‘s Cordelia. She became a tireless champion of Aurangzeb‘s interest, making little secret of her hatred for Dara and Jahanara‖ (Djinns 198). Dalrymple draws a parallel between the fictional character of the Shakespearean tragedy and the Mughal princes and princesses which is interesting to read and to understand the cold-blooded plot for achieving private ambition.

Dalrymple feels that even the Mughal architecture is symbolic of their moral deprivation and innate corruption. He refers to Safdarjung‘s tomb which tells the story of the miserable past of the Mughals who have ended themselves in drinking and whoring. He criticizes Mughals for their inability to give a responsible governance which led to their decline. He compares Safdarjung‘s tomb to an ―elderly courtesan‖ who hides the imperfection of her face under the make-up and ornaments which are worn like over-applied rouge. Even the mosque which is situated to the side of the gatehouse has the smell of decadence about it. And it seems as if the domes of the mosque are ―flirtatiously striped like the flared pyjama bottoms of nautch girls; there is something fundamentally voluptuous in its buxom curves and poise‖ (Djinns 158- 59). The words like ―degenerate‖, ―voluptuous‖, and ―buxom‖ all together work to portray an effeminate and decadent regime of Mughals.

Their inefficiency is juxtaposed with efficient British administration in India. It is quite interesting to see how a British nationalist projects the past of his own people. Dalrymple portrays the regimen of Tughlak and Mughals in negative light but leaves no stone unturned to defend English people. He attempts to be objective in his

43 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi portrayal of Britishers by showing their cruel side also but their positive traits dominate the description.

Dalrymple describes the early settlement of Britishers in India by relying on the narrative of a British official William Franklin. The author highlights those early Britishers who were attracted toward the Indian culture and tradition, ―These early residents were a series of sympathetic and slightly eccentric Scotsmen, whose love and respect for India was reflected by their adoption of Indian modes of dress and Indian ways of living‖. (Djinns 98). Sir David Ochterlony was fond of ‗hookahs‘ and ‗nautch girls‘ and Indian costumes and was known among natives as ‗Loony Akhtar‘.

The other Englishman who was fascinated by the Indian mode of living was William Fraser who was sent to Delhi from Calcutta as the Resident assistant. But within a few years of his stay, Fraser adopted the Rajput style of living. He pruned his mustache as Rajputs did and married Indian women and had children with them. His favorite activity was hunting Asian lions on foot with a spear. He was so much preoccupied with his life in the east that he even forgot his official duties. Dalrymple creates humor by telling the reader the way Fraser and his Indian tribal bodyguard sleep, ―While he slept, his bodyguard of Indian tribals would unroll their mattresses and sleep on his couch‖ (Djinns 99).

Fraser‘s narration probes the possibility of communication between East and West. His contemporary Charles Metcalfe complained against him to the Governor General in Calcutta that he was forgetting his responsibilities towards the empire. He was inclined towards learning ancient Sanskrit text and was friendly with the natives like Ghalib. The writer uses a number of pages in summarizing imperial regime in India to show that India was more than a ruling territory to them. While narrating the history of British Imperialism, Dalrymple relies on the individual narration which is typical of the travel genre.

He gives a precise account of Delhi during the Revolt of 1857. He writes, ―The hopes of a happy fusion of British and Indian culture, promised during the Twilight, were forgotten in the massacres which initiated and the hangings which followed the Indian Mutiny‖ (Djinns 147). Delhi was recaptured by the British on 14th September, 1857and after great destruction and loss of life. With the Revolt of 1857, the behavior of the British changed, ―It is as if in victory all the most horrible

44 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi characteristics of the English character- philistinism, narrow-mindedness, bigotry, and vengefulness- suddenly surfaced all at once‖ (Djinns 148). Dalrymple‘s account of the revolt is based on the narrative of Hugh Chichester, Mirza Ghalib, and Ahmed Ali who have witnessed the period themselves. But the Indian version of narration is different from British. Chichester‘s narration justifies the ruin of Delhi in the following words:

There are several mosques in the city most beautiful to look at. But I should like to see them all destroyed. The rascally brutes desecrated our churches and graveyards and I do not think we should have any regard for their stinking religion. One was always supposed to take one‘s shoes off before going to visit one of these mosques, or to have an interview with the King. But these little affairs we drop now. I have seen old Pig of a King. He is a very old man, and just like an old Khitmutgar [waiter].‘ (Djinns 148)

On the contrary, the poet Ghalib laments the fall of his countrymen and destruction of the city of Delhi. Ahmed Ali narrates the story told by his grandmother that how she was thrown out of her haveli and stripped naked by the British Sepoys in search of jewels. Dalrymple finds it worth mentioning that Delhi Mutiny Memorial was erected on the site of British Camp on the Ridge which commemorates not only the Mutiny casualties but also indicates the end of bloody war.

If there was hatred in some British, others were full of love for India. In 1922, the government decided to reconstruct Delhi as its capital under the supervision of Lutyens, a British official of that time. Iris Portal describes the personality of Lutyen and also unfolds the ways in which the construction of a magnificent city had taken place. She admires his work and draws parallel between New Delhi and Washington.

Dalrymple‘s fascination for architecture is clearly perceptible in City of Djinns which is full of details of well-known buildings, and particularly the building constructed by the British under the supervision of Lutyen. He admires the Viceroy‘s House which is now President‘s Palace and finds it solid and timeless. Dalrymple appreciates the fusion of east and west and remarks:

East fuse with West Round arches and classical Greek colonnades were balanced by lattice work stone screens and a ripple of helmet- like chattris. At

45 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

the very center of the complex, the resolution of every perspective in New Delhi stood Lutyen‘s staggering neo-Buddhist dome. (Djinns 81)

He finds that the Lutyen‘s building is symbolic of culture exchange where the west style of ―round arches‖ and ―colonnades‖ are beautifully woven with ―helmet- like chattris of east‖.

Dalrymple admires British architecture but finds it an embodiment of their dictatorial and imperial side, ―For, despite their very many, very great differences, Imperial India, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany all belonged to comparable worlds. All were to different authoritarian; all made much of magnificent display; all were built on the myth of racial superiority . . . ‖ (Djinns 82).

The author highlights the inhuman and arrogant side of the British Imperialism and finds ‗Only the vanity of the British Empire – an Empire emancipated from democratic constraints, totally self- confident in its own judgment and still, despite everything, assured of its own superiority-could have produced Lutyen‘s Delhi‖(Djinns 85). We must acknowledge Dalrymple‘s serious effort to give an unbiased picture in spite of his irresistible desire to appreciate British architecture.

This juxtaposition of the point of acceptance and denial of British power is captivating. This can be further noticed in Dalrymple‘s quoting the inscription on the gateway of the Baker‘s Secretariats ―LIBERTY WILL NOT DESCEND TO A PEOPLE; A PEOPLE MUST RAISE THEMSELVES TO LIBERTY; IT IS A BLESSING WHICH MUST BE EARNED BEFORE IT CAN BE ENJOYED‖ (Djinns 83). The writer mourns the ―patronizing‖ nature of the inscription and also claims that it is for those who believe in the benevolent nature of the British Empire.

The writer praises the aesthetic aspect Lutyen‘s legacy and defends him against Pandit Nehru‘s remarks that ―New Delhi is visible symbol of British power, with all its ostentation and wasteful extravagance.‖(Djinns 85). Nehru wanted to say that British colonialism had not added to the progress of India rather they had wasted their time in constructing various colonial buildings. And Dalrymple defended Luyten in these sentences:

He was right, of course, but that is only the half story. It is also the finest architecture artifact created by the British Empire, and preferable in every way

46 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

to Nehru‘s disastrous commission of a hideous new city by Le Corbusier at Chandigarh is now an urban disaster, a monument to stained concrete and discredited modernism; but Imperial Delhi is now more admired and loved than perhaps ever before. (Djinns 85).

Dalrymple also takes into account the history of India‘s Independence and Partition and its effect on Delhi. The narration is based on the memory of the people who witnessed that period or heard the stories of it from their ancestors. The characters like Mr& Mrs. Puri (the landlord of William), Balvinder‘s father, are the victim of partition.

The Partition of India resulted in great chaos and confusion and led to the bloodiest massacre in Indian history. Dalrymple quotes from a report in the 1947 edition of The Hindustan Times, ―Meanwhile, refugees poured into India: ―300,000 Sikh and Hindu refugees are currently moving into the country.‘ (Djinns 44). The newspapers were loaded with news and pictures of dead lying like a thick carpet on Railway Stations.

The writer argues that the history of partition gives him deep insight into Modern India which behaves like a nouveau-rich heiress: all show and vulgarity and conspicuous consumption. ―It was a style most unbecoming for a lady of her age and lineage, moreover, it jarred with everything one knew about her sophistication and culture‖ (Djinns 44). The old Urdu speaking influential people who settled in Delhi both Hindu and Muslims are now replaced by ―hardworking but uncivilized Punjabi colonizers‖ (Djinns 44).

The partition of 1947 led the path for the prosperity and development of a new Delhi but the agony of the lost Delhi can be heard in the tale of Begum Hamida Sultan. She mourns the death of old Delhi. There are hardly any original inhabitants and the language of Delhi is also dead.

Dalrymple finds that old- Delhi was ruined by the historical decision of Partition of India. Like new historians, he uses small narratives of the local dwellers to reconstruct the history of the partition of India. Old Delhi was once the centre of sophisticated culture had turned into warehouses for North India‘s wholesale goods

47 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi and spare parts at present. It is no more a place known for its aesthetic sense and the taste of Urdu elite.

The other historical element touched upon by the writer is the assassination of Indira Gandhi by her Sikh security guard, Sub-Inspector Beant Singh on 31st October 1984.The effect of her death was immediate and led to the anti-Sikh riot in Delhi.

The writer points out that Delhi has witnessed many riots and violence. It has transformed in all spheres of life: language, culture, commerce, attitude etc. He feels that the overflow of western goods and ideas has brought perceptible change Delhi. Now we can find lovers loitering in public parks and the advertisement of condoms dominate Delhi‘s skyline. He visualizes Delhi as a woman whose sari was beginning to slip and she had started to unbutton herself after a long Victorian twilight. Dalrymple compares the past with the present and shows Delhi as an exclusive city which holds its past and present together.

The book also mentions the history of eunuchs who are marginalized by the mainstream society. Dalrymple writes ―like most things in Delhi, the curious position of the eunuchs in Indian society can be explained by the head-on collision of two very different traditions, one Muslim, one Hindu‖. And adds, ―To be a eunuch was a curse; even the sight of them was defiling to a Brahmin. No one was allowed to accept alms from them, no one was allowed to consume food prepared by them, and they were excluded from all sacrifices‖ (Djinns 172).This historical narration includes the problem and hardships faced by the hijras living in Delhi like Chaman, Razia, Vimla, and Panna . Dalrymple quotes Manucci‘s account of Delhi‘s eunuchs. ― Yet you do not have to spend very long with them to appreciate how India, then as now, has turned them into what they are, how it has brutalized them and forced them to anaesthetize their own sensibilities‖(Djinns 173). His narrative of eunuchs exposes the insensibility of people who find fault in eunuchs for their genetic deformity and ―turned into something half-way between a talisman and an object of ridicule‖ (Djinns 183).

Khushwant Singh‘s novel Delhi: A Novel (1990) also presents the marginalization of eunuchs but his treatment is different from Dalrymple. Singh had drawn a parallel between Delhi and a eunuch Bhagmati, a central character in his text as both of them had witnessed adversities which left them unattractive.

48 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

City of Djinns is a non- fiction book where the writer has presented the account of Delhi of over three thousand years after thorough research. It highlights the fact that history also employs narrative which is one of the post-modern traits. This reading proves that objective presentation of historical facts is nearly impossible. Dalrymple is fond of the colonial buildings and his remarks on these buildings revive the saga of British colonial period in India. He employs various tropes and discourses in the text to present his perspective.

This Chapter is followed by Dalrymple‘s first historical narrative White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India written on the harmonious relationship of British and Indians during eighteenth century India.

49 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

Work Cited

1. Ali, Ahmed. Twilight in Delhi. India: Rupa Publication. 2007. Print.

2. Ashcroft,Bill. Griffiths, Gareth. Tiffins, Helen. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post Colonial Literatures. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. June, 2002. Print.

3. Austa, Sanjay. ―Meet the Author.‖ Interview with William Dalrymple. The Sunday Tribune. Web. 15, 2002.

4. Bastin, Giselle. Kate, Douglas. Michelle Mc Crea. Savvor, X. Micheal. Journeying and Journalling Creative and Critical Meditations on Travel Writing. Australia: Wakefield Press, 2010.Print.

5. Datta, Antara. ―Dalrymple in the Eye of the History Storm.‖ Texts Travelling Text. Ed. Rimli Bhattacharya. Spec.issue of YearlyReview12 (2004): 135-47. Print.

6. Dayal, Maya. Celebrating India. India: Penguin Book, 2010. Print.

7. Duncan, Emma. ―Review of City of Djinns”. www.williamdalrymple.uk.com

8. Edward, J. and Graulund, Rune. (Eds). Post Colonial Travel Writing: Critical Exploration. United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Print.

9. Hollan, Patrick. Huggan, Graham. Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Print.

10. Ivison, Douglas. ―Travel Writing at the End of Empire: A Pom Named Bruce and the Mad White Giant‖. Lakehead University,2003. Print.

11. Moris, Jan. ―Book Review/ Swash buckle and Decay in an Ancient City: City of Djinns‖. The Independent. Saturday 28, 1993. www.independent.co.in

12. Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Vintage Books, 1994. Print.

13. Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978. Print.

14. Singh, Khushwant. Delhi: A Novel. India: Penguin Books, 1990. Print.

50 City of Djinns: A year in Delhi

15. Tejpal,J. Tarun. ―A Capital Endeavour: Engaging Scholarly Look at Delhi, Past and Present‖. India Today Magazine, Oct15, 1993. www.indiatoday.com

16. Thoburn, Rev. J.M. My Missionary Apprenticeship. New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1886. Print.

17. Welch, Anthony. Crane, Howard. ―The Tughluqs: Master Builders of the Delhi Sultanate‖. www.jstor.org/stable/1523075

18. Wordsworth, Nicholas. Review of City of Djinns. www.williamdalry mple.uk.com

19. Young, Tim. ―Interview with William Dalrymple‖. Studies in Travel Writing. Vol 9. 2005: 37-63. Print.

51 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

Chapter 4 WHITE MUGHALS: LOVE AND BETRAYAL IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INDIA

White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India, (2002) is William Dalrymple‟s first attempt at historical narrative. This book sets out to explore the history of the 18thcentury India when British officials were embracing Indian style of dressing, learning Indian philosophies, and accepting Indian religion contrary to the history of British conquest and exploitation of India. The writer talks about the significance of the relationship between British Officials and elite class Indian women.

Dalrymple unfolds the tragic- love story of British officer James Kirkpatrick and an Indian Muslim woman Khair un-Nissa. She belongs to the family of nawabs of Hyderabad. “Kirkpatrick had gone out to India full of ambition, intent on making his name in the subjection of a nation; but instead it was he who was conquered, not by an army but by a Hyderabadi noblewoman called Khair un- Nissa” says William Dalrymple in the introduction of the novel. The romantic plotline of the text focuses on the conquest of British emotions and imagination by natives.

In White Mughals, Dalrymple narrates history like a tale instead of giving academic tone to this book. It glorifies the relationship of British and Indians which is always questioned by the other historians. This chapter critically examines Dalrymple‟s positioning of White Mughals as a history book and his motives behind the representation of British history in India from a positive perspective.

The book opens with details of the amorous relation and marriage of a British Resident James Achilles Kirkpatrick with a beautiful woman Khair un-Nissa. She was an elegant and powerful lady who resolutely stood for her union with James Achilles. He was tall, well proportioned, good looking and a sensitive man. He had exceptional linguistic ability to speak Persian and Hindustani, even regional languages like Tamil and Telegu. It seemed that he had been brought up by Indian ayahs after his mother‟s death, and this fluency may have dated back to his Madras childhood. There were frequent reports that many British children of the period alarmed their parents by

52 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India speaking the Hindustani (or in his case presumably, Tamil) of their ayahs as their first language (WM75).

In an anonymous autobiographical fragment which he submitted to the Madras Courier in 1792, James described himself as an officer whose proficiency in the Persian and Hindustani tongues, and conversancy in the manners and customs of the race of men by whom those languages are spoken, had contracted a certain degree of partiality from them.

This narration covers the span of eight years in Hyderabad from 1797 to 1805. Dalrymple explores the relationship of two people belonging to extremely different culture and ideological environment. Their love and mutual understanding bridge all the differences and overcome all the hurdles. At a time when world is preoccupied with the line of Rudyard Kipling , “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet”(web) and scholars are engaged in discussion on clash of civilizations in terms of East and West, Islam and Christianity, White Mughals explores the possibility of reconciling two worlds through love.

Dalrymple has used the title “white Mughals” for those British men who were involved in the process of acculturation and openly accepted Indian culture and lifestyle in the 18th century. In the book, James Achilles Kirkpatrick represents those White Mughals who were open for interaction and assimilation in a new culture and tradition. He embraces Islam and adopts Muslim culture and lifestyle for the sake of his beloved Khair un- Nisa. The text highlights warm and porous relationship between the two communities before mutiny of 1857.

Kirkpatrick was a British resident at the Indian court of Hyderabad. Dalrymple shows that the affair of James Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa was not concealed but a well-talked affair among their people. Not only common men but even authorities were apprehensive of their alliance. Indian suspected motives of James Kirkpatrick. Dalrymple quotes from his resources to prove the veracity of this tale. “ It was said that he had given up wearing English clothes for all but the most formal occasions, and now habitually swanned around the British Residency in what one surprised visitor has described as „a Musselman‟s dress of the finest texture‟. Another „Kirkpatrick had hennaed his hands in the manner of a Mughal nobleman, and wore Indian mustachios…‟”(WM 4).

53 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

The writer cites a report by Lord Clive (another British Official) that Kirkpatrick “had connected himself with a female of one of Hyderabad‟s noble family” (WM 5). The couple get married. The perceptible change in the lifestyle of Kirkpatrick raises doubt about his loyalties toward East India Company. And some sources confirmed that he had started working for the Hyderabad‟s Nizam against East India Company. Others said he had actually, married the girl, which meant embracing Islam, and had become a practicing Shi‟a Muslim. Kirkpatrick‟s alleged new religious affiliation, combined with his undisguised sympathy for the Hyderabadi culture was the reason behind it. It was expected that he would attend more to the objects of the Nizam‟s court than those of British government.

Their love could not survive for long due to premature death of Kirkpatrick. After his demise, Khair un-Nissa had an affair with James Kirkpatrick‟s assistant. But that man betrayed and deserted her. Eventually, misery fell upon Khair-un-Nissa. She was severely punished for her deviation from prescribed norms of society and was forcefully exiled from Hyderabad. She lost her position and power and even her children were snatched from her. They were sent back to London and baptized there. Khair un-Nissa never got the opportunity to see her children again as they never returned to India. Their lives were segregated by a gulf which nothing could bridge.

This book is based on empirical research and the author gives a detailed description of the sources, he has used for writing this book. He emphasizes on the authenticity and rarity of the original sources and says:

None of these sources had ever been translated into English, and so was virgin territory for those unfamiliar with either nineteenth-century Deccani Urdu or the heavily Indianised Persian that the manuscripts were written in which meant virtually everyone bar a handful of elderly Hyderabadi Islamic scholars. (WM.XXXIV)

Dalrymple exclaims that the story of Khair-un-Nissa after the death of James Kirkpatrick is unknown even to the contemporaries of Kirkpatrick. And it took him nine months to unravel the unknown story of his protagonist Khair-un-Nissa. He found her details in Duke Humfrey‟s Library. The writer seems proud of his achievement of digging a story which was unexplored and brushed aside by the other historians:

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Yet clearly- and this was what really fascinated me- while the documentation surrounding Kirkpatrick‟s story was uniquely well-preserved, giving a window into the world that few realize ever existed, the situation itself was far from unusual, something the participants were themselves well aware of .(WM X)

Such passages focus on his arduous research and original approach to explore a tale which gives a deep insight to understand the intersection of two cultures and civilizations at a particular moment in history. This meticulously researched book gives credibility to the historical narration. G.S Randolf Cooper writes in his review of White Mughals published in Modern Asia Studies, “Dalrymple‟s description proliferates with the enthusiasm of someone who is in love with his research and thrilled with the chance to tell what is largely an unknown story (742).”

In order to retell an unknown tale, Dalrymple has used the letters of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and also an article published in Blackwood’s Magazine, “The Romantic Marriage of James Achilles Kirkpatrick”, written by Kirkpatrick‟s kinsman Edward Strachey (WM XXXV). The other important source is the Persian book Kitab Tuhfat al-Alam by Abdul Lateef Shushtari which is an autobiography, written by Khair-un- Nissa‟s first cousin and another manuscript used is Gulzari-i-Asafiya (WM XXXVIII).

There is a personal tone in the book White Mughals. He begins his narration as first person “I” and involves his reader in his journey to an untravelled land in the past. Dalrymple‟s history books are the result of his passionate involvement with historical monuments. The Last Mughal was inspired by the Red Fort and his interest in Mughal history whereas White Mughals was conceived through his interest in the British Residency which was built by James Achilles Kirkpatrick for Khair un-Nissa. It motivated him to know more about the story of the couple.

Their story introduced him to his own legacy that he himself was “the product of a similar interracial liaison from this period, and that I thus had Indian blood in my veins” (WM X|I). As a narrator, Dalrymple becomes an important character in the text. He narrates all the details of his journey and the whole process of writing this book, hence readers feel connected with the author.

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Dalrymple‟s book is appreciated all over the world because it is multi-genre. In other words, his book is not confined to a single feature exclusive for a particular type of literary work rather it has a complex structure. It satisfies readers of history, travelogue as well as literature equally, “It has seduced the readers of love stories, culturally exotic travelogues, and detective mysteries” (Randolf 743).

The writer in an interview with Amrita Ghosh says that he has basically written this book for general audience rather than academic readers. But at the same time, he adds “I also wanted to give enough scholarly data for it to be taken seriously as a history book” (Web). He does it by providing endnotes and footnotes and lots of references from various primary and secondary sources as practiced in the field of academic history. Narayani Gupta in Biblio appreciates Dalrymple for writing history in such an interesting way. Gupta suggests that this book must be recommended for students of history in India as supplementary reading. The student of history in India should know that there can be interesting ways of revisiting the past and there is more to the subject of history than to study revenue settlement and constitutional changes.

Self- characterization is also an important feature of Dalrymple‟s works. For instance, he portrays himself as a narrator William in City of Djinns whereas in The Last Mughal he confines himself to the role of a historian. But in White Mughals, he characterizes himself as a travel writer, historian and narrator. As a travel writer, he talks about the journey he has undertaken to write White Mughals and his daily routines. He had started to work on this book in the spring of 1997, “Over the five years- and many thousands of miles of travels- since then, innumerable people have been incredibly generous with their hospitality, time, expertise, advice, wisdom, picture, editing skills, bottles of whisky, family papers, camp beds and cups of tea” (WM XXVII).

He opens an unexplored world to the foreign readers and does not fail to create a sense of aura, exoticism, and suspense. While writing White Mughals, Dalrymple tries to show a place once colonized by British, It was moreover, a relatively unexplored and unwritten place, at least in English, and a secretive one too” (WM XXXIII).

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White Mughals opens a dialogue between the past and present and the East and West by revisiting historical sites. Dalrymple shows that the 18th century was a period of cultural interaction and also an ideological intersection between the British and Indians, a precedent for contemporary multiculturalism. Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton in their edited book Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire say that White Mughals was hailed by international community especially in England because this was, “a genealogy of imperial cosmopolitanism, a celebration of multiculturalism and, in some sense, a recuperation of possibilities fashioned by empire building- again, apparently innocent of the sexual violence and add coercion of empire” (6).

Such projects are undertaken by Britishers to reconceptualise and reinterpret British imperial histories and emphasize the importance of “space and place in the imaginations of empire builders, colonial settlers and native subjects, whether comprador elites and subalterns” (2).Similar treatment of history to represent the colonial period of India is clearly visible in his other works such as City of Djinns and The Last Mughal.

Dalrymple tries to remind us of an era which was open to dialogue between two communities. He shows a time when, “normal steely dualism of Empire- between rulers and ruled, imperialists and subalterns, colonizers and the colonized – had broken. “The easy labels of religion and ethnicity and nationalism slapped on by generations of historians, turned out, at the very least, to be surprisingly unstable”(WM XI) . Every modes of binary opposition were in flux.

The narrator gives a series of examples of those British Officials who transformed their ways of living under the influence of Indian customs and traditions. There is One Sir David Ochterlony, a resident of Delhi embraced Islam and insisted on being addressed by his new name as Nasir-ud-Daula (Defender of the State). He adopted the lifestyle of a Mughal gentleman and started wearing Indian costumes like „choga and pagri‟ and developed a taste for hookahs and nautch girls. The other British official Thomas Legge was drawn towards Indian alchemy and divination. He led the life of a fakir and like an ascetic renounces the material world. He lived naked in an empty tomb in the deserts of Rajasthan. Legge claimed that he has discovered the Garden of Eden in the mountains of Hindu Kush.

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George Thomas is another British official who immersed himself in Indian ways of living at the end of the eighteenth century. He had his own estate in the Mewati badlands in the west of Delhi. He was known as „Jehaz Sahib‟. William Franklin gave an account of him that though he was uneducated “he spoke, wrote and read the Hindoostani and Persian languages with uncommon fluency and precision” (32).

It was not only British who were emulating natives but even Indians were embracing western culture and style of living. The writer gives the example of Dean Mahomet, a Muslim landowner from Patna who followed one of the British men to Ireland and married Jane Daley, a woman of another faith.

The 18th century was a period when East India Company was trying to establish itself as a power. So it couldn‟t treat Indians as inferior and dominate over them. Hence these cultural assimilations of adopting Indian ways and marrying Indian women were part of the strategies of the East India Company to mingle with natives. They even started to learn the languages spoken in India to empower themselves for communication and to dominate all spheres of life. And by the early nineteenth century, East India Company was strong enough to take the reign of governance of India in their hand. Even a leading Subaltern historian Gyan Prakash observes the same in his article “Inevitable Revolution” published in Nation:

Embattled, the British were forced to depend on indigenous allies and could not afford to treat native population and cultural inferior. Forcibly or willingly, many crossed culturally. They shed European trousers for native pajamas, grew Hindu moustaches and Muslim beards, married local women and kept concubines, and collected indigenous texts and artifacts. A human story interest and immersion in other cultures, languages and artifacts- not masterly underpinned British imperial expansion. (WM 26)

Prakash calls Dalrymple a „revisionist‟ who has tried to reconstruct the picture of the British colonial period by revisiting sites of struggle. Prakash believes that cross-cultural interaction may not be strategic all the time but most of the time it was. Apart from their goal of imperial expansion, there may have been a human interest in a culture and language they were subjugating. Such perspective is represented in

58 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India almost all British publications to salvage some cultural value from the debris of a notorious past.

Nicholas B. Dirks in his book The Scandal of Empire: India and the Creation of Imperial Britain talks about British imperial past in India and says that historians and writers are now recreating a new picture of Empire by self-legitimizing and justifying British presence in India. He says that it is “critical to refocus our attention on the history of empire, cutting through the unquestioned assumptions of imperial history whenever it mistakes colonial ideology for a balanced history” (335). He talks about the scandal of the British Empire in colonizing India and says that the history of Britain and India in the 18th century is interlinked. This book weaves the whole journey of British colonialism in India and explores a valid self-justification of the colonial past.

The end of the eighteenth century was the transitional phase in the history of India. The 19th century was the period known for transfer of power from the Mughal hands to British administration. Dalrymple reminds us that this was a period of rapid conquests, economic extraction by the East India Company policies but before that the 18th century is defined by him as a “hybrid world” and the relationship between India and Britain was “symbiotic”. In this regard Dalrymple writes:

The Kirkpatricks inhabited a world that was far more hybrid, and with far less clearly defined ethnic, national and religious borders, than we have been conditioned to expect, either by the conventional Imperial history books written in Britain before 1947, or by the nationalist historiography of post- Independence India, or for that matter by the post-colonial work coming from new generations of scholars, many of whom tend to follow the path opened up by Edward Said in 1978 with his pioneering Orientalism… It also became increasingly clear to me that the relationship between India and Britain was a symbiotic one. (WM X|-X|I)

Besides Dalrymple, there were other historians also who were studying the details of the warm relationship. These European writers were preoccupied in capturing histories of intimacies and celebrated it as a period of multiculturalism and exchange of ideas. Feminist historian Ann Laura Stroler in her article “Tense and Tender Ties” published in Journal of American History questions these “sentiments of

59 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India private nature”. These sentiments have helped not only with the ambitious plan of empire building and expansion but also created a ground for sustaining Raj through its entangling with the roots of India. Vicente Rafael calls it “white love for brown affection”(56) Rafael shows that this desire to marry Indian women was not motivated by personal emotions rather their move was infused with lust for power, an ambition to dominate the social, political and economic order of the colonized country. Once they succeeded in attaining their desired goal, Indians were pushed to the periphery. They fixed natives in the relegated role of savage subjects who were in desperate need of these enlightened white administrators as depicted in The Last Mughal.

Ballantyne and Burton find that these cross-racial sexual relationships are ways to “connect” and “anchor” with native subjects. They write, “. . . studies of “intimate frontier” or the “tense and tender ties” of empire have conceived of the intimate as operating as profoundly localizing domain... enabling the emergence of both creolized and mestizo reworkings of Europeaness” (5). The “intermarriage” plays a vital role in gaining access to the resources and lands of local communities.

To study James Achilles Kirkpatrick‟s alliance with an Indian noblewoman Khair-un-Nissa as only an emotional affair is to miss an important angle. Kirkpatrick was known in the East India Company‟s record as an exceptional diplomat. He had expelled not only the last serious French force from southern India but also successfully negotiated an important treaty with the Nizam of Hyderabad. This had for the first time brought the Nizam‟s vast dominions into a firm alliance with the British. Kirkpatrick‟s intimate knowledge of Mughal society also allowed him to participate in Hyderabadi court rituals in a way that earlier Residents had been unqualified to do, and later generations would find impossible. So when the Nizam recovered from an illness, James did not just go and congratulate him as other diplomats of the period might had done. Instead, as he reported to Calcutta:

After paying my respects to his Highness and expressing my Joy in his happy Recovery, I passed a Bag containing a thousand Rupees with the usual ceremony thrice round his Highness‟s head, and then desired that it might be considered as a Tussaddookh or health-offering on the present Joyful Occasion; a mode of manifesting the interest which Government I represent takes in his Highness‟s welfare, that was highly applauded by all present, and

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appeared to excite a pleasing emotion even in his Highness himself as far as could be perceived in his low and listless condition.(WM 127)

This was a small gesture but appreciated in the social and political world. By wearing Islamic dress, using Mughal styles of address, larding his speeches with Persian aphorisms like “the wise Shaikh Sady”, and accepting and using Persian titles, James Kirkpatrick started building excellent terms with the Nizam who trusted him and treated him like his son. He explained the secret of his success in Hyderabad, “I will inform you in a few words, that it consists of treating old Nizzy with a great deal of respect and deference, humouring in all his innocent whims and wishes” (WM 103). James had also proved himself adept at the kind of intelligence work essential in so friction-ridden and strategically sensitive posting, where the spies of each rival group eavesdropped on each other. During his first two years in Hyderabad, James had succeeded in setting up an extensive network of spies and contacts in the court. The Hyderabadi historian Ghulam Imam Khan in his book Tarikh i-Khurshid Jahi mentions James Kirkpatrick:

He was very close to the Prime Minister and a great favourite of the Nizam who use to call him „beloved son‟.... in contrast to many of the English who are often proud, haughty and snobbish, Kirkpatrick was a very cordial and a friendly person. Anyone who had spent a little time with him would be won over by his pleasant manners. In the very first meeting, he would make the person feel he had known him for years, and take him for an old friend and acquaintance. He was completely fluent in the language and idiom of these parts, and followed many of the customs of the Deccan. Indeed he had spent so much time in the company of the women of Hyderabad that he was very familiar with the style and behavior of the city and adopted it as his own. Thanks partly to these women he was always very cheerful. (WM 116)

Because of his knowledge of harem life, Kirkpatrick never committed the mistake made by many of his contemporaries. He never underestimated the power of the Nizam‟s women in the Hyderabad political process. In his very first report for Wellesley, James wrote not only about the Nizam and his advisors, but also devoted many pages to analyzing the distribution of power within Nizam Ali Khan‟s harem. James‟s writing shows that he understood the very precise and intricate hierarchy in

61 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India the Nizam‟s harem. This knowledge enabled him successfully to predict the outcome of power struggles and succession disputes. He routinely wore Indian clothes and even before this liaison-clearly kept his own harem at the back of his house which was complete with Mughal maidservants, aseels (wetnurses), midwives and harem guards. Such meticulous details about Kirkpatrick‟s perfection in political and social life of Hyderabad state make it clear that it was more than his love for a noble woman Khair Un-Nissa.

The way he orders a special quilt for Nizam as the Hyderabadi winter set in and writes to Calcutta, “It will arrive in very good season as the cold weather is just setting in, when the old gentleman requires warm clothing. You have no idea how kindly these marks of attention are taken by him; I may truly say that by such attentions I have gained his warm heart” (WM 10) shows that it is not a lover who is talking but a thorough diplomat.

Kirkpatrick flourished in Hyderabad by his unusual command over native language and struck an excellent relationship with the Nizam. Dalrymple informs the reader that under James‟ supervision, the residency‟s participation in the social and cultural life of Hyderabad led to “cross- fertilization” of ideas and growth of the good relationship between British Officials and nobles of the court. It definitely led to incalculable political benefits. Dalrymple writes that

James Kirkpatrick made himself intelligible in the political lingua franca of the wider Mughal world. Equally important was his willingness to submit to the ritual subordination of Mughal court procedure- the giving of nazrs (symbolic gifts) and the accepting of khilats (symbolic court dress is supposedly taken from the Nizam‟s own wardrobe) all had profound political significance in Mughal court ritual. (WM 127)

James not only indulged in whims of the Nizam but also went out of his way to please him. He found him a pair of „prodigious‟ spice island doves, „each as large as a goose‟, as an ornaments for his pigeon collection, and also a young lioness for his menagerie. These presents were not a result of James‟s undoubted generosity but useful policy.

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James privately believed that he might never have pulled off the Subsidiary Treaty of 1800 had he not found the Nizam three items for which he had especially asked particularly intricate piece of clockwork „with cascades and fountain represented by glass set in motion‟, „an artificial singing bird…automaton, set with jewels…. Representing the plumage [and] thirdly fur cloak …. From Nepal… a most acceptable present to the gentleman, who even in this hot weather is always wrapped up in fur dress or shawls. (WM 348)

Hence, from the above quote, it gets clear that the “intimacies” shown by the British Officials during the end of the eighteenth century has political significance. James Achilles with his intelligence learned the languages and courtly mannerism, hence, mingled with the natives to gain influence within the local politics. His love for an Indian lady and eventual wedding helped James Achilles to strong his root in Indian soil and find sustenance in local communities. Durba Ghosh in her book Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire also opines the same. She says that these types of intimacies were strategic and politically motivated. The British officials participated in local practices and had their own ways to strengthen their position with the local court. So James Achilles Kirkpatrick was also trying to settle his local political affairs to fulfill the mission of his country as a successful diplomat.

Before he had fallen in love with Khair Un-Nissa, he was in a relationship with an another Indian bibi . He had lived with her for many years and fathered a son also. In 1791 James brought the boy back to England during a year‟s sick leave, after which the child joined the multi-ethnic household of children, legitimate, presided over by the handsome Colonel in Kent.

Ghosh emphasized by referring to Michael Fisher that by participating in court rituals, speaking and reading Persian, which was the business language of India and living the life of native was practiced by Britishers to defeat natives in their own space. But the saddest part of the whole episode was that children born out of such relationship were never given societal acceptance. That British men were having sexual relationships with native women was open secret. The letter of James reflects his pain over the racial discrimination prevalent among the British in India. They were

63 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India especially harsh towards children of mixed race. James was concerned about fate of his child and said,

I would be loathe to think, that he may be one day [ before beginning again;] he would I have no doubt be exposed to the same illiberal objection and obloquy, should he ever be obliged to seek his fortunes in the country which gave him birth. Among other circumstances which rendered this child peculiarly dear and interesting to me is the striking resemblance which he bears to my dear father. He is indeed, in every respect, a most lovely infant… .(WM 384)

In sep, 1801, soon after the birth of Shahib Allum, he wrote to William that he would endeavour to send his little Hyderabadi to England as soon as possible though it will be painful for him to separate from his soul. As the colour prejudice was still much less prevalent than among Company‟s servants in India.

It was widely and probably correctly believed at the time that the only way Anglo-Indian children had the chance of making something of their lives was if they received a pukka English public-school education. English racism against „country born‟ Anglo-Indian children was now becoming so vicious in India as to make this provision very necessary. Without it, their options were limited in the extreme, and they were condemned to sink to the margins, pushed away and ostracized by both British and Indian society (WM 381).

James and Khair un-Nissa‟s daughter Kitty was regarded illegitimate throughout his life. In his will James Kirkpatrick had referred to his children both Sahib Allum and Sahib Begum as his „natural children‟, a contemporary legal terminology for the children of unmarried couples. Their daughter Kitty writes to her grandmother to get a certificate from the Nizam or a mujtahid which will prove that some sort of legal marriage ceremony had taken place between James and Khair Sharaf un-Nissa but she could not get any.

Hayden White asserts that writing of history is not a scientific method rather it is guided by various personal motives. He focuses on the mode of emplotment where the historian plots the story of the past according to his intention. White says that the writing of history involves a three-level process. The first step is “identifying” or

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“uncovering” or “finding the stories” lying buried in the chronicles. The next step is the explanation by emplotment which means “providing the „meaning‟ of a story by identifying the kind of story that has been told” (7). It means that in the course of narrating the story, the historian provides it with the plot. In White Mughals, the plot of the book is the “tragic love story” and accordingly Dalrymple arranges events to shape an interesting story to serve his purpose, “by invoking principles of combination which serve as putative laws of historical explanation” (11).

Dalrymple uses ample historical material to tell his story from the eighteenth century. It was the time East India Company was still struggling to establish its colony in India. He projects the relationship shared by Indians and British in a positive light. In White Mughals, Dalrymple reminds us of “the divergence political stakes attached to the history of „race mixing‟ ”, and the various roles played by the intimacy in the development of social colonial formation (Ballantyne and Burton).

The writer tells the story of a woman and the life of harem during that time. Khair-un-Nissa has been depicted as a powerful woman who leads her life according to her will. She is a pious, emotional, and impulsive woman who faces many hurdles in her life but succeeds in overcoming them bravely and strongly. She is a woman of grace and determination, “willing or able to stand in her way once she had made up her mind about something” (WM 126)

Dalrymple also talks about many other influential women during the 18th century India. These women have been discussed by Abdul Lateef Shushtari in his book Tuhfat al’ Alam. Dalrymple was surprised to see the power of women during 18th Century and how they played prominent roles in politics. These strong women in the late 18th were Razia Sultana, Chan Bibi, and Dilshad Agha. These women were famous for their horsemanship, archery, shooting, etc besides being educated in science, mathematics, poetry, medicines etc. There were also women like Mah Laqa Bai Chanda, who was Hyderabad‟s most popular dancer and courtesan. She happens to be the first woman Urdu poet. He tries to capture the gap in history writing by bringing to the forefront the suppressed and neglected history. He wrote about the marginalized segment of society by highlighting those women who were ahead of their times. They were free to read and write, take part in politics and own their own states.

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The author draws a parallel between Indian women and India itself as both of them have mesmerized their colonizers. This is evident in Dalrymple‟s description of Indian women and India. He praises the beauty of Hyderabad:

Hyderabad hid its charms from the eyes of outsiders, veiling its splendors from curious eyes behind a non-descript wall and labyrinthine backstreets. Only slowly did it allow you into an enclosed world where water still dripped from fountains, flowers bent in the breeze, and peacocks called from the overladen mango trees. (WM XXXVII)

James gives an enticing description of India and says that it has a bewitching charm for strangers. It seduces, embraces and transforms the outsider. The colonizers fell in love with this colony and instead of subjugating India; they got passionately and emotionally involved in it. The colonizers had an overwhelming aesthetic feeling for the beauty of India. James Achilles Kirkpatrick in his letters praises Indian landscape as he is talking about a woman. He writes, “charming verdure that cloathes the whole country and renders it so delightful to the eye… you may walk bare-headed in the sun without inconvenience almost any hour of the day” (WM 76).

Through the tale of James Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa, the author tries to show that meeting of East and West is not impossible and never has been. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. “they have met and mingled in the past, and they will do so again”(WM 501). The subject-matter of east –west encounter which Dalrymple deals in his book is not new. Other European writers also explored such issue like E.M Forster in A Passage to India and Pearl S. Buck in Mandala. These writers show the clash of cultures and the impossibility of reconciliation between the Britishers and Indians.

In his novel Passage to India E.M. Forster analyzes the relationship between Indians and Britishers and explores the possibility of friendship between an English man Cyril Fielding and an Indian Dr. Aziz at the time of British colonization. Dr. Aziz is slightly scornful of the English because of his bad experience with Major Callendar, his superior at the hospital. Later on, he develops a friendly bond with Fielding and their friendship represents the positive side of the relationship between the English and the Indians.

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Later in the novel, Fielding‟s friend Ronny Heaslop‟s fiancée Adela Quested accuses Aziz of sexual assault. This allegation leads to Aziz‟s arrest and his court trial. Fielding supports Aziz and proclaims his faith in his innocence. It shocks British colonists. This incidence leads to racial tension between the two communities. At the end, Adela admits her mistake and takes back her charges against Aziz and he is acquitted. But this incident creates tension between the colonizers and colonized and affects the friendship of Aziz and Fielding. Aziz now suspects the motive of Fielding and they both get separated.

In the climax of the novel, Aziz and Fielding meet each other and on their final boat ride, Aziz tells Fielding that their friendship is impossible till India is a colony of British and they are not equal. The last scene of the novel depicts that even the landscape of India feels oppressed by their friendship. When Fielding asks Aziz “why can‟t we be friends now? He replies, “ because the horses did not want it- they swerved apart: the earth did not want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temple, the tank, the jai, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the guest house, that come into view as they emerged from the gap and saw Mau beneath : they didn‟t want it , they said in their hundred voices, „ No, not yet‟ and the sky said „No, not there‟ ” (316).

Similar sentiments are also expressed by American writer and novelist Pearl S. Buck in her novel Mandala. The story revolves around Maharaja Jagat and his family and their contact with the western world. The family is coping with the challenges of settling in independent India. Maharaja Jagat is opening a hotel for tourists to get financial benefits. Maharaja Jagat and his wife Moti are happily married and have two children Veera and Jai. Their son Jai is missing and seems to be dead in the war with China.

Maharaja Jagat transforms when he meets a beautiful American woman Brooke Westley. Both of them started admiring each other. His relationship with Brookes makes him realize the difference between sex and romantic love. On the other hand, his wife Moti who is learning Christianity from Father Francis Paul, seeks solace in his company. She expresses her feeling to the priest but such a relationship is not acceptable.The east-west culture clash also affects Veera the daughter of Jagat and Moti. She is interested in Bert Osgood, the American businessman who works

67 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India with Jagat. Veera expresses her feeling to Osgood who rejects her proposal though he likes her. He tells her that their union is impossible as she is a princess and he is a common man.

But Dalrymple‟s passionate but doomed love story treats the confrontation between the two communities with a difference and ends it on a positive note. He tries to locate the work of art within other discourses prevalent at that time and sees literature and history as a part of a dynamic exchange. Dalrymple‟s narrative history employs narratology practiced in literature. Thus, history and literature appear intertwined. History requires linguistic intervention and literature cannot be understood without having knowledge of its historical context. Thus, the “textuality of history” and “historicity of the text” are key concepts of new-Historicism as Stephen Greenblatt in his essay “Resonance and Wonder” writes and these terms can be explained through White Mughals.

The term New Historicism was coined by Stephen Greenblatt during 1960. He gave equal importance to literary and non- literary texts. In his seminal essay,“ Renaissance of Self-Fashioning” he says, “There is no such thing as human nature independent of culture, complexes of concrete behavior patterns- customs, usages, tradition, habit clusters... a set of control mechanisms- plans, recipes, rules, instructions… for the governing of behavior”(124).

Another new historicist Hans Bertens also expresses views similar to Greenblatt and says that “the work of art is a product of a negotiation between a creator or class of creators equipped with a complex, communally shared repertoire of conventions, and the institutions and practices of society” (176).The New historicists assume that a literary work is the product of time, place and thus, any work of art must be read in the light of all the material available for the same historical period. They reject the autonomy of both the artist and his work of art.

According to the new-historicists, the writer and his work are the product of “hegemony” and reflect the dominant ideology at the time of its production. Dalrymple is a British writer who is writing about the time of colonization of India by British Empire. As a British man, his view of British colonial past is different from the writer of a colonized country. Like a White historian Dalrymple is talking positively about the relationship between India and Britain in White Mughals whereas

68 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

Indian historians of that time have portrayed the end of 18th century as a period when East India Company was trying to establish itself in India. It has been observed that the writers from the western world are preoccupied with the idea of representing the positive image of British Raj.

Peter Barry argues that “ new historicism refuses (at least ostensibly) to „privilege‟ literary text: instead of a literary „foreground‟ and a historical „background‟, it envisages and practices a mode of study in which literary and non- literary text are given equal weight and constantly inform and interrogate each other (172) . Dalrymple has used literary and non literary sources to constitutes his book. He incorporates letters, diaries entry, magazine article, newspapers to explore the story of White Mughals. He writes:

By way of Prelude, it may not be amiss to observe that I did once safely pass the fiery ordeal of a long nocturnal interview with the charming subject of the present letter. It was this interview which alluded to as the one when I had full and close survey of her lovely Person-…I could not, confess, help feeling myself something more than a pity for-She declared to me again and again that her affections had been irrevocably fixed on me… .(WM 189)

Dalrymple found the major lead to the story of James Kirkpatrick and Khair- un-Nissa in an article “The Romantic marriage of James Achilles Kirkpatrick”. This article was published in Blackwood Magazine (1893) written by a kinsman of Kirkpatrick name Edward Strechey. He also used a rare manuscript, Hyderabadi history of the period called as Gulzar I- Asafiya. Besides James and Khair Un-Nissa , there were also other stories of inter racial marriage.

The other Indian women who wedded British Residents at that time were Fyze Baksh. She was married to Maratha court General William Palmer. She was Khair un- Nissa‟s best friend. Her father was an Iranian immigrant and a captain of the cavalry who had moved from Delhi to Lucknow after Fyze‟s birth. On her marriage to William Palmer she was formally adopted by the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam who gave sher the title Sahib Begum .The New Historicists are interested in recovering the lost histories and explore the mechanism of repression and subjugation like Dalrymple. He says,

69 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

The tale- which had never been told, and seemed to be unknown even to Kirkpatrick‟s contemporaries- bore a striking resemblance to Madame Butterfly. Day after day, under the armorial shields and dark oak bookcases of the Duke Humfrey‟s Library, I tore as quickly as I could through the faded pages of Russell‟s often illegible copperplate correspondence, the tragic love story slowly unfolding fully-formed before me. (WM XXXIX)

Dalrymple also uses visuals such as pictures, photographs, maps etc to lend a clear understanding to his western readers. In the middle of the 1960‟s, Raphael Samuel and his contemporaries became aware of the value of photographs as evidence for the 19th century social history. The other historian Simon Schama also influenced Dalrymple. Schama had used visual evidence in studying the seventeenth-century Dutch culture. The use of image and pictures allow readers to imagine the past more vividly. The critic Stephen Bann says that use of image brings us “face-to-face with history” (13).

The German Marxist critic Walter Benjamin in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” gives his response on the „photographic image‟ and says that the machine “substitutes a plurality of copies of a unique existence” and thus exhibits a move from the „cult value‟ of the image to its „exhibition value‟(219). The other critic Michael Camille argues that a photographic image actually increases the aura by adding glamour.

Dalrymple uses maps also to depict the geographical location of Hyderabad as well as India. He also uses paintings and photographs preserved in the archives to create a better understanding in the reader. Dalrymple uses the image of John Wombwell, a chartered accountant. In that picture, he is smoking hookah on the terrace in Lucknow and Gomti river is flowing behind. The other picture is of David Ochterlony along with his nautch girls at Delhi residency. These images give us a glimpse of the Indian lifestyle of these British officials.

The writer also used pictures of various bibis who were married to British officials. There is a picture of a Bengali bibi painted by Francesco Renaldi and image of Bouline Elise, the bibi of Claude Martin. The other portrait is of Jamdance, the companion of William Hickey painted by Thomas Hickey who died after giving birth to a son. That child was known as “chota William Saheb”. The image of the

70 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India protagonist Khair un-Nissa and James Kirkpatrick was depicted in the book. A picture of James by an Indian miniaturist survives in a private collection. It shows an alert, neat, handsome young man with close-cropped hair and elongated muttonchop whiskers of a style very similar to those then being sported by Lord Wellesley. He is dressed in a hybrid uniform of an embroidered black jacket of a vaguely English cut, but below it he wears cool white Indian pyjama bottoms and Hindustani slippers (WM 363). Henry Russell a British official who had seen Khair un-Nissa, was disappointed to see the painting because it failed to reproduce the beauty of Khair-un-Nissa. He found her much more beautiful than her picture

The author shares the pictures of the Deccani Pleasure garden where begums and princes used to spend their leisure time. In one picture, a begum is enjoying music under a chattri in her garden in the afternoon; the other picture shows a love-sick Hyderabadi begum consulting an aseel while waiting for the arrival of her lover Another picture depicts a Deccani prince with his women. While one plays music, another looks after a pet deer, while a third one is dressed in Jacobean silk knickerbocker and a plumed wide-rimmed hat, passes her prince a glass of wine. At her feet is an Indian spaniel.

He also shares the photographic images of various notable men and monuments. The first photograph is of the mercenary Alexander Gardner, one of the last of the white Mughals in his tartan slawar kameez. Gardner is “clothed from head to foot” adorned with the egret‟s plume, only allowed to the person of high rank. Dalrymple also depicts the tomb of Michel Joachim Raymond. The complex remained the venue of strange syncretic rituals until it was destroyed by an unknown vandal in March, 2002. The photographs of the hill of Maula Ali, naqqar khana gateway and Char Minar have also been used.

Dalrymple is also fond of historical monuments and glorifies the architecture of the colonial building. In White Mughals Dalrymple describes the buildings built by the East India Company. He talks about the old British Residency which is now Osmania University College for Women. He compares it with the contemporary White House in Washington. He calls it one of the perfect buildings erected by the East India Company which has a massive fortified garden over the River Musi. The writer moves ahead in the description of the building and informs the reader that it

71 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India was built by Lieutenant Colonel James Achilles Kirkpatrick between 1797 and 1805. Dalrymple writes that though the building is in a dilapidated condition but still it is easy to see how magnificent the Residency would have been once:

It had a grand, domed semi-circular bay on the south front, reached through a great triumphal arch facing the bridge over the Musi. On the north front, a pair of British lions lay, paws extended, below a huge pediment and colonnaded front. They looked out over a wide expanse of eucalyptus, mulsarry and casuarina trees, every inch the East India Company at its grandest and most formal. (WM XXXII-III)

So, from the above study it is clear that the other writers also explored the relationship of east and west but were negative about the reconciliation of the two worlds. But Dalrymple through the events of the past shapes a story which gives hope about meeting of east and west which was once a reality. White Mughals is about mingling, fusion and hybridity. It promotes tolerance and understanding and tries to bridge two worlds. To some extent, it succeeds in doing so. The story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa shows possibility of the union of East and West ,“ Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have met and mingled in the past; and they will do so again (WM 501) affirms Dalrymple at the end of the story.

72 White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India

Work Cited

1. Ballantyne, Tony. Antoninette M. Burton. Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire. University of Illinois Press, 2009. Print.

2. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Print.

3. Benjamin, Walter. Illumination: Essays and Refection. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Print.

4. Cooper, G.S Randolf Review: White Mughal. Modern Asian Studies 39, 3(2005) 741-760. Cambridge University Press, 2005. UK.

5. Dalrymple, William: White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India. Penguin Book, 2004. Print.

6. Dirks, B.Nicholas. The Scandal of Empire: India and The Creation of Imperial Britain. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Howard University Press, 2006. Print.

7. Forster, E.M. A Passage to India. Penguin Classic: 1946. Print.

8. Ghosh Amrita, In Focus: An Interview with William Dalrymple.(web)

9. Ghosh, Durba. Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Print.

10. Greenblatt, Stephen. “Resonance and Wonder” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Vol 43, 4 (1990): 11-34.Print.

11. Hutcheon, Linda. “Histographic Metafiction” Passionate Doubts: Designs of Interpretation in Contemporary American Fiction. 1995. Print.

12. Prakash, Gyan. “Inevitable Revolution”. The Nation. April 30, 2007.(25-30).Print.

13. Stoler, Laura Ann, “Tense and Tender Ties” Journal of American History 88 , 3(2001): 829-65.

14. White, Hayden. Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. USA: John Hopkins University,1973. Print.

73 The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

Chapter 5 THE LAST MUGHAL: THE FALL OF A DYNASTY, DELHI, 1857

William Dalrymple‟s The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 is a historical narrative published in 2006. This book gives an account of the events centered on the life of Bahadur Shah Zafar as the title of the text suggests. This historical narrative offers an insight into the actual condition of the Mughal Empire when Zafar became king in the mid-sixties. The Mughal reign was on the verge of political decline and Zafar no longer held sovereignty. Besides this, Dalrymple also tries to dissect the reason for the Mutiny of 1857 in this book.

The text seems to pick up the thread from where Dalrymple‟s earlier book White Mughals ended. His former text was written in the background of the history of the 18th century India. This narration celebrates the harmonious relationship between British and Indian community. The fascinating love story of James Kirkpatrick, (the British Resident in the court of Hyderabad) and Khair-un-Nisa, (who belonged to a noble family of Hyderabad) served as the backbone to the text. On the contrary, The Last Mughal unfolds in the turbulent time of the 19th century. It chronicles the history of the 1857 Uprising and gives an account of the last days of the Mughal Empire. It projects the rise of British rule in India and failure of the Mughal dynasty because of various reasons.

The mutiny led to bloodshed, with great number of lives lost on either side. Afterwards, nothing could ever be as it was before; the trust and mutual admiration that the white Mughals cultivated was destroyed forever. With the British victory, the Mughal aristocracy was swept away and British culture was unapologetically imposed on India. At the same time the wholesale arrival of the memsahibs, the rise of Evangelical Christianity and the moral dilemma it brought along with it ended all possibilities of amicable relationship between the two nations.

Dalrymple interacts with his readers and shares with them how he came upon with the idea of writing the history of the Mughals. In the introduction of the book, The Last Mughal, he had written that visiting the Old city of Delhi was his favorite pastime. During these excursions, he was mesmerized by the magnificence of Zafar‟s palace and Red Fort. He started reading voraciously about Mughal dynasty and its

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 rulers who constructed these magnificent buildings. His immersion in Mughal history resulted in representing their account in his historical narrative.

Dalrymple is fond of writing about Delhi and its history. He lays emphasis on its charm and it has always been the central point of reference in his narrations. This is evident from his previous book the City of Djinns which highlights different phases of the history of Delhi. “Delhi had a greater and more overwhelming effect on me than it would have had on other more cosmopolitan teenagers; certainly, the city hooked me from the start” (LM 7) says Dalrymple. And thus, this statement highlights his passionate involvement with Delhi and its architecture. He unearths all historical events of Delhi and compares the present Delhi with its past.

The writer opines that Delhi of the 19th century was the abode of the most civilized people of the world. The inhabitants of Delhi were proud of their legacy of beautiful and elegant language Urdu. It was the language of the poets and historians. Poetry was discussed in every house of Delhi and Urdu was spoken by the common men and women. The author also informs that there was a special dialect for the different class of people and was spoken by even the elite class. Dalrymple mentions about The Garden of Poetry, a collection of Urdu poetry which contains more than 540 poets from Delhi. It includes couplets from the Emperor and fifty members of the royal family along with a poor water seller from Chandni Chowk, a Punjabi merchant and so on. He introduces the grand Mughal culture and deplores the loss of it because of British intrusion and revolt of 1857.They played a large role in the decline of suchgrand status of Delhi and irreplaceable loss of a great culture and tradition.

The book begins with the description of the marriage procession of Bahadur Shah Zafar‟s son Prince Jawan Bakht which took place on 2nd April 1852 i.e., five years before the Uprising which served as the background to the text. Dalrymple introduces the reader to the Mughal trends and cultures. He describes their grand functions and wedding processions with all its magnificence and beauty. He quotes Zahir Dehlvi from Dastan i- Ghadar who describes the marriage procession as “such beauty and magnificence had never seen before” (LM 30). Dalrymple also quotes from an issue of Delhi Gazette published on 31st March 1852 which gives an account of the royal marriage in these words “a brilliant train of elephants, camels, horses, and conveyances of the every denomination” (LM 30).

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

The author highlights the financial crisis in Emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar‟s regime in the background of these lavish ceremonies. He throws light on his inefficiency and irrationality. In order to meet the expenditure of the grand marriage ceremony, Zafar had raised money from different sources. Dalrymple quotes details from the British Resident‟s diary of the court to inform that since December Zinat Mahal,the wife of Zafar was busy in procuring a large amount of money to arrange the lavish wedding. This aspect shows the extravagant and pompous nature of the Mughals who could not go without grandeur as it marked their authority.

Zafar‟s political powers were also declining like his financial status. Dalrymple informs the reader that Zafar was king only for namesake and the real powers were in the hand of British officials. Hedid not control even 10 miles from the Red Fort and his real authority existed within the boundaries of his fort. The British resident Sir Thomas Metcalfe though friendly with Zafar kept firm eyes on the daily routine of the Emperor and forbade him from exercising his power as an Emperor. Zafar felt that “whoever enters this gloomy palace, Remains a prisoner for life in European captivity” (LM 38). Thus the marriage procession which on the surface level was the symbolic facade of grandeur and strength was underlining the ugliness and hollowness of the Mughal Dynasty. Dalrymple writes “Seen from this point of view, the spectacular marriage procession of Jawan Bakht was less a symbol of strength than the last desperate fling of a terminally ill dynasty” (LM 40).

. Dalrymple contrasted this situation with Zafar‟s earlier position of authority and power in 1803 when Britishers had just entered India after defeating the Marathas alliance. He quotes Governor General Lord Wellesley who was astonished by the power and sovereignty which Zafar enjoyed, “almost every state and class of people in India continue to acknowledge his nominal sovereignty. The current coin of every established power is struck in the name of Shah Alam…” (LM 38). Dalrymple findsa significant correlation between Zafar and Delhi. Zafar personified Delhi of the 19th century as both of them had lost their earlier glamour and were on the verge of decline

The book laments the loss of the Indo-Islamic civilization and concludes that the Britishers didn‟t know what they were destroying.It was a result of the British policy of conquest, expansion and exploitation of India as a colony. The Last Mughal therefore is a book at whose core lies portrayal of the character of Bahadur Shah Zafar

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 of Delhi during the period of mid-19th century as well as the history of British Imperialism.

Dalrymple highlights the picturesque beauty of Delhi as the place of Dar ul- Mulk, the seat of the Mughal praised by the poet Mir, “In this beautiful city the streets are not mere streets, they are like the album of a painter” (LM 32).Dalrymple further writes that when places like Lucknow and Murshidabad were experimenting and welcoming the western fashion and architecture, Delhi was proud of its indigenous culture. The reason lay in the fact that there were fewer interactions between Delhi and British culture till 1852. The British were limited to the domed church, a classical Residency building. Hence, Delhi retained its oldest culture and was proud of its „tehzib‟ and heritage.

The writer finds that people of Delhi in the 19th century were so much in love with Delhi that they could not think of living anywhere else other than Delhi. Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan wrote about Delhi, “The water of Delhi is sweet to the taste, the air is excellent, and there are hardly any diseases” (LM 34).These details serve as indices and prepare the readers for what would come and help them to understand the events related to 1857. Like indices, these details are wedged into the narrative torepresent a moment of nostalgia contrasted with the terrible aspect of popular violence against the Raj.

As every person is a byproduct of the society in which he is born and bred, so Dalrymple is also not an exception. Like other European writers, he also tries to justify colonization and represents the positive image of the British. He is apprehensive about the presence of British in India as both his books City of Djinns and The Last Mughal reflect. While writing about the colonial history of British India, Dalrymple is preoccupied with the idea of justifying British presence in India.City of Djinns provides an account of his visit to Iris Portal before moving to India. He engages her in a conversation about her experience of Delhi in pre- independence and asks a question at the end which has preoccupied him, “Do you think British rule was justified?” (Djinns80).

Dalrymple seems keen to represent the positive aspect of British Imperialism in India. In City of Djinns he focuses on the mystical relationship between British and Indians while in White Mughals, he highlights the romantic relationship between East

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 and West. Here, Dalrymple tests the boundaries and explores the possibility of assimilation of Britishers and Indians on the ground of love.

But Dalrymple‟s treatment of history is different from academic history because he employs narrative style of writing history. In other words, he adopts the style of narrating history, in the form of a story. Even Khushwant Singh in one of the issues of Outlook shares a similar sentiment about Dalrymple‟s style of writing history, “. . .[The Last Mughal] shows the way history should be written: not as a catalogue of dry -as- dust kings, battles, and treaties but to bring the past to the present, put life back in characters long dead and gone and make the reader feel he is living among them…” (26) In the process of writing the history of India, Dalrymple utilizes his material in such a way as if he is bringing historical events alive in front of the readers. He employs historical figures as characters in his book.

The author‟s history books deal with the same subject matter but continue to focus on different aspects of a familiar story. He explores the British Imperial history and relation between the dominant groups and their native subjects from a different perspective.

In the introduction to the text The Last Mughal, he asserts that “… At the center of it lies the question of how and why the relatively easy relationship of Indian and Briton, so evident during the time of Fraser, gave way to the hatreds and racism of the high- nineteenth-century Raj. The Uprising, it is clear, was the result of that change, not its cause” (9).

Here, he also claims that he has used the rare material available in the archives to show the Indian perspective of mutiny of 1857. Dalrymple writes, “Discovering the sheer scale of the treasures held by the National Archives was one of the highlights of the whole project. It is a commonplace of books about 1857 that they lament the absence of Indian sources and the corresponding need to rely on the huge quantities of easily accessible British material” (LM 12). He questions, “why no one had properly used this wonderful mass of material before” (LM 13). Thus, these statements of Dalrymple increase the credibility of his book The Last Mughal as a history book.

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

In a telephonic interview, Dalrymple himself lays emphasis on two things “the centrality of Delhi” and the unexplored historical data available in Urdu and Persian language, “It‟s simply that in Delhi there are 20,000 primary sources of Urdu and Persian [material], which allows us to see the Uprising in quite incredible detail…”(web). Dalrymple‟s study is based on an immense amount of empirical research through his exploration of archival material from various sources. Unlike traditional historians, Dalrymple exploits both literary and non-literary texts in the process of writing history. This approach of parallel reading of literary and non- literary text is also emphasized by the new- historicism which has given equal weight to all sorts of text. Peter Barry explains, “That is to say, new historicism refuses (at least ostensibly) to „privilege‟ the literary text: instead of a literary „foreground‟ and a historical „background‟ it envisages and practices a mode of study in which literary and nonliterary texts are given equal weight and constantly inform and interrogate each other”(78).

For writing The Last Mughal, Dalrymple has used The Mutiny Papers, diary entries, materials published in newspaper Dilli Urdu Akbhar and Sirajul -Akbhar and various personal and official letters. He also refers to literary works Dastanbuy of Mirza Ghalib and Dastan i-Ghadr by Zahir Dehalvi etc. All these materials have been interpreted in the context of the Uprising of 1857 to represent the repressed historical consciousness. It was an attempt to give a better insight into the situation of the 1857 Uprising. Hence, it can be said that Dalrymple is a new historicist who utilizes maximum possible material to study the scenario of the mutiny of 1857.

Dalrymple writes that the documents available at National Archive were collected by the British from the palace and the army camp. These were the petitions and requests made by the ordinary citizens such as Delhi-potters, courtesans, sweetmeat and overworked water carriers to Zafar against the problem faced by them because of the Mutiny. These documents were overlooked by the historians. These discourses helped in developing Dalrymple‟s understanding of that time. They gave a glimpse of the actual condition of Delhi during 1857.

The other feature of this book which makes it at par with the works of new historicism is its representation of the voice of common men who are generally mute in elite historiography. New Historicism proclaims to rewrite history from the

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 perspective of those living at the margin. It rejects the concept of elite class history and shifts its focus on the significance of the ordinary events.

The Last Mughal can also be studied in the framework of subaltern historiography by relying on narration of commons man to write people‟s history. It is a new trend of historical research in modern Indian historiography developed during 1960s. Historians focus on the subjugated class of peasants, oppressed women, workers and other marginalized sects of the society who fall under the discipline of Subaltern Studies. Here the historian records the history of the ordinary people so far pushed at periphery.

Subaltern studies starts as a critique of two schools of history: Cambridge school and the nationalist historians. Subaltern historians write history of nationalism focusing on the history of elite classes. They brought an anti-elitist approach to history writing. These writers focus on the study of history from below. In other words, subaltern historiography is different from writing of elite and British historiography which has hegemonic power structure. They devoice those who are marginalized in the society by excluding the experiences and perspectives of lower classes from the documents of dominant groups.

The pioneers of this approach are the historians like Rodney Hilton, E.P Thompson, and Eric Hobsbawm etc. They influenced history writing by placing common people in the centre of their studies. These writers were concern about rescuing from the condescension of posterity the past of the socially subordinate group in India (14).

Ranajit Guha is another important name in the study of subaltern studies .Guha in his essay “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India” begins by giving an account of historiography of Indian nationalism which is based on “elitist” account of narration and it ignores the account of marginalized people such as Women and Peasants divided on the basis of cast, creed, religion, gender etc. And this elitist account of the historiography is the result of “ideological product” of British rule in India.

Dalrymple like a subaltern historian takes into account a memoir of an ordinary sepoy Sitaram Pandey to write about mutiny of 1857. His writing traces the changing

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 attitude of the British officials during the 18th and19th century, “In those days the sahibs could speak our language much better than they do now, and they mixed more with us. Although officers today have to pass the language examination, and have to read books, they do not understand our languages…” (LM 136).

The author uses The Mutiny Paper to highlight the problem of ordinary people of western suburb Paharganj at the time of mutiny. These ordinary people of Delhi complained to Zafar about the nuisance and loot by the Gujars, “We poor folk, residents of Jaisingh pura and Shahganj, also known as Paharganj, have come together to the Luminous Presence, because from days of old, our settlement was attached to the Royal Estates, yet now the Tilangas come out from Ajmeri Gate and oppress the shopkeepers, and take goods by force without paying anything…” (LM 209-10). Suresh Menon appreciates Dalrymple for his wide-angled narration and use of the narrative of ordinary men to discuss their life and problem faced by the common Delhiwallahs:

By keeping the Emperor in his sight at all times, Dalrymple gives his narration multiple perspectives. And by describing the stories of ordinary men, he gives it an intimacy that derives from detail. The form, therefore, is as fascinating as the content. Dalrymple has written a masterpiece that scores on two other fronts all historians dream of- original research and fresh insights. The Mutiny Papers which he discovered at the National Archives gives him access into daily lives, while by gently pointing out the similarities between then and now, he gives his history a contemporary feel. (Deccan Herald)

Dalrymple writes in the introduction of the book that the material which he has used in the text excites because of its “street level nature” and we get the history of the common men who are generally ignored. Another remarkable feature of The Last Mughal is its humanistic approach to history. New historicists have focused on „human nature‟ that is shared by the author of the literary text and its characters along with the writer‟s target readers.

The exponent of the new historicist approach , Stephen Greenblatt says that in the course of writing a book, the writer cannot present his views in an autonomous way for “the human subject itself began seem remarkably unfree, the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular society”(247). He points out that the

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 writer breaths the episteme of his time. Any de-contextualized writing of his present and past is impossible. His writings are informed by the ideologies of his time and the writer is bound to construct and position his text in the conditions and ideological formations of his own era.

There were certain religious groups among Britishers who had specific imperial agenda- namely the Evangelicals and Utilitarians in 18th century India. Their activities were the black spot on the face of colonialism. Even Dalrymple accepts it but he does not fail to remind his readers about those British who have loved India. These white men were equally disturbed by perceiving the negative streak between communities in the form of religious hatred and racism. Thus Dalrymple can be seen in the role of revisionist who tries to draw a positive picture of British imperialism as says Gyan Prakash. Prakash finds him quite impatient with Edward Said and other post-colonial critics, “Writing with the traditional British suspicion of theory, he sees them as purveying the abstract concepts of Orientalism and colonialism. These abstractions, according to him do injustice to the human interactions across identities that were common in eighteenth century”(27).

A British writer Nigel Collett reviews Dalrymple‟s The Last Mughal in the Asian Review of Books and compares him with revisionist historians like Neil Ferguson. Collett writes, “…, this process of historiographical tectonic shifting has rarely occurred in work on the Empire and of India. It has happened now with the appearance of William Dalrymple‟s book The Last Mughal: The Fate of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857” (web).

Collett appreciates Dalrymple for his objectivity and use of unexplored material for rewriting the account of the Uprising of 1857. He finds that Dalrymple‟s writing unravels an enigmatic phase in the history of colonization. Collett writes about Indian historians that they have preferred to follow their British counterparts and extemporize on the „isms‟ and „ologies‟ of the moment. Their failure has given Dalrymple an opportunity he has seized with gusto.

Dalrymple‟s celebration of the harmonious relationship between Britons and Indians during 17th and 18th century in White Mughals is the initial part of the whole story. In the beginning, British were trying to gain footing in India with a farfetched dream to control and colonize India. Hence, the initial appreciation of native culture

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 and interaction with Indians were part of their hidden agenda to win the confidence of Indians. Once they succeeded in attaining their target, the attitude of British drastically transformed from a friend to a ruler. They started calling Indians barbaric and uncivilized who needed the governance by their enlighten race to meet the challenges of time. Later this deterioration in their relationship led to the atmosphere of distrust and unrest.

Dalrymple tries to relocate the causes of the Uprising of 1857 in The Last Mughal. In the introduction to the book, he says that during his study, he finds no single coherent explanation for mutiny or war of Independence as Indian Nationalist historians call it. There were a series of episodes and reasons behind the whole event. Details of the history of 1857 Uprising show various views of the historians regarding the mutiny. And according to their views, the historians select their material to assert their point.

Dalrymple writes, “Instead of the single coherent mutiny or patriotic national war of independence beloved of Victorian or Indian nationalist historiography, there was in reality a chain of very different uprisings and acts of resistance, whose form and fate were determined by local and regional situations, passions and grievances” (LM 16).

He highlights the “religious cause” of the Uprising. In an interview, he accepts that 1857 Uprising “was expressed unequivocally as a war of religion. But this is not to say there was no deeply held set of grievances…So as to say that the uprising was expressed in religious language is not to deny that there were secular, economic, political grievances” (web). From the above statement, it is clear that Dalrymple believes that the Uprising was a result of various factors but he constructs the plot of the text to highlight the religious nature of the Uprising.

He writes, “The religious nature of the Uprising was becoming immediately apparent. British men and women who had converted to Islam were invariably spared, yet all Indian converts to Christianity- Hindu or Muslim- were sought out and hunted down” (LM 153). . . He mentions about Dr. Chaman Lal who had converted to Christianity, hence is killed by rabble rouser after enquiring about his religion whereas those British men and women were spared who converted to Hinduism and Islam.

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

The other factor highlighted by Dalrymple which affected the religious sentiments of the natives, was the “cartridges issue”. In 1856, there spread a rumor that the cartridges for the new Enfield- rifles used by the soldiers were greased with the fat of pig and cow. As cow was sacred to the Hindus and pig was sacrilegious among Muslims, both the communities felt betrayed by this information. They felt that the Britishers were deliberately trying to make them lose their religion because the soldiers were supposed to bite off the cartridge before loading the rifles. Once this rumour damaged the relationship of two communities, nothing could restore it to the previous state.

Dalrymple carefully projects the different attitude of the people of Delhi towards the mutiny of 1857. He points out that the uprising was not the war of independence inspired by any patriotic and noble sentiments. It was rather a barbaric act of boorish soldiers. They were plunderers and robbers who were looting rich marwaris and moneylenders. These soldiers came from other parts of the country. Initially many people of Delhi welcomed these sepoys who professed that they would restore Mughal power and banish the “kafirs” from their land. But gradually the attitude of these people changed. They started regarding these sepoys as barbaric and held them responsible for chaos and disturbance in the city.

The writer highlights the changed attitude of Maulvi Muhammed Baqar who was the editor of the Dihli Urdu Akbhar. Initially, Baqar wrote enthusiastically about the Uprising of 1857 in his column, “how the rebellions had been sent by God to punish the Kafirs for their arrogant plan to wipe out the religions of India” (LM 18). But within a few days his attitude towards the sepoys changed. And after that, the editions of Dihli Urdu Akbhar were filled with details of the lazy and boorish species. In one of his issues, he wrote, “The population is greatly harassed and sick of the pillaging and plundering,” and writes further, “Great peril confronts all the respectable and well-off people of the city… the city is being ravaged” (LM 18).

The author claims that the Uprising was mainly supported by the lower middle class, especially the Muslim weavers and textiles merchants. Elite class of Delhi did not support it and found it chaotic and barbaric in nature which was motivated by religious sentiments. Dalrymple quotes Ghalib, poet laureate of Delhi from Dastanbuy,

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

Noble men and great scholars have fallen from power he wrote, and nameless men with neither name nor pedigree nor jewels nor gold, now have prestige and unlimited riches…In its shamelessness the rabble, sword in hand, rallied to one group after another. Throughout the day the rebels looted the city, and at night they slept in silken beds… (LM 155)

Dalrymple uses Mutiny Papers to show that the common men of Delhi were suffering at the hands of these sepoys. Common Delhiwalla regarded this Uprising as Ghadr or mutiny rather than Jang e- Azadi or war of Independence. The writer quotes profusely from the writings of common men to share the point of view of the common Delhiwallahs, “The presence of sepoys billeted all over the city continued to be a problem. Even when they were not looting, fear of their violence and exactions paralyzed business in the city” (LM 260).

The city was in the grip of fear and violence spread by the mutineers and the business of the city was paralyzed. The rich moneylenders were terrified of robbery by sepoys. They complained about the cavalry “who come for the sake of looting wanting to frighten us to death or imprison us. For last three days, we have been forced to go into hiding, while our employees and servants have been harassed and persecuted” (LM 260-261).

The author emphasizes the fact that the Uprising was not only harming the British but Indians as well. The sepoys were looting those from the rich class who had no connections with the British. Dalrymple quotes from an anonymous source, “The Tilangas assaulted the house of Saligram with the intention of looting it but at first, could not loosen the screw. At midnight the Tilangas finally broke through the gate, along with Muslims of the city, and [together they] looted all goods of the kothi” (LM 158).

The Marxist historians have focused on „feudal character‟ of the 1857 Revolt. Jawaharlal Nehru in his book The Discovery of India writes, “The revolt of 1857-1858 was essentially a feudal rising, though there were some nationalist elements in it” (327).The Nationalist historiographer of the 1857 Revolt, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in The Indian War of Independence 1857 patronizes the revolt and glorifies the great leaders like Nana Sahib, the Emperor of Delhi, the Queen of Jhansi. He finds sacred motives behind the revolt and highlights the principles of

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

„Swadharma‟ and „Swaraj‟ in his rhetorical narrative. Though mutineers failed to achieve their goal but it never lost its splendor in the narration of nationalist historiographers.

The British perspective of the 1857 Uprising is completely different. They believed that it was the period of chaos when illiterate and barbaric Indians rebelled against the modern and efficient British government. John. W. Kaye wrote three- volume of books on A History of the Sepoy War in India 1857-1858 (1877). He showed that the event of the 1857 was an attempt to overthrow an alien regime. He used a lot of documents to show that the mutiny was a mass psychical reaction against the innovations and reformative measures of a modern and enlightened government. He represented British government as well equipped, efficient and capable of civilizing a barbaric population.

Hence, it is clear from the above readings that there has never been any common consensus among historians regarding the period of 1857. Edward Hallet Carr rightly remarks in his book What is History? “History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish on the fishmonger‟s slab. The historian collects them, takes them home and cooks and serves them in whatever style appeals to him” (7).

The proclamation about the objective treatment of history is impossible. The post-modernist approach to history elaborated by Hayden White emphasizes on the diverse perspectives adopted by historians to meet their goal. History is about the presentation of selected materials. Dalrymple‟s insistence on objectivity in giving the details of the 1857 Uprising is delusive.

The problem which is clearly visible in the text of The Last Mughal is that Dalrymple has simply neglected the other causes of the Uprising. He claims that though there were a series of causes for the Uprising, the book focuses only on the religious motive.

Looking into history, it can be found that at the time of insurgency, British rule in India was a century-old establishment. East India Company was already very powerful and it was dominating military, political, economic, and academic sphere. This interference of the Britishers bred discontentment among natives. Evangelical

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

Christianity and the greasing of cartridges issue served as the last straw which led to the Uprising of 1857. In this regard historian Gyan Prakash writes:

The company annexed territories, established courts, laid telegraph, and railway lines, collected taxes and instituted land settlements that caused widespread discontent. The developing ideology of liberal imperialism, buttressed by evangelical Christianity left little room for the existing cultures and traditions. The old nobility and land owners were summarily cast aside, and Thomas Macaulay declared that all the accumulated products of Oriental knowledge were worth a single self of a Western library. (Nation 2007)

The British authority was trying to spread their rule by undermining the authority of natives. The Uprising was the reaction against this violence and suppression. Prakash offers an insight and argues that, “The Mutiny in the army over greased cartridges served only to unify and escalate specific grievances at different places and among different groups into a widespread violent opposition to the company. And hence, religion cannot be the only cause for the revolt of 1857” (27).

Dalrymple highlights the clash of Muslim ideology and the new Christian values which were propagated by the British Officials during the 19th century. The British attempt to spread the new faith of Evangelical Christianity was marked by the arrival of John Jenning. He dreamt of opening a missionary in Delhi and finally got a job of chaplain in 1852. The British officials Captain Douglas and his wife also supported his mission and Jenning describes them as, “chruchy as myself…a warm supporter of the mission” (LM 59).

Dalrymple mourns the end of an amicable relationship between British and Indians for which the 17th and 18th century are known. At that time, British personages adopted Indian lifestyle and custom such as William Fraser. He pruned his mustaches in the Delhi manner and gave up eating pork and beef in order to share his table with Hindu and Muslim guests. Sir David Ochterlony was also fond of the courtly culture and enjoyed „huqqas‟ and „nautch girls‟. These people married Indian women and had children with them. Even a large number of high profile Indian Muslim clerics married British women and converted them to Islam. But this attitude considerably changed during 1857 and the sense of understanding and sympathetic

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 attitude wavered. This uneasy equilibrium ripened the plot for the outbreak of the Mutiny of 1857.

Dalrymple writes “During the early 1850s, it sometimes seemed as if the British and the Mughals lived not only in different mental worlds but almost in different time zones” (LM 91). When British residents were up at 3.30 am, Mughals were still awake and were enjoying the poetic „mushairas‟ and when the Mughal poets and courtesans went to sleep, the British were busy in their physical exercises.

At the time of the mutiny, Delhi was not in direct control of anyone as Zafar was no more in power. On Zafar‟s orders, Hakim Ahsanullah Khan was supervising the palace tailor for arranging the funeral procession for Fraser, Douglas, and the Jennings family. The entire Fort was ordered to participate in the funeral rites of the dead. This showed Zafar‟s genuine attempt to do whatever he could for humanity without any discrimination and personal prejudice.

Mutineers claimed that they had come “to fight for our religion and to pay our respects to His Majesty” (LM 172). When Ahsanullah Khan told them that the king was not in the position to help them the officer replied that “Only give us your blessing. We will provide everything else” (LM 173). Zafar was in a state of dilemma whether to support mutineers and their cause or not. Finally left with a very limited choice, Zafar gave his blessing to the sepoys. This move changed the fate of his dynasty and Delhi.

Within one day almost the whole city was empty of the British and this drastic change in the situation gave way to Zafar‟s hope of re-establishment of the great Mughal dynasty. Zafar‟s increasing interest in the revolution was noticed by Mohan Lal Kashmiri who had allied himself with the British and wrote a letter to Brigadier Chamberlain which mentions the following account of the situation:

I never heard from any native in Delhi or elsewhere that the King Bahadur Shah was in communication with the mutineers before the mutiny broke out. But after the miscreants had made themselves masters of the palace and the city…they contrived to bring out His Majesty in a royal procession to restore confidence to the citizens… All these things made Bahadur Shah believe that

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

he had been born to restore the realm of the Great Timur in the last days of his life. (LM 191)

The British officials in other parts of the Nation were also appraised of the situation in Delhi. The British Troops proceeded to help and to conquer Delhi from rest of India. The actual strength and position of the mutineers was not exactly known to the British troops; hence, it was quite a hard-hitting situation. It was for the first time that the British supremacy was challenged in such a way.

Campbell shared his anxiety, “there were around 4000 government troops against more than 20,000 rebels whose numbers were increasing every day” (LM 277). General Wilson in his letter to his wife described the situation in these words, “We are still in the same uncertainty as to what we are to do now we are here… Frankly, I doubt we have the means to take Delhi, and that without the merciful assistance of the Almighty, I fear the result. I trust He will not forsake the cause of His own people” (LM 277).

Dalrymple states that the only reason for the decrease in the number of mutineers was that they had an inadequate food supply. They were not being paid whereas the British troops were having an adequate amount of food supply for their survival. By the end of the July, the situation was in British favor and British camp decided to indulge in mass massacre to take revenge. George Wagentrieber called for the complete destruction of Delhi and exhorted disdainfully, “annihilation of the demons that have so polluted its walls and blackened the pages of history with their hellish crimes” (LM 303).

The strength of the British just doubled with the arrival of General John Nicholson. He marched on 14th August with 1000 British troops, 600 irregular horses which almost turned the situation. There was news of British violence and cruelty in response to the Uprising all over Delhi. Even the royal family was not spared. Those princes who had been found guilty were stripped naked, humiliated and killed. Their dead bodies were left in front of kotwali where the British troops queued up to see them. Hodson exclaimed that “I am not cruel, but I confess I did enjoy the opportunity of ridding the earth of these wretches” (LM 398).

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

The other British official Edward Vibart who participated in the massacre of the civilians described the horror on the faces of women who witnessed their husbands and sons being brutally killed, “Heaven knows I feel pity but when some old grey bearded man is brought and shot before your eyes, hard must be that man‟s heart I think who can look on with indifference” (LM 398).

Even Zafar and the women of the royal families were not spared .They were imprisoned and humiliated. The great and prosperous city was turned into a city of deaths. Zafar was sent in exile to Rangoon where he lived until his death on 7th November 1862 which marked the end of the Mughal dynasty of 350 years.

Dalrymple appreciates Zafar for being like his ancestor Akbar, “An attractive symbol of Islamic civilization at its most tolerant and pluralistic” (LM 483). His period was marked as a great period of learning and prosperity. Zafar was himself a great poet and calligrapher; and Delhi was then undergoing the “great period of learning, self-confidence, communal amity and prosperity” (LM 483). Thus, Dalrymple also appreciated the character of Zafar who strengthened Hindu-Muslim unity.

In The Last Mughal, Dalrymple provides ample footnotes, endnotes and references whereas in the City of Djinns, he simply narrates the historical events without referring to the sources. Dalrymple‟s style of writing history is quite different and is not practiced in India. In India, history is given an academic tone. There are sufficient evidences to support the claim that Dalrymple was mesmerized by Delhi and represented its romantic version for western readers as an exotic place.

The writer keeps in mind those western readers who have never been to India. Hence, he uses a lot of „visual material‟ acquired from various archives to give them a better understanding of an alien place. Researchers have proved that the visual is the most fundamental of all senses. Gordon Fyfe and John Law claim that “depiction, picturing and seeing are ubiquitous features of the process by which most human beings come to know the world as it really is for them”(2). And for writing to the reader of the alien culture these visual effects are really very helpful.

Dalrymple has used maps of different places of India such as Delhi and North- West India in 1857 to lend a geographical understanding of these places to his western

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857 readers. He also uses photographs of the paintings available in the archives. He utilizes the photograph of Zafar from Sir Thomas Metcalfe‟s „Dehlie Book‟. The term „Mahi Maraati‟ is not easy to understand. Hence, in order to create an understanding of it, Dalrymple depicts the photograph of a painting where two elephants of the state carry the Mahi Maratib or Fish Standard which can be easily understood from the portrait. He also gives the photographs of Zinat Mahal, General Archdale Wilson; Brigadier General John Nicholson etc. He also incorporates images of war front, for example, the movement of Delhi Field Force towards the capital city Delhi, the British attack on Kashmiri Gate on 14 September 1857 etc.

This chapter is followed by the conclusion of the whole thesis which reiterates the points made in the previous chapters and explores the possibility of future research on this topic.

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857

Work Cited

1. Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Term: Paperback, 1998. Print

2. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Print.

3. Carr, Edward. H. What is History? 2nd ed. London: Penguin Books, 1987. Print.

4. Collet, Nigel. “The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857”. Asian Review of Books. January 28, 2007. www.asianreviewof book.com.

5. Dalrymple, William. City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi: India: Penguin Books. 1994, Print.

6. Fyfe, Gordon. Law, John. Picturing Power: Visual Depiction and Social Relation. London: Routledge, 1988. Print.

7. Menon, Suresh. Review of The Last Mughal. Deccan Herald. www.deccanherald.com

8. Nehru, Jawaharlal. The Discovery of India: Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994. Print.

9. Prakash, Gyan. “Inevitable Revolution”: The Nation. 2007. Print.

10. Singh, Khushwant .“In the Court of Bahadur Shah: India”. Outlook Magazine, 2006. Print.

11. Savarkar, D. Vinayak. The Indian War of Independence 1857. Bombay: Sethani Kampani, 1949. Print.

Conclusion

Chapter 6 CONCLUSION

In this concluding chapter, after thorough discussion, it can be pointed out that Dalrymple is an acclaimed historian and writer whose treatment of history can be categorized as narrative history. He is known for his monographs and is also popular in the field of journalism. He is a multi-media persona who uses television, magazines, and newspapers to communicate to his readers and audience. He has published various newspaper articles, reviews and also hosted television shows and radio documentaries. This sort of engagement in the public sphere has given Dalrymple insight into the psyche of his readers and he knows the art of arresting their attention.

Dalrymple is quite competent and brims with confidence. Samantha Weinberg appreciates the author as a generous and confident person and writes, “I sent him an e-mail saying, „Have you finished your book?' and his message came back, „yes, and though I say so myself, it's bloody brilliant‟ ” (web).This tone reflects Dalrymple‟s confidence in the success of his book.

In writing history, Dalrymple seems to be inspired by historians such as Antony Beevor and Simon Schama. He lays emphasis on the importance of writing history in the form of a story which allows inclusion of narration in it. It explains facts and concepts better than the traditional approach of writing history by explaining the cause of events rather than simply recording it. It provides a hermeneutic understanding of the happenings and explains reasons behind the outcome. Here the emphasis shifts from hidden motives to characters depending upon the author‟s aim. Hence, selection of facts is an integral part of narrative history. The writer chooses between the important and the not so important and shifts his focus accordingly. He also decides about the significance and authenticity of the resources. This mode of writing history as a narrative is new in India as Indian historians only take academic history seriously.

Dalrymple‟s history books target the general readers and hence, employ various discourses and tropes to make them interesting. Dalrymple says, "History

93 Conclusion can be wonderful literature, and no less scholarly or valuable for it being written in fine prose. I've learned that there's no shame in telling a good story (web)”.

Similar view is expressed by Barnaby Rogerson in his article published in The Independent. He reviews Dalrymple‟s recent book Return of a King, and appreciates his style of writing in these words, “William Dalrymple is a master storyteller who breathes such passion, vivacity and animation into the historical characters…”(web). This view of Rogerson is applicable to all his history books. He cleverly narrates events and focuses on characters from the past, as a fiction writer does. It appears as if the real figures from the past are coming alive to play their role on the pages of his history texts. These characters leave quite a deep impression on the readers as if the readers themselves are witnessing the whole episode from the past.

From the critical analysis of Dalrymple‟s works, it becomes obvious that he is fascinated with the medieval history of India. Almost all his history works primarily focus on it. His book City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi is a travelogue but at the same time blends the various phases of the history of Delhi with his personal experiences of living in modern Delhi. His other works such as White Mughals and The Last Mughal are history books written in the style of historical narratives. They also narrate colonial and pre-colonial history of Indian sub-continent.

Dalrymple‟s history books form a trilogy which begins with White Mughals. It unfolds during the end of the 18th century when East India Company was trying to establish itself as a power. It highlights the story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa. It also highlights about the unique relationship between British and Indians in the pre-colonial days. It was the time of great cultural exchange. Both the communities indulged in mutual appreciation of each other‟s culture and adopted each other's lifestyle. This multicultural society was a result of intersection of cultures. Dalrymple finds this period quite promising in a sense that the interaction between British men and natives could lead to a more harmonious future. And this book reminds us of the forgotten era of early colonialism and multiculturalism.

In his treatment of history of British colonial past, Dalrymple attempts to be impartial and tries to give a balanced perspective of the past. But he is unable to sustain the same point of view till the end as all knowledge is historically conditioned. A man is a social and political construct and he cannot transcend history. Dalrymple

94 Conclusion could not rise above his own historicity and ideological formation. Hence, he revives colonial history to reconstruct a positive picture of the British Empire, a kind of justification for imperial presence in India. Dalrymple's style of narration creates an exotic image of India to the western readers.

The British readers connect with India as a place where their ancestors once lived and ruled. This sense of exoticism and nostalgia about India raises various debatable issues such as Orientalism and Postcolonial studies. Dalrymple‟s history books make history accessible and interesting. He utilizes „historical narratives‟ for writing history books rather than simply writing facts. This approach of dealing with history is similar to Linda Hutchen‟s style of writing history as „histographic metafiction‟. She advocates, “[to] write history or historical fiction- is equal to narrate, to reconstruct by means of selection and interpretation. History (like realistic fiction) is made by its writer, even if events are made to seem to speak for themselves” (231-232).

Another Postmodern historian Hayden White says that in the course of writing history historians „uncover‟, or „find‟ the story from the chronicles and then organize the whole story according to their purpose. In other words, the historian foregrounds the story as tragedy or romance etc. For instance, In White Mughals, Dalrymple tells the “tragic love story” of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa with a mission to explore possibility of cultural interaction and assimilation.

Dalrymple also keeps himself abreast with the traditional school of history which gives importance to authentic sources of materials. He uses material from archives and shares with his readers his effort and interest in digging the untouched material from the past. He spent many years in researching the story from history and accordingly arranged them to write history.

The author claims that he has used some rare materials which have been ignored by other chroniclers. Thus, he tries to convince his readers that his approach to history is different and original. He utilizes both literary and non-literary material in the process of writing history. Thus, Dalrymple stands close to the ways of a new historicist.

95 Conclusion

Dalrymple's monographs are complex. His first book on Delhi City of Djinns is a travelogue. It not only draws our attention to the journey of the writer and his experiences but also connects with the history of Delhi right from the time of Mahabharata, to the imperial history of British rule, the Mughal period, the partition of India and Pakistan, and the riots and assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984.

In the process of exploring Delhi, he connects these historical events to the individual experiences of living in modern Delhi. The characters which constitute the text such as Mr. and Mrs. Puri, Iris Portal, Balvindar (the taxi driver) help Dalrymple to narrate the history of Delhi. Mr. and Mrs. Puri tell about the riots and the assassination of Indira Gandhi, as the couple themselves witnessed the riot and were able to survive it. Iris Portal becomes an important tool to explore British colonial settlement in India and voice feelings of the rulers. Balvinder‟s father was the survivor of the partition of India and Pakistan and sketches the scenario of that time.

Dalrymple's White Mughals and The Last Mughal describes the period from the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century India. In White Mughals Dalrymple's narrative works at two levels. On the one hand, he explores the love story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa which he has found quite romantic and interesting. This inter-racial love affair gives him an opportunity to talk about those British men who adopted native lifestyle in late 18th century. On the other hand, he explores the story of the establishment of the East India Company in trade, military, and politics. He writes this story by using material from various sources such as letters, diaries, and reports. And thus, draws a captivating picture of sexual intimacies between the British officials and the native women.

In The Last Mughal Dalrymple narrates the story of the early nineteenth century India, when British Empire successfully imposed it rules and regulations on natives. This book also works on two planes. Firstly, it centers around Bahadur Shah Zafar II who became king when he was in his mid sixties.. And the period of 1857 was very crucial for Delhi and Bahadur Shah Zafar, as both faced decline. Secondly, Dalrymple relates the incidences related to the revolt of 1857 and seriously explores the causes of the mutiny. He calls it sepoy‟s mutiny and opines that it was not the first war of Independence inspired by noble sentiments but mere barbarism of handful rebels who came from other parts of India.

96 Conclusion

Dalrymple‟s recent book Return of a King (2012) is also a history book written in narrative style. But this book is not part of the present study. Here, the author narrates Great Britain‟s attempt to control Afghanistan and how it finally faced defeat. He gives a comprehensive account of the battle for Afghanistan. The book opens in 1809 and goes beyond 1842. It traces the history of ruler Shah Shuja of that time and ends with the defeat of the British troops. The plot of the book shows how 18000 well-equipped British troops marched from Kabul through treacherous mountain passes and only one man was able to reach Jellalabad. The aim behind the invasion of Afghanistan was that British were trying to use Afghanistan as the gateway to invade India. Dalrymple elaborates on the point that Afghanistan was never a unified country. Hence, it was a big drain on the wealth of East India Company.

Dalrymple draws a parallel between the current situation of Afghanistan and the British invasion of it in the 19th century. He shows that it was as impossible to conquer Afghanistan in the 19th century as it is in the modern time. In Return of a King, he highlights the loopholes in the British strategies which led to their failure in winning Afghanistan. Diana Athill in The Guardian says, “This book would be compulsive reading even if it were not a uniquely valuable history, which it is because Dalrymple has uncovered sources never used before…” (web).

Benjamin D. Hopkins in his review of the book Return of a King published in Project Muse appreciates Dalrymple and remarks, “Dalrymple's new book offers a supple and engaging treatment of that "field". A story of hubris, arrogance, and ignorance, recounted in beautifully written prose, it gives the reader a detailed frame of familiarity along with many of the leaves of grass populating it” (515).

The writer again claims to discover rare materials and tells how he has risked his life to dig out material from the dangerous parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Dalrymple found material for this book in the national archive. Another major source was the two epic poems written immediately after the war, “Jangnama” and “Akbarnama” which give information about Afghanistan

The author‟s forthcoming book The Anarchy: India between Empires 1739-1803 is about the rise of the East India Company. He provides a glimpse of his upcoming book in some interviews. And on the basis of it, it can be said that this book sets out

97 Conclusion to explore the period of 1739 and is a prologue to all his history books. This was the period when Nadir Shah of Persia invaded India during Mughal regime. He plundered Delhi and looted its wealth. This book is one of the extreme illustrations of privatization in history. It explores the great Mughal period in which art and music flourished.

Dalrymple is a lover of monumental buildings and says that every building hides some history beneath it. In almost all his history books, he describes historical buildings and architecture constructed by the Mughals and the British. He says that if these monuments are ruined then that piece of history will also be destroyed and never known to mankind.

The author finds history lurking in every nook and corner of India. He seems to interact with the past to give it a voice in the present but he does not fail to remember his allegiance to his own race. At the same time his method of treating history is new and enticing. He blends facts of history with his unique literary style of presentation to write history in an interesting and captivating manner. The subject of the present study is not verification of facts but the manner of their presentation. This thesis affirms the author‟s status as a narrative historian and suggests the possibility of further historical inquiry about collection of resources and presentation of information. As no knowledge is ultimate and final, hence in the post modern spirit of historical enquiry, the thesis invites refutation of the point made or its further explanation.

98 Conclusion

Work Cited

1. Barnaby, Roger. The Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, by William Dalrymple. 23 Feb. 2013.www.independent.co.uk

2. Benjamin, Hopkins.D. “Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan 1839-42 by William Dalrymple. Common Knowledge, vol 21.3 (2015).

3. Diana, Athill. “Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan by William Dalrymple- review”. Jan, 2013. www.theguardian.com

4. Gardner, Anthony. “William Dalrymple: The Ebullient Author on Writing White Mughals”.March, 2012. www.anthonygardner.co.uk

5. Hutcheon, Linda. “Histographic Metafiction”. Passionate Doubts: Designs of Interpretation in Contemporary American Fiction. 3-32, 1995. Print.

99 Bibliography

Primary Sources:

1. Dalrymple, William. The Age of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters. New Delhi: Penguin, 2004. Print.

2. Dalyrmple, William. City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi. New Delhi: Penguin, 2004. Print.

3. Dalrymple, William. In Xanadu: A Quest. 1990. New Delhi: Penguin, 2004. Print.

4. Dalrymple, William. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. London: Bloomsbury, 2009. Print.

5. Dalrymple, William. White Mughals: Love & Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India. New Delhi: Penguin, 2002. Print.

6. Dalrymple, William, From the Holy Mountain: A Journey in the Shadow of Byzantium. 1997. New Delhi: Penguin, 2004.

Secondary Sources:

1. Abrams, M H. A Glossary of Literary Term. Paperback, 1998. Print.

2. Ali, Ahmed. Twilight in Delhi. India: Rupa Publication, 2007. Print.

3. Ashcroft, Bill. Gareth, Griffiths. Helen, Tiffins. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post Colonial Literature. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

4. Ballantyne, Tony. “The Changing Shape of the Modern British Empire and Its Historiography.” The Historical Journal 53.2 (2010): 429-52. Print.

5. Ballantyne, Tony. Antoninette ,M Burton. Moving Subjects: Gender, Mobility and Intimacy in an Age of Global Empire. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Print.

6. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. Print.

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