How does he do it? How can a Britisher be so much of an indophile that he keeps churning out books after books on India with so much of substance that not even an Indian is capable of! Definitely , has to do with a re-incarnation. I know some of us Indians do pretend to be more white than the whites themselves but not in the depth and philosophical understanding that William Dalrymple achieves in his Indian robe.
He first visited India as an 18 years old boy in Jan1984 and then started his 20 years old love affair with Delhi, resulting in his 4 books based on this country’s history. It is Delhi which fascinates him most and his latest book’The last Mughal’ is based on Delhi. He is familiar with all the corners of the city. The historical facts, the by lanes, the imagined Delhi of the 1800s all are a tribute to the quality of love expressed for the city by the author.
Taking the great Indian mutiny of 1857 as the main event, the author explores the reasons for the mutiny, the state of Indo-British relations before and after that, Hindu-Muslim relations and the start of the independence movements in great details. What sets this book apart is that it is the first work done taking into view the actual events as recorded by the Indians affected at that time. So far all has been presented from the English historians point.
For the 1st time the author has spent 4 years in the archives of India, Burma, England, America and dug out Urdu and Hindi papers, correspondences, newspapers of the times, translated the common man’s words, court records, petitions and made sense of what actually happened.In his brilliant analysis he shows us that it were the British who were the bumbling idiots, caught on the wrong foot.They just did not know what was happening and , when realised it, handled it so badly that it escalated things.
The historians so far as have presented Bahadur Shah Zafar as the idiot king who was responsible for bringing down the 352 years old mughal rule to an ignoble end. No way, says the author who actually starts and ends the book with Zafar as a lovable character. An average administrator, who became king at a late age of 60 plus, he comes across as a noble man who was just in his treatment of Hindus. His religious tolerance apart, he was a great poet, encouraging the greats like Ghalib and Zauq. He himself wrote great ghazals like ’lagta nahin hai dil mera’ and ’na kisi ki aankh ka noor hoon’ which were sung by the great Mohammad Rafi.
A Sufi saint is how the author describes him. He remained dignified through his trials at the hands of the British even at the ripe age of 83. Denied the pleasure of writing during his imprisonment in Rangoon, he used to burn incense sticks and write with them on the walls of his room till he died at the age of 87 years. The myth of Mangal Pandey is also demolished in a convincing manner. Mangal was one of the Sepoy of the Indian army who mutinied all over India over the use of beef in bullets wax.
The whole mutiny was actually a revolt more religious in nature. People felt offended at the blatant efforts to convert them to Christianity. The treatment of the natives by the British attracted critique. Having been invited as traders, they became masters, ridiculing the Indian kings in their own courts and laying down ground rules and constraints and customs. It was accumulation of many factors which led to the mutiny and the subsequent events.There was also no bad blood between the Hindus and Muslims prior to the mutiny.
It was in fact the mutiny which started all the bad Hindu-Muslim divide which ultimately led to the partition in 1947.The war of independence also has its genesis after the mutiny. The mutiny was not a part of the independence war , for the latter started much later when analysis of the bad British behaviour was done in subsequent times and the arrogance of the British increased as a result of their overcoming the mutiny of 1957. Well it all sounds so very unreal but backed by solid historical research and quotes, the author has turned out a master piece, a must read for all Indians.