William Dalrymple: Historian illustrates fall of dynasty (Interview)
History, proverbially, is written by the winning side. This has certainly been the case for 19th-century India, argues William Dalrymple, an author of history and travel books who lives in New Delhi and London.
Dalrymple’s latest book, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857, examines the downfall of the capital and imperial court of northern India’s Mughal Empire.
The author draws extensively on contemporary documentation, originally written in the court’s official languages, Persian and Urdu. Much of this material, though housed in public archives in India, has never before been accessed by the numerous British and Indian historians who have studied the events known variously as the Indian Mutiny, the First War of Independence, and the 1857 Uprising.
This conflict and modern India’s independence were separated by 90 years of British domination over South Asia. The fact that modern scholarship has remained out of touch with writings of the Mughal court is not just coincidental: the destruction of northern India’s Persian- and Urdu-speaking elite (to be replaced by an English-speaking counterpart) was the result of British retributions in 1857.
For Dalrymple, this cultural destruction is among the most lamentable consequences of the 1857 Uprising. The author clearly admires much about the 1850s Mughal court and especially about its elderly Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II.
"Zafar," Dalrymple summarizes in an interview, "is (by 1857) an 82-year-old mystical poet who enjoys calligraphy and miniature painting and the writing of Urdu couplets. Anyone less suitable for leading troops over the barricades is hard to imagine. But … prior to (the uprising) … he couldn’t have been a more well-suited figure for leading this huge literary renaissance which took place in his reign. This was the great age of Urdu poetry, what the reign of Elizabeth was to English poetry."
All the more impressive, Dalrymple continues, is that this "last great flowering of Mughal civilization … took place despite almost no resources."
Read entire article at http://thechronicleherald.ca
Dalrymple’s latest book, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857, examines the downfall of the capital and imperial court of northern India’s Mughal Empire.
The author draws extensively on contemporary documentation, originally written in the court’s official languages, Persian and Urdu. Much of this material, though housed in public archives in India, has never before been accessed by the numerous British and Indian historians who have studied the events known variously as the Indian Mutiny, the First War of Independence, and the 1857 Uprising.
This conflict and modern India’s independence were separated by 90 years of British domination over South Asia. The fact that modern scholarship has remained out of touch with writings of the Mughal court is not just coincidental: the destruction of northern India’s Persian- and Urdu-speaking elite (to be replaced by an English-speaking counterpart) was the result of British retributions in 1857.
For Dalrymple, this cultural destruction is among the most lamentable consequences of the 1857 Uprising. The author clearly admires much about the 1850s Mughal court and especially about its elderly Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar II.
"Zafar," Dalrymple summarizes in an interview, "is (by 1857) an 82-year-old mystical poet who enjoys calligraphy and miniature painting and the writing of Urdu couplets. Anyone less suitable for leading troops over the barricades is hard to imagine. But … prior to (the uprising) … he couldn’t have been a more well-suited figure for leading this huge literary renaissance which took place in his reign. This was the great age of Urdu poetry, what the reign of Elizabeth was to English poetry."
All the more impressive, Dalrymple continues, is that this "last great flowering of Mughal civilization … took place despite almost no resources."