Book: The Last Mughal
Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 499
Pages: 578
Eisha Sarkar
Posted on Mumbai Mirror on Monday, July 19, 2010 at 06:55:16 PM
"Those who fail to learn from history are always destined to repeat it," - it is this Edmund Burke quote that draws a parallel between the events of 1857 described in William Dalrymple's book, The Last Mughal and those following 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On the face of it, The Last Mughal could pass off as a history textbook, chronicling and detailing the events that brought an end to one of the greatest empires of all time. But if you read between the lines, that Dalrymple subtly nudges you to do, you find that the West was as much to blame as the rot in the Mughal administration for sounding the death-knell of a glorious dynasty. The last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar II, died a prisoner of the position he inherited, of a cause he had nothing to support with and for his participation in a war he did not want to fight.
Dalrymple writes, "Zafar was no friend of the British, who had shorn him of his patrimony, and subjected him to almost daily humiliation. Yet, Zafar was not a natural insurgent either. It was with severe misgivings and little choice that he found himself made the nominal leader of an Uprising that he strongly suspected from the start was doomed: a chaotic and officerless army of unpaid peasant soldiers set against the forces of the world's greatest military power, albeit one that had just lost the great majority of the Indian recruits to its Bengal Army."
Whether the Revolt of 1857 was actually a revolt or a sepoy mutiny or India's first war of Independence (as some Indian nationalists put it), what it did for sure was change the way Indians would look at the West. While one of the most famous causes for the unrest were the Enfield rifle cartridges rumoured to be coated with 'fat from cows and pigs' that all Hindu and Muslim sepoys in the army ranks found humiliating, there were others where the native population was simply discontented or impatient with the treatment being meted out by the British. Dalrymple writes, "One of the causes of unrest, according to one Delhi source, was that 'the British closed madrasas'. These were words that had no resonance to the historians of the 1960s. Now sadly, in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7 they are phrases we understand all too well, and words like jihad scream out of the dusty pages of the source manuscripts demanding attention."
Taking off from where he left in the City of Djinns, Dalrymple weaves stories of kings with their courtiers, poets and prisoners, British officers and their native subordinates, churchmen and religious fanatics, snooty white-skinned British women and nautch girls into a brilliant tapestry of mid-nineteenth century Delhi. He describes Zafar whose court boasted of some of India's finest poets including Ghalib and Zauq, his conniving Begum Zinat Mahal, his sons - the principal rebel leader Mirza Mughal, the badmash Mirza Abu Bakr and the spoilt and selfish Mirza Jawan Bakht (who would have succeeded Zafar had 1857 not happened), Zafar's confidante Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, betrayed his master, the chief eunuch Mahbub Ali Khan, Zafar's page Zahir Dehlavi whose Dastan-i-Ghadr "gives the fullest and most richly detailed surviving account of the course of the siege and Uprising from the point of view of the Palace." With the help of notes from their personal diaries, Dalrymple brings to life the characters of British men and women in Delhi - the Metcalfes, Reverend John jennings, Robert and Harriet Tytler, Edward Vibart, Brigadier john Nicholson, General Sir Archdale Wilson and William Hodson.
Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Penguin
Price: Rs 499
Pages: 578
Eisha Sarkar
Posted on Mumbai Mirror on Monday, July 19, 2010 at 06:55:16 PM
"Those who fail to learn from history are always destined to repeat it," - it is this Edmund Burke quote that draws a parallel between the events of 1857 described in William Dalrymple's book, The Last Mughal and those following 9/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On the face of it, The Last Mughal could pass off as a history textbook, chronicling and detailing the events that brought an end to one of the greatest empires of all time. But if you read between the lines, that Dalrymple subtly nudges you to do, you find that the West was as much to blame as the rot in the Mughal administration for sounding the death-knell of a glorious dynasty. The last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar II, died a prisoner of the position he inherited, of a cause he had nothing to support with and for his participation in a war he did not want to fight.
Dalrymple writes, "Zafar was no friend of the British, who had shorn him of his patrimony, and subjected him to almost daily humiliation. Yet, Zafar was not a natural insurgent either. It was with severe misgivings and little choice that he found himself made the nominal leader of an Uprising that he strongly suspected from the start was doomed: a chaotic and officerless army of unpaid peasant soldiers set against the forces of the world's greatest military power, albeit one that had just lost the great majority of the Indian recruits to its Bengal Army."
Whether the Revolt of 1857 was actually a revolt or a sepoy mutiny or India's first war of Independence (as some Indian nationalists put it), what it did for sure was change the way Indians would look at the West. While one of the most famous causes for the unrest were the Enfield rifle cartridges rumoured to be coated with 'fat from cows and pigs' that all Hindu and Muslim sepoys in the army ranks found humiliating, there were others where the native population was simply discontented or impatient with the treatment being meted out by the British. Dalrymple writes, "One of the causes of unrest, according to one Delhi source, was that 'the British closed madrasas'. These were words that had no resonance to the historians of the 1960s. Now sadly, in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7 they are phrases we understand all too well, and words like jihad scream out of the dusty pages of the source manuscripts demanding attention."
Taking off from where he left in the City of Djinns, Dalrymple weaves stories of kings with their courtiers, poets and prisoners, British officers and their native subordinates, churchmen and religious fanatics, snooty white-skinned British women and nautch girls into a brilliant tapestry of mid-nineteenth century Delhi. He describes Zafar whose court boasted of some of India's finest poets including Ghalib and Zauq, his conniving Begum Zinat Mahal, his sons - the principal rebel leader Mirza Mughal, the badmash Mirza Abu Bakr and the spoilt and selfish Mirza Jawan Bakht (who would have succeeded Zafar had 1857 not happened), Zafar's confidante Hakim Ahsanullah Khan, betrayed his master, the chief eunuch Mahbub Ali Khan, Zafar's page Zahir Dehlavi whose Dastan-i-Ghadr "gives the fullest and most richly detailed surviving account of the course of the siege and Uprising from the point of view of the Palace." With the help of notes from their personal diaries, Dalrymple brings to life the characters of British men and women in Delhi - the Metcalfes, Reverend John jennings, Robert and Harriet Tytler, Edward Vibart, Brigadier john Nicholson, General Sir Archdale Wilson and William Hodson.
Dalrymple does well to pick up certain nuances of the English spoken by the British then, of how they referred to the rebels as "Pandies" after Mangal Pandey who was among the first rebels in Barrackpore. He also supplements well with photographs of paintings of Zafar and his courtiers and other people of Delhi.
Chronicling the events that lead to one of the worst massacres in the nineteenth century and the destruction of an entire city and much worse, the intricately woven cultural and religious fabric that would finally lead to the Partition of India in 1947, the brilliantly-researched The Last Mughal is not just a slice of history but a gruesome reminder of how much we stand to lose if we don't learn our lessons yet again.
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