White Mughals by William Dalrymple- A Review

Q1: What do the Battle of Seringapatam, the Second Anglo-Maratha War and the Battle of Waterloo have in common?

A1: They were commanded by Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington.

Q2: What does Arthur Wellesley have to do with the White Mughals?

A2: This book is set in the period (1798-1805) when his brother Richard Wellesley was the 5th Governor General of India. Richard Wellesley was also responsible for refining the notorious treaty of Subsidiary Alliance; according to which a ruler who signed this treaty was given protection by the East India Company against any external attacks. In exchange for money and territory, of course.

Now for the book. A very brief back-history here! I bought this book around 8 years back as it sounded very interesting. But I found it difficult to read because of all the references, cross-references and footnotes. And the wealth of detail it contained. The book consists of 500 pages plus another 100 of notes, references, acknowledgements and introduction. I abandoned it after ploughing through the first 100 pages.

Then last month 2 things happened which stirred up my curiosity and interest to such an extent that I took up the book once more and read it from start to finish in a matter of days.

– First: I visited Hyderabad and went for a Heritage Walk to the British Residency. This is a recently renovated mansion which was built for and by Col. James Achilles Kirkpatrick who was the British Resident in Hyderabad and who’s the main character of this book.

– Second: After returning from Hyderabad, my interest greatly piqued, I came across this short film on YouTube in which the author William Dalrymple; narrates how he stumbled upon this story and how he researched and wrote it. I found his account as fascinating as the book that I read.

(Yes, I’m a fan of his work, anyway. And have been fortunate enough to attend a talk that he gave before the release of Kohinoor, another of his books. It was a major fangirl moment!!)

White Mughals is the true story of how James Kirkpatrick, an official in the East India Company who was posted to Hyderabad, was involved with and later married Khair-u-Nissa, a young, Muslim lady from an aristocratic family. It’s also a vivid, colourful and beautifully detailed account of the last years of the 18th century when the East India Company was beginning to extend its footprint across this land.

It was a time of intrigue, treachery, alliances and betrayal as the British, the French, the Mughals, the Marathas and Tipu Sultan jostled and fought for power and territorial expansion.

it was also a time when several British officers who were posted to India, went ‘native’ as it was then called. That is, they began to adopt the customs, dress and language of the land they had been sent to administer. Many of them even changed their religion, settled down with ‘bibis’ and ‘begums’, raised families and preferred to give up the land of their birth. This gave rise to what Dalrymple calls “the unexpected and unplanned minglings of peoples and cultures and ideas”

Not surprisingly, it was viewed with disfavour by the the senior officials in England and after 1805, the scenario changed completely; leading up to the war of 1857 and India becoming a colony of the British Empire.

It was therefore a time of upheavals and transformation, all of which is narrated in a most engaging manner- very different from the dull, monochromatic fare served up in our history textbooks.

DISCLAIMER: This is not some sweeping, epic saga of a grand, doomed passion. But it is real-life account of how love can cross barriers and yet end in tragedy and loss.

After all, what is history but a series of causes and consequences that needs to be viewed through various perspectives so that we can reach a better understanding of our past.

PS: History needs to be taught through heritage walks! The text books can wait.