Nothing has been more unexpected, than my latest addiction to William Dalrymple’s White Mughals. It’s all about things I generally find a bore to read about–old-time history stuff, the British, war, political intrique, the mughals…yawn, right? Well, not exactly. I have not been able to put down this 500 page historic epic about one James Achilles Kirkpatrick and his love for a Muslim Indian Begum–Khair un-Nissa (pictured).
Entirely without intending to do so, I happened to see Jodha Akbar, and was thrilled to find in one of Dalrymple’s impeccable footnotes the scene where Akbar has a mercenary thrown off the balcony.
This book is as much a journey with Dalrymple as he digs deeper into the story of Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa as it is about discovering these two fascinating historic characters. With beautifully timed hooks like,
“And then, quite suddenly, nothing….In a story powered by a succession of extraordinarily detailed and revealing sources–letters, diaries, reports, despatches–without warning the current that has supported this book suddenly flickers and fails….The lights go out and we are left in the darkness “
But not once does Dalrymple allow the darkness to descend. With brilliance and imagination, Dalrymple places these central characters in the heart of Hyderabad, Mughal India and its early collusions with the British Raj. I loved many things about this book. The central characters and their incredible and intriguing love story, the political milieu of the Nizam’s courts and its relationship with the Marathas in the late 18th century, the detailed accounts of ways in which women were often significant players in politics and it was useful to know this if you were a diplomat for the British. It was gratifying to know that if Akbhar had indeed married his Jodhaa, she would have most certainly done more than influence the court lunch menu. But perhaps the most fascinating facet was one of the book’s central themes–that of experiencing an account of the British in India in an entirely different, unexpected way.
With a clarity of vision and love, Dalrymple paints us a picture of many British colonialists who fell in love with India and were fundamentally transformed by her. There is the story of Hindoo Stuart a British army officer, who converted into Hinduism shortly after landing in India. With a twinkling sense of humor, Dalrymple points out that Hindoo Stuart was the first to market the sex appeal of wet saris (in a book where he urged English ladies to wear them). All this in the absence of any undertones of Kurtz and his Heart of Darkness, was to say the least refreshing.
