William Dalrymple, a British travel writer and scholar of Indian history, sometimes gets himself into hot water with Indian critics. He was attacked by Farrukh Dhondy a couple of years ago for criticizing V.S. Naipaul’s pro-communalist comments, and then more recently by Pankaj Mishra for lamenting the state of non-fiction writing in and about India. But whatever you think of his role in these arguments, Dalrymple as a historian is the real deal: his book Delhi: City of Djinns is an amazing historical travel narrative, which blends Dalrymple’s experiences in modern Delhi with a great deal of careful research into Delhi’s formidable past.
The current issue of Outlook India has a nice essay by Dalrymple on the Indian Mutiny/Rebellion of 1857 (thanks, Indianoguy!). The essay is really in three parts: one is a fresh look at the fall of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the “last Mughal” — whose sons were all executed (murdered) by the British after the Rebellion. The second part is a discussion of “Mutiny papers” in the National Archives of India that Mahmoud Farooqi has been translating from Urdu. These documents show the Indian perspective on the events of 1857, where one finds, among other things, that the rebels were motivated by religious rage to a very great extent. Finally, there is a discussion of contemporary Delhi — in which preserving the emblems of this past is of very little interest to most people. Though I remember reading somewhere that one of the main causes of the failure of the Rebellion was Zafar’s age and his failure to act decisively (see details at Wikipedia), Dalrymple has a slightly different take. There’s no doubt that Zafar was old at the time the Mutiny occurred (he was about 80), but his weakness was not his fault. He only ascended the throne at age 60, by which time it was too late to do anything to revive his family’s dead empire. Moreover, he contributed a great deal to literature:
Zafar came late to the throne, succeeding his father only in his mid-60s, when it was already impossible to reverse the political decline of the Mughals. But despite this he succeeded in creating around him in Delhi a court of great brilliance. Personally, he was one of the most talented, tolerant and likeable of his dynasty: a skilled calligrapher, a profound writer on Sufism, a discriminating patron of miniature painters and an inspired creator of gardens. Most importantly, he was a very serious mystical poet, who wrote not only in Urdu and Persian but Braj Bhasha and Punjabi, and partly through his patronage there took place arguably the greatest literary renaissance in modern Indian history.Himself a ghazal writer of great charm and accomplishment, Zafar’s court provided a showcase for the talents of India’s greatest love poet, Ghalib, and his rival Zauq—the Mughal poet laureate, and the Salieri to Ghalib’s Mozart. (link)
One could of course argue, echoing Tagore, that mystical poetry is the consolation of a defeated people, but this is definitely better than the standard image of Zafar as an indecisive invalid. (Some of Zafar’s Urdu ghazals are here)
Dalrymple also strongly condemns the violence involved in the suppression of the Rebellion, including the (ghastly) British decision to summarily kill all of Zafar’s sons and the wanton destruction of priceless monuments (including the palace inside the Red Fort) in Delhi and other Indian cities. This wasn’t enlightened Liberalism or Imperial benevolence, but a dirty war in which indiscriminate killing and humiliation were used to ensure victory.
From my perspective, the most interesting parts of Dalrymple’s piece detail the 20,000 Urdu documents in the National Archives that are now being translated by Mahmoud Farooqi. Partly they are interesting because they add to our image of everyday life in India at that time:
What was even more exciting was the street-level nature of much of the material. Although the documents were collected by the victorious British from the palace and the army camp, they contained huge quantities of petitions, complaints and requests from the ordinary citizens of Delhi—potters and courtesans, sweetmeat-makers and over-worked water carriers—exactly the sort of people who usually escape the historian’s net. The Mutiny Papers overflow with glimpses of real life: the bird-catchers and lime-makers who have had their charpoys stolen by sepoys; the gamblers playing cards in a recently ruined house and ogling the women next door, to the great alarm of the family living there; the sweetmeat-makers who refuse to take their sweets up to the trenches in Qudsia Bagh until they are paid for the last load. (link)
But it’s more than that. What the papers underline is the extent to which religious feelings drove the rebels. It goes well beyond the question of “greased cartridges”:
As the sepoys told Zafar on May 11, 1857, “we have joined hands to protect our religion and our faith”. Later they stood in Chandni Chowk, the main street of Old Delhi, and asked people: “Brothers: are you with those of the faith?” British men who had converted to Islam—and there were a surprising number of those in Delhi—were not hurt; but Indians who had converted to Christianity were cut down immediately. It is highly significant that the Urdu sources usually refer to the British not as angrez (the English) or as goras (Whites) or even firangis but instead almost always as kafirs (infidels) and nasrani (Christians).
Although the great majority of the sepoys were Hindus, in Delhi a flag of jihad was raised in the principal mosque, and many of the insurgents described themselves as mujahideen, ghazis and jihadis. Indeed, by the end of the siege, after a significant proportion of the sepoys had melted away, unpaid, hungry and dispirited, the proportion of jihadis in Delhi grew to be about a quarter of the total fighting force, and included a regiment of “suicide ghazis” from Gwalior who had vowed never to eat again and to fight until they met death—”for those who have come to die have no need for food”. One of the causes of unrest, according to one Delhi source, was that “the British had closed the madrasas”. These were words which had no resonance to the historians of the 1960s. Now, sadly, in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7 they are words we understand all too well, and words like jihad scream out of the dusty pages of the source manuscripts, demanding attention. (link)
I don’t think Dalrymple is saying that everyone involved in the Rebellion of 1857 was motivated by this kind of religious feeling (indeed, as I understand it there were as many or more Hindu sepoy rebels). But it is worth considering whether people might feel differently about the concept of “jihad” when one shares a political and military goal with a Jihadi.
Finally, Dalrymple talks about the total indifference to the past that many contemporary Indians feel. As Dalrymple puts it:
I find it heartbreaking: often when I revisit one of my favourite monuments it has either been overrun by some slum, unsympathetically restored by the asi or, more usually, simply demolished. Ninety-nine per cent of the delicate havelis or Mughal courtyard houses of Old Delhi have been destroyed, and like the city walls, disappeared into memory. According to historian Pavan Verma, the majority of the buildings he recorded in his book Mansions at Dusk only 10 years ago no longer exist. Perhaps there is also a cultural factor here in the neglect of the past: as one conservationist told me recently: “You must understand,” he said, “that we Hindus burn our dead.” Either way, the loss of Delhi’s past is irreplaceable; and future generations will inevitably look back at the conservation failures of the early 21st century with a deep sadness. (link)
Cremating the dead is one thing — but forgetting them entirely is quite another.
Manish may be gone, but my superpower of being able to tell the author from the first sentence remains unaltered! I’ll have to work at some of the other Mutineers though…
Another thought-provoking post Amardeep, in particular considering whether one considers jihaad in a different light when you share the goal. I must say I also agree with the last point you mention from Dalrymple – the apathy to history from many contemporary Indians. This is rife…apart from episodes in history where your ‘group’ (religion/sect/community) was persecuted, which has no doubt been distorted over the years to become an excuse for violence, many modern Indians have a sad disregard for the past and their own history. But although he who forgets history is destined to repeat it, perhaps this brings a useful pre-occupation with the future?
Another required reading from our brilliant amardeep. Maybe you should start the Mutinous Book Club so we can catch up.
Well, I’m a great fan of Dalrymple for his White mughals and his City of djinns and also for his fight to conserve buildings in New Delhi by Sir Edwin Lutyens and now the old havelis. I can feel his frustration. I just read The Places In Between by Rory Stewart about Archeological plunder near Jam, Afghanistan where Mohammad Ghori built his Turquoise Mountain city using his Indian treasure and about the destruction of Bamiyan Buddhas by Taliban. Are we Indians any better, to knowingly destroy historical buildings.
Maybe you should title this post “Sepia Jihad?”
LOL.. Looks like it is really a “jihad” by “upper caste Hindus” and “Muslims”.. No wonder Sikhs helped the Brits to put this down.. We have to give the noble “First war of Independence” tag to some agitation where the goal was to get the “universal humanrights” for all people, like “Dandi march” or “civil disobedience movements”.. Not for this one..
Agreed. I’ve been meaning to suggest a “Sepia Literature” tab for quite a while now.
And I echo the thoughts about the main article — excellent stuff, Amardeep.
I just saw Rang de Basanti and now I’m confused. I thought the purpose of the Sepoy Mutiny was to inspire future middle-class Indians to become nationalist anti-corruption leaders by Losing Control 🙂 And quite clearly, the movie indicates that all religions came together in happy harmony to celebrate India’s military might and make friends with the White girl.
Ahh…this has all been clarified for me. The Sepoy Mutiny was meant to inspire Dil Chahta Hai, not the entirely dissimilar Rang de Basanti. Sorry! 🙂
Sorry to nitpick, but the magazine is caleld Outlook, not Outlook India. The website is outlookindia.com (presumably because outlook.com was taken). Just wanted to let you know, so that you can avoid coming across as a clueless aan-aar-eye. 😉 haven’t read the outlook cover yet, and i don’t know how much dalrymple you’ve read, but although i have enjoyed the historical component of all his books that i have read immensely, i can’t bring myself to say the same about much of his writing about contemporary south asia. his understanding of latter-day political and social developments is very shallow, and tinged with more than a bit of burra-sahib condescension (sp?) and unadulterated nostalgia for a mythical gilded age of sultans and magnificently lavish living, seemingly unaware (or untroubled by) the feudal underpinnings that sustained the lifestyles he is so fascinated by. in a way, he is of a kind with a certain kind of orientalist colonial type, who were fascinated by the ostentation of india’s upper classes and preferred to gloss over much that lay below the surface. in that way, i find his politics extremely problematic. wish he’d be called out on that properly. i find the uncritical fawning over his writing by much of the indian media extrmely irritating, but then i find much of the indian media very irritating.
Actually, Saurav, I think you’re confused — the Indian Rebellion of 1857 was actually caused by Rani Mukherjee’s flirtatious pout: the Pout That Started a Million Mutinies Now Heard Round The World.
And it had nothing to do with Aamir Khan’s funny hair in RDB, but everything to do with his funny mustache in MP-TR.
What a great article!! A potent combination of rich material and beautiful writing.
The change in attitude of British from those who went native on a regular basis to the rising magisterial approach and evangelical zeal coincided with the rising dominance of unilateral British power in the world. The historical rewriting effort headed by Macaulay and suppressing of Indian history/achievements is something that is nicely covered by Amartya Sen’s Argumentative Indian as well(Disclaimer – I don’t agree with a lot of things in that book).
The religious/jihadi angle is something that was not touched upon at all in my NCERT/CBSE history textbooks, which on a whole were highly informative and amazingly written – a treasure trove of information. I remember the whole episode of the 1857 being depicted as a class struggle against oppressive British economic policies for which the greased cartridges incident was a catalyst. In fact religious antagonisms were always glossed over. Maybe there is something to the Marxist/Leftist rewriting of Indian history after all?
The loss of Indian architectural heritage though sad is something that is inevitable I suppose. The lack of importance given to historical preservation either documents or monuments is something that has always saddened me. I always wondered if this is a cultural or a religious thing that arises out of a fatalistic outlook towards life. Maybe endless reincarnations and eternal time frames reduce the importance one gives to relatively short periods of times? Maybe its not such a bad thing after all; todayÂ’s India needs to look to the future more than to the past.
William Dalrymple […] sometimes gets himself into hot water with Indian critics…
This is TOTALLY off-topic, but I was amused when a UK magazine IndoBrit gave him a huge glowing spread on White Mughals when their editor was having an affair with (the married) Dalrymple. After it ended, the magazine did a huge spread about how he was just an ignorant gora with a brown fetish and didn’t know what he was talking about. Ah, history is written by the victors. Or the love-spurned. 😉
As for Bongsie’s reference to “the apathy to history from many contemporary Indians” — someone recently posted in the news tab a link to an essay about “10 Things I Hate about India” (can’t find it now!) and one of them was the total and complete inaccessability to historical documents, kept hidden by bureaucrats and babus — it was really interesting, how Indians don’t have access to original writings about things, and have to rely on Western archives! So maybe that’s part of it? Even academics can’t get an accurate picture of history in their own country?
Dalrymple kind of answers his own question in the article: Because Delhi’s present culture is informed by the mercantilist class of Hindu Punjabis who migrated because of partition, its Mughal history may be viewed as an embarassment rather than as a testament to the sophistication of India’s heritage, or at the very least a matter of indifference, just as (I’m told) Lahore is a Muslim city now, dominated by Muslim Punjabis, its cosmopolitanism long forgotten…
Ahhh….thanks for setting me straight! Now if someone would explain his dance moves to me, I would be all set.
Although, I am not familiar with Dalrymple’s previous books/writings, he seems to romanticize the Muslim history/culture of India. I dont agree with his critisicm regarding the destruction of priceless monuments in Delhi by the British, Its exactly what the Muslim invaders did to Hindu Monuments/Temples. So its not a British thing, almost every occupying force does that, That’s what the Americans did after they invaded Iraq.
Really? Care for a little context here? The Americans went around destroying mouments to Saddam Hussain and the Baath party, not Mosques. More Mosques have been destroyed by sectarian violence and by foreign fighters. Why lump them in to this debate?
I think Someole’ guy hits the nail on the head. I’ve read a lot of Dalrymple’s works, as they were generally prescribed by my white Asian studies professors at Cornell. The west has an obsession with collection and preservation of material goods; India as a primarily Hindu society, has never attached fundamental importance to the preservation of material goods for posterity. I attribute this to our understanding of the trivial nature of our material existence. But it is wrong an false to say we don’t preserve anything; of course we do. Coming from the South, I have been to all the great temples at Mahabalipuram, Madurai, Tirupati and others that are preserved beautifully so they can continue to be used. Which is why we should preserve things. Perhaps the problem here is not India’s negligence of its art and history, but the western tendency to fetshize objects that are ancient simply because they are old. I thought that the Dada movement had debunked the idea that art was something made by “creative” malcontents with large price tags attached; I consider cottage crafts in India to be the equal of Swarovski ducks, just as I consider the slum to be the equivalent of the skyscraper. Let Indians preserve what is important to them and not what condescending westerners think we should.
Also, I don’t like Naipal either, but if dalrymple has such a problem with Naipal patronizing the colonials, why doesn’t he draw more attention to Winston Churchill, who is admired like a saint in his own country and much of the western world, but was in reality a bigot and we all know he once referred to Gandhi as a “naked little savage”? It seems like he is basically willing to forgive the millions of British that were guilty, either through active participation or tacit compliance in the Raj, but he thinks he has the right to attack an Indian citizen who chooses to support a party in his own democracy? Come on; by that logic then every single person who supports the BJP is crazy, bigoted, or at best ignorant. While I know someone is going to bring up Gujurat, I don’t think I have to dig very deep to find many examples of terrible atrocities and leadership due to the Congress party, such as the entire reign of Indira Gandhi. The idea that Dalrymple is somehow an authority that has the clout to weigh in on how India should be governed is ludicrous; it’s just another form of intellectual colonialism; i.e. only white and western trained academics are smart enough to handle and appreciate our own history. Please.
Dark Knight, on your second comment, actually Dalrymple’s biggest problem with Naipaul is his anti-Muslim slant in “India: A Wounded Civilization” and his public comments about Ayodhya. As a historian, if Dalrymple knows enough about medieval Indian history and culture to correct Naipaul, he has every right to do so, irrespective of the color of his skin.
I havent read “City of Djinn’s” but a couple of this articles left a bad taste in my mouth (ok, I know I should have swallowed and not chewed :-)).
One of them was on Goa and based on interviews wih elderly Goan’s nostalgic about their days under the Portuguese “At Donna Georgina’s” (couldnt find the complete article on the web). Another similar one was on the old Hyderabad and on the 1948 “police action” Under the Char Minar, where he waxes nostalgic about the Nizam’s rule and reproduces dubious claims on the numbers killed in the “police action”.
Yeah Dalrymple! Mind your own business! Leave us alone! Fuck off! Concentrate on Churchill! Don’t tell us Hindus what to do! Stop persecuting us! Stop telling us Hindus what to do with our Mughal houses! Only we Hindus are allowed to demolish what Muslim structures we like! Don’t be such a racist colonialist! Or there will be trouble!
Hail Mogambo!!!!
i don’t think the destruction in delhi is based on hindu-muslim antagonism or fatalism or cremating the dead or culture but more on the pressures of population and development and is due more to the usual bureacracy and bad urban planning. hindu, muslim and british structures have been destroyed to make way for more “modern” developments in the face of huge population and economic pressures. many of the mughal havelis were sold by their owners to developers.
thats why it took india so long to get freedom because there was lots of indians supporting angrej.same thing going on today.thats why indian people are behind. Jai Shree Sai Baba Jai Shree Krishna
though substantiating evidence was found that his soul-patch in Dil Chahta Hai was responsible for a small outburst in a physics class. Not a mutiny or uprising, but a little disruption.
Second Amardeep’s comment. I am confused. Why should Dalrymple write about Churchill? He has spent his life, researching, reading, and writing about INDIA and Indian history. He is a historian of medieval, Mughal India, and also a modern travel writer about INDIA. There are literally hundreds of white and other skin-colored historians who know more about Delhi and India even though I was born there and have brown skin.
Dark Knight, I partly agree with your comment #16. I think that we should give influence to the opinions of Indians living in India as to what should be preserved or not. My problem is the assumption that their is a healthy movement already in place to preserve these things. The cottage crafts that you mention may have been important once, but how many people are being exploited now to sell the masala version of globablization? Those crafts are also being destroyed and made less authentic.
I like Bong Breaker’s comment: “apart from episodes in history where your ‘group’ (religion/sect/community) was persecuted, which has no doubt been distorted over the years to become an excuse for violence, many modern Indians have a sad disregard for the past and their own history.” It seems that for many groups, the only reason to preserve anything is to provide evidence of their persecution by other people. Isn’t that also fetishizing and using history?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the preservation of India’s history should be done with the opinions of people who have studied history in mind. And I don’t include politicians with their agendas to be truly non-partisan historians.
Amardeep,
As I said, I don’t like Naipal myself, I find him to be disgustingly apologist myself, but I am simply stating that his attack on Naipal, as you acknowledged on your blog, seems to stem from a deeper desire to confront Naipal for his views as a writer and an Indian. I personally find most of Naipal’s views to be objectionable, but I support his right to have them. What I don’t support is the idea that somehow a “historian” who didn’t grow up in Indian society somehow is allowed to “lament the state of non-fiction writing in about India”. This very statement shows the type of intellectual colonialism I am referring to; inherent in that statement is the assumption that his non fiction writings about India are somehow better, and that anyone who tries to write in a different manner is somehow worse. Who is he to broadly critique the works of thousands of Indian intellectuals and historians who wrote significant works in both English and their own languages, most of which he has never even heard of, let alone read? My grandfather was a prominent Tamil scholar at University of Madras, he wrote academic works on Indian writers and histories of South India that were widely reknowned among South Indian intellectuals. Are his works somehow unworthy because Mr. Dalrymple says so? I might hate Naipal, but at least he’s writing about something he knows. I never disputed Dalrymple’s credentials as a historian or his knowledge. I disagree with his speaking as if he somehow is an authority on modern Indian culture. He is not. I am not being anti-white; surely anyone that has been to India once knows that white people are treated differently than brown people; everyone panders to them, people stare at them in the streets. The point is that while he might have studied history, it is not his place to pontificate on the state of modern India, and any of his observations are probably misinformed because of the lens of race that precludes him from experiencing life as an Indian. W.E.B. DuBois says it much better than I do; there is a veil that is drawn, and it cannot be lifted. Dalrymple should stick to writing fantasies about Mughals and their white wives for his Western readers, and stop telling Indians how to record their own history.
Oh and it’s quite obvious Spoorlam is one of the moderators, my initial guess is Abhi though possibly someone else. not sure which, but clearly someone affiliated with Pseudo-Secular Mutiny that wants to make it clear that any support for Hinduism obviously makes you in favor of child marriage, Sati, castism, Modi and Gujurat, widespread killing of Muslims and any of the other atrocities that us brown savages that worship rocks like to commit.
Also, I hate the tired refrain I hear from NRI’s and other Westerners about “how sad it is that Indians don’t preserve/maintain their cultural heritage”. This is a patently false generalization, and it disgusts me. Clearly, some people in India have always cared, or else nothing would have survived the over 600 years of foreign invasions. How do you explain Tirupati? The temples in Madurai? Kerala’s main temple in Trivanduram? The entire golden triangle? India is one of the few countries where true artists are still trained from childhood; perhaps the more accurate thing to say would be that you personally don’t/haven’t cared about preserving Indian culture. I know many people in India who are artists, writers, and intellectuals of my parents generation who are infuriated by these claims. The main difference is one of money; India doesn’t have millions of dollars to spend on museums, and the government has almost no allocations for the arts and preservation. Instead of constantly bemoaning the way “Indians are”, here’s a revolutionary idea: why don’t you Indians here in America get out your checkbooks, or at least write to the Laxmi Mittals and Tatas of the world and convince them to do the same? Most of cultural preservation of the arts in Mid-20th century america was done through philanthropic efforts, not government sponsorship. Perhaps instead of complaining, you should try preserving something you think is important.
Notice I don’t include myself. My family both here and India has been contributing the maintenance of University of Madras and other such institutions for years, though we are among the few. The problem? Most of the wealthiest Indians would rather give money to Harvard or the Smithsonian that to the Madras Museum. Whose fault is that?
Sleepy’s comment,
gives rise to this question: Who exactly is a non-partisan historian?
But Naipaul wasn’t an Indian, he was a Trinidadian. He didn’t grow up in India any more than Dalrymple did, and he doesn’t live in India now:
Dalrymple, on the other hand, does live in India.
I’m not trying to defend Dalryple. I’m ignorant enough that I had never heard of him before this post. However, I do object to the idea that (a) that you have to be from a place in order to produce good scholarship or even commentary on it and (b) that skin color and diasporic ethnicity give some sort of special insight. If you were correct, then we would have to reject Indian commentaries on America, and I would be unable to ever be a scholar of China since I lack the ethnicity and appearance.
Dark Night, do you think that Mahmood Mamdani is a bad scholar of Africa because he is a brown Ugandan and not a black one?
Dark Knight, You’re throwing around arguments without full knowledge, and attacking people you might actually agree with if you bothered to stop and find out what they actually say.
You say this:
Wait, do you know anything about V.S. Naipaul? He was born and raised in Trinidad. He doesn’t speak any South Asian languages. He’s been to India maybe four or five times in his 70 years, and written 3 books on the subject, two of which are expressly dismissive. Oh, and he’s most certainly not a citizen of India.
In contrast, Dalrymple has lived been in Delhi six months of the year (or more) for the last 20 years.
On the non-fiction writing question, have you read Dalrymple’s actual essay, the one which started the current debate? One of the ironies of the essay is that he actually cites Mishra approvingly. Since I worry that you’re not going to actually click on the link, let me summarize it for you. Dalrymple laments the fact that most of the best-known contemporary Indian writers are abroad rather than in India itself — not because he wants to punish backwards India, but because he wants to encourage it to grow. He also points out that one of the reasons for the diasporic trend is that the state of book publishing in India is not great; that is where the comment on non-fiction writing is made. And even there he doesn’t say that there aren’t Indian historians doing good work (he acknowledges Sanjay Subrahmanyam, who teaches at Oxford), but that they aren’t writing for a mainstream audience. Dalrymple is diagnosing the problem based on real evidence (i.e., publishing statistics) and first-hand experience.
For the record (so that you all don’t take the absence of a denial as a confirmation) we have no idea who SpoorLam is either. He (she?) is not one of the masthead mutineers. And it’s most definitely not Abhi – you can tell when Abhi comments, his voice is distinctive and he never uses sarcasm of that sort. If you find out, though, let us know. We’re kind of curious.
Oops, sorry for doubling Ennis’ comment.
P.G. Wodehouse, O.k., I so brought that one on myself 🙂 Instead of non-partisan, I guess I should have said someone with a more training in history, perhaps more objectivity and less of a tendency to do whatever gets more votes? I’m trying to say that it requires some training to look at things and how they are placed historically. For example, would you trust a Khalistani politician to make the decision about what building should be torn down to make way for a new mall? I’m sure that they wouldn’t say to tear down a gurudwara, even though the haveli next to it is perhaps a couple of centuries older. I’m not saying historians are completely objective, that would be dumb. Having studied history for just four years, I can say that I do have a different way of looking at certain things. Perhaps a slightly more careful way than I had when I started. And beyond historians, the people who live around these old buildings should also have more of a say instead of a politician who is eager to see a huge multinational build headquarters there. Most of the people living in the “old” portions of cities are not the nouveau riche benefiting from MNC’s. I bet I said something there that I’m gonna have to come back and change 🙂
Great point Ennis. Naipaul is the biggest brown sahib the world has ever produced. His knowledge of India is shallow and nowhere close to Dalrymple’s intimate familiarity with modern India in which he has lived, travelled, and written. Naipaul’s fiction about Trinidad is another matter–I actually teach it in my classes and consider him to be a major novelist. But I would much rather deal with Dalrymple’s views on India than Naipaul’s.
Dark Knight, I sympathize with much of what you are saying about a rich, progressive culture in India that people in the the Euro-American world can’t access, and also the point about needing money to preserve buidlings and monuments. Actually, the first person to make arrogant remarks about Indian writing in regional languages was Salman Rushdie, not Dalrymple. Secondly, I think though that the state of monuments in Delhi is really sad, and Dalrymple may be writing from that context. Mughal India has left a rich intellectual, literary and architectural heritage which is sadly ignored in Delhi and the North generally. Secondly, after having lived and worked in the academy in the US, I don’t see the absolute distinction between Indian, British, and American scholars of India. They are actually a varied, close-knit, congenial community and no one accuses another of being less authentic. This is because you earn your right to comment on a culture through decades of familiarity with archives, local scholars, local languages, travel and so on. And then you are the expert in the field, not against people who live in a country, but with them.
All this is quite apart from the merit of Dalrymple’s work. I also have problems with his colonialist nostalgia, and I’ve heard other things about his arrogance. But I wouldn’t oppose his right to have an opinion.
Actually, Abhi, mosques have been destroyed too, and lots of good things from museums and probably a lot more from outside museums that we don’t hear about — and human beings as well.
To begin, I plead ignorance on Naipul. I started two of his books when I was younger, and found them so distasteful that I did not finish either. I had heard of him as greatly acclaimed throughout the diaspora, but I never took an interest because I found his writings objectionable. I never intended to get on here defending Naipul or his views. I am more interested in Dalrymple and his assertions about Indian and his criticism of Indian writers.
Obviously this issue is a personal one because I consider myself to be an Indian writer, or at least an Indian-American writer. Having grown up straddling the two countries and returning every year, I feel perhaps more connected that most ABD’s. Also, I cannot comment on the state of book publishing in Delhi, but I feel that it is highly dangerous to generalize about the entire country from the state of one city. I assure you that Madras has no such lack of history books; My father, who is deeply interested in classical Greek history, frequently purchases old German, British and American books about Greeks that are only available in South India because they can be printed cheaply. I spend most of my time in the South, so I can’t comment on the North, but I can say with confidence that Kerala, Andhra and Tamil Nadu are all full of as many people interested in Indian art and culture as any western country. Obviously the crippling poverty and illiteracy of the masses prevents them from higher pursuits; I wonder if many NRI’s (coming from middle class bacgkrounds) are exempted from a cultural education in favor of economic advancement? Because I assure you, my family in India trains every child in art, music and other cultural pursuits, and most of the people I interact with do so as well.
Amardeep, I read both articles and I feel more equipped to respond. First and foremost, why should an Indian writer be judged on his English writing? Doing so is inherently either a nod to colonialism or else a ground more comfortable tread by NRI’s that are raised in English speaking culture. It is not unusual that the best Indian writers in English are from outside of the country; what’s more strange is that we expect our “best writers” as Dalrymple calls them, to write in English instead of their native tongues. While he acknoledges their existence, his tone is extremely dismissive, almost colonial. To me, he exemplifies liberal western academia, which only considers writing to be legitimate if it is either 1) commercially successful or 2) backed by some type of degree or authority, such as the Indian prof. he references at Oxford. Please do not name some Indian at Oxford or Harvard and act like you are giving us credit; that is partonizing to the worst degree. Any prof. at one of those schools is already an accepted expert; what’s important is to gain recognition for our homegrown authors. That doesn’t mean pandering to the Western market; as Dalrymple admits, most Indian authors that write in their native tongues sell many copies. To me that in itself seems evidence of just how wrong his assertions are. I really take issue with his views on the diaspora being superior somehow in its ability to capture the experience; despite my immersion in India, I know there is much I will never understand. Which is why I question his own understanding.
About the racial quotient; do I think that a person must be part of a race to understand it? In a word, yes. You can write extensively from second-hand sources, but I do not think I could ever write a novel that truely captures the experience of being African-American, just as I don’t think Dalrymple can speak for Indian people. Obviously, neither can Naipul. Scholarly works on history are one thing; wide-spread classification of an incredibly diverse subcontinent is another altogether. Just because his books sell well (or Roy, Lahiri or any of the other writers he cites) does not mean they are the best. In my experience, most writers who are the most significant are rarely widely read. In fact, most people I know who study Indian literature do not consider Roy or Lahiri to be close to the same level as Rushdie or Seth. And none of them comes close to approaching the level of depth and understanding found in authors such as Premchand. I’m not sure I responded to all your points, but I tried. Let me know what you think.
oh yes, and soldiers were living in Saddam’s “palaces” and swimming in the pools last I heard, so those haven’t been destroyed…about strafing mosques, remember Fuhl-loozhah?
From Pankaj’s letter: Not surprisingly, Dalrymple has nothing to say about the best young Indian novelists in English, who mostly live in India – Amit Chaudhuri, Vikram Chandra, Siddhartha Deb, Raj Kamal Jha, Rana Dasgupta, Rupa Bajwa and Tabish Khair. Recent books by Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Amitava Kumar, Urvashi Butalia, and Abraham Eraly disprove his assertion that the state of Indian non-fiction is “dire”. And he is startlingly ungenerous to writers such as the distinguished historian Romila Thapar. Sunil Khilnani, estimable author of The Idea of India, stands accused of having “decamped to Washington” – although he has long been resident in the west. Dalrymple also tries to dismiss Ramachandra Guha, a respected biographer and author of the forthcoming Picado as a “cricket historian”
Thapar is perhaps the best historian from India. Her works dwarf those of Dalrymple, and will be relevant far after his have faded from the Best-seller lists. I personally don’t think you should get to comment on a culture just because you have lived among them and studied them. You can comment, but it shouldn’t be taken as fact, as Dalrymple’s views often are by the West. I’ve lived in America almost my whole life, mostly among white Christians, and I studied American history (along with Asian studies). If I said that I thought White America was a materialistic, hedonistic society concerned with exploiting the underprivileged dark masses and keeping the Christian, Protestant power structure intact while betraying its principles to expand its economic power base and suppress indigenous cultures, would I be taken serously? Hardly; I would be dismissed as an anti-american and anti-christian. While some people (such as Amardeep and his college prof. buddies) would probably welcome my right to say that, most Americans (the same people that make Fox news the nation’s leading information source) would hate me and tell me to “go back to my country” and leave them the land they took from the Indians. My point here is that my reaction to Dalrymple is the same reaction most Americans would have to a similar outsider’s take on their country. A nation’s literary and historical representation is a very touchy political issue; the consensus seems to be that the post-colonial nations would prefer to mold their own image, rather than relying on the impressions of someone that comes directly from the same country that was just suppressing your national dialogue.
I think Hari Kunzru’s approach is fine; he is who he is and doesn’t try to speak for others. Indians should be given the same route; I do think that Rushdie has more business commenting on native lit. than Dalrymple, that doesn’t make him right but at least I’m interested in his opinion, because when goes out in the world, he (like us) is viewed as an Indian, and must in some part represent Indians to the world. And what, exactly, has Dalrymple done to benefit the “people” of India? Perhaps one reason we don’t preserve Mughal buildings is that the majority of Indians are Hindus, and the buildings are a reminder of a different colonial empire. Why do African-Americans oppose the confederate flag? Shouldn’t they be trying to “preserve” that part of their history? You get my point.
With that I’m going to sleep and stop fighting the good fight. I hope I didn’t offend anyone, if you want my collected views you can check out my blog. Again, I’m not knocking Dalrymple’s books or his intelligence, just whether he has the right to weigh in so authoritatively on Indian writers without acknowledging how many great ones there are. It just seems pompous and condescending to my view, and typical of his ilk. That’s all, read my blog if you care.
Abhi
Follow this and this, You will find some startling info about American Miltary’s involvement in the looting of Baghdad’s Museam.
Following the Iraq war, billions of dollars of Iraq’s money was directed to American companies to rebuild the country. But much of it remains unaccounted for. Sometime back BBC Newsnight aired a story titled “The 50 Billion Dollar Robbery”. Newsnight is known for unbiased reporting and that report is pretty convincing.
In all the years I grew up in India, I have never once heard the opinion expressed that Moghul era buldings are “reminders of a different colonial empire”. It may be the opinion of a fringe, but it is far from the mainstream opinion. Your history, is your history and the muslim kingdoms are a integral part of it for better and for worse.
The reasons are much more banal, as someone pointed out, its sheer pressure of the population, greed, neglect etc.
Thanks a lot for the interesting post and the links, Amardeep !
Did the words like kafir and jihad have the exact same religious connotation back then as they have today? Is it possible those words conveyed the differences in race, skin color, language and outsider/foreigner status of the British rulers at least as much as the difference in religion they followed and preached?
Regarding the lack of conservation attempts, we have to appreciate that, in a diverse country like India, not all historical symbols and monuments are equally meaningful to all Indians. Conservation requires passion. Tolerance or even appreciation of different cultures, languages and religions does not necessarily generate that passion. What Dalrymple passionately wants to conserve may not be the same as what majority of Indians and the central and state governments elected by them are passionate about. That does not mean that Indians, in general, are more forgetful or indifferent about their past than others – particularly when we keep the economic constraints in mind.
Regarding the Guardian article about Indian writing, there are a couple of sections where he seems to assign an undue significance to Indian writing in English and draws misleading conclusions.
1)
This is an odd comparison. He admits that bulk of Indian writing in English has very limited circulation in India and is primarily a diasporic activity targeted at western readers. Why would he then compare the English-language literary life in Delhi with the great literary renaissance of the nineteenth century? I know very little about contemporary Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi literature of India and Pakistan, but I can assure him that Bengali kobita-sommelons (poetry conference) in Bengal’s cities, disticts and villages can still bring poets and readers from all sections of the society. Bengali is just one of twenty-odd major Indian languages with thriving literature. The writers in these languages are not widely translated, are not short-listed for Booker/Pulitzer and do not have tenures at western universities, but they do matter to Indians. In a post-colonial India, I do not quite see the trade-off and the apparent fall from glory he seems to be bemoaning.
Another example.
I must be missing something here. By his own admission, a Romila Thapar-lite best-selling Indian history written in English would probably have sold about 5000 copies. And that would have stopped the spread of Hindu nationalist myths – whatever that means – among the mythical middle class of 80 crore Hindus who have been practising their religion for a few thousand years? That seems simplistic.
An old fight, but waged here quite well and completely. Dark Knight stakes his position with verve, ven if it is – in the final analysis – untenable. There is plenty of truth to what he says.
The thing about this discussion is that it centers on a figure who has indeed turned out to be problematic.
No one denies that Dalrymple has done some excellent work. In fact, he seems to be continuing to sponsor and execute really valuable, unique research. His writing (especially in this Mughal Quartet) is quite a major contribution.
Unfortunately, he’s also shown that he is more than a bit of a cad and very capable of being petty and vindictive in print and out. His pontificating on the state of Indian arts and letters is tiresome, unwelcome and really amazingly shallow. His commentary is very often glib, pointless and self-aggrandizing, suffused with a holier-than-thou attitude that’s really quite intolerable in someone who remains an outsider in India. Plus, he’s pursued shabby public vendettas with serious people doing serious work (Khilnani, Guha, and more) within the culture that he’s pretty much self-appointing himself authority about.
Even by low desi double standards, it’s adding up to a bit too much.
Firstly : the Nobel laureate VS Naipaul is the direct beneficiary of the largesse that was liberally doled out to the anti-Islamists like VSN in the wake of 9/11. He would never have won the Nobel any other way. Also, I’m sure, an utterly mediocre film like Khamosh Pani would never have attracted international attention but for 9/11. Secondly : while it is true that VSN is not a citizen of India, he manages to exploit the aura around his soft and conveniently slippery identity to his advantage. A move away from the origin (India) in a diasporic shift; a move into the world of English writing; a geo-cultural shift to England; his self-endorsing marriage to a Pakistani Muslim socialite and his myriad visits (not 3/4 as Professor Amardeep suggests with such academic self-assurance) to India especially in the last 15 years coinciding uncannily witht the rise of the Hindu right; his declaration of open support to Atal Bihari and BJP. Thirdly : Just who the hell is this failed, marginal scriptor for box-office disasters such as Krishna,American Daylight, Mangal Pandey, a person by the name of Farrukh Dhondy? Any endorsement from him to VSN can only spell doom!
My blood pressure boils.
Stay out of India WhiteMan Dalrymple!
Stop persecuting us with your colonialist mentality by saying it’s sad that Mughal houses dissapear!
Such arrogance.
And stop criticising VS Nightfall. If he pisses off the colonialist patronising pompous white ‘historian’ who defiles Hindus with his literary rape of Hindus, he should win Nobel Peace Prize for what he says about Islam rule in India and our ass rape for 67,000 thousand years by Pakistani-Abrhamamic colonialists, never mind literary Noble prize.
Only Hindu can write about India! Keep it pure!
Hail Mogambo!
Shriyut Shri SpoorLam’s pressure self-acknowledgedly is boiling (sic). He is into prescribing self-medication which seems to be frightfully in consonance with what was once in vogue in the late 1930s within the burgeoning cultural economy of a belligerently blue-blooded and an aggressively Aryan Germany. He wants the WhiteMan D out of his – read Hindu – India. His self-medication – an unreliable remedy in the best of times – goes through a libidinal purgatory denying anyone the right to even express a sense of loss at the disappearance of the Moghuls from India. The next leg of his self-medication has its origins, curiously enough, in the urinary tracts of His Authorship Sir Vidia S Naipul about which less said the better.
Only Hindus can write about India says the hurt and highly pressured Hindu. Which Hindu: Gandhi or Hegdewar? Nehru or Guru Golwalkar? Romilla Thapar or Meenakshi Jain? Bipan Chandra or some spurious Devender Sharma? Me or you?
Panini,
For future reference, SpoorLam is a jokester. Every word that comes out of his mouth satirizes the militant Hindu nationalist sensibility.
I see that commenters are attacking each other.. (Islam lovers attacking Hinduism lovers). It is fun to read 🙂 .. But to put things into context, the above quote from Darlymple does not really show him to be in the “Islam loving” camp to be hated by the “Hinduism loving” camp.. Can someone explain?? Maybe you can say “Whites loving”.. But later in that article he also explains how an English general wiped out the Mughal lineage. What’s wrong if he laments about losing “heritage”.. ?
Panini
Stop persecuting me!
I am adding your name to the list of anti-nationals who will be dealt with.
Hail Mogambo!
Comrade Spoorlam,
I salute your struggle to free the minds of people high on the opiate of religion.
This plutocratic, land owning gentry has used religion to oppress the masses for too long. Your efforts to unmask these capitalist, communal hindus who have raped the pleabian masses for centuries is a brave step towards a true revolution.
We cannot trust these upper caste hindus to express their opinions about India. They will only use this to distract the true people of India from joining the global agenda of communism.
Do not forget – Anyone who is expressing pride in Indian identity is only a tool for the conspiracy of the upper clases to exploit the long subjugated masses.
Remember 1917!!!
Long Live the Revolution!!