HYDERABAD: It is William Dalrymple who can make people go into mellifluous stupor on a nippy evening despite long waits. The stupor continues as he takes over the stage with his renditions of Ghalib and Bahadur Shah Zafar from his book ‘The Last Mughal’ alongside vocalist Vidya Shah who sang raags from the sunset era of the Mughal dynasty. Hyderabad, which was the setting of his magnum opus ‘White Mughals’, saw him clad in a black pathani emanating a spicy scent as he walked to the dais for musical readings from the tale of an empire that rose to lofty pinnacles. Its last emperor didn’t get even a handful of earth for the burial in his own motherland. This White Mughal took a new avatar for the 12th edition of Krishnakriti Art Festival organised by Kalakriti Art Gallery every year in memory of its founder late Krishnachandra B Lahoti. And no Dalrymple is not here for any literary fest that people misconstrued. He had his own performance ‘Enter the Last Mughal’ on the stage. His clear blue eyes twinkled as he talked about his upcoming book ‘The Anarchy’ and why India will always be a difficult lover for him.
On his quadrilogy
The last time Dalrymple took the readers in a delightful stupor was in the cold, ragged yet beautiful mountains of Afghanistan through his book ‘Return of a King’ set in the era of 1839-42 when the British occupied this land. It is a spinning, course-changing tale of British Army and Indian soldiers who meet catastrophe in that cold terrain. The Afghanistan of that time and of today still finds many parallels. And earlier it was just a trilogy, but now it was part of his quadrilogy. He speaks with a smile, “‘The Anarchy’ is prequel to the books I have written so far: ‘White Mughals’, ‘The Last Mughal’ and the ‘Return of the King’. This book is about Nadir Shah of Persia plundering Delhi. So I am jumping forty years back into history. I have now begun to realise how big the documentation is. It is Nadir Shah, in 1739, who comes and takes away the entire wealth that the Mughals have collected. Delhi could no longer pay its governors, armies. Suddenly cities like Calcutta, Lucknow, Hyderabad no longer belong to the Mughals and the Marathas get the free rein to do whatever they want. Then Afghans come, the Durranis come. The great anarchy comes and then two French and British merchant companies, with 3,000 sepoys each, come. The empire crumbles and these two companies rise to power. History books tell us that the British conquered India. I say it was not the British who conquered India, it was the Corporation which conquered India. I say Corporation in the same way that Google is a corporation or Microsoft is a corporation. For example, America coming to the aid of Greater American Corporation. So, you see the British State coming to the aid of the British Corporation the East India Company. As modern lobbyists do in Washington, they buy the legislature. Similarly, there were 30 per cent of Parliament shares in East India Company.” The book will take three years more. ‘The Anarchy’ tells how the East India Company took over.
Bong connect
It’s not surprising that Bengal features so much in his books. He says that the Bengali lineage came to him through French angle in the family tree. He adds, “I had this Bengali great grandmother who was married into an English family in Chandannagar. The same lineage traces go back to my great aunt Virginia Woolf, who also partially Bengali in a tiny way.” He discovered it while writing ‘White Mughals’ when he was exploring the connections between lords and soldiers of East India Company who chose their concubines from Bengali regions while Calcutta was the capital of British-occupied India.
‘India is a difficult lover’
Talking about love and relationships he admits that India has been like a difficult lover for him. “I have very intense relationship with India like a love affair. I have been in the country for the past 31 years. My life was completely transformed when I came here at the age of 18. India still fascinates me. India can be really frustrating sometimes in a million ways. There are traffic jams, pollution, power-cuts when you are in the middle of an important work. It becomes convenient for me sometimes as I am a foreigner and it becomes convenient for me to have access to a lot of things which otherwise would not be accessible to a desi. However, it can be quite prickly and nationlistic if you belong to a colonial country. It’s natural as 300 years of colonialism doesn’t vanish in a decade. If I wanted I could go back and never come back, but it is like a very long-term mistress whom you don’t feel like leaving.” (Laughs)
Hi’story’ resources are inexhaustible
He has been deep into Indian history and after years of history and travel writing his resources are not going to exhaust. “Not in the least bit are the sources exhausted. I will be really lucky if I found a little patch of Indian history between Mughals and the Raj which is very much under searched and also has vast archives scattered between India, Lahore and London. 18th century India has a very rich and prolific traditional writing history.”
White Mughals shooting this Spring in Hyderabad
He has sold the rights of his book White Mughals. He says, “It is in a sense that it is no longer my business. There’s a plan to come back to Hyderabad in Spring with the movie’s director Ralph Fiennes. Hyderabad will get to see him in a couple of months. I keep going to Koti College as it’s my favourite place in Hyderabad. I, too, will be there. My most favourite place is still Koti Residency.”
Difficult terrains
Afghanistan was in real bad shape when William began his research on his acclaimed book ‘Return of a King’. He was even shot in the arm. He explains, “By the time I began researching ‘The Return of the King’, Afghanistan was beginning to head in the direction where Taliban were already the sergeants. So I was jumping around. Even in 2009 it was very difficult to travel by land. I went to Jalalabad and it was in wrecks of cars who didn’t make it! Then I journeyed to meet this warlord Anwar Khan, who is ex-Taliban who took me to his village. Centre-piece of the book is this retreat from Kabul. I also got shot in the arm at Kandahar. It does drive off the rival researchers.” (chuckles).
He adds, “Afghanistan has immeasurable pool of resources. There is a great danger with historians that there is very limited source of history which everyone is referring to. You have to find the newness. I never had that problem in Afghanistan. You find the resources that no-one has looked into in the past 300 years. So, it’s great. Herat is like Agra. It was the centre of big Renaissance under Shahrukh. In 15th century, there are spectacular ruins of quality buildings. Herat has amazing towers. Kabul and Jalalabad are not very exciting. Herat is beautiful but equally wild. I had exciting times in Kandahar. It was Nadir Shah who destroyed the city in 1730.”
A book on destroyed archaelogical sites of Syria?
Torn with serious civil conflicts, Syria has lost many of its museums and archaelogical sites of great historical value, it can be a great book on loss. William has different takes on this. “I have written a lot about Syria. It appears in my first book ‘In Xanadu’ and in my third book ‘From The Holy Mountain’. I am deeply distressed by what happened over there. Now I am in my middle age and no longer a twenty-year-old reporter. I got kids and I cannot go into active conflicts. Afghanistan was a simmering civil conflict which you could skate through. A serious war correspondent can go. I am not going to Syria until the conflict subsides. With ISIS kidnapping and torturing it is not worth it. It’s been only two years that war correspondents are going there for reporting.”
Exploring ancient Indian art
After ‘The Anarchy’ his next book will be on art. He reveals, “In fact, I will be writing on two books simultaneously. I’d like to write a book on history of Indian art. I’d be researching eras early to Mughal times especially the early Buddhist sculptures. I love that classical Indian piece of history. It has not taken shape yet.”
MNCs and globalisation are not new
In ‘The Anarchy’ he is exploring the rise of the East India Company. I am excited about looking at East India Company as a corporation. The East India Company plundered Bengal and looted Murshidabad. The share prices rose astronomically thus. Plus there was a famine and they brought in a revenue and the economy collapsed. Unlike Lehmann Brothers the East India Company was too large to collapse. It was controlling over half of the Britain’s exports and run more than half of London stocks. The State had to buy it out in the same way banks are rescued. Then the prices are regulated and you get the Regulating Act. This is exactly what happened during banking crisis in America. It’s very interesting. We think this new crisis of MNCs, globalisation and great financial crises are not new. This was going on from a long time and we see how privatisation and nationalisation happened between the State and the Company.”
‘My days are not normal’
I have different lives in a day. Nothing is normal. Sometimes it’s managing the JLF. Reminding authors to take visas. I live the life of a photographer, too. Then there is my writing life –sitting in the garden basking in the sun. You pay the price when you are writing. No internet, no connection to the outer world. It can be demanding.