White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-century India

However, White Mughals is by no means just an exotic love story. It is a vehicle for Dalrymple's understanding of the complex legacy of the English Empire in India, that he defines more in terms of exchange and negotiation than dominance and subjugation. It is a powerful and moving plea by Dalrymple to understand the cultural intermingling and hybridity that defines both eastern and western cultures, and a convincing rejection of religious intolerance and ethnic essentialism. Elegantly written and at a pace that belies its length, White Mughals confirms Dalrymple's status as one of the most important non-fiction writers of his time. --Jerry Brotton

Reader Reviews:

Once Upon a Time in Hyderabad ... (2/2 people found this helpful)

This book is a complex many-faceted marvel! It is carefully researched history transformed into the story of an ultimately tragic romance. With its portrayal of Europeans astride two cultures, it offers a wonderful, and probably unintentional, counterpoint to the Clash of Civilizations. It is a swarm of all-seeing flies on the walls and writing desks of Hyderabad's elite, both British and Indian, two centuries ago - with their city, dress, festivals and habits brought vividly to life. It is a fascinating description of British and Mughal political intrigue in and around the Deccan as imperial control tightened. It is a sensitive reflection on the rapacious, self-indulgent and precarious lives lived by the British in insalubrious coastal cities like Calcutta and Madras. And as result of the unbelievably painstaking process of meticulous documentation we are convinced that we are seeing events exactly as participants did. It is a mind-blowing accomplishment.

Very readable history (3/3 people found this helpful)

This is a well researched book, it took Dalrymple just over 4 years and addresses a history of British India you won't find elsewhere, the integration of British and other European settlers into India and how they inter-married, converted to Islam, etc

All these things are now conveniently forgotton in the events that followed where the Victorian imperial prejudices are now thought of as having existed from the beginning. Dalrymple shows that this is not so and far more integration and mingling happened in the early years.

The book itself follows the relationship of, James Kirkpatrick, the British resident in Hyderabad in detail and combines it with the background and history of other characters and events relevant to the story. I found the style worked well but could sometimes be too much of a tangent to the main story especially if you're already familiar with the history.

I'd recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Indian history or the life of officers of the Honourable East India Company.

Great history (2/3 people found this helpful)

This is a fine book set in the period when India came under threat from Napoleon until Nelson intervened at the battle of The Nile. When young English boys were taken out to India for education prior to their careers there it is hadly surprising that some went native. But it was one thing to take a local mistress, quite another to marry a princess. A tragic love story results. The author is clearly more in sympathy with the old policy of The East India Company which banned Christian missionary activity. He regrets the changes brought about by Wilberforce and his Clapham Sect friends which changed official policy towards religion.

A few White Mughals would come in handy now. (2/6 people found this helpful)

Reading Mr Dalrymple's unusual and revealing White Mugals gives great enjoyment. The focus of the work, an ultimately tragic love story, acts both as an unfolding tale of secret passion, faith and betrayal and as a window on the courtly and city life of Hyderabad and the power politics of the Deccan.

Set mainly in Hyderabad, these events took place as the relatively relaxed attitudes of the C18th towards racial intermarriage, cultural assimilation and religious flexibility gave way to a new tone from the British in India of racial and cultural superiority and Christian intolerance.

The principal narrative is of the love between James Kirkpatrick, Resident (or ambassador) for the British East India Company at the Muslim court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and Khair un-Nissa, the young and beautiful daughter of a Hyderabadi noble family.

How their personalities and mutual devotion become entangled in the politics both of the Hyderabadi court and of the increasinly fractious relationship between the East India Company and the Nizam is vividly related through a rich documentation not previously brought to light.

The range of characters of all persuasions we meet en route to the final, sad correspondence between the mother and daughter of Kahir un-Nissa, is rich in the extreme. Which of us would not wish to dine with the urbane and effective Aristu Jah, Minister to the Nizam, in his scented night garden? Who of us could bear the bullying authority of Richard Wellesley, Governor General of India; neither the first nor the last to build and then damage his career through an intemperance in the East, and perhaps more than a footnote in assessing whether trade follows the flag, or the other way around.

Mr Dalrymple gives himself ample space both to tell his story and to digress into a range of beguiling, extended asides into the cultural, relgious and political milieu against which his principals play out their fate. Hyderabadi gardening, the fusion of Muslim and Hindu religious observances, the use of public works, architectural styles, the politics of the harem and the lives of other 'White Mughals' all feature strongly.

And underlying everything is a sense that, when all is said and done, there is more pleasure in the sharing of difference than many would currently allow. We could do with a few more James Kirkpatricks today, and rather fewer Richard Wellesleys.

This superb book (13/13 people found this helpful)

This is a marvellous book, history at its most appealing as documentation of a period and as gripping narrative. At its core is the love story and marriage between James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the East India Company's Hyderabad resident at the end of the 18th century, and Khair Un-Nissa, the grand-daughter of a high ranking official at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad. Kirkpatrick's significance is that he represents a little-known phenomenon: the adoption by some Europeans of the religion, manners and dress of Islam or Hinduism while (in the case of the book's protagonists) retaining their essential Britishness. Around this theme of cross-cultural migration and the personal narrative of the Kirkpatrick family whose children were sent off to England at a young age and never saw their parents again, William Dalrymple has woven a marvellous tapestry of Hyderabad court life, East India Company attitudes and Anglo-Indian intrigue. The story is peopled with some fascinating human beings including the Nizam's Prime Minister Aristu Jah and his assistant and later successor Mir Alam; the William Palmers father and son who appear to have achieved as complete an identity with their host country as it is possible to imagine; Marquess Wellesley, the bullying Governor General of the day and elder brother of the (later) Duke of Wellington; Khair's mother Sharaf un-Nissa who lived on for decades after her daughter's death and whose late correspondence with her granddaughter is one of the book's most moving moments; and James Achilles Kirkpatrick himself, a decent and honourable man, anointed son of the Nizam, at first willing instrument of the Governor General's policies but later disillusioned by the latter's excesses and prepared to counter them. It is through the sources he has unearthed, in particular the correspondence, that Dalrymple succeeds so brilliantly in bringing these forgotten people back to life so that their motives and passions engage us across the gulf of two centuries and profound changes in social assumptions and attitudes. The story is imbued with the author's own evident love of India and its people and his ability to steep himself in his subject so that we feel we breathe the air of the country.

Anyone who has the slightest affinity for India or an interest in the colonial Anglo-Indian relationship will love this book.

White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-century India

William Dalrymple

Editorial Review: