This attitude Dalrymple emphasizes, started changing in the early 1800s probably due to the unforeseen ascent of the Company’s political fortunes in India by which time, the local kings and the Nawabs had been reduced to pretty much the status of puppets in the hands of the foreigners. Their initial purpose was to make sure the Company made enough profits for its subscribers and shareholders in London and any intermingling of races and customs that might encourage a harmonious relationship between the Company officials and the locals was treated very much as a welcome development towards building a favourable climate for business.

A lot of Britishers married Indian natives and the Company in its initial days was quite open to this practice. There was a huge proportion of the migrated European population that had actually transitioned to Indian-ness, adopting Indian fashion and cuisine, religious practices and customs to the extent of even being called as ‘ White Mughals’ in the 1700s. Dalrymple writes with so much pain about a transition that took place in India, from a time in Indian history that starts around the 1700s when British traders, soldiers and officials who had made India their home had actually embraced Indian culture, customs and ethos with so much love and liberality, to a point in the second decade of the 19 th century when they started for reasons not fully apparent, looking at the local culture with condescension, bigotry and typical European exceptionalism.

Dalrymple’s analysis shocked me as it amounted to reducing or trivialising the assumed loftiness of the cause of the Sepoys by attributing it to a more or less unidimensional factor- religion.ĭalrymple lays strong emphasis on the uninhibited evangelism practised by the Christian missionaries fully sanctioned by the Company administration. The rebellion that took place, also called the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, was not fought wholly on account of, as I had assumed for so long, pressing issues such as the widespread exploitation of the Indian working classes, the merchants and the artisans by the Company Raj or the deliberate mishandling of famines and food shortages by the Company that were so rampant during its rule. Surveying the so-called First War of Indian Independence that took place at Delhi through the eyes of historian William Dalrymple in his book The Last Mughal, I was led to revise many of my long-held assumptions.

The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple