I wanted to write a review of The Last Mughal. Finished it a few days back. But then I could hardly remember the starting as I read it about 6 months back. A special gift as it was, I started reading it in Malaysia and as luck would have it, completed it when I am in Helsinki. SO basically I read it never in the country it talks about, in the city I love as much as its Scottish writer does, but understand so little.
The book starts with how the last of the Great Mughal, Bahadur Shah II became the emperor of Delhi in his sixties. The once great Timurs' influence was now reduced to a small yet captivating city of Shahjahanabad that Shahajahan had built with so much of love. The old king with the pen-name of Zafar, was a marvelous gardener and an articulate poet. William Dalrymple vividly desribes how King only in name, Zafar could barely manage to exert his will inside the palace which had become full of cheating cocumbines and unruly illegitimate princes. The control of Delhi was more or less passed onto the British like in the rest of the India. But this did not stop Zafar from taking Delhi to its cultural zenith. It was an era of Ghalib, the times of Zauq. When courtesans doubled as tutors to children of the nobility teaching them the courtesies (adab). Zafar himself had a few as his disciples. Delhi was a city that hosted the Mushaiyaras every evening with fresh mangoes being served and the most refined Urdu being spoken. The words that Dalrymple uses immediately recreate that lost grandeur in front of your eyes.
As I read the initial few pages, the whole Chandni Chowk started to crowd my imagination. The streets I grew up in started to lose their shabbiness and regain their grandeur - such is the effect of William Dalrymple's words. The Havelis, the bazaars, the lanes, The Red Fort, the Jama Masjid were all transported to the Mughal era and I could see the streets hosting the poetry competitions between Zauq and Ghalib, with wine being served and songs by the courtesans. This was Delhi of 1857.
When 300 mutinous Hindu soldiers entered Red Fort in the middle of the night to seek the blessings of a Muslim king, he saw a chance to regain the pride his dynasty had lost in the past century. Dalrymple shows how the rebellion was not only a mutiny of some soldiers against their senior officers, it was at the same time a social, economic, political and military in nature. Scared and angered by the inroads that Christian missionaries were making in the Hindu and Muslim cultures, the whole of north India rose up against the mightiest Empire in the world. Today it is hard to imagine how the whole Hindu heartland rallied to Delhi proclaiming a Muslim king as its true ruler. But it was Zafar's hard-work over the years that gained him this respect. Extremely tolerant, he even banned cow-slaughter and didn't let the Rebellion turn against Hindus ever.
Meanwhile little did Zafar know how his nod of consent to the 300 sepoys would change the course of his beloved city and his famous dynasty. After killing the British in Delhi and thus capturing Delhi, the sepoys started looting the city for and wealth and soon enough the Dilliwallahs start despising whom they called Tilanganas. Dalrymple quotes various complaints to the emperor by common people against such plundering. He then shifts the focus to the British. How British try to regain the lost ground inch by inch. At this time Dalrymple cleverly reminds the reader of the situation that the world is seeing today in Palestine-Israel conflict. The book then gets into a trap of how the situation was worsening in the city and gets rather boring as Dalrymple keeps quoting various letters which are now preserved in National Archives of India. The ending is rather abrupt when the sepoys give in.
Dalrymple then describes how cruelly the British massacered the Delhi residents and how very muslim inhabitant was either killed or thrown out of the city they always lived in. The author gives a moving account of the public hanging of people, the destruction of Havelis and the Red Fort. Dalrymple then goes on to describe the last year of Zafar in exile till he dies.
The most interesting thing about the book is the way the author has dealt with the title character, that of Zafar. At one time he would be critical of him, at another - sympathetic. The reader is given a lot of space to decide on him. As for me, I found him to a weak man, a weaker husband and even a weaker king. But can anyone expect a man is his eighties to be as pragmatic? A ruler who became the king in his sixties when the whole of India had already given in to the British? How could he have behaved otherwise?
Perhaps the book is a lesson to the politicians of today to give way to the younger generation. N also for the world, on how can Islam be actually integrated with other religions and how atrocities lead to nothing but revenge. Overall, a must read for anyone who loves Delhi!
The book starts with how the last of the Great Mughal, Bahadur Shah II became the emperor of Delhi in his sixties. The once great Timurs' influence was now reduced to a small yet captivating city of Shahjahanabad that Shahajahan had built with so much of love. The old king with the pen-name of Zafar, was a marvelous gardener and an articulate poet. William Dalrymple vividly desribes how King only in name, Zafar could barely manage to exert his will inside the palace which had become full of cheating cocumbines and unruly illegitimate princes. The control of Delhi was more or less passed onto the British like in the rest of the India. But this did not stop Zafar from taking Delhi to its cultural zenith. It was an era of Ghalib, the times of Zauq. When courtesans doubled as tutors to children of the nobility teaching them the courtesies (adab). Zafar himself had a few as his disciples. Delhi was a city that hosted the Mushaiyaras every evening with fresh mangoes being served and the most refined Urdu being spoken. The words that Dalrymple uses immediately recreate that lost grandeur in front of your eyes.
As I read the initial few pages, the whole Chandni Chowk started to crowd my imagination. The streets I grew up in started to lose their shabbiness and regain their grandeur - such is the effect of William Dalrymple's words. The Havelis, the bazaars, the lanes, The Red Fort, the Jama Masjid were all transported to the Mughal era and I could see the streets hosting the poetry competitions between Zauq and Ghalib, with wine being served and songs by the courtesans. This was Delhi of 1857.
When 300 mutinous Hindu soldiers entered Red Fort in the middle of the night to seek the blessings of a Muslim king, he saw a chance to regain the pride his dynasty had lost in the past century. Dalrymple shows how the rebellion was not only a mutiny of some soldiers against their senior officers, it was at the same time a social, economic, political and military in nature. Scared and angered by the inroads that Christian missionaries were making in the Hindu and Muslim cultures, the whole of north India rose up against the mightiest Empire in the world. Today it is hard to imagine how the whole Hindu heartland rallied to Delhi proclaiming a Muslim king as its true ruler. But it was Zafar's hard-work over the years that gained him this respect. Extremely tolerant, he even banned cow-slaughter and didn't let the Rebellion turn against Hindus ever.
Meanwhile little did Zafar know how his nod of consent to the 300 sepoys would change the course of his beloved city and his famous dynasty. After killing the British in Delhi and thus capturing Delhi, the sepoys started looting the city for and wealth and soon enough the Dilliwallahs start despising whom they called Tilanganas. Dalrymple quotes various complaints to the emperor by common people against such plundering. He then shifts the focus to the British. How British try to regain the lost ground inch by inch. At this time Dalrymple cleverly reminds the reader of the situation that the world is seeing today in Palestine-Israel conflict. The book then gets into a trap of how the situation was worsening in the city and gets rather boring as Dalrymple keeps quoting various letters which are now preserved in National Archives of India. The ending is rather abrupt when the sepoys give in.
Dalrymple then describes how cruelly the British massacered the Delhi residents and how very muslim inhabitant was either killed or thrown out of the city they always lived in. The author gives a moving account of the public hanging of people, the destruction of Havelis and the Red Fort. Dalrymple then goes on to describe the last year of Zafar in exile till he dies.
The most interesting thing about the book is the way the author has dealt with the title character, that of Zafar. At one time he would be critical of him, at another - sympathetic. The reader is given a lot of space to decide on him. As for me, I found him to a weak man, a weaker husband and even a weaker king. But can anyone expect a man is his eighties to be as pragmatic? A ruler who became the king in his sixties when the whole of India had already given in to the British? How could he have behaved otherwise?
Perhaps the book is a lesson to the politicians of today to give way to the younger generation. N also for the world, on how can Islam be actually integrated with other religions and how atrocities lead to nothing but revenge. Overall, a must read for anyone who loves Delhi!
