White Mughals & Hyderabad

It was in May that I was reading White Mughals by Willian Dalrymple, when a lovely coincidence resulted in my visit to Hyderabad during that time.

White Mughals, though technically classified as a history book, is essentially a true & moving love story between an English resident James William Kirkpatrick and a Hyderabadi noble woman Kahirunnissa, set in Hyderabad of 18^th century. Kirkpatrick took to Islam to marry this woman.

Keeping this love story in the foreground, Dalrymple has explored and evidenced the inter-cultural and inter-racial mingling of an improbably large number of British people with the Indians at that time.

Having considered the English as mostly colonial masters and India-haters, I was really surprised to learn that there were actually a large number of Englishmen who not only did not hate India, but loved this country so much that they embraced the Indian culture in totality– dress, cuisine, lifestyles – everything. The rare photos reproduced of the Englishmen including the protagonist show them all decked up in Indian finery, complete with hookahs et al. A large number of them had Indian wives. Many of them spoke fluent Persian and Hindustani, got their palms hennaed and even nursed the ubiquitous Indian symbol - moustache.

For a historian, Dalrymple has an excellent narrative style. Considering that he does not have the luxury of a fictional plot, the story he has pieced together from the available sources including private letters is truly a compelling one, and I could feel the passion of the main characters.

Another surprise protagonist which emerges from the story is the city of Hyderabad. Dalrymple has been able to create a lively approximation of Hyderabad of yore. The painstaking research, though digressive sometimes, sparkles through each and every page.

(Image Courtesy: FlytoHyderabad.com)

When I first visited Hyderabad around 7 years back, I was pleasantly surprised to find a clean, energetic city with wide roads (it was during the reign of Chandrababu Naidu) in place of a stinking city which some people had warned it to be. There is however a more important thing about the city which I felt - it seems to present a delightful confluence of North and South Indian cultures, as symbolised by the language (ready understanding and acceptability of Hindi in this southern state) and food (delicious cuisine which is able to satiate even a North Indian palate).

This time, however, I long to see beyond the present, and explore the forgotten monuments like the British Residency, Begum's Garden, Raymond's Tomb etc, and visualise the past in places like Banjara Hills. But whenever I do this, I am sure I will be armed with this gem of a tome.