WHAT MAKES DALRYMPLE TICK?
The historian’s ability to write with the flair of a novelist and research with the accuracy of a historian has earned him many fans
It is perhaps definitive of an author’s talent when Salman Rushdie hails him/her for their literary abilities. This is downright true for historian and author William Dalrymple. “I’m not doing anything different from what my contemporaries are doing,” says the modest author, before adding, “You can always research with the diligence and the accuracy of a scholar, and then, write it up with the flair and language of a good novelist while sticking firmly to facts and footnoting every source to back up every single assertion you make. But it is important to stick to the facts.”
The author’s last book, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, made it to Former US President Barack Obama’s favourite books of the year. When the latter put up his list late December, Dalrymple replied to the tweet writing, “A happy New Year to you too”. That was not it. The sales of his book skyrocketed in the neighbouring country after a photograph of Pakistani Prime Minister, Imran Khan, reading The Anarchy, started doing rounds on the internet.
As the title suggests, the book charts the rise of the British East India Company, running parallel to the downfall of the Mughal Empire. Numerous scholarly works have been written on the reason for this degradation. The descendants of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan, after the death of Aurangzeb, found themselves, for the first time, staring at the loss of authority to someone with technological advancements way superior and undoubtedly unmatched. The author stresses on the fact that if one looks at the last years of Aurangzeb and the following 20 years, 1700 to 1720, and reads what’s written about those years, the conclusion lies in the religious bigotry which is counted as a major contributor for the downfall. “That was the old view,” says Dalrymple, adding, “But the more modern view is that it was the overambitious expansion to the Deccan. When the Mughals tried to conquer both Bijapur and Golkonda in a single decade, it exhausted the empire. Moreover, their mishandling of the Marathas was another reason. Many Marathas, initially, were fighting beside he Mughals.”
And as to the uestion we ask in our eadline, e a look into the author’s formative years may give the answers. It was when he was a student at Cambridge University that he read the works of Steven Runciman. “I was deeply inspired by his works. He wrote on the rusades and the Byzantine mpire. And his telling of he fall of Constantinople in 453 made him a model for me when I was writing the ast a Mughal,” says the uthor.
The author also cites Anthony Beaver’s The talingrad t as an nteresting read. “It is an extraordinary ex work on the Second World War. Beaver, after the fall of the Berlin wall, managed to get access to the Soviet archives. He told this story with this new scholarly material that no one had seen before. He told it as a thrilling story. The characters were described with details of a novelist but entirely based on primary sources,” adds the
I was deeply inspired by Steven Runciman’s works. His telling of the fall of Constantinople in 1453, made him a model for me, when I was writing the Last Mughal. WILLIAM DALRYMPLE, HISTORIAN
author.
And what about India? What does he make of the nextgen? The author is quick to name Manu Pillai. “I am very pleased to see his works. His works are a delight,” he says. The author further adds, “There’s also Parvati Sharma who did the biography of Jahangir. It was a well written book. Another example here will be that of Ramchandra Guha. His Gandhi series (India After Gandhi, Gandhi Before India and Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World, 19141948) is very well written. He’s not working in any university. He’s a writer rather than an academic. But his works are incredibly scholarly.”