White Mughals

Children of Kirkpatrick
and Khair, leaving for
England, ages 5 and 3

India, in its romantic and political aspects as well as its poverty, has always fascinated me.  In 1984, I watched the mini-series The Jewel in the Crown, which confirmed my understanding that the British Raj represented a clash of two civilizations -- East and West, and never the twain shall meet.  The series -- with its frequent scenes of British snobbery and contempt for "the locals" -- also reminded me that, romantic as the Raj might seem in hindsight, it was not for the most part a charitable effort to lift up the poor benighted souls of India.

Before my trip to Kashmir this month fell apart, I had begun reading William Dalrymple's White Mughals (2002).  This was the fourth book by Dalrymple that I've read and discussed in this blog, the others being In Xanadu, City of Djinns, and Nine Lives.  In White Mughals, a book resulting from the author's extensive research into previously unstudied letters and documents, and a book dense with facts and extensively footnoted, Dalrymple argues that before roughly 1800 the British were far more impressed by and respectful of Indian civilization than they became later.

It also became increasingly clear to me that the relationship between India and Britain was a symbiotic one.  Just as individual Britons in India could learn to appreciate and wish to emulate different aspects of Indian culture, and choose to take on Indian manners and languages, so many Indians at this period began to travel to Britain, intermarrying with the locals there and picking up Western ways.

Although White Mughals presents an in-depth study of Anglo-Indian relations in the decades immediately before and after 1800, the history is presented in the course of telling a story: the impressive and ultimately tragic career  of James Kirkpatrick, Resident (representative of the East India Company) in Hyderabad from 1798 to 1805. 

Until 1858, British interests  in India were asserted by the East India Company, a commercial trading company, headquartered in Calcutta.  During the eighteenth century, the Company had become increasingly aggressive in dealing with local rulers, developing its own private army, which by 1803 was twice as large as the entire British Army.  But although Calcutta and surrounding Bengal, as well as Madras and Bombay were under direct Company rule, the Company's power was exerted primarily through pressure on local rulers through the company's Residents.

Most of northern India was under the nominal control of the rapidly weakening Mughal Empire, centered in Delhi.  The Mughals were ethnic Turks, for the most part, but had largely adopted Persian as their language.  Hyderabad, a large landlocked region in south central India was ruled by a hereditary Mughal ruler called a Nizam, nominally representing the Mughal Emperor in Delhi, but in reality, by the time the book discusses, totally sovereign.

All of the above is easily learned from any reference book.  Dalrymple's genius is in making this period come alive -- the sounds, the smells, the personalities.  He knows when to devote a paragraph or so to a description of flowers in a palace garden, when that description brings the entire palace, the entire local experience alive in the reader's mind.

Dalrymple points out that the Company officers in India were far from home -- a six-month sail back to England.  Many had come to India as young teenagers. It was easy for them to "go native," and most did.  They adopted the dress, the manners, the food, the culture of a Persian-speaking Empire that was far more cultured than was England at the time.  The Company's Residents, such as Kirkpatrick, didn't consider themselves British imperial rulers, but ambassadors to the local rulers, company representatives whose job was to assist where possible and exert influence to protect the Company's interests when necessary.  Their mission wasn't to Anglicize the local people, but to cooperate with them.

Some Residents and other Company personnel converted to Islam, either out of conviction or out of convenience.  Many had their own harems of wives and concubines.  They lived well, and they lived as local people of their class lived.

James Kirkpatrick was such a man.  He and the Nizam became quite friendly.  Kirkpatrick quite easily adopted the habits and customs of the local people.  He spoke fluent Persian, as well as the local "Decanni Urdu" dialect and Hindi.  He became a "white Mughal."  He was well liked and respected by the local aristocracy.  He represented the Company well.

Kirkpatrick fell in love with a teenaged member of the local aristocracy, Khair un-Nissa, and his feelings were strongly reciprocated, according to Dalrymple.  Despite strong Muslim opposition to an upper class Muslim woman marrying a Christian, the two were privately married after Kirkpatrick formally converted to Islam.

Unfortunately for Kirkpatrick, during his Residency, a new Governor General arrived in Calcutta, Richard Wellesley.  Wellesley had no interest in local culture or in becoming close friends with local rulers.  He was rigid, "very British," and instinctively relied on force rather than finesse.  Kirkpatrick came to loathe him, and the feeling was mutual. Although some of Wellesley's successors were less Anglo-centric, his term as Governor General represented a turning point in the attitude of the East India Company, and of Britain itself later, toward the people of India.

The stage is thus set for the bulk of this rather lengthy but absorbing book.  Wellesley found it incomprehensible that one of his Residents had not only "gone native" to the extent Kirkpatrick had, but that he had stirred up scandal among the ruling classes of Hyderabad by his "relationship" or marriage (it was unclear to most whether a valid marriage had actually been celebrated).  Kirkpatrick, on his part, strongly opposed Wellesley's imperial approach to running the East India Company.  After most other "white Moghuls" had trimmed their sails to the prevailing winds, Kirkpatrick, either admirably or foolishly, remained the last thorn in Wellesley's side.

Politics.  Military affairs.  Personal rivalries.  Inter-cultural romance.  Quiet moments in Persian gardens.  What's not to like?  As in Dalrymple's other books, the story is so interesting that a vast amount of history goes down easily.

Not only careers were at stake, but lives as well, as the climate in India caused many British to die early deaths from local diseases.  White Mughals is a book in which almost no one dies happily in the end.  Including, of course, ultimately, the British Empire.

Kirkpatrick and Khair had two beautiful children, to whom both were strongly devoted.  At the ages of 5 and 3, however, they put the boy and girl on a boat to England, where they were to be educated.  Prejudice against Anglo-Indian children had become so intense in India, both legally and culturally, that only a life in a less bigoted (at the time) England made sense.  They had a painting done of the children, just before they sailed from Madras.  Neither father nor mother ever saw their children again.

Dalrymple ends his book on a note of hope, perhaps too optimistically, perhaps not.

Even today, despite all the progress that has been made, we still have rhetoric about "clashing civilizations," and almost daily generalizations in the press about East and West, Islam and Christianity, and the vast differences and fundamental gulfs that are said to separate the two  The white Mughals -- with their unexpected minglings and fusions, their hybridity, and above all their efforts at promoting tolerance and understanding -- attempted to bridge these two worlds, and to some extent they succeeded in doing so.

As the story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa shows, East and West are not irreconcilable, and never have been.  Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart.  But they have met and mingled in the past; and they will do so again.

As the conflict between Hindus and Muslims has shown this week, hatreds based on ethnic differences are difficult to overcome.