and
South Asia Region, External Affairs, World Bank
Invite you to a discussion featuring a recent publication
|-----------------------+------------------------------------------|
| | The Last Mughal: |
| | The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 |
| (Embedded image moved | by William Dalrymple |
| to file: | On a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, |
| pic11258.jpg) | 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by |
| | a small group of British soldiers to an |
| | anonymous grave in a prison enclosure. |
| | As the British Commissioner in charge |
| | insisted, "No vestige will remain to |
| | distinguish where the last of the Great |
| | Moghuls rests." |
| | |
| | Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal |
| | Emperor, was a mystic, an accomplished |
| | poet and a skilled calligrapher. But |
| | while his Mughal ancestors had |
| | controlled most of India, the aged Zafar |
| | was king in name only. Deprived of real |
| | political power by the East India |
| | Company, he nevertheless succeeded in |
| | creating a court of great brilliance, |
| | and presided over one of the great |
| | cultural renaissances of Indian history. |
| | |
| | |
| | Then, in 1857, Zafar gave his blessing |
| | to a rebellion among the Company??s own |
| | Indian troops, thereby transforming an |
| | army mutiny into the largest uprising |
| | any empire had to face in the entire |
| | course of the nineteenth century. The |
| | Siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad: |
| | one of the most horrific events in the |
| | history of Empire, in which thousands on |
| | both sides died. And when the British |
| | took the city-securing their hold on the |
| | subcontinent for the next ninety |
| | years-tens of thousands more Indians |
| | were executed, including all but two of |
| | Zafar's sixteen sons. By the end of the |
| | four-month siege, Delhi was reduced to a |
| | battered, empty ruin, and Zafar was |
| | sentenced to exile in Burma. There he |
| | died, the last Mughal ruler in a line |
| | that stretched back to the sixteenth |
| | century. |
|-----------------------+------------------------------------------|
Tuesday, April 3, 2007 from 3:00pm - 4:00pm
World Bank J Building - J1-050, 701 18th Street, NW
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
?William Dalrymple?s captivating book is not only great reading, it
contributes very substantially to our understanding of the
remarkable history of the Mughal empire in its dying days, and also
to the history of Delhi, of India, of Hindu-Muslim collaboration,
and of Indo-British relations in a critically important phase of
imperialism and rebellion. It is rare indeed that a work of such
consummate scholarship and insight could also be so accessible and
such fun to read.? ?Amartya Sen
Introduction by
Dale Lautenbach
Communications Advisor, South Asia Region, External Affairs
Presented by author
William Dalrymple
Author
William Dalrymple is the author of five acclaimed works of history
and travel, including City of Djinns,which won the Young British
Writer of the Year Prize and the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award; the
best-selling From the Holy Mountain; and White Mughals, which won
Britain's most prestigious history prize, the Wolfson. The Last
Mughal was awarded the 2007 Duff Cooper Prize for History and
Biography. He divides his time between New Delhi and London, and is
a contributor to The New Yorker Review of Books, The New Yorker and
The Guardian.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
In Praise of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
?A riveting account . . . It is neither wholly a biography of Zafar,
nor solely the story of the siege and capture of Delhi. Instead Mr.
Dalrymple charts the course of the uprising and the siege, weaving
into his story the unfolding tragedy of Zafar?s last months. The
animating spirit of the book is Delhi itself . . . It is here that
the originality of [Dalrymple?s] new book lies.? ?The Economist
?Dalrymple brings out the poignancy and pathology of a Mughal Lear
with the ease and élan of a master storyteller . . . In The Last
Mughal, history is human drama at its elemental best . . . History
ceases to be a dead abstraction on his pages. And the lost Delhi
becomes an enduring enchantment.? ?S. Prasannarajan, India Today
?[A] towering achievement . . . Dalrymple brilliantly evokes the
tense equilibrium on the eve of the Indian Mutiny and, with pace and
panache, leads to the explosion.? ?Michael Binyon, The Times
?Brilliant . . . A magnificent, multi-dimensional work which shames
the simplistic efforts of previous writers . . . With both empathy
and sympathy the author portrays the last years of a decadent
empire.? ?David Gilmour, The Spectator
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