Invite you to a discussion featuring a recent publication
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
by William Dalrymple
On a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 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
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?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.
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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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