Oct 23, 03: William Dalrymple on "White Mughals"
William Darlymple, one of the most captivating writers of non-fiction, interviewed by Bapsi Sidhwa, a Houston based distinguished international writer and a frequent contributor to Border Crossings! William will discuss his new book “White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India”.
Music played from CD " Moon Rise over the Silk Road", Indo-Persian music by a group called GHAZAL
WILLIAM DALRYMPLE. was born in Scotland and brought up on the shores of the Firth of Forth. He wrote the highly acclaimed bestseller In Xanadu when he was twenty-two. The book won the 1990 Yorkshire Post Best First Work Award and a Scottish Arts Council Spring Book Award; it was also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize. In 1989 Dalrymple moved to Delhi where he lived for six years researching his second book, City of Djinns, which won the 1994 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award and the Sunday Times Young British Writer of the Year Award. From the Holy Mountain, his acclaimed study of the demise of Christianity in its Middle Eastern homeland, was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Autumn Book Award for 1997; it was also shortlisted for the 1998 Thomas Cook Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize. A collection of his writings about India, TheAge of Kali, was published in 1998.
WHITE MUGHALS: From the early 16th-century, it was not uncommon for British colonizers in India to embarrass the Crown by “turning Turk” or “going native.” James Achilles Kirkpatrick was the British representative at the Court of the Nizam of Hyderabad when, in 1798, he glimpsed a beautiful young Mughal princess, Khair un-Nissa—“Most Excellent Among Women.” Falling in love with Khair, he converted to Islam and married her despite opposition from all sides. He also agreed to become a double agent, working for the Nizam against his employers, the East India Company, as he tried to balance the interests of both cultures. But Kirkpatrick’s story was not unique. By this time one in three British men in India were living with Indian women, many taking on Indian ways, clothes, habits and even religions, crossing cultures to become “White Mughals.” William Dalrymple unearths the romantic exploits of Kirkpatrick and several of his contemporaries, in the process documenting the melding of two very different cultures: Christianity and Islam.
For more information about William Darlymple and White Mughals visit www.williamdalrymple.uk.com
