The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
by William Dalrymple
List Price:
Our Price: $11.98
You Save: $18.02 (60%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $5.71 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: William DalrympleEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Deckle Edge
Published: 2007-03-27
ISBN: 1400043107
Number of pages: 534
Publisher: Knopf
Book Reviews of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
Book Review: A research of first order.
Summary: 5 Stars
Exactly 150 years ago, today the first shot of the revolt of 1857 was fired. Today India celebrates what I grew up learning as "The first war of Indian independence".
Most of the history taught in Indian schools is written by the 20th century socialist, nationalist historians and that became my frame of reference. I always looked back at the "war" of 1857 with some sense of pride, it was a time we were told - Hindus and Muslims came together to fight off the British yoke, when oppressed poor rose up against the zamindars and money lenders, when nationalism was a common thread that tied the widespread war, where mendicants carried the message of revolution in secret chappatis and women joined the men in the struggle for independence. Overall a romantic nationalist picture painted by secular historians.
This book by Dalrymple shatters the myth I was raised with. He, based upon his meticulous research and conflation from disparate documentation, both native and British, conclusively proves that the outbreak of May 10, 1857 was a bloody communal riot.
At least it started like that, except that the wrath of both Hindus and Muslims combine fell on the hapless British men, women and children.
There is no pride whatsoever in what happened on the days of May 10 and May 11.
In fact it should be marked as a day of mourning when the sepoys marched into Delhi and in just first 48 hours massacred all Christians in the capital. Not just killed but chopped into pieces. No one was spared, not even pregnant women. Just a few survived who either escaped just in time or were sheltered by some Delhiwallahs.
In fact on this day started what would be one of the biggest catastrophes to befall on the magnificent capital of Mughal India, from which it has not emerged in many ways till today.
Dalrymple writes this book almost as a war correspondent embedded with troops on either side. His narrative is full of real life events, hour by hour, as they unfolded in those fateful times. It is a research in history that parallels the deciphering of Brahmi by James Princep. It opens the door to one of the darkest and bloodiest period of Indian history which laid the foundation of an even bloodier event, the partition of 1947.
He also clearly shows that the outbreak which was united at least from Indian perspective was soon hijacked by a bunch of Jihadis, coloring it with an extremist Islamic color, despite the whole hearted attempts of the King and Princes to retain the united fervor.
This became one of the turning points in the history of this struggle and became an excuse for a pogrom of worst kind perpetuated by British against Muslims of Delhi.
If you survive reading the brutality of Indians in the first half of the book you will find it hard to not get deeply disturbed at the unimaginable savagery that the victorious British unleashed on the Indians. More than a hundred thousand people, a large number of them innocent were ruthlessly killed, war crimes of worst kind committed, women raped (though it was conclusively proved that the mutineers never committed any rape, albeit all the killing), mosques and graves desecrated, property looted, buildings destroyed and all this happened in the backdrop of shameless inducements of Padres quoting the Bible out of context.
While British murderers and looters leached the city of all its people and possessions, what is also insightful is that in their heinous crimes they were aided, in fact surpassed by their "Indian" mercenaries who were predominantly Sikh, Gurkha and Pathan in origin.
It would not be wrong to say that this war was predominantly Hindustanee (confined mostly to Hindi speaking belt) in nature and the "foreign" mercenaries (from other parts of India) had no qualms in squashing it and taking home the booty.
What is also shameful is the fact that these British murderers and pillagers not only remained scot-free above the law but were also decorated by the British government. Prize agents who plundered the Indian treasures and shamelessly broke and sold even the paneled walls of many palaces or Red fort, were knighted.
Perhaps nothing is more poignant than the disgusting treatment meted out to the King and Princes on whom the British had no jurisdiction. The whole trial was not only a farce but was completely illegal, even by British view point.
Overall this book is not for the weak hearted, but it is a must read for anyone who wants to learn the true history of that period.
I hope the findings of this incredible work will find their way into history text books in India and dispel the myths that the youth are made to believe in.
Nothing is more dangerous than fiction wrapped in history text books because "if we do not learn from history, we are destined to repeat it".
Summary of The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
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.
Award-winning historian and travel writer William Dalrymple shapes his powerful retelling of this fateful course of events from groundbreaking material: previously unexamined Urdu and Persian manuscripts that include Indian eyewitness accounts and records of the Delhi courts, police and administration during the siege. The Last Mughal is a revelatory work?the first to present the Indian perspective on the fall of Delhi?and has as its heart both the dazzling capital personified by Zafar and the stories of the individuals tragically caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.
India Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in India Books
The Jahangirnama: Memoirs of Jahangir, Emperor of Indiaby Jahangir
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1999-11-25; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $799.95
The Long Peace: Inquiries Into the History of the Cold Warby John Lewis Gaddis
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 1989-02-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $15.00
Price in other shops:
Kashmir 1947: A Survivor's Storyby Krishna Mehta
Penguin Global; Published: 2006-08-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $5.71
Price in other shops:
Gandhi Speaksby M.K. Gandhi
Penguin Global; Published: 2010-05-26; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.67
Price in other shops:
Gem in the Lotus, the Seeding of Indian Civilizationby Abraham Eraly
Penguin Books India; Published: 2000; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.92
Penguin History of Early Indiaby Romila Thapar
Penguin Books; Published: 2003-08-07; Paperback; Book
Best price: $44.41
The Penguin Gandhi Readerby Mohandas K. Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 1995-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.34
Price in other shops:
Road of Bones: The Siege of Kohima 1944. Fergal Keaneby Fergal Keane
HarperCollins Publishers; Published: 2011-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.29
Price in other shops:
White Mughalsby William Dalrymple
Harper Collins; Published: 2002-10-07; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $59.35
Hope Diamond: The Legendary History of a Cursed Gemby Richard Kurin
Harper Perennial; Published: 2007-09-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.05
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Twilight in Delhi (New Directions Paperbook)by Ahmed Ali
New Directions Publishing Corporation; Published: 1994-06; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.25
Price in other shops:
The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (Modern Library Classics)by W.M. Thackston Jr.
Modern Library; Published: 2002-09-10; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.98
Price in other shops:
Raj; The Making And Unmaking Of British Indiaby Lawrence James
St. Martins Press; Published: 1998-12-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $24.23
Price in other shops:
The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistanby Yasmin Khan
Yale University Press; Published: 2007-09-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $17.29
Price in other shops:
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 (Vintage)by William Dalrymple
Vintage; Published: 2008-03-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.48
Price in other shops:
White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century Indiaby William Dalrymple
Perfection Learning; Published: 2004-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.35
Price in other shops:
Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern Indiaby William Dalrymple
Knopf; Published: 2010-06-15; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $5.50
Price in other shops:
A Princess Remembers: The Memoirs of the Maharani of Jaipurby Devi Gayatri
Rupa & Co; Published: 1996-11-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $11.16
Price in other shops:
City of Djinns: A Year in Delhiby William Dalrymple
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2003-03-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.44
Price in other shops:
White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century Indiaby William Dalrymple
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2004-04-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.99
Price in other shops: