Word: mughals
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...central Indian city of Bhopal. Nevertheless, according to the book Le Rajah de Bourbon, published last week by European blueblood Prince Michael of Greece (a Bourbon scion himself), Balthazar is a direct descendant of Jean de Bourbon, a swashbuckling nephew of Henri IV who joined the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar in 1560. While Jean's progeny faded into obscurity in the East, Henri IV's ruled France for centuries until the guillotine ended the Bourbon line at Louis XVI in 1793. Now, Prince Michael claims Balthazar is Louis XVI's closest living relative. Still, Balthazar, who has volunteered...
...story of Zafar's extraordinary final days is the subject of William Dalrymple's new book, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi, 1857. Fans of Dalrymple know him as an author of crisply written works of non-fiction drawn from his travels and historical research, books so full of drama and memorable characters they read like novels. His latest work won't disappoint them...
...Last Mughal may be set a century and a half ago, but it revolves around a contemporary theme: the clash of civilizations. The spirit of evangelical Christianity had begun to infect the Englishmen in India in the 1850s. Many believed that they had been granted the Empire in order to convert Hindus and Muslims to the "true faith." On the other side, a growing number of India's Muslims were turning to a more orthodox form of Islam and dreaming of declaring jihad against the British. In May 1857, thousands of sepoys (Indian soldiers) serving in the British army mutinied...
...Although Zafar's life binds the narrative together, the real subject of The Last Mughal is Delhi itself. Dalrymple wants to prove that, far from being decadent and in terminal decline as is often thought, late Mughal Delhi was a thriving city, full of poets, artists and traders. Religiously eclectic, Delhi culture freely blended Hindu and Muslim influences. Although Indian nationalist memory glorifies cities along the Ganges like Kanpur as the centers of the revolt, Dalrymple suggests that Delhi was the true locus of the 1857 uprising. Drawing on contemporary accounts from the Indian and British sides, he paints...
...Last Mughal argues that the destruction of Zafar's court and the religiously tolerant culture of Mughal Delhi exacerbated divisions between Hindus and Muslims and fueled the rise of Islamic fundamentalism on the subcontinent. Without Zafar, Dalrymple writes, "it would be almost impossible to imagine that Hindu sepoys could ever have rallied to the Red Fort and the standard of a Muslim leader, joining with their Muslim brothers in an attempt to revive the Mughal Empire." By invoking the memory of the last Emperor, Dalrymple reminds Indians of a time when such religious harmony was easy to come...