Suggestion to William Dalrymple

Dalrymple should choose Tipu Sultan for his next book

Reading William Dalrymple is a delightful experience. As a writer who has mastered the rhythm of Indian social life and felt the heartbeats of the country, his extraordinary faculty for historical narration with the right amount of pot-pourri ensures wholehearted acceptance of his works in any corner of the subcontinent, not just India alone. I’ve just completed his ‘Return of a King’ which details the First Afghan War (1839 – 42) and the disastrous British effort to hoist a puppet king, Shah Shuja on the throne in Kabul. The author gives a vivid account of life, for the royals and camp followers in India in the first half of 19^th century as the management of the war was handled from the newly built hill station of Shimla, the East India Company’s summer capital.

I felt really sad after completing this book. Not that it was disappointing – on the contrary, it is an enchanting work, as usual. But what dampened my spirits was the realization that I had gone through all of Dalrymple’s books by now. It was an eye opener to read ‘The Last Mughal’, the first book I read a few years back and instantly became his fan. Then came White Mughals, another influential work. After that, The City of Djinns, The Age of Kali, From the Holy Mountain, Nine Lives and In Xanadu came one by one. Of these, only Nine Lives was a disappointment and those who cherish Dalrymple’s syle need not look further to see where it flopped. Return of a King came out last, in 2013 and I was on the lookout for it from the day I saw it announced. When the book presented itself quite unexpectedly in the Public Library, I jumped on it and it provided a few days of very happy reading.

Return of a King took nearly three years of research and publishing chores to see the light of day. It does mean that for at least two more years to come, no new book might be coming out of the author’s deft pen. And what will he write about next? The author had made India his home for most of the year, staying near Delhi – understandably, he spends the summer back home in Scotland – and prefers the Islamic tradition which forms a main stream of the country’s historical past to pick his subjects from. Indian heritage is really like an occasionally malfunctioning zipper where the slider sometimes fail to properly align the Hindu and Muslim teeth.

I would suggest Tipu Sultan, also called the Tiger of Mysore, to Dalrymple as the focus for his next work. Tipu, and his father Hyder Ali were two great rulers of Mysore in the 18^th century. Tipu was the last of Indian kings who could dictate terms to the British. He still evokes currents of hatred or admiration in the populace, whose opinion is divided on religious lines. He defied the British and hence sometimes termed a freedom fighter. But he strived hard for an alliance with Napoleon and the French as a junior partner, but that power couldn’t save him from disaster in the end. He is sometimes called a secularist, pointing out the temples in his fort complex and the peaceful lives of his subjects of which Hindus formed the majority, as also many of his military leaders who were Hindus. But there is no denying that he attacked temples and employed forced conversions on his invasion of Kerala. People behave like the scars have still not healed completely which is conceivable as South India had not witnessed massacre, plunder and rape in the scale it accompanied wars in the North waged over differences in religion of the concerned parties. As a consequence people love to hate him to the core – still many a house dog in Kerala is named after him. Others find in him attributes worthy of adulation like his drive for social reforms, aversion to foreign intervention and adoption of new technologies in warfare like rockets. To add colour to the already vivid picture, the full implications of the issue could be comprehended only when it is examined in the backdrop of the rivalry between the French and English back home and in their colonies in the second half of 18^th century. South India was the battleground to stage the war between two foreign powers and its rulers were often caught in the diplomatic crossfire. So, Tipu Sultan would be a fitting subject for Dalrymple’s deep and profound research which will end up in a fine historical narrative.