The Last Mughal: 'Legitimating Discourse' as 'Cause?'
William Dalrymple’s book The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 is about the Indian Mutiny/War of Independence of 1857. It traces the Mutiny/Revolt of 1857 through untapped archival material found in the National Archives in Delhi in the form of letters written by various observers of and participants in what has been described as ‘the most gigantic mutiny in the history of the world’ by WH Russell.
Mr. Dalrymple is a phenomenal writer. There is no doubt! His book is full of facts that few laypersons are aware of. His narrative about life before, after and during the Mutiny is well crafted. He has the unique gift of making history come alive in his writing. I enjoyed reading the book because of its style and content. However, on many counts I have found his narrative problematic.
First, I will spell out the parts where I do not see a problem in his book.
1. I think he has done a splendid job of using letters written by ordinary folks to tell the tale of the Mutiny. Mr. Dalrymple has thrown down a gauntlet to Indian historians and perhaps his critique is apt – why have these resources so readily available to a student of history not been used by Indian historians?
2. He has raised interesting questions about the role of Christian and Muslim (and maybe Hindu) clerics in formulating the discourse of the Mutiny.
3. He does not seem to be overtly taking sides. He is critical of the British, as he is about the Mughal regime and the mutineers and their leaders.
4. We learn a lot about Mughal policies, way of life and British organization as well from his book.
However, there is one central question in my mind right now. What is Mr. Dalrymple trying to do with this book? I was, at first, not surprised to see the use of post-9-11 academic discourse in his introductory chapter. However, after reading the book I wasn’t so sure that the mention of modern jihad and 9-11 was accidental or rhetorical. In fact, I began to wonder if Mr. Dalrymple had deliberately read back the post-9-11 academic discourse into the 1857 Mutiny. In fact, even though he doesn’t explicitly mention it, it seems that the argument could be interpreted as saying that the crucible of the modern political jihad can be traced to the reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Timurid, in the India of the mid-19th century.
Having said this, I think I must bolster my claim. You see, Mr. Dalrymple IS doing what we call process tracing. He starts out by describing the fall of the dynasty, the death of Zafar and comes back to this in the end. He describes the manner in which dualities existed in Indian society – between the British way of life and the Indian, their dress, customs, mannerisms, etc. He then traces the first antecedents of fundamentalist Christianity and arrogance and how this offended the Indians (both Hindu and Muslim).
Essentially, according to the book, the basic cause of the Mutiny was a ‘clash’ (and I am using this word deliberately) between the Indians and their two religions and the British and their religion. It was a war of religion against religion.
This idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’ has been made popular in the work of Samuel Huntington, that stalwart of American political science who has influenced four generations of policy-makers in the US from his office in Harvard University. Huntington divided the world into 8 civilizations and prophesied that the next Great Wars would be between civilizations. This theory has since found vindication by world events like 9-11, the war on Afghanistan, the Iraq war and the recent confrontational stand towards the US adopted by Iran. Of course, many have chosen to support such theories because of their simplicity. We have now heard Bush referring to ‘Islamo-fascists’ and in general Muslim people as being trapped in states of un-freedom. Democracy is seen as the panacea to the ills created by authoritarian regimes in the Middle-East.
The interventions of Amartya Sen who has questioned the idea of Huntington’s 8 civilizations and Mahmood Mamdani, who traces the rise of political Islam as the ‘unfinished business of the Cold War’, have not found as much currency and popularity as Huntington’s original thesis. I must leave you to decide which of these arguments makes more sense.
In the meantime, I will attempt to argue that Mr. Dalrymple uses this same idea of a civilization clash to explain the Mutiny. However, what baffles me completely is the manner in which he does not really piggy back on Huntington, even though his argument resonates very well with the Clash thesis. I will briefly examine his evidence and then point out some serious contradictions in his narrative.
Mr. Dalrymple uses newspapers, letters, declarations and official reports to establish how the Mutiny had a distinct Islamic flavor. He mentions the writings of a Muslim editor, clerics and pamphlets circulated at the time, which talked about the British as infidels and called all supporters of Zafar to jihad. He also mentions that at a later stage in the Mutiny, 4000 Afghani jihadis (yes, he refers to them as jihadis) swarmed Delhi and enlisted in the service of Zafar. What bothered me about the account most, in this regard, was how quickly he switched from calling this Mutiny a ‘jihad’ and then towards the end of the book acknowledged that 65% of the soldiers were in fact Hindu. Is this not a contradiction of his own argument? His argument would have held some weight if he had been able to prove, for instance, that even the Hindus in the Mutiny were following the jihadi model. There is simply no evidence to support this.
Zafar is portrayed, perhaps accurately, as a weak, feeble, indecisive and mystical emperor who was the accidental leader of a huge Mutiny. However, what is even more important is the fact that the Mutiny was the perfect excuse for the British to unseat Zafar from the throne, destroy the dynasty and advance their own control over India. Zafar’s own personal vacillations did not help him. To get rid of troops from the Red Fort he supported the plan of Mutineers marching to Meerut. This made him complicit in the Mutiny. After all the Mutiny was enacted in his name.
However, there are two sides to this story. The first is the religious and racial arrogance of the new British who were entering India. The second is the economic narrative.
Why does Mr. Dalrymple not read the Mutiny as anything more than a religious clash? Was India that primitive that its people could only evaluate enemies and friends only in terms of religion? How could a country where the emperor was half Hindu and half Muslim (Zafar had a Rajput mother) so easily turn against the British solely on religious grounds? It is true that soldiers in the British-Indian army viewed the greased cartridges as an attempt by the British to break their faith. Perhaps this was the spark that lit the sub-continental tinderbox. However, Mr. Dalrymple comes across as being rather eager to establish that this religious distrust was the primary and most important cause of the Mutiny. He does not address policies like the Doctrine of Lapse that was resented by most kings who did not have an heir and had their kingdoms annexed by Lord Dalhousie, tax collection and the imposition of commercial agriculture (cotton, indigo), the change in land tenure and the deep rifts between the British officers in the army and their common soldiers. A combination of social, economic and legal policies provided the impulse to the Mutiny as well.
Today many political scientists who write about ethnic conflict in Africa, for instance, argue that such conflict is not born of primordial sentiments or loyalties. Okolie (2003) and Nnoli (1995) have argued separately that often times economic conflict masquerades as ethnic or religious conflict – like in Nigeria. This does not gainsay the existence of the religious problem but says that religion is like a cloaking device that obfuscates the real causes of strife. What is at root economic or political looks religious on the surface. The idea is that many times conflicts are so deeply tied in to politics, economics, social factors and religion that it is extremely hard and most times deeply unfair to separate out the causes and propel one dominant cause to the forefront of the literature.
This is precisely what the book does, even though the empirical work (65 per cent Hindus amongst the mutineers) does not tell us how 35% Muslim participation in a Mutiny can be categorized as jihad. Mr. Dalrymple has found pamphlets and editorials calling for jihad. In the same way he has found articles and editorials and letters authored by British that are deeply racist in nature and others which are sympathetic. So if his evidence suggests that the Indian participation in the Mutiny was a ‘jihad’ then why was the British retaliation that followed not termed ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘genocide’, or ‘racially motivated killing’. Why has the British response been described as just that, ‘a response to establish order’, when in fact racially motivated atrocities towards Indians had been continuing even before the Mutiny? The legal set up also gave the British an endless round of appeals if they were tried for bad behavior or persecution of natives. Are these not sufficient causes to make any group of people angry? Why does he think it is specifically the threat to Indian religions that made the Indians pick up arms?
I think Mr. Dalrymple’s book is very cleverly done but it also tricks the reader. We start out reading about the different lives the British and the Indians led. Then the arrogance of the British and the Christian clergy is described. The book set up at this point seems to indicate that we are going to see the Mutiny as a response to Christian fundamentalism. The book then proceeds to trace the onset of the Mutiny and the escape of certain individuals and families to and from Delhi. The massacres by the Mutineers are described. We are told of Zafar’s plight, his inaction and his non-existent role in exhorting the mutineers. We are then told of the British response, the entry of Afghan jihadis in support of the Mutiny, and the final triumph of the British, the trial of Zafar and his exile. We are told about the eye-for-an-eye massacres by the British, the looting and the killing, the destruction of Delhi. But we are not given any evidence apart from a few letters and the entry of the Afghan jihadis that this was anything but jihadi in nature. The figure of 65% Hindu participation is buried towards the end of the book in one sentence. There is no content analysis (how many jihadi letters or editorials were found, on what basis was a letter or an editorial termed ‘jihadi’), and no head count of Muslim and Hindu participation in the Mutiny by region. Perhaps if he had done this, he could have isolated jihadi tendencies by region, instead of arguing that the entire Mutiny was jihadi.
Interestingly, at the very beginning in his small retaliation against Indian historians Mr. Dalrymple praises those who studied the Mutiny as isolated events that had local causes in each case. Therefore, it is even stranger that he himself refuses to identify local causes of the Mutiny, refuses to split the Mutiny according to different cities/regions and instead proceeds to lump mutineers from across India as answering a religious call to arms. How very curious!
There is some information about British retaliation by region or mohalla. Some figures are thrown out and do give us a good sense of the magnitude of the retaliation to the Mutiny. It would have been so much simpler for Mr. Dalrymple to lay out the figures in a few tables. But for reasons unknown to me, he doesn’t. So while we grapple with the empirics of his argument, the beauty of Mr. Dalrymple’s writing seduces us.
Mr. Dalrymple interprets the Mutiny for us in the most simplistic, unproblematic way he can. In doing so he uses the dominant academic ideas of civilizational clashes to read back causation into the Indian Revolt of 1857. While no one will deny that the Mutiny was precipitated by the incident of the greased cartridges, it is less clear if pent up religious anger was the only cause of the Mutiny. Further, every war or mission of aggression is couched in a legitimizing discourse. For colonization (broadly defined as economic and racial exploitation) it was the civilizing mission, i.e., that idea that it was the White Man’s burden to transform natives into Bible-buying Christians. Today, the War on Iraq is shrouded in the discourse on democracy, when everyone knows that it is really about gaining control over oil resources. After all which country is stupid enough to go to war to make another country ‘free’ and bring it democracy, if it doesn’t get something back in the bargain? But we all know that bringing democracy to Iraq is not the ‘cause’ for the Iraq War, however much Bush may try and convince us. Similarly, colonialism is condemned today for being economically exploitative. No one buys the White Man’s Burden as the ‘cause’ for colonization of entire continents, anymore.
Why then can Mr. Dalrymple not view ‘jihadi’ language as providing the legitimating discourse for a war against imminent colonization. Why is the idea of ‘jihad’ a ‘cause’ of the Mutiny? Since when has legitimating discourse begun to replace causation?
I am taking issue with the book because after having devoted a substantial amount of time reading Mr. Dalrymple's works and knowing that his fascination with north India is heartfelt, almost devotional; I still cannot understand why he would use a crude version of the Clash thesis to explain one of the first ever wars of independence fought by any near-colonized nation. In other work I have sensed this discomfort, a reluctance, if you will, to accept India with all its contradictions. For some reason, I remember one line from The City of Djinns, where Mr. Dalrymple writes something about "Frooti bleeding over tinny Maruti cars". I kept thinking to myself, well, cars everywhere are tinny, aren't they. I sensed that Mr. Dalrymple was reluctant to make peace with whatever passes for 'modern India'; that uncategorized beast that no one can understand or tame. Especially when modern India is contrasted with the romanticized past it pales in comparison. But beyond the romanticism of the Mughals (and any other feudal/aristocratic setup for that matter) there was also a foundation of deep tyranny which was expressed in several ways through caste, class, gender, race and religious dynamics. All of this always made me feel that I would make my own peace with what I call India's 'lopsided modernity' - an imperfect batter of ideas, social practices and institutions; each squabbling for superiority and dominance, as long as I didn't find myself reinserted back into a feudal order, no matter the scores of breathtaking mausoleums the old regime was able to erect.
OK.. me rambling now.. :).
Mr. Dalrymple is a phenomenal writer. There is no doubt! His book is full of facts that few laypersons are aware of. His narrative about life before, after and during the Mutiny is well crafted. He has the unique gift of making history come alive in his writing. I enjoyed reading the book because of its style and content. However, on many counts I have found his narrative problematic.
First, I will spell out the parts where I do not see a problem in his book.
1. I think he has done a splendid job of using letters written by ordinary folks to tell the tale of the Mutiny. Mr. Dalrymple has thrown down a gauntlet to Indian historians and perhaps his critique is apt – why have these resources so readily available to a student of history not been used by Indian historians?
2. He has raised interesting questions about the role of Christian and Muslim (and maybe Hindu) clerics in formulating the discourse of the Mutiny.
3. He does not seem to be overtly taking sides. He is critical of the British, as he is about the Mughal regime and the mutineers and their leaders.
4. We learn a lot about Mughal policies, way of life and British organization as well from his book.
However, there is one central question in my mind right now. What is Mr. Dalrymple trying to do with this book? I was, at first, not surprised to see the use of post-9-11 academic discourse in his introductory chapter. However, after reading the book I wasn’t so sure that the mention of modern jihad and 9-11 was accidental or rhetorical. In fact, I began to wonder if Mr. Dalrymple had deliberately read back the post-9-11 academic discourse into the 1857 Mutiny. In fact, even though he doesn’t explicitly mention it, it seems that the argument could be interpreted as saying that the crucible of the modern political jihad can be traced to the reign of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Timurid, in the India of the mid-19th century.
Having said this, I think I must bolster my claim. You see, Mr. Dalrymple IS doing what we call process tracing. He starts out by describing the fall of the dynasty, the death of Zafar and comes back to this in the end. He describes the manner in which dualities existed in Indian society – between the British way of life and the Indian, their dress, customs, mannerisms, etc. He then traces the first antecedents of fundamentalist Christianity and arrogance and how this offended the Indians (both Hindu and Muslim).
Essentially, according to the book, the basic cause of the Mutiny was a ‘clash’ (and I am using this word deliberately) between the Indians and their two religions and the British and their religion. It was a war of religion against religion.
This idea of a ‘clash of civilizations’ has been made popular in the work of Samuel Huntington, that stalwart of American political science who has influenced four generations of policy-makers in the US from his office in Harvard University. Huntington divided the world into 8 civilizations and prophesied that the next Great Wars would be between civilizations. This theory has since found vindication by world events like 9-11, the war on Afghanistan, the Iraq war and the recent confrontational stand towards the US adopted by Iran. Of course, many have chosen to support such theories because of their simplicity. We have now heard Bush referring to ‘Islamo-fascists’ and in general Muslim people as being trapped in states of un-freedom. Democracy is seen as the panacea to the ills created by authoritarian regimes in the Middle-East.
The interventions of Amartya Sen who has questioned the idea of Huntington’s 8 civilizations and Mahmood Mamdani, who traces the rise of political Islam as the ‘unfinished business of the Cold War’, have not found as much currency and popularity as Huntington’s original thesis. I must leave you to decide which of these arguments makes more sense.
In the meantime, I will attempt to argue that Mr. Dalrymple uses this same idea of a civilization clash to explain the Mutiny. However, what baffles me completely is the manner in which he does not really piggy back on Huntington, even though his argument resonates very well with the Clash thesis. I will briefly examine his evidence and then point out some serious contradictions in his narrative.
Mr. Dalrymple uses newspapers, letters, declarations and official reports to establish how the Mutiny had a distinct Islamic flavor. He mentions the writings of a Muslim editor, clerics and pamphlets circulated at the time, which talked about the British as infidels and called all supporters of Zafar to jihad. He also mentions that at a later stage in the Mutiny, 4000 Afghani jihadis (yes, he refers to them as jihadis) swarmed Delhi and enlisted in the service of Zafar. What bothered me about the account most, in this regard, was how quickly he switched from calling this Mutiny a ‘jihad’ and then towards the end of the book acknowledged that 65% of the soldiers were in fact Hindu. Is this not a contradiction of his own argument? His argument would have held some weight if he had been able to prove, for instance, that even the Hindus in the Mutiny were following the jihadi model. There is simply no evidence to support this.
Zafar is portrayed, perhaps accurately, as a weak, feeble, indecisive and mystical emperor who was the accidental leader of a huge Mutiny. However, what is even more important is the fact that the Mutiny was the perfect excuse for the British to unseat Zafar from the throne, destroy the dynasty and advance their own control over India. Zafar’s own personal vacillations did not help him. To get rid of troops from the Red Fort he supported the plan of Mutineers marching to Meerut. This made him complicit in the Mutiny. After all the Mutiny was enacted in his name.
However, there are two sides to this story. The first is the religious and racial arrogance of the new British who were entering India. The second is the economic narrative.
Why does Mr. Dalrymple not read the Mutiny as anything more than a religious clash? Was India that primitive that its people could only evaluate enemies and friends only in terms of religion? How could a country where the emperor was half Hindu and half Muslim (Zafar had a Rajput mother) so easily turn against the British solely on religious grounds? It is true that soldiers in the British-Indian army viewed the greased cartridges as an attempt by the British to break their faith. Perhaps this was the spark that lit the sub-continental tinderbox. However, Mr. Dalrymple comes across as being rather eager to establish that this religious distrust was the primary and most important cause of the Mutiny. He does not address policies like the Doctrine of Lapse that was resented by most kings who did not have an heir and had their kingdoms annexed by Lord Dalhousie, tax collection and the imposition of commercial agriculture (cotton, indigo), the change in land tenure and the deep rifts between the British officers in the army and their common soldiers. A combination of social, economic and legal policies provided the impulse to the Mutiny as well.
Today many political scientists who write about ethnic conflict in Africa, for instance, argue that such conflict is not born of primordial sentiments or loyalties. Okolie (2003) and Nnoli (1995) have argued separately that often times economic conflict masquerades as ethnic or religious conflict – like in Nigeria. This does not gainsay the existence of the religious problem but says that religion is like a cloaking device that obfuscates the real causes of strife. What is at root economic or political looks religious on the surface. The idea is that many times conflicts are so deeply tied in to politics, economics, social factors and religion that it is extremely hard and most times deeply unfair to separate out the causes and propel one dominant cause to the forefront of the literature.
This is precisely what the book does, even though the empirical work (65 per cent Hindus amongst the mutineers) does not tell us how 35% Muslim participation in a Mutiny can be categorized as jihad. Mr. Dalrymple has found pamphlets and editorials calling for jihad. In the same way he has found articles and editorials and letters authored by British that are deeply racist in nature and others which are sympathetic. So if his evidence suggests that the Indian participation in the Mutiny was a ‘jihad’ then why was the British retaliation that followed not termed ‘ethnic cleansing’ or ‘genocide’, or ‘racially motivated killing’. Why has the British response been described as just that, ‘a response to establish order’, when in fact racially motivated atrocities towards Indians had been continuing even before the Mutiny? The legal set up also gave the British an endless round of appeals if they were tried for bad behavior or persecution of natives. Are these not sufficient causes to make any group of people angry? Why does he think it is specifically the threat to Indian religions that made the Indians pick up arms?
I think Mr. Dalrymple’s book is very cleverly done but it also tricks the reader. We start out reading about the different lives the British and the Indians led. Then the arrogance of the British and the Christian clergy is described. The book set up at this point seems to indicate that we are going to see the Mutiny as a response to Christian fundamentalism. The book then proceeds to trace the onset of the Mutiny and the escape of certain individuals and families to and from Delhi. The massacres by the Mutineers are described. We are told of Zafar’s plight, his inaction and his non-existent role in exhorting the mutineers. We are then told of the British response, the entry of Afghan jihadis in support of the Mutiny, and the final triumph of the British, the trial of Zafar and his exile. We are told about the eye-for-an-eye massacres by the British, the looting and the killing, the destruction of Delhi. But we are not given any evidence apart from a few letters and the entry of the Afghan jihadis that this was anything but jihadi in nature. The figure of 65% Hindu participation is buried towards the end of the book in one sentence. There is no content analysis (how many jihadi letters or editorials were found, on what basis was a letter or an editorial termed ‘jihadi’), and no head count of Muslim and Hindu participation in the Mutiny by region. Perhaps if he had done this, he could have isolated jihadi tendencies by region, instead of arguing that the entire Mutiny was jihadi.
Interestingly, at the very beginning in his small retaliation against Indian historians Mr. Dalrymple praises those who studied the Mutiny as isolated events that had local causes in each case. Therefore, it is even stranger that he himself refuses to identify local causes of the Mutiny, refuses to split the Mutiny according to different cities/regions and instead proceeds to lump mutineers from across India as answering a religious call to arms. How very curious!
There is some information about British retaliation by region or mohalla. Some figures are thrown out and do give us a good sense of the magnitude of the retaliation to the Mutiny. It would have been so much simpler for Mr. Dalrymple to lay out the figures in a few tables. But for reasons unknown to me, he doesn’t. So while we grapple with the empirics of his argument, the beauty of Mr. Dalrymple’s writing seduces us.
Mr. Dalrymple interprets the Mutiny for us in the most simplistic, unproblematic way he can. In doing so he uses the dominant academic ideas of civilizational clashes to read back causation into the Indian Revolt of 1857. While no one will deny that the Mutiny was precipitated by the incident of the greased cartridges, it is less clear if pent up religious anger was the only cause of the Mutiny. Further, every war or mission of aggression is couched in a legitimizing discourse. For colonization (broadly defined as economic and racial exploitation) it was the civilizing mission, i.e., that idea that it was the White Man’s burden to transform natives into Bible-buying Christians. Today, the War on Iraq is shrouded in the discourse on democracy, when everyone knows that it is really about gaining control over oil resources. After all which country is stupid enough to go to war to make another country ‘free’ and bring it democracy, if it doesn’t get something back in the bargain? But we all know that bringing democracy to Iraq is not the ‘cause’ for the Iraq War, however much Bush may try and convince us. Similarly, colonialism is condemned today for being economically exploitative. No one buys the White Man’s Burden as the ‘cause’ for colonization of entire continents, anymore.
Why then can Mr. Dalrymple not view ‘jihadi’ language as providing the legitimating discourse for a war against imminent colonization. Why is the idea of ‘jihad’ a ‘cause’ of the Mutiny? Since when has legitimating discourse begun to replace causation?
I am taking issue with the book because after having devoted a substantial amount of time reading Mr. Dalrymple's works and knowing that his fascination with north India is heartfelt, almost devotional; I still cannot understand why he would use a crude version of the Clash thesis to explain one of the first ever wars of independence fought by any near-colonized nation. In other work I have sensed this discomfort, a reluctance, if you will, to accept India with all its contradictions. For some reason, I remember one line from The City of Djinns, where Mr. Dalrymple writes something about "Frooti bleeding over tinny Maruti cars". I kept thinking to myself, well, cars everywhere are tinny, aren't they. I sensed that Mr. Dalrymple was reluctant to make peace with whatever passes for 'modern India'; that uncategorized beast that no one can understand or tame. Especially when modern India is contrasted with the romanticized past it pales in comparison. But beyond the romanticism of the Mughals (and any other feudal/aristocratic setup for that matter) there was also a foundation of deep tyranny which was expressed in several ways through caste, class, gender, race and religious dynamics. All of this always made me feel that I would make my own peace with what I call India's 'lopsided modernity' - an imperfect batter of ideas, social practices and institutions; each squabbling for superiority and dominance, as long as I didn't find myself reinserted back into a feudal order, no matter the scores of breathtaking mausoleums the old regime was able to erect.
OK.. me rambling now.. :).
posted by Vasundhara at 4:53 PM
4 Comments:
V,
about the clash of civilisation thing, well i have always suffered it 's onslaught in terms of people using it as a weapon against Islamic fascists, which includes everyone muslim ,but never got around reading it. I heard edward said speak against it(video, not in the flesh) and well, i thought hey thats an argument, and he basically tore the guy apart, but then thats his job. the point of all this being, who was this ed said guy, was he any good, should i even be listening to him.
anyways, thank you for the review, i liked it a lot, i had bought the book long before, and i read white mughals of darymples before, liked his style. i haven't gotten through the first chapter, but now i am going to be a little bit cautious when i read :). though i think william is cool, (that seems to be the only parameter according to which i judge men) but lets see.
sorry for the long post, but i just blab way too much, more than what might be good for me :)
'sif
Hey V
really really liked your review on WD. it was illuminating, critical and insightful. however, there's one point that nags me - why would he want to make 19th century India the site of primary jihadi impulses? what discourse does it tie into? Is he trying to invest Indian history and politics with the power of inherent dissent and polylogous cultural voices? (resistant or otherwise), or is he trying to posit India as the modern civilization essentially at war with the west, strategic historical motives and dissent in place? curiouser and curiouser! and I havent had breakfast yet! :)
Hi V,
I am not sure if you really "got" what Dalrymple is trying to put across with The last Mughal. He isnt tracing a process, he isnt explaining mordern socio-political phenomena in the light of history, neither is he trying to say that the mutiny was the world's first 'jihad' (in the context that we know the word today), which would be a gross error that I am sure a person of Dalrymple's stature would not make.
'jihad' is an urdu word whose core meaning is some form of struggle or best effort in the cause of god. Over time, it replaced armed religious struggle, since that was the most common effort god seemed to require of its followers.
Urdu incidentally was the language of the literate masses of the North during the Mughal period. Also, Muslim culture and the Muslim way of life was at its zenith during this time. The interpretation therefore is, that 'jihad' was a term used at that time to mean popular struggle, across the board by Hindus and Muslims.
You ask about the power of religion in this country, and whether we have been so primitive to be governed solely on religious motives.
The grim answer is, yes. While economic factors have played a very big role in most of our wars, riots, mutinies and reforms, nothing seems to have galvanized or disintegrated the fabric of this subcontinent as much as religion.
While economics of the land has been the fulcrum, the lever is always, religion. Whether that be the Rajput retaliation under Rana Pratap, the Sikh insurrections under Guru Gobind Singh, the mutiny or in a more recent past, the worlds most violent and bloody partition.
Economic depravity our masses have endured and adjusted to, but the fabric of India has always reacted very violently to religious winds.
And therefore it is impossible not to interpret our great historical events in terms of religion.
However, it needs calibre to come out in the open and say this in so many words. Its politically much safer to hide behind famines and taxes and zamindari as explanation.
Like it or not, India (and by that I mean the landmass starting from the northern regions of Badakshan to the southern tip of Kanyakumari, has been dominated, shaped and at times mis-shaped on religious lines
While there is a lot that is debatable on your interpretation of Dalrymple's book, I leave you with a single thought.
Dalrymple is doing something phenomenal. He is rediscovering and chronicling our past (India's past) in an independent light, free from the influence of British Indian and post-independence nationalist historians. Reinterpreting his work and dissecting it in the light of different theories and contexts, is a relatively easy task and something that hand-me-down historians have made a successful profession of, in this country.
What is much more difficult though, is to walk down the Indian National Archives in Delhi, sort through the dust and dirt of a 100 years and make our own conclusions about our past.
How many of us are game for that?
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