William Dalrymple has a marvellous ability to write history that reads like a novel. This book is a narrative adventure in which he writes about the British in India during the 18th century, the relationship that soldiers and officers of the East India Company had with the people of India, Hindu and Muslim that they lived among. This was a time when they made an effort to learn Indian languages, understand the customs and the culture, take on local ways of living and being, and assimilated in more ways than one - something that changed dramatically in the 19th century.
At the heart of this narrative is a long buried story - of a forbidden love affair between James Achilles Kirkpatrick, an officer of the East India Company and resident at the court of the Nizam in the late 1790s, and Khair-Un-Nissa, a young Muslim noblewoman. who was the great-niece of the Nizam’s Prime Minister. Dalrymple begins the narrative by giving an account of Kirkpatrick's family and his life before he was posted to Hyderabad.
James Kirkpatrick was born in India when his father, who was also an officer in the East India Company, was posted to Madras. He was sent off to school in England, but he came back to India as a soldier once he graduated. He had a gift for languages and he was fluent in Persian, Hindustani, Tamil and Telugu. He had an affinity for India, he loved the food, the culture, the clothing and the landscapes. He'd gone native by many accounts even before he met and married his Muslim wife.
He saw Kahir-un-Nissa for the first time in 1798 and he was smitten, but it was she who engineered a way to see and talk to him. She sought him out with the support of her mother and grandmother. Their relationship was a massive diplomatic scandal. Kirkpatrick converted to Islam to marry her and the East India Company began to suspect him of looking to further the Nizam's interests while seemingly, working for the East India Company.
Dalrymple does a marvellous job of evoking the Nizam's court in the late eighteen century. He bases his narrative on British East India Company records, letters that James wrote to his brother William, and a cache of Persian letters, books and historical accounts of that time period that he found almost by chance when he was shopping for souvenirs around Charminar, on a visit to Hyderabad in 1997. This allows him and the reader to get multiple perspectives of that time, the people, the culture and the way things used to be.
This is a sweeping work of narrative history that brings a forgotten period of history alive. There are many fascinating figures in this story, plenty of politics and diplomatic maneuvering. The writer goes into the kind of detail that can make the book feel a bit dense in parts, but it's worth staying with. This is one of William Dalrymple’s most celebrated works, and I can see why.