Books Recommended-II

[abhishek]

Went through this book titled "White Mughals" by William Dalrymple.Book is biographical account of romance of a british resident and a girl from Hyderabad ruling elite.More than that book provides wonderful insight into India of late eighteenth century and relations of europeans and contemporary indians Definitely worth a look.I am providing details for all those interested
Name :White Mughals
Author : William Dalrymple
ISBN:0-00-655096-7
publisher:Harper Collins


Mfg
/dhama

ps: for god sake this is not an endorsement of any kind

[rameshlakra]

i second 8-)

[amitdahiya]

Dear Abhishek,
The Book club chose it as the book of the month in July. We did a reading of varous excerptsand discussed them. An amazing thing for me was the fact that a naval adventurer was able to come to the Mewat region of Haryana and declare himself Raja of Mewat. He struck his own coins and mantained a small army. Now this guy was no company or nation seeking imperial expansion. He was just one person and he became a self declared ruler just 60 kms from Delhi what does it tell us about our entity in those times.
Amit

[abhishek]

One thing that really surprised me was the disparity between the ruling elite and a commoner,the comfort with which these nawabs and "white mughals" lived was at times horrifying.
Regarding self styled king of mewat....if I am not wrong Mewat is a muslim dominated area with mews( as these muslims are called) so projection of that over whole southern punjab and western UP doesnt sound very convincing to me.And he embraced islam in the process.And to be very frank I think India became a colony of arabs and sundry muslim tribes after the first attack of Bin Kasim on Sindh and during 18th century just rulers changed.One more point regarding "king of mewat" well it would not have been possible without consent of local population or their headmen.

MfG
/dhama

[amitrajora]

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