OF HISTORY, CONQUEST AND ANARCHY

Reader’s Digest in conversation with William Dalrymple, author of historical and narrative non-fiction and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival

- Samhita Chakraborty

Scottish writer–historian William Dalrymple is the author of more than a dozen books, including bestselling titles such as City of Djinns, White Mughals and The Last Mughal. His most recent book, The Anarchy—The Relentless Rise of the East India Company (Bloomsbury) has been described as his “most ambitious work yet”. Reader’s Digest caught up with the acclaimed author just ahead of the Jaipur Literature Festival this month.

You begin Anarchy by showing how the English word ‘loot’ came from the Hindustani word for ‘plunder’. But some people in India and Britain believe that the English gave the colonies the gift of the English language. Is that narrative a skewing of history?

Obviously there are very complicated questions. All empires involve one set of people dominating another set of people; all empires are violent; all empires tend to be extractive. The story of the East India Company shows that when the British first came to India, it didn’t come as a conquering state. They came in this very unexpected form of a trading company, which then militarizes. But the Company, from the point it begins to conquer Indian territory, has no motive other than profit. The idea that the British came here to bestow railways, the English language, cricket and tea is a later Victorian spin, that bears no historical reality at all (laughs).