11-07-2006, 08:39 AM
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/artic...348263.cms
Dalrymple goes after 'lazy' historians
Bhaskar Roy
NEW DELHI: Before actually giving an account of the Mutiny in Delhi's summer of discontent, William Dalrymple has declared war on Indian historians, virtually accusing them of lethargy in accessing source material in the archives on 1857.
The Mutiny Papers a treasure trove of information on the 1857 Uprising have been gathering dust without any researcher bothering to take a look at them, Dalrymple bitterly complains in the introduction of his just published book The Last Mughal .
"It is a commonplace of books about 1857 that they lament the absence of Indian sources and the corresponding need to rely on the huge quantities of easily accessible British materials...yet all this time in the National Archives there existed as detailed a documentation of the four months of the Uprising in Delhi as can exist for any Indian city at any point of history," he writes.
He even pokes fun at the Indian historians' obtuse style and tendency to use jargon. Dismissed by some Indian writers as the "Bollywood historian" for a perceptibly simplistic and facile approach, it is clearly his turn to give it back.
"...lists of casualties, predictions of victory and promises of loyalty, notes from spies of dubious reliability and letters from eloping lovers all neatly bound in string and boxed up in the cool, hushed, air-conditioned vaults of the Indian National Archives," he goes on, stressing the flaw of the local historians.
However, historians well respected in academic circles reject Dalrymple's contention that he has accessed such documents for the first time.
Professor Irfan Habib of Aligarh Muslim University points out that way back in 1957, Athar Abbas Naqvi brought out a six-volume history of the Mutiny using Urdu and Persian documents.
Asked about Dalrymple's claim that such sources are being tapped for the first time, Habib says, "This is not correct". He claims that Naqvi's seminal work "helped change the perspective". Shireen Moosvi, another historian of the Aligarh school, points to a major project of the Indian Council of Historical Research to bring out the documents on the Mutiny from all available sources.
As for Dalrymple's claim of hitting a treasure trove, she says, "This is just an academic flourish every author says things like that." She does not seem to have been impressed by his writing either. "I have not taken him very seriously as a historian," Moosvi says.
Dalrymple goes after 'lazy' historians
Bhaskar Roy
NEW DELHI: Before actually giving an account of the Mutiny in Delhi's summer of discontent, William Dalrymple has declared war on Indian historians, virtually accusing them of lethargy in accessing source material in the archives on 1857.
The Mutiny Papers a treasure trove of information on the 1857 Uprising have been gathering dust without any researcher bothering to take a look at them, Dalrymple bitterly complains in the introduction of his just published book The Last Mughal .
"It is a commonplace of books about 1857 that they lament the absence of Indian sources and the corresponding need to rely on the huge quantities of easily accessible British materials...yet all this time in the National Archives there existed as detailed a documentation of the four months of the Uprising in Delhi as can exist for any Indian city at any point of history," he writes.
He even pokes fun at the Indian historians' obtuse style and tendency to use jargon. Dismissed by some Indian writers as the "Bollywood historian" for a perceptibly simplistic and facile approach, it is clearly his turn to give it back.
"...lists of casualties, predictions of victory and promises of loyalty, notes from spies of dubious reliability and letters from eloping lovers all neatly bound in string and boxed up in the cool, hushed, air-conditioned vaults of the Indian National Archives," he goes on, stressing the flaw of the local historians.
However, historians well respected in academic circles reject Dalrymple's contention that he has accessed such documents for the first time.
Professor Irfan Habib of Aligarh Muslim University points out that way back in 1957, Athar Abbas Naqvi brought out a six-volume history of the Mutiny using Urdu and Persian documents.
Asked about Dalrymple's claim that such sources are being tapped for the first time, Habib says, "This is not correct". He claims that Naqvi's seminal work "helped change the perspective". Shireen Moosvi, another historian of the Aligarh school, points to a major project of the Indian Council of Historical Research to bring out the documents on the Mutiny from all available sources.
As for Dalrymple's claim of hitting a treasure trove, she says, "This is just an academic flourish every author says things like that." She does not seem to have been impressed by his writing either. "I have not taken him very seriously as a historian," Moosvi says.