Michael: Forget everything you think you know about the British in India—the stiff upper lip, the pith helmets, the strict separation. For a brief, forgotten moment, the British didn't just conquer India. They were seduced by it. And in some cases, they even became Indian. Kevin: Whoa, hold on. Seduced by it? That's not the version of the British Empire I learned in school. That was all Kipling's "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." Michael: Exactly the myth this book is here to shatter. Today, we’re diving into William Dalrymple’s masterpiece, White Mughals. Kevin: And this isn’t just some pop history. Dalrymple is a serious historian, a fellow at places like Princeton and Oxford. He spent years living in India, digging through forgotten archives to write this. The book even won the Wolfson History Prize, which is basically the Oscars for history books. Michael: It is. And he uses that research to uncover this astonishing, almost unbelievable world of cultural fusion. He calls the men at the center of it 'White Mughals.' Kevin: Okay, 'White Mughals'—what does that actually mean? Are we talking about British guys who just really liked the food, or is it deeper than that? Michael: Oh, it's much, much deeper. We're talking about high-ranking officials of the East India Company who adopted Mughal court dress, spoke fluent Persian and Hindustani, smoked hookahs, and, most importantly, married into the local Muslim and Hindu aristocracy. This wasn't just a phase; for many, it was their entire life.

Kevin: That’s wild. It completely upends the image of the aloof, colonial administrator. Can you give me an example? What did this actually look like on the ground? Michael: Dalrymple gives so many, but one of the most flamboyant has to be Sir David Ochterlony. He was the British Resident in Delhi. And every evening, he would take his thirteen Indian wives—his favorite bibis—for a stroll around the city. Kevin: A stroll? Michael: A stroll. Each on her own private, beautifully decorated elephant. Kevin: Wait, thirteen wives on thirteen elephants? That's not a diplomatic mission, that's a parade! How was this even allowed? Michael: At the time, it was just part of the landscape. When the Anglican Bishop of Calcutta visited him, he was shocked to find Ochterlony sitting on a divan in full Mughal attire, being fanned by servants with peacock feathers, looking for all the world like an Indian prince. He had been away from Britain for 54 years and had no intention of ever going back. India was his home. Kevin: That’s incredible. But you have to wonder, was this just a few eccentric guys, or was this a real, widespread trend? Michael: That’s the core of Dalrymple’s argument. It was a real trend. He points to another, even more shocking example: Job Charnock, the man who founded Calcutta, one of the great cities of the British Empire. Kevin: Okay, I’m ready. Hit me. Michael: Charnock was in Bengal and witnessed a Sati ceremony, where a young Hindu widow was about to be burned alive on her husband's funeral pyre. He was so struck by her beauty that he ordered his soldiers to rescue her by force. Kevin: A dramatic rescue! I like it. Michael: It gets better. He took her home, they lived together for many years, and had several children. But here's the part that breaks your brain. After she died, he didn't convert her to Christianity. According to a contemporary account, she converted him to "Paganism." And for the rest of his life, on the anniversary of her death, Job Charnock, founder of Calcutta, would go to her tomb and sacrifice a rooster in her memory. Kevin: A rooster sacrifice? From the guy who founded a cornerstone of the British Empire? This is blowing my mind. It sounds like something out of a movie, not a history book. Michael: And Dalrymple backs it up. He found that in the 1780s, one in three British men in India had an Indian partner. Their wills, preserved in archives, are full of bequests to their "well beloved" Indian companions and their "natural children." This wasn't an anomaly; it was a fundamental part of life in pre-Victorian India.

Kevin: Okay, so this world of cultural blending was real. But the book isn't just a collection of these stories, right? There's a central narrative. Michael: Exactly. And that brings us to the heart of the book. It wasn't just about lifestyle choices. These were deep, passionate, and often dangerous relationships. Which leads us to the incredible story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick. Kevin: The main 'White Mughal' of the story. Michael: The ultimate White Mughal. In the late 1790s, James Kirkpatrick is the British Resident in Hyderabad. He's young, ambitious, and one of the most powerful men in southern India. And he falls head-over-heels in love with a young Muslim noblewoman named Khair un-Nissa. She's barely a teenager, a descendant of the Prophet, and from one of the most powerful families in the state. Kevin: This feels like Romeo and Juliet, but with empires. What was in it for her family? Was it just love, or was there a political angle? Michael: That's the brilliant complexity Dalrymple uncovers. It was both. Khair's grandfather, a powerful minister, saw the immense strategic value in an alliance with the top British official. But the book makes it clear, through secret letters Dalrymple unearthed, that the passion was real and mutual. He found a ciphered letter where Kirkpatrick describes their first secret "nocturnal interview." He writes about her "uncontrollable wishes" and how she declared her "affections had been irrevocably fixed on me." It's incredibly intimate and raw. Kevin: So what did he do? He couldn't just marry her, could he? Michael: He did. But he had to risk everything. He secretly converted to Islam, taking the name Hushmut Jung, 'Glorious in Battle.' He underwent circumcision and married Khair un-Nissa in a Shi'a ceremony, all while trying to keep it hidden from his superiors in the East India Company. Kevin: Why the secrecy? If this was so common, what was the big deal? Michael: Because the tide was already turning. A new Governor General, Lord Wellesley, had arrived with what the book calls "bullying imperial policies." The era of easy-going cultural exchange was ending. The British were starting to see themselves as rulers, not partners. Intermarriage and "going native" were becoming deeply suspect. Kirkpatrick was caught right at that turning point. Kevin: This all sounds incredibly romantic, but let's be real. He's the powerful British Resident, she's a teenager. Some critics say Dalrymple romanticizes what was ultimately a colonial power dynamic. How does the book handle that? Michael: That’s a fair and crucial question. And Dalrymple does address it. While the power imbalance is undeniable, he uses so many primary sources—not just from the British side, but from Khair un-Nissa's family and Hyderabadi chronicles—to show her agency and the family's complex motivations. They weren't just passive subjects. Her grandmother initially fought the match fiercely. The family negotiated hard. And Khair herself is portrayed as a passionate, determined young woman, not a victim. The book doesn't give us a simple fairy tale; it gives us a complicated, messy, and deeply human story that defies easy labels.

Kevin: So, what's the big takeaway here? We have this incredible lost world of cultural blending, and this one tragic love story that seems to represent its end. Michael: Exactly. The story of Kirkpatrick and Khair un-Nissa isn't just a romance. It's a tragedy about a path not taken. Dalrymple shows us that the 'clash of civilizations' isn't inevitable. For a moment, East and West met in tolerance, peace, and even love. The tragedy is that the rigid, racist, and fearful structures of the growing British Empire chose to forget it ever happened. Kevin: And what happened to them? To their family? Michael: That’s the most heartbreaking part. Kirkpatrick died young, and their two children were sent to England to be raised as proper Victorians. They were separated from their mother, Khair, who they would never see again. The children became the living embodiment of that forced separation, caught between two worlds, with their Indian heritage all but erased. Their daughter, Kitty, grew up to be a minor celebrity in London society, but she always carried a sense of that lost world with her. Kevin: Wow. It makes you wonder what history would look like if that world of the White Mughals had survived. It's a powerful reminder that the way things are isn't the only way they could have been. Michael: Absolutely. And it’s a story that feels incredibly relevant today, in a world still grappling with cultural and religious divides. We’d love to hear what you think. Does this change how you see colonial history? Find us on our socials and let us know. Kevin: This is Aibrary, signing off.