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ASSIMILATION AND TRANSCULTURATION IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INDIA: A Response to Pankaj Mishra

ASSIMILATION AND TRANSCULTURATION IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INDIA: A Response to Pankaj Mishra William Dalrymple In a characteristically thoughtful and elegant essay immediately preceding my contribution to this symposium, Pankaj Mishra objects to the scope of some central ideas in my book White Mughals.1 He appears to be under the impression that British imperial administrators who intermarried or cohabited with Indian women and assimilated to the norms of Mughal society—figures like James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Sir David Ochterlony—were “isolated” eccentrics: “a few individual cases.” “There is no fresh evidence,” Mishra writes, “that there were more than a handful of these men in India.” It is an odd claim to make since the very detailed statistical evidence showing that this is emphatically not the case is laid out very clearly and at some length in the first chapter of my book. Mishra seems to think that eighteenth-century India was full of aloof Curzon-like British men, of the sort found in late-nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury India, and he reflects this stereotype back onto the very different world 1. William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (London: HarperCollins, 2002). Common Knowledge 11:3 Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press of the East India Company during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This is http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Common Knowledge Duke University Press

ASSIMILATION AND TRANSCULTURATION IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INDIA: A Response to Pankaj Mishra

Dalrymple, William
Common Knowledge , Volume 11 (3) – Oct 1, 2005
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References (25)

Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press
ISSN
0961-754X
eISSN
1538-4578
DOI
10.1215/0961754X-11-3-445
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

William Dalrymple In a characteristically thoughtful and elegant essay immediately preceding my contribution to this symposium, Pankaj Mishra objects to the scope of some central ideas in my book White Mughals.1 He appears to be under the impression that British imperial administrators who intermarried or cohabited with Indian women and assimilated to the norms of Mughal society—figures like James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Sir David Ochterlony—were “isolated” eccentrics: “a few individual cases.” “There is no fresh evidence,” Mishra writes, “that there were more than a handful of these men in India.” It is an odd claim to make since the very detailed statistical evidence showing that this is emphatically not the case is laid out very clearly and at some length in the first chapter of my book. Mishra seems to think that eighteenth-century India was full of aloof Curzon-like British men, of the sort found in late-nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury India, and he reflects this stereotype back onto the very different world 1. William Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (London: HarperCollins, 2002). Common Knowledge 11:3 Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press of the East India Company during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This is

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Common Knowledge – Duke University Press

Published: Oct 1, 2005

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