William Dalrymple’s incurable colonial hangover
Behold! The direct descendant of Major General Sir John Dalrymple of North Berwick, 5th Baronet, a great soldier known for his cruelties in Madras Presidency, and the direct descendant of Sir John Warrender Dalrymple of North Berwick, 7th Baronet, the judge in a court in Bengal known for his focus on profits, and the son of Lord Lieutenant of East Lothian Sir Hew Dalrymple, 10th Baronet, the self-important William Dalrymple, is now waging a great battle against Dina Nath Batra, a “native,” who has dared use the courts and police against a member of Dalrymple’s tribe!
I first stumbled upon the writings of William Dalrymple on the internet a few years ago and contacted him as I was concerned by the unscientific claims he passed off as historical truths. In particular, I took exception to the following words.
“Indeed a decade ago when the miraculously undecayed body of St. Francis…”
I explained to him that neither the dead body of Francis Xavier nor that of Vladimir Lenin was undecayed. On a related point about other claims in the Bible, Dalrymple’s response was bizarre. He presented the “four Gospels plus Josephus” as sources for historical evidence. Since the Gospels were part of the Bible, his point was that the Bible was evidence for the Bible!
Clearly, Dalrymple was not familiar with the methods used in researching history. Nor did he seem familiar with even basic facts. Ordinary information such as the similarities between Islam and Christianity excited him like new discoveries about everyday events excites a small child.
Another point of contention was Dalrymple’s description in which the historical truth of “Saint” Thomas and his alleged miracles were treated as open questions.
“In Kerala, St Thomas is said to have converted the upper caste Brahmins with the aid of miracles and to have built seven churches. Whatever the historical truth…”
At some point Dalrymple flaunted his degrees to refute me. “Actually, Arvind my friend,” he bragged, “I have a top first in history from Cambridge (currently rated ahead of Harvard as the best university in the world) where I was the senior history scholar.” And then he sent this link and this link in order to persuade me that his college degree was from the world’s top-ranked university.
Dalrymple also bragged that he had some honorary doctorate degrees. Being from a long line of barons must have helped him. After all, no British university has conferred honorary degrees on any Black person or Muslim for peddling religious myths as historical facts.
Curiously, Dalrymple never talks about the massive wealth that his family has accumulated by plundering India. Here is some information published in 1872 giving some clues about the size of this loot. William Dalrymple’s direct ancestor, John Warrender Dalrymple, was a judge who was paid a huge sum of 37,992 silver rupees per year when every ounce of silver was worth a sixteenth of an ounce of gold. That is a whopping 27.69 kilograms of gold per year since each silver rupee weighed 11.66 grams. This amount does not include bribes he may have received to rig lawsuits. This particular Dalrymple was in India for thirty years. That is just one Dalrymple. There were other looters in the family including a Dalrymple in Madras whose job was to kill Indians. Given this background, William Dalrymple’s massive sense of entitlement should surprise no one.
Another characteristic of William Dalrymple seems to be his discomfort in going against the myths peddled by the church. He appears to be a Catholic who fears the wrath of the Pope if he commits blasphemy. The fact that his brother has been a Roman Catholic priest may explain this behavior. This also lends credence to the view in some quarters that the ban on Salman Rushdie from the literary festival at Jaipur stemmed from Dalrymple’s opposition to blasphemous speech and the announcement about Rushdie’s speech was merely a publicity stunt.
Dalrymple blamed Muslims for this purported fiasco. After all, a British Lord could never be wrong. Had the police prevented Rushdie’s speech from happening, Dalrymple and his cohorts could have declared themselves martyrs whose free speech rights were suppressed. As things turned out, Jaipur’s Commissioner of Police called his bluff by telling him that Rushdie’s televised speech could be shown and the police would keep things under control. Read what Dalrymple admitted in London’s Guardian newspaper.
“[The Jaipur Commissioner of Police] was quite clear: the videolink could go ahead…
But equally, can you justify going ahead with a literary event, however important, if you know that you will thereby be putting at risk the lives of everyone who attends… as well as knowingly igniting a major religious riot…” [emphasis added]
This reasoning sounds like the government’s excuse for banning books and is not consistent with the beliefs of a person interested in the right to the freedom of expression.
Opposition to Indians seeking legal recourse is a recurring theme for Dalrymple. He objected to the lawsuits filed against MF Husain despite the fact that Husain was once part of the government machinery that silenced the voice of other Indians.
On the other hand, when he wanted to silence the voice of Farah Damji – a lady of Indian descent with whom he had a falling out – the legal system was supposed to help him bully and silence her. Apparently, someone with the moniker “Ms Equaliser” had sent out emails about Damji and Dalrymple. Dalrymple suspected Farah Damji and complained to the police. Dalrymple also complained to the police when Damji showed up at a literary festival in Rajasthan.
The immense sense of privilege harbored by the son of former Lord Lieutenant of East Lothian Sir Hew Dalrymple is astounding. Perhaps he believes that Indians are still slaves who should serve the British. Maybe he will soon demand that police stations and courts in India go back to the time of his father and keep out Indians with signs that say, ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed.’
[The author can be reached at [email protected].]
Brilliant. can we get an update to this piece. I am sure this Sepoy has done more destruction in the past 3 years as well.
He’s here to earn his two coppers from the sepoys who buy into his slop. The fruit don’t fall far from the tree.
[…] time of his father and keep out Indians with signs that say, ‘Dogs and Indians not allowed.’ William Dalrymple's incurable colonial hangover – India FactsIndia Facts […]
Okay ! His grandfather and his father loot the nation. Then some years back their grandson/son comes to India to write history and tell us Aurangazeb was great gentleman 🙂 Sanity Dies!
“Indeed a decade ago when the miraculously undecayed body of St. Francis…”
To the miraculously stupid and especially to the British I recommend this passage for The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine who according to a BBC documentary is “The most valuable Englishman ever”. I enthusiastically concur.
“If we are to suppose a miracle to be something so entirely out of the course of what is called nature, that she must go out of that course to accomplish it, and we see an account given of such miracle by the person who said he saw it, it raises a question in the mind very easily decided, which is, is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie? We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course; but we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time; it is therefore, at least millions to one, that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie.
The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous; but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle, if Jonah had swallowed the whale. In this, which may serve for all cases of miracles, the matter would decide itself, as before stated, namely, is it more that a man should have swallowed a whale or told a lie?
But suppose that Jonah had really swallowed the whale, and gone with it in his belly to Nineveh, and, to convince the people that it was true, had cast it up in their sight, of the full length and size of a whale, would they not have believed him to be the devil, instead of a prophet? Or, if the whale had carried Jonah to Ninevah, and cast him up in the same public manner, would they not have believed the whale to have been the devil, and Jonah one of his imps?
The most extraordinary of all the things called miracles, related in the New Testament, is that of the devil flying away with Jesus Christ, and carrying him to the top of a high mountain, and to the top of the highest pinnacle of the temple, and showing him and promising to him all the kingdoms of the World. How happened it that he did not discover America, or is it only with kingdoms that his sooty highness has any interest?”
http://www.ushistory.org/paine/reason/singlehtml.htm
So, is this the best argument you guys can bring against Dalrymple?
That his “direct” ancestors were colonials, looters and cruel?
That his brother was a Catholic priest?
Provide a partial quote and incomplete sentence as evidence of his blatant wrongness?
And you want this article to be perceived as serious argument?
No wonder you guys lose the plot every time!
And no wonder Rajiv Malhotra has to beg academics to take him seriously!
No attempt at argument, just the unmasking of yet another tawdry Prufrock; this one of the firangi variety:
http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/ataseer/2011/10/aatish-taseer-the-tnb-self-interview/
[I saw him at one of his book launches, a grotesque figure, a man become obese on the affections of Indians! He lay on a stage, this great whale of a man, dressed in a mirrorwork kaftan, if you please, his dirty feet hanging off. And all about him, like little pixies, Baul singers skittered around…
They’re Bengali bards of a kind. And to complete this awful scene was an audience of embassy trash. They sat among bolsters and fountains, sipping white wine. You’ve never seen anything more hideous in your life. But we mustn’t blame him alone; the fault is as much India’s; it is India who makes giants of these mediocrities, fattening them up till they’re as corrupt as Kurtz.
In this respect, one cannot be harsh enough. In a more confident country—like Russia, say, in the 19th century; or, even China today—a man like that would have been booted out. He would have been a figure of fun and contempt. He would not have been able to position himself as a gatekeeper to intellectual life. But in India, he can; we love a man like that!]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1042735.ece
[Dalrymple seduced her on a pile of scatter cushions under a towering plum tree in the walled garden of his home in Chiswick, west London, one sweltering night this summer while his wife was away.
she wrote an account on the internet of their affair in which she describes how she circled his flame like “a jehadi moth, intoxicated by the white-hot power of his words”.
her nickname for him was “Sweet Baronet”, a reference to his father, Sir Hew Hamilton-Dalrymple, the former Lord Lieutenant of East Lothian. In turn, Dalrymple called her “Farah-ji” and begged her not to dedicate a book she was writing to the plum tree.]
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/pandora/now-ferry-faces-snub-over-bloodsports-row-446010.html
[Farah Damji’s feud with the travel writer William Dalrymple continues to rage, four years after she spilt the beans on their affair to the Daily Mail.
Damji, a colourful former Asian magazine editor, has penned a piece about the tryst- subject of much media tittle-tattle at the time – called ” Why I Kissed and Told”, for a prominent Indian newspaper which she’s posted on her online blog.
“It wasn’t so much a case of kiss-and-tell [with Dalrymple]; it was more like scratch and smell,” she says. “He is very white, very flabby, almost bald; something of a Great White Whale in the Delhi waters and speaks Hinglish with a lisping Oxbridge affectation.”
Worryingly for Dalrymple, his blushes are unlikely to end there. Damji is now threatening to write an autobiography.]
Rajiv Malhotra doesn’t need to beg–he hasn’t begged at all (it is you lot that excels at that and raises it to an unseemly art form). All he’s done is pointed out ethical concerns of such a monopoly of india’s intellectual life and issues with doniger et al’s work.
You seem to be having some difficulty with logic, so let me break it down into smaller parts for you:
1. east india company arrived with monopoly granted by british crown
2. EIC trade was highly profitable due to value of Indian goods, so it began influencing political life in India
3. EIC trained sepoys to enforce its will, protect its interests and plunder the country
4. Dalrymple descended from same EIC blokes
5. Dalrymple has inordinate monopoly power over India’s literary fairs, which influence intellectual life by shutting out inconvenient and unprofitable views (i.e. Malhotra) no matter how scholarly and worthy of review
6. Intellectual life then influences political views and political life
7. Morons vote for idiotic, corrupt and anti-national party led by foreigner
8. Dalrymple becomes and remains a wealthy neo-colonial moby dick shutting out dissenting voices
Step outside of south delhi or whatever cloistered/incestuous intellectual cul de sac you flop around in.It is your side that has already lost the plot and is sweating over it and what may come in April/May. Hence the orchestrated sepoy attacks on Malhotra and the tone deaf, hypocritical defense of Doniger’s unscholarly and intellectually dishonest work.
An intellectual is ultimately one who is in search of the truth, not navel-gazing or defamation, which doniger has routinely been confirmed to have been engaging in. There was a point for point rebuttal of her work, but not a peep out of you poseurs then. Spend less time competing for foreign crumbs and validation and more time sharpening your mind. Your comments have demonstrated where it stands in the pecking order vis a vis blunt butter knife…
Hey Willie, don’t take recourse in the argument that the author provided partial sentences. You should be able to defend every word, clause, partial sentence or full sentence. Francis, Thomas, Jesus, Gospels, resurrection, whatever. You flaunted your degrees in response, did you really? LOL.
Discombobulated nincompoops can keep serving ur masters as Sepoy’s however Indians are not going to take every thing lying down.
Bravo! Finally, my countrymen are waking up. This Internet is not going to allow some people to monopolize Truth.
What an exposé of this hypocrite and impostor Dalrymple!
We need more and more writers of the genre of Arvind Kumar who expose the true character of charlatans and unafraidly ‘call a spade a spade’!
It is so soul-satisfying to read this systematic demolition of this crook.
More strength and power to Arvind Kumar and may his ‘tribe increase’!
I first came across the name of William Dalrymple when, in an Indian railway station, I picked up a copy of “The Age of Kali”, Lonely Planet, 1998. So that was in the 20th century when he was presumably backpacking in India prior to assisting Cambridge in ousting Harvard as world’s best university. I took an instant dislike to the book. I just pulled the book out from my bookshelf, dusted it and began re-examining the reasons for my instant dislike. I see now that my dislike was probably rooted in an implicit recognition that William Dalrymple uses literary schizophrenia as a tool and as an aid in order to market himself and his products. In one paragraph he is all Mark Tully empathising with and “understanding” the characters he encounters in India; in another paragraph he is a furtive Katherine Mayo with disguised gutter sensibility infusing and informing his travel-writer’s prose. He has obviously perfected this chiaroscuro of schizophrenic light and shade into a saleable art form.
Thank you, Arvind Kumar, for the additional insight into the psychoanalytic make-up of William Dalrymple. Be prepared to receive brickbats from the Guardian. Well, India’s loss from within the precincts of a Mehrauli farmhouse is the UK’s gain in spiritual prowess : “In the course of my travels I often came across the assumption that intense spirituality was somehow the preserve of what many call ‘the mystic East’… it’s a misconception that has always irritated me as I’ve always regarded our own indigenous British traditions of spirituality as especially rich.” The Voice hath spoken.
For what it’s worth the Shanghai Academic World Rankings, which is better regarded than the survey that the White Moghul provided, have consistently placed Harvard (and for most years Stanford and UC Berkeley and MIT) above Cambridge. Farah Damji’s tale of adolescent seduction by the middle-aged Dalrymple is great fun to read, as is Aatish Taseer’s penetrating put down of one of the Viceroy’s Indian soirees. But these don’t matter to the Indian elite fawning over him. This rampant servility by Brown sepoys only goes to underscore how small numbers of invaders from abroad were repeatedly capable of ruling the subcontinent for centuries; a venerable tradition that continues to this very day.
Excellent write up and expose, Mr. Kumar. The next time pompous buffoons attempt to silence you using (questionable) credentials–be sure to cut them down to size with this: http://www.andhraportal.org/fv-community-news/post/science-1-deepak-chopra-0/
Also, “Cambridge ahead of Harvard” (according to the conveniently British “Guardian” paper)? I didn’t realize the Baronets Dalrymple could also count a comedian in their lineage as well…
This Anglo is swollen headed due to the importance given by India’s macauleyputras,once the helm of nation is in hand of Nationalist it’s won’t take much time to deflate this pompous ballon.
This moron Dalpimple runs the Jaipur Lit Fest like a dictator. Doesn’t allow real intellectuals like Sri Rajiv Malhotra to participate. His brown sepoy Namita Gokhale gives the run-around to anybody who wants to present a talk…like a Sarkari bureaucrat…only to ultimately confess that “William decides”.
When will brain-washed Indians realize that they are in fact superior to morons like Dalpimple?
Why blame this moron for disparaging Indian beliefs at every given opportunity when the so called “educated, urbanized, westernized, anglicised” morons are already present in government machinery and our main stream media… the day top officials of our nation understands Indian culture and its capability, people like Dalrymple will soon go into oblivion…