THE BROKEN SCRIPT
| At the start of the nineteenth century, there was a Mughal emperor on the throne in Delhi, but the Mughal empire, in decline for almost a century, was practically gone. A new power had emerged―the British East India Company, which captured the Mughal capital in September 1803, becoming its de facto ruler. Swapna Liddle’s book is an unprecedented study of the ‘hybrid halfcentury’ that followed―when the two regimes overlapped and Delhi was at the cusp of modernity, changing in profound ways. With a ground-level view of the workings of early British rule in India, The Broken Script describes in rich detail the complex tussle between the last two Mughal emperors and the East India Company, one wielding considerable symbolic authority, and the other a fast-growing military and political power. It is, above all, the story of the people of Delhi in this period, some already well known, such as the poet Ghalib, and others, like the mathematician Ram Chander, who are largely forgotten: the cultural and intellectual elite, business magnates, the old landed nobility and the exotic new ruling class―the British. Through them, it looks at the economic, social and cultural climate that evolved over six decades. It examines the great flowering of poetry in Urdu, even as attempts to use the language for scientific education faltered; the fascinating history of the Delhi College, and how it represented a radically new model for higher education in India; the rise of modern journalism in Urdu, and various printing presses and publications, exemplified by papers like the Dehli Urdu Akhbar; and the founding of remarkable institutions like the Archeological Society―all of which point to a fast-modernizing society that was being shaped to a significant extent by Western ideas and institutions, but was also rooted strongly in indigenous systems of thought and learning. The Revolt of 1857 and its aftermath violently disrupted this distinctive modernity. The book draws upon a variety of records―including Urdu poetry written after the revolt was brutally suppressed, proceedings of the trials conducted by the British, private letters and newspaper reports―for a nuanced examination of the events of 1857, challenging many commonly held and often simplistic assumptions. In the process, it details not only the destruction wreaked upon Delhi, but also strategies for survival and early attempts to rebuild and revive individual lives and institutions. Combining immaculate scholarship with extraordinary storytelling, Swapna Liddle has produced an outstanding book of narrative history―on a great city in transition, and on early modern India―that will be read and discussed for decades. | |||
Table of contents : Title Dedication Contents Map of Delhi Mughal Emperors and Contenders to the Mughal Throne British Officials in Charge of the Administration of Delhi Introduction PART ONE: Akbar II: The Beleaguered Emperor 1. A New Power 2. A New Emperor 3. The ‘House of Timur’ 4. Revisiting a Relationship 5. ‘The Abode of War’? 6. The British Power and the New Elite 7. Peace…and Strife 8. The Question of Succession 9. Exile 10. Charles Metcalfe as Resident 11. Keeping Up Appearances 12. The British Enclave 13. Cultural Crossover PART TWO: Winds of Change 14. Increasing Economic Control 15. Removing the Mask 16. Marginalized 17. Domestic Strife, and Rammohan Roy 18. Re-ordering Spaces 19. Religious Identities 20. Not Business as Usual 21. Uncertain Relationships 22. The Fraser Assassination Case PART THREE: Bahadur Shah Zafar: The People’s Emperor 23. The New Emperor and His Court 24. Challenges from Company and Family 25. George Thompson: Advocate of the Mughal Cause 26. Trouble in the Family 27. Two Royal Deaths 28. The People’s Emperor 29. Ties Old and New 30. Unity and Discord in the City 31. Assessing Foreign Rule PART FOUR: A World of Poetry and Education 32. Languages of Culture 33. The World of Poetry 34. Education 35. The Government College 36. The Government College: Early Years 37. Upheaval and Reorganization 38. A New Paradigm for Education 39. The Translation Project, and its Limitations 40. Master Ram Chander and the Advancement of Learning 41. Print and Journalism 42. The Changing World of Poetry 43. New Worlds in Language 44. Questioning the Heritage of the Literary Tradition 45. New Preoccupations PART FIVE: 1857 and Its Aftermath 46. 11 May 1857 47. Suspicion and Terror 48. The New Regime 49. War 50. A City Divided 51. A Cause to Fight For 52. A World Turned Upside Down 53. Nerves and Resources Stretched Thin 54. A City Destroyed 55. Leader of a ‘Muslim Conspiracy’ 56. The City Transformed 57. The Lament Epilogue Acknowledgements Endnotes Select Bibliography Copyright End Page |
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