In The Last Mughal, William Dalrymple constructs a vision of nineteenth-century India in which cultural and political vitality is almost entirely monopolized by the Mughal court, while the Hindu population, despite being the demographic majority and the principal force behind the 1857 revolt, is relegated to the margins of historical significance. His narrative gives the impression that India’s pre-colonial past was the domain of Islamic rulers alone, with Hindu agency reduced to either silence or stereotype.
This interpretive slant is nowhere more evident than in Dalrymple’s hagiographic treatment of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the titular “last Mughal.” Rather than offering a critical account grounded in historical rigor, Dalrymple indulges in lavish, near-poetic praise for a figure whose actual influence during his reign was tenuous at best. In the introduction to the book, Dalrymple writes:
“[Zafar] succeeded in creating around him in Delhi a court of great brilliance. Personally, he was one of the most talented, tolerant and likable of his dynasty: a skilled calligrapher, a profound writer on Sufism, a discriminating patron of painters of miniatures, and an inspired creator of gardens and an amateur architect...”
Dalrymple continues, extolling Zafar as a “very serious mystical poet” who composed verse not only in Urdu and Persian, but also in Braj Bhasha and Punjabi. He further declares that under Zafar’s patronage there occurred “arguably the greatest literary renaissance in modern Indian history.”
Such effusive praise borders on romantic myth-making. The reality is far less luminous. Bahadur Shah Zafar, though an aesthete of modest talent, lived the greater part of his life as a powerless figurehead confined to the Red Fort. An opium addict by his own admission, Zafar played no role in military or administrative matters. He neither governed nor defended his people, and certainly did not lead the Revolt of 1857. To present him as the symbolic fulcrum of the uprising is, at best, a historical distortion, and at worst, a deliberate attempt to recast a pan-Indian struggle as a Mughal-led movement.
Dalrymple’s portrayal of the 1857 Revolt further reveals his selective emphasis. While dedicating hundreds of pages to the internal affairs of the Mughal court, he all but ignores or trivializes the contributions of key Hindu leaders—Rani Lakshmibai, Nana Saheb, Kunwar Singh, Tantia Tope, and Amar Singh—who were instrumental in leading the revolt across vast regions of northern and central India. These figures, where mentioned at all, are relegated to the footnotes of history. Meanwhile, the sepoys—many of them Hindu—are described with palpable disdain as “a large undisciplined army of boorish and violent peasants from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh.” Mangal Pandey, whose act of defiance triggered the mutiny, is summarily dismissed as irrelevant.
The question must be asked: why does Dalrymple reserve sympathy and admiration for the declining Mughal aristocracy, but not for the Hindu resistance that formed the backbone of the anti-colonial revolt? Why are the poetic talents of Zafar given such attention, while the courage and leadership of figures like Lakshmibai and Tantia Tope are ignored?
This imbalance extends to Dalrymple’s broader interpretation of Indian history and identity. In Chapter 12, he refers to Agra as “the old Mughal city,” despite its ancient pre-Islamic origins, including references in the Mahabharata. He laments that in contemporary Agra, statues of Indian heroes such as Shivaji, Rani of Jhansi, and Subhas Chandra Bose have replaced those of Mughal emperors:
“Today, if you visit the old Mughal city of Agra... note how the roundabouts are full of statues of the Rani of Jhansi, Shivaji and even Subhas Chandra Bose; but not one image of any Mughal emperor has been erected anywhere in the city since independence.”
His lament reveals a nostalgic attachment to imperial symbols at the expense of nationalist icons. That only Mughal rulers are called “Great” in his work speaks volumes about his underlying framework.
Dalrymple also wades into the politically charged waters of the Ayodhya dispute, calling the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992 a result of colonial propaganda, as though the well-documented destruction of Hindu temples by medieval Islamic rulers were a fabrication. He writes:
“For many Indians today, rightly or wrongly, the Mughals are still perceived... as sensual, decadent, temple-destroying invaders—something that was forcefully and depressingly demonstrated by the whole episode of the demolition of the Baburi Masjid at Ayodhya in 1992.”
But the claim that Mughal iconoclasm is a colonial myth is untenable. The destruction of thousands of temples across India is not an invention of British propaganda but a matter of historical record, found in Persian chronicles, inscriptions, and even court documents of the time.
At its core, The Last Mughal is a work of imperial nostalgia. It mourns the decline of a dynasty that had long ceased to be politically relevant and paints a sepia-toned picture of a lost Indo-Islamic cultural order. But it does so at the cost of marginalizing the vast and complex civilizational contributions of Hindu India. The effect is not merely one of imbalance—it is one of historical erasure.
Dalrymple writes not as a dispassionate chronicler of the past, but as a modern bard of empire—romanticizing the Mughal court while dismissing the Hindu majority as either uncultured or violent. In this regard, he does not stand outside the colonial tradition; he continues it. The Last Mughal, though praised for its narrative flair, fails as a serious work of history. It is, in the end, a literary tribute masquerading as scholarship—an ode not to India, but to an empire that never truly represented it.
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