White Mughals (77 page)

Tawaif
✷ The cultivated and urbane dancing girls and courtesans who were such a feature of late Mughal society and culture

Thali
✷ Tray

’Umbara
✷ Covered elephant howdah

Unani
✷ Ionian (or Byzantine Greek) medicine, originally passed to the Islamic world through Byzantine exiles in Persia and still practised in India today

’Urs
✷ Festival day

Vakil
✷ Ambassador or representative (though in modern usage the word means merely lawyer)

Vilayat
✷ Province, homeland

Yakshi
✷ Female Hindu fertility nymphs, often associated with sacred trees and pools

Zamindar
✷ Landholder or local ruler

Zenana
✷ Harem, or women’s quarters

1
Mark Zebrowski,
Gold, Silver and Bronze from Mughal India
(London, 1997)

2
Edward Strachey, ‘The Romantic Marriage of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, Sometime British Resident at the Court of Hyderabad’, in
Blackwood’s Magazine
, July 1893.

3
That said, though it has yet to be pulled together into a single coherent thesis, there is a growing body of work which has begun to show the degree to which the East India Company officials of the eighteenth century, like the Portuguese before them, assimilated themselves to Mughal culture. Nearly thirty years ago, Percival Spear’s
The Nabobs
(Cambridge, 1963) painted a picture of hookah-smoking eighteenth-century Englishmen with Indian
bibis
living it up in Calcutta, while their counterparts in the backwoods
mofussil
towns and more distant centres of Mughal culture made a more profound transition, dressing in Mughal court dress, intermarrying with the Mughal aristocracy and generally attempting to cross cultural boundaries as part of their enjoyment of, and participation in, late Mughal society. Subsequent work has refined this picture. Much of this work has centred on Lucknow, where Desmond Young, Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, Seema Alavi, Muzaffar Alavi, Jean-Marie Lafont and Maya Jasanoff have between them painted a remarkably detailed picture of a hybrid and inclusive culture where men like Claude Martin, Antoine Polier, Benoît de Boigne, John Wombwell and General William Palmer all, to differing extents, embraced that city’s notably hedonistic take on late Mughlai civilisation. Desmond Young,
Fountain of Elephants
(London, 1959); Rosie Llewellyn-Jones,
A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the City of Lucknow
(New Delhi, 1982),
A Very Ingenious Man: Claude Martin in Early Colonial India
(New Delhi, 1992) and
Engaging Scoundrels: True Tales of Old Lucknow
(New Delhi, 2000); Muzaffar Alam and Seema Alavi,
A European Experience of the Mughal Orient: The I’jaz i-Arslani (Persian Letters, 1773-1779) of Antoine-Louis Henri Polier
(New Delhi, 2001); Jean-Marie Lafont, ‘The French in Lucknow in the Eighteenth Century’, in Violette Graff (ed.),
Lucknow: Memories of a City
(New Delhi, 1997) and
Indika: Essays in Indo-French Relations 1630-1976
(New Delhi, 2000); Maya Jasanoff’s essay on art-collecting and hybridity in Lucknow will appear in 2002 in
Past & Present.
Toby Falk, Mildred Archer and myself have found evidence of a similar process of transculturation in Delhi, particularly in the circle of Sir David Ochterlony, William Fraser and James Skinner that formed around the British Residency from around 1805 until about the time of Fraser’s death in 1835: Mildred Archer and Toby Falk,
India Revealed: The Art and Adventures of James and William Fraser 1801-35
(London, 1989); William Dalrymple,
City of Djinns
(London, 1993). Seema Alavi has also shown the extent to which James Skinner, half-Scottish, half-Rajput, mixed both cultures to create an ‘amalgamation of Mughal and European military ethics’, as well as personally acculturating himself ‘in the manners of high class Muslim society[, adopting] many of the customs especially the hookah and Mughal cuisine’: Seema Alavi,
The Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition in Northern India 1770-1830
(New Delhi, 1995), esp. Chapter 6. Skinner has also been the subject of study by Mildred Archer in
Between Battles: The Album of Colonel James Skinner
(London, 1982) and Christopher Hawes in
Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India 1773-1833
(London, 1996). Chris Bayly has shown how useful inter-racial sexual relationships were for gaining knowledge and information about the other side, while Durba Ghosh’s important work on the
bibis
has shown just how widespread this sort of cross-cultural sexual relationship was at this period: C.A. Bayly,
Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India 1780-1870
(Cambridge, 1996); Durba Ghosh, ‘Colonial Companions: Bibis, Begums, and Concubines of the British in North India 1760-1830’ (unpublished Ph.D., Berkeley, 2000). Ghosh has also demonstrated the extent to which this assimilation was a two-way process, affecting the Indian women who came into close contact with Europeans as much as it did the Europeans themselves. Meanwhile, Amin Jaffer’s work has shown the degree to which the domestic material environment Company servants inhabited tended to be something of an Anglo-Mughal amalgam, while in a parallel study Lizzie Collingham has emphasised the assimilation of the British body to its Mughal environment. Linda Colley has demonstrated the degree to which English captives—particularly those imprisoned by Tipu Sultan at Seringapatam—embraced Islam by a combination of force and choice, and the degree to which they took on different aspects of Indian ways of living: Amin Jaffer,
Furniture from British India and Ceylon
(London, 2001); E.M. Collingham,
Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj
(Cambridge, 2001); Linda Colley, ‘Going Native, Telling Tales: Captivity, Collaborations and Empire’, in
Past & Present
, No. 168, August 2000, p.172. Colley’s forthcoming work,
Captives
, will expand on this theme.

4
Mirza Abu Taleb Khan (trans. C. Stewart),
The Travels of Mirza Abu Taleb Khan in Asia, Africa, and Europe during the years 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, and 1803
(London, 1810).

5
Michael Fisher,
The Travels of Dean Mahomet: An Eighteenth Century Journey Through India
(Berkeley, 1997), p.xxi.

1
‘Report of an Examination instituted by the direction of his Excellency the most noble Governor General, Fort St. George 7th Nov 1801’ OIOC HM464. For Government House Madras see Sten Nilsson,
European Architecture in India 1750-1850
(London, 1968) and Mark Bence-Jones,
Palaces of the Raj
(London, 1973).

2
Mountstuart Elphinstone: OIOC, Mss Eur F88 Box13/16[b], f.92.

3
Annemarie Schimmel,
Islam in the Indian Subcontinent
(Leiden-Koln, 1980), p.111.

4
OIOC HM464, op. cit., f.368.

5
Wellington,
Supplementary Despatches & Memoranda, Vol. II
, p.174, ‘Memorandum of Conversations which passed between Seyd-oo-Dowlah, Captain Ogg, and Colonel Wellesley, and between Meer Allum and Colonel Wellesley, Dummul 26th Sept 1800’.

6
Quoted by Sir Penderel Moon,
The British Conquest and Dominion of India
(London, 1989), p.277.

7
Stanley Lane-Poole,
Aurangzeb and the Decay of the Mughal Empire
(London, 1890), p.19.

8
Castanheda,
Historia do Descobrimento e Conquista da India peolos Portugueses
, Vol. I, III-43, p.107, and quoted in Maria A.L. Cruz, ‘Exiles and Renegades in Early Sixteenth Century Portuguese India’, in
The Indian Economic and Social History Review
, XXIII, 3 (1986), p.9.

9
J.H. Van Linschoten,
The Voyage of John Huyghen Van Linschoten to the East Indies
(2 vols, London, 1885; original Dutch edition 1598), p.205. 10 Ibid., p.213.

11
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (trans. V. Ball, ed. W. Crooke),
Travels in India
(2 vols, Oxford, 1925). 12 Linschoten, op. cit., Vol. 1, pp.207-8.

13
Ibid., pp.206-10, 212-14. See also M.N. Pearson,
The New Cambridge History of India 1.1: The Portuguese in India
(Cambridge, 1987), pp.98-119.

14
Quoted in Pearson, op. cit., p.87.

15
Linschoten, op. cit., Vol. 1, p.184.

16
Geoffrey Parker,
The Military Revolution
(Oxford, 1988), p.129.

17
See Cruz, op. cit., p.11.

18
G.V. Scammell, ‘European Exiles, Renegades and Outlaws and the Maritime Economy of Asia c.1500-1750’, in
Modern Asian Studies
, Vol. 26, No. 4 (1992), pp.641-61.

19
See A.R. Disney,
Twilight of the Pepper Empire: Portuguese Trade in South West India in the Early Seventeenth Century
(Harvard, 1978), p.21.

20
From a manuscript in the OIOC by Mirza Mohd Bux ‘Ashoob’,
‘Tarikh i-Shadaat e Farrukhsiyar va juloos e Mohd Shah’
, f.266a, quoted by S. Inayat A. Zaidi, ‘French Mercenaries in the Armies of South Asian States 1499-1803’, in
Indo-French Relations: History and Perspectives
(Delhi, 1990), pp.51-78.

21
Sanjay Subrahmaniyam,
The Portuguese Empire in Asia: A Political and Economic History
(London, 1993), p.254.

22
William Foster (ed.),
Early Travels in India 1583-1619
(London, 1921) pp.203-4.

23
Nabil Matar,
Islam in Britain 1558-1685
(Cambridge, 1998), p.7.

24
Ibid., p.37.

25
Ms Bodley Or.430, f.47 recto.

26
Thomas Pellow (ed. Robert Brown),
The Adventures of Thomas Pellow, of Penryn, Mariner
(London, 1890), p.103; also quoted in Matar, op. cit., p.39.

27
Samuel C. Chew,
The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England During the Renaissance
(New York, 1937), pp.373-4.

28
Zaidi, op. cit., p.74, n.112.

29
Nabil Matar,
Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery
(New York, 1999).

30
Quoted in ibid., p.28. 31 Ibid., p.42.

32
William Foster (ed.),
The English Factories in India 1618-1669
(13 vols, London, 1906-27), Vol. 1, pp.vi, 39-40.

33
Dr John Fryer,
A New Account of East India and Persia Letters Being Nine Years Travels Begun 1672 and finished 1681
(3 vols, London, 1698), Vol. 1, p.83.

34
Foster,
English Factories
, op. cit., Vol. 3, p.360.

35
Ibid., Vol. 4, p.99.

36
J.A. de Mandelslo (trans. J. Davis),
The Voyages and Travels of J. Albert de Mandelslo: The Voyages & Travels of the Ambasssadors sent by Frederick Duke of Holstein, to the Great Duke of Muscovy, and the King of Persia
(London, 1662), Vol. 3, p.27.

37
Alexander Hamilton,
A New Account of the East Indies
, (2 vols, London, 1930), Vol. 1, pp.8-9.

38
Foster,
English Factories
, op. cit., quoted in Philip Davies,
Splendours of the Raj: British Architecture in India 1660-1947
(London, 1985).

39
John Jourdain (ed. W. Foster),
Journal of John Jourdain 1608-17
(London, 1905), p.162.

40
Foster,
English Factories
, op. cit., Vol. 8, passim. Also OIOC E/3/21, OC2121 (f126), OC2150 (f221), OC2151 (f224), OC2153 (f228), OC2154 (f232), OC2155 (f234), OC2156 (f236).

41
Foster,
English Factories
, op. cit., Vol. 8, p.304.

42
Ibid., Vol. 3, p.345.

43
Cited in H.D. Love,
Vestiges of Old Madras
(2 vols, London, 1913), Vol. 2, p.299.

44
Scammell, op. cit., pp.643, 646.

45
Philip B. Wagoner, ‘ “Sultan among Hindu Kings”: Dress, Titles and the Islamicization of Hindu culture at Vijayanagar’, in
Journal of Asian Studies
, Vol. 55, No. 4 (November 1996), pp.851-80.

46
Chester Beatty Library 9.681, ‘A Young Prince and his Courtesans’, in Linda York Leach,
Mughal and Other Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library
(London, 1995), Vol. 2, pp.948-9.

47
Kirkpatrick’s conversion to Islam is the best-attested of such conversions for marriage purposes, but it is clear from his letters that William Gardner also had to undergo a similar ceremony, as, very probably, did William Palmer. The practice was no doubt a great deal more widespread than is apparent from the sources, which only go into detail on such points in exceptional circumstances.

48
Colley, ‘Going Native, Telling Tales’, op. cit., p.172.

49
P.J. Marshall, ‘Cornwallis Triumphant: War in India and the British Public in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in Lawrence Freeman, Paul Hayes and Robert O’Neill (eds),
War, Strategy and International Politics
(Oxford, 1992), pp.70-1.

50
James Scurry,
The Captivity, Sufferings and Escape of James Scurry, who was detained a prisoner during ten years, in the dominions of Haidar Ali and Tippoo Saib
(London, 1824), pp.252-3.

51
See Jaffer, op. cit., p.36.

52
Claudius Buchanan,
Memoir on the Expediency of an Eccleciastical Establishment for British India; both as a means of Perpetuating the Christian Religion Among Our Own Countrymen; And as a foundation for the Ultimate Civilisation of the Natives
(London, 1805), pp.15ff.

53
Sadly this much-repeated and thoroughly delightful story may well be apocryphal: I have certainly been unable to trace it back further than Edward Thompson’s
The Life of Charles Lord Metcalfe
(London, 1937), p.101, where it is described as ‘local tradition … this sounds like folklore’. In his will (OIOC L/AG/34/29/37), Ochterlony only mentions one
bibi
, ‘Mahruttun, entitled Moobaruck ul Nissa Begum and often called Begum Ochterlony’, who was the mother of his two daughters, although his son Roderick Peregrine Ochterlony was clearly born of a different
bibi
. Nevertheless it is quite possible that the story could be true: I frequently found old Delhi traditions about such matters confirmed by research, and several Company servants of the period kept harems of this size. Judging by Bishop Heber’s description of him, Ochterlony was clearly Indianised enough to have done so.