THE POWER OF PLACE
INDIA
HOW INDIA HAS CHANGED ME WILLIAM DALRYMPLE
“ Delhi never feels pedestrian. It always feels bonkers”
I NEVER INTENDED TO COME TO INDIA. I originally set out to be an archaeologist in the Middle East, but the dig I was assigned to in Iraq closed down — purportedly due to a nest of British spies. So, I joined a friend who was heading to India. I had no particular connection to the country, but when I arrived, it was one of those moments in life when everything changes. Thirty years later, I’m still here. A constantly changing kaleidoscope of things has kept me attached, and a whole variety of careers have been facilitated by being here. My first job, teaching, took me from the Himalayas down to the far southern tip of country. By the time I was two stops in, India had unveiled itself in all its complexity and beauty — I was addicted.
I’M A CHANGED PERSON, HAVING LIVED HERE. Just as I now look different from how I did when I turned up in India aged 18, I now think very differently too. I came from an extremely Catholic Scottish background. I went to monastic schools, my uncle’s a priest and my brother became a priest, too — we took our Catholicism seriously. Here, everyone believes in different things. Even within Hinduism, there are million ways of practising, different gods to worship and a choice of festivals to observe. India is so vast and varied in a way that Britain isn’t for me; it’s an oddly homogenous place despite its history of immigration and empire. India has made me more open-minded than would have been possible living in Europe. India is a true multiculture — it’s massively pluralistic in every sense: racially, religiously, climatically, geographically. It’s a living lesson against dogmatism.
DELHI IS MUCH UNDERRATED, EVEN WITHIN INDIA. It’s regarded as a difficult place to live and as a big, polluted city — although it’s been glorious during lockdown. For me, as a historian and a writer, Delhi is fascinating. It has such a tangible
sense of history, with monuments lying around on roundabouts, and tombs, palaces and old city walls wherever you turn. The Delhi Archives is also located here — housing a lifetime of documents that have barely been read — and when I need a break from my research, there’s plenty going on elsewhere. Delhi has transformed in the last couple of decades from a government town to become a place that’s home to India’s publishing and media industries, and many of its best writers. It has an amazing classical music and dance scene. I’m never bored here. In England, on a dreary winter’s day, things can feel pedestrian. Delhi never feels pedestrian. It always feels bonkers.
I’VE BEEN TRAVELLING AROUND INDIA FOR 30 YEARS AND THERE’S STILL A GOOD QUARTER OF THE COUNTRY I’VE YET TO SEE. There are major monuments and mountain ranges, extraordinary places in the Himalayas I’m dying to visit. India is a continent rather than a country — you could never run out of things to explore here. I feel like a child in a sweet shop or a miser in a bank vault sometimes. There’s an almost infinite amount to take in, see and understand. The book I’m currently working on is about the diffusion of Indian culture out of India: the way Buddhism took over China, and the way Hinduism took over Southeast Asia. Plus, how Indian mathematics travelled first to Baghdad and then to Renaissance Europe, giving us the decimal system and the numerals we use today — I didn’t know all this until a few years ago. Here I am in my mid-50s, still discovering amazing, world-changing information whenever I open a book about this country.
William Dalrymple is the author of numerous travel and popular history books about India. His latest book is The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company.
williamdalrymple.uk.com
Jul/Aug 2020 77
IMAGE: GETTY
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149
