Exploring Hyderabad with Author and Historian William Dalrymple

«This weekend's Sunday at the Met will explore topics related to the recently opened exhibition Sultans of Deccan India, 1500–1700: Opulence and Fantasy. The afternoon program will feature a much-anticipated lecture on the city of Hyderabad by historian and author William Dalrymple, as well as an original dance performance, Veiled Moon, by Preeti Vasudevan and her dance company, Thresh, inspired by the life of the Deccan poetess Mah Laqa Bai Chanda.»

Left: William Dalrymple

The Deccan and, in particular, Hyderabad are favorite topics of Dalrymple, and both are explored in the epilogue of the exhibition catalogue as well as his 2002 book, White Mughals. The book focuses on a star-crossed love story in the late eighteenth century between James Achilles Kirkpatrick, a British resident at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad, and the very young and very beautiful Khair-un Nissa, the niece of the Nizam's diwan (prime minister). Dalrymple unveils a juicy story of secret and forbidden romance, one which was revealed to the author through years of extensive research that led him to clandestine treasure-filled bookshops in Hyderabad alleyways, encrypted letters in the Kirkpatrick archive in London, and the heartbreak of monsoon-soaked census records made illegible by thick green mold.

I recently spoke on the phone with Dalrymple while he was on his farm outside New Delhi, where he was getting ready for a trip to Hyderabad to film a BBC documentary on the subject of White Mughals. (This documentary will also show footage taken in the Sultans of Deccan India exhibition galleries with Met Curator Navina Haidar, a good friend of Dalrymple).

"When White Mughals came out, there was all kinds of media and press, movies and documentaries that never quite worked out, until now," he told me during our conversation. But when it rains, it pours: along with the BBC program, a feature-length film version of the novel is underway that will be directed by actor Ralph Fiennes and produced by Frank Doelger, who has served as producer and director for Game of Thrones. What a remarkable team to bring this dramatic story to the big screen!

When I asked Dalrymple why he was drawn to the Deccan, he responded that it is "surprising in every way—a Shia Persianate fusion that is mixed with deep southern Hindu Sanskritic, producing a mix quite different to anything seen before. There is the unexpected mix of the British folding into this culture, and the result is visible through arts, literature, philosophy, poetry, painting, and history."

Dalrymple went on to explain that in this period in Hyderabad's history, there were many intercultural weddings, much like the relationship between the characters in White Mughals. (Records show that during the 1780s this statistic was about one in three.) James Kirkpatrick was considered to have "gone native" with his marriage to Khair-un Nissa and close relationship to the Nizam, but he still answered to the East India Company. "Kirkpatrick had a kind of double life," said Dalrymple. "He converted to Islam, but continued to live in the British Residency, a structure contemporaneous to and very similar in appearance to the White House."

British Residency, Hyderabad, constructed 1803–6. Formerly the home of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the Residency is now part of Osmania Women's College. Photograph courtesy of Antonio Martinelli

In spite of the adage coined by Rudyard Kipling, "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," White Mughals illustrates how the British were integrated into Deccani culture, rather than kept apart from it. According to Dalrymple: "This period was unique in its dissolution of boundaries. The British became part of the same process as anyone else in the mixed culture. They were artistically mixed, intellectually mixed, philosophically mixed, as well as sexually."

Among the most unusual aspects of the romance between Kirkpatrick and Khair-un Nissa is the high-profile nature of the lovers, and, because of this, the existence today of various contemporary biographies, letters, and other archived material (such as the Kirkpatrick archive at the British Library) that help to reveal the story. Unlike most of the private romances between English men and their Indian wives, so many details in the case of White Mughals—the amorous rendezvous of the lovers, Khair-un Nissa's unwed pregnancy by Kirkpatrick while engaged to another man, accusations of murder and blackmail—all spring to life from historical documents. As Dalrymple succinctly puts it, "The living rooms and bedrooms have become available to us in a way that does not usually exist."

William Dalrymple is one of those wonderful historian storytellers whose words bring the past alive and allow one to dream. It therefore is no surprise that the White Mughals story is being interpreted into new formats. Surely it's time for a widespread awareness and exploration of the rich culture of the Deccan, an area that is ripe for further exploration and exposure.

One can't help but see some similarities between the dual English-India combination in Dalrymple's book and his own life. Perhaps the author saw a bit of himself in these characters, as he himself has lived in India for decades (Dalrymple and his family balance their time between London and Delhi), and in the course of his research for this project also discovered that he, too, has Indian blood in his veins. When asked if he collaborated on projects with his wife, the artist Olivia Fraser, Dalrymple responded that "we work extremely closely on related areas, but do not collaborate formally. She makes maps and other graphics in my books. She is a brilliant editor, while I am color-blind, so my advice is sorely dismissed."

As for what's next for William? He has a new book coming out in 2016 on the subject of the rise and dominance of the East India Company, so stay tuned for The Anarchy: How a Corporation Replaced the Mughal Empire, 1756–1803.

Sunday at the Met—Sultans of Deccan India, 1500–1700: Opulence and Fantasy will take place on Sunday, April 26, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. in the Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. This event is free with Museum admission.