Wednesday 1 January 2014

The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty, Delhi 1857 by William Dalrymple


There are many reviews up on Amazon explaining why this is a brilliant book on Delhi and the Indian Mutiny of 1857. It is unlikely to be bettered in our generation.

I enjoyed it a lot, but the bias against evangelical Christians in chapter two irked. This bias then reappeared in the author's conclusion. Dalrymple is a wonderful historian, and deserves much praise for what his scholarship has given us. However I felt his treatment of Victorian evangelicals was unwarranted. Some comment was necessary. 

Hence this review.

Brilliant narrative history, stained by a simplistic and offensive bias against evangelical Christians.

As all the other reviewers say, this is an absolutely brilliant book. But there's a stain on the painting: a simplistic and offensive bias against evangelical Christians.

The bias is obvious in Chapter Two, 'Believers and Infidels'. Here the evangelical Anglican vicar Rev. Jennings is depicted in hideous colours. According to Dalrymple he is a man of violence:

'Jennings' plan was to rip up what he regarded as the false faiths of India, by force, if necessary.'

Dalrynmple's sentence enforces the old cliché of the missionary holding the Bible in one hand, a machine gun in the other. However from Dalrymple's text all one can ascertain is that Jennings was hoping that the arrival of the British Empire in India would further the cause of Christianity. There's nothing about 'forced' conversions.

The character assassination of Jennings continues. We learn from Dalrymple of his 'brash and insensitive yet silky unctuous manner – strikingly similar to that of Obaidah Slope in Barchester Towers...' There is no foot note to support this. All we learn from the other people quoted is that Jennings was 'enthusiastic' and a 'bigot', which could simply mean he believed what most Christians have believed for the last two thousand years – that the Christian faith is exclusive.

A couple of pages on and the same bias gets to work on the bishop of Calcutta, Reginald Heber, who, not surprisingly, wanted to see the Christian faith spread. Dalrymple misinterprets one of Heber's hymn to argue that the bishop and others like him thought the Indians were vile. In verse two of a hymn that begins; From Greenland's icy mountains..., Heber pens these lines:

Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile

Any Christian with just the slightest knowledge of their faith would immediately recognise that here Heber is referring to all of humanity; every native of every nation is vile, contaminated with Adam's sin. But Dalrymple uses the hymn to try and get his readers to think that Heber only thinks the natives of India are 'vile'.

The bias is truly shocking a few pages on. Dalrymple is continuing to paint a picture of increasing religious tension as the background to the mutiny. While doing this he seems to condone 'Sati', the practice of a Hindu widow being burnt alive on her husband's funeral pyre, and appears to condemn the British for banning the practice in their determination to 'aggressively and insensitively promote Christianity.'

In this moral universe the good guys are those who see women being burnt alive and walk on the other side in the name of tolerance; the bad guys are missionaries like William Carey who campaigned to get the practice banned. They are 'aggressive' and 'insensitive'. 

This chapter ends with the author calling all Christians fundamentalists, which presumably means evangelicals, as people who inject 'venom' into the world. Writing about Islam and Christianity Dalryple says - '...the fundamentalists of both faiths have needed each other to reinforce each other's prejudices and hatreds. The venom of one provides the lifeblood of the other'.

The idea that a Christian only becomes an evangelical/fundamentalist because of an encounter with a fundamentalist of another faith is extremely simplistic – and fanciful. In the 19th C thousands upon thousands in England and America were converted by the preaching of dogmatic, intolerant Bible believing Christians like Moody, Finney, Booth, Spurgeon and Simeon. These converts became evangelical. Like Jennings they believed in spreading the Gospel. Most of them probably had never met a fundamentalist Muslim or Hindu. They were dogmatic because of the Gospel, not because of another faith. It is disappointing that an author of Dalrymple's abilty should serve up this superior sounding simplistic liberal myth that one fundamentalism breeds another.

As for the use of the word 'venom' to describe the missionary endeavour of Victorian evangelicals in India, this is unfair. Most decent minded people believe that everyone of faith should have the right to seek the conversion of others. This is not a venomous activity, this is what freedom of conscience and religion is all about. The use of the word 'venom' is also offensive. Most Christian missionaries truly believe that lives improve when people follow Jesus Christ. They are dogmatic about this. That's why they sacrifice a lot to go and preach. Dalrymple here is implying that their impact is 'venomous' - poisonous, destructive. This is offensive to the character of missionaries, and to the millions who have benefited from their countless projects to help the poor.

The rest of the book is superb historical narrative. We are largely spared the bias. But then it appears again right at the end. As Dalyrimple concludes the tale he has told so well we have this odd contrast with Zafar, the last Mughal king who failed to take a stand either for or against the British during the mutiny. For Dalrymple Zafar is a 'strikingly liberal and likeable figure when compared to the Victorian Evangelicals whose insensitivity, arrogance, and blindness did much to bring the Uprising of 1857 down upon their own heads.'

As another reviewer has said, it is simplistic to see the Victorian Evangelicals as causing the mutiny. In fact it is very likely that if there had not been a single evangelical Christian in India in 1857 the army – which was not run by evangelicals - would still have wanted the sepoys of Bengal to use the new rifles with the unclean lubricants. So the sepoys, seething with all sorts of grievances, would still have thought the 'Christian' British were wanting to corrupt their faith and would have rebelled. The source of the initial violence of the mutiny was firmly with the sepoys. There is not a murderous evangelical in sight.

Simplistic – and offensive. Most Christians throughout history have wanted to spread the Gospel. It is in the DNA of the church. But Dalrymple smears such activity as being filled with 'insensitivity' and 'arrogance', and, worse, implies that if a Christian shares the Gospel of Jesus Christ seeking the conversion of a Hindu or Muslim, then the Muslim or Hindu has a moral right to react with appalling violence. It's a 'shut up or we'll kill you creed'.

As it has turned out the Victorian Evangelicals, and many other Christians, especially the Roman Catholics, went on to bring immense benefits to India. Jennings' vision, so loathed by this author, saw churches, schools, hospitals, orphanages, hospices, and much more built for the people of the sub-continent. Some are still in use.

And no young widows are being burnt alive.


William Dalrymple is rightly recognised as one of our generation's greatest writers and historians. It is hard to see how anyone will produce a better book on Delhi and the mutiny. It is brilliant history. All the more pity that he has allowed this stain of an unreasonable bias against evangelical Christians to spoil such a fine work. 

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