William Dalrymple: Fact

“Actually, when you have been in the country for a long time… whether it’s an Indian kid going to live in California working in a software company or whether its me coming to live here as historian and writer; to a certain extent you become a part of the country, and to a certain extent you remain always the person you were with the set of circumstances, history or personal history. So, I don’t think I can ever totally become Indian, but after twenty years I have certainly taken many of the Indian elements. In fact I am sitting talking to you right now in my cotton pajamas and at lunch time I will probably have dal and rice. In various ways I have taken on the life of Delhi; I think I am in the lucky position, in that I can talk to both worlds.”

William Dalrymple

In Amrita Ghosh, "Author in Focus: An Interview with Dalrymple".

Life , World , Way , History

“Everybody has their own India and I think it’s a nonsense construction, “a real India”. The real India might be the India of the villages and certainly there’s a lot to be said of the fact that India’s heart lies in its villages. But I live 5 miles down the road from Gurgaon with kyscrapers and software companies and backoffice projects and call-centers. And that’s a very real India too, so I think “real India” doesn’t make much sense-- anymore than the real US with apple pie and Thanksgiving and family around campfires; is that anymore real than Manhattan?”

William Dalrymple

In Amrita Ghosh, "Author in Focus: An Interview with Dalrymple".

Family , Thinking , Sense , Heart

“The motives of people like Dalrymple, those who wilfully set out to deny the facts of the destruction of the Hindu civilisation of India, are the opposite. Their denial of the large-scale destruction and denigration of Hindu religion and culture by the Muslim raiders, invaders and conquerors of India is motivated by the deep-seated political aim of the Independence movement to brook no divide between Hindu and Muslim. It was for its time and for all time a noble aim. That was one of the things V. S. Naipaul said to the BJP gathering--that the project of Nehru and Gandhi to avoid going into the import of that history was in itself positively motivated. There is never any justification for one community in India to conduct a pogrom against another. Not then, not now. But surely the construction of history should be truthful. Suppression can only exacerbate the anger.”

William Dalrymple

Farrukh Dhondy, Does Willy Get It Wilfully Wrong?, Outlook India, https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/does-willy-get-it-wilfully-wrong/223746
About William Dalrymple

Religion , Time , History , Anger