In historic Company

Get reintroduced to India’s history that you thought you knew, with a lecture by William Dalrymple

History needs an unbiased and well-researched telling to an audience who questions. Influenced by this thought, Eshan Sharma, founder of Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative, aims to engage the audience with a study of the past and promote critical thinking through heritage walks and online lectures. Next on the platform’s schedule is a lecture by William Dalrymple on his recent book, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company, about the sinister and violent seizure of an entire Subcontinent by a militarised multinational company that replaced the reign of the Mughal empire.

Eshan Sharma

“Everyone talks about a British conquest but the East India Company was not the British Government, it was a private corporation, run out of one small office in London. And I think that’s been forgotten; we’ve turned it into a national story about the British and India.” The historian continues, “It’s a crucial time now more than ever before to understand this because we’re in a period where we fear the power of corporations. We wonder how we came to a situation where a corporation that is not a part of the government and is only answerable to shareholders can come to such power.”

Part of Dalrymple’s research include travelling across India to places where the empire once ruled including, the Red Fort and Jama Masjid in Delhi, Kolkata — to the Company’s headquarters, Murshidabad — to the capital of the nawabs of Bengal, Tipu Sultan’s base at Srirangapatnam, and other locations. He explains, “Colonial history is still largely written from only British documents, which is unacceptable because you can’t possibly tell the whole story using just this. There are very rich sources from both sides.” He also visited archives like the National Archives of India in Kolkata, The British Library in London, Patna’s Khuda Baksh Oriental Public Library as well as the libraries in Tonk, Rajasthan. Dalrymple worked with translator Bruce Wannell on scarcely used documents in Persian, Urdu and other languages, as well as chronicles, autobiographies, biographies and memoirs from the period, which had been unused before. “It’s only by putting the two together, the Indian and British sides of the story, that you get a holistic image of what happened. And with this, the book has a new perspective on that part of Indian history.”

On: May 6, 5 pm
Log on to: Karwaan: The Heritage Exploration Initiative on YouTube

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