Book review: William Dalrymple's The Anarchy is a thoroughly enjoyable read

Historians may find gaps in it, but William Dalrymple's ambitious history of the East India Company is worth investing in, finds Omkar Goswami

Only an audaciously brave person without formal training in history can dare to write a 557-page tome on the East India Company’s conquest of India from the second quarter of the 18th to the mid-19th century — a broken-up India contested by many rivals and accompanied by wanton lawlessness, anarchy and pillage. An India whose capital Delhi the Urdu poet Mir Taqi Mir described thus: “Where only ruined walls and doorways stand / Sikhs, Marathas, thieves, pickpockets, beggars, kings all prey on us / Happy he is who has no wealth, this is the one true wealth today” [quoted in p.274].

William Dalrymple has done just that in The Anarchy. In a fast paced and eminently readable way, he has given us a feeling of the time — of the machinations and actions between the Company and various Indian kings and chieftains, of the battles fought, and of how, in an unpredictable but eventually fortuitous way, the Company came to control vast chunks of land from Madras and Mysore in the south, to Bengal, Bihar, Benaras, Awadh, the Doab and then all the way up to Delhi.

Consider the cast of main characters: Joseph Francois Dupleix, Robert Clive, Siraj-ud-Daula, Mir Jafar, Mir Qasim, Shah Alam, Najib Khan Yusufzai, Ahmed Shah Durrani, Ghulam Qadir Khan the Rohilla, Shuja ud-Daula, Philip Francis, Warren Hastings, Edmund Burke, Haidar Ali, Tipu Sultan, the brothers Wellesley (Richard as the Governor General and Arthur, subsequently the Duke of Wellington, as an army commander), Daulat Rao Scindia, Tukoji Holkar, Nana Phadnavis and the Marathas… and more. Consider the vast swathe of geography. And you will realise that it is impossible to fashion a comprehensive review of the book without it stretching to several pages.

Instead, I have decided to focus on a significant chunk that covers the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam (born 1728; died 1806), immortalised by a wicked contemporary ditty — Sultanat-e-Shah Alam, Az Dilli ta Palam, or the empire of Shah Alam stretched from Delhi to Palam.

The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence and The Pillage of an Empire | Author: William Dalrymple | Publisher: Bloomsbury | Pages: 576 | Price: Rs 699

Vacillating, kind to his own detriment, entirely dependent on the support of other armies, and often on the run, Shah Alam is usually described as a weak and supplicant ruler. More ruled upon than ruling. Dalrymple recognises these aspects and, yet, presents a more sympathetic picture of this man’s travails than has been done earlier.

Born as Ali Gauhar, he was raised in effective captivity within the Red Fort. Thanks to never-ending court intrigues, the 26-year-old poetry-loving Gauhar was freed to become Emperor Shah Alam, so long as he genuflected to his supremely ambitious Vizier, Imad ul-Mulk. Effectively under house arrest for some years, Shah Alam finally found the courage to fight his way out of the Red Fort, cross the Yamuna and escape eastwards. Knowing that a return to Delhi meant certain death, he decided to move on to Bengal and take control of that territory. As in most things, he was too late. 

The Battle of Plassey was over. Siraj ud-Daula was dead. Mir Jafar had been replaced by Mir Qasim as the Nawab of Bengal. The Company was in full control. Shah Alam made several attempts to enter Bengal and take Murshidabad. To no avail.

In the meanwhile, the relationship between the Company and Mir Qasim deteriorated beyond redemption. So he fashioned an agreement between Shuja ud-Daula of Avadh and Shah Alam to extirpate the wretched Company. Thus happened the Battle of Buxar in October 1764. Miserable military tactics by Indians and superior discipline of the Company’s troops spelt the end of the three armies of the Mughal world, “confirmed the Company’s control of Bengal… and opened the way for them to extend their influence far inland to the west”.

Shah Alam was wily enough to patch up his relations with the Company — leading to his conferring the Diwani (revenue-collecting rights) of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to Robert Clive in Allahabad on 12 October 1765.

Soon, Shah Alam had enough of being a refugee in Allahabad, and wanted to return to Delhi. In April 1771 he began his journey up the Doab, and re-occupied the throne at Red Fort on 6 January 1772, ending his 12 years in exile. To rule a wretchedly devastated city but as an emperor nevertheless.

Some minor battle successes followed. Then came a terrible tragedy. In July 1788, Ghulam Qadir, a Rohilla Afghan who Shah Alam had earlier adopted and treated like a son, entered an undefended Red Fort. He pillaged the fort for money and jewellery and, then, in August 1788, blinded Shah Alam. Eventually, the Marathas under Mahadji Scindia came to Delhi’s rescue. They defeated Qadir’s forces, seized and killed him excruciatingly and sent Qadir’s gouged out eyes to Shah Alam.

The denouement was the Battle of Delhi in September 1803, when British troops under Lord Lake defeated the Scindia’s army and captured the city. Shah Alam — who had witnessed it all from Nadir Shah’s sack to the Battle of Buxar to giving the Diwani to the Company at Allahabad to being blinded by a psychotic — was now under British protection “with a Company pension [where] he could at least spend his last years on the throne of his ancestors, in his beloved Red Fort, in comfort and safety, and with some measure of dignity”...

There is much more in The Anarchy than Shah Alam. I suspect some hardcore historians may have criticisms of the book. There are some gaps as well, such as the Peshwa influence in Pune being broken by Mountstuart Elphinstone after the Battle of Khadki. Even so, this book is a thoroughly enjoyable read. And worth investing in.

Omkar Goswami is an economist, economic historian and the chairman of CERG Advisory