At the heart of the story is an unheard of romance between James Achilles Kirkpatrick, a long time resident of the Company at Hyderabad and Khair–un –Nissa a Hyderabadi Deccani aristocratic woman in strict purdah. A large chunk of the story concerns their rather unusual romance concerning their respective stations in life – Kirkpatrick was the British Resident, akin to the ambassador of the East India Company to the Nizam’s court and a Christian and Khair – Un – Nissa a Muslim in purdah. Invariably their liaison had political as well as well as religious connotations which could never be fully resolved. Caught up between political and religious intrigue, calamity is never far and the couple’s domestic life is marred with tragedy, and especially so the life of Khair –un –Nissa, who according to the book married around sixteen and before her widowhood at the age of 21 had given birth to two children, and had died by the age of 27.

However to reduce the book to a mere love story however exotic the characters is to minimize the impact of the book. The larger canvas of the book is its attempt to show that the “ White Mughals” through their lives demonstrated in spite of their quaint eccentricities and even excesses that it was possible for different cultures t co exist, learn from and live together. To do that, Dalrymple strings together characters like the Kirkpatrick brothers, Sir David Ochterlony – He of the Kolkata monument, William Hickey, the diarist , William Gardner- of the Gardner’s Horse regiment , army commanders like Hindoo Stuart to demonstrate a way of life that was not uncommon in the early decades of the nineteenth century before the jackboots of the imperialism which we so well know and despise.

Sitting in the early decades of the twenty first century , it looks fascinating to examine the lives of the characters that populate the book and the twist and turns of their life. The facts are presented matter of factly – it was considered “fast travel” to get from Machalipatnam(near Vijaywada) to Kolkata in two weeks, where mail traveled through runners called harkaras , stationed non stop so that the mail never got held up because it was passed from hand to hand like relay race and where the travel options were limited to traveling overland on bullock cart or elephant or wagons or choosing a “fast ship”.

William Dalrymple’s exhaustive research ensures that one can hardly fault him on fact. He in fact brings out once again, what has always been known, that no people who engaged with India for any length of time can not be affected by it- not even the imperious, aloof and class conscious British. This is all fine and one can put the book down with just the simple conclusion perfectly true that India has a rich and composite culture that embraces any one. But Dalrymple’s own conclusion and possible compulsion in writing the book is important. In his own words “ We still have rhetoric about clashing civilizations and almost daily generalizations in the press about East and West, Islamic and Christianity, and the vast differences and fundamental gulfs that are said to separate the two…East and West are not irreconcilable, and never have been. Only bigotry, prejudice, racism and fear drive them apart. But they have met in the past. And they will do so again.” Perhaps if we take nothing out of the book but these thoughts alone, we would have done well.