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Love in a hot climate
By Selina Hastings Last updated at 00:00am on 11.10.02The British Resident James Kirkpatrick first saw the beautiful 14-year-old Khair Nissa in 1798 at a wedding in Hyderabad, in the centre of India.
Khair was a member of a Moslem family prominent at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad.
She was already betrothed, but her female relations, disapproving of the young man chosen for her, had devised a plan to bring her to the attention of the British official.
Behind the scenes, Mughal women wielded considerable power, and it was tacitly recognised that providing the British with wives and concubines was an effective method of maintaining influence over them.
The plan succeeded: Kirkpatrick fell deeply in love with the girl, eventually making her his wife and fathering two children - despite the fact that Khair was a Sayyeda, a descendant of the Prophet, in theory forbidden ever to meet, let alone marry, an outsider.
But as William Dalrymple explains in his fascinating account, there was a relaxed attitude to such things at this time, and a substantial degree of cross-fertilisation - literally sometimes - was accepted as the norm.
CLOSE relationships between the Residency and the Nizam's courtiers were common, and most Englishmen kept Indian mistresses and to some extent adopted local dress and customs.
Not all, it is true, went as far as James Kirkpatrick. An outstanding officer of the East India Company's Political Service, he had a profound love and understanding of the mores of his adopted country.
He was fluent in the language, smoked a hookah, dyed his fingers with henna and, except on official duty, always wore native dress. In order to marry Khair, he even agreed to give up his Christian faith.
Well aware that this would be regarded by his compatriots as a step too far, Kirkpatrick went to great lengths to keep his marriage secret, virtually impossible in a city as alive with intrigue and conspiracy as Hyderabad.
Needless to say, his enemies were quick to make use of his ambiguous position, cooking up disgraceful stories of rape and intimidation, the scandal eventually escalating to a point that was considered seriously damaging to British interests in the area and giving rise to an inquiry headed by Lord Clive himself.
In the end, all the charges were
dismissed and Kirkpatrick was allowed to continue as a skilful and popular governor.
He built a magnificent new Residency, with an elegantly elaborate zenana, or women's quarters, for his adored wife, and he delighted in overseeing the upbringing of his son and daughter, who were raised as Moslems, had Mughal names and spoke Persian as their first language.
But the idyll was short-lived. According to custom, at a tender age the children were sent to Britain to be educated.
On the day of their departure, their distraught mother wept and tore her hair, while their father, prevented by official business from accompanying them to Madras, left as soon as he could and galloped to catch up with them, but was taken ill before he reached the port and died three days after their ship had sailed.
On the ship's passenger list the brother and sister, little Sahib Allum and Sahib Begum, appeared for the first time as Master William and Miss Katherine Kirkpatrick.
The boy and girl, belatedly baptised and sent to live with relations in Kent, never saw India or their mother again.
Khair, widowed at 19, was dead at 27, her fate unknown to her daughter for 40 years, when by chance Katherine, while living in Torquay, met the wife of the then Assistant Resident of Hyderabad who was able to put her in touch with her Mughal grandmother.
In an extraordinary coda, lovely Kitty Kirkpatrick as a young woman caught the eye of Thomas Carlyle, who modelled on her the heroine of his famous novel, Sartor Resartus.
Enthralling as the story is of James Kirkpatrick and his Mughal bride, there is a great deal more than this to White Mughals.
William Dalrymple unscrolls a wide panorama, a vivid, often turbulent picture of India before and during the 18th century.
Impressively researched and written with vigour and panache, the book gives a detailed portrait of Hyderabad and of the court of the Nizam, with its sophisticated society and complex power structures, its literature, music and architecture.
Although occasionally the reader suffers from information overload, Dalrymple is a gifted narrator and brings vividly to life the diplomatic dealings between the Indian princes and the East India Company, as well as the battles and internecine rivalry between the Company and its mortal enemy, the French.
And he brilliantly depicts some of the leading characters, most memorably the loathsome Lord Wellesley, Governor General of Bengal, whose bullying and conceit not only almost wrecked James Kirkpatrick but, much more dangerously, threatened to scupper Britain's carefully constructed relations with the local princes.
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