Who's Afraid Of William Dalrymple?

It is striking the lengths to which some writers will go to defend theirturf--or even their friends’ turf. Ramachandra Guha’s latest display of dyspepticdistemper, aimed at the evil outsider William Dalrymple, is a case in point.

Ostensibly in response to Dalrymple’s review of Pankaj Mishra’s new book,An End to Suffering, Guha has absolutely nothing useful to say about theactual review, or its validity, much less about Mishra’s book. So, instead ofoffering substantive or factual critique of what Dalrymple actually has to sayabout Mishra’s book, Guha takes issue with a single paragraph in a two-pagearticle, and exploits the opportunity to attack Dalrymple himself in a blustery,hysterical ad hominem that smacks of defensive narcissism andself-righteous indignation rather than reasoned argument.

Guha decries what he sees as Dalrymple’s "elite-mofussil thesis." Atissue is the following paragraph from Dalrymple’s review, which Guha claims is"pretty vicious about [Sunil] Khilnani":

In a field still dominated by the St Stephen’s mafia and the Doon School diaspora, Mishra is an outsider. He was born in Jhansi and grew up in dusty railway colonies around Uttar Pradesh, before taking a degree in the decaying anarchy of Allahabad University. In contrast to the optimistic platitudes of a diaspora writer like, say, Sunil Khilnani--educated abroad and clearly knowing nothing of the grim reality of the boondocks of Bihar--Mishra does not lecture the world about South Asia from the sanitised safety of an East Coast campus. Instead, he writes as a man who really knows, from hard experience, the provincial India he writes about and in which he still lives for most of the year.

Strip away the colourful language and Dalrymple is simply stating theobvious: that most writers of Indian non-fiction in English hail from elitebackgrounds; that, while they tend to be the translators of Indian sensibilityto the global audience, they are often as far removed from the day-to-dayconcerns of the Indian masses as are New Yorkers from, say, "the boondocks ofNebraska," or Nebraskans from the urban poor of Chicago; and that Mishra,whose background and talents give him access to both the elite literary-culturalworld and the "boondocks of Bihar," possesses a refreshing, somewhat uniqueperspective as a result.

Guha’s response is utterly disingenuous. He bends over backwards to givereaders the misimpression that Dalrymple’s entire review of An End toSuffering was offered solely to promulgate the notion that legatees of eliteinstitutions "must bow down before writers born in the mofussil." He sumsthis up with a total oversimplification: "Born to privilege, you cannotunderstand India; reared in a humble home, you must. This is Dalrymple's thesis."

But this is decidedly not Dalrymple’s thesis, as anyone who takesthe time to read the whole review will see. Nowhere does Dalrymple claim thatMishra’s background alone somehow makes him a better writer, or that, as Guhaimplies, only mofussil-born writers can lay claim to intellectual authenticity.(How could he possibly argue that? As I’m sure Dalrymple himself would dulyconfess: He’s bloody Scottish, for God’s sake!)

Guha nevertheless scolds Dalrymple with the vapid truism that "it is how awriter tackles his subject that is important, not where he studied or lives."Fair enough. But when ninety percent of Dalrymple’s review is devotedprecisely to assessing how Mishra "tackles his subject," it is ridiculous topillory him for also pointing out where Mishra "studied and lives" along theway--factors which, Guha’s high-minded rhetoric aside, do indeedmatter.

Still more ridiculous is the fact that, for some reason, the only substantivecriticisms which Guha manages to muster don’t even have anything to do withMishra, An End to Suffering, or Dalrymple’s review. Hoping to proveDalrymple’s knowledge of India "specious," but armed with little more thansarcasm and his own opinion, Guha inexplicably fires away at Dalrymple forunrelated comments made recently in the Financial Times, and for apassage regarding Ahmed Ali in the decade-old City of Djinns…yet even thatattack is erroneous and misplaced, as a short glance at chapter 3 of City ofDjinns will demonstrate. Then finally, clutching at straws, Guha dredges upsome self-serving (and, better yet, unverifiable) anecdotal "evidence" ofDalrymple’s supposed ignorance of Ambedkar (evidence which, like all rumourand innuendo, is all the more effective for being locked safely away in Guha’smemory, and can never be refuted, only denied).

He calls Dalrymple’s jab at Khilnani "vicious," and I grant thatsingling him out was perhaps unfair. But was it more vicious than, say, yankinga tiny passage out of a lengthy review, misrepresenting it beyond recognition,and then using it as a springboard to vent Guha’s own personal irritation atDalrymple’s successful career? More vicious than taking the opportunity totrash not just Dalrymple’s writing and scholarly ability, but indeed his veryright to write about India?

Indeed, what really seems to be at issue here is Guha’s contention thatDalrymple "instructs us on which Indian writers we may trust and which not."Who is he to lecture us? This is Guha’s thesis.

Leaving aside the scarcely veiled nativist chauvinism expressed by this "us"(should Guha then stop writing holier-than-thou commentary about America, andlecturing the Americans on whether or not to deny him a visa?), I suppose thatGuha means that Dalrymple, as a white man, is not free or qualified to expressan opinion on the abilities of any Indian writer, or comment on how that writer’sbackground plays a role in his or her writing style. Surely Guha can’t reallymean that, can he?

Well, apparently he can and does; and in so doing, Guha dusts off a tiredreference to "divide-and-rule" --the implication being that the ScotsmanDalrymple is a ghost of India’s colonial past, that anything he has to say istainted by that colonial legacy, and that as such he is not to be trusted tocomment on "us."

Now, one can justifiably argue that India has yet to slay its colonial demons(or asuras, as the case may be), and that one result is that a Britishwriter like Dalrymple (or any Western writer, for that matter) shouldaccordingly be held to higher standards of scholarly evidence and culturalsensitivity. Dalrymple himself surely understands this, and can take thecriticism, so long as it is proffered in intellectual good faith. But whateverDalrymple’s faults as a travel writer or historian may be, Guha’s brand ofvindictive politics of the personal--much like Farrukh Dhondy’s poisonouspolemic earlier in the year--does nothing to illuminate them. Indeed, it isGuha himself whose "argument is mischievous as well as wrong-headed…calculatedto stimulate prejudice and envy among his readers." None of his attempted "critiques"of Dalrymple’s writings hold up under further scrutiny, and his mean-spiritedhatchet job merely betrays the worst sort of insecurity and professionaljealousy. There is no doubt room for a reasoned debate on what might be calledthe "Dalrymple Phenomenon," but petty and misinformed rants are certainlynot the place to start.

Rajeev K. Kinra is PhD Candidate, Department of South Asian Languages andCivilizations, University of Chicago, USA.