Scottish-born writer William Dalrymple’s persistent fascination with Delhi, his adopted city, has often led Indian writers like Suketu Mehta to address him as "honorary Indian" or even "White Mughul," a term coined by Dalrymple himself.  In every subsequent book since his "City of Djinns," published 20 years ago, the celebrated writer has returned to his pet period in the city’s history — 1707 to 1857.

Four years ago, Dalrymple set out to co-curate an exhibition chronicling the tradition of court patronage and its impact on the Mughal artistic culture of this period. Now showing at the Asia Society on Park Avenue, “Princes and Painters” includes about 100 works by Delhi-based court artists, and a selection of paintings commissioned by White Mughals like William Fraser, James Skinner, and Thomas Metcalfe, who not only made Delhi their home but also embraced and adopted the lifestyle of the Mughals who were, until 1857, still influential in India despite the emerging British presence.

ARTINFO spoke to the writer about his obsession with these White Mughals, his first-time attempt at curating, and the bureaucratic loops that are a characteristic of 21st-century Delhi.

Why do you find yourself revisiting the late Mughal period in Delhi’s history?

In truth, what’s interesting about this period is that the easy distinctions of colonial and colonized, Mughal and European, Christian and Muslim don’t work. This is a world that breaks free of the usual categorization. It’s a world where Muslim princes are celebrating Hindu festivals like Holi. It’s a world where nominal Christian princes are giving up pork and beef in order to share their table with their Muslim and Hindu friends. It’s a world where Hindus go to Madarsas and where Muslims, like Ghalib, celebrate Varanasi. So, in every way, the categories that we’re brought up to assume exist break down and more visibly so in the arts. The easy categorization of colonial activity as parasitical, negative, destructive doesn’t work.  

The exhibition opens with the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 and closes with the fall of Delhi in 1857, after this very brutal rebellion against the British. And what’s interesting is that it has two great moments, one is Mohammed Shah and the other is Bahadur Shah Zafar. Between these two reigns which are normally written off as periods of decline, what’s actually going on is an extraordinary artistic renaissance which is unrecognized, largely unchronicled, and which has never been shown before.

What were some of the challenges you faced while curating the show?

It was a lot more work than I reckoned. The Asia Society, in a sense, has done most of the work. I haven’t been filling in custom forms, getting involved with insurance. I haven’t had to do any of that. But just writing labels, and the very interesting discipline of writing didactics; writing a synopsis in 300 words to an audience that may not be knowing where India is, or where Delhi is, or who the Mughals were, and yet to be able to write a board that is not moronically simplistic to someone who does know this stuff, and to be accessible to someone who doesn’t necessarily know, all of that took a lot more time than I anticipated.

Are there any plans to bring the show to Delhi?

This show should have ideally opened in India. The National Museum in Delhi is the place that should have been hosting it, except there’s no institution in India which has regular "loan" exhibitions. Legally, it’s also difficult to get work in and out of the country.  In fact, I think there’s virtually nothing from India in the exhibition, because it’s such a hassle trying to loan work. We were told very clearly that if there were pieces elsewhere similar to the one’s back home, we should go with the pieces elsewhere, because of all the bureaucratic hoops you have to jump through. We tried really hard. There are some spectacular collections in India, but it’s really difficult to get access to them.