‘Nationalist history presents India as this ancient thing called Bharat Varsha, with geography from the Mahabharata that remained constant. But the British were conquering random territories based on economic sense, not Indianness': Sam Dalrymple

Indian Express

20-06-2025

Sam Dalrymple is in the United Kingdom when we speak, where he will be based until October. It is a fitting location from which to reflect on Shattered Lands (Harper Collins; 536 pages; ₹799), his ambitious debut on the British Empire's afterlives, which traces five partitions that dismantled what was once known as the Indian Empire. From Burma's separation in 1937 to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, Dalrymple reconstructs the imperial geography, one where Indian rupees circulated in Dubai, Yemeni Jews carried Indian passports, and loyalty to the Viceroy stretched from Aden to Assam.
A Delhi-raised Scottish, Dalrymple, 28, studied Persian and Sanskrit at the University of Oxford. He also speaks Hindi and Urdu fluently. His work spans media — print, film, and virtual reality with projects exploring migration, memory, and the afterlives of empire.
If the surname rings familiar, it is not incidental. He is the son of historian William Dalrymple, one of the most prominent chroniclers of South Asia's early modern past. In this conversation with The Indian Express, Dalrymple speaks about erased borders, nationalist cartographies, Jinnah's contradictions, and advice from his father. Edited excerpts:
The key moment was visiting Afghanistan's Bamiyan Buddhas at 16. But the real inspiration was Project Dastaan, founded with friends at Oxford. We noticed Indians and Pakistanis mingled freely abroad unlike Israelis and Palestinians, yet could not visit each other's homelands.
We used Virtual Reality to reconnect Partition-separated families. One man, Iqbal, wanted to find his Hindu friend Narendra Singh, who had preserved their ancestral mosque amid horrific violence. We found Narendra's family in Mohali near Chandigarh. Though Narendra had passed, his widow immediately suggested they all vacation together.
My co-founder Sparsh Ahuja's family was saved during Partition riots by Muslim neighbours in what is now Pakistan. When we visited, he heard for the first time their side of the story — how they hid his family in their barn when mobs came looking for Hindus to kill.
Project Dastaan showed me how Partition severed connections that persisted despite official hostility. Reconnecting families made me want to explore how these borders came to be – not just 1947 but all the partitions that shattered the Indian Empire.
The way that India is defined by the British is very clearly laid out in the Interpretation Act of 1889: that everything ruled and governed under the Viceroy will be defined as part of India. This includes both directly ruled British India as well as the princely states and protectorates: all these maharajas, nawabs, sultans and sheikhs who had handed over their foreign policy and defence to the Indian government, though they ranged from being internally completely independent to having significant state involvement like Jaipur. States such as Bhutan and Sikkim were very much internally independent with only minor British interference.
The definition was simply the territories inherited by the East India Company. Everything ruled by the East India Company in 1858 was nationalised by the Crown, though random distant territories such as Hong Kong and Singapore were separated within the first few years. What's remarkable is that this vast swathe from Yemen to Burma was given Indian passports. In the book, I've included a picture of an Indian passport given to a Yemeni Jewish woman who wanted to migrate to Mandate Palestine after the Balfour Declaration. To think that in order to migrate from Yemen you had to get an Indian passport is bizarre.
The way nationalists have written history presents India as this ancient thing called Bharat Varsha, with geography from the Mahabharata that remained constant. But the British were just conquering random territories based on economic sense, not on 'Indianness'. Gandhi and other nationalists were certain independent India should stretch from Sindh to Assam, but when Gandhi went to Burma he argued for its separation. Hindu nationalists from the Mahasabha said Arabian states shouldn't be part of India because Arabia was a separate civilisation. Modern India traces its origins to this Bharat idea that excludes places the British conquered but nationalists don't consider part of India. Also, Yemen and Burma have been racked by civil war, their archives often burnt, so few historians have looked into them. In the Gulf, historian James Onley discovered that 99 per cent of Qatar's history is kept in the Bombay archives. He wrote The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj (2007) because these areas never appeared on maps of British India – it was always kept somewhat secret.
Of all the characters, Jinnah was the most surprising and complex. In the 1920s, he was considered the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity — Sarojini Naidu gave him a trophy with that title. He married 'Rutti', a much younger Parsi woman, believing in interfaith marriage, but she was ostracised by her community. This disillusioned him about India moving past religious boundaries. Later, as a leading Congressman, he was overshadowed by Gandhi and Nehru who treated him poorly. We're used to the Jinnah of the 1940s, but in the 1920s he was a secular man who ate pork, drank whiskey, and had a Parsi wife. His transformation into the founder of the first Islamic republic is fascinating. In 1946, he accepted the Cabinet Mission Plan where Pakistan would exist as a province within a united India — like countries within the United Kingdom today. It is fascinating to think how much bloodshed could have been avoided had this gone through. Gandhi and Jinnah ultimately pulled out of this idea.
It was Hindu nationalism, Muslim nationalism — all of them. But Hindu nationalists wanted a nation resembling Bharat Varsha. The idea of Bharat Mata is key to why Burma and Arabia were separated. Nationalist maps of Bharat Mata never included these areas. The British, seeing India might soon be independent, considered separating these regions to maintain economic control, knowing nationalists didn't want them. Fascinatingly, there were nationalists in Burma and Yemen who saw themselves as Indian and wanted to remain part of India, but figures such as Mahatma Gandhi pushed against this. U Ottama, a Burmese Buddhist monk who became Savarkar's predecessor in the Hindu Mahasabha, argued that Burma was part of Bharat and that Buddhism was part of Hinduism, but was booed down at Mahasabha meetings and eventually resigned.
He actually pushed me to write this as a book. Originally it was a documentary project with National Geographic, but when Covid hit and we could not film, he suggested turning it into a book.
He read two drafts – one after my first draft and one before final submission. But my mother was the real editor-in-chief, reading everything meticulously. My father's work focuses on medieval through early modern history, while mine relies heavily on oral histories, techniques I learned from mentors such as Aanchal Malhotra and Kavita Puri who specialise in Partition testimonies.
That said, I owe my historical interest to him dragging me around Rajasthan's hill forts, Bengal's delta, and Kerala's theyyam dancers since childhood. I've lived in Delhi for 22 years because he moved us here.
I do not see them in conflict at all. Globally, academic historians do research while others popularise it accessibly. My book uses sources in eight languages from multiple archives, as rigorous as any academic work, but written for general readers. It reveals new research like Burma and Dubai's separation from India. Good popular history like films about Rome builds on scholarship. The distinction is when popular works lack footnotes or obscure sources — but you can absolutely write academically rigorous history for the public.
Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics.
She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks.
She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year.
She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home.
Write to her at [e-mail] or [e-mail]. You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More