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DeScriPtion
At the start of the nineteenth century, there was a Mughal emperor on the
throne in Delhi, but the Mughal empire, in decline for almost a century, was
practically gone. A new power had emerged-the British East India Company,
which captured the Mughal capital in September 1803, becoming its de facto
ruler. Swapna Liddle's book is an unprecedented study of the 'hybrid halfcentury' that followed-when the two regimes overlapped and Delhi was at
the cusp of modernity, changing in profound ways.
With a ground-level view of the workings of early British rule in India, The
Broken Script describes in rich detail the complex tussle between the last two
Mughal emperors and the East India Company, one wielding considerable
symbolic authority, and the other a fast-growing military and political power.
It is, above all, the story of the people of Delhi in this period, some already
well known, such as the poet Ghalib, and others, like the mathematician Ram
Chander, who are largely forgotten: the cultural and intellectual elite, business
magnates, the old landed nobility and the exotic new ruling class-the
British. Through them, it looks at the economic, social and cultural climate
that evolved over six decades. It examines the great flowering of poetry in
Urdu, even as attempts to use the language for scientific education faltered;
the fascinating history of the Delhi College, and how it represented a radically
new model for higher education in India; the rise of modern journalism in
Urdu, and various printing presses and publications, exemplified by papers
About the author
'Swapna Liddle's' love for the city of Delhi, and in particular Shahjahanabad, led her to write a PhD thesis on its cultural and intellectual life in the nineteenth century. Today she seeks to raise awareness about the city's historic precincts, mainly through her work for the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). She is the author of 'Delhi: 14 Historic Walks'.
