This is not a novel of crime fiction. Though it has plenty of intrigue, murder, mayhem, blood and gore, it is a work of serious scholarship of a horrendous episode in Indo-British relationships based on hitherto untapped archival material gathering dust in India, Pakistan, England and Burma. It shows the way history should be written: not as a catalogue of dry-as-dust kings, battles and treaties but to bring the past to the present, put life back in characters long dead and gone and make the reader feel he is living among them, sharing their joys, sorrows and apprehensions.

A white Scotsman, Dalrymple has no racial prejudices against browns or blacks. If anything. he's biased against his own people.

Those who have read the City of Djinns and the White Mughals must have sensed that only William Dalrymple could have written The Last Mughal. Though a white Scotsman, he has no racial prejudices against browns or blacks: if anything, he is biased against his own people and in favour of those they wronged. It makes great reading.

The rebellion of 1857 lasted only a few months—from May to September 1857—but it shook the whole of India like a severe earthquake, taking a toll of thousands of lives. Its epicentre was Delhi, the capital of the Mughal empire founded by Babar in 1526. By the time it struck, the empire had shrunk to a few square miles around the city. As the adage went: Sultanat Shah Alam az Dilli ta Palam—the kingdom of Shah Alam extends from Delhi to Palam. By the time the last of the emperors ascended the throne, it had shrunk further and was confined to Red Fort; his subjects comprised his vast harem of begums, concubines, their offspring, maidservants and manservants, most of them living in hovels without much to eat. The fort was guarded by an English officer; the so-called emperor received a living allowance from the British Resident and had little to do with governance. He spent his time composing poetry, practising calligraphy, watching his elephants being bathed in the Yamuna, and praying. Once in a while, he rode on his favourite elephant to the royal mosque, Jama Masjid, amid bursts of fireworks, or visited his wife's relations in the city. What he most looked forward to was holding poetic symposia (mushairas) in the Red Fort or in Delhi College outside Ajmeri Gate where his latest composition was read out first, followed by recitals of other poets, both Indian and European. The mushairas usually ended with recitals by masters like poet laureate Zauq and the greatest of them all, Mirza Asadullah Ghalib, in the early hours of the morning. As Ghalib put it, the candle burns brightest before it flickers and dies out.

A few decades before the outbreak, relations between Indians and Britons were reasonably amicable. Quite a few Britishers acquired Indian customs and styles of living, spoke Persian and Urdu; some married native women. Sir David Ochterlony had 13 bibis in his harem, James Skinner (Sikander Sahib) had 14. Besides building St James Church at Kashmere Gate, Colonel Skinner built a mosque for his Muslim wives and a temple for the Hindus. They wore Indian clothes, ate Indian food and smoked hookahs. It was one-way matrimonial traffic. Nubile English girls who came to India were not willing to share their nuptial beds with rival wives. But there was the Kashmiri dancing girl Farzana Zebunnissa who converted to Catholicism, cohabited with whites and carved out a principality of her own and became Begum Samru of Sardana near Meerut.

Relations between whites and natives began to sour with the aggressive evangelical zeal of clerics who attempted to convert Indians to Christianity. The Christian missionaries were confronted by jehadi elements from madrassas who looked down on both Christians and Hindus as infidels. However, the English topped the jehadis' hate list. The British had already annexed Satara, Jhansi and Nagpur on the excuse that they had no male heirs. Then, without any excuse, they incorporated the Muslim state of Avadh as well. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that their next victim would be whatever remained of the Mughal kingdom of Delhi.

In the suspicion-laden atmosphere came the issue of new cartridges which had to be greased with the fat of cows and pigs. Sepoys who were largely upper-caste Hindus from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and Muslims who were lesser in number saw this clearly as a deliberate attack on their religions. The fat then was really in the fire. The first shot was fired by Mangal Pandey on March 29 at Barrackpore. He was promptly hanged. A little under two months later, sepoys in Meerut Cantonment refused to obey orders, killed their English officers and marched to Delhi to reinstate Zafar as Badshah of Bharat. So did thousands of jehadis, including women from Delhi and outlying towns, in a desperate attempt to restore Islamic rule in Hindustan.

Dalrymple explains why Indians looked up to Bahadur Shah Zafar as their leader against foreign rulers: "The dramatic way in which both Hindus and Muslims had rallied to the Mughal capital at the outbreak of the uprising had demonstrated the degree to which the mystique of the dynasty was still very much alive more than a century after the Mughals had ceased to exercise any real political, economic or military power. Contrary to all expectations, the idea of the Mughal Emperor as the divinely ordained axis mundi, the universal sovereign and Padshah, Lord of the World, still had resonance across Hindustan at this time."

Bahadur Shah Zafar proved to be a reluctant and inept leader, bullied in turn by the rebellious sepoys and nagged by his principal begum, Zeenat Mahal, 42 years younger than him, whose only ambition was to see her son Jawan Bakht recognised as the heir-apparent in preference to his elder stepbrothers. She kept in constant touch with the British. Zafar's diktat did not hold even in the Red Fort. A few days after the mutineers had taken control, they slaughtered all English men, women and children who Zafar had given shelter in the palace as well as every white person and Indian Christian they could lay their hands on. Their nemesis was not long in coming.

The British swore dire vengeance. Led by men like General John Nicholson, Captain William Hodson and Theophilus Metcalfe who looked down on Indians with loathing and contempt, they descended on Delhi with their new mercenary forces comprising Gurkhas, Sikhs and Pathans. They pillaged every town and village, setting them on fire and hanging every able-bodied man they could find on their way. For three months, the defenders fought back heroically. After the northern city wall had been breached, they retreated and continued their resistance till they could resist no more. The city was subjected to a general massacre. Women and children were spared but men hanged or shot in hundreds every day. Large parts of the city were levelled to the ground, and the Jama Masjid converted to a stable for Sikh cavalry.

Bahadur Shah Zafar turned to the Quran for portents. He opened the holy book at random (faal). The message did not give any hope. It read: "Neither you nor your army, but those who were before." On September 18, there was a solar eclipse. For superstitious Indians, it portended more evil to come.

Knowing the struggle was over, one night Zafar slipped out of the Red Fort and sought refuge in Humayun's tomb. A few days later, Hodson brought him, his wife and favourite son back as prisoners on the undertaking that their lives would be spared. A couple of days later, he got Zafar's three other sons, stripped them naked before shooting them. Ghalib wrote to a friend: "The light has gone out of India."

Zafar was put on trial, convicted and sent to exile in Rangoon with Zeenat Mahal, their son Jawan Bakht, a couple of other wives and servants. He died at 5 am, November 7, 1862. He was buried in an anonymous grave at the back of a walled prison enclosure. Thus ended the story of the great Mughals.

Dalrymple's book rouses deep emotions. It will bring tears to the eyes of every Dilliwala, among whom I count myself.