THE BROKEN SCRIPT DELHI UNDER THE EAST INDIA COMPANY AND THE FALL OF THE MUGHAL DYNASTY, 1803-1857

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