For the last five years I have been fascinated by the history of the British in India. It began with my rediscovery of my grandmother’s family, the clatto basses, who for more than a century endured riots, debt, and disease everywhere from the heat of Madras to the snows of Afghanistan.
But then I delved into the larger story of this extraordinary company. How did the British come to rule the world’s most populous nation? what did they think they were there for? did they really believe that the empire would last forever? I have tried to go beyond the awesome rush of events, the terror, the cruelty, and the heroism, to the doubts and flashes of understanding that some of them had from time to time, none more so than John Low, the patriarch of the family. who was famous for his love of native government; however, he who helped depose three rajas and was ultimately blamed for the outbreak of the great riot. the books I have chosen illustrate these melancholy paradoxes of empire.
You are reading: Books on british raj in india
1. kim by rudyard kipling (1900)
if you ask any indian writer which book in english about india has meant the most to him, he will most likely answer kim. It’s a strange choice though, this rambling story about a wandering Irish orphan who is captured by the British secret service and recruited into the great game of repelling Russian influence in the Himalayas. but kim is a very strange book that intertwines buddhism and espionage, the colorful life of the bazaar and the great main road. because it doesn’t lead exactly anywhere, it goes everywhere. is a children’s classic for adults who are awake enough to understand it.
2. white mughals by william dalrymple (2003)
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Before the memsahibs arrived, lonely British officers consoled themselves with their Indian bibis. some they abused and then abandoned, but others they married and started families in those early quiet days before the raj got the name from him. Dalrymple tells in compelling detail the saddest story of James Kirkpatrick, the British resident of Hyderabad who built the most magnificent of all residences there, and the charming Khair Un-Nissa. he overcomes all obstacles to marry her, even converting to Islam. then he dies when she is still only 19 years old, leaving her to be picked up by another British officer and then dropped off from her.
3. the country by emily eden (1867)
if jane austen had gone to india, these are the letters she could have written home. Emily Eden was the sister of George Auckland, probably the worst Governor General of all. she was as cheerful, witty, and caustic as he was stiff and snappish. Her travels through northern India provide not only a seemingly innocent but remarkably poignant commentary on life at the top, but also a sad record of her brother’s disastrous policy in Afghanistan.
4. a matter of honor by philip mason (1974)
How could a few thousand British troops control a subcontinent of 200 million people? In his magnificent short history of the Indian Army, Philip Mason, himself a long-serving officer in the elite Indian Civil Service, evokes the threads of loyalty that bound the British and the Sepoys together until the threads snapped in 1857, e.g. Even after that brutal break they were sewn back together, so British influence lingers on in the much larger army that independent India fields today.
5. curry and rice by george francklin atkinson (1860)
the subtitle of this delightful sketchbook is “the ingredients of social life in ‘our season’ in india”. Captain Atkinson describes with delicious irony the shabby routine in the forests of British India in the 1850s: the innocent young junior, the eldest disillusioned with his Indian family, the pack of mangy dogs with which they hunt, and the cattle even more mangy in the bazaar, the father chewing cigars and the servants worrying about their sweaty masters. Atkinson’s illustrations are as charming and racy as his prose.
6. the great riot by christopher hibbert (1978)
For the British, there was no more traumatic event in the entire 19th century than the Great Mutiny. European officers were murdered by their own men whose loyalty they had trusted, and their women and children massacred in what appears to be a kind of ethnic cleansing. this savage ingratitude for the supposed blessings of the British government provoked retaliation on a much larger scale, which shocked public opinion ‘at home’ as much as the mutiny itself. Hibbert’s book is the best short story of those terrible months.
7. the siege of krishnapur by jg farrell (1973)
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The massacre of the entire British garrison and their families at Cawnpore was the single most shocking episode of the mutiny (vengeful British troops shouted “remember Cawnpore” as they stabbed in their bayonets). the perpetrators were forced to lick the blood of their victims before being killed in turn. Dozens of novels have been written about the mutiny, but only Farrell’s Poro comes close to the status of art.
8. man-eaters of kumaon by jim corbett (1944)
Legendary white hunter Jim Corbett first became famous for killing the man-eating leopards and tigers that stalked villagers in the hills of northern India. He later became equally famous for his efforts to conserve its habitat and the National Tiger Reserve is now called Jim Corbett Park. This fascinating tale of big game hunting can be safely enjoyed by the most sensitive reader because it is about taking life only to preserve it.
9. A Passage to India by em forster (1924)
I had misremembered Forster’s famous book as a rather prissy and sad novel against imperialism. when I returned to it years later, I found it delightful and amusing. of course the british are absurd and don’t understand india or indians and dr aziz and cyril fielding can’t be real friends until the raj is over. But when Forster plays his characters, he does it so delicately that they never stop breathing.
10. stay by paul scott (1977)
It was the raj quartet that made scott famous, but i prefer the coda to the series. “Staying” describes the intolerable Tusk, the retired Indian Army officer who has made a financial fortune staying in a small mountain town after independence, and his long-suffering wife Lucy, who watch their old world shrink as the new india rises around her. literally in the shape of the hideous shiraz hotel. trevor howard and celia johnson were perfect in the television version, but the book is a joy and makes an elegiac farewell to the raj.
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- ferdinand mount is the author of the tears of the rajas: mutiny, money and marriage in india 1805-1905, published by simon & schuster buy it at the guardian bookstore