Full transcript of William Dalrymple interview at Rising Bharat Summit

In the Roman period, Pliny is worried because he says India is the drain of all the world. Great Indian exports like pepper, cotton, ivory, nard and silk, because actually Chinese silk came to Rome via India were major exports and they suffered a 30% tariff at the border, not so different from what Trump is proposing for this country now. And this provided as much as a third of the entire Roman imperial budget. So the idea in this book is that the Silk Road never actually existed before the Mongol period when Genghis Khan's conquest did create a motorway that linked Mediterranean with the South China Sea. Before that, maritime routes rather than overland routes and India rather than China.

Interviewer: Well, it's interesting because I would have thought that for someone coming in from the West, you would have been at least possibly acquainted with this huge legacy and therefore would have been curious about it. But you seem to suggest that it's the translator's fault, that you sort of did not... that ancient India remained marginal in your work.

William Dalrymple: No, it was the first thing that I loved when I came. My very first trip to India, I went straight to Gwalior, Sanchi, Khajuraho, Ajanta, Ellora. But over the course of time, I got obsessed with the East India Company. The idea that a corporation could take over a continent seemed to me an extraordinary thing. And of course, it's something that's happening at the moment. We worry about this, the oligarchs in Trump's world, the way that all the tech moguls were there at the inauguration, these huge companies like Amazon and Meta, which... and Apple and Microsoft, all of whose annual profits are greater than the GDP of most continents. This extraordinary power that corporations now have, it seemed to me, a very interesting subject.

But I have loved going back to this. This was a lockdown book. We were all locked down. I had my library. It gave me a wonderful opportunity to read very widely across different fields. And what I found was that the history of this period is often locked into different silos. So the Buddhist history is often told as part of a Chinese story, the Silk Road. The story of Sanskritization of Southeast Asia, how Indian epics, Indian language, Hindu kingship spread to Angkor Wat, where the largest Hindu temple in the world is built, not in India, but in Cambodia. But the largest Hindu empire in the world is the Khmer Empire.

The way that Indian mathematics spread through the Arab world to give us the number system we all use, the nearest thing we have to universal language. These seem fascinating ideas. And what I was trying to do was bring them all together under one roof and connect the dots, which I think people haven't done. The last time a book like this was written, probably A. L. Bachman's Wonder that Was India, which is written in 1954.

Interviewer: Of course, we've had some historians that have looked at that period. But I wanted to ask you, because it's an interesting thought, experiment. And it points to the rising Bharat that we see today. So it's not an accident, is it?

William Dalrymple: So my view is that, if you look at... Angus Madison is the historian who studied trade figures historically, GDPs per head, and tried to work back from present figures to the sort of thing that was going on in Moghul India or medieval India or medieval Ming China, for example. And it's unequivocally the case, although you can quibble details in these figures, because obviously ancient economic figures are hard to come by and don't have the same veracity as modern figures. But nonetheless, it's completely clear that for most of history, maybe as much as 70, sometimes 80% of the world economy was generated by the lands that are now India and China.

That both of these had terrific trading traditions, both over land and by sea. Both of them had extremely advanced credit systems, groups in society who dominated the mercantile world. And this was the case not just in ancient India, but as recently as the Moghul period. When people discuss the Moghuls, they often think of, you know, Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan, lying back in the palace, dropping mangoes into each other as well, white pigeons flutter around.

What people forget is that those sorts of riches, that incredible wealth, were generated, as anywhere else, largely by trade and industry. And so in the Mughal case, it's the incredible textile trade—something like one million handlooms in Bengal alone. Which is why the Portuguese, and the Dutch, and the British, and the French, and the Danish all turned up in the 17th century—because India was a major manufacturing centre and was making the greatest, for example, cotton in the world. And the East India Company realised that the Mughals didn't have a navy, that they could be the exporters.

So for most of history, India has been the richest region of the globe. Sometimes China puts it to the post, as in the Ming period. Sometimes India is ahead. But the dip comes—the freak comes, if you like—when the Europeans turn up. And with gunboats, from the moment that Vasco da Gama starts bombarding Calicut, India and China and Southeast Asia—all of them—end up seeing gold, for the first time in history, pour into European pockets and disappear into distant parts of Europe.

Then in 1947, the British disappear, the whole colonial system begins to self-destruct. It takes 20 or 30 years—it spreads throughout Africa. But by the late ’70s, decolonisation has largely happened. And what we see now, 75 years later, is not some freak of either the brilliance of the administration in this part of the world, nor some strange quirk of economic history. It is things reverting to their natural place. India has always been a rich country. It has two harvests a year, it has rich minerals, it has gemstones, it has spectacularly fertile soils, it has innovative people. And so, seen from the long view of history, the rising Bharat that this summit is celebrating is not anything at all surprising. It's just the natural equilibrium of the world reasserting itself after 400 strange years of European colonialism.

Interviewer: I want to ask you a little bit more about—you know, you've sort of talked a little bit about, a lot about—the trade aspects of things, the economy. But this was also a knowledge system of vast study.

William Dalrymple: Correct.

Interviewer: So build on that a little bit. You've really delved into that in your book. There's Nalanda, and before that also you sort of talked about other stuff.

William Dalrymple: Yeah, so Nalanda is the subject that the last panel was talking about, and they were quite correct to say that Nalanda was the main centre of learning in Asia. Our main source for Nalanda is a Chinese monk, Xuanzang, who comes overland by foot in the 7th century, and he leaves a very detailed account of this place, which he regards as the NASA, the Harvard, the Ivy League, the Oxbridge of his day.

And we know that not just Xuanzang, but hundreds of other monks from China, from Korea, from Japan, come to this place because it has the best library in Asia—nine stories tall, three sections, all the books in the world. You can borrow any of them as long as you put them back in your pigeonhole in the central courtyard in the evening. And Xuanzang is like some sort of bright-eyed undergraduate that's just turned up at Harvard for the first time.

Everything is wonderful, everything is extraordinary, the monks are men of genius, they all work hard, they all study. And it’s something which I think has been forgotten. And when people go from this country to Southeast Asia—to Vietnam, to Cambodia—they see the effects of this period. From the 7th century right through to about the 12th century, Sanskrit is the common language of both culture and diplomacy, all the way from Kandahar to Java, to Bali.

And the renown of Indian literature, like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Puranas, is being read in all these countries. Men are renaming themselves—the small kings at the edge of an estuary in Malaysia, a chieftain in Java—suddenly become not Kadunga like his father, but Mahendra Varman, Surya Varman. They take these Sanskritic names, and the landscape is renamed and reimagined.

So you have a new Ayodhya outside Bangkok, a new Kurukshetra in Laos. The Mekong, some etymologies say, is just the Khmer pronunciation of Ma Ganga. And most of the main Shaivite shrines in India find their names popping up again with the new Khmer pyramid temples that are being built in the jungle in Cambodia. So India has terrific prestige during this time.

It starts with the economy and with trade, but it grows into a whole civilization or a diffusion. And the most remarkable conquest, if you can call it that, of the imagination—important to say this is a conquest of ideas, not a conquest of swords. It was not done with jackboots and spears and shields and swords. This was an empire of ideas, an empire of the spirit. The most remarkable conquest is China.

China’s only woman empress was called Wu Zetian. Wu brings in monks and scholars from Nalanda—some of them Chinese, some of them Indian. You have an Indian called Gautama Siddhartha running the Bureau of Astronomy and Astrology and Mathematics. You have other Indians in senior places of government. And this is the high watermark of Indian influence. China becomes, for this one reign, a Buddhist country. It becomes the state religion. Confucianism and Daoism are both demoted.

And again, I don’t think people in this country are quite aware of the extent to which, you know, often China and India are seen as rivals with two different spheres of influence. I do think many people have taken in the fact that an Indian religion born in Bihar becomes the state religion of China for a period of history. And I think it’s hugely important now, as India is perceived now, rightly, as a rising economy, as a rising force, and will be, whatever happens, one of the three main economies of the world by the end of this century, if not sooner. It’s very important to understand that—that it’s not something, it’s not a freak or some weird quirk of modern politics. This is the natural order of things reasserting themselves.

Interviewer: Well, the economic miracle that was India was put to the sword—literally—or crushed under the jackboot of the Brits. But the knowledge system that it was, was also crushed, some people say, by the sword. Nalanda, for example, was sacked. And that led to what many people today describe as the great vandalism of what was an Indic culture, which predated Islam and, of course, then the British. How is it that we have not looked back and examined that—that sort of got lost in time, that narrative, that vandalism that took place? Why was that ignored? You’ve portrayed the Mughals that followed as refined, rooted, and Indian. How do you now view critiques that this framing glossed over conquest, destruction, and displacement? You’ve been hard on the British, but not so...

William Dalrymple: So there is a long period of Islamic rule in this country. The worst destruction, unquestionably, took place in the early years of the 12th and 13th century. That’s when Bakhtiyar Khalji burns Nalanda. You get at this period, as before, rulers who are violent; you get rulers who are great examples of civilization and refinement. It isn’t as if violence was introduced to Eden in the 12th century. If you read about Chola conquests, for example—completely destroying the Chalukya capital of Vatapi, ploughing it under so thoroughly that we don’t even know where it is today, with satellite imagery or anything—we can’t find this capital because the Cholas destroyed it. Or burning the temples of Sri Lanka, as the Pallavas and Cholas did.

Violence has always existed. The Cholas also raided Buddhist monasteries at Sompur Mahavihara, which is the equivalent of Nalanda in what is now Bangladesh. So violence is there throughout history, but you’re quite right that there are terrible things happening. And the burning of a great library—whether it’s Alexandria in the 8th century or whether it’s Nalanda in the 12th—is one of the great, horrible tragedies of world history.

Not everything is lost. It should be said that a lot of the manuscripts from Nalanda make their way, both before the destruction and as the destruction is happening, to Tibet. There are monasteries in Tibet that contain great works of Nalanda monks. The tradition lives on in Tibet and abroad, and much of the learning of Nalanda continues because it had been an international center of Buddhism. You have monks coming from Korea, from Indonesia, from Tibet, and so on. So while what happened is one of the great tragedies of world history, and I would entirely agree with you, it isn’t that it’s totally extinguished.

There is a great deal which survives, and we actually know a great deal of Indian history from Chinese manuscripts translated out of Sanskrit into Chinese, and we have to translate back, like with Xuanzang, in order to understand our own history.

Interviewer: Would you agree with some of those who say that while the Hindu kings that you described, who went about invading other kingdoms, other Hindu kingdoms, they weren't necessarily supplanting a way of life? The Muslim invasions led to a break in the continuity of a particular tradition—of a Hindu tradition, of an Indic tradition, of a Buddhist tradition. Call it what you want. So there's a distinction. Would you agree with that?

William Dalrymple: I say it's more complicated than that. It isn't as if Sanskrit is wiped out. You get the great epics surviving. They are translated into Persian and into other languages. A lot is lost. I'm not for a minute denying that, and I think a great disservice has been done to history by anyone that has ever denied that destruction. But India remains a great center of learning. People come to study in the centers of learning in India, and when, for example, Genghis Khan destroys the great universities of Central Asia, it is here in Delhi that new universities get built. When you go to Hazakas village, that is the great university of Feroz Shah Tughluq, which is full of scholars—refugees from Central Asia. So there is a long tradition of scholarship continuing in this country, under all sorts of different religious and linguistic banners.

There are spectacular examples of places where Indic learning continues even under Muslim rule—for example, in Bijapur, where the Sanskrit classics are translated and a lot of the learning. So history is full of violence. There are destructions through all periods of history, but I would say that the fact that the tradition has continued— There is a long thread that runs through Indian history, which is not one of continued destruction, but is this remarkable survival.

Interviewer: Where did Indians lose the thread of this ancient India? Where did Indians lose the thread?

William Dalrymple: I think it's here. I think it is very much retrievable. I don't feel that I'm living in a country which has lost its civilization or lost its civilizational bearings. I think the fact that it is here, the fact that we are discussing this all now, and that India has still a rich tradition—it'd be not true to say that India has the same reputation it had during the age of Nalanda when all the great scholars were coming here, but it's possible to imagine that that will happen again. There are traditions of learning and knowledge here which are remarkable and which can still teach the world a huge amount.

We need to be more aware of our history and do more to preserve it. For example, Nalanda itself—only 10% has been excavated. 90% remains unexcavated. How is it that in the 21st century, there is a tiny site museum there with strip lights and a couple of dusty cabinets? I mean, even in countries like Turkey you go today and you find enormous provincial museums, beautifully spotlit, fantastic displays of objects in glass cases. Nalanda is a remarkable example of how India can showcase its past and show off its incredible traditions of soft power. Traditions which have been lost, but which can be taught again. I'm very optimistic. I think there is so much that could be done. There are so few really first-class, world-class museums in this country, but there is great material here. A decision by government to invest more in museums and archaeology could see this become a major centre of tourism and of cultural display.

Interviewer: So let me lead you on to the two final questions because we're running out of time. Obviously, there's a growing movement within India to reclaim civilizational memory from colonial and Islamic overlays, and you know that there's been a thrust even politically. How do you view some of these efforts?

William Dalrymple: Which efforts are you referring to?

Interviewer: This reclamation of the ancient history—and there are now obviously some amount of tensions that are building up in certain sites across the country, where people are hoping that one community would abet in this great reclamation project by giving up their own control, so to speak, or their own rights.

William Dalrymple: India is not unique in that it's a country with many different layers and civilizations, many different periods of different dominance. If you go to, for example, an island like Sicily in the middle of the Mediterranean, there are successive Arab, Byzantine, Spanish, Neapolitan... That island has been ruled from many different places. The answer, it seems, when you have a complex and nuanced history is to write complex and nuanced books about it and to teach it in a complex and nuanced way.

That if you go to Sicily, the Spanish rulers, who were very unpopular, who were toppled by Garibaldi and the Risorgimento—their statues are not toppled. They're still standing there. They're still in the museums. Their objects are on display. History is complicated. There are many parts of the world where civilizations lie in different layers like sediment, like geology, and the attempt has to be made to teach it with nuance. History is not a matter of heroes and villains, of angels and demons. There are gray areas. People—human beings everywhere—have both good and bad qualities. And I think that it's very important to try and teach and present history with nuance and with...

Interviewer: So what would you say to those people who are accused of poking the majority community in the eye by going out there and celebrating the Mughals of the world or other controversial figures in history? Maybe making even a case for preserving roads that have been named after British colonialists and so on and so forth? How do you react to those?

William Dalrymple: I think history is rich and that to politicize the presentation of history and just to pretend that only one people have ever lived and ever ruled—

Interviewer: So you would apply that same principle?

William Dalrymple: I don't believe in knocking down statues or changing rules, changing roads.

Interviewer: Or canceling out authors and so on and so forth from your textbooks, even if they've said vile things—like in the West there is this...

William Dalrymple: I think you've got to struggle to have accurate history and nuanced history and to try and understand history. You don't learn about history by coming with a set political view and trying to find the facts that prove that.

Interviewer: So you would say that Rudyard Kipling, for example, who is now sort of held up as somebody who was a person of his times but no longer relevant because his frankly racist views, etc., etc., are offensive to one section of the world and therefore needs to be expunged or not read—what would you say to that lobby?

William Dalrymple: I mean, I think all of these things are interesting matters to be treated with proper scholarship. I'm not a believer in removing characters like that from the curriculum. I think they are of their time. They should be read. Ditto with Aurangzeb. He's not someone that I admire or hero-worship, but he's someone who is part of history, who did certain things, and we should try and understand what he did. History is all about understanding. It's not about lecturing and sort of turning people into whiter-than-white saints and darker-than-black villains. It's the science of trying to understand the complexity of our past. And so to cancel people, to knock down statues, to remove things from a complex history—which is full of complexity and variety and many grey areas—seems to me completely the wrong way to approach these matters.

Interviewer: Well, thank you for resurrecting the Golden Road, and a road that takes us back to the glories of ancient India and hopefully runs right through and connects us to the present.

William Dalrymple: I mean, as a foreigner coming to this country, I am in awe of the variety of the different periods of history. And in a sense, I don't have a dog in this race. I don't support one team or the other, and I can get as much pleasure from visiting the Taj Mahal or watching a Mughal manuscript as I can from visiting Vijayanagara or going to the Tanjore Great Temple and being amazed by the Buddhist frescoes of Ajanta. It's all very rich history, and it should all be celebrated.

Interviewer: We leave it at that. Thank you very much.