Everybody has their own India and I think it’s a nonsense construction, “a real India”. The real India might be the India of the villages and certainly there’s a lot to be said of the fact that India’s heart lies in its villages. But I live 5 miles down the road from Gurgaon with kyscrapers and software companies and backoffice projects and call-centers. And that’s a very real India too, so I think “real India” doesn’t make much sense-- anymore than the real US with apple pie and Thanksgiving and family around campfires; is that anymore real than Manhattan?
author and historian (born 1965)
William Dalrymple (born March 20, 1965) is a Scottish historian, and writer, art historian and curator, as well as a prominent broadcaster and critic. His interests include the history and art of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East, the Muslim world, Hinduism, Buddhism, the Jains and early Eastern Christianity.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Alternative Names:
William Benedict Dalrymple
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William Hamilton-Dalrymple
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William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple
From Wikidata (CC0)
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The economic figures speak for themselves. In 1600, when the East India Company was founded, Britain was generating 1.8% of the world’s GDP, while India was producing 22.5%. By the peak of the Raj, those figures had more or less been reversed: India was reduced from the world’s leading manufacturing nation to a symbol of famine and deprivation.