Here are a couple of threads that are worth reading if you want to know more about the Dalrymple debate.
The first is a review and the second is Dalrymple's response.
http://aolsearch.aol.co.uk/aol/search?query=Last%20Mughal%20chapatis&invocationType=sb_uk
http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/optical_character_recognition/return_of_the_white_rabbit.html
I hadn't read the second until today and it confirms my feeling that Dalrymple is unwittingly racist. As we said he fails to adequately balance the book and in his response he seems to be 'out of awareness'. I think his problem is that he is a romantic with a small r, someone who feels life rather than thinks about it. He has a feeling that Indians are innately unpredictable and childlike whereas the British are organized and rational (he even manages to reconcile the seemingly contradictory behaviour of the English as ruthless psychopaths by presenting them as men who 'think through' their slaughter).
I'm glad I read the book for all it's weaknesses. If nothing it has made me want to read some of the poetry produced during the three hundred years of Mughal rule.
