Books & Authors podcast with Swapna Liddle, author, The Broken Script; Delhi Under the East India Company

The period leading up to 1857 in Delhi is written about in very contradictory terms. Sometimes it is called the last flicker before the candle goes out. But this is the high point of Urdu literature and poetry; it is the lifetime of Ghalib, Momin, Zauq, Bahadur Shah, and of Delhi college. It is also the time of the total decline of the Mughal dynasty. There were so many interesting things happening yet it is talked about in cliches. Earlier colonial historians pushed the idea that the period was decadent because it served to then justify British rule and the belief that it was needed for India to progress.