Join Vidhi for its sixteenth Book Adda on ‘The Broken Script: Delhi under the East India Company and the Fall of the Mughal Dynasty 1803-1857’. The discussants will be Swapna Liddle, Indian Historian, Author, and Heritage Conservator with Aditya Prasanna Bhattacharya, Senior Resident Fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy. This will be a hybrid event held at the Office Basement, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi. If you cannot join us in person, please join us online via Zoom.

The discussion will begin at 06:00 PM IST on 16th May 2024 (Thursday). 

ABOUT THE BOOK

Broken Script is a riveting account of the overlap of two regimes in Delhi- the Raj in its ascendancy, and the Mughal empire in its final days. It is a tale of people – both Indian and British, living out their lives while one world is made, and the other falls apart, of actions – both cunning politics and cool pragmatism, and of places – grand palaces and narrow allies which watched on as the Raj – a total project of colonisation – came to be.

• How did the delay in striking a seal in Calcutta affect politics in Delhi?

• What connects Mirza Ghalib, the Doctrine of Lapse, and horseshoes attached the wrong way round?

• What does a market selling electrical and surgical equipment have to do with a daring play mocking English prize agent?

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN

• Swapna Liddle, Indian Historian, Author, and Heritage Conservator

• Aditya Prasanna Bhattacharya, Senior Resident Fellow, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy