Empire: World History - 20. Nationhood, the Indian constitution, and the railways

Episode Date: December 1, 2022

Join William and Anita for the second part of this week’s special question time bonanza where they answer all of your queries. In this episode they discuss the impact Jallianwala Bagh had upon Indian nationhood, the influence that Britain had upon the writing of the Indian constitution, and whether the railways did benefit India. To get your free two week trial for Find my past, go to www.findmypast.co.uk and sign up.   LRB Empire offer: lrb.me/xempire   Twitter: @Empirepoduk   Goalhangerpodcasts.com   Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Welcome to this very special, part two of our Q&A Empire podcast, where we were inundated with so many questions, and we made our producer cry because we banged on for such a long time that we've gone into two parts it's not that we had so many questions

that we took so very long to answer them I think is the honest answer and we went off so many little rabbit holes and sidebars that okay so what is question one right this one for you William Ben Heyman I'd love some episodes on the literature from

or about the era of empire like the work of Rudyard Kipling Ian Forster Paul Scott RK9 Ravindonata, Gore, Nirad Chaudhry, would you consider doing this? Absolutely, yes. Only one of those would make a superb episode.

But if I had to just choose one, Rudyard Kipling, who fascinates me and who's this incredibly complicated character, brought up in India, sent to England miserable at home, Baba Blacksheep coming out of that. And then early on in his life, writing some incredibly sympathetic. accounts. My favorite, well, two favorite stories, one of the two is on the city wall, which is this wonderful account of his life in Lahore, with lots of clearly visiting the dancing girls and experiencing all the darker delights of Lahore. And then Kim, which, one of the great essays on Kim is Edward Saeed in cultural and imperialism wrote this astonishing

essay on Kim, because it's a book which is sort of as complicated as Kipling in all its ways. It's both sympathetic and offensive. Some of it is deeply touching still. Some of it just makes you want to sort of bite your tongue with frustration. I mean, mostly it makes the enamel fall off my teeth, I must say. I mean, I can recognise a beautiful writing, but it makes me feel really second class. All of Kipling? Now, Kim, I think Kim, and I tell you, there was another beautiful thing.

and let's definitely do Kipling because I find him fascinating. There's some that he writes beautifully well. I like you, feel very ambiguous about it. But fun enough, have you ever read the strange tale of Morobi Jukes? It's one of the greatest short stories I've ever read. It's like a sort of, it's pre-HG Wells' sort of early science fiction. And this guy is going out for a ride outside Karachi when he falls into this sort of bizarre world of people who've died,

then come back from the dead and been left in a sort of prison camp in sand dunes outside Karachi and he's there with the undead and the eat crows. It's a kind of bizarre. Okay, for God's sake, don't give away the ending like you do. Okay, just send it. Strange ride of Moribu Jukes. One of the greatest short stories of the 19th century in my view. And I'm just a very quick tidbit. You know, I like a titbit. But the Lockwood, Kipling and Rajad together when Rudyard's very, very young, they do this. Are you? aware of their Christmas almanac. No, I did.

I mean, I only ever heard of this because I picked it up from Michael O'Dwyer's book about my time in India, India as I knew it. And he said it was the absolute highlight of the year in Lahore. It's the thing that the Brits looked forward to most was the almanac that Lockwood and Rudyard, little Rudyard at the time, were producing an almanac. And it was all about British life in Lahore. And I'm desperate to get a copy of it or see a copy of it. So if anyone knows whether the...

Right in. Kipling Almanac is any copies at who I'd love to see them. No, to jump off from that one, Lockyard Kipling, of course, ran the museum in Lahore that Rudyard Kipling calls in Kim the Jadugar, the House of Magic. And fun enough, I've just been writing about this for my new book on the diffusion of Indian culture and art outside India. And I've been writing about Gandharaan art, which is something that Lockyard Kipling was a great enthusiast for. That's these extraordinary early Buddhas that are very classical Greek and Roman

in style. Are you working on a new book? You never mention it. Well, I think we might have to have a few episodes on all this stuff. You've never brought that up. Okay. One for you. Anita, this is Chitra Shintre. What role, if any, did the British have in writing the Indian Constitution? This is such a good question, such an interesting question, because actually on the surface of it, the Indian constitution is the child of one man Babasab and Babka. And Bedka, exactly. I always presumed he'd done the whole thing. Yeah. So, yes, he did. So for those of you who may have heard the Ramgua episode, you'll know that there was a really tense, nervous headache of a relationship between Babasab and Babka and Gandhi. Over whether Gandhi was taking Dalit right seriously enough.

Yes. Yes. So Britson have a hand in writing the constitution. But a lot of things, particularly in the penal code in law, have been just transposed from the British side. And that dates back to 1860 when Thomas McCauley decided to codify British criminal law in India. And a lot of those things still remain. And I thought I'd make a list of some of those things. The word khaki, do you know the word khaki?

Dust. And why Indian policemen, yeah, it comes from kark, the word dust in India. So that the police where khaki dates back to a British. British edict in 1847's never been repealed and so they still do it. You've got left-handed traffic. That was adopted in India in 1800. The British imposed it. India's never revisited it. Did India have right-handed traffic before that or? No, it just doesn't mean that. But everywhere, it's cute or both sides of the road like today. Arguably, that still happens today, William. Just go whichever way you like. Particularly at a level crossing. Yeah. And then you've got

sort of this idea of adversarial law, you know, where you have two people facing off at each other in in a court. That's, again, a British artifact. The Indian Evidence Act that dates back to 1872, the Transfer Property Act that dates back to 1882, still on the Indian statute books. And you've got so many of these things that are transposed, and some of them actually are quite controversially so, and the one that I wanted to talk about a little bit, and maybe this is more about Penal Code than Constitution. But Section 377 of the British Colonial Penal Code. Now, this has had been such a grenade of a subject, yeah, because it criminalised all sexual acts that were against the order of nature. So this is a very old piece of British statute, which, you know, made homosexuality illegal.

So you could violate Article 377. You could end up in jail. So same-sex marriage, forget it. Even being suspected of being homosexual, engaging in homosexual acts was a problem. Now, there has been a ping-ponging of challenges to this because Britain, of course, repealed it. They don't have that anymore. You don't get sent to prison for being gay. But in India, it has been wrestled over as recently and only really resolved in 2018.

So, first of all, you know, there's an amazing project called the NAS project, which first challenged this. I think it was in 2006. It was a long, long time ago. So portions of this Section 377 were struck down as being unconstitutional with respect to gay sex in Delhi, in the Delhi High Court in 2009. But then that judgment was overturned by the Supreme Court of India in 2013. Then in 2016, a three-member bench of the court had to look at petitions by this very interesting organisation called the NAS Foundation. Which I've just given a set of my books for a fundraiser this week, for enough, for them. And I covered their activities here in Britain, I think, in sort of the early 2000s,

because they did a lot about sort of AIDS awareness in the South Asian. Amazing, amazing charity. Yeah, really, really, really fantastic. And then in 2017, the Supreme Court upheld the right to privacy as a fundamental right under the Constitution. There have been these constitutional wranglings that have gone on. And our publisher in India is challenging at the moment for the right for gay marriage. Right. Which is not allowed currently in India.

No, you can't. But in 2018, you know, it was decriminalised, an effect, to be gay in India. But you still can't have gay marriage. There was that famous picture of Vikram set on the front of India today with guilty or something. It was a very, very strong cover taken by Roet Chowler. Right. He's such a good photographer. He'd look up his stuff if you're interested. He's such an amazing photographer. So, you know, I suppose because you have two founders of the nation in Gandhi and Nair, and Jinnah, who've studied law in England,

there wasn't this huge desire to chuck everything out and rewrite everything, as there was in America, let's say, where everything was, you know, again, recreated by the founding fathers. So that's why you have many artefacts, but to answer your question, in a really long-winded, rambling, sometimes not even... We've been rather our style than that's style.

We should put it on a T-shirt for our podcast, but I hope that answers your question. Look, a question for you, Jonathan Lawrence has asked. I was wondering if you'd be able to say anything further on South India's absorption into the Raj, hands of the EIC. I remember you touched on Mysore and Tipu Sultan very briefly, which was really great, he says. But I think a lot of the picture so far has been north heavy. It'd be great to hear a little more about the particular cases of the South,

especially given the precarious relationship between the South of India and the Mughals. Yes, I mean, absolutely right. We have definitely been North Central. Anita is Punjabi and I live in Delhi. Which is one reason. And Anita's North Indian, so she made me do it. God, you're hilarious. But I would love to balance this in future by doing a lot of stuff on the ancient kingdoms of the South.

The Palavas who built the extraordinary rats at Mahabalipuram, the Cholas with their incredible temples and their raids on Southeast Asia. One of the few cases in Indian history when Indian powers take military action outside the sphere of modern India. They also, of course, raid and attack and nearly entirely capture Surinanka, burning down temples and looting jewels and gold and bronze and silver from the Buddhist temples. So interesting and controversial and difficult stuff there. And then the whole story of Vijaynagar, which is one of the great stories of modern Humpey where many travelers go, inland from Goa, but which is one of the great cities of Indian history. And when envoys come from Timur's Samakand, they are just, their jaws drop at the riches and sophistication of

Vigna Agra. And these are all stories that we should do in future. The ancient, yes, but also, you know, the modern, which is, which is where the British even the south, we might have been talked about, but the Madras presidency was a central hub of colonial power. Correct. Where the British made many of their most important decisions and control great swathes of land. And you did have sort of a really violent struggle. So when two parts of the Congress split between early 1900s, where they're trying to work out, you know, are we going to do this peacefully through negotiation,

or are we going to just throw them out and set fire to things? There are some really leading figures from the south of India who say, no, the only way we can get the British out is through force by force. So, you know, we should definitely do that. And also, you know, covering the South is going to give me the chance to talk about tripe. Are you aware of tripe?

I'm not aware of tripe. Tell me, I might say, I won't say upums or doses. Why tripe? So tripe is a fairly terrible thing than people eat in Britain, I think. I don't know, you probably love it. Give me upums and doses any day. But tribe is a photographer who writes at the very, at the very beginning.

That tribe. That tripe. I know his work. In the Victorian Arbor Museum, this is wonderful image. It's amazing. But he produces, like some of the earliest recording,

photographic recordings of the East India Company. And some of the great temples of the South first photographs were by him. 1850s? 1850s. Yeah, maybe even starts even earlier because he retires at the grand old age of 38

after the mutiny where he goes, not to stuff this. Not doing this anymore. But he produces a nine foot long image which is a continuous image. Anyway, look, we'll talk about more tripe. More tripe. Of course, and then the other thing is, again, one of the great controversial topics,

a huge punchbag in modern India, Tipu Sultan. Oh, yes. Most extraordinary story. When I first came to India in 1984, there was a sort of a hundred-part television series but called the Sword of Tipu Sultan, and he was this great nationalist hero, and they portrayed him as this person who the British were terrified of

who often defeated the British. And this is true. He was one of the most effective, resistant leaders against the East India Company. He was the only major resistance leader who never allied with the British. He always remained impactably opposed to company rule. And he used to write letters to, for example, the Nizam of Hyderabad, who was flirting with company alliances saying, do not know the way of the British. Once they put their talents in, they never retract them. And Tipu studies the company. First of all, his first of all, his first of Rather, Heider Ali studied the way the company fought and was the first Indian ruler to really take on European military tactics.

I mean, that's an enormous subject, which we will cover, because we are coming back to India, but for homework, if you live anywhere near the Victorian Albat Museum, go and see Tippers Tiger, which is this amazing automaton toy that he created of a tiger crouching over a European soldier and the bellows, there's a whole system of bellows inside. and if you've sort of turned the handle. And cables, yeah. And you turn the cables and the tiger will chew on the throat of the prone European. Who will screech?

Grunts and screeches come out. So go check that out. Okay, so here's one for you, William, I think. What about the railways? What about the railways? Exactly. Always pointed to when people want to defend the benefits of empire, what's the real story here?

And that's from Mother Like a Sixth. care. So it's a very interesting story. It was, of course, like everything to do with the East Indy company, a commercial proposition. You don't build a railway out of charity. You build a railway as a commercial operation. And it was put out to tender and investors, like everything else, the East India company, made money on it. And the idea that this was some sort of charitable operation or gift or sort of, you know, Oxfam equivalent coming along and helping to feed the starving of India is just nonsense. The reason you build railways is you want to get trade up and down the country. You want raw materials from the mines to reach the

ports. And you want to be able to move soldiers very quickly around the country. And it was a crucial role in all those. So, I mean, undoubtedly, you know, a useful thing for India to have, but certainly not done for charity. No. And also, can see who really benefited most from the railways because it was the first thing the nationalist would attack would be the railways. You know, if you wanted to bring the authorities to their needs, you would attack, you would cut off railways. You would put logs on lines. You would... Cows online. Yeah, mess with the signals. You would do anything that you can to disrupt because that was the flow of stuff coming out and the flow of soldiers coming in, as you say.

So that was like, gosh, we did that quite quickly. Amazing. Be concise. All right, that sounds like a good place to pause. We'll be back after this short break. Hello and welcome. This is part two of our Q&A session. The next question, Anita, is Nicholas Pimlet. I concede that the 1919 massacre, that's John Wollabug,

as well as being appalling in itself, was very important in the story of Indian independence because it was the moment that people like Gandhi, who were previously pro-British, turned to the cause of independence. But this raises the question of why Gandhi and presumably many other Indians were pro-British in the first place.

I'd really like to know more about how Indians dealt with the experience of occupation under the Raj and the conflicts and tensions that this doubtless gave rise to. So this is a really good question, a really interesting question. So, I mean, let's take them more modern. And again, this is conjecture,

but it's conjecture based on a lot of things that we read. And I suppose with Gandhi, Nairu and Jinnah, well, let's just take Gandhi the younger. Is that pit the younger and pit the older? Let's do Gandhi the Younger, who was a real advocate of the British. He was loyal. He was a loyal subject.

So during the Boer War, as we've mentioned before, he was a stretcher bearer for the British side. He didn't believe in killing. So the best he could offer was his body on the front line to take back British troops to have them treated. And as we've discussed, you know, in the First World War, he campaigned for Indians to be recruited and went around himself saying you must fight for your country. This is, you know, Britain is your king. let's join in the fight with the supposition as well that went along with it that if we prove ourselves to be loyal we'll have more powers it wasn't all the powers but more powers and 1919 puts paid to that but i think there's something even deeper on a deeper level when the british came and sort of you know

we touched on things like law and order i mean the railways are one thing which we just dealt with in short drift but you know a system of law that is the same no matter which province you're in that you have rights of ownership, that you have a right to complain, and that some capricious Maharaja can't throw you in a hole if you're doing something that irritates them, that appealed to an intelligentsia. People like Nairun and Gandhi and Jinnah, you know, the capricious nature of things changing

or shifting to sands beneath your feet. So there is something very appealing about that, a structure, a sanity about that. I think also, any time it's very important to have the imagination to go back to that time and the period before it, to realize that, you know, today we're very much conditioned to consider ourselves members of a nation-state, citizens of a country, to whom we have allegiance and who we have rights and duties. But that's not the case in 18th century India. And the whole story of the East India Company is one where you have a conquest taking place of

India, affected by Indian mercenary soldiers working for a bunch of traders. And that whole scenario is only possible in the world where people do not have clear national allegiance. There is no such thing, or you get the beginnings of it turning up in 1857, which is why 1857 is so interesting and important. But in the 18th century, there is clearly no sense of an Indian nationality belonging to a nation state that's being invaded by foreigners. You certainly have the sense that the British foreigners, but so was, you know, for example, Mir Jaffa, the general of Sarajadalu, he was born in Iraq. India was full of people in the Mongol administration who'd been born in Afghanistan or Uzbekistan

or from all over. And so this idea that it's black and white as we see it. Yeah, but then the premise of the question becomes even more interesting because the phrase that Nicholas Fimot has used is, why is Gandhi and presumably many other Indians, why were they pro-British in the first place? And what you seem to be suggesting is that it's not necessarily pro-British, it's not anti-anything, it's just bumping along with the times and the tides, because there's no sense of nationhood. So I think you had a very confused sets of loyalties in the 18th century with people supporting whoever they thought would be good for them and would be,

and who was probably least violent to them and their families and whom they would be safest with. And for example, the whole growth of Calcutta, the story of Colonial Calcutta grows because the English defense system there, including the Maratha ditch, is considered to be an effective way of keeping out the Marathas, and therefore if you're worried about the Marathas coming,

raiding up from the guts of Maharashtra, if you go to Calcutta and settle there, your wife won't be kidnapped and your daughter won't be raped. Which explains why there's a very different sentiment, I suppose, in history. So in the north where you have the Sikh Empire, where they do it for themselves, where they push back against the Afghan marauders who come over the borders, they have a lot less romance about the British coming in and keep them out right until the last possible minute they keep them out.

I think the whole question hinges on the fact of understanding that things can be very, very different a hundred years ago or 200 years ago, that all the sets of allegiances and duties and responsibilities and our image of who we are and who our allegiance lies with is very different at that period. Aisha Jalal, fun enough, has written a fascinating book about this. We had her on to talk about Jinnah, but one of her other great books is a book called Self and Sovereignty.

And she points out how many people seem to have their allegiance in the 18th and early 19th century, not to a country, but to a city. Yes. So somebody is Shah Jahanabad Abadi or Akbarabadi. Lahorees were definitely Lahorees. Yeah, yeah. Or Lahori.

Yeah, yeah. And many people's identities and their surname is hinged on their town of birth. And that's where their allegiance lies. In other words, very locally, there's only the beginnings of a sense of wider nationalisms. So is there the answer to it? because I don't know whether we're answering Nicholas Pimult's question. Is it? It's a complicated question that you can spend an hour answering, yeah.

Yeah, right. But is there a possible answer in that until 1919, Indians were willing to do the benefit of the doubt thing. But after 1919, that stopped. That ended. Something changed in the psyche of Indians, which led to people like Tagore handing back awards. And Tagore wasn't the only one, by the way.

But also people saying right now, forget about sharing power, forget about asking anymore, we see you and we want you to go. Yes, I mean, I think it's very interesting in a sense how enthusiastic Gandhi is at the idea of British justice at the beginning of his life and how something like this completely blows it out of the water. And suddenly, you know, when some people who have given you the benefit of the doubt, like Gandhi and Nair and Jinnah, suddenly see that everything that you believed, Everything that you thought, at least you could rely on because it's without, it's bloodless, it is statute, it is solid, it is based on years of precedent, can be blown out of the water in an instant, nothing happens. That changes the whole paradigm completely and makes it unbearable.

So I'm not sure if we answered it very well, but we had a run at it, Nicholas. This is another question now from Andrew Dayton. I've been utterly engraced in the podcast, thank you. A true historical Leviathan in the genre. Thank you, thank you. We haven't paid Andrew Dayton for this tweet. We should perhaps say it at this point. No, we haven't.

Though, this is the equivalent of the Andrew Dayton, but, but you could have expanded to early Indian history. That would have been epic, says Andrew. Did Jesus really go to India? So two different questions. Certainly, we are definitely going to go to early Indian history. and early India has a whole range of fascinating empires, the Moorias, the Guptas, the Kushans, the Chalukyas, the Palavas, the Cholas, all of which can and I hope will merit an episode or two or three each. And there are so many fascinating chapters to early Indian history. I'm really, really looking forward to discussing that. Yes, yes. But what about the Jesus question?

So the Jesus question. So I can't remember the exact thing. Is this a 19th century vision that someone has or early 20th century vision? Listen, Mr. Catholic, you're asking the most godless E than you know. Why are you asking me? There's some story that I think somebody in Germany has a vision or that Jesus, in the missing years between him preaching in the temple as a boy and turning up in his early 30. to do his main mission, that he spent the intervening time in Kashmir.

Now, the short answer to that, there is absolutely no historical evidence whatsoever for that idea at all. You know, the Amity Muslims believe that Jesus went to spend his later years and was proved to be an old man and died in India. And he had a peaceful life, and then he died in India. That's the thing from the Emmides. So that whole story is not historical. But, and this is the interesting thing, Christianity does. arrive in India very early. And again, this is something I've been writing about in my new book,

because there is increasing evidence that there is a very, very important trade route running from the Red Sea coast of Egypt to Gujarat, Kerala, and I recommendu just near Pondicherry in from the first century BC. There had been early. earlier voyages making the journey down the Red Sea, if you catch the monsoon winds, it can take as little as 40 days. And there's now new calculations emerging based on a papyrus that appeared probably from an Egyptian rubbish dump at OxyRinkas, which shows that the Roman Empire got one third of its entire revenue from the customs point at Bernicke, where the traffic from India came in

because the value of the ivory, the nard, which is what they use for making perfumes, and particularly the pepper and the spices and the aromatics which are being brought from India, is so enormous that every year the custom post at Bernice is making more money from the empire than the entire conquest of Gaul made for Julius Caesar.

It's an extraordinary figure, and there's been a lot of writing about this. There's a lot of literature which has been appeared lately. I've actually just written a New York review piece reviewing all this stuff. And there were at least, and we have the figure from plenty, 250 ships a year during the period of Augustus, going from the Roman ports in Egypt to India, and an unnumbered number of Indian ships coming from India to deliver goods on the basis of Indian merchants. And with that stuff, you have religions. So literally this March, just this year, at the site of Berneke, an archaeologist called Steve Sidebottom, who's been digging the site for the last few years, uncovered not just a full-size Buddha done, probably produced in Alexandria, but in the Gandhara and Indian style, but also produced one of the earliest images of Krishna, or Vasudeva, an earlier version of Krishna, which emerged out of the ground in Berenice. Niki this year, which means that it's equally likely that Christianity could have reached

Kerales. Certainly, we have inscriptions in Buddhist caves in the Deccan, where Javanus, that's foreigners, it's like pharynge, it's kind of precursor the word pharynge. Some of them who describe themselves as Romai, in other words, Romans, give individual pillars or sponsor areas of Buddhist monasteries in the first and second century AD. And so it's quite possible that Christianity got there at that point. What we do know is that by the third century, there's a whole book being produced called The Acts of Thomas, full of legend and mythology of how St. Thomas, the apostle, who allegedly, according to the gospel, but refused to believe the resurrection of Jesus,

he gets sent off to India in this Acts of Thomas and appears in Kerala. Now, there's a whole Syrian Christian church in Kerala that, at least from the third century, AD have believed that this to be true. I've seen it. And so anyway, it's a fascinating story. So the short answer is no to Jesus, but Christianity in some form very early. Well, so hang on, I just visited the bodily in while you were chatting.

And I just looked up this, the Amidhi belief. So this is based on the canonical gospels, the Qur'an's hadith and revelations to Mirza Ghulam, Ahmed, having delivered his message to the Israelites and Jude. Jesus is understood to have emigrated eastward to escape persecution from Judea and to have further spread his message to the lost tribes of Israel. In Amity, Islam, Jesus is thought to have died a natural death in India. He lived to an old age and died in Shreinauga in Kashmir, and his tomb is presently located at the Rosa Bal Shrine in Kashmir.

Yeah, well, I mean, this stuff has very, has very clearly has very little historical. Historical evidence. Do you know when you were talking about the Romai, though, that made me think, because you know, the Romanese travelers here, as we call them, but the Romani have a lot of Sanskriti words in their language. And I wonder if that's that period of, you know, the sea passages going to and from. Is that the basis of Romanese? So, no, I think, I mean, it's a similar story of migration, but no, the sea route runs very strongly in the first century

and then it's dying down by about the fifth century. and my understanding is that the gypsies, the Romanes, leave Rajasthan, where specifically they have links to Rajasthan in maybe the 7th, 8th, 9th century and migrate slowly into central Europe. And the extraordinary story which I have been witnessed to is that the flamenco gypsy musicians of Andalusia and the Langer Manganiya musicians of Rajasthan still, have exactly the same dance rhythms centuries apart. And we have introduced at the Jaipo Literature Festival Spanish flamenco musicians to Manganias, and they have not a word of common language. The Spaniards don't speak Hindi or Rajasdani and the Rajasanis don't speak Spanish, but they speak identical musical languages and it takes them about 10 minutes to begin jamming and playing perfectly with each other. And it's a wonderful site. We put that several times, we put

a wonderful ex-Radio Tarifa musicians called Caravan on with Kutla Khan and Chughe Khan, our two big Rajasthani musicians at the Jai Pulitzer Festival. And they instantly dance and play together with exactly the same music. And they have the same clackety-clacks, the same castanets, very, very similar. I've rocked out to Kudla Khan. And they use them in the same way. the Murchang, the Jude's hub, which they're using their mouth. So, listen, I mean, that's, we may be going to Jaiapur to do this podcast. If you're listening in India. We are going to Jaipei to do this.

I haven't packed my socks yet. But I mean, you know, look, if it happens, I hope, hopefully, fingers crossed it's going to happen. But if you are listening in India, spread the word that we're coming to Jaiper. If you're there in Jopper, come and say hello. And also do messages for things that you like us to talk about while we are there doing the pod thing in Jaipo. What is our email address, William Dauronport? It is Empire Pod. UK at gmail.com and the Jibonet Festival dates are 18th, 23rd of January, 2020.

Now, look, where are we going next on this podcast, William? Because we have to end it, otherwise the producer is going to come and beat us both up. So the idea was that having done something centered very much on India and Britain, we would do a series that had neither in any way. So we decided to go and do the Ottomans. and then maybe the Persians after that go to the Middle East. We will come back to India and we will come back to the British Empire. And I think many of our listeners are between India and Britain and are waiting for us to get on with lots more.

Every day we're getting mails say, will you do this, we do that? What about Nehru? What about Tabush Sultan? And so on. But looking forward very, very much to doing the Ottomans. And we've got next week a real treat. my friend and your the great Peter Frankapan, the author of the Silk Road.

Before he wrote the Silk Road, his great interest was Byzantium. And he's going to be coming on next week to talk about the last days, the end days of Byzantium when it was just a rump left in and around Constantinople with the Ottomans rising to power

in Anatolia, in Asia Minor and getting closer and closer to Constantinople. And we're planning a, wonderful run through. We've got people like Bettany Hughes lined up to talk about Ottoman women. We've got Eugene Rogan to talk about the Ottomans in the First World War. And we may have a very special Nobel Prize winner, Orhan Pamuk, coming in. Don't say that. You're just, again. What is it with you blowing

any kind of drama? First of all, he hasn't said yes yet. We're working on him. We're working on it. No pressure, Warren. Can I just do this? Because, I mean, very famously moved a world to tears with your reciting of a lovely piece of all poetry. Remember that? You were asked to do that very recently again by a newspaper. And it isn't that I'm jealous. At all.

No. Or that this is a competitive blood sport. No, it's not who I am. It's not in my DNA. But this is a poem about Constantinople. Hey, ready? Huh. Hankey.

Hankey. Istanbul was Constantinople. Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople. Been a long time gone, Constantinople. Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night. Every gal in Constantinople lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople. So if you have a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul. Even old New York was once in New Amsterdam.

Why they changed it? I can't say. People just liked it better that way. So take me back to Constantinople. No, you can't go back to Constantinople. Been a long time gone, Constantinople. Why did Constantinople get the works? That's no body's business, but the Turks. They might be Giants, best band ever.

You've got to sing it next time, Anita. I were leaving you to do the solo. That is the Empire Podcast. The inanity that is the Empire Podcast. That is the Anarchy that is the Empire podcast. With me, William Duremberg. And me, Anita Arnum.