If all goes according to plan, Ralph Fiennes and Michael Fassbender might be coming to India — even Calcutta — to shoot for the film adaptation of White Mughals, written by William Dalrymple (inset). The author revealed the possibility in a chat with t2 on the documentary, The White Mughal — Love and Betrayal in India. The one-hour programme for Discovery Channel showcases the forbidden love of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, a British diplomat stationed in Hyderabad who converted to Islam to marry his love, the princess of Hyderabad, Khair-un-Nissa. 

Narrated by Dalrymple, the programme will reconstruct the lives of the White Mughals who assimilated themselves into the Indian life. Excerpts from the chat...

Hello from Calcutta...
How are you? We shot for this documentary there last April. So I know it must be hot there. I am a winter visitor to Bengal. I don’t visit Calcutta after February (laughs).

Where in Calcutta did you shoot?
The story ends in Calcutta. The main action is in Hyderabad. James Kirkpatrick, who falls in love with the Muslim princess Khair-un-Nissa in Hyderabad, gets sent to Calcutta and dies on the way there. His widow, Khair-un-Nissa, goes to Calcutta to pay her respect at his grave — right up from Hyderabad to Vizag and through Odisha. She spent a year mourning Kirkpatrick at his grave in Park Street cemetery. After a year, she was seduced by Kirkpatrick’s wicked assistant Henry Russell somewhere in Chowringhee. Later, she was dumped by him and left to die broken-hearted in Masulipatnam. We filmed on the Hooghly, at the Chowringhee and the cemetery.

It must have been difficult to shoot in Chowringhee given how much it has changed?
Well, there are quite a lot of buildings that still have fragments of the 18th century. We got lovely closing shots in Howrah in the evening of country boats coming up the river. Then we took a shot in St. John’s Church where Kirkpatrick’s memorial is. And we ate a lot of delicious Bengali food at Aaheli — aubergine and fish. 

Have you picked up the trick of dealing with fish bones?
No, I can’t. My Bengali friends do that horrible thing of picking a fish clean off the bones in it. I prefer to go boneless even if I am in Calcutta.

So you are not a ‘White Bengali’ yet...
Actually, I have a Bengali great-great-grandmother from Chandernagore. So I am a Bengali. My great-great-grandmother married a Frenchman. We have her marriage certificate. She took the name Marie Monica. Her Hindu name was not recorded but it is mentioned that she was born a gentile d’Inde — in other words, an Indian local. Incidentally, one of her descendants from a different line was Virginia Woolf. She was her great-granddaughter. 

Coming to the adaptation, how was your book turned into a documentary?
The book tells the story of the whole period, with many examples, Kirkpatrick being the predominant. The documentary deals with ‘The White Mughal’, in the singular. That’s how we have reduced the 700-page book to a one-hour film. The story of White Mughals and the film is about this interaction in the 18th century between Europeans and Indians, which is disguised by 19th century racist theory and ignored by post-colonialism. But this interaction was the norm in 18th century colonial society. People take the 19th century stereotype of the East is East and the West is West. 

The point of this book, and now the film, is to foreground the interaction between the colonial East India Company and Indians, both socially and sexually, at a time when British rule was at its most rapacious and corrupt. When the Crown arrives in the 19th century, you get a relatively malicious society with separation of Indians and British but a relatively uncorrupt rule through the efficient ruling mechanism, the Indian Civil Service. 

What news of the feature film?
I think it is nearly financed. It moved from one production company to another, largely because it involves a massive panorama, big money — battles, elephants.... It’s not a cheap film to make. The main producer now is Frank Doelger, the man behind Game of Thrones. The director will be Ralph Fiennes, a.k.a. M in Spectre. He also won an Oscar for Schindler’s List.

And was Voldemort in Harry Potter!
Yes. And the front runner to play Kirkpatrick is Michael Fassbender. 

Wow! And all of you would be coming here for the shoot at some point? 
Yes. They have to come to Calcutta. Park Street cemetery has such a great atmosphere. Only one half of the cemetery has survived. North Park Street Cemetery was tragically bulldozed in the 1960s.

Sudeshna Banerjee
(The White Mughal — Love and Betrayal in India airs on Discovery Channel on April 3 at 8pm)