A CONQUEST OF PASTSto paint the current Talpurs as usurpers, with "their stupid policy to
injure agriculture, to check commerce, "to oppress the working man,
and to accumulate riches for their own sensual pleasures."^36 The
oppression narrative of a Hindu majority seething under a Muslim
minority was so entrenched within the Company's productions of
Sind's past that it flattened out the histories of this region, calcifying
Chachnama's diverse world representation under one overarching
symbol: temple destruction.
James Mill (1773-1836) finished his The History of British India in
1817, and it quickly became a hegemonic text on Indian pasts. As such,
it projected his radical utilitarianism onto a static ancient India.^37
While it remained required reading at East India College at Haileybury,
it was augmented by works produced by former and current Company
officials who filled Mill's constructs with new and robust regional· de-
tail. These writers included Mountstuart Elphinstone, Vincent A.
Smith, and Stanley Lane-Poole.
Elphinstone (1779-1859) began his administrative career with the
Marathas in Poona and deliberately set out to offer a corrective to Mill's
History-one which was "under the guidance of impressions received
in India."^38 His History of India: The Hindu and Mahometan Periods
was completed in 1841. Elphinstone situated the Muslim urge to con-
quer in the "fanaticism of the false prophet," and Chachnama was the
originary source that documented communal strife and warfare among
Hindus and Muslims. He found that "though loaded with tedious
speeches, and letters ascribed to the principal actors, it contains a
minute and consistent account of the transactions during Mohammed
Casim's invasion."^39 For Elphinstone, Qasim was "prudent and concili-
ating" but caught between the Muslim habits of "ferocity and moder-
ation." For example, Elphinstone narrated Qasim's cruelty when taking
Daybul: "Casim at first contented himself with circumcising all the
Brahmins; but, incensed at their rejection of this sort of conversion,
he ordered all above the age of seventeen to be put to death, and all
under it, with the women, to be reduced to slavery."^40 Elphinstone high-
lighted contrasts to Muslim barbarity in the bravery of the local resis-
tance, starting with Dahar, who, "already wounded with an arrow,
mounted his horse and renewed the battle with unabated courage, he
was unable to restore the fortune of the day and fell fighting gallantly