Life in India
In his teens, Stuart left Ireland for India, where he remained for the rest of his life, embracing the Hindu culture and eventually earning his nickname. Starting as a cadet, he rose through the ranks to become a Major-General. His last command was over his own regiment the Saugor Field Force.
Major V. C. P. Hodson's biography of Stuart mentions that he "had studied the language, manners and customs of the natives of this country with so much enthusiasm, his intimacy with them ... obtained for him the name of Hindoo Stuart".
He is mentioned in William Dalrymple's book White Mughals (2002). Stuart adopted several Hindu customs, including bathing in the Ganges at Calcutta every morning, amassing a collection of deities as well as Indian clothes. He even encouraged European ladies in India to adopt the sari (through "frequent and vigorous" contributions to the daily Calcutta Telegraph in the year 1800) and Indian sepoys to wear full mustaches on parade. His commander-in-chief "ticked him off" due to his partiality towards sepoys sporting "Rajput mustaches or brightly colored caste marks on their foreheads".
Read more about this topic: Charles Stuart (East India Company Officer)
Famous quotes containing the words life in, life and/or india:
“For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Not less are summer-mornings dear
To every child they wake,
And each with novel life his sphere
Fills for his proper sake.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“But nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)