Chandigarh, October 8
A novel based on the life of Maharaja Duleep Singh, authored by Navtej Sarna, former spokesman of the ministry of external affairs, was released in the city today.

The novel titled “The Exile” presents a sordid tale of intrigue, treachery and cold-blooded murders that greeted the end of the Sikh kingdom and the exile of the last Maharaja, Duleep Singh, to England. Sarna has told the unusual story of the last Maharaja of Punjab. Soon after the British had annexed his kingdom, Duleep Singh was separated from his mother and his people, taken under British guardianship and converted into Christianity.

tribuneindia.com 

“At 16, he was taken to England to live the life of a country squire, an exile that he had been schooled to seek himself. But disillusionment with the treatment meted out to him and a late realization of his lost legacy turned him into a rebel,” said the author.

Though Navtej said that writing about history is comparatively easier, he found the novel equally harder to write. “It is always easier to put flesh if you have the skeleton. In fiction, one has to weave the story, but history has its own story. It is harder in the sense that the facts and stories cannot be distorted as per author’s convenience,” he said.