Daily Times

Any discussion regarding the end of the British Raj is bound to be controversial. Pakistanis insist that partition was the right thing to do whereas the Indians insist it was wrong. But there is one thing on which both agree: that partition was carried out in great haste, and to use Churchill’s phrase, it was a ‘shameful flight’. Both agree that the ultimate blame for the mess should be laid on Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy.

The job of drawing the boundary line was given to a British barrister, Cyril Radcliffe, who had never set foot in India. He was commissioned to equitably divide 175,000 square miles between 88 million people. Radcliffe arrived in India on 8th July 1947 and had five weeks to sort out the border.

Several books and hundreds of academic journal articles have been written on the partition. But among the people, the emotions are still raw and wounds still fresh.

It was very brave of Gurinder Chadha to step into the fray with her lavish epic, ‘Viceroy House’. It was designed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of partition. She is the Kenyan-born daughter of a Sikh father, whose lineage goes back to the town of Jhelum in today’s Pakistan. She considers India to be her homeland even though she grew up in London.

Several books and hundreds of academic journal articles have been written on the partition. But among the people, the emotions are still raw and wounds still fresh

She made the film to provide us with her interpretation of those momentous events that culminated in the creation of the modern states of Pakistan and India. The Indian version of the film is dubbed in Hindi and is called ‘Partition: 1947’.

The narrative is based upon two books, Freedom at Midnight and The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition. The first book formed the script for the 1982 blockbuster movie, ‘Gandhi’. which went to win a number of Oscars. The second book was relatively unknown until two years after she started making the film. Chadha had a casual encounter with Prince Charles. She told him that she was making a film about his uncle, Lord Mountbatten. He recommended her to read The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition written by Narendra Singh Sarila, former aide-de-camp to Lord Mountbatten and later India’s ambassador to France. The book ultimately shaped Chadha’s narrative. She spent 18 months with Narendra Singh Sarila and got his advice on every scene in the movie until he passed away.

Most of the action takes place in the Viceroy’s house; the imperial structure with 340 rooms is the largest stately residence in the world. Since August 15, 1947, it has been home to the president of India, and renamed as Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Lord Mountbatten is played by Hugh Bonneville (of Downton Abbey fame) and Edwina Mountbatten by Gillian Anderson (of X-files fame). Jinnah is played by Denzil Smith, Nehru by Tanveer Ghani, and Gandhi by Neeraj Kabi. Veteran Indian actor, Om Puri, plays the blind father of a young Muslim woman, Aalia, played by Huma Qureshi, who is madly in love with Jeet, played by Manish Dayal, a young Hindu man who is on Mountbatten’s staff. AR Rahman’s music injects an appropriately ‘grandiose import’ into the film.

The script is compelling, touching and vivid. The events dramatised in the film evoke the emotions that must have wreaked havoc on the millions who lived through that difficult period in Indian history. We get to see assets being divided, lovers being separated, and people boarding trains to start a new life across the border, knowing that they may or may not make it alive. We see a world being torn apart and a civilisation being rent asunder. Amidst all this horror, we see Mountbatten being dressed in his pressed military uniform, decked with every medal that was in his collection. We see rows and rows of servants in spotless uniforms lining up to serve elegant meals to the British royalty and army. The contrast with the squalor outside of the Viceroy’s house is stark.

The film also generated controversy. Even Singh’s wife has found something in the film that has outraged her. Some have called it an expression of colonial triumphalism and racism. But it brings out the reality of the time, which was marked by racism. It does not defend it. Others have called it anti-Muslim but it shows violence being committed by Hindus on Muslims and by Muslims on Hindus. Some have said it shows the leaders of India’s two major parties in a poor light, unable to tolerate each other – cantankerous and rude.

Toward the end, there is a surprising revelation in the movie. We are told that during his tenure as prime minister, Churchill had decided to create Pakistan and to divide India. There is evidence that he had engaged in secret communication with Jinnah and that, after he had stepped down as prime minister, had started proselytising for Pakistan in England.

But the movie goes one step further and says he had also had the boundary lines developed. So when Radcliffe was struggling to develop the boundary lines that would later bear his name, he was handed a secret dossier showing those boundary lines. Presumably, they had been drawn on the orders of Lord Field Marshal Wavell, Mountbatten’s predecessor.

The movie suggests that Radcliffe merely redrew the lines which had been drawn earlier by Wavell. The revelation has provoked a debate among historians which will continue for a while.

Most viewers in the West have very little knowledge of the partition of India. They will learn a lot from it. And even if one just regards the film as a romantic war movie, it is first-rate entertainment.

The author is an avid film goer. He can be reached at ahmadfaruqui@gmail.com

Published in Daily Times, March 27^th 2018.