Gurinder's movie stirs Partition passions

In some ways, the debate provoked by Gurinder Chadha's Viceroy's House is proving to be even more interesting than the film itself.

"And the film hasn't even been released in India yet," someone remarked in a committee room in the House of Lords last week, where Gurinder got together with Lady Kishwar Desai (wife of economist Lord Meghnad Desai) to discuss Viceroy's House, Partition and the teaching of history.

Viceroy's House is expected to be released around August 15 in India. There will be a dubbed version in Hindi.

"Whether you like the film or don't like the film, it has provoked debate and it has made people question history and how we are taught history and whose history we are being taught," said Gurinder.

She revealed she has made an hour-long documentary for the BBC which will take "an extremely detailed look on the last 10 years before Partition and where exactly the idea of a separate Muslim country came from".

She is inclined to think that by 1945, people like Winston Churchill had decided there would be a Pakistan as a hedge against possible Russian influence in India.

Incidentally, Gurinder's costumes from the film plus the script will be kept in the Partition Museum, which Kishwar has set up in Amritsar.

On the subject of teaching history to schoolchildren, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, raised the issue when he met black and Asian journalists last week in his office with its panoramic view of the Thames.

He had just visited a primary school that taught Black History and recalled some critics had once asked: "'Why should we have a Black History month? Why would you possibly need one?' Well, anyone who has been in this school that is serious about Black History month will realise its value to the entire school."

Flanked by several of his black and Asian MPs, including "the amazing Mr Keith Vaz", he declared: "Having those cultural understandings of where you have come from is very, very important. Britain is a multi-faith, multi-lingual, multicultural society - and do you know what - I think that's a good thing! I'm very proud of that."

Taking sides

Fatima Bhutto, author and niece of the late Benazir Bhutto, has been most intemperate in her condemnation of Viceroy’s House, which she has dismissed as “this unctuous and craven film”.

She alleges Viceroy’s House is anti-Muslim: “All the riots in Chadha’s film seem to be caused by Muslims.”

In response, Gurinder said: “What saddens me is that a film about reconciliation should be so wilfully misrepresented as anti-Muslim or anti-Pakistan.”

Meanwhile, the historian Andrew Roberts argues it is not Winston Churchill who has blood on his hands over Partition but Mountbatten.

Viceroy’s House, he complained, “is just the latest example of the mania for making our greatest national hero into a villain, or presenting him as a joke figure”.

Approval matters

Gurinder had feared Shashi Tharoor would not like her film but he had, especially the way the Mountbattens had expressed regret by staying on after Independence and doing relief work in the refugee camps.

Meanwhile, author and broadcaster Zareer Masani (son of the late Minoo Masani), sent me his article, ominously entitled, "Raj haters: A personal rejoinder to Raj-haters masquerading as historians".

Zareer identified his bogus historians: "I'm referring to Jon Wilson's India Conquered and Shashi Tharoor's Era of Darkness, both of which claim historical veracity on the basis of footnotes carefully culled to reference and generalise from every misdeed any Briton ever committed in India."

Updating Gandhi

This year's London Book Fair, which has a market focus on Poland, also offers a "Spotlight on India" in the 70th year of Independence.

Meanwhile, the Arts Council of England has published a booklet, celebrating 200 of "the best British writers of colour".

I usually drop in on Pramod Kapoor of Roli Books but he has stayed at home this year. However, my best conversation at the fair last week was with his 36-year-old son, Kapil, who told me his father was updating his Gandhi: An Illustrated Biography for the international market.

The book will be published in the US and in France by Hachette, in the UK by Thames and Hudson, in Italy by Rizzoli, in Germany by EDEL, in Flemish by Lannoo and in Russian by Slovo.

Pramod is also researching a book on the Royal Indian Navy revolt of 1946.

Tittle tattle

It was great seeing my old friend, M.J. Akbar, over lunch as he passed through London last week. He tweeted he had "addressed MPs, journalists, academicians at the British Parliament on India's role in a changing world".

He seems to have slipped effortlessly into his new role as minister of state for external affairs.