We are the children of history. When we tell the stories of our forefathers, we speak also of how we’ve been moulded. The deep wounds left behind by the division of British India in 1947, forming the independent dominions of India and Pakistan, mark not only a crucial moment in each country’s history but in the personal stories of its people.
It shaped the story of Gurinder Chadha, certainly. After partition, her family were forced to flee their homes, her father’s youngest sister starving to death on the journey.
Though her film, Viceroy’s House, may embrace the greater political machinations at work, it becomes also an intimate reflection of the pain suffered by her relatives, by their friends, and by all people caught in the midst of an agonising birth of nations.
Film reviews round-up: Viceroy’s House, Certain Women, Fist Fight
The British had occupied India for over 300 years. In August 1947, however, they decided to leave for the simplest of reasons: WWII had stripped them of the resources needed to sustain control over the territory. What they left behind was a nightmare of their own making, one seemingly impossible to repair by this point.
Britain’s empire, of course, lived by the phrase ‘divide and rule’ and India proved no outlier, with a great divide slowly carved between the major religions in the country – Hinduism and Sikhism vs. Islam – to keep them all weak and under their will, too busy fighting each other instead of their oppressors.
Source: Viceroy’s House: Telling the story of India and Pakistan’s traumatic birth | The Independent
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