DESCRIPTION:
Originally broadcast on May 28, 2000 on BBC 2 in the UK. Written and directed by Catrine Clay


"Every other Thursday in the 1920s & 1930s a P&O ship left London bound for Bombay. On board were all of British India: governors, magistrates, Indian army officers, tea planters & their wives - and they all took cameras. Using these home movies and photographs, five personal stories record a lost way of life, building an evocative picture of the dying days of the Empire."


Here is a review of this program by Jill Grey, as posted to India-L on May 29, 2000.

"...a beguiling patchwork of nostalgic moments captured on cine film during the 1920s and 30s. My only criticism is that it was all over too quickly. There must have been miles of wonderful footage left on the cutting room floor that we'll never get to see.

There was much to-ing and fro-ing on liners. P&O's "Cathay", "The Viceroy of India" (1st Class Drawing Room in Scottish Baronial style, gangways decked out as gentlemen's clubs) and the "Rajputana" (with Ghandi on board) all had an airing. So did the views of a number of old India-hands ... Raleigh Trevelyan - son of the Agent at Gilghit, author Molly Kaye and her sister Bets, Iris Butler (sister of RAB and daughter of Sir Montague who took up his post as District Officer at Kotah 'fresh from his double-first in Classics from Cambridge'), and Moslem contributors Haji Mohammed Miah Shah and Haji Montaj Ali whose positions were not specified (why no Hindu participants?). Fifty years later, Simon Portal still can't quite understand how a librarian at the IOL could pronounce the excruciatingly boring Indian diary of his father, Lord Goschen 'fascinating' (precisely because of its monumental dullness, he was told) and gazed wistfully out of the window as Winston Churchill delivered an apocalyptic warning that the writing was on the wall for British India.

Wistfulness was the word. "Any place where you're really happy when you're young... everything in that place is home, and always will be" said Molly Kaye over monochrome footage of her beloved Simla. Snobbery too, as Iris Butler observed. "You'd take to India the prejudices of the day .... orders of precedence, class, accents, were awfully important...'a touch of the tarbrush' was one rather unfortunate phrase....it was awful. "

Ayahs didn't get a mention, but Raleigh Trevelyan's English Nanny Spicer was captured on film, glued to a deckchair after refusing to go ashore at Marseilles where English girls would be captured and sold as slaves in Argentina, or so she'd heard.

As hunting to hounds got under-way at Ooty, Up-country, where Rajahs and British incumbents were the best of friends (though women were "of no importance" and even the Agent's wife didn't count) there were polo matches, durbars and the big event of the year at Gilghit - the Hunza-Nagar tug of war (plenty of original footage). No one up there was aware of any anti-British feeling. "We were just a handful of white people surrounded by this enormous population of locals but we felt no fear at all." As British officials on a bench joshed each other for the cine camera, Iris Baker declared the exclusion of Indians from British Club membership 'a great mistake.'

There was footage of rioting as the great mistake erupted in Bombay and Scottish mechanic cum self-made entrepreneur Bill Fairweather, forced to choose between turbulent India and turbulent Europe, climbed aboard his private aircraft to taxi away forever down the runway he'd built himself at sleepy Muzzaffarpur.

The film ended with shots that brought a lump to the throat : the Somerset Lancers passing through the Gateway of India and an ocean liner sailing from the quay at Bombay for the last time. Haji Mohammed Miah Shah spoke for those left behind: "India was divided in two but the British didn't care because they were leaving", while one of the British departed observed, "we just gave it back .... and left."

As someone said a couple of days ago, the programme was about 'elitism'. Of course it was, but it was also about affection for and indissoluble friendships within India. Some of Raleigh Trevelyan's fondest memories were of his pony rides with the son of the Mir of Hunza ; when schooldays came to an end, Mollie and Bets Kaye couldn't wait to go home - to India. Perhaps Iris Butler's reflection on British snobbery and prejudice was the most eloquent of all: "Oh dear ! Oh my goodness yes.....!" "