Win tickets to ‘Viceroy House’ screening
THE FINAL Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, is tasked with overseeing the transition of British India to independence, but meets with conflict as different sides clash in the face of monumental change.
Viceroy House is directed by the acclaimed Gurinder Chadha and stars Gillian Anderson and Hugh Bonneville (of Downton Abbey fame) in the lead roles. The film represents a personal moment for Chadha, for whom the tragedies of the partition still resonate so many generations later.
“I didn’t just want to explore why Partition happened and focus on the political wrangles between public figures, I also wanted to make sure the audience understood the impact of Partition on ordinary people.”
The Bend It Like Beckham director was born in Nairobi, Kenya 13 years after the controversial Mountbatten Plan struck a jagged line through the north-west of the freshly independent Union of India to create the Dominion of Pakistan.
Chadha conceived the idea of setting her story entirely in Viceroy House, the British Raj’s seat of government in Delhi, to create an “upstairs, downstairs vision of Partition,” which would focus on the negotiations upstairs between Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, and the country’s political leaders Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah, while interweaving the stories of the Indians downstairs.
“I was brought up with the commonly held historical narrative that in 1947, after a long freedom struggle led by Ghandi, the British wanted to hand India back, so they sent Mountbatten out there to do it, but we started fighting each other.
“Mountbatten had no choice but to divide the country. So in a way the violence of Partition was our fault. This is the version of history portrayed in Attenborough’s seminal film Ghandhi. But now if you look at the evidence, that is a very one-sided interpretation.
“My intention is to examine how someone like me can look at new historical evidence and explore an alternative historical narrative to what I’d been taught as a girl.”
Viceroy House opens at cinemas nationwide on July 28.