A bruising portrait of India’s bleakest hour
Indian Partition was one of those cataclysmic 20th-century events the full horrors of which are difficult to comprehend from the cosy vantage point of the present day. On the 70th anniversary of the splintering of the old British Raj along religious lines, its human cost was grippingly tallied in My Family, Partition and Me: India 1947 (BBC One). This was a bruising and intimate portrayal of the ordinary people caught up one of the great geopolitical catastrophies of the post-war era.
Episode one of two also served as a sequel of sorts to Countryfile presenter Anita Rani’s 2015 appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? Tears are an occupational hazard on that BBC blubfest – but Rani’s distress was raw and wrenching as she learned her Sikh grandfather’s family had been slaughtered in ethnic violence as the country was divided into modern India and Pakistan (which initially included Bangladesh).
Here she returned with members of three British families – Hindu, Muslim and Christian – likewise unmoored by partition. Cheshire doctor Binita Kane travelled to a remote village in Bangladesh from which, seven decades previously, her Hindu father had fled Muslim violence. She was understandably lost for words as she gazed over verdant green fields where her family had hidden from death squads leading a campaign of ethnic cleansing. The perspective of Muslims escaping oppression was furnished by 78 year-old Asad Ali Syed, who journeyed to the family home close to India’s border with Pakistan only to discover it was today a mouldering storeroom.
The documentary was mostly reticent about colonialism’s role in the carving up of India. The closest it came to reckoning with such culpability was when Mandy Duke, granddaughter of prominent Raj businessman Arthur Wise, spoke with eye-witnesses to the violence that had swept the city then known as Calcutta.
One elderly man recalled how British soldiers declined to intervene as a rioter ran from a mosque and cut down his father. Why had troops been ordered not to interfere? Would their involvement have eased tensions or enflamed them?
This was obviously heavy going. But there were glimmers of light too. In bucolic east Bangladesh Binita Kane broke down as she spoke to a Muslim man who as a boy had risked his life to smuggle her father’s family to safety. It was a moving reminder that, even amid apocalyptic savagery, human decency endures.
Behind its playful title My Big Gay Jewish Conversion (BBC One) posed the serious question of whether there is a place in modern mainstream religion for gay people. The conundrum was explored with breezy chutzpah by Simon Atkins, a Roman Catholic considering converting to his boyfriend’s Jewish faith.
Crossing the doctrinal aisle initially seemed a no-brainer. Simon’s local rabbi in London was happy to marry the couple and didn’t appeared too fussed about the explicit interdiction in Jewish sacred text against gay sex (which he more or less brushed off as the spiritual equivalent of a parking infraction). The only sticking point was pointy indeed as Atkins would have to be circumcised.
The picture became muddied as he travelled to Israel for a more complete immersion in Judaism. Tel Aviv, Atkins was glad to report, was essentially a large open-air gay club, where one quarter of the population was homosexual and nobody blinked at the sight of soldiers holding hands with other men.
However, it was back to the middle ages as he proceeded to Jerusalem and was confronted by hardliners who told him to his face that his orientation was an “abomination”. One scholar described homosexuality as a lifestyle choice and recommended the presenter have his GP prescribe pills to fix the problem. Atkins was so rattled he ultimately opted against conversion.
With his hipster quiff and neverending patter, Atkins made for an annoying narrator. The documentary also failed to adequately explore the Catholic faith in which he had been supposedly steeped growing up in Ireland. Had he always been religious? Was his moral code tested when he realised he was gay?
A little more background would have put his theological travails into context. As it was, the suspicion lingered that his crisis of belief had been trumped up slightly so that he could get his own BBC documentary out of it.
My Family, Partition and Me: India 1947 ★★★★ My Big Gay Jewish Conversion ★★★