I have been watching quite a few movies about India made by western directors. While Slumdog Millioniare is indeed one of them, the rest are classics. Like Richard Attenborough's Gandhi, David Lean's A Passage To India, The Man Who Would Be King. And also the BBC series The Story of India. All of these are brilliantly produced. The artistry does shine through the artist's work.
However, one thought is unresolved in my mind. How did the westerners ever got a foothold in India ? In each one of the movies above, I can see the Indian servicemen saluting the Englishmen. The policemen brought by Dyer to the Jallianwalla Baugh were Indians. The policemen who mocked the crowds and then got burnt in return were Indians.
In the movie A Passage To India, there is a scene where a newly arrived Viceroy is been driven by an Indian driver. The driver just knocks over some of the pedestrians on the road. In Gandhi, Indian policemen are shown lathicharging Lal Bahadur Shastri's protest. In another movie, an Indian watchman standing outside an English club thrashes some young teenage Indian boys who were sneaking inside the exclusive club.
We all are enraged by the story where Gandhi was thrown out of his first class cabin in South Africa. But in the movie The Man Who Could Have Been King, an Indian TC throws out another Indian from the first class, in order to 'do his duty' towards the Englishmen already occupying the cabin. Inspite of the other man having a valid first class ticket.
Now I dont know if these events are fictionalised by the directors or not. My parents never spoke of life under the English rule. But they were born in free India. The textbooks that I was made to study only spoke out the atrocities committed by the English on Indians. But what about partiality shown by Indian servicemen to Englishmen over their fellow Indians ?
Why didnt the Indian police accompanying Dyer refuse to fire on their own countrymen ? Why did the TC do what he did ? Huh ? Any answers ?
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