Self identity emerges out of a melange of factors — profession, gender, religion, caste, nationality and race. While for some, they maybe neatly compartmentalised, for others the intersectionality is rather evident. Filmmaker Gurinder Chadha is among the latter. Belonging to Punjabi Sikh origins, she was born in Kenya and raised in Britain. She switches between English (in a thick British accent), Punjabi and Hindi effortlessly, calls London her home but finds equal comfort in Mumbai, and is married to a Japanese-American screenwriter and director, Paul Mayeda Berges. “I represent the citizen of the world,” she declares.
Chadha’s films have reflected the multiculturalism that she proudly wears on her shoulders. “As a director, you make films about what you know,” she shares. “And what excites me is the plurality within me”. In that stead, she made popular films like Bhaji on the Beach (1993) and Bend It Like Beckham (2002) in which her characters embodied the duality of being both a foreigner and a local at the same time. “My cultural stand point is one of inclusivity,” she reveals. Seeming to be lighthearted in appearance, Chadha’s characters, who largely belonged to the Indian diaspora abroad, were torn between modernity and tradition. They battled racial prejudices with a slice of humour, while also advocating for equal rights for women.
Seven years after her last film, It's a Wonderful Afterlife (2010), Chadha returns with a film thematically different from anything she has done before in her almost three-decade long career. Her latest is an ambitious period film, Viceroy’s House — releasing in India as Partition: 1947 — which is rooted in research and historical evidence.
When we meet the filmmaker during her Mumbai trip to promote Viceroy’s House , she appears pleased with her decision to break away from her strong suit. “Have you seen the film?” she asks with an expectant look, as we stroll around in a suburban hotel ballroom. “Not yet,” we respond. “Oh, it’s such a shame,” she says. “But I’ll tell you something,” she leans in. “It’s really good!” she exclaims with modesty.
Counter narrative
Chadha’s vivacity is infectious, but as we discuss the underpinnings of her new film, her tone turns contemplative. Despite being a distant political saga in appearance, making Viceroy’s House provided catharsis to the 57-year-old filmmaker. “I grew up under the shadow of Partition,” she informs. Through her formative years, she learnt two versions of history: one imparted to her by her British education, the other shared by her mother. At home, the filmmaker grew up on tales of harmony in undivided India, a counter narrative to the official British history. “My mother used to say, ‘ Pata nahi achanak in goriyan ne kaala jaadu kita si aur sab kuch mit gaya ,’ (The British performed black magic on us and all harmony was destroyed),” says Chadha in Punjabi.
The repressed ghosts of partition returned to haunt Chadha when she retraced her ancestral home in Pakistan as part of the BBC One show, Who Do You Think You Are? . The warm reception she received from refugees – who now occupied her ancestral home – inspired her to make Viceroy’s House .
Two years after she started making the film, Chadha met Prince Charles and casually informed him about her plans. “I said I am making a film on your uncle Lord Mountbatten, and he asked me what am I basing this on, and what’s my research?” she recounts. Prince Charles recommended reading The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition , written by Narendra Singh Sarila, former aide-de-camp to Lord Mountbatten and a senior Indian civil servant. The book ultimately shaped Chadha’s narrative. “We spent 18 months with him [Narendra Singh Sarila] before he died and consulted him about every scene,” she explains. “My film is detailed work based on the research he had done.”
But history — by its sheer reliance on memory, documentation and political power — is tricky terrain, often questioned for its subjectivity. Pakistani writer and poet Fatima Bhutto called the film “a glossy imperial version of India’s traumatic partition that scandalously misrepresents the historical reality” in her review for The Guardian . But Chadha – who wrote her defense in the same publication – is well aware of the multiplicity of history. “[Winston] Churchill said, ‘History is written by the victors’. That’s how the film starts,” she explains. “He also said history will be kind to me because I get to write it. And Viceroy’s House is my version of what I believed happened; in 1947 and to my family,” she clarifies.
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Upstairs downstairs
Beyond the grand scheme of politics and colonialism, Viceroy’s House seeks to provide a human face to Partition. “My buaji [aunt] died in the tragedy when she was two. She would’ve been 72 now,” recalls Chadha, who grew up on horror stories of Partition narrated by her grandmother. “For me it’s a healing film,” she introspects. Making the movie gave her a sense of closure, which she also hopes to evoke in the Indian audience. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t crave having an ancestral home. Even though I have a British passport, my visa to Pakistan was recently denied,” she sighs.
Chadha adopted the classic concept of ‘upstairs-downstairs’ to tell the story of both the aristocrats and the proletariat. Interestingly, the popular British TV series, Downton Abbey shares the format and the lead actor, Hugh Bonneville, with Chadha’s movie. “When we started working on this film there was no Downton Abbey . We were so pissed off when Downton happened,” she exclaims. The filmmaker used the tried and tested format to comfortably usher an international audience into an Indian setting. The initial intent was also to make the film on an epic and opulent scale like Gandhi (1982), but unlike Academy Award-winning Richard Attenborough film, Chadha didn’t have a lavish budget. “So by telling an upstairs-downstairs story, we used the house as a microcosm of the whole of India at that time,” she explains.
A world of conflicts
Despite it being 70 years since Partition, Chadha says the film finds global relevance in today’s divisive world. “When we started making the film, [Barack] Obama was the president, there was no Syrian refugee crisis and there was no Brexit. But in the time we took to make the film, the world had changed,” she observes. For the Americans, Viceroy’s House could be an allusion to Trump demanding border walls and proposing travel bans. For the British and Europeans, the film could find pertinence in Brexit and the ongoing refugee crisis. “My film is about boundaries and geopolitics, which is very relevant at the moment,” adds Chadha.
The filmmaker has two primary target groups: India and the West. Keeping up with her tradition of having two different titles for her films, the Hindi-dubbed version Partition: 1947 , has a marketing strategy tailor-made for India. For instance, the English trailer focuses on the film as a lush British costume-drama, but the Hindi trailer jumps directly to the politics of partition. “The Indian one doesn’t pussyfoot around,” she chortles, adding that the film is sure to make the British feel guilty. For the filmmaker, Viceroy’s House is like a Trojan horse: it first comforts you and then hits you where it hurts the most.
