Maria on Bhowani Junction

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Communications/Media Studies, Media Archive on 2016-08-15 17:14Z by Steven

Maria on Bhowani Junction

Archive to Blockbuster
2016-08-11

Maria Kaladeen, Associate Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies
University of London

The happiness I feel in encountering old movies about dual-heritage characters and communities is inevitably marred by the regurgitation of tired and offensive stereotypes about these individuals. The 1956 film Bhowani Junction, based on John Masters’ 1954 novel of the same title, is no exception. However the film is fascinating in spite of these stereotypes because it ultimately, and belatedly, makes a powerful statement about the rights of those of mixed heritage to self-identify…

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Books: Eight-Anna Girl

Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Media Archive on 2010-08-15 04:18Z by Steven

Books: Eight-Anna Girl

Time Magazine
1954-03-29

Bhowani Junction (394 pp.)—John Masters—Viking

In days gone by, when the sun never set on the British Empire, old India hands toted the white man’s burden, and Rudyard Kipling wrote about it in some 35 volumes of prose and poetry. Now that the burden has been lifted, many an old India hand has little to tote but a stiff upper lip. Not so John Masters, exbrigadier of the Indian army. Bounced out of India by Indian independence, he has bounced right back again, figuratively, at least, with a self-imposed burden of Kiplingesque dimensions. The burden: to write 35 novels about the land of purdah and pukka sahibs, covering the rise and fall of British imperial rule. Bhowani Junction is 39-year-old Author Masters’ fourth, and a Book-of-the-Month-Club choice for April. It covers part of the fall.

Three of Bhowani Junction’s, main characters take turns at telling the story, which hangs on the problems of a group Americans know little about. In India, there are many names for them—Anglo-Indians, Eurasians, half-castes, chee-chees, blacky-whites, eight-annas. Victoria Jones, an eight-anna girl, is “the color of dark ivory.” She is a lush beauty with come-hither eyes and a figure that would make an hourglass seem angular. But in 1946. with the British on their way out of India, Victoria’s problem is acute. (“We couldn’t become English, because we were half Indian. We couldn’t become Indian, because we were half English.”)

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