The Viceroy’s House – My Husband’s Reaction

I and my husband have created a family tradition out of movies. On each of our birthdays we get to choose a movie to watch in the cinema, and the other will just have to watch it irrespective of the genre. On my birthday a few days ago, I chose the movie ‘The Viceroy’s House’, directed by Gurinder Chadda. 

My husband is a South African man of Indian ethnicity. The history of his country is not the history of my country and he is not really aware of India’s colonial past. He does not yet know how magnificent India was before the British invaded us, but he is aware of the legacy of colonialism. Movies such as ‘Lagaan’ showed him that the British were racist, unjust and evil, but ‘The Viceroy’s House’ told him a different story.

Within the first 10 minutes of the movie my husband said his blood was boiling in anger at the way Indians were being treated in their own country. His reaction to the movie was an eye opener for me and I felt a cold stab because I was only watching a movie, my husband was watching the history of the country of his forefathers and he was angry.

India’s freedom struggle has been taught to us from infancy – we know our history well even before it is taught to us at school; which is why the storyline of ‘The Viceroy’s House’ was not new to me – it was very new to my husband.

In the past when I told my husband India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were all one country and the British divided us for their own gain, my husband could not understand how this could have been possible. ‘The Viceroy’s House’ not only gave him an education but also made him question why communal riots took place in 1947-48. Communal tensions between different religious groups is not what we see in South Africa, so when he questioned me I had only two answers and I am not sure either of them justify as cause enough for extreme violence, murder, rape and looting.

Firstly, I believe the riots occurred, and still occur due to the British policy of divide and rule, which divided a great nation on the lines of religion. To this the British added hatred – so much hate that we are still burning. The second reason was anger – anger at why the Muslims were leaving their motherland, and anger at why the Hindus and Sikhs were stopping Muslims from reaching their promised land.

My husband’s reaction to the movie was anger, rage and tears. My husband said he could feel Nehru’s pain when he hugged the man who slapped him. He could feel the emotional turmoil silently killing the footmen who waited on the Viceroy and his British guests, plainly discussing the future of a country as if millions of souls did not matter. As the movie went on, it stopped being a movie to me, it became an insight into the Viceroy’s drawing room – grander than Downtown Abbey and downright evil. I don’t believe I have the courage to watch ‘The Viceroy’s House’ again for a very long time – it’s a bitter pill to swallow.

‘The Viceroy’s House’ is a movie every Indian citizen, a person of Indian origin and the rest of the world must watch – to educate ourselves, to awaken our cold patriotism, and to realise just how unjust and cruel colonialism was to the world.