Masters—not masterly

Forgive me, dear readers, for I was distracted, last week, by the events that usually happen in the month of August, every year, for a very long time now. However, the distraction led me to a critical correction—who is an AngloIndian? You may notice that the hyphen between the two words is missing. This is my deliberate re-naming of my community, because, I feel strongly, we are no longer a patched-up people. We are one among the multitudinous tribes and castes that abound in this country that we still call “home”. For the others who have left the motherland, for whatever reason, they may retain their roots, their culture, their passion—love or hatred—for the country that nurtured them initially, but I categorize them as Anglo-Indian, for, if they are citizens of another land—and yet cling to most things Indian—then they are, indeed, still hyphenated, disjointed and doubly alienated.

Today, I will introduce you to another “Anglo-Indian” writer, John Masters. He was English by birth, but his family had a long, strong connection with British India. He is remembered for his novel Bhowani Junction (1954), in which he makes full use of his protagonist, Victoria Jones, the second daughter of an Anglo-Indian railwayman. The family resides in the colony close to Bhowani railway station, an almost exclusive preserve of the community. Victoria is pretty, outgoing, and pleasant; she also has a mind of her own. She has a boyfriend, Patrick Taylor, who works on the railways. Victoria’s father does not care for the young man, but cannot interfere because his daughters prefer to go their own way. Mr Jones seems browbeaten because he had married an Indian woman, one who is suspected of sitting on the kitchen floor, most often with a mouth full of betel leaves, talking shop with the hired help. He feels downgraded by this connection, for he idolizes an old photograph of an ancestor, who had served in the British army as a Sergeant (and had a surname that ended with –uck).

You are forgiven if you assume that I mean the “F”-word. I don’t. But, to my mind, this widely acclaimed novel about an AngloIndian girl, who, for all intents, is the protagonist of the tale, is a systematic, scheming, and sly way of demeaning and patronizing Ms Victoria Jones, who cannot even implicitly (and should not—according to the author and the whole of the British Raj behind him) be forgiven for having been born as an AngloIndian. This fundamental premise is cloaked in lip-sympathy, in false gentility, and in “I-know-the-whole-truth-about-this-hybrid-community” panache, that makes for voracious reading for the motley crew of AngloIndian bashers. The book is a pseudo-genteel tirade on the monumental folly of being AngloIndian, but Masters conveniently forgets that the English nation is founded upon the greatest hotchpotch of amalgamated peoples. Added to that is the now acknowledged depravity of the John Company hordes, the makers of the AngloIndian (and Anglo-Indian race).

Masters makes use of three first-person narrators, but the reader—not just the careful one—can certainly notice that the puppet-master, Masters himself, is in firm control of the strings. The tale begins with the narrative of Patrick Taylor, 36 years old and holding a senior position in the Railways. He is big-made, but he cowers at the sight of Colonel Rodney Savage. He may be the boyfriend of Victoria, but cannot help himself when Victoria’s elder sister, Rosemary, offers herself as an enthusiastic sex partner. That they gorge on each other is Masters’s way of telling his readership that the Anglo-Indian will go to any lengths to satisfy his/her sexual hunger.

It is possible to excuse Patrick, because he is the stereotypical Anglo-Indian male who works hard when he works and plays harder when he plays. For most writers on the Anglo-Indian theme, the male of the species was not worth thinking about, seriously or otherwise, because he was supposed to be born with traits of cowardice, bravado, timorousness and shameless libido. He (and Patrick) is even characterized as being naïve enough to doubt the evidence presented to him before his very eyes—Colonel Rodney Savage riding the choo-choo train (in gay abandon) with WAC(I) Victoria Jones, while her father drives the actual one. Showing just a little remorse regarding his negative profiling of Patrick Taylor, the author allows the man to be the one who brings down the notorious dacoit, KP Roy, in a melodramatic shootout. Melodramatic because the doughty Anglo-Indian has somehow lost his shoes and does not know where to find them. At the end of the farce, Patrick is allowed to finally snare his sweetheart, because, the author almost suggests, they are made for each other, definitely not for others.

There are two more narrators to contend with—Victoria Jones and Rodney Savage. I will deal with their stories in my next blog. Right now, I have introduced you to the “Savage” connection, and I intend showing you that words, even randomly chosen, can make or damn you. “Savage”?