The way—part II

It is truly said that history tells the story of the winners. Gumption keeps this untruth alive since no one is forthcoming enough to challenge the narrative. This is true in the case of all British writing on India, for even the forward-looking EM Forster was not averse to taking a pot-shot or two at the subject peoples that he mingled with.

Move tangentially to British attitudes—in all kinds of writing—regarding miscegenation and a whole lot of approaches may be observed—derogatory, insinuating, vile, jingoistic and venomous. Sympathy and understanding are inconceivable in such a world, for even lip-service is noticeably bogus in this out-of-the-box, topsy-turvy world.

The world of Dorothy Gower is just such a cauldron of deceit and deception. As one of the main characters in Paul Scott’s The Alien Sky (1958, 1974), this woman has had to lead a double life all through her years. Her father, a Mr Robertson, was British. He had a daughter, also Dorothy, through his first wife, an Englishwoman. The daughter is packed off to England, at the appropriate time, for an education. Robertson remarries, after the death of his first wife, this time a woman of colour, possibly Anglo-Indian, and has another daughter, Amanda, who is blessed (?) with a fair complexion, unlike her mother. Dorothy writes long letters to Amanda, giving her detailed descriptions of English life. These are memorized by Amanda—with a lot of help from a knowing friend—and stored for future use. On her way back to India, Dorothy dies—conveniently, of infantile paralysis—in South Africa and her father seems to think that his Britishness is in jeopardy. He dies, along with his second wife—again, most conveniently—in a car crash, under the influence of liquor, and this makes Amanda an orphan. She is whisked away to Calcutta by an aunt, to keep her antecedents a secret, and Amanda takes the name Daw, which is replaced by the name Dorothy, perhaps to give her a second layer of “identity” protection.

I’m sure, dear Reader, that you are now somewhat confused. This happens most often when a writer tries to bluff his/her way through, because he/she has no first-hand knowledge of the subject. One concoction leads to another and only the die-hard reader will continue down this road—that reader being either a fan, or a research scholar. The point is that Dorothy Gower, nee Robertson, is forced to lead a double life because it was—and still is—assumed that the “white” was infinitely superior to the “black” way of life. And the new Dorothy succeeds in keeping her secret. She is guessed out by a few inconsequential characters, white and black; she comes clean to a white man, the protagonist Joe Mackendrick, from America, who offers her no solace, and she will have to hope that her dark past will not reveal itself to her husband Tom, who also shares the usual feelings of revulsion when it comes to miscegenation.

The protagonist, Joe Mackendrick, forgets why he came to India in the first place. His mission is to ferret out the secret that his dead brother Dwight kept for so long. He is certain that the secret is sexual in nature and his first discovery is that the colour of Dorothy Gower’s eyes is distinctively Oriental. He realizes that his brother must have come across the truth, and that was the reason he had walked out on Dorothy a long time ago. Joe is not man enough to offer Dorothy another lease of life and exits Marapore thinking about what might have been.

Dorothy Gower and Judith Anderson (Dorothy’s friend during her “Amanda” days) are projected as the two sides of the same coin—one white, the other black, one suave and reserved, the other flashy and exuding sex, one afraid of going “Home”, the other doing everything to get a one-way passage to England. Judith believes Dorothy leads a charmed life, but she is totally unaware of the pitfalls that are staring at Dorothy at every turn and corner. Dorothy is doomed to lead a lonely life, caught in a loveless marriage, and with no hope of redemption. It is as if she is forced to live by the author’s dictum that the black-and-white child, from the time that the first of its kind was manufactured—by and through the unbridled sex between the white male and his darker-hued Indian partner—is, was, and forever will be, a canker, an obscene, disgusting off-shoot of lust and urgent sexual gratification.

However, the writer has forgotten his own words: potent, precise and pristine. One of the characters in the book blurts out: “Half-breeds have an exceptionally strong sense of self-preservation, and India needs people like that now (bold-type, mine). My country has almost forgotten the Anglo-Indian community, for my people, according to her, number less than that Spartan figure of 300.

Are we really so easily dispensed with? Can an entire race be consigned to the dust-bin of history? I reckon not. I am sure that I am not alone. We will continue to fight the good fight, in our own way, in our own time. The sun may truly have set on the Empire of old, but I, and many more like me, will keep the Anglo-Indian alive. East and West have fused in us and we will continue, for, as the rock anthem goes: “We are the champions, of the world.”