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From: prasad@cavell.UUCP (Prasad Srirangapatna)
Newsgroups: net.nlang.india
Subject: Re: 'Jewel', British India, and us
Message-ID: <378@cavell.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 13-Mar-85 20:33:48 EST
Article-I.D.: cavell.378
Posted: Wed Mar 13 20:33:48 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 16-Mar-85 01:37:52 EST
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Organization: U. of Alberta, Edmonton, AB
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Sub: The TV series "Jewel in the Crown"
> 
> While I admit it's interesting to speculate on the impression
> Americans gain of India by seeing 'Jewel in the Crown', 
> 'Passage to India', 'Far Pavilions', 'Heat and Dust' and so on, 
> I think the real issue is what we, as educated young Indians, gain
> in the way of historical perspective regarding events that most of
> us view as having taken place in some remote, almost mythical past.

The pre-release publicity surrounding the British TV series "Jewel in the 
Crown" had excited my curiosity to a great extent. But I was quite disappointed
by this much-praised series. The unusually large cast of characters and the
convoluted plot (which is really several different stories tied rather loosely)
were quit confusing even to me (despite possessing an "instinctive" knowledge
of the Indian context by virtue of being Indian!). Although it is probably 
technically and 
cinematically great, and some simplification of the events might be justifiable
in the interests of dramatization (for e.g. oscar winner "Gandhi" did simplify
the man and his message), I felt that Jewel in the Crown did it a bit
excessively, with the dismal result that we tended to see the melodramatization
of the usual American daytime soap-opera.

Whatever the intentions of the author Paul Scott (on whose novels known as
"the Raj Quartet", the series is based), the TV version is undoubtedly aa
colonialist interpretation of the novels. While it might serve to relive "old
glory" for some nostalgic British and to romanticize India as a land of the
strange and the mystique for other western audiences, it would indeed be stupid
to take it too literally or view it as an image of the post-independent India.
Let us not, therefore, generalize too much or derive "cultural" interpretations
based on this TV series which, after all, is primarily "show business".

Prasad Srirangapatna / 13 Mar 
....ihnp4!alberta!cavell!prasad