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Bhowani Junction is a 1954 novel by John Masters, which was the basis of a successful 1956 film. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian (Anglo-Indian) community.
The book is set in 1946/1947, shortly before India gained independence. Victoria is an Anglo-Indian, the daughter of a railwayman. Patrick, also an Anglo-Indian, considers himself her boyfriend, but her feelings towards him have become ambivalent after she experiences British Army culture (see below). In vigorously defending herself from a British army officer who is attempting to rape her Victoria unintentionally kills him but is persuaded not to report the matter by a subordinate of Patrick's--a Sikh, Ranjit, who hopes to marry her and whose family and friends help her to avoid detection.
As presented in the novel (and rather simplified in the film), Victoria had decided to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Anglo-Indian community by joining the British Army during the Second World War--but with the war's end and her coming home, she is confronted with the problem all over again. Her becoming engaged to Ranjit was an attempt to become assimilated in wider Indian society—since British rule is visibly on its way out—until she realises that this marriage would require her to give up her name (and essentially, her identity).
She runs away from the Sikhs and literally into the arms of a dashing British officer, Rodney Savage (commander of a Gurkha battalion), becoming both his lover and his unofficial adjutant in the last hectic days of British rule in India. But in the end she realises that she cannot escape her origins, and—rejecting both the Indian man and the British one—chooses Patrick, an Anglo-Indian like herself.
Patrick begins to realise that in the new India, his children might have a chance of becoming anyone they want to, rather than having to stick to the traditional role of Anglo-Indians, working on the railways.
Bhowani Junction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Bhowani Junction is a 1954 novel by John Masters, which was the basis of a successful 1956 film. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian (Anglo-Indian) community.
The book is set in 1946/1947, shortly before India gained independence. Victoria is an Anglo-Indian, the daughter of a railwayman. Patrick, also an Anglo-Indian, considers himself her boyfriend, but her feelings towards him have become ambivalent after she experiences British Army culture (see below). In vigorously defending herself from a British army officer who is attempting to rape her Victoria unintentionally kills him but is persuaded not to report the matter by a subordinate of Patrick's--a Sikh, Ranjit, who hopes to marry her and whose family and friends help her to avoid detection.
As presented in the novel (and rather simplified in the film), Victoria had decided to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Anglo-Indian community by joining the British Army during the Second World War--but with the war's end and her coming home, she is confronted with the problem all over again. Her becoming engaged to Ranjit was an attempt to become assimilated in wider Indian society—since British rule is visibly on its way out—until she realises that this marriage would require her to give up her name (and essentially, her identity).
She runs away from the Sikhs and literally into the arms of a dashing British officer, Rodney Savage (commander of a Gurkha battalion), becoming both his lover and his unofficial adjutant in the last hectic days of British rule in India. But in the end she realises that she cannot escape her origins, and—rejecting both the Indian man and the British one—chooses Patrick, an Anglo-Indian like herself.
Patrick begins to realise that in the new India, his children might have a chance of becoming anyone they want to, rather than having to stick to the traditional role of Anglo-Indians, working on the railways.
Bhowani Junction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
