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FILMIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE BRITISH RAJ IN THE 1980S: CULTURAL IDENTITY, OTHERNESS AND HYBRIDITY Tesis doct oral presentada por Elena Oliet e Aldea Dirigida por la Dra. Ch antal Cornut-Genti lle D’Arcy Dpto. de Filología In glesa y Alem ana Universidad de Zaragoza Marzo 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION …………………………………………………… 1 1. COMING TO TERMS WITH IDENTI TY AND ‘BRITISHNESS’: THE INCESSA NT CONSTRUCTION AND EROSION OF IDEN TITY BOUNDARIES ………………………. 21 1.1. Globalisation, Migration and Hybrid Societies……………………………… 22 1.2. Identity……………………………………………………………………….. 28 1.2.1. ‘Race’ and Racism……………………………………………………... 36 1.2.2. Miscegenation and Cultural Hybridity…………………………………. 54 1.2.3. Historical Multicultu rality of the British Isles…………………………. 63 1.3. Immigration Policies in Britain……………………………………………… 76 2. BRITAIN IN THE 1980s : THE THATCHER DECADE ………. 97 2.1. Definitions…………………………………………………………………….. 98 2.2. Britain Before Margaret That cher: ‘Labour Isn’t Working’………………….. 102 2.3. Thatcher’s Government: ‘Set the People Free’………………………………. 104 2.4. Britain’s Unique Position in the World………………………………………. 111 2.4.1. The Falklands War……………………………………………………... 116 2.5. Multicultural Britain in the 1980s……………………………………………. 120 2.5.1. New Right, New Racism……………………………………………….. 120 2.5.2. Immigration Controls for the Sake of Good Race Relations… ………… 128 2.6. Thatcherism and Cinem a……………………………………………………... 134 3. HISTORY, IDENTITY A ND THE HERITAGE BUSINESS ….. 141 3.1. History: the Ever-Present Past………………………………………………... 144 3.2. Different Perspectives of Historiography Through Time…………………….. 148 3.3. Heritage Industry: the Nati onal Identity Business……………………………. 169 3.4. Cinema and Heritage…………………………………………………………. 177 3.4.1. British Cinema, Genre and Society…………………………………….. 177 3.4.2. British Cinema in the 1980s: the Heritage Film ……………………….. 189 4. THE RAJ REVIVA L FILMS IN THE 1980s …………………… 207 4.1. Cinematographic Representations of the Empire…………………………….. 208 4.1.1. Adventure an d Male Enterprise………………………………………… 208 4.1.2. Feminising the Em pire…………………………………………………. 219 4.2. The 1980s Raj Film Debate………………………………………………….. 232 4.3. Re-Construction of British History a nd Identity through a Historical Film . The Case of Attenborough’s Gandhi ……………………………………………… 238 4.3.1. Re-Presenti ng History in a 1982 Film………………………………….. 238 4.3.2. History and the I ndividual: Gandhi Becomes a God…………………… 246 4.3.3. Filming India’s Independence Th rough a Western L ense: Bapu Goes West……………………………………………………………………………….. 258 4.4. History in Literary Adapta tions. The Case of Ivory’s Heat and Dust and Lean’s A Passage to India ……………………………………………………….. 273 4.4.1. Adapting History and Literature on Screen……………………………. 273 4.4.2. Heat and Dust ………………………………………………………….. 278 4.4.2.1. Past and Present Reflected in a Critical Mirror………………… 283 4.4.2.2. Olivia: an Out cast in the Memsahib’s W orld of the 1920s…….. 290 4.4.2.3. The Apparent Freedom of the 1980s…………………………… 299 4.4.3. A Passage to India ……………………………………………………... 306 4.4.3.1. A Packaged Holiday to an Exotic Past…………………………. 312 4.4.3.2. India vs. Britain………………………………………………… 316 4.4.3.3. Race and Gender Relationships………………………………… 322 4.5. History, Heritage and Raj on TV. The Case of The Far Pavilions and The J ewel in the Crown ………………………………………………………………… 341 4.5.1. Adapting History and Literature on the Small Screen………………….. 341 4.5.2. Raj serials: The Far Pavilions and The J ewel in the Crown …………… 352 4.5.2.1. Orientalism and Realism………………………………………... 352 4.5.2.2. British, I ndians and Hybrid Transvestism ……………………… 363 4.5.2.3. Eurocentric ‘Realism’: Rape and Punishm ent…………………. 385 CONCLUSION ……………………………………………………… 419 WORKS CITED …………………………………………………….. 435 Websites Cited……………………………………………………………………. 454 FILMOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………. 457 Films Cited………………………………………………………………………… 457 Selected Filmography……………………………………………………………... 459 ACKNO WLEDGEMENTS I would like to begin by expressing my gratitu de to m y supervisor, Dr. Chantal Cor nut- Gentille D'Arcy for intro ducing me to the f ield of cultural studies – m ethod or practice that has encouraged my critical thinking and provided m e with the necessary references and intellectual tools for the completion of this di ssertation. I also wish to thank her for her advice, guidance and continued support. Wit hout her assistance and encouragem ent this thesis could not have been written. Special thanks are also due to Profe ssor Celestino Deleyto and Dr. Luis Miguel García and to all the members in my resear ch group at the University of Zaragoza in projects of the University of Zaragoza for th eir support, and form ativ e influence during the team’s fruitful m eetings. The projec ts the research team has been working on along the past years are entitled: “Género, cultura y soci edad en los cines esta dounidense y británico contemporáneos” (HUM2004-00418), “Hibridaci ón genérica y sociedad en el cine estadounidense y británico: car tografía del discurso cu ltural” (HUM2007-61183) and “Cine, cultura y sociedad” (H12), and all have been financed by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology (MCYT) and the European Regional Development Fund, in collaboration with the Aragonese Government. I am also in debted to institution s such as the Caja de Ahor ros de la Inm aculada, Obra Social CAI “Programa Europa XXI” and the Departm ent of Science Technology and University of Government of Aragon CONAI +D for supporting my research through the granting of a scholarship that enabled me to carry out a two-m onth research stay in 2005 in London. In this respect Professor Peter Ev ans (Queen Mary, University of London) deserves special mention for his guidance and supervision of my and for giving me full access to the bibliograp hical funds at the said University, as well as to the Senate House, University of London, London Natio nal Library a nd the British Film Institu te. I am also indebted to the Edinburgh University Librar y for allowing me access to its funds in the research stay, carried out in the summer of 2008. I owe special thanks to the lecturers of th e English Departm ent at the University of Zaragoza who taught m e during my years as an undergraduate and in the doctoral courses. Nor can I forget my friends and colleagues at the Departm ent who have constantly supported and encouraged me through this proce ss, especially to Dr. Herrero, for both her academic advice and personal suppo rt. Finally, my warmest gratitud e goes to m y parents, grandmother, family and close-friends for their unfailing encouragem ent and understanding all these years. INTRODUCTION ‘All cultures are hybrid [ …]. To speak of cultura l ‘m ixing’ makes sense only from inside a social world’ (Werbner in Tate, 2005: 65). This introductory quotation succinctly expresses the main points I wish to explore in this dissertation. Broadly speaking, I propose to base my analysis of 1980’s British Raj fi lms on Stuart Hall’s theories on identity formation (1997: 5-7) to prove is that ident ities are, for the most part, culturally and artificially constructed. Although it can be affirmed that ‘all cultures are hybrid’, from a social and political point of view, identities ar e built up with in the soci al net of co mplex power relations. Consequently , no matter how conscious we are of the artificiality of cultural construc ts, social rela tions create hierarchies of power a nd marginalisation in certain communities an d within certain contex ts. It is on these political grounds that the concept of ‘hybridity’ matters, as it can be used as a tool to undermine such oppressive power relations. In the post-colonial world of the 1980s, 1 hybridity was a concept which cannot be overlooked. As a result of the influx of immigran ts from the former British colonies after the Second World War, the United Kingdom , duri ng the later half of the twentieth century, became a multicultu ral society. It was the presen ce of foreign cultu res and the rise of New Right policies during the 1980s th at provoked a reaffirm ation of the discourses on national identity based on an imaginary hom ogeneous ‘white’ past. 1 In the book The Empire Writes Back , Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Gr iffiths and Helen Tiffin give several definitions to the term ‘post-col onial’: ‘The semantic basi s of the term “post-colonial” mi ght seem to suggest a concern only with the national culture after th e departure of the imperial power. It has occasionally been employed in some earlier work i n the area to distinguish bet ween the periods before and after independence […] . We use the term “post-colonial”, however, to c over all the culture affected by the imperial process from the momen t of colonization t o the present day […]. [It] i s concerned with the world as it exists during and aft er the period of European dominat ion and effects of this on cont emporary literatures’ (Ashcroft, Griffi ths and Tiffin, 1989: 1-2). I share with Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffi n their last definition of post -coloniality . However, throughout this dissertation I shall be using the term in a br oader sense, that is, in cultural r ather than spec ifically lit erary terms. I will therefore include the coloniser countries and their cultural productio ns as belonging to the ‘post-colonial world’. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 2 During the Thatcher decade, th e imperial past was seen as a point of reference in the search for a sense of ‘Britishnes s’ (Wollen, 1991: 179). As a consequence, the 1 980s were characterised by a general harking back to the past (B igsby, 1993:31-33), in literature, with h istoriographic meta fictions such as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), Peter Ackroyd’s Hawksmoor (1985), or John Fowles’ A Maggot , (1986); in architecture with the cottagey and neo-Georgian styles (Sam uel, 1999: 65); in the ‘heritage industry’ with museum s and national heritage centres (246); as well as in cinem a with ‘Nostalgic Screen Fictions’ (W ollen, 1991: 179) such as Chariots o f Fire (Hudson, 1981), A Room with a View (Ivory, 1985), Maurice (Ivory, 1987) or Howard’s End (Ivory, 1991) among others. Amongst the m any cinematic adaptations of the past that appeared along the 1980s, several, in my opinion, deserve special atten tion because the particular vision of history they proffer highlights social tensions, especi ally those concerning et hnic relations, both in the time the stories were set and at the mom ent the films were released. Screen fictions of the type, set in the Bri tish imperial past in India, labell ed ‘Raj productions’ (Hill, 1999: 99) include such f ilms as Gandhi (Attenborough, 1982), Heat and Dust (Ivory, 1983), A Passage to India (Lean, 1984), and The Deceivers (Meyer, 1988), the made-for TV film Kim (Davies, 1984) and the TV serials The Far Pavilions (Duffell, Channel Four, 1984) and The Jewel in the Crown (Morahan and O’Brien, ITV, 1982). Moreover, the 1980s witnessed an increase of interest in thes e films not only in Britain but also across th e Atlantic. In the United States, movies such as Gandhi or A Passage to India were nominated f or a number of Academy Awards, the form er being awarded eight Oscars a nd the later two. 2 Box-office success in the USA proved to be a 2 Gandhi got t he 1983 Oscar for best picture, actor in a leading role (B en Kingsley), directing (R ichard Attenborough), screenplay writt en directly for the screen (John Briley), ci nematography (B illy Willi ams and Ronnie Taylor), art di rection (Stuart Crai g and Bob Laing for art decorati on and Michael Sei rton for set decoration), film editing (John B loom) and Co stume design (John M ollo and Bhanu Athai ya ). A Passage to Introduction 3 boosting influence for the British film industry. Mrs Thatcher’s policy of privatisation and free-market econom y was fast damaging the arts in general and the film industry in particular. The lack of public subsidies for ced cinema directors and producers to rely mostly on funds from television or private co mpanies. In order to profit from the US market, m any of the f ilm s produced strived to present im ages of Britain’s glorious past that American audiences w ould find attractive. As Kellner states, m edia culture in mo st capitalist countries is, above all, a ‘commercial form of culture’ (1995: 16), devised to appeal to mass audiences. This thesis aim s to analyse the histo rically contin gent emergence and success of the British Raj productions in the 1980s and the conf licting meanings that can be derived from these cultural texts when stud ied against the socio-cultural and political b ackground of the time. More concretely, my purpose is to focus on the ambivalent meanings that can be elicited f rom these scr een fictions tha t invi te spectators to embark on an e scapist and nostalgic journey back in tim e to an epoch apparently free f rom the socia l and multicultural tensions of the mom ent, while, at the same time, are highly critical of the injustices committed during the im perial past. This stu dy’s target is the refore to unea rth and demonstrate how those criticism s of the past in matters con cerni ng ethnicity, gender and class are equally relevant to the so ci ety in which these films were produced. Presenting, as they do, similar ideological st ruggles in their portrayal of the past, I have decided to include in th e corpus not only feature films but als o Raj TV serials broadcast in the decade under study. Even so, I shall be concentrating more fully on the screen productions which enjoye d great popularity at the time, in term s of audience and/or award: Gandhi (Attenborough, 1982), Heat and Dust (Ivory, 1983), A Passage to India India was awarded the 1 985 Oscar for best actress in a supporti ng role (Peggy Ashcroft) and origi nal score (Maurice Jarre). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 10 permut ation. Si gnifiers, the materi al signs we atte nd to, d o not invari ably correspond e ither to fi xe d signifieds, the m eanings we associate with them, or t o precise re ferents, the t hings they re fer to outside t heir own co de or lan guage. T he emphasi s on one pos sible si gnified m ay be at the expens e of other, supp ressed signifieds (43-44). Nichols concludes that the signifying syst em in cinem a engages with the ‘endless chains of discourse that constitu te a culture’ (44) and points to the f act that this type of film study, carried out within the cont extual realm of culture, is not only form al but political: The ‘rem ains’ of the refe rent, no m atter how t attered or medi ated, funct ion to affirm distinct ive qualities to th e historical world , to anchor signification to beliefs and to orientate subj ectivity toward possible action. A multiplic ity of referential ‘rema ins’ are quite commensur ate with different, multi cultural w ays of seein g: theori zing ho w such fram eworks c orrespo nd with one anot her and with what degree of compatibility, though, calls for a stress on comparative method s that have been slow to arise in relation to an identity politics th at em phasizes the autonomy and often the in sularity of one gr oup fr om another (44 ). According to Simon During, the field of cultural studies was born as ‘an engaged form of analysis’ which ‘worked in the inte rests of those who have fewest resources’ (1994: 1-2). In the same way, he also considers that: Most individu als aspire and struggle the great pa rt of their lives and it is easy to forget this if on e is just interpreting tex ts rather than thinking ab out reading as a life-practice. Cultural studies insists that one cannot just ignore – or accept – divis ion and struggl e (During, 1994: 2). Similarly, Chantal Corn ut-Gentill e and Felic ity Hand state that: Postmodern cultural an alysis is more aware than ever of th e irreductible diversity of v oices and interests, while, at the same time, it also recogn izes the increasingly g lobalized forms which see k to harness, exp loit and even curtail – this diversity (1995: 14). Cultural studies have thus beco me ‘the voice of the other, the marginal in the academy’ (During, 1994: 17). This contains with in it a double meaning, in that, on the one hand, these marginal voices come from the cu ltural productions made by people consi dered to belong to the ‘other’ group. On the other hand, this marginality may appear in the form of dissenting voices within the mainstream di scourse because of th e polysemic meanings inherent in all cultural practices. Hence, despite the visual splendour of the past exhibited in the Raj Revival films, the spectator is nevertheless able to perceive the dissenting voices of Introduction 11 marginalized characters. As commented before , in these films, the marginal groups are embodied mainly by female and non-white charac ters. 4 Gender and ethnic relations are therefor e crucial for the unde rstanding of our society and its cultural productions. The Raj f ilms, when analysed through the perspective of gender and race, not only appear as nostalgic white patriarchal productions, but also as a ‘black’ 5 and female revisionism of the, until then, dom inant historical pe rspective. In this sense, it is worth taking into ac count Bha bha’s conception of the prefix ‘post’ when applied to different social di scourses in today’s society: If the jargon of our times –postmodernity, po stcoloniality, postfeminism – has an y meaning at all, it does not lie in the popular use o f the ‘post’ to ind icate sequentiality – after -feminism; or polarity – anti-modernis m. These terms that insistently ge sture to the beyond, only em body its restless and revisionary energy if th ey transform the present into an expanded and ex-centric site of experie nce and em powerm ent (19 94: 4) . Cultural studies, is therefore an important tool in th e analysis of cultural productions – particularly media culture artefacts – in the post-colonial world, which is constantly challenged by the paradoxical mi xture of ideas regarding globalisation, hybridisation and the pres ervation of national id entities. In the study of the political and social implications of m edi a productions, films appear as relevant objects of analysis because they both reflect and construct the dom inant and dissenting voices th at form part of society. My methodological approach will ther efore be interdisciplinary. Hence, all the contextual background will be built out of the theo ries of post-colonial studies critics such as Homi Bhabha, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak and Stuart Hall, as well as the work of political theorists such as Hugo Young, Ian Gilmour, Samuel Brittan and Ivor Crewe among others. For issues of history, histor iography and the heritage phenom enon, I shall rely mainly on Frank Ankersm it, Hayden White, Edward Carr, Raphael Sam uel and John 4 According to Stuart Hall, femin ism and the questions of race became two real ruptur es in the work of the Centre for C ontemporary Cultural studies because bot h ope ned the questi on of the personal as political and the understanding of power rela tionships, together wit h the re writing of history from different perspect ives (1992: 282-283). 5 I write ‘black’ between inverted commas because I used it as a culturally constructe d category meaning ‘non- white’. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 12 Corner and Sylvia Harvey. As regards film studies, I will follow the analysis proposed by Rick Altman, Celestino Deleyto and Steve Neale, as well as Richard Dyer’s and S alman Rushdie’s own interpretations of the films under study. In the first chapter of this disse rtation m y aim is to present an overview of the concept of identity from a psychological, soci al and political perspective, each ap proach then serving as theoretical background for th e study of ethnicity, gender and class in the contemporary context of globalisation. The first section will ex plo re the issue of globalisation and the emergence of contem porary ‘hybrid societies’. The notion of ‘hybridity’ itself will be shown to be an artificial constr uct cultural construction that, just like identity, is based on em pty categories. Ho wever, such categories are necessary for the individual to cohabit in a world based on social structures (De rrida, 1979: 212). Broadly speaking, I will try and contextualise in this ch apter the paradoxical nature of post-colonial globalised societies which present a high de gree of cultural contact and hence the possibility of the emergence of new hybrid relationships that underm ine former power structures in what Hom i Bhabha labels ‘th ird space’. Nonetheless, I will also explo re the other side of the argument wh ich can be briefly summaris ed as econom ic globalisation provoking inequalities and cultura l contact through immigration that in turn fuel ethno- nationalist passions. Multi culturalism, in the heat of th ese ethno-nationalist passions, is regarded by some groups as causing the di ssolution of well-founded traditional identities rather than as an opportunity for new enriching inter-cultural exchanges. The second section of the chapter deals with the actual form ation of cultural identities, from a psychologica l and social poin t of view. I will focus on aspects of iden tity related to issues of ethnicity. After a br ief out line of the historical fo rmations of ‘race and racism’ the concepts will then b e relate d to the issu e of m iscegenation and the interm ingling of gender and ethnicity. Class a nd nationality will also be discus sed as Introduction 13 important n otions in the cultu ral portrayal of in terethnic relationship s, both in the colonia l and post-colonial periods. After the general view of the concep ts asso ciated with identity and hybridity, a special sub-section will then be devoted to the question of ‘Britishness’ and how the British Isles can be considered as having been multicultur al from their very conception, thus puttin g to the test any e ssentialist def inition of Britishness. Finally, drawing on the notions of nationa l identity constructi on, in the third part of the chapter I will analyse British imm igration policies in a post-colonial contex t and dem onstrate the extent to which these policies reflect contem porary anxieties on identity construction. Both the historical and social overviews, as well as the theorisation of notions of identity and hybridity, will provid e the backgrou nd for m y contextual analysis of the 1980s in the following chapter, and likewise for the subsequent analysis of the polysemic meanings in the film ic productions to be studi ed as exam ples of the competing residual, dominant and em ergent discour ses at stake in these visu al cultural texts. The second chapter, then, focuses more pa rticularly on the period th at has come to be called the ‘Thatcher era’. After a brief an alysis of the main Thatcherite policies and the econom ic and social changes brought about by the Conservati ves to the country, I then concentrate on issues of immigration policies and the econom ic, social and cultural implications of the breaking up of the Empire. As a means of revitalising the damage d econom y of the nation, Mrs Thatcher advocated the implementation of neo-liberalis t measures based m ainly on a free-market economy. Bent on bring ing about the recovery of Britain’s position of ‘greatness’ in the international sphere, the Prime Minister cr eated a populist discourse by re-fashioning those past values so in vogue when the nation was the mother-country of a powerful empire. This invitation to return to the good old ‘Victorian values’ had significant implications at the level of multicultural hospitali ty – or ‘conviviality’, to use Paul Gilroy’s e xpression (2004: Filmic Representations of the British Raj 14 xi) – in the country, as it s purred certain sectors of the popu lation to manifest new racist views before the increasing pr esence of imm igrants who ha d arrived from the form er colonies. New racism substituted the old bio logical assumptions that estab lished a hierarchy of human races based on skin colour , by a more subtle form of discrimination which attributed racial tensi ons to incompatible cultural dif ference am ongst people from different parts of the world. Mrs Thatcher he rself spoke of native Br itish people’s natural fears of being swamped by waves of foreigners invading the country – a vision of Britain founded on Enoch Powell’s apocalyptic speeches on the imm igration issue in the 1960s. In order to ‘facilitate good race relationships’ am ong the differe nt ethnic and cultural groups living in Britain, the Conservative government enforced stricter imm igration controls and launched a campaign of law and order by backi ng the actions of the police force agains t criminality. The new powers given to the police, which in theory were to benefit the public at large, were felt by some to be speci fically targeted agai nst the poorer ethnic communities. In these communities, which suffe red the brunt of poverty and high levels of unemployment, it could be said that crim inal activ ity was rife precisely becaus e of the aggressive implementation of neo-capitalist m easures. Tensions amongst the immigrant communities began to rise, which, in the early part of the decade, gave way to waves of race riots. The Thatcher decade also saw the rise of problem s in the ambit of arts and culture, as artists – and intellectuals – believed thei r interests were being dam aged by a free-market economy that was increasingly exposing artistic freedom to comm odification. In the last section of the chapter, I intend to ex plore the implications o n the arts of both Thatcherite economic m easures and Mrs Thatcher’s id eological and m oral crusade, and most particularly the effect of conservative pol icies on the film industry. Apart from its historically weal position vis-à-vis Ho llywo od, British cinema becam e even more Introduction 15 vulnerable to the decline of audiences with the increa se of the domestic presence of television and VHS. In spite of its difficult situation the British film industry enjoyed a ‘renaissance’ in the 1980s which transcended national frontiers. Filmmakers, prompted by the climate of the times and often driven to criticise the governm ent, developed a successful branch of social-realist film s, not unfrequently with the help of Channel Four. At the same time however, the inte rnational suc cess of Chariots of Fire opened up a new niche in the film industry of heritage produc tion s that boomed throughout the decade. The return to the past dramatis ed in these cinem atic productions seemed to epitom ise the essence of Thatcherite values, as they seemi ngly converted the nation’s cultural heritage into a commodity, while a t the sam e time, they prom oted a perception of British identity based purely on an imagined hom ogenised white, upper-middle class of the past. Related to the issue of the insta bility of contem porar y cultural identities, John Hill points to the relevance of nostalgia, as a tool that provide s the ‘security of place an d tradition’ in an increasingly deterritorialised globalised world’ (1999: 75). A nd yet, by drawing on Stuart Hall’s theor isation of polysem ic meanings I sh all be dem onstrating that, apart from that ‘preferred’ interpretation of the films, other ‘n egotiated’ and even ‘oppo sitional’ m eanings can be elicited from these appa rently nostalgic productions. The third chapter will be entirely dev oted to the analysis of th e different meanings that may be extracted from the cinem atogr aphic productions of the Thatcher d ecade. Hence, after commenting on the appearance of the heritage industry and relating this boom to its reflection in the filmic productions of th e sam e term, I shall focus more particularly on its main com ponent, namely: history. Because the conception of ‘his tory’ is crucial to the understanding of the heritage business, the n e xt section will be dedicated to delineating the different approaches of historiography th rough tim e. Given that the representation of the historical past is likewise fundamental in the construction of identities, the analysis of Filmic Representations of the British Raj 16 who speaks about past events and how these even ts are selected and interpreted will be the main target of analysis in the study of the Raj film ic productions, which re -enact the imperial past ‘through the eyes of the present’ (C arr, 1983: 24). In the last part of the third ch apter I intend to narrow the fo cus of analysis and concentrate on history as represente d in the British films set in the past. I shall theref ore begin by contextualisin g British cinem a and by offering an overview on the issues of film genre, so that both heritage and Raj films may be set within the general background of British national cinema. Interestingly enough, the notion s of genre derived from the theories of Derrida and Foucau lt (among others), point to th e paradoxical im possibility of creating fixed categorisations and the unavoidable human compul sion to order the world in terms of generic categories in a ll realm s of social experience. This hypothesis allows m e to connect the unstable and hybrid na ture of any categorisation, all uded to in the first chapter when deconstructing th e notions of ethnicity and identity with the fluctuating nature of cinema genres. To this end, I base this com p arison on Rick Altman’s thesis on the fluidity of cinema genres and the ever-changing charac ter of nation as a constructed or imagined community, to use Benedict A nderson’s definition (1991). What interests me especially is Altman’s attention to the struggle between m a rginal and central categories, which brings about a never-ending dialectical process that facilitates the evolution of both cinema and society (1999: 204-5). Th e ultimate aim of this s ection is therefore to demonstrate that, as a cultural pra ctice, cinema does not m erely reflect soc ial realities, nor do es it construct its ideological discourses b ut, as part of a wi der cultural system of representations, it r efracts society (Deleyto, 2003: 32-3). Taking into account the associatios es tablished between cinema and nation, cinematic g enres and social contexts , I start the last chap ter by expl oring the evolution of the ‘masculine’ ‘adventure’ em pire film s of the 1930s and 1940s towards the more Introduction 17 ‘female-centred’ Raj producti ons of the 1980s. Basing m y arguments on the struggle between marginal and central elements and ideological discourses at stake in cinema genres and society proposed by Altman, m y aim is to show how those m arginal and negatively stereotyped characters that abound in early em pire films gradually m ove centre- stage – their troubled relationships becomi ng key components of the 1980s narratives. In this respect, atten tion will fo cus on those re bellious he roines who try to establish new relationships with Indian men, thus breaking dom inant imperial patriarchal structures of the time. Likewise, h itherto invisible or m isr epresented ‘no n-white’ colonised characters acquire mo re relevance in the n arratives. Por trayed as potential pa rtners of th e British heroines, som e Indian characters are given pr ominent ro les in these film s. They are therefore endowed with a higher degree of ps ychological complexity than in previous stereotypical representations or their characterisations offer an ironical distancing from the way Orientals were depicted in earlier empire productions. On the other hand, critics such as Salman Rushdie and Tana Wollen have questioned such new empire fictions that portr ayed a nostalgic vision of the pas t with a splendorous and glamorous visual depictio n of India as reinforcing Eurocentric perspectives on the Eastern ‘other’ and thus perpetuating what Edward Said called ‘orientalis t’ discourses. According to these critics, the f ilms’ visual pleasure would counteract any kind of criticism embodied by those marginal characters who had reached central narratives. My aim here is th erefore to expl ore how these cinematic screen fictions deal with border-crossing, while simultaneously promoting Britain’s past ‘Greatness’ as the main commercial as set. Although gathered under the sam e label of Raj fictions, due to their shared topic, setting and time, the screen productions I have chosen for analysis also present conspicuous differences, which is the reason I have decided to analyse them separately by Filmic Representations of the British Raj 18 concentrating on the ou tstanding features th ey each present. I start with Attenboro ugh’s Gandhi as it was the first Ra j film to become an international bloc kbuster and critically acclaimed film. Since it is the only screen pro duction not to be adap ted from a fictional novel, but an attempt to represent ‘real’ histor y, I concentrate on issu es of the subjective re-enactment of the past and on how m anipulativ e the selection and interpreta tion of events can result, especially when presented in a q uasi-documentary s tyle format that leads spectators to view or percei ve the screen as a transpar ent window on to the past. Next comes a brief intro duction on the que stion of lite rary adaptations, previous to a close analysis of Ivory’s Heat and Dust and Lean’s A Passage to India . Both are films that tackle the question of boundary-crossing in term s of gender and ethnicity. Both likewise ultim ately proffer the possi bility of a ‘third space’ in which form er dichotomies preventing intercultural friendship and understanding could be erased. After commenting briefly on the particulari ties of the television medium as opposed to big screen productions, I end the chapter with the analysis of the two TV Raj serials, The Far Pavilions and The Jewel in the Crown , produced and broadcast during the 1980s. Without leaving aside the evident difference in their form at, my examination of the serials is directed at revealing how, for all the ‘biscuit-tin’ iconography and rea listic styles, they are nevertheless vehicles for, or carrier s of, conflicting m eani ngs and ideological discourses when set against the social and political background of the time. To sum up, m y chief objective in this dissertation is to explore the competing meanings that texts re-visioning the past m a y offer to contemporary audiences desperately seeking stability in a glo balised world that is fast fom enting instability as the main feature characterising increasingly ‘ hybrid’ societies. In the 1980s, me m ories of the imperial past haunted identities in m ulti-ethnic, multicul tura l Britain, fuelling conflic ting ideas and discourses amongst groups and communities that had lived the tran sformation of a rigid Introduction 19 colonial set-up into an ever-more fluid globa lised ‘assemblage’. Against this background, it would seem that the common denom inator in these fi lms is the ir, in general, pos itive upholding of hybridity, as an emergent possibi lity which could serve to counteract these discourses that revisit the past solely to m ain tain or re-create relationships of power that still margina lise certain individuals in certain so c ial contexts. In this resp ect, my inter est in approaching film studies from a cultural pers pective is to adhere to the definition of cultural studies as an ‘en gaged and committed’ form of analysis (Nelson, 1998: 274). From this perspective, film ic representations are appr o ached as refractions of social realities and hence, their analyses aim to provide a bette r understanding of the complex associations between centre and m argins at work in the inte rconnected labyrinth of class, gender, race, culture, ethnicity and national identities. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 26 Historical capitalism has, of course, always st rained to be come a world system. The perpet ual quest to m aximize accumulation has alway s compe lled geogra phical expansion in sea rch of new markets, ra w ma terials, sour ces of cheap l abour, a nd so o n. The hist ories of t rade and migrati on, of mi ssionary and m ilita ry conquest , of im periali sm and neo -imperi alism, m ark the various strategies and stages that have, by the late tw entieth century, made capitalism a truly glob al force (2001 : 25). This explains why globa lisation is such an uneven process, a phenomenon that is bringing even greater amounts of wealth and high levels of be nefits to already privileged classes in the North, while other sectors in the Western world and – more acutely – in other parts of the world suffer from incr easing poverty and exploitation. In Krishan Kumar’s words: Globalisation creates or intensifies in equalities at every level of the world system. It is not an even process. Driven a s it is by the logic of capital accumulation, it has th e well-known effect of concentrating benefits in some parts of the worl d, largely the already ‘d eveloped’ re gions, at the expense of other parts (1 993: 83). More and more, therefore, capitalist drives are ‘opera ting on an emergent global level which over time are com pressing the di stances between peoples an d places within different societies, and which increase th e sens e that we liv e in a single world’ (Warde, 2002: 13). Marshall McLuhan puts it more succi nctly. He refers to this ‘bringing together’ of distant cultures as ‘the global village’ ( http://news.bbc.co ; 17/2/04). Morley and Robins explain the contem porary relationships of power among countries by looking back at the colonial experien ce: ‘globalisation, as it dissolves the barriers of distance, makes the encounter of colonial centre and colonized periphery immediate and intense’ (2001: 25). Although, on som e levels, this encounter results in interesting and enriching intercultura l exchanges the truth is that this sam e phenomenon is also provoking confrontation and hatred as a result of the cultu ra l dominance of som e communities over oth ers, but more especia lly because of increasing econom ic inequalities within these new multicu ltural societies. 9 9 Unfortunate exam ples of this econom ic and cultura l implications of globalisation are Al Quaeda’s terrorist attacks in New York in 2001 and the War on Iraq in 2003 at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Chomsky, 20 00: 11-13) – fo llowed by the attack s in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005 . As Paul Gilr oy explain s, ‘those events [9/1 1 and War on Iraq] have been widely i nterpreted as pa rt of a Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 27 Hence, two forces seem to be sim ultaneous ly at work in th e shaping of cultural identities in the contemporar y globalised world. On the one hand, there is a tendency towards the ‘conviviality’ of different cu ltures in cities all around the world. 10 The mixing of dif ferent races and p eoples encourag es an enriching m ulticulturalism in the formation of new, always contingent, soci eties. On the other hand however, native populations’ misgivings or fear of ‘other’ foreign cultures concur rently leads to the divisions being drawn between communitie s and, as a consequence, to a new reinforcement of long-standing hierarchical conceptions of different civilizations. In the analysis of these different forces shaping contem porary cultural identities in the context of m ulticulturalism and globalisation it is nec essary to pay attention to the concept of ‘post-colonialism’. In Stuart Hall’s w ords: We need to situ ate the debates about iden tity within all tho se historically specific develop ments and practices which have disturbed the relativel y ‘settled’ character of many popu lations and cultures, abov e all with the processes of globalization , which I would argue are coterminou s with modernit y and the processes of f orced and ‘free’ m igration w hich have becom e a global phenom enon o f the so -called ‘p ost-col onial’ world ( 1997: 4 ). The phenomenon of migration from lesser to more developed countries is thus forcing the Western metropole to confront ‘its postcolonial history, told by its influx of post-war migrants and refugees, as an indigenous or native narrative internal to its national identity ’ (Bhabha, 1994: 6; italics in original ). Following this argum ent it seems only logical that, in order to understand the contemporary phenomenon of globalisation, neo-imperialism and migration, attention must turn to the historical past: The immigrant is now he re because Britain, Europe, was once out there; that basic fact of global history i s not usual ly denia ble. And y et its grudgin g recogn ition p rovides a stim ulus fo r form s of hostility ro oted in the asso ciated realization that today’s unwanted settlers carry all th e ambivalence of the em pire with them. They project it in to the unhap py conscious ness of their fearful and an xious hosts and nei ghbours. Indeed, the in comers m ay be unwante d and feare d conflict betwee n conte nding ci vilizati ons. Indee d, the B ush admi nistration’s ‘war o n terr or’ m ight be thought of as havi ng bro ught the slum bering civil izational gi ants of Chri stendom and Orie nt back to li fe’ (2004 : 21) 10 Gilroy defi nes the term ‘convivialit y’ as: ‘the pro cesses of cohabitation and int eraction that have made multiculture an ordinary feat ure of social life in B ritain’s urban areas and in postcolonial cities elsewhere’ (2004: xi). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 28 precisely becaus e they are the unwitting bearers of the imperial and colon ial past (Gilroy, 2004 : 110). Although Gilroy advocates th at the figure of the postcolonial migrant m ust be recognized within the context of the lost im perial past, he nevertheless advocates that ‘we need to conjure up a future in which black and brown Europeans stop being seen as migrants’ (2004: 165). Even so, in many cases, the presence of immigrants is felt by the host nations as a threat to th e stability of the country – a f eeling initially reflected in attitudes of hostility and racism towards the newcom ers and then towards the second generation of immigrants who belong to a di asporic space between their parents ’ country and their own birthplace. As Kum ar explains, in our contem porary globalised world, we find both an upsurge of nationalis tic feelings an d an intensification of social and cultural interconnections and exchanges (1993: 83). At its core, therefore, globalisation or the expansi on of the wor ld mark et is causing a shift in the form s of human contact. Indeed, the crisis in the processe s of identity construction is itself becoming globalised. 11 Clearly, the cross-country – and cross- continental – economic and commercial interconnections boosted by globalisation ar e also bringing about or generating significant cultural and so cial permutations. For this reason, issues of identity beg consideration. In the following section, therefore, identity will be presented as fom enting both harmony and conflict or exclusion. 1.2. Identity The question of cultur al identity is an important issue o f debate in contem porary societies all around the world, and even more so in Great Britain, given the profound changes in the constitution of Britis h society along the last decades. In Questions on 11 For a more detailed account of th e paradoxes and contradi ctions of the phenomenon of global isation related to post-colonial migrat ory processes, see Castles, 2000:12 4-132. Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 29 Cultural Identity , Stuart Hall highlights the social and cultural im portance of such concept. He argues that a sense of identity e ntails demarcations of inclus ion and exclusion: ‘identities can function as poi nts of identification and attachment only because of their capacity to exclude, to render “outside”, abjected’ (1997: 5, italics in original). A sense of identity is th erefore dependent on the fl uctuations of sameness and difference. Identif ication with a cer tain gr oup o r community autom atically im plies the existence of an ‘other’, someone who is diffe rent ‘from us’ and therefore cast outside the – often imaginary – am bit of our community. Su ch a demarcation is im aginary because it creates an illusory sense of homogeneity that erases the fragm entary, hybrid and criss- crossing nature of identities. As Benedict Anderson famously not ed, identification in terms of i.e. ‘nation ’ is im aginary since community members – thos e who feel this shared sense of belonging – can never get to know all the other people who m ake up this group labelled ‘nation’. Moreover, a sense of ‘national identity ’ erases the inner differences within the nation in term s of class, gende r, sexuality or ethnicity, and the varying degrees of ‘belongingness’, such as those whose identity is more strongly attached to a particular region or locality than to the whole nation (1991: 6-7). Another example would be the fictitious li nes drawn in terms of r a c i a l o r e t h n i c identity. Who is included under the label of blackness or whiteness? The infamous ‘one drop law’, for instance, identified as ‘black ’ a person having inherite d ‘one drop of black blood’ in spite of an apparently Caucasian physique (Gardner, 2000: 4- 8). Bearing this in mind, it appears that the concept of identity is also closely linked to issues of power. According to Laclau: The constitution of a social identity is an act of power […]. Derrida has shown how an identity’s constitutio n is always based on exclud ing somethi ng and establishing a violen t hierarchy between the two res ultant pol es — man/ wom an, etc. What is pecul iar of the second term is thus re duced to the function of an accident as opposed to the essentiality of the fi rst. It is the sam e with the black- white rela tions hip, in which white, of course, i s equivale nt to ‘hum an being’. ‘ Woman’ a nd Filmic Representations of the British Raj 30 ‘black’ are th us ‘marks’ (i. e. marked term s) in contra st to t he unmarked term s of ‘m an’ and ‘white’ (in Hall , 1997: 5). In view of this, identities are no more th an contingent artificial constructs based on empty categories su ch as race, class, cu lture and nation, which inclu de and exclude people according to the interest of the dominant group (San Juan, 2002: 64). Consequently, the faculty of excl usion in the construc tion o f social identities is in itself an act of power. 12 Lawrence Grossberg forwards two theories of identity construction: those of difference and those of otherness . According to Grossberg, theories of difference are those deriving strictly from a stru cturalist and po st-structura list approach; that is, identity in this case is built up in term s of its rela tion with other identitie s; on the other hand, theories of otherness co nstruct ‘dif ference’ in terms of power structures, which are not fixed but historically contingent . In other words, ‘differenc e, as m uch as identity, is an effect of power’ (1997: 93-4). Accordingl y, Grossberg agrees with Hall in his conception of cultural identities as ‘a matter of “becoming” as well as o f “being”’. This means that individuals often tr y to base a sense of belonging in a certain comm unity in their common roots set in the past. However, at the same time, these individuals must face the ever-changing identities in an unstab le present: ‘Far from being eternally fixed in some essentia lised past, they are subject to the continuous “play” of history, culture and power’ (1997: 52). 12 As Fouca ult stated, a ny kin d of social ass ociation i s im bued wit h rela tionships of powe r: ‘A s ociety without power relation s can only be an abstractio n. Which, be it said in passing , makes all the more politically necessary the analysis of power relations in a give n society, their hist orical form ation, the source of their strength or fragility, the conditions whic h are necessary to transf orm some or to aboli sh others. F or to say that t here cannot be a soci ety without power rel ations is not to say either t hat those which are established are necessary or, in an y case, that power constitutes a fatality at the h eart of societies, such that it can not be undermined’ (1982, http://fo ucault.info/docu ments/foucault. power.e n.htm l ). Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 31 Viewed in this light, the paradoxical even ts that are occurring under the shadow of globalisation could be explai ned through an understanding of the processes at work in the construction of social identities. As stated at the beginn ing of this chapter, in the globalised world at the turn of the twenty-f irst century, two fundamental processes seem to be converging: the gradual emergence of an international economic order and the inexorable spread of multiculturalism . Paradoxically, these phenom ena are also provoking two contrasting trends affecting the c onstruction of identitie s. Firstly, there is a tendency towards the creation of new hybrid id entities or rather a liminal space that opens new possibilities for the ‘conviviality’ of different or fragm ented identities hitherto relegated to the marginal ised spheres of ‘in-betweenness’. 13 This niche that breaks with the rigid either/or dicho tomy of identity construction is what Hom i Bhabha calls ‘third space’: The importanc e of hybri dity is not to be able to trace two ori ginal mom ent s from which the third emerges, rathe r hybridity to me is the ‘t hird space’ which ena bles other positions to emerge. This third space displaces the histories that c onstitute it, and sets up ne w structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately und erstood through received wisdom […]. The process of cultu ral hybridity gives rise to something different, somethin g new and unrecog nisable, a new area of negoti ation of meaning and rep resentat ion (Bha bha in Ru therford , 1990: 211). Hall places the conc ept of hybridity in the realm of ‘diaspora identities’. He refers to Afro-Caribbean peoples in partic ular who, as he explai ns, have constructed their heterogeneous ide ntities through a p ro cess of migration and dislocation that has compelled them to a continual producti on and reproduction of them selves through incessant transformation and difference (1997: 58). Such a definitio n of ‘diaspora identities’ is equally applicab le to the hybr id condition of m any contemporary cultural identities that m ay lead to apositiv e outcome of harm onious co-habitation. The other trend affecting identity construc tion derives from the ever mo re intense ethno-nationalist passions in both develope d and developing countries (Kumar, 1993: 13 Lawrence Grossberg defines hybri dity as ‘subaltern i dentities existing between two com peting i dentities’ (1997: 91). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 32 82-5). In other words, while some ethnic group s are increasingly exerting their rights to greater private and pub lic recognition of thei r id entities or perm itting identities to criss- cross and m erge, other sectors, dism ayed by the growing pluralis ing of society, are vindicating the historical excl usivity of their nationhood and culture, basing their claims on an essentialist notion of identity that leaves no room for hybridity. 14 Crucial to the comprehension of how discourses on race and racism are developed is the understanding of the psycho logical dimension in the construction of identity and ‘otherness ’. Lola Young relies on Lacan’s theory of th e mirror stag e to explain the origins of racist attitudes. 15 As she explains, the mom ent the child becom es aware of the difference between her/himsel f and the world, s/he exp eriences anxiety because of her/his loss of control o ver her/ his needs and desires. Auto matically, these anxieties are repressed as the child splits the ‘self’ and the world: ‘The “good” self was originally in control of ever ything and thus free from anxi ety; the “bad” self has no control over the infant’s environment and is prone to suffering apprehension’ (1996: 31). Simultaneously, the world, as the ‘not I’ and th erefore as ‘the other’ is divided into the absolute categories of good and evil. This divi sion of the self and the other has im portant implications when applied to notion s of race and ethnicity. In his article on race and psychology, Michael Rustin accoun ts for the construction of racism as the empty cat egory which is filled by the ‘schizoid mechanisms’ of the m ind. Melanie Klein furthe r defines the schizoid mechanism s of the human m ind by presenting it a par anoid and irrational splitting of objects into loved 14 Grossberg labels the two current trends in identity cons truction as th e essentiali st tenor and th e anti- essentialist one, the form er pointing to a common origin or structure – whi ch tries to ‘discover the “authentic” and “original” content of the identity’, and the l atter underlying the relat ional and incomplete nature of identiti es, thus denying ‘the existence of aut hentic and originary identities based on a universal shared origin or experience’ and dependent ‘upon its difference from , its negation of, some other te rm’ (1997: 89). 15 For a detailed account of the construc tion of the individual’s identity in th e ‘mirror stage’ see Lacan, ‘Le stade du miroir com me formateur de la foncti on du “J e” telle qu’elle no us est révélée dans l’experiénce psychoanalyti que’ (1966: 89-97) Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 33 items and hated ones. As she states, these m echanisms include: ‘the suffusion of thinking processes by intense, unrecognized emotion, confusion between self and object due to the splitting of the self and massive projectiv e identification , and ha tred of reality and truth’. (Klein in Rustin, 2004: 187). According to Rustin, such mechanisms imply an irrational projection onto ‘the ot her’ of the hated - or socially unacceptab le - attributes of the self. In this way, ‘the effect of getting rid of bad f eelings into the other is to allo w the self to perceive itself as wholly good’ (2004: 189). Rustin concludes that the unconscious mental processes of th e mind in the identity f ormation of the individual interact with social proc esses to constitute ca tegories of inclusion and exclusion (20 04: 193). Transposing this argument from the self to the group or comm unity, it appears that dominant sectors in society can only assert their superiority and authority by rejecting those who do not belong in thei r group, on the basis of their bad, negative, ‘hated’ qualities. As regards the racial questi on, the identification of a subject as black or white has further im plications. If blackness is the excluded ‘m arked term’ in the identification process, then whiteness erects it self as no particular quality or colour, but as the invisible norm. According to Richard Dy er, ‘white is no colour because it is all colours’. Consequently, ‘white domination is reproduced by the way that white people “colonise the definition of normal”’ (1993: 142). Moreover, traditional Western ideology has attributed very specific connotations to this colo ur dichotomy. Following the Ju deo-Christian use of ‘white and black to symbolize good and evil’, whiteness is associated with ‘order, rationality, rigidity’, and blackness with ‘disorder, irrationality and looseness’ (Dyer, 1993: 145). Seen in this light, ‘other ness’ is therefor e ne cessary for the dominant identity to e xist, and fixed meanings and stereotypes are im posed on thes e ‘others’ in or der to control them . Filmic Representations of the British Raj 34 Magnifying the argument still further, the East is by logic a Western construction that defines itse lf against a distinct ‘other ’. This is what Edward Said called ‘Orientalism’. In his own words: The Orient is an integral part o f the European materi al civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that p art culturally and even ideological ly as a mode of di scourse wi th supporting institu tions, vocabulary, sch olarship, im agery, doctrines, even co lonial bureaucracies and coloni al sty les (1985: 2; ita lics in ori ginal.) According to Said, the West has construc ted a discourse regarding the Orienta l ‘other’ that is politically and ideolog ically at the s ervice of W estern various inter ests. He gives three definitions o f the term Orientalism. In the first place, in an a cademic sen se, ‘Orientalism’ refers to the in stitutions and scholars that are devoted to the study of the ‘Orient’; secondly, Orientalism can be understood, in a m ore general sense, as ‘a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemo logical distinction m ade between “the Orient” and (most of the tim e “the Occident” )’. And thirdly, a hist orical and material meaning of Orientalism can indicate ‘a West ern style for dom inating, restructuring and having authority over th e Orient’ (1985: 2-3). Orientalism is therefore a m ulti-dimensional concep t that constructs and comprises the ‘otherness’ of Eastern territo ries and peoples thr ough the Western lens. Accordingly, as Said states: …without exam ining Ori entali sm as a disco urse, one ca nnot p ossibly understand the en ormously system atic discipl ine by which Eu ropean cult ure was able to manage – and eve n produce – t he Orient politically, socio logically, militarily, ideo logically, scientifically and imaginatively dur ing the post-Enlighten ment period (1985: 3) . Over and above all these areas of dominance, there is, Said adds, a conspicuous political dimension that works in the inter est s of the Western construction of the Orient. As a consequence, the analysis of Orienta lism gives more inf ormation as to the very creator of such a discourse than abou t the objectified Orien t itself: … a distribution of geopolitical awaren ess into aesthetic, scholarly, eco nomic, sociological, historical, and philological te xts; it is an elabor ation no t only of a basic geographical distinction Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 35 (the worl d is made up of two uneq ual halves, Orient an d Occident) but also a w hole series of ‘interests’, which, by suc h means as schol arly discovery, philolog ical reconstruction, psychological analysis, landscape and sociologi cal description, it not only creates but also maintains; it is , rather than expr esses, a certain will o r intention to understand, in some cases to control, m anipulate, even t o inco rporate, what is a m anifestly di ffere nt (or alternati ve and no vel) world [… ]. Orie ntalism is – and doe s not sim ply represe nt – a considera ble dim ension o f modern political-intellectu al culture, and as su ch has less to do with the Orient than it does with ‘our’ world (1985 : 12). In his analysis of power relations an d cultural identities in a colonial and post- colonial context, Hall furt her contends, as Said did, th at non-white colonial subjects were not only constructed as ‘the other’, but were forced to experience them selves as ‘other’: 16 ‘Every regime of representation is a regime of power formed, as Foucault reminds us, by the fatal couplet “power/knowledge”. But this kind of knowledge is internal, not exte rnal’ (1997: 52). 17 Closely related as they are to discourses of power, social constructions of identity and ‘otherness’ help categorise individuals in a hierarchical order w hich is alw ays beneficial to the dominant group. With this in m ind, it could therefore be argued that ‘race’ or ‘ethnicity’ are politic al categories. In Paul Gilr oy’s words: ‘“Race” has to be socially and politically constr ucted and elaborate ideological work is done to secure and maintain the diff erent form s of “racializatio n” which have characterise capi talist development’ (1998: 38). In this respect, Gi lroy argues that there is no single discourse on race and racism but different racisms , which may vary depending on the social formation or historical conjuncture (1998: 39). 16 To make m atters w orse, the i nternalizat ion of ot herness al so bri ngs about a nxiety , which i n turn becomes a burden for that alread y marginalised subject. This is what Frantz Fan on illustrates in h is well known e xplana tion of the e xperience of the black col onial subject when confronted with the white man’s gaze: ‘Et puis il nous fut donné d’affronter le rega rd blanc. Une lourdeur i naccoutumée nous oppresse […]. Dans l e monde bl anc l’homm e de couleur re ncontre des di fficult és dans l’élabo ration de s on schéma corporel. La conaissance du corps est une acti vité uniquem ent né gatrice [ …]. “Tiens, un nègre!” C ’était vrai. Je m ’amusai. “Tiens, un nègre!” Le cercle peu à peu se resserrai t. Je m’am usai ouvertem ent. “M aman, regarde le nègre, j’ai peur!” Peur! Pe ur! Voi là qu’on se mettait à me craindre. Je voulus m’amuser jusqu’à m ’étouffer, mai s cela m ’ était devenu im possible’ (Fanon, 1975: 89-90). 17 On Foucault’s theory on power and knowl edge, see also: Ra binow, 1991: 51, 61, 25 8-272. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 42 Increasing interest in ev olutionary lineag e com pelled m ore scientists to develop theories that accounted for human variety and classification. Pieter Camper advanced in 1770 the theory of skull measurement or cr aniology, further developed by Franz Joseph Gall, whose work opened the way for the development of the scientific fields of physiognomy and phrenology at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Generally speaking, all these early invest igations postulated that a co nnection existed between the shape of the brain and facial features, as well as with the character, personality, temperam ent, mental capacity and even th e m orality of the s ubjects under study. By extension, ‘samples’ or prototypes of the sp ecies were codified and assigned a category or variety. Needless to say, such studies were to prove instrumental in the appearance and spread of scientific raci sm, especially sinc e investiga tion results invariably found that the Caucasian race was endow ed with superior qualities in terms of beauty, m ental capacity and m oral inclinations. 21 Very soon, the correlation black skin a nd incapacity for rational thought was established as the unquestionable object ive truth (L. Young, 1996: 41). During the imperialis t venture, it was also common belief that ‘progress’ entailed a st eady evolution from prim itivism to ever-m ore advanced civilis ation. In fact, already since the Enlightenment, it was believed that ‘socie ties would progress forward by m eans of a general, secular and unilinear process of social developmen t’, thus Europe was viewed as ‘far advanced and consequent ly, as playing a central ro le in this evolution because of the high standard of civilisation alre ady r eached in these nations’ (Cornut-Gentille and Hand, 1995: 7). The status attained by different peoples he lped establish a hierarchical division of different social groups, Europe thus f eaturing as the topmost level of attainable progress. 21 See L. Young, 1996: 43; R . Young, 199 6: 96, Sm ith, 1984: 194-201 Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 43 This scale of classification was also applied with in Western Europe, where fair skinned, rational Northerers were considered supe rior to those dark-s kinned passionate Southeners. Outside Europe, a hierarchy was also maintained. Oriental peoples were considered to enjoy a certain level of ci vilisation, language and culture, and were consequently placed above Native Am ericans and Africans. Within the East, Arabs came out top of the scale, as noble people but with too m uch imagination, followed by Persians, who were viewed as good poets, while the Japanese decreed to be resolute but stubborn. For their part, Indians and Chinese people were classified as grotesque and monstrous savages due to their polytheism and ‘strange’ religious practices. Lastly, African ‘negroes’ were deem ed to be primitive, a-cultur ed peoples with no hint of rationality and thus closer to animals than to rational white Wester ners (Goldberg, 1998: 30-3). Along part of the eighteenth centuries and the last qu arter of the nineteenth century, the consolidation of racist theories through science was mainly the result of Western econom ic and political self-interest, developed out of both the exploitation of slaves in the American plan tations and empire building. As Robert Young puts it, ‘no one bothered too much about the d ifferences between races until it was to the West’s economic advantage to profit from slavery or to defend it against Abolitionists’ (1996: 92). Such an account points to the para doxical existence of, on the one hand, a pyramidal vision of peoples and, on the other, m any Enlightenment philosophers’ commintm ent towards egalitarian ism – which culminated in the ideals of equa lity, liberty and fraternity during the French Re volution. Robert Young e xplains that it was clear to all at the tim e that the revolutio nary ideals on equality only applied to ‘fully rational beings’, a collective from which th e lower ranks of soci ety and women in the Filmic Representations of the British Raj 44 Western world as well as the inhabitan ts of primitive, ‘oth er’ societies were exclu ded (1996: 42). Jordan and Weedon clarify the paradox by relating it to Liberal Humanist cultural values. They define the Libe ral philosophy as ‘the belief in the inalienable r ights of the individual to realize him- or herself to the full’ and Humanism as ‘the belief in an essential human nature and the power of re ason to bring about hum an progress’ (1995: 23). Glenn Jordan and Chris Weedon connect these id eas with the nineteenth-cen tury Arnoldian notion of ‘Culture’ as th e path to the individual’s self-real isation advocated by Liberal Hum anism. In other words, ‘Culture ’ en ables the realisation of ‘hum an nature to the full by developing their in tellectual and m oral life’ (1995: 25). The key question here is how profoundly ethnocentric the equatio n established between ‘culture’ and ‘progress’, with Western civi lization and Liberal Hum anist egalitarian ideas p roved to be. It is true that, on one level, th e insist ence on basic hum an rights and essential human qualities shared by humankind have been very useful tools for the emancipation of formerly excluded social groups. Nevertheless, the construction of a European identity, though based on Liberal Humanist ideals, also brought about the hierarchical division of ‘other’ groups. As Jordan and Weedon state: ‘Europe’s self-image has consistently been defined in opposition to a less civilis ed, non-European “Other”’ (1995: 32). 22 In the authors’s view, the contradiction between hum an rights and social divisions was solved by means of certain discourses that justified the exploitation of ‘the ot her’ in the name of Western economic and political developm ent: Liberal Humanist Culture assumes that whilst human nature is essen tially the same everywhere, some cul tures are m ore devel oped t han othe rs. In p rivilegi ng val ues that are bourge ois, Wester n, white and male, it implies that it is cultural d ifference based on underdevelopment that makes non-white societies differen t and European cultu re and intrinsically civilis ing force (1995: 59). 22 In Sartre’s words: ‘Hi gh-m inded peo ple, liberal or just s oft-hearted, protest that they are shocke d by thi s consistency, but they are either mist aken o r dishonest, for with us there is nothing more consisten t than a racist humanism since the Europea n has only been a ble to become a m an [i.e. a hum an] through creating slaves and monster s’ (in Jordan and W eedon, 1995: 34). Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 45 This ideology was backed by the rise of pseudo-scientific discourses that confirmed the natural and social order of th e world and accounted for the existence of human diversity. David Mason explains th at along the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there was a tendency to link physical difference and different patterns of social organization with the notion of hierarchy. 23 The ‘primitive societies’ Europeans ran in to in the territories they conquered were seen as inferior when com pared with the European superiority especially in the technologica l and m ilitary spheres (20 00: 5). Hence, Europeans justified their domination of those supposedly inferior races or even species (1996: 16-18). In the nineteenth century, J. C. Pritchard’s theory of racial difference established a close relationship between r ace and culture: ‘The first p eople had been black and identified the cause of subsequent whiteness as ci vilization itself. W hite skin therefore became both a m arker of civili zation and a product of it’ (in Young, 1996: 35). 24 According to Robert Young, thre e historical events helped seal scientif ic theories of racial difference and other popular fo rms of racism that all supported white superiority: firstly, th e Indian Mutiny in 1857, which brought in its train di rect rule from Britain on the Indian sub continent after th e de feat of the mutineers; secon dly the debate s around slavery and abolition that developed before, and at the time of, the Am erican Civil War (1861-5), and finally the bloody Jama ica Insurrection at Mo rant Bay in 1865 that was mercilessly suppressed by Gove rnor Eyre, and which provoked a political debate in Britain on whe ther G overnor Eyre should be prosecuted or not for exercising 23 The pervasive influence of such postulates even r eached the twentieth century when these ‘scientific’ theories also served to back Nazi sm (Mason, 1995:5). 24 Taking into account how identity a nd the discourses on race are con str ucted, it is not difficult to acknowledge the close relationship between cult ure and ra ce. As Robert Young affirm s: ‘Cul ture has always marked cultural difference by producing t he other; it ha s always been comparative, and racism has alway s been an integral part of it: the two are inextr icably clustered together, feeding off and generating each other. Race has always been cultu rally constructed. Culture has been racially constr ucted’ (1996: 54). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 46 arbitrary power in repressing and executing the leaders of the re volt without a legal process (R. Young, 1996: 92). 25 Meanwhile, other political issues furthe r confirmed a connection between race and class. In the 1860s the Liberal Party, in its vindication of social equality, was campaigning for the extension of the franchise to the lower classes. Ideas on egalitarianism were soon extended to the no tion of racial equalit y. According to Greta Jones: ‘Liberals of the 1860s felt that the question of arbitrary governm ent and political and racial equality was indivisible. Th eir opinions on the black-white issue were influenced, to a certain extent , by others more direc tly related to the questions within Britain itself’ (1980: 140). In the last decades of the nineteenth century all these even ts provoked heated debates in British society while they also co n tributed to whipping up populist, jin goist views of the civilising missi on, econom ic bonus and political grandeur of the British Empire. The growing interest in scientific inquiry and classi fication of the natural world, together with profit-making a nd the politica l urge to domin ate the world, further kindled the debates on the case for and against empire building. The pseudo- scientific theories that supported the creation of the empire and exploitation of other peoples often clashed with religio us stances and/or libera l advocat ors of free trade together with national and individual liberty. The background debate that had been ra ging since the turn of the ninettenth century confronted defenders of monogenesi s and polygenesis, the form er postulating the common origin of all human races, the la tter convinced that the different races were in fact different species. Those upholding th e monogenic hypothesis based their ideas on the Bible, with Adam and Eve as the f ounding parents of humankind. Christian groups, 25 Some politi cians and intellect uals such as Mill, Darwin and Huxley were i n favour of Eyre’s prosecut ion, while Carly le and Ruskin, among ot hers, were against it. Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 47 especially Evangelicals and low-church fa iths worked f or the welfare of those considered to belong to other ‘ra ces’, since from their religious stance, there were just as much ‘God’s creatures’, that is, descendants of Adam and Eve, as white people were. Convinced that the pure origin of man was exclusively white and male, monogenists tended to view other variations of human beings as deteriorations of this ideal. Following this logic, non-white peoples were regarded as hum an beings that belonged to inferior categorie s which, in view of monogeni sts, explained the physical and psychical differences – features that depa rted from established canons of beauty and entailed lesser mental faculties and defici ent values. Convinced of the full hum anity of non-whites, monogenists defended abolitionis t positions. Ho wever, they also advocated that these peoples should be trained, educat ed and civilised into the superior W estern culture, and yet maintained in posts of servitude (R. Young, 1996: 101-2). For their part, polygenists were whole hear tedly in favour of slavery since, in their view, ‘blacks’ belonged to a di fferent species, and he nce, were sub-hum an, closer to the ‘apes’ than to ‘white hum an beings’. 26 In other words, if dark races were not totally human, then slavery, that is, free labour force, was perfectly licit, and so was the usurpation of land from the natives. This was, for instance, the position defended by James Hunt, president of the Anthropologica l Society in London and fervent advocate of polygenesis (Jones, 1980: 141). Polygenesis defendants also position ed them selves fiercely against miscegenation. In their belief that different r aces m eant different species, they regarded racial mixing as un-natural as the sexual coupling between a hum an being and an anim al. 26 The roots of polygeni c hypot heses go back to the sev enteenth cent ury, ‘pre -Adam ist’ theori es put forward by Isa ac de la Peyrère ( 1596 - 1676 ). He claim ed that the Bible accounted for the origins of the Jewish species with Adam, and later on, Christ’s follo wers we re elevated over the Jews as the Chosen People. Prior to Adam , de la Peyrèr e defend ed the existenc e of other pe ople in a Hobbesian state of nature; these peop le were supposed to be black and infer ior , as a species in between the white descenda nts of Adam and earlier b easts (Fredrickson , 2002: 52). La Peyrère had to renounce these id eas that were considered heretic, yet th is theory gave way to th e polygenic views of the nineteent h century, when ‘science’ increasing ly gained prominence over Biblical literal ex planations of the na tural world. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 48 Scientists who supportered this thesis, like the anthropologist Robert Knox, argued that the unions between different races would even tually result in infertile off spring – a living proof that whites and non-whites be longed to clearly separated species. (Goldberg, 1998: 64; R. Young, 1996: 6 -16). Against this background, it is hardly surprising that the notions of ‘hybridity’ and ‘miscegenation’ were soon to becom e determ inant nineteenth-centu ry factors in the theorisation of race and the construction of d iscourses on racism. In this respect, a crucial figure in the cons olida tion of modern racism in Europe and its colonial territor ies was Arthur de Gobineau. In his work: An Essay on the Inequa lity of the Human Races (1853-1855 ) he postulated that although a variety of races could co-ex ist within a single species, the intr insic superiority of the white Indo-European or Aryan race over the rest was beyond doubt. 27 He claimed that racial m ixing was inevitable, an d that it was precisely the degree of mixtur e am ong the distinctive human types that accounted for the unequal stages of civi lisation in th e world. 28 Racial mixing thus provoked degeneration, as was the case, he argued, of Southern Eur opean countries that presented a higher level of racial mixing with inferior peoples. In cont rast, those closer to the Aryan race, that is, Germanic and Scandinavian populations ha d progressed further and achieved higher cultural status. These ideas led de Gobineau to assert that progress – or civilisation – was the result of the ac tivities of the white race : All civilisations of the world, includ ing those of Egypt, India and China, have been initiated b y Aryans, but for the most part by contracting a ‘fertile m arriage’ with other races. Black people , left on their own, by con trast, have remained in mersed in a profound inertia (in R. Young, 1996: 99). Debates on the issue of race were that much invigorated with the advent of social Darwinism. The publication of Darwin’s On the Origins of Species in 1859 m arked a watershed in both the natural and the social sciences. Darwin’s novel proposal was that 27 Later on this e ssay was to have a gr eat influence o n Hitler’s Mein Kampf . 28 See Smith, 1984: 193-209 Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 49 of a single general law that led to the adva ncement of all organic beings through simply letting ‘the strongest live and the weakest di e’ (Hawkins, 1997: 25). Such a law affecting all living cr eatures compelled all organism s to mutate into new or di fferent varieties or species so as to better adapt to ever-cha nging environm ents and thus succeed in the struggle for survival (Darwin, 1988: 111-127). The effects of this theory were twofold. In the first place, th e hitherto clear-cut taxonomic division between species was sudde nly shown to be unfixed and unstable. Accordingly, living beings, and human race s am ong them, were now exposed as subject to change and evolution – the existence of varieties or su b-species being supportive of the monogenic approach (Wade, 1999: 38; J ones, 1980: 141). Secondly, if the evolution of different living creatures depended on their continuous st ruggle for existence, it was proved that this uphill battle occurred at th ree levels: between individuals of the same species, between individuals of different sp ecies and, finally, betw een individuals and the environm ent or the physical conditions of life (Hawkins, 1997: 26; Darwin, 129- 139). If On the Origins of Species was a landmark in the study of natural history, Darwin’s second major work, The Descent of Man (1871) proved to be as conspicuous and controversial an essay. In this book, Darwin came to acknowledge that he had perhaps put too much em phasis on the notion of ‘the survival of the fittest’ in his intention to overthrow ‘t he dogma of separate creations’ (Haw kins, 1997: 26). Nonetheless, Darwin’s claim that hum a n beings had descended from a non-hum an ancestry shared with apes provoked great contro versy in scientific circles. ‘Anim als’ and ‘human beings’ no longer appeared as two dis tinct and irreconcilable c ategories but we re both part of a continuum. In this continuum, living creatures had quan titative rather than qualitative differences, not only with respect to physical traits but also to language, Filmic Representations of the British Raj 50 reason, imagination an d morality (1997: 28). 29 Darwin included a whole chapter on human races , where he made his stance agai nst polygenes is by arguing that differences between human groups might m otivate a classi fication into sub-species, but not into distinct sp ecies . He also stated that the tradition al label ‘races’ cou ld be m aintained, if used exclusively to refer to sub-species within the same group. He demonstrated his assumption by describing the h igh degree of amalgam ation of races present in the American continent and Pacific isles, as th e success in sexual reproduction indicated that the similarities of the subjects under study we re greater than the differences (Darwin, 1978: 1972-9). Darwin’s contribution to the natural science instigated n ew perspectives in the analyses of human social organisation. There were som e premises that accounted for the social Darwinist world view. To begin w ith, it was believed that biological laws governed all organisms in nature, hu man beings included. A dditionally, these o rganisms struggled for existence, because of the pressure of populations on natural resources. In this fight for survival, physical and mental traits were adapted in term s of sex and inheritance, which led to the natu ral selection of species, that is, to the emergence of new species or the elimination of others (Hawkins, 1997: 31). Although the thesis forwarded by Darwin underm ined polygenic theories that justified the exploitation of those regard ed as sub-hum ans, it did sustain and even reinforce the hierarchical division estab lishe d between superior and inferior races, in spite of the new perspectives on evo lutionary instability in the class ificatory system. As is known, Darwin described evolution as a slow , gradual process in which creatures, (i.e. humans) have evolved from more simplistic ancesto rs (i.e. apes). As Greta Jones expounds: 29 See Darwin, (1871) 1978: 19-21 Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 51 Regardle ss the unit y of m an, Darwinism im plied ‘prim itive’ pe oples were early and infe rior historical forms. Darwin’s Descent of Man was an attempt to find a gradu ated series of links – mental, social and moral – as eviden ce for evolution. To this exigen cy, a belief in human equality, to which other areas of Darwin’s life and wo rk testifies, was sacr ificed (1980: 14 2). According to Mike Hawkins, although Da rwin was an opponent of slavery, he was convinced of the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon civilisations over other primitive peoples and was a defender of the intellect ual superiority of men over women (1997: 36). 30 In her analysis of the implications of so cial Darwinism in the conceptions of race and class in English thought, Greta Jones el ucidates four main assum ptions (1980: 142- 5): In the first place, thinkers foun d in Darwinism a scientific just ification for social hierarchies, generated by ‘natural’ rather th an social laws. In other wo rds, racial and social inequality was the result of natural se lection. Secondly, the ‘sur vival of the fittest’ legitimised the im perial enterprise, a s Mason states: ‘The survival of the fittest’ was the cry that could justify both conquest and war and legitimize as natural a social ord er that was the outcome of po litical and military struggles […]. Early discussio ns of racial di fference had found a r eady audience in those who wish ed to justify slavery (1995: 7). 30 Even though nowad ays these scientific theories on racial inferiority are ad amantly rejected, a nd the concept of race is perceived by most people as a mere cultural con struct, there are still scientific attempts to account for racial differe nce and inferior ity of indi viduals pertaining to certa in racial groups. In Oct ober 2007 a controversial discussion filled up pages and p ages in newspapers. The storm was caused by the Nobel-Prize winner, James Watson, who discovere d the DNA structure. In a recent conference Dr Watson argue d that Africans were less intelligent than Eu ropeans: ‘Dr Watson was quoted as saying h e was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are ba sed on the fact that thei r intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says n ot really”. He was furt her quoted as say ing that hi s hope was that everyone was equal but that “peopl e who have t o de al with blac k em ployees find t his is not true”’ ( http://news.b bc.co.uk/ ). His research institution can celled his contract and he later apo logised for these remarks: ‘Without referring directly to the subject of racial differences, Dr Watson once more invokes the idea that Darwinian natural selection has led to diff eren ces in behavioural ability between peop le from differe nt geogr aphical regi ons of t he world. “ We do not ye t adequately understand t he way in whic h the differe nt envir onments in the wo rld have sel ected over t ime the genes which dete rmine o ur capacit y to do differe nt things ” […]. “The ove rwhelm ing desire of soci ety today is to assum e that equal powers of reaso n are a universal heritage of humanity. It may well be. But simply wantin g this to be the case is no t enough. This is not science. To question this is not to g ive in to racism. This is no t a discussion about superiority or inferiori ty, it i s about seeki ng to unde rstand differe nces, ab out why s ome of us are great m usicians and others great enginee rs”’. ( http://news.indep endent.co.uk/ ). Non etheless, the fact that these debates are still present and held by scientists in the twenty-first century de monstrates the lo ng-standin g infl uence of past racist discourses (see also http://www.cn n.com/2007 ; http://entertainment.time sonline.co.uk / ). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 58 age of imperialism, but with pervas ive trace s lo ng after the colonial enterprise. Mainly because of its association with reprod uctive roles, the female body has traditionally b een closely linked to m other earth and the land. 33 Hence, in patriarchal societie s, women come to symbolise the ‘nation’ s spiritual and m aterial vita lity […] invoked to safeguard the existing order against the perils of modernity’ (Mosse in San Juan, 2002: 81). As a consequence, the female m embers of th e community are conf erred the role of transmitting and reproducing national and ethnic ca tegories as well as that of maintaining the boundaries of these ethnic and national groups (San Juan, 2002: 85). Given this crucial connection between nationalism , ethnicity, gender and sexuality, one can begin to understand why th e issue of miscegena tion has never been welcome in socie ties which try to preserve their identity borders agains t foreign influences. The boundaries of inclusion and in clusion based on ethnic/national categories may be destabilised by m embers of mixed ethnic or cultural background whose ‘in- betweenness’ does not conform to any of thos e pre-establish ed, artificial categories. Since in patriarchal societies the continua tion of the fam ily line is determined by the Law of the Father, 34 couples that bring together an ‘acceptable ethnic man’ and an ‘outsider woman’ are tolerated, as it is the woman’s cultural background that is sacrificed and not the man’s, hence the c oncern in patriarchal societies in keeping women’s choice of partners within the limits of their own community. 35 To a certain extent, this explains why a hierarchy of acceptation of m ixed unions is determ ined by 33 See Ortner, 1996, Walby, 199 4, and Lerner, 1986. 34 Rutherford aff irms that th e Law of the Father functi ons as the guardi an against miscegenation in order to propagate and maintai n the community’s ethnic patrilineality (1997: 149). 35 Gardner explains the pervasive m yths that have alwa ys accompanied the inconsistent equation of racial mixing between blacks and whi tes in Western cult ure in general and the United St ates in particular: ‘miscegena tion, o r illicit s exual intercourse, between white males and black fe males that resu lts in a mixed race progeny upgrades the black race to a higher intellectual capacity and responsivene ss to Western culture, and hence is permissible. On the ot her hand, black m a le and wh ite female sexual act ivity can only result in a progeny of lesser i ntellectual capabili ty’ (2000: 13). Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 59 which of the two members of the couple – th e m ale or the female partner — is the ‘outsider’. 36 Another possibility of inter- racial mixing is that which occurs between same-sex partners. In imperial times, although not publicly accepted, ho mosexual male intercourse was nevertheless contemplated. Gobineau goes back in time to exp lain the view. As he comments, the Aryan race was originally an active m ale or masculine group. Given that female Aryans were considered to be devia tions from, or ‘the ot her’ version of the patriarchal norm, non-white races were regarded as fem ale or feminised. As a result, the white male could be attracted to both sexes, wi th only one type of liaison resulting in the possible birth of mix-breed o ffspring. Accordingly, if misceg enation was to be avoided, homosexuality could hav e a higher degree of acceptance as it did not entail the possible consequences of a heterose xual coupling (R. Young, 1996: 109). 37 The obsessive rejection of miscegenation pract ices in scientif ic and social discourses proves the degree of rejection of hybridity in the colonial era. As Rober t Young states: ‘fear of miscegenation can be related to the notion that without such hierarchy, civilization would, in a literal as well as t echnical sense, collapse’ (1996: 95). The long-standing refusal to accept the po ssibility of ‘physical hybridity ’ through miscegenation had a parallel articulation in the possible emergence of ‘cultural’ hybridity or the creation of ‘ hybrid identities’. As expounded in the first part of this chapter, identity f ormation depends m a inly on the existence of difference and ‘otherness’. In the colon ial context, Hom i Bhabha applies the same principle to argue that the ideologica l construction of ‘otherness’ is based on ‘fixity’ so tha t the hierarc hy 36 Daileader analyses how wom en’s bodies are historically represented as the boundaries of the nati on and how these discourses have created many cultural products in lite rature and cinema dealing wi th the concept of ‘Othellophi llia’, that is, t he representation of th e roma ntic coupling between a white woman and a black man and the subsequent presenta tion of legitim ate use of racist violence exert ed against both mem bers of the interracial couple (see Daileader, 2005). 37 Homosexuality here refers to male hom osexuality because i n the patriarchal societies of the ninet eenth century the possibil ity of femal e homosexualit y was not even contem plated. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 60 created between dominant and subject – o r colonisers and colonised people – is constantly maintained (1994: 66). In his own words: The const ruction of the colo nial subject i n discou rse, and the exercise of colonial power th rough discourse, dem ands an a rticulat ion of form s of diffe rence – raci al and sexual. S uch an art iculation becomes crucial if it is held th at the body is always simultaneously (if con flictually) inscribed in both the ec onom y of pleasur e and desire a nd the ec onomy of discour se, dom ination a nd powe r […]. The epithets racial or sexual come to be seen as m odes of differentiation, realized as multiple, cross-cutting d eterminations, polymorphous and perverse, always demanding a sp ecific and strategic calculation of their effects. Such is, I believe, t he moment of colonial di scourse. It is a form of discou rse crucial to the bi nding of a range of differe nces and di scrimi nations tha t inform the discur sive and political practices of racial and cultural hierarchizatio n (1994: 67). In this sense, the ‘other ’ can simultane ously be both a repository of loathing as well as an unknown or ‘dark’ ob ject of desire, hence the a ttraction and repulsion for the ‘other’. Because of this at traction, there exists the dange r of close contact with the ‘other’ that trespasses the boundaries of th e self physically – in the case of sexual intercourse – or cultura lly – in the case of the acquisition of certai n practices hitherto foreign or unknown to the self. Phobia about ‘c ultural miscegenation’ could be explained in the same term s, that is, cultural interchange as a force or developm ent capable of destabilising a given social order. That is why Homi Bh abha emphasised the im portance of fixity in the construction of the colonial ‘other’. To illustra te his point he uses the notions of ‘mimicry’ and ‘m ockery’. All along the decades of the Em pire, discou rses justifying the colonial enterprise as a means of expanding W estern civili sation to underdeveloped prim itive peoples proliferated. On his reading, the natives, it was believed, would eventually become civilised and thus escalate Darwin’s evol utionary chain. By means of more or less violent methods, W estern culture was – to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the colony – imposed on the native communities. As a result, the only option for the colonised individua l was to m ake use of the ta ctic of ‘mim icry’, that is, the imitatio n of the over-rulers’ ways of being and living as a survival strategy. Although theoretically, the ultimate philanthropic goal of em pire- building was the civilisation and eventual Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 61 independence of the colonies, in practice, com plete and perfect imitation of W estern culture was seen as a feasible threat since it could undermine the privileged status of the West over the rest of the world. In Bhabha’s words: ‘colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite ’ (1994: 86; italics in original). The key question for Bhabha in this issue of ‘m imicry’ is ambivalence . On the one hand, mim icry is desirable to the extent th at it enables dominant groups to exert their power on those subjects they re gard as ‘similar but different ’. Knowledge of the ‘other’ facilitates its control. On the other hand, th e mim icking of the master can conjointly stand as a menace for the colonial rule since, in adopting im posed ways, the ruled is also coming to know the ruler. It is the sam e but not quite, the ‘other’ can be dominated but not fully controlled. Viewed in this light, mim icry is a mask the native places before her/himself that denotes both the presence and absence of an ‘other’ identity. In this respect, mim icry is like a camouflage or ‘mockery’: Not a harm onizati on or repre ssion of di fference, but a form of resem blance, that differ s from or defends prese nce by di splaying i t in par t, metony micall y. Its threat […] com es from the prodigious and strateg ic production of conflictual, fantastic, discriminatory ‘identity effects’ in the play of a powe r that is elusive because it hi des no essence, no ‘itself’ (Bhabha, 1994: 90). The ambivalence thus oscillates b etween na rcissis tic pleasure in be ing imitated and paranoia, caused by uncontrollable – and he nce threatening – similarity (1994: 91). On this reading, it can therefore be said that the age of imperialism was characterised by the ambiguity, inconsistenc y and contradiction of its id eological discourses. To cite but an example, colonial ‘contact’ was often used as a euphemism for systematic genocide, at a tim e when colonise rs were prom ulgating their belief in reason and human rights, and considered them selves as the ultim ate exam ple of ‘civilisation’. 38 ‘Contact’ also meant sexual contact, m ore often than no t in the form of rape exerted by 38 See Rose, 2000: 1-14. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 62 the white man upon native women, at a tim e when miscegenation was regarded with horror. Finally, ‘contact’ al so implied the cultural im position of Western norms upon ‘less developed’ peoples, and yet ‘Westernised ’, ‘m imic’ natives were perce ived with a mixture of pleasure and fear. In the twentieth century, the adve nt of post-colonia lism was accom panied by conspicuous scientific, ideol ogical and social changes in human relationships around the world. Even so, inconsistencies and paradoxes are still – or even m ore – present in contemporary societies. The indepen dence of most colonies in the ye ars following the end of the Second W orld War eventually led to a new world order that had done away with the discourses th at justified colon i al rule, while movements in defence of marginalised groups gained precedence. The beli ef in biolog ical superiority in terms of gender, race and class is no longer sustained by the dominant or ‘official’ cultures of the ‘ex-colonising’ countries. Nonetheless, th ere has been an emergence of new or transformed discourses that justify a new kind of hierarchical relati onships favourable to the present dominant groups in society. Cultures are not homogeneous. According to Raymond W illiams, the culture of a given society is the sum total of various d iscourses that reflect complex existing interrelation ships. At any given time, there ar e dominant discourses, that is, discourses that, in an Althussian o r Gramscian term s, appear to be so natural and common-sensical that they com e to exert a major influence in the cultural structures of society. And yet, however dominant these discourses m ay be , they can be challenged, contested or reinforced by other ideological trends inhe rited from the past or emerging as new meanings, values and p ractices. As mentioned earlier on, W illiam s labels the former ‘residual and the latter ‘e mergent’ (1988: 123). Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 63 William s’s theory serves to exp lain the ex istence of contra dictory disc ourses in societies. Ex-colon ial powers, f or instance, may display cu ltural products that co ntain ‘residual’ discourses from the tim es of coloni alism (‘residu al’ because they have not yet been erased from the collective unconscious ). At the sam e time, these nations or communities may have adopted a ‘d ominant’ st and against the colon ial oppression of the past and the advocation of equality between different social, nati onal or ethnic groups. To conclude this section, it must be sa id that, in post-col onial societies like Britain the notion of hybridity no longer carries the negative connotations of the past. On the contrary, hybrid ity is now seen more pos itively as a multicu ltural enrichment. Even so, although nobody nowadays would openly defe nd the prohibition of miscegenation, residual phobic discourses on in terracial m ixing prevent normalisation in the portrayal of relationships of the kind in cultural pr oducts. The co-existence of conflicting and sometimes contradictory discourses in a gi ve n culture renders cruc ial an in-depth exploration of these contextual featur es that m ake up a particular society. 39 1.2.3. Historical Multiculturality of the British Isles The theories of identity construction help es tablish a connection between race issues and the construc tion of natio nal identities in colo nial and postcolonial tim es. In the case of Britain, Lola Young compares the child’s acqui sition of identity and the construction of national identity in post- colonial times in the fo llowing terms: Like the infan t who has to learn to differentiate betw een itself and the rest of the world, it is as if Britai n—as an im perial pow er—had t o dis cover t hat its source of comfort, security and warm th did not com e from itself but fr om el sewhere […]. The di scove ry that the colonies were separate 39 Similarly, St ephen Castle mentions the existence of ‘c omm on-sense’ racist practices at a time when ‘overt racism’ has been publi cly rejected. In his opinion, these derive from a set of ‘assumptions used by people to understand and cope wit h the complex social world aroun d t hem’ (2000: 173). Such ‘comm on sense’ practices may be viewed as residual cultural constructions t hat change and adapt to new ci rcumstances and are thus difficult to erase. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 64 entities with their own d emands and needs become linked to frustratio n, loss and anger. The squalor of the once great cap ital city of the empire , is asso ciated with a crisis in national identity, anxiety is precipita ted by loss—loss of co ntrol, loss of em pire, loss of st atus as a world p ower – and the blame is implicitly lo cated in the chaos and diseas e with which Blacks have contaminated the landscape (in Rut herford, 1990:202). As Anne Marie Smith states: ‘Every im perial centre faces an id entity crisis after it undergoes the tr auma of decoloni zation’ ( 1994: 6). Thus, after the independence of India in 1947, which precipitated the whol e decolonisation process during the following decades, colonialist theo ries on race and identity logically alte red as they adapted to the new situation and British people came to te rm s with their loss of world influence and power. Accordingly, although the discourses of Imperial tim es belong to the past, they still have their inf luence in the proc ess of identity constru ction in the present. As Felicity Hand puts it, the remnants of the Empire represent: ‘… what Salman Rushdie referred to as “the phantom twitchings of an amputated l imb”, that is the crumbs left over from the Empire which are still relished as our imperial heritage’ (1999: 43). In less metaphorical term s, Gilroy comme nts that since the end of the Second World War the United Kingdom has been suffe ring from what he labels ‘postcolonial melancholia ’: The life of the nation has been dom inated by an inability even to face, never m ind actually m ourn, the profou nd change i n circum stances and m oods that f ollowed t he end of t he Empire an d consequent loss of imperial prestige. That inability h as been in tertwined with the apprehension of successive political and eco nomic crises, with the gradual b reak up of the United Kingdom, with the arrival of s ubstant ial num bers of post colonial citizen-m igrants and wi th the shoc k and anxiety that followed from a loss of any sense that the national collective was bound by a coherent and distinctive cu lture (2004: 98). Britain, therefore, still bel ongs to the Western block of the so called ‘developed countries’. Harking back to a not very distant past, Britis h citizens could proudly affirm that their country had been the g reatest impe rial power in the world. Just after the F irst World W ar, the British Em pire covered a fi fth of the world’s surface and included a quarter of its population (Kumar, 2003: 35). Ho wever, since then, the nation has found Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 65 itself relega ted to a m ore humble position and consequently, can no long er be consid ered a world leader. As will be seen in more detail alo ng the next chapter, new relationships were established with both the Unite d States and the European Un ion. These new alliances led in turn to a readjustment of relations within the Commonwealth. Me anwhile, pressures from ethnic communities within th e United Kingdom were also building up. Britain’s more humble position in the world and its a lte red inner situa tion ar e circumstances that could very well be prop itious for th e fashioning of a new British id entity, strong eno ugh to withstand the influence of tradition al views, still r ipe in certain sectors of the population. For this very reason, as Hanif Kure ishi states, ‘it is the British, the white British, who have to learn that being Britis h isn ’t what it was’ (in Morley, 2001: 38). Gwyn William s describes the re-shaping of British society in the following way: ‘The British nation and the British state are cl early entering a proces s of dissolution, into Europe, or the mid-Atlantic, or a post-im p erial fog. Britain has begun a long march out of history’ (in Kumar, 2003: 226) The country’s condition as a ‘declining’ power from the end of Second World W ar onwards logically affected its foreign policy since it could no longer be able to act independently from allied states (Byrd, 1988: 3). 40 The perception of Britain as an im perial nation could be a residual discourse – to use William s’ words – which includes those tr aditional intrinsic qualities of the old generations of Britons who built a grand and lastingly influential imperial country. S uch a notion of British identity automatically ex cl udes those British citizens who partic ipated in the Empire venture, not as rulers but as colonised subjects. That is why, despite their 40 It was the Suez Crisis in 1957 that showed up Brit ain as an eclipsing power in international affai rs, when the invasion of British and French troops of the Suez Canal, after it had been nationali sed by the Egyptian ruler, was followed by inte rnational condem n ation of su ch an action. British and French troops were forced to withdraw and were replaced by United Nations peace-keeping for ces. The United State s and other country-mem bers of the U.N had proved to be more i nflue ntial in solving that international crisis than the country that only a decade before was still a powerful empire (Lowe, 1992: 318; Gr een, 1996: 5-14) Filmic Representations of the British Raj 66 contemporary settlem ent in the isles, these ‘n ew British citiz ens’ do no t fit in this still prevailing ‘white’ definition of Brit ish identity. As Gilroy comments: Britishness […] is seen to e merge as the sum of these cultures [English, Sco ttish, Welsh and Irish]. Alien (i.e. black) cultures have been introdu ced into this country with disastrous effect […]. The increased com petition for lim ited reso urces and the variety f or disr uptive be haviour s introduced by the immigran t population create problems for the national community (1998 : 60). Nevertheless, in spite of attempts in the 1980s towards co nstructing a British identity based on traditional va lues of the past, it bec ame more and more evid ent that times were changing and that a re-definition of what ‘Britishness’ meant in contemporary tim es was sorely needed. As David Morley and Kevi n Robins explain: The grandi ose dream s of a ‘Ne w World Order’, i n which it was p resum ed that all the worl d would follow Am erica and the West into t he ‘End of History’, c haracterized by t he untroubled hegemony of liberali sm and m arket capita lism are now wel l and truly exposed fo r the ethnocentric fantasies they always we re. As west ern culture com es to be recognized as but one particula r form of moderni ty, rather t han as som e universal t emplat e for humanki nd, and as Britain attempts to adapt to its sen se of displ acement from the centre of the world stage—and, at the same time, tries to co me to terms with its own ethnic and cultural complexity—a wh ole new scenario begi ns to emerge (200 1: 3). Drawing on Ernest Gellner’s theory of state and na tion, Steve Fenton specifies that the basis of nationalist discourse is the correspondence of nation with state. He defines ‘nation’ as the idea of ‘people with a shared destiny, a comm on past and future, and a store of customs, colle ctive mem ory and fam iliar symbols held in common’, while the term ‘state’ refers to ‘the form of organisation of citizenship, government and geographical boundaries’ ( 1999: 203). The consequence of the equation nation-state is that all those individuals that are considered to belong to the nation should be included within the legal frontiers of the state. If they do not happen to physically inhabit the limits of the state, they should always be ‘welcom e back home’. In contrast, those individuals who do not belong to the nation should be enc ouraged to leave the state (1999: 203-4). 41 Hence the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion implemented by 41 Layton-Henry explains how imm igrants are perceived by th e native populat ion: ‘while som e immigrants are seen as unwelcome outsi ders – competitors for jobs, housing and welfare benefit s – others are viewed as insiders or as welcome outsiders, either because they are kith and kin or because they are viewed as m ore Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 67 means of immigration restrictions ev idence how im portant identity construction is in the notion of the nation-state. This fact also accou nts for the hostility felt towards those actually bor n in a certa in state but with a f o reign ‘national’ origi n, such as the younger generations born in the UK but with parents or grand-parents of immigrant origin. The rhetoric used in ref erence to them in certa in exclusionary d iscourses is that they belong to the state – Britain confers them legal righ ts thanks to the democratic character of a civilised country – but they ar e excluded from the cultural at tributes of the nation. Gilroy establishes a parallelis m between nationalis m and racism . He gives the exam ple of Britain as a nation relate d to a specific ‘race ’, not only in cultural but also in biological terms, with its inhabitants hav ing traditionall y been labelled ‘the Island Race’ or the ‘Bulldog Breed’ (1998: 45). Likewise, race and class ar e closely related. Post-imp erial migrant labour, for instance, reflected ‘home’ cl ass alignm ent by reproducing ‘the categories of colonial superordination and subordination’ (1999: 208). However, importing the ‘colonial structure’ into Britain caused a double anxi ety. On the one hand, cheap migrant labour brought further competition and hence frustratio n to the white native working-class. On the other hand, the enorm ous and constant changes, cau sed by social mobility in capitalist societies, block th e possibility of a permanent reproduction of the colonial hierarchy. As a consequence, those white indi viduals pertaining to the ‘Island Race’ see their traditional privileged positions threatene d. It is precisely the ‘dynam ic and unplanned nature of capitalism’, the ‘belief th at all is changing – for the worse – and is hopelessly out of control’, that is promoting nos talgia for the long lost days of the stable national past. This harking back to better times is often associated with the perceptio ns assimilable or as bringi ng essential ca pital investment and managerial ski lls. Welcom e outsiders, for example, would include Japanese and American execut ives, whil e welcome insiders woul d include people of B ritish descent and the Irish, who are usually regarded as insiders despi te the troubles in Ul ster (1992: 274). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 74 However, when Kearney turns to menti on the ‘Britannic m elting pot’ of the post- colonial period, he refers to the immigran ts from Commonwealth countries as ‘ethnic groups’ (1990: 211, 216), a label that he had a voided when dealing with the Celtic and Teutonic communities that originally populated th e British Isles. His view of both Celtic and Germanic tribes as having the sam e ‘I ndo-European’ roots leads him to argue that they were culturally bu t not ‘ethnically’ different. 50 The evidence of an initial linguistic rela tionship within the Indo-European family of languages that unifies what time and hist ory converted into disassociated communities problematises divisions of hum an beings into distinct groups. In othe r words, the line that divides human beings into racially, ethnically or cultura lly distinct groups appears as completely unstable. This line cou ld thus be considered a mere ideological division that serves the interests of particular groups in certain circumstan ces. Broadening the argument, the sam e could be said about the boundary that divide s populations into ‘national’ identities and that equates the nation with a particular m yth of ‘ethnic’ essence in order to reinforce th e sameness of that gr oup and its distinctiveness from others. On this view, the idea of ‘Britishn ess’ is as im aginary as that of ‘Scottis hness’, or that of ‘Westerness ’ and even of ‘whiteness’. Ever y category created or established fulfils the interests of those identities struggling for r ecognition o r to m aintain a dominant status over the rest. 50 It was in the late eighteenth century wh en Sir William Jones proposed a lingu istic theory whereby a comm on root coul d be detec ted between E uropean a nd Asi an langua ges, due t o the sim ilarities exi stent between Europ ean languages and Sanskrit, the language of an cient India, whose extensive literary production reaches further back in time than other written work in any European language (Bau gh and Cable, 1996: 18). Although there is no instance – written record – of the ‘In do-European lang uage’ as such, com parisons betwee n European and Asiatic language s show various de grees of similarities that point to a comm on root. These descenda nts are divide d into eleven groups: Indi an ,Ira nian, Armenian, Hellenic, Albanian, Italic, Balto-Slavic, Germanic, Celtic, H ittite and Tocharian . Other theories even id entify another ‘s uperfam ily’ that wo uld include t he Indo -Europea n with the Afr o-Asiati c and Dravidia n lang uage families (1996: 21). Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 75 In this light, the notion of hybridity is as imaginary a construct as the categories of division that prevent (un)desirab le mixt ures. However, as long as identity boundaries exist in the collective co nscious or un consci ous of humanity, hybridit y will also be there to destabilise those taxonomi c structures that m arginal ise and/or oppress certain individuals, not only in the ‘imaginary’, but in very palpable ways. In the case of Britain, ‘Britishness’ is a useful construction that describes a certain unity – political, at least – that asso ciates the inhab itants of the corresponding territory. However, when it com es to analysing the ‘multicu ltural’ com position of post- colonial Britain, internal divi sions amongst those designated as ‘Britons’ are frequently disregarded and hidden under th e homogenised common featur e of ‘whiteness’. This ‘imaginary’ unity is thus used to con front those ‘visibly’ d istinct cultures that came to share this territo ry with those who consider themselves to be ‘ original’ inh abitants. This fact explains the m aintenance of th e ‘island race’ m yth, based on the virtues of its inhabitants, who have been homoge nised under the whiteness of their skin. T he consequences of this equation of nation a nd ‘race’ h ad conspicuous consequences in colonial and post-colonial times. In the col onial period, every inhabitant of the Empire was considered to be a ‘British citizen’. However, clear-cut id entity boundaries were established between wh ite, W estern, civilised and civilising coloni sers, and those non- white, supposedly inferior, colonized subjects. 51 Thus, in spite of a long history of migrancy and settlem ent, when the massive arrival of coloured people from former colonies after the Second W orld War cause d such panic among sectors of the Britis h 51 Likewise, there we re clear-cut differences betwee n the ol d colonies , whi ch were po pulated m ainly by white settlers (i.e. Australia, Canada and New Zealand) and non-white colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. In Ku mar’s words: ‘All subjects of the Empire might be designated ‘British’, bu t that paradoxically served to emphasise the distance separa ting the British of Great Britain, the colonisers and carriers of ‘the white man’s burden’, from all the oth er British of the British Emp ire. The imperial connectio n prom oted the sense not just of dif ference but of sup eriorit y, even of unique ness’ (1 993: 88). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 76 population, harsher immigration le gislation was introduced, aime d at restricting the entry of ‘aliens’. 1.3. Immigration Policies in Britain Notwithstanding the continuous at tempts along different histori cal periods to construct a ‘pure’ British identity, Britain ha s always been a multicultu ral land. For centuries, however, this merging of different peoples in the country has been m o stly invisible. Up until 1945, non-white presence in Britain was fair ly small. And yet, it was existent. As mentioned before, the Rom ans were th e first to bring a contingent of black legionaries from the North of Africa whose m i ssion was to guard Hadrian’s Wall. In the Middle Ages, black entertainers lived in royal entou rages. 52 During the sixteenth century, the Portuguese and Spanish started purchasing slaves from African and Arab merchants and selling them (at a profit) to plantation owners in their colonies. John Hawkins took example and, in 1562, started an equally f ruitful trade by selling three hundred West African men to planters in Haiti ( http ://news.bbc.co.uk .). A few years later, the presence of black slaves in w ealthy households in England became fairly common. Wealthy plantation owners sent th eir children to study in England and sometimes they would send slaves to accom pany them ( http://news.bbc.co.uk .). According to Stephen Bourne, the presence of non-white comm unities was a reality since, at least, the m id- sixteenth century. As he states: Some hi storians m ay argue that the blac k presence i n Elizabet han Engl and was t oo sm all and insignificant to be worth acknowledg ing. However, by 1601, th e black popu lation was large enough for Queen Elizabeth I to have made two attempts to repatriate her black citizens (2000: 52). 52 African drumme rs could be found in Edinburgh i n 150 5. Henry VII and Henry VIII apparently em ployed a black trumpeter who appears in a scrol l under the name of ‘John Blanke’ ( http:/ /news.bbc.co.uk ). Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 77 For her part, Felicity Hand claim s that, from the seventeenth century onwards, ‘owing to Britain’s open-door policy with regard to imm i gration and her increasing religious and political toleran ce, various migrant groups fleeing persecution in their own countries made their way to Britain’ (1995: 137 -8). She cites, as exam ples, the case of the French Huguenots or the Palatines who, si nce ‘they were not vi sibly different from the indigenous population […] were eventually absorbed into m ainstream British life’ (1995: 138). 53 In the early eighteent h century, the presence of Afri cans increased in Britain as a result of the slave trade. Apparently , by 1770, approximately 14,000 black people lived in England ( http://news.bbc.co.uk .). This said, the second half of the eighteenth century also marks the tim e when the abolitionist anti-slavery movem ent was launched. Success came first in 1807 when Parliament banned sl ave-trade, and culminated in 1833, when Parliament definitiv ely banned th e practice of s lavery in the entire British Em pire. With the abolition of slavery, the number of non-wh ite Africans arriving in Britain was sm all. During the same period of tim e, the pres ence of South Asians in Britain was reduced to servants and ayahs, em ployed by wealthy families who brought them over to their households. 54 Indian sailors – or lascars –, em ployed as crew members of British ships, had started to arr ive in Britain duri ng the sam e period. In the eighteenth century, Indian emissarie s, visitors, togethe r with In dian wives of some European m en and their children started to arrive in Britain. Even so, ‘non-white’ presence at that time was so 53 Huguenots and Palati nes were Protestants in France and Germany respectively. During the sevent eenth century they suffered severe persecutions throughout the wars of religion in Europe. I n 1685, Louis XIV of France pronounced the revocation of t he Edict of Nantes – which had gran ted the Huguenots thei r religious and politic al freedom in 1598. As a consequence, about 250, 000 French Protestants fled to Engl and, Prussia, Holland or America. Th e Palatines were a lso severely repr essed and also migrated to other European cou ntries. Many of t hem went to Engl and under Queen Anne’ s prot ecti on and, from there, some decided to go an d settle in America (For further inform ation on Hugue nots and Pa latines see Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Academic Edition, http://www.search.eb.com) 54 The first register of an Indi an Christened in London goes back t o December 1616, and there are other parish registers i n 1730 and 1760 (Vi sram, 2002: 1-2). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 78 rare that it caused no friction. As Ruth Brown comments, duri ng the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain continued with its policy of free entry to the country: During the boom years of industrial revolution British capitalism lapped up labour with insatiable thirst, if only to th row workers back into unemployment in times of slump. Britain’s bosses showed little in terest in the national or ethnic ‘ch a racter’ of the labour po wer which they sucked into the exp anding British economy (1995: 3). During the French Wars of 1793- 1815, some checks on free entry were introduced, but these were based on political reasons, not econom ical or social ones. In 1826 and 1836, an Aliens Act and an Aliens Registration Act were passed. Their purpose was to curtail any subve rsive activities related to th e war with France and hence they were quickly abandoned after the Napol eonic Wars. The only statute m aintained was the 1870 Extradition Act, which allowed the deportation of crim inals (Hand, 1995: 139; Smith, 1994: 171). As is known, the end of the eighteenth centu ry and beginnings of the nineteenth century mark a tim e of important econom ic and social changes in Britain . British society became m ore industrialised and urbanised. These transf ormations, linked with the development of capitalism , also led to migr atory movements from rural to urban areas within the country as a response to both th e search for labour and new labour demands (Kumar in Mason, 2000: 19). Apart from intern al migrations, new pa tterns of external migration also developed. The m ain white im m igrant groups which entered into Britain were the Irish and the Jews. According to Ma son, the Irish had been the largest group of migrants entering Brita in si nce the eighteenth century: A com bination of poverty , fam ine and po pulati on growt h in Ireland (them selves rela ted direct ly to the consequen ces of British colonisatio n) and labo ur shortages in the British econ omy led to the development of a pa ttern of migration which still persists up to the present days (2000 : 20). Irish migration to Britain was m ostly seasonal, as Irish peasants usu ally came over to Britain to sell their crops to British farm ers. However, as a result of the ever- growing demand for semi- and unskilled labou r in Britain, a number of these seas onal Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 79 migrants opted for the f actory jobs on offer. These permanent settlem ents dram atically increased after 1845 as a consequence of the potato famine. 55 Irish immigrants were b y far the most num erous in Britain. 56 Howeve r, the governments’ policy of non- intervention vis- à-vis this gr oup does not mean that there was no hostility against them in Britain. The fact is that long-standing ster eotypes of the Irish as ‘lazy, drunk, Catholic and stupid’ still persist nowadays (Hand, 1995: 138). Following the pseudo-scientific theories of racial classifi cation, Irish people were even considered as biologically inferior (Solomos, 1993: 42). Hostility agains t this group was not only manifested in the widespread use of anti-Irish images in popul ar culture but also in a pervasive violence against these immigrants (Solom os, 1993: 43). 57 Parallely, in the ninetee nth century, som e Indians from wealthy fam ilies were sent to Britain to be educat ed at public schools and universi ties. Being in possession of British qualifications was an essentia l requirement to apply f or a post in the higher levels of public service in British India; since the examination f or the Indian Civil Service was only held in London, many Indian families pa id for the education of their children abroad, with their own funds or thanks to the government scholar ships established in 1868. Some of these students were Mohanda s Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and some m embers of Rabindranath Tagore’s famil y, to name but a few well- known examples. After finishing their studies, m ost of them returned back to their 55 Whereas the 1841 Census i ndicated that there we re more than 400,000 Irish living in Britain, the numbers inc reased to 727,300 in 1851 a nd reache d a peak in 1861 with 806,000 Irish immigrant populatio n (Hand, 1 995: 138). 56 The continuo us flow of Irish m igration to Britain al ong the cent uries has res ulted in a signi ficant proportion of the population of mode rn Britain (10 pe r cent of the total population) that is able to trace back their origins i n Ireland ( Mason, 2000: 21). By the Act of Unio n in 1 800 the Irish ha d acqui red t he status of British su bjects, and hence were subjected to no restrictions on their migratory move ments to England, Scot land a nd Wales. Wit h the form ation of the Rep ublic of Irel and in 192 2, Irish cit izens nevertheless retained the right of free en try and settlement in Britain. Even after 1945, when Ireland left the Commonwealth, th e British Nationality Act granted Ir ish citizens the right to en ter, settle, work and vote in Britain (Solomos, 1993: 42) . 57 On the Irish question, history and represent ation see Foster, 2001: 2-6; McDowall, 2000: 122-136; Oakland, 2001: 60-89). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 80 country, although some remained to practice la w or m edicine in Britain (Hand, 1993: 3). Meanwhile, Indian adventurers, anxious to obtain knowledge on and about the land of the rulers, together with exiled princes a nd p olitical activists al l settled in Britain (Visram, 2002: 2). Simultaneously, Victorian England also witnessed the beginnings of Indian comm ercial activity, with companies su ch as Tata Industries, opening UK-based branches. These few and well-to-do Indians ‘were often pleasantly surprised with the hospitality of the indigenous population’ (Hand, 1993: 102). Less lucky in their relationships with the native population were the lascars whose community numbers star ted to grow in Liverpool, London, Cardiff, Bristol and other British ports in the later decades of the nineteenth c entury. Despite their b eing British subjects, lascars were generally d iscri minated in an attem pt to discourage their settlement in Brita in whenever the passage that they had worked on term inated in the isles (Solomos, 1993: 49). These discrimina tory practices were reflected in the successive Acts of Parliament passed througho ut the nineteenth cen tury: the Merchant Shipping Act of 1823 denied the status of Br itish citizenship to I ndian seam en, and the Merchant Shipping Act of 1894 gave the Secret ary of State power to repatriate those lascars who attempted to settle in Britain. By this law, ship masters or owners could even be fined if Asian or African seamen were f ound destitu te or convicted of vagrancy in Britain (Paul, 1985: 107). The passing of such laws point to the contradiction existing between the state’s legal sanctioning of th e employm ent of lascar s as a boost to the shipping industry and the laws which preven ted these sam e people’s settlement in Britain. 58 During the same period of time Britain, also witnessed the arrival of East European Jews fleeing from religious and econom ic persecution. Some of them were 58 The living conditi ons of lascars in Brit ain is explai ned in detail in Vi sram, 2004: 14-33. Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 81 simply en route to the Unite d States, but others cam e over to settle permanently (Hand, 1995: 138). Although smaller in num ber than the Irish community – this population reached a total of 300,000 in 1914 – the Jewish settlement in the country provo ked hostility among the natives. Jews were generally ‘regarded with suspicion by the indigenous population, who continue d to see them as either Ch rist-killers or oppressive money-lenders’ (Hand, 1995: 138). Because m ost of them were shopkeepers, merchants and artisans, debates about Jewish immigrati on centred mostly on ‘competition for jobs, houses and amenities’ (S olomos, 1993: 45). At the end of the nineteenth cent ury, British industr y was increasingly undermined by cheaper im ports from abroad and the country was beset by economic depressions and political crises. All such f actors led to the rise of unemployment and poverty. It was within this context of rapidl y deteriorating living a nd working conditions that immigrants alone were institutionally singled out as responsible for the problem s suffered by most native workers (Brown, 1995: 3). Against this ba ckground of economic crisis and unemploym ent, the slogan ‘Engl and for the English’ was once and again heralded not only by Conservatives but also by Trad e Union leaders. In 1901, for instance, Major Evans Gordon, a Conservati ve MP for an East London constituency, form ed the British Brothers League which organised a mass pro test against Jew ish immigration (Solom os, 1993: 44-5). In one of his speeches in Parliament advocating immigration controls, G ordon introduced th e ‘numbers game’ into immigration policy. The idea behind his ‘numbers game’ proposal wa s that the m ain cause of discomfort and ill-feeling in the native population was the sheer number of immigrants rather than their skin colour. (see Hand, 1993: 102-4). 59 59 The relati onship esta blished by Gordo n between th e number a nd concent ration of al iens as a determining factor for the increase of aversio n on the part of the native popu lation ‘set the tone for th e racial pro paganda whi ch woul d have E noch Powel l as its most energet ic spokesm an during t he sixtie s and seventies’ (Han d, 1995: 140). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 82 The debates and demands for immigration controls resulted in the 1905 Aliens Act. It affected all non- United Kingdom subjects defined as ‘aliens’. Imm igration officers were given power to refuse entry if they considered that applic ants were ‘undesirable’ (Gordon, 1985: 107). The legislation affected these aliens who did not have adequate means of subsistence. Moreover, an alien could be expelled from Britain if s/he continued receiving poor relief a year after entering the country, or if found guilty of vagrancy, or living in unsanitary c onditions. Although the Home Secretary had the power to deport immigrants, the law also co ntemplated the situation of those who requested British citizenship on the basis of political or re ligious persecution (Solomos, 1993: 46). In a word, the relevance of the Alie ns Act of 1905 is that it m arked the end of unrestricted free entry to the United Kingdom . The outbreak of the First World War, a nd the threat cau sed by the presence of foreigners and possible enemie s in Brita in, resulted in Par l iament passing another Aliens Restriction Act which further tightened immigra tion controls. By this Act, ‘aliens’ were now required to register w ith the police (Gordon, 1985: 107). The end of the war did not see a return to the trad itional ‘open-door’ policy. Quite the contrary, entry controls became even stricter by means of the Alie ns Restriction Amendm ent Act of 1919. Ruth Brown comments that: The Aliens Restriction Act, combined with the Defence of Realm Act, passed some we eks later, created for the first time a clear d efinition of British nationality in law and laid down strict guidelines for local po lice and military authorities in their treatment of ‘aliens ’. The 1919 Aliens Act was introduce d against the backgrou nd of ferve nt nat ionalism and anti-Ge rm an feeling created by the First World War. It formed the basis of all immigration legislation until the introductio n of the 1971 Immigration Act, and was renewed ever y single year between 1919 and 1971 (1 995: 4). In the period between the two World W a rs, the level of m igration decreased dramatically , not only because of the impositi on of even more restrictive measures on the entry of immigrants but also because the eco nomic de pression the country was going Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 83 through granted no job availa bility (Mason, 2000: 22). 60 The 1920s and 1930s witnessed the entry of a mere 700 immigrants per year (Brown, 1995: 4). The Aliens Order of 1920 required that ‘coloured’ seamen should obtai n perm ission from an imm igration officer prior to setting foot on land. This meant that th ey were deprived of their status as British subjects and were therefore made subject to removal from Britain. Although in part engendered by the perceived competition fo r jobs between the native population and ‘aliens’, the resulting legisla tion was also the outcome of racist concerns about inter- breeding between black seamen and wh ite native wom en (Solomos, 1993: 50). 61 In the early 1930s, evidence of views against settlem ent of immigrants in Britain is reflected in A. H. Lane’s writings on the ‘a lien menace’: … immigran ts take away housing an d employment from settled Britons, dr aw on social services and benefi ts without contri buting to t he national econom y, carry diseases an d engage i n unhygien ic practices, foment social u nrest and revolution ary plots, exploit British wo men through prostitution, ru n gambling dens and, most i mportantly, infiltrate and seize con trol of key industries, the financial system, the BBC, the film industry, th e educational system […] and the Labour Government ( Smith, 1994: 168). 62 The unwelcome ‘alie ns’ Colonel Lane ref erred to were m ainly Russian Communists, East Europeans, and German Je ws. He only cited South Asians as British enemies if they shared Gandhi’s ideas on i ndependence for the colonies. In the late 1930s, only those Jewish refugees, fleeing from the rise of Nazism in Germany and Austria were granted entry into the country after promising that th ey would eventually settle elsewhere. Sm ith observes that in the 193 0s there was a general f eeling of anti- Semitism in the British p opulation. Anxietie s around labour and the econ omy resulted in 60 During the post-wa r slum p in the shipping industry, competition for jobs led to racist violence agai nst lascars in C ardiff, Liverpool and Glasgow (Solom os, 199 3: 49). 61 As Lola Young explai ns, in January 1929, the Daily Herald reported that ‘Hundreds of half-caste children with vicious t endencies were growing up in Cardi ff as the result of black m en mating wit h white wom en, while numerous dockland cafes run by coloured m en of a deba sed and degenerate type are rendez-vous f or immoral purposes’ (1 996: 88). In 1927 the Card iff Chief Constab le, James W ilson, recallin g social Darwinist p ostulates, argued that legislation shoul d prohibit int erracial sexual intercourse, as i t was believed that it ‘woul d lead to social, m oral and physiol ogical decay’ (88). 62 Together with Mayor Evans Gordon, Lane’s apocaly p tic views also foresee Powell’s speeches in t he 1960s. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 90 continued to grow throughout the 1960s. This was due to th e fact that no clause was included in the act restricting the entry of relatives. As Ruth Brown states: In the period immediately before and after the Tories introduced the 1962 Act, the entry of dependants into Britain increased almost threefol d as families were left with little cho ice but to attempt to “beat the act”, amidst widespread fea r s that Britain planned to permanently close its doors to its citizens in the New Commonwealth, in cluding the families of those already living in Britain. Total New Commonwealth immigr ation thus grew from 21,550 entrant s in 1959, t o 58,300 i n 1960. A year la ter this last figur e had more than d oubled an d a record 12 5,400 New Comm onwealth i mmi grants e ntered t he UK in 1961 (199 5: 9). The implem entation of this law provoke d heated reactions on the part of members of the Labour Party who criticised th e law’s inherent racism , especially in its discriminatory treatm ent of Commonwealth imm igrants, while an ‘open door’ policy allowed thousands of I rish citizens into Br itain. Nevertheless, when Harold Wilson became the Labour Prim e Minister in 1964, the Comm onwealth Immigrants Act was maintained and, in 1968, a restrictive Imm i gration Act was passed, together with measures to prom ote the integration of immigrants. 69 This fact represents ‘a convergence of the policies of Conservative and Labour Parties in favour of immigration controls’ (Solomos, 1993: 64). In this respect, the el ection campaign that took place in Sm ethwick in 1964 is of special relevance. Whereas Labour candidate, Patric k Gordon Walker was seen as too lenient or libe ral on the question of immigration, the Conservative P eter Griffiths expressed his opposition to the influx of imm igrants with the slogan ‘If you want a nigger for neighbour, vote Labour’. 70 Griffith’s victory in Smethwick thus ‘helped to shift political de bates and attitud es in both major partie s towards a sta nce which emphasised their support for strict controls on black immigration’ (1993: 65). Hudson and William s also interpret the Sm ethw ick episode as fundam ental in bringing about a change policy in the Labour party: 69 The government reduced the num ber of vouchers issued each year to 5,000 and removed t he right of entry from British passport holders to those whose parents or grandparent s were born outside B ritain (Brown, 1995: 13). 70 Lord Elton, in the House of Lords, also echoed t he ‘n um bers game’ that had been advanced at the dawn of the century by Major Evans Gordon: ‘t he fundamental problem of immigration is not the colour of the immigrant s but their numbers’ (in Gi lroy, 1998: 83). Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 91 After the 1964 general election Lab our initially opp o sed further immigratio n controls. However, when it lost the safe Smethwick seat in a by-el ection to Peter Griffith s, a Conservative who h ad largely cam paigned on imm igration i ssues, Labo ur party st rategi sts lost thei r nerve (1995: 179). Labour governments, though, also implem ented acts to promote race relations and protect minority groups from racist att acks and discrim ination. However, the duality ‘immigration - race relations’ was closely inter-connected. Labour MP, Roy Hattersley, describes the government’s strategy at the tim e in his famous statement: ‘Integration without limitation [of m igration] is impossi ble; lim itation without integration is indefensible’ (in Witte, 1996: 36). 71 In 1968 another Act was passed as a resp onse to the ‘East African Asians’ crisis. 72 The problem began when the African c ountries where they lived – Kenya and Uganda – acquired independence. In 1967-8, th e Africanisation polic ies implemented by the Kenyan government forced thousands of Asian residents to leave the country. Having little or no connections with India, and having by law (the 1948 Nationality Act) the right to settle in the UK as British subj ects, most of them decided to come over – others also opted for migration the United St ates or Canada. In Britain, fears of a new influx of settlers created a wave of anti- immigration. As a result, the 1968 Act also introduced the concept of pa triality by clearly discrimi nating non-white newcom ers: ‘This Act specified that imm i gration controls would not a pply to any would-be settler who could claim national m embership on the basis that one of their grandparents had been born in the UK’ (Gilroy, 1998: 45). Davi d Mason explains that, even though skin 71 Race Relations Acts were passed by L abour gove rnments in 1965, 1968 and 1976, although the immigratio n Acts of 1962, 1968 , 1971 and 1981 that had dramatically redu ced the entrance o f Commonwealth immig rants were maintained (Hudson and Williams, 1995: 179, 213). 72 During the pe riod of coloni alism, the Brit ish prom oted the Asian diaspora for labo ur purposes in East Africa and the Cari bbean. It was mainly due to the emancipation of sl avery in 1834. O n many occasions, African slaves were u nwilling to work for their old masters. As a consequence, and in order to pr event a collapse of the plantation sy stem, Indians were hired as indentured workers in other coloni es such as Mauritius, Guyana, M alaysia, Burma and Sout h Africa. These workers of Indi an origin – n ot only Hi ndus but also Sikhs and Muslim s – formed communities where t heir own cultural an d religiou s practices were maintained (Hiro, 19 91: 108; Hand, 19 95: 142). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 92 colour was never mentioned in the 1968 Commonwealth Im migr ants Act, it was im plied in its application: … a passport hol der had to have been bor n, adop ted o r natural ized in the UK or t o have one parent or grand parent who had bee n born, a dopted or natur alized in the U K. This pri nciple was t o become known as patriality. Its practical effect was to retain a right of entry for many citizen s of the ‘old Com monweal th count ries such Aust ralia or Ca nada […] w hile rem oving the ri ght fo r many UK citizens resident i n the Ne w Com monwealt h (2000: 27). The consequence of this Act was the creatio n of a group of ‘stateless’ people. In practice, the government establ ished a quota system for the gr adual entry of East African Asians. It was in this context that, in Apri l 1968, the Conservative MP Enoch Powell uttered his fam ous ‘rivers of blood’ speech: Britons i n some areas had been m ade strangers in their own country by the in flow of i mmi grants […]. In 15 or 20 years, on present trends, there will be in this countr y 3,500,000 Commo nwealth immigrants and their descendants […]. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood” (In Spittles, 1995: 97). As a result of this speech, Powell was dism issed from the cabinet by Edward Heath. Nonetheless, he retained many suppor ters, not only within the Conservative Party, but am ongst traditional anti-Tory grou ps like working-class people who felt directly exposed to the com petition of cheaper labour. As Smith reports: Comm enting on the dockers’ and meat porters’ pr o-Powel march to Parliam ent, The Economist declared: ‘N ot in living m e m ory have groups of w orker s across the country g one on strike i n favour if a Tory politician, as th ey did for Enoch Powell’. Other demonstrations in support of Powell took place in Birmingha m , Coventry, West Brom wich , Southam pton, Southall, Nottingham, Gateshead, Norwich, Preston and Tilbu ry (1994: 172). In 1970, the Conservative manifesto con tinued with a strong emphasis on control to stop larg e-scale per manent imm igration and reduce entry to onl y ‘strictly defined special cases’ (Sked and Cook, 1984: 268). In 1971, a new Immigra tion Act introduced further restrictions on the grounds that those who did not qualify for the right of residence needed a work permit, regardless of the fact that they belonged or not to the Commonwealth. This Act reduced immigra tion from the New Commonwealth to a Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 93 minim um. Henceforth, fam ily reunificati on was the only source of new settlement (Mason, 2000: 28). The only exception was the admission of Ugandan Asians refugees. In 1972, General Idi Amin, the dictator of Uganda , who considered the Asian population as enemies of the state, expe lled them from the country. Most of them (around 50,000) were British passport holders so, despite objections raised, 73 the Conservative government established the Ugandan Resettlem e nt Board to assist their reception as a question of moral duty. Other countries, such as India and Canada, were persuaded to admit a certain num ber of immigrants. Finally only 27,000 cam e over to the United Kingdom (Hand, 1995: 142; Sked and Cook, 1984: 269).In 1974, the newly elected Labour Party tightened controls even further. Ruth Brown cr iticises the di scriminatory measures adopted, such as the refusal to adm it 250 Asians who were expelled from Malawi as well as the imposition o f strict con t rols for newcom ers in the airpo rts (1995: 13). Meanwhile, the late 1960s and 1970s witnessed a new phenom enon of racial hostility on the part of white Britons agains t ‘coloured’ settlers, called ‘Paki-bashing’, consisting in violent attacks perpetrated by groups of white youths against people of migrant origin. The infamous incident that ga ve nam e to this type of brutality was the murder of an East Pakistani, Taus ir Ali, in April 1970 (W itte, 1996: 44). 74 In spite of the different solutions proposed to halt racial c onfrontations, episodes that demonstrated the uneasy relations between the ‘n ative’ British and those of foreign origin continued throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, the protagonists now being second or third generation immigrants, that is, British-born citizens. In the context of a deepening 73 These objections were again spoken out by Powell in Ramsgate , 12 September 1972: ‘hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens her in Britain are livi ng in perpetual dread […]. There are those who live in actual physical fear […] as if they were trapped or tied to a stake in the face of an advancing tide’ (in Spit tles, 1995: 99). 74 On ‘Paki-bashing’ and racial di sturbances during the 19 60s and 1970s se e Witte, 1996: 44-5; Hudson and Williams, 1995: 214-7; Hi ro, 1991: 114-173) Filmic Representations of the British Raj 94 economic crisis, the Conservative governm ent of Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979. As is known, Thatcher’s implemen tation of New Right policies deeply transformed British economy and society. Noto rious were th e new measures adopted and attitudes towards imm igrants and their descendants developed during her stand as Primer Minister. In the age of post-coloni alism and globalisation, both ex-im perial powers and formerly colonised societies have undergone a process of re-defini tion in their cultural identities. The end of imperialism , the implem e ntation of neo-imperialist policies and the forces of economic and cultural g lobalisation h ave activated ever closer contact between different groups and societies, both physical – with new developments in high speed transport – and virtual – thanks to world- wide mass m edia network and the internet. Increasing ‘contact’ has developed in two oppos ite but nevertheless interrelated ways. On the one hand, clear efforts are being made to prom ote tolerance and harmonious co- habitation. As a result, the ol d dichotomies of centre and m argins are being dismantled, opening up the possibility of hybrid identities. On the other hand, traditionally dominant social groups’ fears of losing old privileges ha ve associated ‘hybridity ’ with ‘threat’. This view has therefore spurred a return to past no tions of identities based on ‘pure forms’ that seemed to have been overcom e by the 1980s. Without a doubt, the interdependent and re lational nature of ‘i dentity’ is a core issue in the construction of na tional, ethnic and/or gender si ngularities for, in each case, the sense of ‘belonging’ holds within it th e conscious or unconsc ious principle of exclusion. As regards Britain, the concept of ‘Britishness’ has undergone various re- definitions, as the na tion adapted to new historic al and soc ial circumstances. In the attem pt to come to term s with new identity form ations, Raymond W illiams’ views on re sidual, dominant and em ergent ideologies help explai n conflicting discourses, especially in his Coming to Terms with Identity and ‘Britishness’ 95 insistence that ideo logical beliefs originated in the past m ay still exert a crucial inf luence in the present. From this perspective, the notion of ‘race’, cons tructed mainly in the co ntext of imperialism, cannot be disregarded in th e form ation of a British cultural identity. Following Benedict Anderson’s account of national identity , all discourses – whether they attem pt to re-define British iden tity as intrinsically white or con template Britain as a multicultural soci ety – are, each and everyone, based as an im aginary nation- state. This said, a close analys is of the sens e of Britishn ess proves the lack of stability in such constructions. In this respect, the continge nt nature of the notion of identity ha s been reflected in the different inte rpretations of the cultur al and political bou ndaries of Britain as a nation-state. Likewise, the changing policies of migration from open-door to restrictive measures during the second part of the twentieth century, can be looked upon as attempts to re-define ‘B ritish nationality’ precisely at a tim e when the country was facing an identity crisis brought about by its lose of imperial power and international influence. It is against th is backgr ound that a close view of contem porary British cultur e and society would show the heterogeneous and contingent nature of its composition and the conf licting or overlapping discourses that constantly re-def ine what British ident ity is or should be. The decade of the 1980s witnessed important changes in this respect. A new economic policy based on forward-looking neo-libera list policies, together with attempts to define the nation’s identity based on backwa rd-looking essentialist not ions, contributed to the re-shaping of British cultura l identity. All in all, in order to fully grasp the extent to which the films I shall be analysing take on board and/or reflec t current changes and identity formation processes, both the po litics and economy of the tim es should be examined. This is th e prim e objective of the following chapters which concentrate on the immediate contextual background of the Raj film s of the 1980s. 2. BRITAIN IN THE 1980s : THE THATCHER DECADE The paradoxical nature of contemporary globalising forces – promoting both the permeability of frontiers and hybridity, while fu elling ethno-nationalist passions – h ad an interesting, indigenous version in Britain thr oughout the so-called ‘Thatcher decade’. From the mid-twentieth century onwar ds, Britain had to undergo the ‘traum a of decolonisation’ and its gradual, often painful, adaptation to a new post-colonial and globalised world, which resulted in several economic, political and ideological crises. When the leader of the Conservative party, Margaret Thatcher, becam e Prime Minister in 1979, she was determined to r ecover Britain’s outstandin g position in the world. Mrs Thatcher firmly believed that the o nly means to accom plish her aim was to do away with consensus politics, d ismantle the welf are state, which had charac terised British politics since the end of the Second Worl d War, and implem ent instead New Right policies. These measures brought about prominent changes in th e country that affected all ambits of society. The present chapter aims at presenting a pano ramic view of the decade which will provide relevant clues for the subsequent analysis of the fi lms produced at the time. The first part w ill explore the definitions of the term ‘Thatcher ism’ and the cont extual background against which the said phenomenon emerged and was enforced. The second part will be devoted to issues concerning immigrations and cu ltural rela tionships affecting the multicultural, Thatch erite society of the 1980s. The last p art will consider how arts and culture were af fected under Mrs Thatcher’s prem iership. Special a ttention will be paid to the difficult situation the film industry ha d to face, which ironically resulted in a renaissance of British c inema beyond nationa l frontiers. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 98 2.1. Definitions When attention is turne d to Thatcherism , th e immediate question one is confronted with whether it was a fully developed econom ic and polit ical project or just Mrs Thatcher’s style of government, and whether it came as an electo ral, ideological and po litical watershed or as a logical development of the po litics im plem ented on the previous decades (Gamble, 1994: 333-336). 75 The definition of Thatcherism is rather com p lex, and there is a lack of agreem ent in its designation as to whether it w as just a st yle or whether it represented a coherent ideology, whether it was predom inantly an ec onomic or a social mode. Some politica l analysts coincide in finding a coherent ideology in their analysis of the Thatcher phenomenon. This is the case of Martin Holmes, who reached the conclusion that: ‘Thatcherism is a full-blown ideology whic h does depart radically from the post-war consensus […]. Thatcherism is both reactive to the failures o f Keynesian political eco nomy, including those of Conservative administration, but also visi onary, in aiming at a different economy and society’ (1989: 8). He thus explained that ‘the e ssence of Thatcherism is the advocacy of a m arket economy, where the state f ulfils strictly limited functions ’ (1989: 9). In this respect, Thatch erism can be seen as an ideological re jection of socialism. In Margaret Thatcher’s words: If peopl e could be sure t hat we w ould ne ver have another sociali st gove rnment , increasin g cont rol of the state, incre asing c ontrol of o wnershi p, then I t hink the prospect s for this country would be real ly bright. If onl y we coul d ge t rid of sociali sm as a second force and have tw o part ies which fundamentally be lieved that political freedom ha d to be backed by economic freedom and that you get the best of our pe ople wh en you delegat ed powe r down (19 86, in Riddell , 1991: 204 ). Likewise, Ian Gilmour, who was a m ember of the first Thacherite governm ent, though he opposed some of the Prime Minister’s policies – and was thus classified by her 75 Even the term ‘Thatcherism’ has been appropriated by both supporters and detracto rs, each one adding positive or negative connotations respectively. The expression was coined by the opponents of the Conservative government in the journal Marxism Today an d was used in a derogatory way to Mrs Thatcher’s poli cies. It was later adopted by Mrs Thatcher’s followers to refer to t he improvements British soci ety was undergoing thanks to the new policies im plemented by t he Prime Minist er (Fernández: 1999: 20). Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 99 as one of the ‘wets’ – saw Thatcherism as an ideology dogmatically defended by the Conservative government as if it were a re ligion (in Fernández, 1999: 21). Following the same argument, Dennis Kavanagh isolated eight elem ents of the Thatcherite belief sy stem: ‘minimal governm ent, the importance of individu al responsibility, a st rong state to provide adequate defence and to uphold the rule of law, the promotion of a m arket economy, the moral rejection of high borrowing, and the pur suit of lower taxes and sound m oney’ (in Holmes, 1989: 3-7). On the other hand, other critics consider that the Thatcher phenomenon did not represent a coherent ideological project and prefer to refer to it as ‘an instinct, a series of moral values and […] an expression of Mrs Thatcher upbringing in Grantham, her background of hard work and family responsibility, ambitio n and postponed satisfaction, duty and patriotism’ (Riddell, 1991: 7). Robert Skidelsky conceived of Thatcherism as ‘the culmination of a period of gestation’ after the ‘failures of public policy after 1945’ (1987: 1-2). For Marxists and socialists Thatcheris m represented a repressive structu re that resulted from the econom ic policy implemented , and supported by a type of authoritarian populism which, they perceived, had already st arted in the late 1960 s (Hall, 1990: 19-22). Finally, for Margaret Thatcher herself, Thatcherism was: …a political system to br ing out all that was best in the British character (…). It is a mixture of fundamentally sound economics (…). You r ecognise human nature is such that it needs incentiv es to work harder, so you cut your tax. It is about be ing worthwhile and honou rable. And about the family. And about that something which is really rather unique and enterprising in the British character – it is about how we built an Empire (in Holmes, 1989: 7). The fact is that the 1979 election marked the beginning of an important change in British politics, which had trem endous effects on British society and cu lture. Since the end of the Second World W ar, both the Conservative and Labour Parties had been in agreement, or consensus, over certain basic government policies. Hence, the introduction of fundamental changes in government responsibilit y, such as the welfar e state, the National Filmic Representations of the British Raj 106 The first large-scale operation in 1984 was th e privatisation of the telephone system that had been previously part of the Ge neral Post-Office organi sation. Although the Labour party and the trade unions opposed the move, the sale of shares was hugely successful. It was presented to the electorate as a m eans of making m oney easily and with very little risk. Success was guaranteed because the shares were put on sale at a de liberately cheap price and people who bought them had the opportunity to sell-on imm ediately at a very high profit (Evans, 1997: 35). That pattern continued through the period of the 1983-87. The large privatisations that followed were Britis h Gas, as well as the Trustees Savings Bank, British Aerospace, Brito il, Rolls-Royce, Britis h Airports, British Railways, ele ctricity and water, all passing from the pub lic to the private s ector. 86 In Margaret Thatcher’s view , the benefits of privatisation were not only econom ic and political but also moral, as it com plied with the anti-statist ‘ self-help’ ph ilosophy she advocated (Seldon and Collings, 2000: 68). According to Mrs Thatcher, nationalis ation was a burden for the state and for taxpayers, it w as a form of socialism and the refore of enslavement while privatisation m eant freedom . As Evans explains: ‘Thatcher’s dream was of genuine popular capitalism, and she looked forward in her Manichean way to the tim e when shareholders (good sym bols of freedom ) would exceed trade un ionist (bad symbols of restrictive practice) in number’ (1997: 36). With the p rivatisation of national entities, and the idea of a property-owning democracy, the Prim e Minister wanted to cons truct an inclusive, populist version of the Tory party, as the government felt that th ey were actively providing people with the opportunity to particip ate in the national econom y (R iddell, 1991: 113). In the sam e manner, the sale of coun cil flats to tenants ( turning one m illion families into hom eowners) contributed to stir up Mrs Thatch er’s populism. An im portant factor to keep in mind is that 86 For a more detailed account of the mai n privatisation sales between 1979 and 19 89 see Riddell (1991: 87 -88). Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 107 Margaret Thatche r never envisioned people’ s so cial class position as a historically fixed state but more as a situation that could be overcom e and changed. Even so, she was not an egalitarian (in the socialist sense); for exampl e, she opposed redistributive program mes i.e. state aids that aim at reducing the gap betw een the wealthy and the poor. Neither did she see any need to help or cushion those who failed in the struggle for econom ic success. The right to manage company boards was taken up by Governm ent itself in its adoption of private sector managerial m ode ls and employm ent practices in the public sector, including the local aut horities, the National Health Service, education, the civil service and other public services. According to Stephen Savage, the guiding principles of the system introduced w ere: the pursuit for efficiency, effec tiveness and the val ue for m oney: responsibility is decentralised, lower level operatives are m ade aware of and acc o untable for t he costs of t he operations, targets are… established and ind ividuals assessed accordin g to their liab ility to achieve them (1990: 65). The way in which the conservatives tackled the whole question of welfare in Britain shows to what extent they aimed at introducing and fomenting a differe nt type of m entality from the on e which existed afte r fo rty-fifty years of welfare. So, if in the past the policy of successive governm ents had been to expand the ro le of the state, both in financing and in providing services, that of the conservatives was clearly to reduce costs in ord er to render the welfare system m ore cost-effective. Marg aret Thatcher pejoratively nam ed the welfare state ‘the nanny state’ and c ondemned it for prom oting a de pendency culture that went against her belief in the cult of individualism and self-help (Cornut-Gentille, 2006: 70-1). Taking these views into account, it is not surprising that Mrs Thatcher found her main politic al enemy in the trade unions, whose comm itm ent to collective rights and worker protection stood in dir ect conflict with her belief in the unrestricted play of f ree markets. For the im plementation of a free mark et economy the Prime Minister needed to rid labour of obstructions, although that meant restricting the rights of the workers. Basing her Filmic Representations of the British Raj 108 actions on the belief in persona l responsibility and se lf-help, the reductio n of Trade Unions’ political power was a clear aim on Mrs Th atcher’s agenda. The unpopularity of Trade Unions, after the destructive strikes during the Callaghan years which ended up with the ‘winter of discontent’, was a key factor that aided the Prim e Minister to accomplish her objective. Building upon the Conservative Party’s recent landslide victor y, she succeeded in passing a series of anti-union laws. 87 With the final collap se of the co al miners’ str ike of 1984-5, the power of the unions was profoundly re duced. Strikes became rare and, when attempted, were usually unsuccess ful. Freedom of action, it was believed, would enable managers to react m ore quickly to changing ma rket forces and to have m ore control over workforce productivity. As a consequence, co mpanies would becom e more efficient and more competitive in the m arket place and this in turn would boost the economy and lead to economic growth (Cornut-Gentille, 2006: 74). Nonetheless, by 1990, the boom of the 1980s had ended in trade deficit, huge inflation and continuin g unemploym ent. Likewise, the governm ent faced declining manufacturing output, poor labour productivit y, and petering business investment. The Prime Minister com pounded these unfavour able economic statistics by passing an extremely unpopular ‘comm unity charge’ or poll tax whereby the long-standing rates system paid by all property-owners according to the value of their hom es was replaced by a fixed payment for all adults to their local authority. Introduc ed in Scotland in April 1 st 1989, it went into effect in England and Wales in 1990. However, millions o f people refused to pay. A massive London protest demonstration ag ainst what was perceived as an unfair system of taxation turned into a trem endous ly violent riot. The extremely unpopular poll 87 Employm ent Acts in 1980 and 1982 outlawed secondary pi cketing and severely cons trained the closed shop arrangeme nt between employers and uni ons. Secret ballot replaced appoint m ent of union leaders by committees and specific protecti ons were provided for non-union m embers (they could n ot be refused engagem ent on the ground of non- membership of a t rade union). The Trade Uni ons Act of 1984 (am ended in 1988) pro vided that all members of union executive co mmittees were to be electe d by postal ballot at le ast every five years (Seldon and Collings, 2000: 69). Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 109 tax rapidly helped diminish th e political support that Margaret That cher had enjoyed up until then (Cornut-Gentille, 2006: 76 ). 88 These economic m easures came hand in hand with a set o f m oral values inherited from the Victorian times that Mrs Thatcher be lieved represented the ‘cultural essence’ of Britain when the nation was nor only a pioneer industrial country but a powerful empire as well. It is not by chance that the slogan for the Conservatives in the 1987 election was: ‘Britain is Great Again. Don’t Let Labour W reck it’. By m eans of this maxim, the Thatcher government justified the im plementation of its economic policies as essential to the improvement of the standard of living of Britons and the recovery of a relevant position of the country on the international stage. The m arket creed was accom panied by a return to these Victorian moral values based on Christia n-Protestant individualism and self-help – ‘God helps those who help themselves’. In Crewe’s view, ‘the core principle of Thatcherism is the “Victorian” value of indi vidual self-reliance’ ( 1991: 243). Mrs Thatcher thus fomented the popular use of the term ‘V ictor ian values’, namely ord er, restraint, discipline and submission (Cor nut-G entille, 2006: 77). In Margaret Thatcher’s words: I was br ought up by a Victor ian Gra ndm other. We were ta ught t o… pro ve you rself. We were t aught self-reliance. We were ta ught to live withi n our inco m es. W e were taught that cleanliness is ne xt to Godliness. We were taught se lf-respect. You were ta ught trem endous prid e in your count ry. All these things are Victoria n values. They are pere nnial values (in Blake and John, 2003: 12). 89 In this respect, as Skildesky states: Thatcherism as an economic and social phi losophy – as a basis for t he long-term governm ent of Britain – is seriously on e-sid ed. In this sense it resembles the Manchester Liberalism of the early nineteent h century whic h energise d the ec onom y but had to be tam ed, moral ised and i ntellect ually refined before it was fit t o establ ish a ne w so cial order (1987: 2 3). With respec t to law and order, this em phasis on individu alism, self-r eliance and self-responsibility had further implications. If the individual was ulti mately responsible for 88 The unpopularity o f this measure, tog ether with other confl icts wi thin h er own party , contrib uted to e ndi ng the decade with her unwilling resign ation in November 1990. 89 The Thatcher government was al so influenced by the neo-liberali st theories of the Adam Smith Inst itute and the Institute of Econom ic Affairs (IEA) which had their root s in the liberalist principles of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 110 her or his actions, a criminal action shoul d therefore be severely punished. Since individuals had freedom of c hoice, social background, unemployment, alienation or poverty were no justification for criminal acti on. Margaret Thatcher herself stated: If children have a problem, it is [said to be] society that is at fault. There is not such thing as so ciety. There is living tapestry o f men and women and people and the b eauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves (in Blake and John, 2003 : 14). In order to prevent crime, the governm ent should invest in law and order rather than in welfare. In this sen se, Slikdes ky describes Thatcherite culture as one rid of the ‘bourgeois guilt’ which m akes the rich and successful highly susceptible to m oral blackmail by the poor and unsuccessful. The overthrow of the ‘guilt culture’ is a necessary condition of an en terprise society and reassertion of ‘individual respon sibility’. [Consequently], individualis m and political autho ritarianism appear as co mplements, not opposites (1987: 22). 90 The ‘law and order’ campaign carried out by Mrs Thatcher contributed to the creation of an image of a strong and rather authoritaria n governm ent. These pol icies ne eded to be defended within and outside the frontiers of the country, which im plied not only giving greater powers to police and arm ed forces, but al so controlling appara tuses such as the arts, the academy and the m ass media, or foreign blocks such as the European Union which could oppose the government’s interests. Mrs Thatcher’s ‘m oral crusade’ included the defence of the traditional nuclear family as against all tho se lifestyles : ‘hom osexuals, single mothers, tra des union activists, ravers and demonstrators’ that had been prom oted during the years of permissiveness (Lay, 2002: 79-80). In Stuart Hall’s view, in combini ng ‘the resonant them es of organic Toryism, that is the idea of nation, nuclear f amily, dut y, authority, standards, tra ditionalism – with the aggressive them es of self-interes t, comp etitive individua lism, anti-statism ’ Thatcherism created a new uncaring society (Hall, 1990: 29). The new ethos thus boiled down to a 90 The liberation of the ‘guilt culture’ makes reference to the ideology of the New Right which frees the middle classes from their feeling of gui lt as a privileged cl ass against other margi nalised groups such as the unemployed, wom en, ethnic m inorities, etc. It was i n the 1960s when these groups cl aimed them selves to be victims of the unjust sy stem and asked for compen sations. In the 1980s, the New Ri ght’s emphasis on individual self-responsibility disparaged the dema nds of those groups as blackmail and pro claimed that those who had achieved a pri vileged economi c and social stat us as a result of their own work and effort shoul d not feel guilty for the le ss advantaged situation of others (C ornut-Gentille D’Arcy, 2006: 67). Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 111 mixture of progressive, f orward-looking econom y with a set of back ward-looking m oralist values based on Victorian ideals . In the 1980s, this mixture of past values and present-day entrepreneur ship was therefore intrinsically re lated to the n otion of ‘being British’ (Hall, 1990: 29), a notion that had significant implications in Britain’s relation with the world. 2.4. Britain’s Unique Position in the World Since the end of the Napoleonic W ars and until the outbreak of the First Wo rld War, Britain had been a crucial and d ominant player on the interna tional stage. During that tim e, British politicians regarded foreign pol icy in term s of Britain’s r esponsibility in maintaining world order. In this sense, British policy was aim ed at keeping a balance of power in Europe so that no state would dominate ove r the rest (George, 1990: 12). Nevertheless, especially after the Second World War, Britain’s international influence wa s reduced and shadowed under the growing importance of blocks such as the United States, the Soviet Union and the European Community. Yet still Britain’s states men and diplom ats believed that the country was influential enough to conti nue playing the role of keeping balan ce in international affairs, which leads Stephen George to conc lude that the country was suffering from an ‘illusion of grandeur’ (1990: 14). 91 Mrs Thatcher’s government, however, wanted this illus ion to become a reality again and she fought to recover Brita in’s leadership in the world. Nevertheless, in spite of some flag-waving occasions s uch as the victory at the Falklands war, the recovery of Britain’s grandeur was not an easy task. The capitalist expansion M rs Th atcher prom oted in Britain went hand in hand with the progressive phenome non of globalisation, which, as said before, has tended to increase the inequalities within and between countries. On a world scale, this 91 Britain’s econom ic decline i n the 1970s forced the country to ask the Inte rnational Monetary Fund for financial hel p. Britain was labelled as the ‘sick m an of Europe’, a clear phrase that confirms the country decline in inner and foreign affairs after the S econd World War (Seldon a nd Collings, 2000: 72-73). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 112 implies an increase in the rate of imm igrati on from the poverty-stricken people of the Third World in the search of a better life in the Developed n ations. This ef fect of globa lisation leaves the hosting countries vu lnerable to ‘und esirable cu ltural invasion ’. As Nabeel Zuberi puts it: Britain is still co nvulsed by its postwar, post-co lo nial identity crisis. Most of Britain’s dominions have been l iberated from col onial rule since 194 5. The end of empi re and the need for cheap l abor brought many immigr ants from the former colonies to the ‘mother country’. This settlement ha unsettled older con ceptions of the white body po litic (2002: 539). The implantation of New Right policies created further important paradoxes. Margaret Thatcher’s fervent defence of capit alism, free trade and i ndividualism prom pted continuous contact with foreign countries and cultures. Britain’s association with ‘outsiders’ cam e mainly through three different kinds of political and social relation ships, with the United States, with the European Community and with the Commonwealth. In the past, the relationship with these three blocks wa s crucial for the m aintenance of Britain as a world power. Churchill identified Britain’s unique position in th e world as ‘the junction of three distinct geopolitical formations: the no rth Atlantic world; the Em pire in its transition toward being a commonwealth; and Europe’ (G ilroy, 2004: 106). However, such a position proved to be problematic for Britain, because as a ‘declining ’ power , it was no longer able to act independently from allied states (Byrd, 1988: 3). When Ronald Reagan was elected Pres ident of the United Stated in 1981, the relationships between the two c ountries became closer and closer sin ce both leaders shared the political and economic views of the New Ri ght. This Atlantic asso ciation was labelled a ‘special relationship’ between the two countries. 92 Moreover, as Anna Marie Smith puts it, Mrs Thatcher’s anti-Communist sentim ent and particular views on th e international scene 92 When Reagan came to power, Mrs Thatcher had been i n government for ei ghteen months, proving that her conservative views were very similar to that of the US Republi can party. As Young states: ‘Washington g reeted her as a heroine of pan-Atlantic conservat ism (1989: 250). On her part, i n one of her visits to the Unit ed States, Mrs Thatcher herself declared: ‘W e see so many things i n the same way and you can speak of a real meeting of minds. I feel no inhibiti ons about describing the relationship as very , very special’ ( Financial Times , 23, M arch 1985; in Sm ith, 1988: 9). Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 113 ‘emphasised the threat of freedom from Soviet expansionism ’, therefore: ‘[i]t was almost axiomatic in Mrs Thatcher’s fore ign policy stan ce that security for the West could not be ensured without strong leadership from the Unit ed States’ (1988: 11). Besides, the Reagan and Thatcher regimes ‘were unequivocally for the m aximum possible freedom of trade, and for the liberation of market forces on a worl d scale so that poor countries could help themselves to achieve W estern-st yle development’ (Sm ith, 1988: 27). 93 The easy relationship between the Prime Minister and the leaders of the two superpowers, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorb achev led to Britain playing an im portant role in bringing an end to the Cold War. As Anthony Seldon and Daniel Collings put it: ‘Not since Churchill’s premiers hip in the early 1950s had Brit ain enjoyed so m uch respect in Washington and Moscow’ (2000: 73). Mrs Th atcher, however, was not considered so highly in the European Community. In the EEC, Britain was consid ered an ‘a wkward m ember’. Mrs Thatcher defended external econom ic policies and political co-ope ration of the C ommunity in the interna tional system (Allen, 1988: 36); however, she did not like the idea of a fu ture European Union with greater internal po litical and econom ic unity. 94 Mrs Thatcher’s neo- liberalist ideology led her to agree with the idea of a genuine econom ic common market with the ad dition of co-operation on foreign policy, bu t she rejected the idea of a federalist union of nations (George, 1990: 152). In her speech at Brug es, in 1988, Mrs Thatcher spoke against Britain’s national identity being dilute d under a single European identity, while she advocated for the pro tection of different na tional cultures, warning of the danger of falling under the dominance of a singl e power (Solomos, 1993: 221). T hus, Mrs Thatcher’s efforts 93 As Mrs Thatcher said: ‘W e take the same v iew in the United States and Britain tha t our first duty to freed om is to defend our own, and our second duty is to t ry somehow to enlarge the frontie rs of freedom so that other nations mi ght have the right to choose it’ (i n Young, 1989: 251). 94 That is why Britain enthusiastical ly supported the inclusion of Greece, Spain and Portugal in the European Community: with these three southern countries the Community would become ‘a much more diverse and less cohesive body than it was when Britain first joined of when M rs Thatcher was first elected’ (Allen, 1988 : 37). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 114 were focused on keeping Britain apart from the European Union on certain asp ects in order to preserve the country’s intrinsic cultural id entity – i.e. the refusal to adhere to the common European monetary system . One of the most relevant confrontations between Britain and the European Community was the country’s budgetary contri bution to the Union. And yet, the heated debates in meetings where Mrs T hatcher defe nded fiercely the interests of her country, served to popularise among the electorate both the Prime Minist er and her vision of the country. 95 In a way, her confrontation with the Eu ropean Union served, as the Falklands War did, to create the figure of a foreign enemy against wh om the Prime Minister was battling in the nation’s interests, deflecting attention from the pr oblem s and increasing divisions within the coun try (George, 1990: 163). Throughout the 1980s, as plans for greater in tegration for member states progressed, Mrs Thatcher increas ingly presente d herself as conf ronting Europe in defence of British interests. However, not everyone in her part y shared her approach, and there was a real danger of a split within the Conservative party, which sprang, 1987 and 1992 over the issue of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). 96 Mrs Thatcher’s adam ant refusal to join the ERM in 1989, against the wishes of her Chan cellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, is seen as the first step in her downfall. Britain’s re lation with the Commonwealth was not an easy one either. As Seldom and Collings explain: Although sh e [Mrs Thatcher] helped pilot through a successful Rhodesian agreem ent, giving the form er colony inde pendence i n 1980, she wa s renowne d as being u nsympathet ic to the as pirations o f black natio ns, whil e her cont em pt and refusa l to supp ort Com monwealt h actions agai nst South Af rica excited widespread hostility am ong Comm onwealth lead e rs. As with Europe , Britain was continually on the de fensiv e instead of l eadin g the offe nsive ( 2000: 74). 95 In Mrs Thatcher’s words: ‘I cannot play Sister Bountiful t o the Community while my own electorate are being asked to forego improvem ents in the field of heal th, education, welfare and the rest (in George, 1990: 162). 96 The ERM was a syst em of controlling curren cy fluctuati ons so that member states could benefi t from greater stability in exchange rat es. Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 115 The relationship with the former colonies proved to be a burden rather than a beneficit for the country. Even though tighter controls on immigration were implem ented after the labour shortage at the end of the 1940s, Commonwea lth citizens had been moving freely to Britain after their countries acq uired indepen dence. Reluctant to welcome increasing num bers of foreigners to the British Isles, the trad itional ties with Commonwealth countries represented a prob lem for successive British governm ents, especially when in the 1970s Britain was for ced to provide asylum for the Asian population expelled from Uganda and Kenya. In the 198 0s Mrs Thatcher had to interv ene in the independence of Rhodesia where right-wing wh ite groups and black leaders were fighting for the control of government after independenc e. Caught between two poles, Mrs Thatcher had also to face another dilemma when the power ful country with which she held a ‘special relationship’ invaded Grenada, an ol d dependency of the British Empire. 97 Yet the greates t tensions between the Commonwealth and Mrs Thatcher came with her refusal to apply economic sanctions to South Africa as a m easure against apartheid. She argued that although she loathed apartheid, th e sanctions w ould not help to put an end to it. On the contrary, it would worsen the conditions of bl ack people in the country as they would lose their jobs. She finally supported the EC impor t ban on South African coal, iron and steel, but demands for sanctio ns of Commonwealth countries were greater (Seldon and Collings, 2000: 38). As regards relationships with other form er colonies in Asia, Gerald Segal explains that, in the 1980s: Britain is back in Asia, no t as an imperialist pow er but as an active lead er of the internation al capitalist economy and a supporter of its multilateral s ecurity arrang ements. Britain’s i nterest is not always with all its former colon ies, but with those that pro sper. Its main interest is in the in ternational market economy (1 988: 133). 97 For a detailed account o f the events see Young, 1989 : 484-487; Seldon and Co llings, 200: 13, 27-39; George, 1990: 141-143 an d Sprittles, 1995: 110-113. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 122 of social authoritarianism and ne o-liberalism (1990: 175) 102 . Elizabeth Ansell agrees with this view of the British New Right, which, she belie ves, derives from both the Conservative Party and more extre me right-wing groups. 103 She concl udes that the Ne w Right is more unite d on what it opposes than on wh at it proposes, especia lly concerning racial is sues: Whether the New Right ’s anti-antiracism i s expressed in the form of neo- liberal attack on t he ‘new class’ of anti-racis ts, or the socia l authoritarian charge that the presence of coloured immigran ts is threatening the surviv al of th e distinc tive Brit ish cultura l heritage, the New Righ t arguably shares a common project of mobilizing popular and elite opi nion in opposition to social democratic values associated with the pursuit of racial equal ity (1997: 164). Ansell therefore argues that what is distinc tive about the new racism of the New Right is ‘the degree to which it combines the neo-lib eral concept of freedom from unwarranted state regulations and the social conservative concer n wi th defending established cultural mores and maintaining social cohesion’ (19 97: 164). It is pre cisely this combination of differe nt ideas, hidden inside a set of common-sense assumptions that re nders new racism more pe rvasive and dangerous (1997: 165). There is general agreement among historia ns and critics in identifying Enoch Powell as the founding father of th e new racist discourse in th e United Kingdom (Mitchell and Russell, 1990: 176; Ansell, 1997: 144). Mitchell and Russell identify three main sources for the new racism: Firstly, Enoch Powell’s 1968 speeche s gave voice to the fears and racist reaction of a population that rejected the increasing pres enc e of non-whites on British territory. He anticipated a series of events that would take place in the country i f immigration were not halted. He stated: 102 In terms of pol itics, some sectors of the New R ight devel oped authoritari an views on the form of government adopted as far as they defend the principle of bli nd submissi on to authority . As seen before, Thatcher’s government advocated for centralised power. On the other hand, i n terms of economy, after t he mentioned crises of the 1970s wi th the failure of i nterventionist measures, neo-l iberalist claim ed for a return t o classic market lib eralis m on the p art of con servative pa rties as a means to revitalise the econo my. These measures wer e aimed at em phasising i ndividual autonomy , self-development and freedom ( http://www.search.eb.com/ eb/article-9117288 ; http://www.search.eb.com/eb/ article-9003154). 103 New Right organisations incl ude the Monday Club, the Freedom Associat ion, Conservative 2000, Conservative Way Forward, t he Social Affairs Unit , the Centre for Policy Studies, the Salisbury Group as well as right-wing m edia commentators in both quality and t abloid press (see Ansell, 1997: 145-164). Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 123 In this country, in fifteen or twenty years’ time the black m an will have the whip ha nd over the white man. … Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make m ad. We must be mad, literal ly ma d, as a nation to be perm itting the annual infl ow of so m e 50,000 dependants, who are for the most part the mate rial of the future growth of the immigrant-descended popul ation. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heapi ng up its own funeral pyre. … But while, to the immig rant, entry to th is country was adm ission to priv ileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the im pact upon the existi ng populat ion was very differe nt. For reasons which they could not com prehend, a nd in p ursuanc e of a deci sion by default, on whi ch the y were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own coun try. They found their wives unable to ob tain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighb ourhoods changed beyon d recogn ition, their plan s and prospects for the fut ure defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to th e immigr ant worker the standards of discipline and competence require d of the native-born worker; they began t o hear, as tim e went by, m ore and more voices wh ich told them that they were now th e unwant ed. Th ey now lea rn that a one way privil ege is to be established by act of parliament; a law which ca nnot, and is n ot inte nded to, opera te to protect them or redress t heir grievances is to b e enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur the p ower to pillory them for their pr ivate action s (in Utley, 1968: 180- 186). Although inn the aftermath of his radical a nd ala rmist speeches, Powell was forced to give up his parliamentary seat, ‘his message arguably remai ned popular, leading many to conclude that although Powell had lost his political battle, he had won the ideological war’ (Ansell, 1997: 144). The second source mentioned by Mi tchell and Russell is the journal Salisbury Review , launched in 1982. This publication expose d the views of New Right writers on the topics o f race and racism in Britain and the importance of the preservation of British national identity, rooted in a nostalgic and imaginary ‘pure’ wh ite past. Thirdly, the 1980s witnessed a vast amount of journalistic writing in both the quality and tabloid sections of the British press that disseminated neo-conservative, racialist views of the incompatibility of native and foreign populations regarding their distinctive culture and way of life (Mitchell and Russell, 1990: 177). Out of these sources, Ansell identifies thr ee key categories of meaning that deter mine the development of the new racist discourses of the British New Right. The first and foremost category is the assumption of an immutable hu man nature which is hos tile to those who are different. Accordingly, it is not a question of white prejudice against blacks, but just a Filmic Representations of the British Raj 124 ‘natural’ inclination of people who generally pr efer to be with their own ethnic and cultural group. This tendency is apparent in al l commun ities, not only whites, but also blacks, Asians, Muslims, Jews, Indians or Ba nglade shis. On this view: The new racist teaches the r acist that she has never been a racist, that the r aci al m inorities them selve s would pursue exactly t he same polici es in their own ‘homelands’, and that the preservation of racial- cultural-national purity is the best defence against racial tensions (Smi th, 1994: 57). Such a conception of identity construction is thus imbued w ith an essentialist assumption backed by biological notions. As Bhabha argues (1994: 66), this way of envisaging identity renders the dichotomy ‘sel f-otherness’ fixed and immutable and thus invalidates any prospect for a poss ible amelioration of ‘race’ relations. Fr om this angle therefore, the political solution propose d woul d result in immigrati on controls and/or deportation instead of the i mplementation of ‘useless’ ‘race rel ations’ laws. The key question of the new racist discourse is that its main exponents, li ke Powell himself, do not consider them selv es to have racist opinions or attitudes. In Powell’s view, a ‘racist’ is a person who consider s members belonging to other races to be inferior. Followin g this argument, Powell is not a ‘racis t’, since he believed that no human being is inferior to another, only different, both in ter ms of physical appearance a nd in terms of culture. Yet it is precisely this cultural difference that pr ovokes the incompatibility and hence hostilit y between native and forei gn populations. Nationhood and national identity are thus pe rceived as natural, rather than socio- political constructs. For that reason, ‘intoleran ce’ is re-coded as a le gitimate expression of natural beliefs (S mith, 1994: 56). The justifica tion of hostile reactions against foreigners as natural has further implications. On the one ha nd, it depoliticises the question of racism and exonerates the government from i mplementing r ace relations measures because, if racial prejudice is innate and immutable in human nature, it will never be eradicated by any kind of social measure. On the other hand, it justif ies repatriation: just as that native populations prefer to live amidst their own kin, so to do foreigners apprehe nd their original countries as Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 125 their ‘natural’ homes. Consequently, the only so lution for rac ial problem s is to limit contact between different groups by means of immigratio n control s on entry and repatriation (Ansell , 1997: 165-7). The second category of meaning is the notion of the ‘British way of life’, which raises identity boundaries between ‘w e’, based on an imaginary, homogeneous, British white past, and ‘other’ alien cultures. This indigenous c ulture is based on Victorian values such as ‘work, respectability, the need for social discipline, and respect for the law’ (Ansell, 1997: 168) . New Rightists conclude that the ‘British way of life’ concept was fast being diluted by alien cultures whose increasing presence in the isles coincided with national decline. In Ansell’s words: It is precisely the struggle to link genui ne fears with a particular phenomenon such as black immigrati on – as opposed to, for example, complex sources of structural change lack of community resources, or inadequate job t raining program s – which constitutes the New Right’s ideologi cal work (1997: 169). This idea links in with the notion of ‘the enemy within’, that is , all those communities living in Britain that do not blend into the ge nuine British ‘way of life’. Their ‘otherness’ poses threats and probl ems to the country, a nd this di fference is maintained through subsequent generations of immi grants, because, according to Powell: ‘The West Indian or Indian does not, by being born in England, become an Engli shman. In law, he becomes a UK citizen by birth; in fact, he is a West Indian or Asian’ (Powell, in Hand, 1990: 254). In another speech give n in 1974, Powell continued ar guing that: The nation has been and i s still being eroded an d hollowed out fro m within by i mplantati on of unassimilated and u nassimilable populations… al ien wedges in the heartland of t he state… It is… t ruly when he looks into the eyes of Asia that the E nglish man comes face to face with those who would dispute with him the possession of his native land (in Ansel l, 1997: 175). Powell’s military metaphors of ‘invasion’, ‘w ar’ and ‘conquest ’ in his speeches serve to highlight the mental fashioning of national boundaries that defines the construction of the Filmic Representations of the British Raj 126 native population in terms of inclusion and ex cl usion. Accordingly, the limits of ‘race’ are made to coincide with nat ional frontiers (Gilr oy, 1998: 46). As Anne Marie Sm ith explains, it is taken for granted that t he status of ‘being here first’ establishes a privi leging of the white British population vis-à-vis the black immigrant, while t he ‘being here first’ status of t he colonials and indigenous peopl es counted for absolut ely nothing in t he imperial t radition (1994: 84). Such discourses therefore eschew sense of imperial guilt. However, as Gilroy states: The immigrant is here because Britain, Europe, was once there; […] today’s unw anted settlers carry all the ambivalence of em pire with them . They project it into the unhappy consciousness of their fearful, anxious hosts and nei ghbours. Indeed, the incomers may be unwanted and feared precise ly because they are the unwitting bearers of t he imperial and colonial past (2004: 110). The third category of meaning inher ent in New Right discourses is the ‘new cla ss enemy’, that is, those gr oups of bureaucrats whose job is to attend ‘black’ communi ties and who tend to inscribe non-white groups into two categories: ‘blacks as a problem’ and ‘blacks as victims’. As a result, ‘blacks’ are therefor e not regarded as individuals but as inferior communities in need of special attention. This reasoning is used by t he New Right to attack what they see as the backfire effect of the anti-racist measures, prop osed by the ‘the loony left’ which only serve to further marg inalise whites (Ansell, 1997: 176). These key categories of new racism have opened up a political debate between social authoritarians and neo-liberals, the two comp eting tendencies of Ne w Right discourse and have often been used by Mrs Thatcher’s gover nment to combine appar ently contradictory trends, and thus appeal to a wider electorate. Mitchell and Russell detect three different combinations of such ideas: To begin wi th, neo-conservatives defend an excl usive form of British nationhood, which excludes all those groups considered to be ‘different’ from the traditional white concept of the British population, while neo-liberalis ts defend the idea of individual liberty in a colour-blind approach. This is why, in t he 1980s, the government c ould advocate fo r the return to the idea of the ‘isl and race’, which brought the white inhabitants of the distant Falklands and the white British population closer to each other than whites and non- whites Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 127 living in the UK. Simultaneously, the Tories co uld present an electoral campaign for the 1983 election defending the Conservativ e views on black people as ‘persons’ and citizens with equal rights and opportunities as the white popula tion. The advertisement is worth analysing: it showed a young black man in a suit with the ca ption: ‘Labour says he’s black. Tories say he’s British’. The campaign propaganda continued: With the Conservatives, there are no ‘blacks’, no ‘whi tes’, just people. Conservativ es believe tha t treating minorit ies as equals encour ages the majority to treat the m as equals. Yet the Labour Party aim to treat you as a ‘s pecial case’, as a group all on your own. The question is, should we really divide the British people instead of uni ting them (in Sewel l, 1993: 67). In spite of the colour-blind approach, the inte rpellation proffered in this advert, to us e an Althusserian concept, is an invitation to ‘assimilate’. In other words, a black man will be accepted as a ‘British’ person so long as he is cl ad in a suit, the signifier of British civilisation and ‘way of life’, i.e. ‘the wolf is tr ansf ormed by his sheep’s clothing’ ( Gilroy, 1998: 59). Besides, the image presents a solitary figure, wh ich could be seen as indirectly reinforcing both Mrs Thatcher’s championing of individua lism and her governme nt fimr backing o f immigration control. What is more, the absence of any f emale figure obliterates the threat of excessive fertility usually associated with the st ereotype of the black woman (1998: 59). This advertising campaign represents a New Right’s id eal vision of society, which, acc ording to Smith, ‘only includes elements of othernesses, suc h as certain blacknesses and certain homosexuality, inso far as their alterity has been domesticated’ ( 1994: 116). On a different line, the second di fference between these two trends is that, while social authoritarians are strong advocates of a ssi milationist policies or repatriation laws for those who do not adapt to the wa y of life of the host population, neo-liberalist prefer a Darwinian view of society expose d to the laws of the market – in other words, a society in Filmic Representations of the British Raj 128 which the survival of different competing cu ltures depends on the fr ee choice of single individuals. 104 Finally, the neo-conservatives present racial hostility as the expression of the ‘natural fears’ of a group whose culture and values ar e threatened by the incre asing presence of foreigners, whose different and ofte n incompat ible views on life cannot but result in violent confrontation with the native population. In cont rast, from their ‘laissez-faire’ stance, neo- liberalists believe that the market f orces will eventually erase racial prejudices and discrimination. In their view, individuals will succeed according to their effort and self- responsibility, regardless of their rac e, cultura l background, class or gender, (Mitchell and Russell, 1990: 179-180). 2.5.2. Immigration Controls for the Sake of Good Race Relations As seen in the previous chapter, all these vi ews on race and immigration were reflected in the measures adopted by differen t governments to control immig ration or to promote race relations within the country, as a means of appeasing disturbances betwee n different communities that regularly flared up since th e 1950s. Along the 1980s, conflicts around the issues of race and immigration were manifest. For this rea son, it is worth analysing the political strategy of the Conserva tive governme nt during the period. Already in 1978, in an in terview on television’s World in Action programme, Mrs Thatcher made clear her own pos ition regarding racial issues. Sh e declared that immigrants themselves could become victi ms of a liberal immigration policy, since not only whites but also early immigrants could resent the increasi ng numbers of foreign people , a fact that could 104 In the field of education, neo-conservatives cham pion an assimil ationist type of education, whil e neo-liberals defend the education voucher schem e which enables pare nts t o decide for them selves whi ch school t heir children are to attend, even t hough these practices tend t o create a ghettoisation of singl e-ethnic schools. In any case, both groups coincide i n the rejection of i nterv entionist anti-racist measur es, which may eventuall y marginalise white individuals in favour of black positive discrimination. Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 129 provoke racist reactions among different ethnic groups (Blake an d John, 2003: 34). In line with New Right, new racist discours es, she ec hoed Powell’s apocalyptic views in her so- called ‘swamping s peeches’ wh ich evidenced her view of immigration as a threat: I think [the present rate o f immigration ] means that people are really afraid that this country may be swamped by people of a different culture. The Br itish character has done so much throughout th e world that if there is any fear that it mig ht be sw amped, then people are g oing to be rather hostile to those co ming in (1978, in Hand, 1990: 264). Non-white presence in the Britis h Isles was still seen by the Conservative government as a problem in the 1980s. And yet, the only solution pr oposed to maintain peaceful race relations in the country was fu rth er limitation on the entry of immigrants. First, in 1981, the government passed the Nationality Act, which saw the jus so li policy, until then in force, surpa ssed by the policy of jus sanguinis . 105 This act prevented the UK- born children of immigrant parents from ac quiring the auto matic ri ght to citizensh ip. 106 The Act split the category of Citizen of the Un ited Kingdom and Commonwealth into three sub- divisions: British Citizens, British Dependent Territories Citizens an d British Overseas Citizens. The last categ ory excluded British citizens – m ostly of Asian origin – from the right of abode in Britain (Solomos, 1993: 71). Immigration controls were justified for the sake of good race relations for all those communities already settled in Britain. Thus, a government docum ent, prepared for the OC DE conference, explains the policy of immigration contro l implanted in Britain: In recent decades, the basis of poli cy in t he Unite d Kingdom has been the need to contr ol prim ary immi gration – that is, new heads of house holds w ho are m ost likely to ent er the job m arket. The United Kingdom is one of t he most dense ly pop ulated c ountries in E urope. In term s of housin g, education, social services an d, of c ourse, job s, the co untry c ould not supp ort al l those w ho wo uld like to come here. Firm immigration con trol is therefore essential in order to provide conditio ns necessary for devel oping and m aint aining go od com m unity relat ions (i n Solom os, 1993: 71) . 105 Fenton explains that ‘ Jus soli ’ r efers to righ t according to the ‘soil’, tha t is, a perso n acquires ci tizenship principally in accordance to the place of birth, in contrast to jus sanguinis (‘right according to blood’) whereby a person acquires citizenship principall y by way of descent (1999: 206). 106 The 1981 Nationalit y Act establi shes that: ‘A person born i n the United Kingdom after commencem ent shall be a British c itizen if at the time of the bir th his father or mother is a Br itish citizen or settled in the Unite d Kingdom ’ (1981 c. 61:1). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 130 The 1971 Immigration Act, which had already restricted immigration to dependants of immigrant m en settled in Britain, was m odified by another Act in 1987, which removed the right to bring dependants from m en of m arriageable age. In part, it was the difficult situation of unemployment and poverty that affected marginal groups m ost particularly, as well as th e racist attitudes towa rds black people, that provoked violent riots in those poor areas, of ten inhabited by imm igrant communities. The first wave of disturba nces occurring in 1981: St. Paul’s, Bristol ( 1980), Brixton (April 1981) and Toxteth (July 1981). 107 Apart from labour discrim i nation and racial tensions, 108 these riots also showed up th e poor relationships existent between the police and black youth in particular. As Savage remarks, these ev ents ‘were to an exte nt the result of bad policy and an element of racism in the [po lice] force’ (1990: 92). After the Second World War, the increasing presence of immigrants le d to riots in Notting Hill in 1958, and to the ‘Paki-bashing’ practices of the 1960s and 1970s. The wave of racist violence was intensified in the 1980s, with an estim ate of 7,000 att acks in 1981 (Hudson and Williams, 1995: 214). As a consequence, in stead of finding support in th e police forces, there was a growing sense of mistrust and disillusion on the part of non-white comm unities. The image of the crim inalised black youth involved in mugging and other crim inal activities in problematic inner- city areas prom oted disproporti onate acts of surveillance and provocative policing on non-white communitie s. As Hudson and W illiams explain, the police used the power granted by the Section 4 of the Vagran cy Act, to stop and search 107 Later on more riots took place in St . Paul’s (January 1982), Notting Hill Gate (April 1982), Toxteth (April 1982 and July 1982), St. Paul’s (June 1 983), Handswo rt h, Bi rmingham (9-10 September 1985), B rixton (23 September 1985) and Tot tenham (October 1985) (Tayl or in Hill, 1999: 10- 11). 108 Young relates the riots to the high rate of unemplo yment with in the black community : ‘By the date of its second annive rsary, the Gove rnme nt had presided o ver the biggest fall in the t otal output in one year since 1931 […]. Unem ployment, up by a m illion in t he past twelve mont hs, was ris ing towar ds the once unim aginable t otal of t hree mill ion […]. I n April 1981, seri ous distu rbances occ urred i n Brixto n, south London, a multiracial area with a long history of po or police-community relations and high unemployment, especially among you ng blacks’ (1989: 233) . Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 131 people, especially black people, in public places: ‘This heavy-han ded and som etimes racialist approach to policing has contributed to the alienation of young black people from the police, and to breeding a sense of profound distrust ’ (1995: 214-215). In fact, the riots that broke out in Bristol, in April 1980, flared up after a police raid on suspected drug dealers in a pub, which was one of the few meeting places in town for black youths (W itte, 1996: 56). In March 1981, there was a mass demonstration in London to protest against both the handling of the i nvestigation into the de aths of thirteen young blacks in a fire in Dep tford and the disinteres t of the press in repo rting the events. A police intervention precipitated th e violent conflict, which resu lted in riots (Gilroy, 1998: 102- 103). 109 Although the events profoundly shocked Briti sh society, such actions continued in the following months in different parts of the country (Sprittles, 1995: 84-85). The way the media dealt with th ese riotous situa tions also has its importance, especially in its tendency to portray the riot s as a confrontation of a disordered m ass of black youths against the police forces. 110 In this sense, the m edia activated a sense of menace that recalled Mrs Thatcher’s ‘swa mping’ speeches by presenting the white population as growingly victimised by threat ening black groups. As Ansell observes: The political reaction to th ese events, not the events themselves, rei nforced the New Ri ght belief that black people, whether British-born or no t, are incapable of sharing a civilized social life in common with the (white) indi genous majo rity. In this way, law and or der, like immigration, becam e a condensation sym bol for the racial and status anx ieties of part of the pub lic (1997: 244). On the other hand, the Scarman Report, published in November 1981, pointed to the high levels of youth unem ploym ent, deficient housing conditions, inadequate provis ion of remedial ed ucation for deprived families and lack of soc ial, cultural a nd welfare am enities 109 For a detailed explanation on the causes and origins of the particular riots see Witte, 1996: 58-60, Solomos, 1993: 147-1 77 and Gilroy , 1998: 102. 110 Sprittles remar ks on the warfare vo cabulary used in th e media coverage of the events , such as ‘Battlefront’, ‘The whole nation was appalled by scenes of mindless violence and looting at Bri xton’ ‘This place is at war’, ‘Brixton explodes agai n!’ (see Sprittles, 1995: 85-86). S olomos observes the racialis ation of the report of the events in the newspapers headlines: ‘Riot M ob Stone Poli ce’, ‘Bristol: a mult iracial r iot agains t the po lice’, ‘The Bristol confront ation: racial but not racist’, ‘When t he Black Tide Met the Thi n Blue Line’, ‘Black War on the Police’, ‘army of rioti ng black youths’, ‘Flames of Hate’ (see Solom os, 1993:152-4). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 138 Stephen Frears, Ken Loach or Mi ke Leigh among others – are cl ear expo nents of the social realist mode of filmmaking. As Samantha Lay states: From the 1960s to the p resent, social realist tex ts ha ve been a staple of televi sion schedu les, but it is notable that a rebirth of social realist film and te levisio n occur red in resp onse to t he harsh econ omic and materialist condition s of Thatcherism (2002: 36). Channel Four also supported other types of films which did not belong to that contemporary social-realist trend but to the co stum e dram a or ‘heritag e ’ genre, as was the case of Heat and Dust (James Ivory, 1982), A Room with a View (Ivory, 1985), A Month in the Country (Pat O’Connor, 1987) or Caravaggio (Derek Jarm an, 1986). In opposition to the social-realist f ilms’ direc t challenge to c ontemporary British society, the film s set in the past were often perceiv ed as ‘conser vative productions ’ that reflected the trad itional s ense of British identity prom oted by the Thatcher government (G iles, 1993: 82). This type of film, however, did not always present a stra ight-forward alignm ent with the Conservative government’s ideology, but a m ore complex interrelation of com peting ideologies. 118 In many cases, the British cinem a industry al so had to look for funding in foreign investment com panies, more often than not from the United States. These companies were interested in prof it-making m ovies and thus exploited the British sty le of filmmaking that could appeal to a sector of national and international audiences who were tired of commercial Hollywood productions. On e of the reasons for the su ccess of the British films made in the 1980s was the result of their triumph as winners of a number of academy awards. Critics agree that the so-called ‘ren aissance’ of British cinem a started with Hudson’s Chariots of Fi re , a film that won four Oscars in 19 82. The international success of this film as well as that of subsequent productions was ve ry often equated with notions of national identity as a reaction against cultur al Am ericanisation. It is from this fram e of mind that Colin W elland, the Oscar-winner scriptwriter for Chariots , trium phantly 118 The debates on the h eritage question will be further develop ed in the next chapter. Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 139 announced that ‘the British are coming!’, in ref erence to the British film’s success in Hollywood (Higson, 2003: 6). Nonetheless, Br itish cinema owed by much its success to U.S. financial support and promotion at the Oscar cerem onies (Higson, 2003: 6-8). 119 On this view, the cinematic productions of the 1980s may be seen as reflecting the situation of both Britain in the general cont ext of globalisation and in the particular implem entation of Mrs Thatcher’s polic ies at hom e. As a result, most ‘British’ movies were, in fact, internatio nal co-productions, with m oney invested by American, Japanese and/or European corporations. The paradoxical na ture of globalisation is thus reflected in the films made at the tim e: in order to compete with the powerful Hollywood industry, British cinema had to offer films with a Br itish style that distinguished them from American mainstream movies and that, at th e sa m e time, could appeal to spectators both at home and a broad. Accordingly, the distinctiv e them es and styles of the British cinem atic output contributed to the construction and e xportation of an indigenous British identity set against cultural Americanisation. In other words, British films were sim ultaneously international – and thus multicul tural – at the level of produc tion, and intrinsically national in their thematic and f ormal contents. The fact that filmmakers were forced to use m arket strategies to finance their productions converted most of them into anti- Thatcherites. That is why, m uch of their anger, discontent and criticism of Mrs Thatch er’s society was visually expressed through or by means of their f ilms. The consequences of the dism antling of the welfare state, the emphasis on law and order, the stress on indi vidualism and the construction of a market- oriented society that rewarded th e winners but provided no ‘cushion’ for the losers, together with the often conflictive rea lity of a m ulticultural society, were som e of the 119 Welland m ade a play on word s with the well -known cry that the ‘lone ri der’ gave as he rode across America, warning the coloni alist rebels that the Brit ish troops had arrived. Thi s event marked t he start of the American War of Independence. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 140 topics once and again portrayed in so cial-realist films such as Leigh’s High Hopes , Frear’s My Beautiful Launderette or Loach’s Riff-Raff . But as already discussed at length in pr evious sections, besides the implem entation of New Right economic policies, Mrs That cher’s government also championed the construction of a Britis h identity based on it s imperial past and ‘good, old’ Victorian values – an attitude that was made patent during the months of the Falkland crisis. A particular response to this ideological Thatch erite stance was develope d in another trend of British filmmaking, namely, in the so-called heritage film genre. As trem endously successful productions in the in ternational market, heritage films therefore proved to be ‘the fittest’ in Mrs Thatcher’s Darwinist society. To all eyes apparent, these cinematic produ ctions epitomised the es sence of Thatcherite values: they turned the country’s cu ltural heritage into commodities wh ile at the same tim e promoting a natio nalist perception of British identity based almost exclusively on an imagined, hom ogenised, whit e, upper-middle class pa st. Nonetheless, as I hope to demonstrate in the following chapters, these film s also highlight many of the conflicts and contradictions th at reigned in both the past and in contem porary British society. Britain in the 1980s: the Thatcher Decade 141 3. HISTORY, IDENTITY AN D THE HERITAGE BUSINNESS The proliferation of heritage films in the decad e of the 1980s in Britain is closely linked to the Thatcherite project that combined forwar d-looking econom ic polic ies with a ba ckward- looking ideology. According to Kevi n Robins, the revival of intere st in the past is not an exclusive feature of British society but som e thing which has to do with the na ture of globalisation itself. As the worl d is slowly converting itself into a borde rless space where the links between culture and territo ry are gradually being lo st, the feeling of anxiety in the postmodern individu al increases, as s/he rea lises that reality is unstable and her/his ide ntity is a fragmentary pastiche of ever-changing elements. Against this background, the past becomes the only stable point of ref erence that enables one to saf ely cling unto a secure cultural identity (2001: 2 9). 120 Kevin Robins indicates how the globalising spread of ‘late capitalism ’ and market societies is fast converting i ndigenous cultural products into , on the one hand, standardised commodities that appeal to a world-wide consum er while, on the other hand, the same economic trends are activating th e exploitation of local differe nces and particularities as ways of breaking out of the homogeneisation an d fomenting cultural enterprise (2001: 31). This circumstance would explain the urge to recover and revive au tochtonous traditions that could then be commodi fied on a global scale. 120 Zygmunt Baum an makes an interesting co nnection between the rise of indi viduality in t he concept of identity and contem porary socio-economic changes (see Baugman, 2000: 53-90). He argues that there has been a change from a ‘heavy, Fordist-style capitalism’ to a ‘light, consum er-frie ndly capitalism’. This evolution has implied a new background for individual s who see themselves as living in a world of opport unities where they believe to h ave complete fre edom to constr uct their o wn identity. Ho wever, this situ ation entails a se nse of incompleteness, as all the possibil ities that appear to be at hand cannot be fulfilled. This sense of undeterminacy provokes risk and anxiety . In Bauman’s own words, ‘The world full of possibiliti es is like a buffet table set with mouth-wat ering dishes, too numerous for the keenest of eate rs to hope to taste them all. The dinners are consumers, and the most taxing and irritating of t he ch allenges consumers confront is the need to establish priorities: the necessity to forsak e some unexplored options and to leav e them unexplored. The consumers’ misery derives from the surfeit, not the dearth of choices ’ (Bauman, 2000: 63). The past, t herefore, becomes one more choice in the constructi on of the individual’s identity. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 144 John Hill also focuses on the growing releva nce of nostalg ic renderings of the past in contemporary societies. He affirms that nostalgia ‘is both promoted by globalisation and directed against it in so far as the br eak-up of bounded social systems and the deterritorialization of culture characteristic of globa lization also encourages a longing for the “security” of place and tradition’ (1999: 75). Basing his argumentation on the theories by Roland Robertson and Fredric Jamenson, Hill comm ents on how what he calls ‘twentieth-century nos talgia’ is cha racterised by ‘nostalgic sim ulacra or pastich es of the past’ (75). In other words, f or all its evocation and invocatio n, the ‘reality’ of the past will never be fully grasped. In this sense, nosta lgic retu rns to the past prompted by late capitalism are, in Jameson’s words, no m ore than ‘nostalgia-deco’ (1992: xvii). Hence, as David Lowenthal argues, if it is true that ‘the past is a fore ign country’, nostalgia has made of it a foreign country with the more prof it-making tourist m arket ever (1998: 29). 121 The instability of cultural id entities a nd the commodification of cultures are thus provoking the general harking back to the past that characterises c ontem porary globalised societies. This in terest in the p ast re-appear s in times of crisis, as has occurred in post- colonial Britain. The invocation of historical traditions bri ngs comforts and continuities that help replace the overwhelm ing anxieties of contem porary fragmentations. The past, Barry Richards explains, provides in dividuals or communities with ‘p rote ctive illusio ns’ of an imaginary and cohes ive past identity that attem pts to unify the fragmented pre sent-day community or nation (in Robins, 2001: 22). Robins remarks on the importance of Homi Bhabha’s notion of ‘cu ltural translation ’ in Brita in’s post-colonial context. In his own words: 121 Lowenthal finds the origins of the term ‘nostalgia’ in 1688, when it was coined by Johannes Hofer to name an illness with concrete ph ysical and psycho logical symp toms that cou ld be lethal for t he patient. The te rm came from the Greek nosos , m eaning to return t o one’s birt h country, and al gos , which means to suffer. Until the mid-twentieth centur y, it was percei ved as potenti ally contagi ous, especi ally the variant that affected the mind (1998: 36-7). History, Identity and the Heritage Business 145 Empire has long been at the heart of British culture and im agination, manifesting itself in more or less virulent forms, through insu lar nationalism a nd through racist p aranoia. The relation of Britain to its ‘Ot her’ is one pro foundly import ant context in which t o consider t he emerge nce of both enterprise and heritag e cultures. The question is wh ether, in th ese supposedly post-imperial times, it is possible to meet the challenge of Translation; whether it is no w possible for Britain to accept the world as a sufficiently benign place for its weakness not t o be catastrophic (2001: 23). In this context, Robins continues, there is always the danger of mis-translation an d confusion, yet even more tragic is the danger ‘of a fearful refusal to tran slate: the threat of a retreat in cultu ral autism and of a rea rguard reinforcement of im perial illusions’ (23). In this sense, the heritage industry’s fixation with the past does have, or present, the dangerous potential of overemphasising Britis h imperial roots while negating the coun try’s present-day multicultural reality. As Raphael Samuel states, Heritage is the m ark of a sick societ y, one which, de spairi ng of t he future , had become ‘besott ed’ or ‘obsessed’ with an idealised version of the past. The historicist turn in British cultu re […] corresponded to th e onset of economic recession, the contr action of manufacturing industry and th e return to mass unemployment. It testified the colla pse of British power. Heritage prepared the way to […] a recrudescence of ‘Little Eng landism’, and the rev ival of nationalism as a force in political life. It anticipated and gav e expression to the triu mph of Thatch erism in the sphere of high politics. Heritage, in short, wa s a symbol of national decadence (1999: 261). Although Samuel does not establish a cau se-and-effect connection between the advent of Thatcherism and the rise of the he ritage industry, he does acknowledge a mutual reinforcement of both phenom ena. In their book Enterprise and Heritage , John Corner and Sylvia Harvey assert tha t the visions of ‘identity ’ and ‘belonging’ pro jected by heritage are compensate f or the ‘fragm entation and destabilis ation carried by the enterprise im perative’ (2001: 46). Hence, in their oppo sition, the c ouplet heritage/enterprise represen ts the interdependency of the apparent contradictory or paradoxical nature of the Tory discourse at the time. 122 122 In his analysis of t he heritage films of t he 1980s and 1990s, Andrew Hi gson points t o the fact that the heritage phenom enon is not exclusive of t he Thatcherite project but al so a feature of Tony Blair’s govern ment. In spite of the fact that the leader of the Labour Party wanted to re-brand t he nation as young or ‘c ool’, he retained the vision of t he UK as ‘a forward-looking, ente rprising nati on without wanti ng to discard altogether established traditions, images and identities’ (2003: 49). The proli feration of heritage films i n the 1990s may be due to Blair’s maintenance of some of these Conservativ e principles tha t had charac terised the previous decade in his im plementa tion of the ‘Thi rd Way’ in the New Labour governm ent. Admit tedly, an evoluti on and change of the he ritage cinema in its differen t situatio nal cont exts co uld certain ly be an inter esting sub ject of an alysis, but one beyond t he scope of this dissertation. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 146 The following sections of this chapter will th erefore be devoted to the analysis of the heritage industry an d its interrelation with the revival o f British cinem a in the 1980s. Hence, after discussing the concept of histor y and delineating the different approaches to historiography through time, as a means of elucidating the partic ular portrayals of the past offered in the period films, I shall then conc entrate on the heritage industry itself, and, finally on heritage films as part of this industry. 3.1. History: Th e Ever-Present P ast The world is constantly in flux. Consequentl y, perceptions of the past will depend on the different perspectives on the changing presen t. Ev en the understanding or discernment of historiography, that is, of the narration of the pa st, its methods, functions and the very concept of ‘history’ has evolved through time. According to John Arnold: ‘History is a process, an argument, and is com posed of tr ue stories about the past’ (2000: 14). Arnold’s view of history as ‘true stories’ points to th e fact that the reliance on m aster-narratives has waned and, with it, the belief in an objective ap proach to th e past transm itted in the words and authoritative voice of the historian. History is thus envisaged as a me re ‘story’, o r rather as just one interpre tation among m any other possible apprehensions of the past on the part of a particular historian working on her/his selected evidences to ac hieve certain conclusions. History thus becomes ‘stories ’ in the plural, since versions m ay differ accordin g to the sources, methods, approaches and the very context in wh ich the historian is working. And yet, each and every narration is ‘true’ so long as it subs cribes to the prim ary-source evidences provided. History, Identity and the Heritage Business 147 Because any narration of the past, though based on objective data, autom atically goes through a process of selection and interp retation on th e part of the histo rian, it will always be subjected to possible argumentati on from other perspectives. As Arnold states: History i s above all el se an a rgument . It is an a rgument between dif ferent historians a nd per haps an argume nt between the past and t h e present, an argument between what actually happened, and what is going to h appen next. Arguments are important, they create the p ossibility of chang ing things (2000 : 13). History is, therefore, a conteste d terrain which is perceived in different ways depending on the individual, group or competing ideologies that approach it. The importance of history lies in the fact that it pr ovides both societie s and individuals with a sense of longitudinal meaning in the past and an understanding of root-causes for working processes in the present. Furthermore, the past is people’s he ritage, so it endows societies with not only a sense of stability but also of iden tity (Black and MacRaild, 2 000: 5-6). Frank Ankersmit foregrounds how im portant it is for any society to know its historical past and bac kground. He draws a parallelis m between history and the psychoanalytical processes of the individual w ho com es to terms with her/his own present identity through the knowledge a nd understanding of her/his past: As the psychoanalyst m ay understand pe ople’s pers onalities on the basis of how they describe t heir past, so m ay we expect to be able to disce rn a culture’s fears, expectat ions, desires and re pressed elements by taking into accoun t how it gave form to its past (2001: 1). Benedict Anderson goes further in com par ing the biography of the individual and the historical account of a nation by stating: All profoun d changes in con sciousness, by th eir very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions , in specific hi storical circumstances, sp rin g narratives. After experienci ng the physiologi cal and em otional changes produced i n pubert y, it i s impos sible to ‘remember’ the consciousness of childhood (1994 : 204). Logically, as he asserts, documentary evidence is needed (photographs, birth certificates, letters, diaries, etc.) to account for that past we cannot properly recall. These documents provide an illus ion of continuity while, at th e same time, they acc entuate amnesias. Yet, ‘out of this estrangem ent comes a conception of personhood, identity […] Filmic Representations of the British Raj 250 The movie was therefore conceived as comm ercial and profit-making from the very beginning, and the filmmakers already had in m i nd the kind of spectatorship the film was going to address: I took the course of emphasizin g Gandhi’s political histo ry and at the same time trying to make the man real and t he drama exciting […]. At the sam e time I had to m ake the political context accessible to an a udience that was la rgely uninf ormed about it. Peopl e in Am erica did n ot kno w m uch about British rule in India, the po litical parties in India, or the nature of India’s involvement in World War I and World War II. All these elem ents were critical to the story I wanted to tell and had to be incorporated in the film in such a way that made them seem an inevitabl y and necessary part of the story […]. Before I wr ote Gandhi I travelled in America, speaking to a num ber of people about Gandhi, and th e ignorance about him was massive […]. It was necessary to show Ga ndhi’s great ness and Gan dhi’s i mpact not only o n Indian society , but on B ritis h world a nd soci ety (19 96: 5). The aims of the film were, therefore, to show Gandhi’s greatne ss, to exhibit and dramatise his politics of non-violence and to c onvert these aspects of his life into an international hit. In ord er to achieve these go als, the complexity of India, the imperial relations with Britain and many facets of Ga ndhi’s life and belief s were very much simplified. Taking into account both the filmmake r’s intentions and the context in which the film was m ade, I find it releva nt to anal yse som e significant presences and ab sences that made the film not only more m arketable for box-office purposes but also favourable to Conservative Western ideology. 4.3.2. History and the Individual: Gandhi becomes a God In narrating Gandhi’s life as the epic of a great man, A ttenborough seem s to have followed the nineteenth century philosophy of liberal hi storians who viewed hi story as ‘something written by individuals about i ndividuals’ (Carr, 1983: 35). Th e film concentrates on the Mahatma as a crucial figure in the achievem ent of independence of India, and disregards many other historical processes that were worki ng in the sa me direction at other lev els of society. According to Carr, the ideology of the capita list society, from its very early stages, emphasizes the role of individua l initiative in th e social order. Nevert heless, any past event The Raj Films in the 1980s 251 is ‘a social process representing a specific st age in historical development, and cannot be explained in terms of a revolt of individuals against societ y or of an emancipation of individuals from social restra ints’ (1983: 34). Carr therefor e warns readers that history should not be portrayed as the result of the action of a single individual, b ecause: Human bei ngs d o not always, o r perhaps ev en hab itually, act from motives of which they are fully conscious or which th ey are willi ng to avow; and to exclude insigh t into unconsciou s or unavowed motives is sur ely a way of going about on e’s wo rk wit h one eye wilfull y shut ( 1983: 48). Every nation or society at any point in history contains an arena of conflicting ideologies and cultur al contestations. Conse quently, individuals who act for, or rebel against, society are a reflection of th ese very conflicts alr eady latent in the social sphere. History, then, can be understood as a process in which individua ls act as social beings, and hence: ‘the imaginary antith esis between society and the individual is no more than a red herring drawn across our path to conf use our thinking’ (Carr, 1983: 55). On this reading, the individuation of a hist orical event results from the rom antic view of the individual hero, reinforced by th e capitalis t ideology of individualism . Clearly, Attenborough made use of one and another concep t in the making of the film . This said, it is true that, in 1932, after ma ny petitions, Gandhi decided to write an autobiography. Even so, he stated in the introduction how difficult it was for him to do so, as the biography was an alien genre for him , since it was a W estern and not an Ind ian mode of writing: Writing an autobiography is a practice peculiar to the West. I know nobody in the East having written one, except amongst those who ha ve come under Western influence […]. But it is not m y purpose to attempt a real autobiography. I simply want to tell the story of my numerous experime nts with truth, and as my life consists of nothing but th ose experiments, it is true that the story will take the shape of an autobiography. But I shall not mind, if every page of it speaks only of m y e xperiments. I believe, or at any rate flatter myself with the belief, that a connected account of all these experiments will not be without benefit to the reader (1982: 14). For this reason, the book is entitled The Story of My Experiments with Truth , as the Mahatma’s m ain aim was to explain how his sp iritual, religious, personal and political experiences gave shape to his way of thinking and acting right up until th e 1930s. In many Filmic Representations of the British Raj 252 ways, his reflections on his search for Truth resemble more the writings of an Indian spiritual m aster than the autobiog raphy of a lawyer or politician. In a recent book on Gandhi and his global legacy, David Hardim an carries out a very interesting analysis of the Mahatm a’s ideas and writing s. One of the m ain points in Hardiman’s study is his interpretation of Gand hi’s texts as ‘dialogic’, to use Bakhtinian terminology. Influenced, in part, by Socrat es’ readings, but most importantly, by the dialogic nature of the Bhagavad Gita , 186 ‘Gandhi presented both si des of the case, but in a manner which m ight lead both himself and his adversary towards a resolution, which he considers the “truth”’ (2003: 6). As a prof oundly spiritual and re ligious person, Gandhi believed in the existenc e of an eternal ‘Absolute Truth, the Et ernal Principle’ he equated with ‘God’, which could never be fully comprehended by human beings (Gandhi, 1982: 15). Consequently, in the earthly world, only im perfect human ‘truths’ can be ascertained. Imperfect and hum an as they may be, these tr uths are contingent a nd contextual, hence, always subject to contestation and revision. This is the reason why, in his political and philosophical writings and speech es, Gandhi always contemplated the ideas o f his opponents and urged his followers to open their mi nds to the voice of the adversary or ‘the other’ (2003: 8-9). In his autobiography, Gandhi shows himself to be torn between his personal ideas and his beliefs, his rational and his spiritual thoughts. As a co nsequence, he was constantly revising and reworking his convictions. His in cessant experiments with truth led him to realise that his life was full of inconsisten cies. On this view, it is not surprising to find statements in which Gandhi, the political an d spiritual leader, rejected any kind of consistent ideology or systematised theory: I love to hear the words: ‘Dow n with Gandhism’. An ‘ism’ deserves to be destroyed . It is a useless thing. The real thing is non-violence. It is immortal. It is enough for me if it remains alive. I am 186 This sacred Indian text is written in the form of a dialogue between Kri shna and the hero Arjuna. (see Martín, 2002: 9-32) The Raj Films in the 1980s 253 eager to see Gandhis m wiped out at a n earlie r date [… ]. In trut h, I m yself do n ot know what Gandhi sm me ans. I have not gi ven anyt hing new to t he count ry. I have only give n a new f orm t o the traditional [wis dom] of India. It woul d there fore be wr ong t o call it Gan dhism (in Hardi man, 20 03: 9-10). It was precisely his openness to the ‘other’ that made of him a controversial figure who had many enemies and opponents. Firs t of all, the British gov erning classes feared that Gandhi’s campaign would make them lose their pr ivileges. They were therefore frequently infuriated by Gandhi’s speeches attacking im perialism. They became particularly angry with Gandhi’s answer, when asked about his opinion on Western civilisation, that ‘it w ould be a good idea’. Before a such statement, Churchill reacted by calling Gandhi a ‘fanatic’ and ‘a half -naked fakir’ (in Hardim an, 2003: 238). Gandhi was a devote Hindu but respected ot her religions which he regarded as variants with a common objective: the spiritu al knowledge or fusion with the ultim ate Truth or God. He was therefore resented by those Hindus who disapproved of Gandhi’s defence of the Muslim cause in Ind ia and his friendship with Muslims. He also indirectly provoked negative reactions amongst Islamic se paratists, who profoundly disagreed with Gandhi’s conception of a unified India. Muha mmad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Islam ic movement and first Prime Minister of Paki stan, was one of Gandhi’s most vehem ent political rivals. On the other hand, orthodox Hindus did not agree either with Gandhi’s attempted r eform of the caste system and his insistence on rem oving the practice of untouchability. For their part, some ‘Untouchabl es’ resented Gandhi’s paternalism in their cause (Metcalf, 2002: 176-7). Marxists and socialists al so criticised the way in which Gandhi defended the traditional p easant system and his focus on m oral issues; th ey saw him as th e leader of an emerging bourgeoisie. Social-liberal politicians , such as Nehru, refused to accept Gan dhi’s defence of rural India and objected to the Ma hatma’s dislike of W e stern industrialisation and technological progress, and their de humanising urban societies. To sum up, Filmic Representations of the British Raj 254 [Gandhi] was accuse d, variously, of being an irresp onsible trouble-m aker by his coloni al masters, a destroyer of so cial harm ony by Indian tradi tional ists, a backwar d-lookin g crank by m odernise rs and progressi ves, an a uthoritari an leader by thos e withi n the m ovement who resent ed his st yle of leadership, a Hindu ch auvinist by many Muslims, and a defender of high-caste elitism by lower- caste activists (Hardiman, 2003: 4). The contradictory nature of Gandhi’s own id eas is even m ore evident in his private life and personal relatio nships with his parent s, friends, wife and children. Torn between his family and his duty as the leader of th e country, his public d emands for pacif ism, understanding, humility and openness often revert ed in to patriarchal authoritarianism within his ow n family. 187 Trying to find one’s way to the heart of th e m an is therefore a very difficult task unless the intricacy of Gandhi’s philosophy and the inconsistencies of his p ractices are acknowledged, as Gandhi himself tried to do. In the attempt to summ arise the Mahatma’s message in a blockbuster film addressed m ain ly to W estern audiences, Gandhi’s complex ‘heart’ and thoughts become sim plified to the extreme. The problem in representing the life of a person and his historical context in a sim plified way, wi th profit-making purposes and, on top of that, in a realistic style th at offers the illusion of transparent access to th e past events is that not only Gandhi’s heart but hist ory itself becomes manipu lated. At this point, it is interesting to exam ine Gandhi’s own concept of ‘ history’ and how it is set in opposition to the film’s portray al of the past. S imilarly to the m etaphysical-driven structure of Gandhi’s life and ideas, his conception of hi story departs from th e cause-and-effect line towards progress rooted in the European Enlight enment stream of thought and gets closer to the ancien t idea of ‘myth’. In his own words: ‘whereas genera lly history is a chronicle of kings and their wars, the f uture history will be the histo ry of man’ (Gandhi in Hardim an, 2003: 126). 187 Episodes on Gandhi as an authoritarian pat riarch can be found in Fischer, 1997: 118 -122, 261- 270 and in the film Gandhi, My Fat her . The Raj Films in the 1980s 255 Hardiman argues that Gandhi was deeply inf luenced by Tolstoy’s concept of history as produced by many people, that is, not only by great men but also common people, all acting in a range of different ways with unpredic table outcomes. Human beings do not really have full control in their writing of history. On the cont rary, they are driven by an ‘unknown substance of life’, or as Gandhi would have it, by God (2003: 34). Suspicious of human truths, Gandhi rejected the claim s of objectivity by academic historians and argued that m ythical narrations o f the past gave access to spiritual truths. In other words, Gandhi refused to be limited by the determ inism of a lineal conception of history and preferred the openness of myth: 188 In Gandhi’s view, human betterment thus lay in the realm of ethics (his ‘truth’) rather than in the working out of an illuso ry historical progress. Actio n dictated by an ab stract historical need cou ld never achieve the desire d results. It was by defining an ethical life, and living according to that ideal in a very direc t way, that one could d o good in the w orld. Gan dhi thus r efused to t ry to justify his beliefs thro ugh an appeal to any historical meta- narrative (Hardiman, 20 03: 35). Two important features in the study of myth may prove useful in clarifying Gandhi’s philosophy. To begin with, in his anal ysis of the concept of ‘myth’, Laurence Coupe considers that one relevant aspect that characterises mythical narrations is that of ‘possibility’. On the one hand, myth may imply a verticality of hierarchy towards perfection, full developm ent or what Aristotle called ‘entelechy’. On the other hand, myth may also entail horizontality in its openness to other possible realities beyond the limits of the actual world: ‘W hile myth m ay be paradi gmatic, and while it may imply a social and cosmic order, or perfection, it also carries with it a prom ise of another mode of existence entirely, to be realised just beyond th e present tim e and place’ (1997: 8). The second conspicuous aspect of myth is that it is set between ‘ideology’ and ‘utopia’. On the one ha nd, the ideological function of m yth is to serve as a socialising process of integration for the individuals of a community. In this sense, m yth operates as a 188 In contrast to the rational thought development in Europe from the Enlightenment, whi ch provoked a process of demythol ogisation, Gandhi preferred mythos to l ogos (Coupe, 1997: 10). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 256 form of preservation of social order and c onservation of tradition. On the other hand, the utopian characteristic of myth com es as a disruptive force that may underm ine the oppressive function of the ideology. Utopia opens up the possibility for change, transformation and hence liberation from the re pressive structures of tradition. In Coupe’s words: ‘Utopia prevents ideology becoming a claustrophobic system ; ideology prevents utopia becoming an empty fantasy. Myth, or th e social imagination, involves both’ (1997: 97). This tension between ideology and utopia is probably what best explains Gandhi’s experiments with ‘truth’ in the earthly m atte rs of life and politic s. Instead of being constrained by the limiting for ces of histor y conceived as linear and static, Gandhi struggled towards the utopian possibilities of a mythical c onception of past, present and future. Aware, though, of the ideological forces present in any human social formation, Gandhi’s utopian desires were not ‘empty fantas ies’ but incessantly rew orked experiments. More importantly, as against the ‘Enlighten ed’ concep tion of linear, academ ic history, Gandhi’s mythical perception of the world al lowed him to open his m ind to ever-present subaltern ‘histories’ and ‘co mmunities’ suppressed in official versions. As Hardiman remarks, Gandhi adopted a ‘traditional’ Ind ian stance to wards the p ast. He distinguishes th is from a ‘Judeo-Christian cosmol ogy’ that sees hi story as develo ping di alectically and mat erially in a way which l imits the possibilities for the future, as peop le cannot, in this view, transcend the dialectic of a given time and period ( 2003: 35). The relevant aspect of Gandhi’s ideas is hi s mistrust of m eta-narratives. Despite his spiritual belief in the single transcendental ‘Truth’ of God, he was perfectly aw are that this ‘Truth’ could never be fully comprehe nded by human understanding. Consequently, human beings should not cling to totalitarian, ever-lasting narra tives that do not assum e the feasibility of their imperfection when c onfronting the ‘other’’s point of view. Attenborough, in contrast, offers a narrative of the past that leaves no room for dialogism . The Raj Films in the 1980s 257 He presents the p ast as if objec tively atta in able, disregarding the fa ct that any text is mediated by tropes or poetic m echanisms – to use Hayden W hite’s terminology – that make of any attem pted ‘presentation’ of the past a mediated ‘ re -presentation’. In the first place, Attenborough – followi ng Louis Fischer’s narrative structure – has the film begin with Gandhi’s death. T hese very powerful scenes enhance the expectations of the audience. W ho was that man whose last words after being m urdered were ‘Oh God’? Why was his funeral followed by so m any people in that huge and solemn procession that had such a worldwide im pact? Who was the assassin and what led him to shoot such an extraordinary man? The rest of the film com es as a se ries flashbacks starting with Gandhi as a young man travelling to S outh Africa. From that mom ent on, the spectators believ e that the film will provid e answers to those questions posed in its disturbing first scenes. Hence, by using Gandhi’s murder and state funeral as an introduction to the film , one of the effects is to provoke suspense and, in this way, to invite viewers to satisfy the expectations created. 189 Even so, the imposing, opening vi sta of the funeral has further ideological implications that will be reinforced at the end of the film, when the very same scene will be repeated. And yet, the spectators will find as they watch the film that all the questions raised by Gandhi’s murder are le ft without answers. As said before, the screenwriter lamented that he had to skip many relevant aspects of Gandhi’s life to ‘package’ his biography into a three-hour film . Curiously enough, a filmm aker who tries to 189 Comparing the beginning of Gandhi with Lean’s Lawren ce of Arabia , Attenborough explai ns that his aim was quite different from Lean’s: ‘The m emorial service at the beginni ng of Lawrence wa s done in order t o set out the potenti al examinati on of the complexities of t hat particular character […]. Gandhi was to all i ntents and purposes, not the antit hesis, but very, very dissim ilar in his yout h to the figure w ho eventually em erges in the early 1900s, and then, of course, comes into full bl ossom as the first part of the century goes by’ (1982: 4). Bearing in mind that the potential Western audience of the film had little knowledge of Gandhi, i t was necessary to start th e film with the funer al scene whi ch made them be aware of the fact that the man they are seeing was considered by 350 mi llion people almost a deit y. ‘[W]ithout t hat knowledge, y our anticipati on of, and excitement and interest in the way in which he reaches a point of deci sion, a m oral judgement, is not as enhanced as it could be the other way. I accept that th ere is inevitably a loss at the end of the film, on one level—of surprise in re lation to the assassin ation. But on the other hand, I mean you either trip on the banana skin or you see the banana skin then you t rip (1982: 6). Filmic Representations of the British Raj 258 compress the deeds of s uch a world-famous figur e in the us ual film ic time-slot devotes no less than eight m inutes in presenting the s ame scene twic e over. 190 My argument is that the film’s introduction is cruc ial to appropriate the figur e of Gandhi within Western ideological discourses and as a m eans of ju stifying the suprem acy of the West in the present through a particul ar vision of the past. Attenborough was aware of the fact that Nehr u wanted to preserve the figure of the Mahatma as a hum an being and thus avoid a ny kind of supernatural dimension. Although Attenborough insisted on the fact that he wa nted to portray Gandhi as a human being, the outcome in the film is quite questionable: Nehru said: ‘D on’t deify hi m; he was to o great a m an to be deified ’. And Gandhi , when presse d for what his c redo was, for w hat meant somet hing to hi m, ended u p by sayi ng, if t here is ever ‘Gandhism ’, I hope I am wiped off the sl ate. Whatever value there is, it is my life. My life is my message […]. I felt for t he first tim e deeply touc hed by w hat a m an had to say, and w hat a m an was prepared to do, an d what a man bel ieved was possible, as fa r as all h uman bei ngs we re concer ned. Not as a deity, i n any sense whatsoever: an ordinary human bei ng (1982: 4). It is true that, in Indi a, Gandhi was already very mu ch admired and worshipped by the people who called him ‘Mahatm a’ – the gr eat soul – yet this name had no value whatsoever for him: ‘Often the title has deeply pained m e [… ]. The m ore I reflect and look back on the past, the more vividly do I feel m y limitations’ (1982: 14). In a review of the film in The Times , Salm an Rushdie stated that: deification is an Indian d isease and in India M ohandas Karamchand Gandhi, great soul, little father, has been raise d hig her than a nyone in t he pant heon o f latter- day gods. ‘But w hy’, I wa s asked m ore than once i n Indi a recently , ‘why sh ould a n Engli shman w ant to dei fy Ga ndhi ?’ (1983: 10). Rushdie explains that one of the reasons m ight be the perpetuation of orientalist discourses that portray India as an e xotic, mystical p lace. Although Attenborough contributes to the depiction of Gandhi as a superhuman, m ythical character, the great man is not assimilated to a sadhu – saintly Indian m en who look for union with the deity – nor is there any attempt to com pare him to a Hindu god. The English filmmaker carefully 190 Each scene picturing the murder takes two mi nutes and is followed, in the first case, by th e funeral and, in the second, by the cremati on, each lasting two mi nutes. The Raj Films in the 1980s 259 reinforces the presentation of Gandhi as a Chri st-like figure: som eone who is murdered by his own people and whose last words are dedicate d to God. In the same way as Christ said ‘Abba’ just before dying, Gandhi utters ‘Oh God’ when he is shot. E ven the murderer’s, Nathuram Godse, respectful re verence before the ki lling rem inds of Ju das’s kiss. Olivier Curchod finds even more parallelisms between Gandhi and the life of Christ: … pour la référence incons ciente pe rmett e une m eilleure perce ption du m essage par u ne conscience occidentale: l’humilité du Mahatma, l’opposition Jinnah/Gandhi (Ph ari siens/Jésus), le miracle des chevaux en Afrique du Sud, les foules qui suivent Gan dhi vers la mer (et un petit garçon monte à un arbre pour vo ir passer le sage, comme Zachée, Jésus), tout cela rappelle singulièrem ent l’esprit des Evangiles ( 1983 : 57). In Rushdie’s words, Gandhi impersonates the Christian leader ‘ded icated to ideals of poverty and simplicity, a m an who is too good for this world and is therefore sacrificed in the altars of history’ (1983: 10). The following se quence – Gandhi’s funeral – contributes to deify his image in the spectator s’ minds, especially af ter Einstein’s w ords are quoted by the Am erican journalist: ‘Genera ti ons to com e will scarce ly believe that such a man as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth’. The film carefully shows how people from different social and cultura l backgrounds attended the funeral, yet the absence of Harilal, Gandhi ’s eldest son, in the crem ation is never mentioned. Neither is Gandhi’s personal life, except fo r a few references to his relationship with his wife ever developed. At the beginning of the film, he is show n to be a perfect example of a m iddle-class fam ily man – the type defended by the Conservative Party in Britain in the 1980s – portrayed as the perfect husband and father of small children. There is a scene depicting the happiness of family unity in which Gandhi is still dressed in Western clothes. Later on, he will tell the Am e rican journalist how he was married when he was a child, but still he embodies the valu es of a loving husband when he is shown crying at his wife’s deathbed. Nothing is insi nuated concerning his problems with one of his sons, nor about his endless doubts on the e ducation of his children or the traditional health cures that he imposed on them, preven ting them many tim es from taking ‘Western’ Filmic Representations of the British Raj 266 With respec t to the manufacture of clothes, the British in th e film are very m uch redeemed in their im perialist exploitation of the natives. Gandhi denounced how English textile factories monopolised production and sold at high prices the clot hes that the Indians were prevented from manufacturing. Advo cating non-violence but also non-cooperation, he encouraged people to set fire to British cl othes and make their own Indian ‘dhotis’ as he himself did. This is the reason why Gandhi becam e, from then on, associated with the spinning wheel, the symbol that figures on th e nation’s flag since the independence of India. Attenborough depicts this famous campai gn in the film , but he adds some sequences showing Gandhi’s visit to England or, more concretely, to those industrial areas where factory workers were now out of work ‘thank s’ to him. Far from showing any kind of hostility against him, these working-class Briton s welcomed him . These images, presented as if they were documentary news-reels, portr ay a very positive image of the British people acclaiming the defender of justice, even in detriment of them selves (Figure 7). Figure 7 (Still) Image with copyright The Raj Films in the 1980s 267 So far, all white characters except th e officer in th e train, and the British commissioner who orders the arm y out at the saltworks, ar e presented in a positive way. There is however another important exception: General Dyer. A conspicuous event on the long road towards India’s independence wa s the Amritsar Massa cre in 1920. During the Great War, India had faithfully cooperated with the British. Indians therefore, thought that they would be rewarded with independence. Far from that, the issue of in dependence was not even considered. In stead, the British applie d more restrictive and repressive laws to maintain order. The Ro wlatt Laws legitimised the use of repression against any Indian suspected of taking part in nationalist pro-independence campaigns. Disappointed, Gandhi advocated a new campaign of general satyagraha or non-cooperation and non-violent acts of protest. In Delhi, a demonstratio n brought together Hindus and Muslim s against British rule. As this demonstration had not been au thorised, General Dyer decided to give the Indians a lesson of law and or der under British rule and orde red the troops to open fire against the crowd at Jallianw alabagh. Given that it was a cl osed place with no possible escape route, many people were killed, incl uding wom en and small children; there were 379 dead and 1500 injured people (Mattazzi, 2002: 54-55). The result was a massive outburst of violent riots against the British despite Gandhi’s efforts to promote peaceful actions. By means of a series o f close-ups of the soldiers, the sequence of the m assacre shows how the killers were, in fact, Indians obeying the white master. These bloody scenes are followed by Dyer being Court-m artialled . During the tria l, the British judges are evidently much disturbed by Dyer’s cold attitude and his justification of the actions taken. The General is therefore found guilty of charges. English justice is thus presented as fair, and the massacre sim ply as the result of a madm an’s decision. On that account, Dyer is excluded from being a represen tative charac ter of the Britis h people. In this sense, events Filmic Representations of the British Raj 268 are clearly manipulated in the film in favour of the British in an attempt to ease guilty consciences respecting som e past events. As Ranahit Gupta states: In the film, colonialism never seems to cast an ugly shadow. Even th e issues surrounding the massacre of thousand of Ind ians at Jallianwalabag h , in the state of Punjab, are conv eniently sidestepped. Attenb orough refuses to acknow ledge th e massacre as part of a systematic attempt to intimidate civilian po pulations. Indeed , he fails to mention that General Dyer, the British officer who ordered the massacre, was later rewarded by the British (1983: 46). As depicted in the film, General Dyer was forced to resign. However, the significant o missions here are, f irst, that he re tained his rig ht to receiv e a life allowance and, secondly, that ther e were many sym pathisers of Dy er, both in India and in Britain. Many members of English Clubs in India collec ted m oney to help Dyer in his retirement; the sum they am assed amounted to £ 26.000 (Lapierre and Collins, 1975: 60). While white Westerners – ex ception apart – are portrayed in the film as honest, civilised people, Indian characters are ch aracterised as mere shadows or puppets surrounding Gandhi’s exceptional figure: Nehru comes across as a fop, a somewhat na ïve and spineless po litician. Zinnah, who led th e Muslims’ fight for Pakistan, is presented in strangely villainous terms. Other im portant ch aracters are mere shadows. Their chracterization does little jus tice to the role they played in reality (Gupta, 1993: 46). Rushdie argues that the film presents false po rtraits of most of the lead ers of the independence of India. This is the case of Pa tel, who, according to Rush die, is presented as a clown, or Jinnah, characterised as a ‘Count Dracula figure’. Even so, the most striking distortion for him concerns the com plete er asure of Bose from the historical account: Bose the guerrilla, w ho fought with the Japanese again st the British in the war. Bose whose views could ha ve pro vided anothe r sort of co unter weig ht to Gan dhi’s and s o im proved t he film . But Bose was violent, and the film, if it means anythin g, seeks to mean th at non-violence works, and that it could wo rk an ywhere, i n an y revoluti on. All cou nter ar guments are th erefore ri gorousl y exclude d (1983 : 10). Nehru also provided a conflicting counter-v iew to Gandhi’s in his conception of India as a new industrial societ y, but he is presented as a mere acolyte. Here again, therefore, a gross simp lification m ay be a ppreciated concerning different conflicting ideologies in Indian society at the time of the independence (Rushdie, 1983: 10). The Raj Films in the 1980s 269 On the other hand, the Indian people, th e villagers Gandhi was so fond of, are presented as just nameless m asses, crowds th at provoke violent riots and are not able to control themselves unless guided by a powerful p aternal figure. They not only fight against the British oppressors but also among st themselve s. In Sharma’s words: The only identity that the Indian ‘masses’ have in the film is either a p assive one which co nsists in obeying Gandhi’s tenet of no n-violence (the Jallianw alla Bag h Massacre) or a violen t, animal-like mob whe n they t ransgress thi s principl e (the bur ni ng of the police station at Chauri Chaura, the violence in the aftermath of the partitio n of India). There is no reference to the peasant refo rm movem ents that were taking place in Awadh and Be ng al or any other kind of popular m oveme nt. In fact, the scenes of c ommunal violence at the end of the film serve rathe r to emphasize the sad face of Britain’s colonies when left t o fend fo r them selv es with national leaders who are too busy bick ering to administer the c ountr y properl y (1995: 66). As the internal com plexities of th e Indi an nation go unexp lained in the film , the audience cannot but think that Indians are fanatic and violen t by nature. A quick overview of the history of the Indian subcontinent woul d show that ever since th e first tribes that settled in the Valley of Indo river (3000 BC), this territory has been populated by peoples of different origins, who brought with them th eir own cultures and reli gions – i.e. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsees and Christians, am ong others. The rivalry between Hindus and Muslims goe s back in time to the eighth century, when the first Mughal Muslim emperors invade d the subcontinent and settled there. After the eightee nth century, conf licts between Hindu and Mu slim communities gr ew as a consequence of not only religious but also eco nomic, cultural and so cial differences. The British had exerted their power over all these communities d istributed in severa l princely states ruled by Muslim or Hindu princes. Confr ontations between the different states were instigated in m any ways by the British them se lves; their ‘divide and rule’ policies had led them to ‘gra nt franchise to Indians on the basis of religiou s comm unities, thereby playing the communal card in the cour se of their conquest and adm ini stration of India’ (Sharma, 1995: 67). That is why independence and the subsequent p artition of the country in 1947 implied not just the s imple replacem ent of fo reign rulers by native ones, but a new concept of imagined nation which tried to unify the country under a new democratic state. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 270 Gandhi was against partition. He argued that all these different communities had lived for centuries together and that there was no reason to divide the country in the moment of independence from the imperial pow er. Any division would result so artif icial, he predicted, that War would be unavoidable. T o prevent that, Gandhi even asked Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, to become the Prim e Minister of the new independent Nation. However, Nehru and other members of the Indian National C ongress would not accept that proposal. Jinnah fought for the creati on of a free Pakistan, as he feared the oppression of Muslim communities in a country ruled by a Hindu majority. The person in charge of dividing the c ountry was the British lawyer Sir Cyril Radcliffe. He drew a line by taking into accoun t where the majority of Hindus or Muslim s lived. However, his knowledge of the dif ferent communities was quite lim ited and the imposed division proved to be a failure. 197 Fearing violent revenges, many Muslim s had started to escape from Hindu te rritories towards what was to become Pakistan. Meanwhile, Hindus living in that ar ea, afraid of Muslim violence, ha d com e to occupy former Muslim districts in places such as Calcutta. Neverthele ss, violence h ad already dram atically hit that 197 Partition resulted in many inconsisten cies. Hyderabad, in the centre of India, was a state with a majority of Muslims, w ho found themselves fo rced to make a diffic u lt choice between their land or their religion. Yet the most conflictive states were Ben gal and Punj ab. Bengal was handed over to Pakistan even though the resu lt was geographically absurd. On the o ther hand, the Punjab was a rich region with an intrinsic cultural identity. Two important cities belo nged to that area, Lahore and Amritsar. Lahore was a rich, aristocratic city, a favourite with English men and the Indian elite. It had also been a to lerant city where people of d ifferent creeds lived peacefully, yet the cruellest violence star ted in 1947 between Sikh s and the Muslim League. Amritsar is the cradle of Sikhism , where one c an fi nd t he Golden Tem ple, the most im portant place of worshi p for Si khs – the creed f ounde d by Nanak at t he end o f the fi fteenth cent ury which tri ed to rec oncile Hinduism and Islam under th e belief in a single g od (Sm art, 2000:4 9). Howeve r, in the Punja b, there was a majorit y of Musl ims, wi th only a 13% of S ikhs. Si khs, thou gh, owned 40% of the la nd and hel d an im portant monop oly of ind ustry and t ranspo rt. As a conse quence, the divisi on of Punja b prove d extrem ely complicated. Lahore was gi ven to Paki stan while Am ritsar remained in In dia, and m ost of the la nds of t he Sikhs we re cut in two (Lapierre and Collins, 1975: 192-199 ). The fight for Kashmir had its origins in the partition. A very rich area, with a majority of Muslims, it was handed over to India. Kashmir had been, until th en, ruled by Hari Singh, a Hind u Maharaja who refu sed to give the state to Pakistan , even though 77% of the popu lation were Muslim s. He preferred to create an independent St ate, f ree from bot h Indi a and Pa kistan, yet he final ly signed the adh esion of the State to Ind ia (Lapierre and Collins, 197 5: 212). The division had further inconsisten cies which led to econo mic crisis in many of those areas. For instance, the Bengali area, which belonge d to Pakist an, included t he land where jute pla nt was gro wn, yet al l the industri es and the port of Calcut ta belongi ng to India h ad no jute f or manufact ure or expo rt (279). The distrib ution of wealt h, mat erials and army men as well as civil serv ants was not an easy task either (see Lapierre and Collins, 1975 : 177-201; Metcalf, 2002 : 214-17). The Raj Films in the 1980s 271 city. Gandhi, horrified before that situation, deci ded to carry out a fina l fast until the riots stopped. He demanded that houses now occupi ed by Hindus should be returned to Muslims. The Mahatma wanted peace even if that m eant favouring Muslim communities at the expense of the Hindu community. During his fasting, he forced out the Indian government a prom ise that the 550 million rupees owned to Pakistan would be returned to the Muslim state which was bankrupt by that ti me. Gandhi believed that the payment of the debt would be considered as an act of fratern ity. He also fasted in order to m ake leaders from the dif ferent communities sign a letter in which they agr eed to keep their communities in peace. Both Hindus and Muslim s – leaders from extrem ist groups included – signed the peace treaty and Gandhi stopped fasting on January 18th 1948. In the film, the confrontation between Hi ndus and Muslims is dramatised by having a desperate man (Om Puri) appr oach Gandhi during his fasting begging for counsel as to what to do after the death of his little son at the hands of Muslims. Gandhi suggests he should adopt an orphan Muslim child and ra ise him as his own while respecting his religious education. By om itting the cultu ral and histo rical background of the country, in this scene, the film depicts Gandhi again as an ever-forgiving Christ-lik e figure. In contrast the Indian mob in the background is shown to be brutal and fanatic. 198 In this sequence, a voice from the crow d can be heard shouting ‘death to Gandhi’. The camera focuses on Nehru’s sho cked reactio n. And yet, this voice from the crowd was not a solitary one. The outrage of violence both Hindu and Muslim communities had suffered made it very di fficult for them to stop revenge and live again as brothers, as 198 Nevertheless, their fanaticism is not so different fr o m that of other nation s and commu nities, fighting for their own ri ghts agai nst the possi ble opp ression of others. Th e events de picted in the fi lm occurred in India in 1947, just two years after the II World War whic h provoked a nightmare of cultu ral fanaticism and xenophobia exerted by white communities in the heart of Europe. Hitler used the swastika, a Hindu symbol, for his own di scourses on the ‘purity ’ of the Arya n race (s ee ‘Origi ns of the swasti ka’ BB C News; Tue sday, 18 January 2005, http://news.b bc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_n ews/magazine/4183467.st m . Filmic Representations of the British Raj 272 Gandhi advocated. On the other hand, the film also omits how many Muslim women went to the Mosques to pray for Gandhi, a Hindu, and how many Hindus offe red their homes to Muslim refugees (Lap ierre and Collins, 1975: 385). Many individu als would have their own stories to tell, those who took revenge on the ones who had killed their beloved, those who were forced into exodus, those who rema ined in the new born, culturally hostile country, and those who prom oted peace in th eir villages, neighbourhoods or families. By concentrating on Gandhi as a god-like hero, the f ilm disregards the fact that ‘History’ is full of ‘histories’ which contribute to the outcom e of certain events. As said before, one of the important om issions in the film is the m urderer’s story. Gandhi’s last fast demanding an entente between Hindus and Muslims further enraged a certain sector of Hindu right-wing extremists who defended a Hindu country, free from the British and Muslim oppressors. As agains t Ga ndhi’s vision of India as a m ulticultural country, for them, India was exclusively fo r Hindus. Nathuram Godse, the person who eventually shot Gandhi, was a member of Ra shtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (R.S.S.S.), an extremist Hindu group. During the first cam paigns against the British, Godse had been a follower of the Mahatma and had even been imprisoned for participating in the non- cooperation movement. He was also a ferven t H induist from an orthodox Brahmin Hindu family. He would not eat meat, nor drink alcohol and he had also taken the brahm acharya vow at the age of 28 (Lapierre and Collins, 1975: 356). He lo ved his country and wanted it to be free from the colonial oppressors. Nat huram Godse and Gandhi were not so different after all. However, they differed in their im agined independent nation. Godse felt betrayed by Gandhi’s all-inclusive view of India. The R. S.S.S. wanted to get rid of the British in order to rule their own country, not to find themselves restricted by the inclusion in their government of the Muslim s. 199 199 Nathuram Godse’s perspective is reveale d in a recent interview to his brother who shared the same views on Gand hi as a trai tor to the Hi ndu cause. See ‘“His Principle of Peace Was Bogus”. ‘ Gopal G odse, co- The Raj Films in the 1980s 273 In the film, the lack of explanation for the murder also contributes to the association of Gandhi with Christ. Gandhi’s murder at the hands of his own people establishes a parallelism with Christ’s crucifixion, which needs no explanation. In this way, the killing would be interpreted as a mystical, and no t as a po litical act. The close-up of the murderer’s nameless face shooting Gandhi appear s to be representati ve of the religious extremism and violence inherent to Easter n people (Figure 8). His anonymous presence could also mean in the film that the killer was a ‘lone nut’ under the influence of ‘a sinister-looking sadhu in a ri ckshaw’ (Rushdie, 1983:10). Figure 8 (Still) The repetition of the murder scene at the end of the film contributes to create a sense of both comp leteness and circularity. As s aid before, the Jewish-C hristian tradition presented a teleological perception of time and human experience. However, the two World Wars in the twentieth centu ry wiped out the optimism which characterised W estern civilisation with the idea of histo ry as ‘pr ogress’. ‘Change’ started to be regarded with suspicion and progress started to be replaced w ith the concept of ‘decline’ (Carr, 1983: conspirat or in Gand hi's assassinat ion and b rother o f the assassi n, looks back in a nger--an d with out regret ’. Time Asia. February 14, 200 0 VOL. 155 No. 6 http://www.time.com/time/as ia/mag azine/200 0/0214/ind ia.godse.h tml . Image with copyright Filmic Representations of the British Raj 274 112). India’s independence marked the first major step towards the consideration of Britain’s decline from its powerful p osition in the world, which provoked , in Carr’s words, a sinking back ‘into a paralysi ng nostalgia for the past’ (1983: 148). In this sense, ‘the significant thing is that change is no longer th ought of as achievement, as opportunity, as progress, but as an object of fear’ (1983: 155). 200 This fear is reflected in the film’s circularity and foregrounding of the Mahatma’s assassination. A man, an individual, tried to bring some light to the ex-colony, yet Indi a’s independence left th e country in a violent civil war. At the end of the film, Mirabe hn and Bourke-W hite comment on Gandhi’s sense of defeat and sadness at the end of his life. This dialogue emphasises a sense of pessim ism and questions the effectiveness Gandhi’s deeds. On the one hand, the film presents Gandhi as a hero who achieved the independence of his country. Ru shdie criticises this portra yal Gandhi as ‘the saint who vanquished an Empire’, and the film ’s simplif ication of the complex political situation: ‘The message of Gandhi is that the best way to gain your freedom is to line up, unarmed, and march towards your oppressors and perm it them to club you to the ground, if you do this for long enough, you will embarrass them into going away […] This is a fiction’ (1983: 10). On the other hand, the repetition of the father of the nation’s m urder by a Hindu could be metaphorically interpreted as a parricide that leaves the new nation as an unprotected orphan. As a result, Gandhi’s achievement is reduced to a sense of defeat. The future is therefore uncertain and the violent death of the hero imbues the ending with feelings of uncerta inty and fear. What is more, the close up of the nameless face of the person who murdered Gandhi offers a perception of India – or the East – as a 200 Carr conclu des that : ‘At a mom ent when t he worl d is changi ng its s hape m ore rapidly and more ra dica lly than at any t ime in t he last 400 years , this seem s to me a si ngular bl indness, which gi ves grou nd for apprehension not that the world-wide m ovement will be stayed, but that this c ountry – and perhaps other English-s peaking co untries – ma y lie behi nd the general ad vance, an d rela pse helpless ly and uncom plaining ly into s ome nostalgic backwa ter’ (1 983: 1 56). The Raj Films in the 1980s 275 place where fanaticism and violence are inbred characteris tics of Eastern people. In this manner, Attenborough’s biopic discretely m ainta ins the long-standing stereotypes which associate Western culture with civ ilization, reason and order and Eastern people with primitivism , irrationality and chaos. By focusing on those w hite characters who ad mired Gandhi, and by highlighting the Mahatma’s non-vi olent m ethods as almost the exclusive means that expelled the British out of India, the film elevates the British to a civilised sphere of superiority. In cont rast, Indians are too fanatic to f ully grasp the ir leader’s message and are thus le ft in chaos, hence, the film ’s veiled justification of British fears of being ‘swamped’ by those violent Orientals. A last relevant point to be made about th e film is that, by portraying Gandhi as an exception in Indian culture, the director of the film appropriates the fig ure of Bapu, the father of the Indian nation, to portray a leader embodying Western values. As Sharma states: ‘The saintly figure of Gandhi […] become s a signifier for the liberalism of Britain’s colonial policies, rather than for the streng ths of India’s freedom movement’ (1995: 62). In other words, Gandhi is shown as an individual who struggled for the ri ght of his country to be free and independent from colonial exploi ters and whose long-term ideal was for India to become a unified and strong nation. Seen in this light, Attenbor ough’s construction of Gandhi does not appear to be so very different from Thatche r’s nationalist beliefs in the greatness of her own nation, in Britain’s right to defend its own interests against foreign menaces, and the im portance of maintaining the unity of the country. In his article ‘Gandhiana and Gandhiology’, Ashish Rajadhyask a comments on the Indian governm ent’s promotion of Gandhi in India and the film ’s subsequent success in the country. He argues that Attenborough’s film has depoliticised th e historical events by universalising the nationalist values impersonated by the individual epic hero. The film was granted tax exemption by the governm ent and all the theatre s in Bom bay had block-reserved seats for Filmic Representations of the British Raj 282 cinematic te xts are those concerning the sem iotic transpositio n and the synthetic nature of cinema. Som e conspicuous modifications, th ough, are related to th e different cultural contexts of both the literary texts and filmic productions. Of all the films I analyse, David Lean’s A Passage to India was probably the most controversial in terms of its adaptation. Questions of accuracy, fidelity and quality we re once and a gain criticised in the endless comparison of the film with E. M Forste r’s liter ary ‘class ic’, with a clear preference for the latter. Less critical attention was paid to the other productions, wh ich are based on novels written in the 1960s and 1970s. The particularity of Heat and Dust was that Ruth Prawer Jhabvala was both author of the novel and sc reenwriter for the film. As a consequence, issues regarding the reproduction on screen of the literary aut hor’s intentions were out of question. Moreover, the novel is particularly inte resting from its formal the point of view, as it presents a number of cinem atic de vices, ea sily translat able into film. Heat and Dust can be described as a clear case of fruitful intertextuality between a cinem atic novel and a literary film. As far as the TV series The Far Pavilions and The Jewel in the Crown are concerned, the original novels or source texts have never been regarded as ‘classics’. In their case, therefore, questions of accuracy and fidelity are less relevant. In fact, the series have often been regarded as ‘qua lity’ products for the TV medium. 4.4.2. Heat and Dust Heat and Dust was released one year after th e worldwide success of Attenborough’s Gandhi . This new Raj picture shared with the Mahatma biopic the same setting and roughly the same historical background. And yet, Ivory’s production also presented significant differences, the most obvious one being the target audience: while Gandhi was conceived as a mainstream blockbuster from the very beginning, Heat and Dust was The Raj Films in the 1980s 283 produced by the independent Merchant-Ivory co mpany. Accordingly, this film did not have such an international impact in term s of box-office success: it received, though, artistic recognition. For instan ce, it was nom inated for eight BAFTA film awards, winning Best Screenplay for Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s ad aptation; it was awarded the Golden P alm in the Cannes Film Festival and the ALFS Aw ard for the Screenwriter of the year (www.merchantivory.com). Two more conspicuous differences between Heat and Dust , Gandhi and A Passage to India are rela ted to the particularity of the litera ry adaptation and to the m ulticultural aspects of its production. As explained above, Heat and Dust was adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala from her own novel, which won the Booker Prize for 1975. From her very beginnings as a writer, Jhabvala combined her career as a novelist and screenwriter. She adapted some of her own novels as well as literary works by other novelists, such as E.M Forster and Henry James, and she also wrote directly for the screen. The result has b een a literary and cinematic sym biosis in all her works (Fargo, 2007: 25). Jhabvala offers a remarkably prolific in tertextuality between he r novels and scripts. The outcom e of this combination of the two m edia is a hybrid work that opens up new possibilities of expression in this semiotic m ixture and break s away from the hierarchical relationship between literature and cinema. Heat and Dust presents the story of two women: 203 Anne (Julie Christie), an Englishwoman of the 1980s, decides to do some research on her great-uncle’s first wife, Olivia (Greta Scacchi). 204 In doing so, Anne unveils Olivia’s sc a ndalous and silenced story. In the 1920s, Olivia had followed her husband Douglas (Cristopher Cazenove), a 203 I summarise both novel and film but include the name of the actors playing the roles in the cinematic adaptatio n for its subseq uent analys is in the f ollowing sec tion. 204 Both the book and the film locate the past back to 1923, yet the passages concerning Anne’s story do not offer a precise date, so readers are made to believe that the action takes place in a postcolonial background, around the time t he book was written, 1975. This lack of concrete reference to time makes the film easily adapted to the year it was released, 1982. T his date a ppears in the credit sequence, whic h situates the present- day story in ‘1982, Sati pur town’. Filmic Representations of the British Raj 284 district collector, to India. There, she becam e part of the world of the memsahibs, yet she never managed to adapt to this typ e of life. In her attem pt to escape from the constrictions of the British community, she fell in love with an Indian p rince (Shashi Kapoor). She got pregnant and decided to have an abortion. Ho wever, she was discovered and consequently, expelled from the English society. She ends up living alone in the m ountains, where she is occasionally visited by the Nawab. In order to learn all the secrets of that sto ry, Anne travels over to India. Duri ng her stay in the new ex-col ony, she goes thr ough roughly the same experience as her great-aunt: she too has an affair with an Indian m an and gets pregnant. The novel Heat and Dust has been described as a ci nematic piece in its use of ‘editing’. Jhabvala explained that she was ve ry much influenced by cinem a and that she loved spending time in the editing room , trying to make sense of the different scenes by mixing up one and the other in order to create certain effects. She says this was the device she used in writing her novel Heat and Dust : she first wrote the contemporary story and then the block set in the past. Af terwards sh e cut and pasted passages and balanced out the different parts until a new, more complex narrative was generated. (Fargo, 2007: 25). On the other hand, the film is quite literary. Th e spectators have access to Olivia’s story through letters, as if it was a classic epistolary novel. At th e beginning of the film the character of Olivia looks directly at the cam era (a very artificial mode of filmmaking) and starts telling her story, emphasising the verb al narration over the visual rendering of her story. Very often the scenes are introduced by a voice over narrator which corresponds to present-day Harry – the Nawab’ s English friend – telling A nne his version of the story. Moreover, several other important mom ents in the film are related by charac ters. Hence, the film is based more on narration than on actio n. In other words, it is closer to the literary ‘telling’ tha n to the visually ‘showin g’ mode. The Raj Films in the 1980s 285 The second important aspect that m akes of Heat and Dust a special film , worth analysing in the context of the Raj revival f ictions, is the m ulticultural na ture of its production team: the director, James Ivory, is a U.S. American, the producer, Ism ail Merchant, is Indian, and Jha bvala herself presents a cultu rally hybrid background which is clearly reflected in her written and screened characters an d stories. Born in Pola nd to Jewish parents, she too k refuge in Britain during the Second W orld War. She married an Indian and migrated to her husband’s country where she spent twenty-f our years. She then settled in the United Sta tes but often travelle d to India where she spent m any months with her family. Against this personal background, Jhabvala’s fiction is peopled with rootless, dislocated characters th at try to m ake sense of the cultural clashes they are often exposed to. These tensions are frequently presente d in terms of Orient and Occident. More concretely, Jhabvala’s fictions deal with European or Ameri can characters trying to come to terms with their live s and intercultural relationships in the Ea st. In her exhaustive analysis of Jhabvala’s fiction, Marta Fargo expounds that the comm on feature obsessively repeated in these works is the conf lict of characters w ho intend to overcome the constructed boundary that sepa rates people from different cultural backgrounds. These barriers are shown to be very complicated – if not impossi ble – to trespass, and these characters often end up punished with the ostr acism of their own comm unities (2007: 44). These fictions present cosm opolitan charact ers who, in trying to escape from the impositions of their own comm unity, become quite receptive to the c ommunity of the ‘other’. Although they strive to find their own identity liberat ed from artificial constructs, they fail because no matte r how aware a person is of the artific iality of any culture, this artifice is necessary for the construction of an identity. The bitterly pessim ist paradox, which could be elicited in Jhabvala’ s fictions, is the fact that cultu ral constructions entail constrictions for the liberty of the individual and a lack of understanding in any pursuit of Filmic Representations of the British Raj 286 intercultural dialogue. Yet the building of an id entity dives ted of artificial impositions is an impossible task: a cultureless identity m ean s nothing, only emptiness, ostracism or death. This is the price characters that rebel agai nst the cultural constr ictions of their own community have to pay. Intere stingly enough, this recurrent topi c in Jhabvala’s fiction is also a common them e in imperial fictions, and one that was particular ly present in the Raj screen productions of the 1980s. The attempt to do away with cultura l constructs and the subsequent failure to create unc onstrained identities are what lead to the tragic f ate of rebel characters. The emptiness of the Marabar caves in A Passage to India is the m ost powerful example symbolising this situation. The Raj fictions, thus, go back to the past of the empire in order to deal once and again with the issues of cosmopolitism and identity, 205 which are conspicuous matters of debate in increasingly globalised changing societies. Both tradition and changing values and the new possibilities offered by cultura l interchange are ref lected in the Raj productions as a tension between their temporal and spatial settings. Relationships between past and present, Eas t and West are the main concerns in th ese film s, with Heat and Dust being the pi ece that best puts in contras t thes e issues by inviting the spectator to travel backwards and forwards between present and past, and Western and Eastern spaces. 205 The philosopher Kwam e Anthony Appiah point s to the im portance of cosm opolitanism in contem porary globalised societies and he d efines it as a combi nati on of ‘universality’ and ‘ diversity’. C osmopoli tanism is universalistic because ‘it believ es that every human being matters and that we have a shared obligation to care for one another’, but ‘it also accepts a wide range of le gitimate human diversity’, that is , ‘tolerance for other people’s choices of how t o live and hum ility about what we ours elves know’. Appi ah concludes that ‘conversation across iden tities is worthwhile because […] if you accept that you live in a world with many different kinds of people, and you are goi ng to live in respectful peace with t hem, then you need to unde rstand each other, even though you don’t agree’ (2008: 3). In He at and Dust and i n other Raj fi lms, cosmopolit an characters try to put into practice these ideas of univers al ity and diversity, however they find them selves caught in conflicting relati onships of cultural identit y and power which will prove it difficult for them to establ ish conversations with the Other. The Raj Films in the 1980s 287 4.4.2.1. Past and Present Reflected in a Critical Mirror Past and present are closely relate d through two female protagonists. Heat and Dust thus confirms the tendency of recent Raj productions in fem inising the impe rial accounts of the past. At first, the two h eroines seem to repr esent a relaxation in the f ormer rigid barriers that separated different cultures. Neverthele ss, this m ovie also s hows how those boundaries have not completely d isappeared, especially in the con text in which this c inematic production was released. As seen in previous chapters, the 1980s were years of economic and cultural readjustm ent in the U.K. with re sonant Thatcherite them es advocating for the preservation of a traditional, old-fash ioned sense of Britishness and new racis t ideas. These discourses reinforced the dichotomy ‘self-ot herness’ and m aintain ed the hierarchy of British superior ity over those belonging to the r ealm of ‘otherness’. At the tim e Heat and Dust was released, echoes of the Falklands’ victory could still be heard. Hence, the increasingly multicultu ral reality of Britain cl as hed with aversive racist attitudes defended by a certain sector of so ciety. Those daring to do away with cultural binarisms still f ound themselves in a blurred ‘no-m an’s land’. Ironi cally, the expression ‘ no-man’s land’, quite a patriarchal, more of ten than not refers to the situation of women, who are the ones that have to fight against cultural as well as gender barriers. This combination of gender and cultural conflicts has a conspi cuous presence in the story of the two m ain characters in Heat and Dust . It is however very interes ting to notice the manner in which this issue is also reflected in the formal presentatio n of the film. The social imposition of pres ervation of cultural bou ndaries which renders it dif ficult for those who want to penetrate ‘the ot her’s’ culture is first portraye d with what seems to be a deliberate lack of psychological depth the char acters p resent. The difficulty in accessing to the characters’ minds prevents the spectator from knowing their feelings and the true intentions of their acts (Furne ss, 1983: 132). This fact enables the audience to distance Filmic Representations of the British Raj 288 themselves from any character’s position, no ma tter their cultural background. Thus, it is not easy to know whether the Nawa b is really in love with O livia or whether he is just using her as an instrument of revenge on the British colonise rs. Likewise, it is dif ficult to know what Anne’s feelings for Inder Lal are, or what she thinks about her situation as a single mother and about her future. The same occurs with respect to Olivia, even though the letters to her sister give clues as to he r thoughts, they do not provide a full explanation of her inner life. Besides every access to her mind stops after the m iscarriage. This cinematic devic e exemplifies the f rustration felt when there is a la ck of communication between people, especia lly when there is a will to cro ss the bridge into another culture. Chion reports that: Ivory ne joue p as ce jeu qui c onsiste rait à rebai sser une cul ture de vant une autre, et, en l’occurre nce, à mortifie r l’occidental e devant l ’indienn e. Jeu stup ide et destructeur, dans quelque sens qu’on le joue, et de surcroî t me nsonger: u ne cultu re n’est ni inféri eure ni s upérieure, elle existe , c’est tout (1983 : 56). By deliberately rendering it difficult for th e spectator to empathise either with the British, or with th e Indian charac ters, the f ilm thus shows that both cu ltures are e qually complex and difficult for an outsider to underst and. This is a recurrent theme in Jhabvala’s fiction. As Marta Fargo remarks, India in Heat and Dust is presented as a site of intercultural exchange that often ends up in frustration for both Western and E astern characters. In this respect, the heat and the dust of the place are revealed to be both the literal and metaphorical elem ents of a suffo cating and oppressive atmosphere. Fargo adds that, not only in Heat and Dust , but also in other works by Jhabvala, European and American characters undergo a triple m ood cy cle in their relationshi p with India and the Orient: admiration, indifference and disenchantme nt. The significant feature of this process is that it is not linear b ut cyclical, that is, ‘disenchantment’ is no t the last s tage because moments of adm iration and i ndifference enduringly come a nd go (2007: 26). It could be said that this cycle, present in the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala’s productions, is also a feature The Raj Films in the 1980s 289 characterisin g the other Raj fictions’ pictu ring of the dif ficult relationship with the ‘Oriental other’, reinfo rcing the multiple possibilities that may overlap: rejection, attraction, admiration, indiffere nce and disenchantm ent. In Heat and Dust , these different possibilities are presented through various characters. Olivia and Anne are those who best represent the difficulty of ‘crossing the bridge’ into ‘otherness’. Olivia ’s story is portrayed through a spectacular past of grandeur and exotic palaces, princes an d adventures. By means of its magnificent scenes of the past, Heat and Dust partak es of other Raj revival f ilms nostalgia fo r the British Imperial past, also reflected in the visual aspect of the text . W alter Lassally, the cameram an, explains that as a means of visually contrasting both histor ical periods, filters were used in the shooting of the 1920s scenes in order to soften the col our and as a means of rendering the pictures ‘more gentle and m ore pastel’. In contrast , the lighting and the camera movement for the modern sequences were ‘somewhat more stri dent in both color and m ovement’ (Lassally, 1984: 48). In this way, scenes of the past become mo re pleasurable for the spectator than those set in the 1980s. As Hill reports, ‘the grandeur which was associated both with the Nawab and the English colonialists has ende d and been replaced by th e noise, bustle, and turmoil of modern India’ (1999: 102) (Figures 9, 10). Figure 9 (Still) Image with copyright Filmic Representations of the British Raj 290 Figure 10 (Still) In the same way, Michel Chion analyses th e effect the different style in 1920s and 1980s sequences has on the spectator: L’époque pass ée est évoquée , en general, avec un certain lustre, une image léchée et nim bée, tandis que pour l époque m oderne, la ph oto se fait pl ate, terne, fonc tionelle . Avec pour c onséque nce que le spectateur ressent comme une so rte de punition, de corvée, les retours à la période moderne, s’impatientant de retrouver les belles images, les b elles demeures, les belles toilettes du passée (1983 : 55). A significant aspec t of the film is theref ore its self-consciousness in presenting the past through a nostalgic lens. In contrast to the transpar ent documentary style through which Attenborough presented Gandhi , Ivory clearly shows the mediation any recovery of the past has to undergo. The spectator is not promis ed a film that is going to be ‘true to the spirit’ of Olivia. On the cont rary, we have a character, Anne , doing research on an event in the life of her great aunt which has been concealed for a long tim e. She tries to m ake sense of all the fragm entary records she finds throug h Olivia’s lette rs to her sister and Harry’s memories. She visits the places that served as the setting f or Olivia’s s tory and imagines how those decadent buildings would have b een in the time of the splendour of the Raj. The Image with copyright The Raj Films in the 1980s 291 account of the past is the result of Anne’s research and re-composition of events in her mind. The film clearly shows that what we ha ve is Anne’s interpretation, which is often tinged by the nostalgic recalling of the past and the exotic flavour the mem ories of the Raj entail, hence the different camera techniques an d soundtrack that are used to present the different periods. It could therefore be argued that Heat and Dust is a self-conscious film which represents m eta-cinematographically the process followed by all the heritag e and Raj films. The present is there simply to prov ide a window on to the past because it is thanks to Anne’s research th at Olivia’s story is recovered fr om oblivion. Thus, the very film Heat and Dust appears as a synecdoche for heritage a nd Raj film s in general. In this respect, Anne symbolises the research und ertaken by the direc tors of such film s in their inten tion to provide faithful approaches to the past. In the same m anner, rath er than conventional stories, ideologica lly committed to the dom inan t culture, the heritage film s portray figures that had something different to tell, precisely those that were most often silenced. For instance, films such as Maurice , Another Country , Where Angels Fear to Tread , A Roo m with a View or Howards End all present characters that conf ront the conventional rules of the society in which they live. If Anne had really wanted to search for her roots as a m eans of reasserting her ‘pure’ white British identity in a post-co lonial m ulticultural world, she would most probably have looked into the life of Douglas’s second wife who was her direct relative, thus presenting the power of the British Em pire and the past as unproblematic. Nevertheless, her interest is clearly focused upon what happened to the first wife, the one who was silenced, marginalised an d expell ed from the co mmunity for comm itting the worst possible crime: m iscegenation. However vi sually attractive the past is presented to Filmic Representations of the British Raj 298 is a form of knowle dge and identification that v acillates between what is always ‘in place’, already known, and s omet hing that m u st be anxio usly repeat ed… as if the essential duplicity of the Asiatic or the bestial sexu al licence of the African that n eeds no proof, can never really, in discourse, be proved. It i s thi s process of a m bivalence […] that gives t he colonial stereotype its currency: ens ures its repeatability in chang ing historical and discursive junctures; informs its strategies of individuation and marginalization; produ ces the ef fect of probabilistic truth and predictability (Bhabha, 1994: 66). Thus, in stereotypes fashioned by whites, black/dark people are as sociated with threatening sexuality. F or example, in the scene tha t shows Olivia com ing back from a walk on her own, she is met by Mrs Saunders (J ennifer Kendal), a perfect exam ple of the British memsahib, who advises her never to do that again because: ‘Spicy food heats their [Indian men] blood. There is only one thought in their head, you know what with white women’. As m entioned in the analysis of Gandhi , non-whites are also considered to be violent, in terms of savage, ‘i rrational’ attacks on other people , in contrast to European or Western ‘civilis ed’ manners. This com es from the traditiona l Eurocentric discourses which propagate the ideas that Europeans go to wa r or conquer other territories to expand their culture’s positiv e values, while non-Europeans – nam ely native people in Africa, America, Asia or Australia – take part in irrationa l riots a nd perpetrate savage actions, hence, the scenes in the film dedicated to the Nawab’s st ory of the attack of an Indian tribe or in Douglas’s account of the sati. According to Lola Young the whites’ need to project on to the ‘other’ – blacks – all the nega tive traits le ads to an im agining of themselves as the positive counterpa rt of civiliza tion: For Whites to see themselves as rational, o rdered and civilised people, they hav e to construct a notion of irration ality, disorder and uncivilised behavior which is imposed on th e object of their stimulus to anx iety. Elements of the culture whic h are re pressed re-em e rge in the despised c ulture (in Ruth erford, 19 90: 193). Although, as reflected in the above exam ples, British ‘whiteness’ is clearly associated with order and Indian ‘blackness’ with chaos, this ste reotyping is sometimes and who clearly beyond it ’ (Dyer, 1993:16). The stereotype provides a partial knowledge that helps to represent, appropriate and, therefore, control , the other (Baudrillard in Young, 1995: 143). In ot her words, the stereotype is used to classify people belon ging to the sphere of ‘oth erness’ according to a selecti on of traits which help to maintain hi erarchical divisions. [Document text truncated for crawler view.]