A M E R I C A N C O N S E R VAT O R Y T H E AT E R
Carey Perloff, Artistic Director • Ellen Richard, Executive Director
PRESENTS
Indian Ink
by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Carey Perloff
The Geary Theater
January 14–February 8, 2015
Words on Plays
Vol. XXI, No. 3
Nirmala Nataraj
Editor
Elizabeth Brodersen
Director of Education & Community Programs
Michael Paller
Resident Dramaturg
Shannon Stockwell
Publications Associate
Anna Woodruff
Publications Fellow
Made possible by
Deloitte, The Kimball Foundation, National Corporate Theatre
Fund, The San Francisco Foundation, The Sato Foundation, and
The Stanley S. Langendorf Foundation
© 2014 AMERICAN CONSERVATORY THEATER, A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Table of Contents
1
Overview of Indian Ink
6
Tom Stoppard and the Inspiration behind Indian Ink
by Shannon Stockwell
8
Indian Ink in a Different Key
A Conversation between Carey Perloff and Tom Stoppard
13
“Who, Whom”
A Brief History of the British Raj
by Shannon Stockwell
21
Placing the Jewel in the Crown
British Writers of the Raj Genre
by Nirmala Nataraj
25
Fictional Flora and Literary Life in 1920s London
28
The Rasa Effect
Summoning a Felt Experience
by Anna Woodruff
32
The Flavor of Love and Pleasure
Shringara and the Legacy of Indian Erotic Art
by Nirmala Nataraj
37
Narrative Art in Indian Ink
A Communion between Poetry and Painting
by Anna Woodruff
42
Dreaming in Color
An Interview with Costume Designer Candice Donnelly
By Shannon Stockwell
47
“Going Native”
Interracial Love in the British Raj
by Nirmala Nataraj
51
The Hullabaloo over Hobson-Jobson
by Anna Woodruff
53
An Indian Ink Glossary
56
Questions to Consider / For Further Information . . .
COVER Radha and Krishna in the Grove, artist unknown, eighteenth century.
Roli Books.
OPPOSITE Scenic designer Neil Patel’s set model for A.C.T. and Roundabout
Theatre Company’s coproduction of Indian Ink
Overview of Indian Ink
Indian Ink is based on Tom Stoppard’s 1991 radio play In the Native State. The stage
version of the play was first performed at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford,
England, and opened at London’s Aldwych Theatre on February 27, 1995, under the
direction of Peter Wood. The play’s American premiere was in 1999 at A.C.T., directed
by Carey Perloff.
Creative Team
Neil Patel ....................................................... Scenic Designer
Candice Donnelly... ....................................... Costume Designer
Robert Wierzel .............................................. Lighting Designer
Dan Moses Schreier ...................................... Sound Designer
John Carrafa .................................................. Choreographer
Characters and Cast
Flora Crewe ................................................... Brenda Meaney
Coomaraswami .............................................. Ajay Naidu
Nazrul ............................................................ Vandit Bhatt
Eleanor Swan ................................................ Roberta Maxwell
Eldon Pike..................................................... Anthony Fusco
Anish Das ...................................................... Pej Vahdat
Nirad Das ...................................................... Firdous Bamji
David Durance .............................................. Philip Mills
Rajah/Politician ............................................. Rajeev Varma
Dilip .............................................................. Kenneth De Abrew
Resident ......................................................... Mike Ryan
Englishwoman ............................................... Mary Baird
Englishman ................................................... Dan Hiatt
Nell ................................................................ Danielle Frimer
Eric ................................................................ Glenn Stott
OPPOSITE Radha and Krishna Embrace in a Bower, artist unknown, c. 1605
1
Susan Gibney as Flora Crewe and Art Malik as Nirad Das in A.CT.’s 1999 production of Indian Ink,
directed by Carey Perloff. Photo by Kevin Friedman.
Setting
1930s India, 1980s England, and 1980s India
Synopsis
It is 1930. A free-spirited young British poet named Flora Crewe has just arrived in
the native Indian state of Jummapur (a principality technically under the control of a
rajah, and not directly under British control) to give a lecture on literary life in London.
She is also in India to recuperate from illness, which she intends to keep a secret. We
cut back and forth between India in the 1930s, where Flora relates her experiences via
letters to her sister, Nell, and 1980s England, where Nell (now Mrs. Eleanor Swan) is
speaking with Eldon Pike, an American university professor specializing in the works
of Flora Crewe.
Pike and Eleanor sit together reading Flora’s letters from her time in India. As they
read her letters, we see the Flora of 1930 living out the events (some of which are not
related in the letters). Pike is now compiling a collection of Flora’s letters for publication
and asks Eleanor to tell him everything she knows about her sister, so that he can explain
the letters at length in his footnotes. Eleanor is not completely forthcoming with Pike
about the details of her sister’s life.
2
In the meantime, in a letter to Nell, Flora describes her first picnic in India
with the Theosophical Society. She has just met Nirad Das, an Indian artist who is
fascinated with London, especially the Bloomsbury Group and the Pre-Raphaelite
painters. They develop a rapport, and Das offers Flora a sketch that he drew of her
as she lectured. A line in one of Flora’s letters (“like Radha, the most beautiful of the
herdswomen, undressed for love in an empty house”) leads Pike to believe that Das
eventually painted a nude portrait of Flora. Eleanor dispels his notions by revealing a
non-nude portrait of Flora (by Das). While Pike is thrilled, he is intent to solve the
mystery of her time in India.
The scene switches back to Flora, who sits writing a poem while Das paints a
portrait of her. Flora chides Das for not being Indian enough; she views his behavior
as obsequious and “Englished-up.” Over time, they develop a deeper understanding
of each other’s intellectual tastes and temperaments. As we see the relationship
between Flora and Das develop, we cut to 1980s England, where Eleanor has made
the acquaintance of Anish, the son of Nirad Das. Anish is a painter who has settled in
England. He decided to find Eleanor after his father’s painting was reproduced on the
cover of Pike’s Collected Letters (marked “unknown artist”). As Anish and Eleanor get
acquainted, we discover that Nirad Das was imprisoned for participating in a protest
against the British Raj during Empire Day celebrations in Jummapur—shortly after
Flora visited India. Anish and Eleanor discuss India’s imperial history, disagreeing on
the meaning of key historical events. All the same, they establish a friendship based
on remembering the lives of Anish’s father and Eleanor’s sister. The mystery of Flora’s
time in India slowly unravels as Anish and Eleanor speak further about their own lives.
As Flora continues to sit for Das, they talk about everything from Das’s love for
English (and its ironic role in making possible the growing nationalist movement
in India) to the fact that Flora once sat for the painter Modigliani. In the midst of
their time together, Captain David Durance, from the British residency, rides up on
horseback to Flora’s bungalow to see if she has settled in comfortably. He then invites
her to dinner and dancing at the British high-society club on Saturday night.
When Flora and Das meet again, the heat has put her in an ill temper and him
in a state of frustration over his painting. Das believes Flora hasn’t said anything to
him about it because she is not pleased with it. She accuses him of not being enough
of a true artist to stand by his work regardless of its reception, and he is both furious
and ashamed. He threatens to leave with the canvas, and they struggle over it until
Flora collapses, gasping for breath. Das helps her to a chair, and she admits to him
that her “lungs are bad.” After she climbs into bed, she asks Das if he would prefer to
paint her nude, in the Indian style, as that might have more rasa, a central aspect of
Indian aesthetics that emphasizes the emotional state aroused in a viewer by a work of
art. Das had previously explained to Flora the elements of shringara, the rasa of erotic
love: a lover and his beloved one, the moon, the scent of sandalwood, and being in an
empty house. Flora reveals her “scandalous” reputation as a poet who writes about sex.
She also implores Das to be more of an “Indian artist.” He protests passionately that
3
Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2014 production of Indian Ink, directed by Carey Perloff. Photo by
Joan Marcus.
the British Empire has exploited India and all but destroyed Indian art; how can he be
an Indian artist when there is no such thing as authentic Indian art anymore? He talks
to her about his Rajasthani tradition of narrative art, which often depicts the Hindu tale
of Krishna and Radha’s romance. Flora is intrigued by the overt sensuality of the story.
Meanwhile, in 1980s England, Anish is moved to tears by a painting Eleanor shows
him: his father’s initial oil portrait of Flora, which Anish confirms is unfinished. Anish
suggests that his father abandoned this portrait in order to paint a nude watercolor
instead. He then produces this watercolor from his briefcase. Eleanor is shocked but
confirms that the model is indeed Flora.
At the beginning of Act II, Flora is dancing at the club, an exclusive space for British
people in India, with Durance. She is disturbed to discover that others at the club know
she is in India because of her health. She asks Durance how they found out about
her illness, and he implies that Das must have told them. She refuses to believe this.
Durance reveals that he is in love with Flora, but she gently rejects him.
In the meantime, Pike has traveled to Jummapur to collect information about Flora
and the mysterious Indian artist who painted her portrait. With the help of a young
assistant, Dilip, he discovers Das’s name. Pike goes to the Jummapur Palace Hotel,
4
which was once the Rajah of Jummapur’s residence. He meets the Rajah’s grandson, a
politician who recalls that the Rajah gave Flora a priceless 1790 nude watercolor of a
scene from the Gita govinda (an epic poem that details the love story of Krishna and
Radha). Pike is almost certain that the nude watercolor was actually of Flora, and that
it was painted by Das. He suggests that the two had an intimate relationship, which
Dilip rejects.
We also see Flora’s 1930 meeting with the Rajah of Jummapur. He offers to show
her his art collection, and she asks to see all of it, even the erotic miniatures he wouldn’t
normally show to a Western woman. In 1980s England, Eleanor and Anish are in
Eleanor’s garden looking at two paintings: the nude watercolor by Das, and the Gita
govinda watercolor from the Rajah (which Eleanor found in Flora’s suitcase). Eleanor
reveals that she chose not to tell Pike about the Rajah’s gift because “he’s not family.” As
Anish examines Das’s nude watercolor, he notes the symbols in the painting and asserts
that it was “painted with love”; Eleanor disagrees with his interpretations.
We come to the final meeting between Das and Flora. We learn that the Theosophical
Society has been suspended because of riots (presumably, by the Indians against the
British) in town. Das tells Flora he can’t paint her the next day, and she says that she
is leaving in the morning to go to the hills and will be journeying back to England
afterwards, as her sister, Nell, is pregnant. Flora confronts Das, asking him whether he
told others that she is ill. He assures her that the information was probably disclosed in
her letter of introduction sent from England, which would have been opened by British
officials. She is embarrassed that she could accuse Das of such betrayal. As a token of
his appreciation, he gives her the unfinished portrait he began in their early meetings.
The electricity goes out; in the moonlight, Das reveals another portrait, the small nude
watercolor of Flora on which he has been working. The moonlight clouds to darkness
and they stand together. Flora is heard reading an erotic poem.
In a letter to her sister, Flora subtly implies having made love with someone. Pike
reads the letter and writes in his footnote that the “someone” was probably Durance.
Eleanor and Anish discuss the mysterious “someone” in Flora’s poem but come to no
final conclusions.
The scene shifts to Eleanor’s younger self (Nell) in 1931, visiting Flora’s grave in
India. Flora died June 10, 1930, shortly after she left Jummapur. Nell had just given
birth to a baby who died, which is why it took her so long to visit her sister’s grave. Eric
Swan, the man who escorts Nell to the gravesite, will later become her husband.
After this revelation, the play ends with Flora toward the end of her travels in India,
finishing a letter to Nell. Flora is in light spirits and says that she feels happy about her
time in Jummapur. She likens herself to Radha, “the most beautiful of the herdswomen,
undressed for love in an empty house.”
5
Tom Stoppard and the
Inspiration behind Indian Ink
By Shannon Stockwell
Tomáš Straüssler was born in 1937 in Czechoslovakia, and he arrived in India as a
refugee when he was four years old. He lived there from 1942 to 1946, and he learned
English while attending a school in Darjeeling run by American Methodists. While in
India, his mother met Kenneth Stoppard, a major in the British Army, who brought the
whole family back to his home in Derbyshire, England. His mother and Major Stoppard
married, and Tomáš adopted the name he uses today.
Stoppard did not enjoy school and dropped out when he was 17, taking a job at the
Western Daily Press, a newspaper in Bristol. He hoped to pursue a career in journalism,
but while working as a critic, he fell in love with the theater. His first play, A Walk on the
Water, introduced him to the agent Kenneth Ewing, who provided Stoppard with the
inspiration for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
The National Theatre in London produced Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at
the Old Vic in 1967, and later that same year, the play moved to Broadway. The reviews
were overwhelmingly positive, and the production won the Tony Award for Best Play.
Stoppard was just 27 years old.
Since the success of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Stoppard continues to be an
astoundingly prolific playwright with a flair for intellectual themes and witty dialogue.
In 1972, shortly after the premiere of The Real Inspector Hound, he explained in an
interview with Mel Gussow:
I suddenly worked this out: I write plays because writing dialogue is the
only respectable way of contradicting yourself. I’m the kind of person who
embarks on an endless leapfrog down the great moral issues. I put a position,
rebut it, refute the rebuttal, and rebut the refutation. Forever. Endlessly.
Stoppard began writing In the Native State as a radio play, which was commissioned
by the BBC. “I had this tiny notion that I could write a conversation between a poet
and a painter,” he remembered in a 1995 interview, again with Gussow. “While the poet
was having her portrait painted, she would be writing a poem about having her portrait
painted. There would be this circular situation. That’s all I had. And not necessarily in
India.”
6
Although the seminal image for the play didn’t contain India, the country was always
in Stoppard’s mind. “I had only been thinking about [India] in the general sense of using
what I’ve got,” he said. “I’ve got India. It feels that one should be using it sometime
sooner or later.”
In another interview, he said that he wanted to write about “the ethics of empire.”
Whichever came first, the two ideas—empire and the circular relationship between
painter and poet—coalesced in In the Native State, which aired in April 1991 and starred
Felicity Kendal as Flora Crewe.
Next, Stoppard adapted the play for the stage, and Indian Ink premiered in London
at the Aldwych Theatre in February 1995. Indian Ink is often called Stoppard’s most
romantic play, its warmth a stark contrast to the intellectual debates that typically mark
his work. He agrees with this sentiment: “One of the things that is nice about working
on Indian Ink: there are no villains in it. It’s a very cozy play in many ways. . . . I really
enjoy its lack of radical fierceness.”
SOURCES Paul Delaney, Tom Stoppard in Conversation (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan
Press, 1994); Mel Gussow, Conversations with Stoppard (New York: Proscenium Publishers Inc., 1995);
Josephine Lee, “In the Native State and Indian Ink,” The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard, ed.
Katherine E. Kelly (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Dan Rubin, “A Brief Biography
of Tom Stoppard,” Words on Plays: Arcadia (San Francisco: American Conservatory Theater, 2013)
Stoppard at A.C.T.
Tom Stoppard has been a favorite with A.C.T. audiences since the company’s early
years in San Francisco. He once joked, “I am the house playwright!”
1969–72 Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
1974
Jumpers
1977
Travesties
1978
Travesties, revival
1981
Night and Day
1987
The Real Thing
1990
Hapgood
1995
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
1995
Arcadia
1999
Indian Ink (U.S. premiere)
2000 The Invention of Love (U.S. premiere)
2002
Night and Day
2004
The Real Thing
2006
Travesties
2008
Rock ’n’ Roll
2013
Arcadia
7
Indian Ink in a Different Key
A Dialogue between Carey Perloff and Tom Stoppard
One of the joys of working with Tom Stoppard is that he refuses to see his plays as
untouchable objects. He is much more interested in the relationship of each play to the
moment in which it is produced and fully understands that the “event” of producing a
play is an endlessly iterative one that must take into account the environment in which
it is produced, the design and the company collaborating on it, and the state of the
culture at large.
When we were invited by Roundabout Theatre Company in New York to revisit our
1999 A.C.T. production of Indian Ink, the first thing Tom and I did was sit down at
his dining room table in London for a day and slowly work through the play again. We
had three objectives. One was to make some cuts, since Indian Ink is a long play and
audience attention spans have decreased in the 15 years since its premiere. The second
was to clarify some thorny plot points revolving around the three mysterious paintings
in the play. The third was to re-examine the ending, with which we both felt vaguely
dissatisfied the first time around. (The final moment of the play reverted to a quote from
a nineteenth-century Englishwoman traveling in India, and while the quote had wit and
political relevance, it didn’t help complete the arc of the beautiful love story between
Nirad Das and Flora Crewe.)
This production differs markedly from my first production of the play, because at
Roundabout we were in a much smaller space with no capabilities to fly or move scenery.
We had to come up with a much simpler and more fluid way to tell the story visually.
Indeed, on the first preview we restaged the entire beginning of the play, choosing
to begin with Eleanor alone onstage reading one of Flora’s letters, because we had
discovered that the scenery lent itself better to that structure. We also found more artful
ways for the lighting and sound design to indicate place, so that we didn’t have to worry
about switching back and forth from India to England in any literal way. The result of
all of these elements is a more romantic and mysterious piece of work.
It’s always a gamble to revisit something that you have loved, but it’s also a great
gift, because you can take the work you’ve done and build upon it, learning from your
previous experience. In the case of Indian Ink, the world has changed enormously since
1999, and the questions the play raises about cultural collision and colonialism are more
germane than ever. The play feels very alive to us upon revisiting it, and this has proved
to be true for audiences, as well.
—Carey Perloff
8
The following exchange is from a telephone conversation that took place between Carey Perloff
and Tom Stoppard on October 20, 2014.
Perloff: Let’s talk about when we first knew we were going to do Indian Ink again,
what we remember from doing it 15 years ago in San Francisco, and what we felt we
wanted to revisit.
Stoppard: I remember it very well 15 years ago, and I remember it visually. My
absolute first thought about approaching the script was: I couldn’t understand how one
was going to design it. But somehow you managed to crack that one, so that was all very
reassuring! I’m sure this is probably in hindsight, but I think of it as being a trouble-free
experience in my life. I remember being at the tech rehearsal and loving the way it felt
and looked and sounded. As usual, I felt that the play was slightly longer than it ought
to be. I’m afraid I probably felt that in London and San Francisco and everywhere else.
Perloff: So then, 15 years later, we sat down together at the table and reworked the
play. We made cuts, reordered, and worked on the ending.
Stoppard: Let’s start with the last one. I’d always felt conflicted about the ending of
Indian Ink. On the one hand, I loved quoting Emily Eden, because it contextualizes the
story of Flora Crewe historically. And I thought that was welcome and desirable. The
British had been in India a long time and also had this disaster in Afghanistan, when
the British interfered in Afghan internal affairs in the nineteenth century much to their
own detriment, which turned out to be quite prescient in the contemporary age.
On the other hand, I always felt a loss in the sense that the last voice you heard in
the play was a recorded voice; although it was Flora’s voice, it didn’t feel right for the
actor to actually speak that long paragraph of Emily Eden. So it’s always been a bit of a
compromise, and in the end, I went along with it for the sake of that very last sentence,
Emily Eden’s quote: “I sometimes wonder they do not cut all our heads off and say
nothing more about it.”
When we got to New York all these years later, the idea was to not end the play
politically, but to end it emotionally and romantically. We tried to save the last sentence
of Emily Eden by giving it to Durance earlier; obviously, that sentence doesn’t carry any
real weight, because it was massaged into a scene where there are much more important
things at work. So I would say the thing with Emily Eden is unfinished business, and
around the year 2025, I’ll have to reconfigure it.
Perloff: On the whole, the response to the play in New York is more passionate than
it was here in 1999, and I think that’s because of this ending. The 1999 San Francisco
production ended with Flora sitting on the train in her traveling clothes and opening
up Emily Eden’s Up the Country. In this production, we don’t have to do any of that.
You decided that Flora would finish her own letter instead, but I remember you said
to me, “But where will she be?” As it turned out, she is in the graveyard, because that’s
9
Tom Stoppard and Carey Perloff, 2004. Photo by David M. Allen.
where the last scene is, with the younger Eleanor looking for Flora’s grave. That invited
a completely different kind of staging.
I remember the day in rehearsal when we discovered the staging of the ending:
Rosemary Harris was onstage as Eleanor, watching her younger self. And Anish was
still onstage with Eleanor. And then Pike was onstage, and I thought, let’s keep Pike
and Dilip onstage looking for the grave. I think this ending is so satisfying because
the audience gets to experience the ghosts of everyone that Flora has touched on this
journey. All of it comes back together in that one letter.
Stoppard: What’s interesting about the New York ending—and you shouldn’t be shy
about taking a bow for this—is that Eleanor and Flora share the stage for one long beat.
They’ve been isolated from each other by half a century.
Perloff: When we finished in San Francisco in 1999, Jean Stapleton, who played
Eleanor, said to me that her only regret was that the two sisters never got to play a scene
or be onstage together. So that was such a happy discovery, when Flora comes out and
begins her final letter, saying, “Darling, that’s all from Jummapur,” and Eleanor looks at
her—those two sisters can meet. That is worth a lot for an audience.
Stoppard: Are you going to keep the essential design in San Francisco?
10
Perloff: We’re going to keep the same structure. I think we found a solution to taking
the world of the play and making it fluid. At Roundabout, they said it was the least
amount of attrition they’ve had in a play, which is surprising, because the first act is long.
Stoppard: Attrition is code for people leaving?
Perloff: At intermission. They had almost no one leave.
Stoppard: What an interesting word. They should say “adhesion” to denote the people
who don’t leave!
Perloff: Adhesion is about 90 percent. We could put it that way. That’s better, right?
But I think people are staying because they’re not waiting for the scenery to move or
anything. It moves really fluidly and people love that.
Stoppard: I must say, it was a very good opportunity to actually carve away at the
script, partly because some of the lessons and allusions don’t really land in the United
States. I think the cuts were helpful. In fact, the more I think about it, I was under some
kind of delusion that the first act was going to be 80 minutes in the 1999 San Francisco
production, but in fact, it was 90 minutes. I’m glad it isn’t 90 minutes anymore!
Perloff: I don’t think we miss those cuts. We took out a lot of references and research
the play didn’t need. But then, there were a couple we found that we loved. We were
going to take out “Darling, I wouldn’t trust them to run the Hackney Empire,” but
instead we added one of Pike’s footnotes to explain what that was.
Stoppard: Altogether, although it took a while, it ended up as what we wished, a
relaunch of your original production in San Francisco. It could hardly have ended better.
Perloff: I feel really happy about where it is. I think the ending makes an enormous
difference in actually finishing the relationship between Flora and Das, which is so
complicated. I also think time has caught up with this play in a good way. Today, the
notion of cross-cultural love affairs, and the complexity with which colonized peoples
inevitably end up taking on the characteristics of their colonizers, are things we actually
know about. You were prescient there. In the 15 years since it was done, the relationship
between Flora and Das has become much more interesting and complex, because these
ideas are more in the world than they were then.
We should talk about how we solved the Gita govinda painting sequence.
Stoppard: I think that it’s going to be even better at The Geary.
Perloff: We spliced Eleanor and Anish, and Pike and the Rajah talking about the Gita
govinda letter. So now we know that Pike got it wrong—that he had originally been
right about there being a nude watercolor of Flora, but then he got it wrong when he
11
decided that the painting in the Rajah’s letter had to be the nude of Flora. I don’t think
audiences ever understood this the first time around.
Stoppard: I thought that Eleanor and Pike walking into the Rajah scene would be
helpful for the reasons you say, but it wasn’t. I wish we could have made it clear without
that. I thought it got slightly muddled; I felt that there was a small penalty to pay
because it broke the Rajah/Pike scene.
Perloff: Now that the actors have the rhythm of it, it works really well. What’s
amazing now is that you get to the end and nobody has lost the thread of tracking those
three paintings: the unfinished portrait of Flora by Das, the nude of Flora by Das, and
the Indian painting that was given to Flora by the Rajah.
Stoppard: That’s important.
Perloff: That tracking was one of our goals. We were worried about that potential
confusion.
You did one other thing that was really fun. Because you reordered the last four
scenes of the play, you emphasize the moment when Flora writes in a letter to her
sister, “Oh dear, guess what? You won’t approve. Quite right, darling. It’s definitely time
to go. Love ’em and leave ’em.” This now happens after the moonlight scene when
Flora says goodbye to Das, so we know the letter was about him. And then comes the
Durance scene. But that letter used to happen after the scene when Flora says goodbye
to Durance. The reordering is really fun, because we know the letter is probably about
Das, but Pike’s footnote contradicts this knowledge and tells us it was about Durance.
And then Anish asks Eleanor about the reference and says, “Well, surely you would have
approved of her having a relationship with Durance,” but Eleanor says, “No.” With this
reordering, you kept the mystery in the air.
Stoppard: Which raises the question for me: when and whether I should adjust the
text in the future.
Perloff: Isn’t it time for this play to have another London production? It seems to me
that we’ve learned so much about the play and what kind of space it fits into. I think if
there’s another reprinting, you should do a new text.
Stoppard: If there were a London revival, I would use this version as a useful occasion
for a new edition.
Perloff: I think this version is the discovery, and that’s why they’ve had such a great
run of it in New York. It’s your work in such a different key. People are so thrilled to
discover it, as if for the first time.
12
“Who, Whom”
A Brief History of the British Raj
By Shannon Stockwell
Who, whom. Nothing else counts. . . . It’s your country, and we’ve got it.
Everything else is bosh.
—Flora Crewe in Indian Ink, by Tom Stoppard
The Early Years
The sixteenth century was not Britain’s finest hour. In addition to the religious and
political infighting that marked the era, the country also suffered from a depressed
economy, crippling poverty, and virulent disease. But by the end of the century, Queen
Elizabeth I had imposed many reforms that improved the lives of middle- and upperclass Britons, and now that they had the means, they began to desire items of luxury.
India, on the other hand, was vibrant and wealthy, and to the British, everything in
this exotic land suggested grandeur. In 1600 Elizabeth chartered the British East India
Company to control all commerce between Britain and India.
At first, the East India Company was relatively benign. Despite their superficial
differences, the Indians and the British found that they had similar values, ranging
from an affinity for team sports to a penchant for rigid class structures. Many British
men moved to India permanently and raised families there. The British Empire saw the
colony as “the jewel in its crown,” its most-prized possession, and treated it as such. But
this amicability wouldn’t last. Charles II, Elizabeth’s successor, passed several laws that
gave the Company many rights without any responsibilities, and by the 1670s, it could
impose laws, create taxes, and conquer territories in Britain’s name. When the Company
first arrived, India was not a unified country, but by 1856, almost 70 percent of the land
was British territory.
The British had initially been attracted to the exotic beauty of India, but once they
began establishing permanent lives there, they felt the need to bring the comforts
of “civilization” to their new home. They built railroads, created postal and telegraph
services, and set up schools where Indians could be educated according to Western
standards. In 1835, English was enforced as the national language of India, a movement
spearheaded by Sir Thomas Babington Macaulay, whose goal was to create “a class of
13
A drawing of Indian rebels, Illustrated London News, 1858
persons Indian in colour and blood, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in
intellect . . . who may be interpreters between us and the millions we govern.” In fact,
these “improvements” did help the natives, though not necessarily in the way Britain
intended: the improved infrastructure and communications allowed Indians to share
their experiences and realize that they, and their culture, were being subjugated.
These tensions came to a violent head in 1857 when a group of sepoys (Indian
soldiers) rebelled against British rule. This resulted in a war (called the “Indian Mutiny,”
the “Great Rebellion,” or the “First War of Indian Independence”) that came to an end
in August 1858, when the rights of the East India Company were transferred to the
British crown via the Government of India Act. The government that emerged became
known as the British Raj (raj being Hindi for “rule”).
Under the structure of the Raj, about two-thirds of the region was officially
British territory, and a viceroy was appointed to oversee operations and act as a liaison
between Britain and India. The viceroy was assisted by the Indian Civil Service, a
small administrative elite composed almost entirely of British men until laws in the
twentieth century allowed for greater Indian participation. The remaining third of India
comprised over 600 “native states,” like Tom Stoppard’s fictional Jummapur, where
the Indian princes (like the Rajah in Indian Ink) could maintain their rule under the
condition that they keep a peaceful and cooperative relationship with Britain. Each
territory was appointed a British resident, who ensured the cooperation of the princes;
in Indian Ink, Durance works for the resident of Jummapur. These native states could
only exist if they did as the Raj instructed; thus, Indian princes who were intent on
preserving their power and indulgent lifestyles rarely questioned British authority.
14
The Hills: A Colonial Getaway
Like meat, we keep better here [in the hills].
—Up the Country, by Emily Eden
The gymkhana clubs and upper-crust dining societies of Indian Ink were mainstays of
the British Raj. Places to drink, socialize, play sports, and be with one’s countrymen
were vital in establishing the authority of the British colonial presence—especially
because they created a sense of spatial and social separation from the indigenous
culture.
One of the key elements of the British Raj was the hill station, a common vacation
spot and place of unofficial congregation among the British. The requirement for a
hill station was simple: a high elevation, preferably 6,000 to 7,500 feet above sea
level. These spaces were primarily envisioned as sanitaria where Europeans could
recover from illness and heat. For the British, who were accustomed to the moderate
maritime climate of their homeland, heat was an uncomfortable reminder of the hostile
environment of the tropics. Until the late nineteenth century, when new medicines were
developed, it was believed that, in the words of tropical medicine expert Sir James
Ranald Martin, “heat is in fact the great moving power of all other subordinate sources
of disease.” In these remote colonies, which nestled among Himalayan peaks like the
hamlets of the English countryside, expatriates found themselves in a climate and
culture reminiscent of the one they’d left behind.
Both the Indian and British cultural imagination have rendered a nostalgic view
of hill stations as elite hideaways where gallant soldiers, droll intellectuals, and bored
debutantes threw grand parties and gossiped about matters in India and at home.
Footpaths dotted with trees and flowers, fruit orchards and vegetable gardens, Tudor
cottages, Swiss chalets, and other distinctly European elements offered a change of
scene from the architecture and residences common across the subcontinent. Teas,
evening walks, picnics, balls, sporting events, theatrical spectacles, and other festivities
were important aspects of a colonial’s daily routine. This offered what historian Dane
Kennedy calls “isolated, exclusive milieus where sojourners could feel at home.”
Gender and age disparities were leveled here, creating an atmosphere not unlike
home. Hill stations were where the British women of the subcontinent came to birth
their children, where the children were schooled, where young men and women met
and married, and where visitors like Flora Crewe could recuperate from illness.
After World Wars I and II, Britain experienced a major loss of resources and
manpower. By the 1930s, when Flora would have arrived in the hills after her visit to
Jummapur, property values in these elite locations had sharply declined as the British
presence dropped. All the same, hill stations survived as holiday resorts for Indians,
as well as British people who decided to remain in the country after independence.
Although they are no longer symbols of British authority and segregation from the
massive Indian population, existing hill stations are a testament to their sustained
appeal among tourists seeking rest, relaxation, and respite from the heat.
SOURCES David Arnold, Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in NineteenthCentury India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and
Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and Their Critics, 1793–1905 (London, UK:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980); Pat Burr and Ray Desmond, Simla: A Hill Station in British India
(New York: Scribner’s, 1978); Pamela Kanwar, Imperial Simla (New Delhi, India: Oxford University
Press, 1990); Dane Kennedy, The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1996)
15
Over the next few decades, Britain’s investment and interest in India grew. In 1869
the Suez Canal opened, which cut through Egypt and made it possible for a ship to travel
between Britain and India in just three weeks. India became a prime vacation spot for
the British elite, while privileged Indians went to Britain for educational opportunities.
For the most part, the Raj’s imperialism was ideological rather than aggressive, but, as
historian Alex von Tunzelmann writes, “New generations were growing up with notions
of equality, democracy, citizenship, blind justice and fair play, only to discover that none
of these rights actually applied to them.”
Instead of resulting in outright war, as in the 1857 Rebellion, this increased
awareness led to the creation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and the All-India
Muslim League in 1906. In its early years, Congress was just an annual gathering of
those invested in India’s future. They strove to ensure that the Raj existed (as the British
claimed) to help India eventually achieve autonomy. However, Congress was largely
loyal to its country’s colonizers; as Congress member Achut Sitaran Sathe said during
a session in 1900, “The English renaissance has so far permeated the educated Indian
that it is no longer possible for him to be otherwise than loyal and affectionate towards
the rulers of his choice.”
The Birth of Nonviolent Resistance
When World War I broke out in 1914, some nationalists who wanted eventual
autonomy for India were especially enthusiastic about supporting the British war effort,
believing that passionate participation would prove their readiness for independence. By
the end of the war, over two million Indians had served overseas, more than any other
member of the British Empire. Not all nationalists were so cooperative, however, and
the British passed laws in order to prevent anti-Raj activity during wartime. When the
laws successfully discouraged potential uprisings, the Raj extended them after the war
was over.
The extension (known as the Rowlatt Bills) was announced in early 1919, when
India was recovering from a famine, the Spanish influenza epidemic, and a war-ravished
economy. In a country already on the precipice, the announcement of a law as restrictive
as the Rowlatt Bills was bound to cause protest. The leader in this particular case was
Mohandas Gandhi, a British-educated lawyer who had perfected a form of protest
called satyagraha, which historian Lawrence James defines as “a quality of the soul which
enables an individual to endure suffering for what he knew to be morally right.”
In response to the Rowlatt Bills, Gandhi called for a nationwide hartal (day of fasting
and prayer). The protest, which began at the end of March 1919, was meant to be
nonviolent, but riots broke out. The worst occurred in Amritsar, a city of 150 thousand
that burst into violence following the arrest of two protest organizers. British military
forces arrived in the city and immediately banned all public gatherings, but many
citizens did not hear the warning. About 15 to 20 thousand gathered the next day to
celebrate a religious festival at the Jallianwala Bagh, an enclosed area with only two exits.
16
Map of India in the 1930s
When British military forces heard that their ban was being disobeyed, they came to the
Bagh and, with no warning, opened fire. Official estimates say that 379 were killed and
1,500 more were wounded.
In response to the tragedy, Gandhi called off the hartals. The Amritsar Massacre was,
according to von Tunzelmann, “the most influential single incident in the radicalization
of Congress.” But in the years that followed, many Congress members decided to try to
work within the system. This led to a feeling of cooperation between Indian politicians
and the British government and, as James writes, “The Raj breathed again.”
Mounting Tensions
While the relationship between Britain and India was coldly cooperative following the
1919–22 riots, an internal rift was opening within Congress. The Muslim minority of
India knew they would never have equal representation in the democracy that Congress
17
wanted after independence, and the idea of a separate Muslim nation arose. The name
for this new nation was “Pakistan,” an acronym for the provinces that were to comprise
it: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan. Pakistan also translates to
“Land of the Pure” in Urdu. But many Hindu members of Congress felt that Pakistan
was a disastrous idea; a divided India would be unsustainable upon Britain’s departure.
Over the next 30 years, this disagreement over partition would propel the country into
religious violence.
In an attempt to heal the rift between Muslims and Hindus, Gandhi announced a
new satyagraha campaign against the British protesting the salt tax. Salt was a product of
the earth, and the fact that it was taxed symbolized the Raj’s intrusive nature. In March
1930, Gandhi, joined by thousands of Indians, marched to the sea and obtained his own
salt, bypassing the commercial salt industry altogether. It was a simple protest, and one
in which people of all ages, castes, and religions could get involved. The Salt March
brought international recognition to India’s struggle for independence, but if the point
was to unite all Indians in the face of a common enemy, the protests were not entirely
successful; Hindu-Muslim relations remained strained.
In 1920, a New York Times article stated: “British imperialism would be compelled
to evacuate Great Britain itself before it would willingly evacuate India.” But when the
decade proved to be full of mounting religious and political tension, the Raj realized the
jewel in its crown was becoming a liability. Both Indians and the British called for the end
of the Raj, but it would take more than 20 years for this to happen. The unwillingness
of both Hindu and Muslim politicians to compromise on the subject of partition
didn’t help speed things along; additionally, not all Britons were so willing to give up
India. Winston Churchill, who was soon to become Britain’s prime minister, dedicated
himself to preventing Indian independence, believing not only that Indians were unfit to
manage their own affairs, but that the colony was a central component of British identity.
“England, apart from her Empire in India, ceases forever to be a Great Power,” he said.
Along with internal conflicts in Indian politics, Churchill was one of the greatest external
roadblocks to India’s independence, fighting reforms every step of the way.
World War to Independence
Despite various difficulties, Britain granted India provincial autonomy in 1935, which
meant that some of India’s provinces made up an autonomous state whose government
the Raj could suspend at any time. But in 1939, Britain was forced to abandon the
Indian independence effort, instead turning its attention to the war brewing in Europe.
Again, Indians served in the British military, hoping that independence would follow.
The niceties surrounding wartime support did not translate into complacency, however.
In August 1942, Congress, led by British-educated lawyer Jawaharlal Nehru, passed the
“Quit India” resolution, which called for Britain’s immediate withdrawal and sanctioned
“a mass struggle on nonviolent lines under the inevitable leadership of Gandhiji.” In the
days following the resolution, the nonviolent hartals gave way to bloody rebellions all
over India, which Viceroy Lord Irwin called “the most serious since that of 1857.”
18
A drawing protesting the hasty departure of the British, by Chittaprosad Bhattacharya, c. 1947
There was no way the Quit India campaign could have been successful during the
war, but by the time the Allied Forces won in 1945, Britain realized it could no longer
afford to maintain the jewel in its crown. In the British elections following World War
II, a Labour Party victory removed Churchill from office. Parliament was primed to help
India achieve total independence.
This was easier said than done. A sizeable portion of the Indian population was now
calling for the creation of not just one, but two independent nations. Championed by
its president, British-educated lawyer Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the All-India Muslim
League demanded a partition of India with a separate state for the Muslim minority;
Congress, headed by Gandhi and Nehru, was intent on keeping the country united.
In 1946, Jinnah and Nehru attended a conference, held by the viceroy, to determine
the future of India. When a compromise could not be reached, Jinnah called for direct
action among his Muslim brethren. In Calcutta, a gathering of thousands supporting
Pakistan turned violent; for once, British military forces did not intervene, and around
five thousand people were killed over three days. The Calcutta riots shattered hopes for
a united India, but also instilled a sense of urgency on all sides. Britain appointed Lord
Mountbatten of Burma as viceroy and announced a deadline for Indian independence—
June 1948. Due to mounting violence and Mountbatten’s persuasion, Nehru and
Congress reluctantly accepted partition.
On June 3, 1947, the future of India was announced. Areas with a Hindu majority
would belong to India, and areas with a Muslim majority, to Pakistan. The exceptions
19
were the provinces of Bengal and the Punjab; the plan stipulated that these areas would
be divided in half. Careful thought should have gone into this division, but that was
impossible, because Mountbatten had just announced that the actual date of Indian
independence would be August 15, 1947—almost a year earlier than Britain had
originally stated. Except for Mountbatten, no other faction involved in the creation
of India and Pakistan felt that moving up the date of independence was a good idea.
The announcement intensified violence, especially in Bengal and the Punjab, provinces
where citizens still didn’t know what country they would belong to after August 15.
Despite mounting violence, Britain began bringing their troops home. Whatever
violence occurred, India would now have to deal with it alone.
Pakistan celebrated its independence on August 14 with Jinnah as its governorgeneral; Indians celebrated theirs, with Nehru as their prime minister, on August 15.
After the celebrations, Mountbatten finally revealed the new borders—which he had
been keeping secret so as to avoid protest—and chaos ensued as a total of 15 million
Indians migrated; an estimated one million died from violence and disease. Many
critics, then and now, blame Mountbatten for this massive and tragic loss of life; if
Britain’s retreat from India had not been so rushed, they say, India and Pakistan would
have had sufficient time to plan a peaceful migration. But some Britons felt that the
chaos following independence and partition was a sign that the British were indeed
the civilizing force they always thought they had been. India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
(known as East Pakistan until 1971) have remained plagued by religious violence since
partition, but it is impossible to tell whether this infighting would exist had the British
never colonized India.
Others have recalled the time of the British Raj with fond nostalgia—particularly
British women who, like Eleanor Swan in Indian Ink, lived in India for many years and
were all but forced to return home upon the Raj’s departure. As one British woman
living in India remembered, “We loved England dearly, and had longed all these years
for home, yet, faced with the uprooting, I found myself scared of leaving a way of life
that had grown so familiar.” After 1947 Britain saw an influx of Indian immigrants
in search of economic opportunities and refuge from civil war, but few Britons felt as
welcome in their former colony. Although some Europeans chose to remain in India
after independence, historian Margaret MacMillan writes, “Few of the women who
looked back on India with fond nostalgia wanted to return for even a short visit. Perhaps,
having been disillusioned with a homecoming once, they did not want to risk it again.
India, their India, was better in their memories.”
SOURCES Lawrence James, Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India (New York: St. Martin’s
Press, 1997); John Keay, India: A History (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2000); Margaret MacMillan,
Women of the Raj (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988); Alex von Tunzelmann, Indian Summer: The
Secret History of the End of an Empire (New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2007)
20
Placing the Jewel in the Crown
British Writers of the Raj Genre
By Nirmala Nataraj
Although the era of the British Raj ended over a half-century ago, its legacy lives on in
the literature of colonial and postcolonial India. Even now, English stands as the primary
language of educated Indians. The stories of such diaspora authors as Salman Rushdie
and V. S. Naipaul, as well as the works of British authors who developed the “Raj genre,”
which details the real and imagined daily affairs of British and Indian people under the
Empire, reveal the longstanding literary appeal of cross-cultural contact.
When Tom Stoppard wrote Indian Ink, he culled his information from sources as
varied as the works of Naipaul, Emily Eden’s letters, and E. M. Forster’s A Passage to
India. Stoppard’s interest in cultural and political differences is evident in some of his
other plays, such as Professional Foul, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, and Hapgood,
which are responses to the artistically and socially repressive Cold War politics of
Eastern Europe. Like many works devoted to the British Empire’s “jewel in the crown”
(a common term for colonized India), Stoppard’s play reflects on how cultural exchange
creates both the possibility of misunderstanding as well as new, more intimate ways of
relating to each other.
Flora and Das underline the manner in which English education, arts, and language
resulted in an uncomfortable indoctrination of European ideals among colonized Indians.
Das idealizes Thomas Macaulay (who scoffed at the notion of Indian education and
called for reforms that would create “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but
English in tastes, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect”) and is described as “the Indian
who loves all things English—literature and his references are English and he obviously
is in a kind of thrall to English culture.” Flora chastises Das for this, prompting him to
be “more Indian, not Englished-up and all over me like a Labrador and knocking things
off tables with your tail. . . . I want you to be with me as you would be if I were Indian”).
The British image of India was arguably informed by a similar desire for all things
Indian, evident in fantasies of Indian pageantry and exoticism. This preoccupation with
a romanticized culture holds true for the tens of thousands of literary works that address
the lives of the British in India.
21
Rudyard Kipling
Although the earliest books in the Raj genre were published in Britain in the late
eighteenth century, promoting the notion of India as a quaint exotic land, the works of
nineteenth-century author Rudyard Kipling are imprinted in the cultural consciousness
as definitive of the genre. Kipling, who was born in Bombay and worked as a journalist
in India during his adulthood, wrote a number of short stories and novels—but he is
most celebrated for his works set in India, which readers and critics considered authentic
accounts of British life in the colony. In 1888, Kipling’s Plain Tales from the Hills was
published, featuring stories encompassing the ennui and longing of British colonials in
the hill station of Simla. The book offered a fanciful and idealized picture of the summer
capital of the British Raj:
Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too
seriously—the midday sun always excepted. Too much work and too much
energy kill a man just as effectively as too much assorted vice or too much
drink. This is a slack, kutcha [imperfect] country where all men work with
imperfect instruments; and the wisest thing is to . . . escape as soon as ever
you can to some place where amusement is amusement and a reputation
worth the having.
While Kipling viewed himself as an author writing for the entertainment of the
British in India, his works quickly established him in the literary circles of nineteenthcentury London. His 1900 novel Kim, which details the life of a young white vagabond
on the streets of India, is a dense adventure story that sums up the lures and seductions
of the colony, presenting what The Oxford Companion to English Literature calls “a vivid
picture of India, its teeming populations, religions, and superstitions, and the life of the
bazaars and the road.” Kipling’s tendency to portray India as distant and unfamiliar is
especially pronounced in Kim, which is full of “Brahmins and chumars [untouchables],
bankers and bunnias [the merchant castes], pilgrims and potters—all the world coming
and going. It is to me a river from which I am withdrawn like a log after a flood.”
Kipling’s name has been tainted in current literary circles—George Orwell famously
wrote in 1947, “Kipling is a jingo imperialist; he is morally insensitive and aesthetically
disgusting”—but his Indian works influenced generations of British authors obsessed
with the country’s allures, contradictions, and dangers.
E. M. Forster
English novelist E. M. Forster is the author whose place in the canon of British Indian
literature is most celebrated and most contested. While A Passage to India (1924) is
lauded as a great work of literature, it is chided by Britons and Indians alike for its harsh,
often inaccurate, depictions of both groups. Although Forster’s book is written with an
air of authority, he only spent a year in India, causing critics to condemn his work as
22
“inauthentic.” However, during his visit, Forster spent the majority of his time among
Indians, particularly Muslims, and was the personal secretary of the maharajah of Dewas.
His experiences led him to develop portraits of his fellow countrymen and -women as
bullies, idiots, and shrews.
A Passage to India is about colonial relations and centers around Dr. Aziz, a young
Muslim doctor who comes to recognize his poor treatment at the hands of the British.
The book also features British characters who are exiles and outsiders, such as the
schoolmaster Fielding, the matron Mrs. Moore, and her young companion Adela
Quested, who wishes for an authentic experience of India. With the character of
Adela, Forster hints that British women are responsible for the rift between Indians
and Europeans. After Adela accuses Dr. Aziz of raping her during an expedition to the
Marabar Caves, Fielding chastises her for her prejudice: “The first time I saw you, you
were wanting to see India, not Indians, and it occurred to me: Ah, that won’t take us far.
Indians know whether they are liked or not—they cannot be fooled here.”
A Passage to India’s depiction of the subcontinent as an exotic yet hostile land is one
of the most poetic accounts of life under the Raj:
How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders
have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only
retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home.
India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world’s trouble, to its
uttermost depth. She calls “Come” through her hundred mouths, through
objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She
is not a promise, only an appeal. In India, the retreat is from the source of
life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it, because disillusionment
cannot be beautiful.
Stoppard was influenced by Forster while writing Indian Ink, especially in exploring
the struggles that opposing cultures face in overcoming prejudice. Flora and Das make
mention of A Passage to India, although their interpretations are markedly different:
FLORA: [You] reminded me of Dr. Aziz in Forster’s novel. Have you read
it? I kept wanting to kick him.
DAS: (offended) Oh . . .
FLORA: For not knowing his worth.
DAS: Then perhaps you didn’t finish it.
FLORA: Yes, perhaps. Does he improve?
DAS: He alters.
In fact, Dr. Aziz comes to hate the British. Forster deftly examines the subtleties
of British oppression, as well as the ways in which Indians mischaracterized their
colonizers. Because it is essentially a book about how identity is forged by difference, A
Passage to India is a biting testament to the words of novelist Paul Scott: “In India the
English stop being unconsciously English and become consciously English.”
23
Paul Scott
Stoppard on Writing India
Perhaps the most famous
contemporary example of the
[T]here’s almost nothing of my experience in
[Indian Ink], not even indirectly. On the other
Raj genre is Paul Scott’s epic
hand, India is the only empire country I would
tome, The Raj Quartet, which
want to write about in any way. I was there
offers romance, intrigue, and
between the age of four and eight and the
literary rigor in the same package.
country has always fascinated me. . . . [T]he
Written between 1965 and 1975,
difficulty, particularly in this decade by the
this masterpiece of postwar
way, is not to write Indians who sound like
Indians, which is hard enough, but to avoid
fiction was Scott’s attempt to
writing characters who appear to have already
“fight the awful literary-academic
appeared in The Jewel in the Crown and A
fixation on Kipling and Forster.”
Passage to India. I mean the whole Anglo-Indian
Scott’s novels weave together
World has been so raked over and presented and
a series of narratives that reveal
re-presented by quite a small company of actors
who appear in all of them . . . and so I mean
the fears, hopes, and desires of
there is this slight embarrassment about actually
the Indians and British in the
not really knowing much about how to write an
days preceding independence.
Indian character and really merely mimicking
Scott was most interested in the
the Indian characters in other people’s work.
embattled relationship between
Because my own memory of living in India
ruler and ruled. His first novel,
really hasn’t been that much help because my
conscious knowledge of how Indians speak and
The Jewel in the Crown, offers
behave has actually been derived from other
two parallel stories with tragic
people’s fictions.
endings: a young woman named
Daphne Manners falls in love
with an Indian man, Hari Kumar,
SOURCE Paul Delaney, ed., Tom Stoppard in
Conversation (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of
and is subsequently raped by a
Michigan Press, 1994)
group of Indians (echoing the
rape at the center of Forster’s A
Passage to India); and an older missionary woman, Edwina Crane, commits suicide after
concluding that her presence in India is ultimately meaningless and that she has no
power to effect change.
Although Scott’s novels, which were later turned into a BBC television series, explore the
personal lives of multiple characters, individual stories are secondary to what he described as
“the perpetually moving stream of history.” Scott’s work is absent of the nostalgic luster that
imbues most other novels of the genre; first and foremost, The Raj Quartet chronicles the
ways power and prejudice complicate the stories we record for posterity.
SOURCES Anjali Arondeker, “‘Too Fatally Present’: The Crisis of Anglo-Indian Literature” Colby
Quarterly 37 (2001): 2; Dinah Birch, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 7th edition
(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009); Alan Johnson, Out of Bounds: Anglo-Indian Literature
and the Geography of Displacement (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011); Shafquat Towheed,
ed., New Readings in the Literature of British India, c. 1780-1947 (Stuttgart, Germany: Ibidem Verlag, 2007)
24
Fictional Flora and Literary Life in
1920s London
Flora’s Brush with Theater
It was Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree who, soon after the Crewe family arrived
in London from Derbyshire, gave FC her first employment, fleetingly as
a cockney bystander in the original production of Pygmalion, and, after
objections from Mrs. Patrick Campbell, more permanently “in the office.”
It was this connection which brought FC into the orbit of Tree’s daughter
Iris and her friend Nancy Cunard, and thence to the Sitwells, and arguably
to the writing of poetry.
—Eldon Pike in Indian Ink, by Tom Stoppard
The famous actor-manager Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1853–1917) ran London’s
Haymarket Theatre for ten years before taking over management of Her Majesty’s
Theatre in 1897. Tree’s 1914 production of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion at Her
Majesty’s Theatre was one of the most successful theatrical productions of a new play
on the London stage in the early nineteenth century. The aristocratic Sitwell family
included the poets Edith (1887–1964) and Osbert (1892–1969) and their brother, the
critic and essayist Sacheverell (1897–1988). Two of Tree’s three daughters, Violet and
Iris, were active in Edith Sitwell’s circle of artistic friends. Poet Nancy Cunard was a
close friend of Edith in the early 1920s.
Orbiting the Sitwells
The Sitwell circle, prominent in the 1920s and 1930s, provided an alternative to the
famed Bloomsbury Group in matters of taste in literature, art, and music. In her
poetry, Edith Sitwell experimented with imagery and rhythm in an effort to achieve
the effects of music in verse. In 1916 Edith founded the literary journal Wheels, whose
contributors actively protested the rigidity of conservative society and the romanticism
of the Georgian poets. The Sitwells and their circle experimented with art and form.
Like Flora, Edith was painted and photographed in various poses, including traditional
25
Some of the major figures in the Bloomsbury Group, including (from left to right) Angelica Garnett,
Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, and Virginia Woolf. Harvard Theatre Collection.
death poses. The poetry of the Sitwells initially shocked readers, and for much of their
careers they were attacked by those they called “the philistines.” New Statesman editor
J. C. Squire, who accuses Flora Crewe of “posing as a poet” in Indian Ink, gave Wheels
very bad reviews. The Sitwells, however, were known for their vigorous counterattacks.
The Bloomsbury Group
Now, Mr. Coomaraswami, turning a phrase may do for Bloomsbury, but I
expect better of you.
—Flora Crewe in Indian Ink
The Bloomsbury Group (a circle of literary, artistic, and intellectual friends who met
at homes in and around the Bloomsbury district of London between 1907 and 1930)
was perhaps the most renowned London literary association during the early part
of the century. At the heart of the group were the sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia
Woolf. The group also included their husbands, art critic Clive Bell and journalist/
political essayist Leonard Woolf, as well as the novelist E. M. Forster, artist and critic
Roger Fry, economist John Maynard Keynes, poet Vita Sackville-West, and biographer
Lytton Strachey. Members discussed aesthetic and philosophical questions in a spirit of
26
agnosticism and were strongly influenced
by philosophers A. N. Whitehead and
Bertrand Russell. They held in common
a belief in the importance of personal
relationships, good taste, and the pursuit
of knowledge.
Heat
by H. D.
O wind,
rend open the heat,
cut apart the heat,
rend it to tatters.
Gertrude Stein and the Rue de Fleurus
Fruit cannot drop
through this thick air—
fruit cannot fall into heat
that presses up and blunts
the points of pears
and rounds the grapes.
Oh . . . yes, Gertrude Stein!—
and I can’t bring myself to say
she’s a poisonous old baggage who’s
travelling on a platform ticket. . .
—Flora Crewe
Cut the heat—
plough through it,
turning it on either side
of your path.
FC went to tea with Gertrude
Stein and her companion Alice B.
Toklas in Paris in 1922. The legend
that Stein threw her out of the
apartment because FC asked for the
recipe of Miss Toklas’s chocolate
cake cannot be trusted. FC did not
like chocolate in any form.
Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961) was born in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She dropped
out of Bryn Mawr College after failing
English. In 1911, H. D. (as she was
known) went to England to visit and
never returned to the United States
again. An early Imagist poet, she was
sometimes referred to as the “Goddess
of Imagism.” Among her friends were
Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams,
May Sarton, T. S. Eliot, and Elizabeth
Bowen.
—Eldon Pike
The Sitwell circle was known to visit
Gertrude Stein’s celebrated salon in the
rue de Fleurus, along with such wellknown figures as Pablo Picasso and Ernest
Hemingway; Edith Sitwell considered
Stein a genius and arranged for her to
lecture at Oxford. It seems, however, that Flora Crewe concurs with the assessment of
Virginia Woolf, who wrote to Roger Fry in 1925: “I cannot brisk myself up to deal with
[Stein]—whether her contortions are genuine and fruitful, or only such spasms as we
might all go through in sheer impatience at having to deal with English prose.” In 1933,
Stein published her best-selling Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Taking on the narrative
voice of her longtime companion, Stein wrote that she had known only three geniuses
in her life: Picasso, Alfred North Whitehead, and Gertrude Stein.
27
The Rasa Effect
Summoning a Felt Experience
By Anna Woodruff
Poetry is a sentence whose soul is rasa.
—Nirad Das in Indian Ink, by Tom Stoppard
Rasa is an aesthetic theory first developed by Hindu sages and artists around the
third century ce. The Sanskrit word literally translates to “taste” or “essence.” Aside
from describing the overall mood or flavor of a work of art, rasa refers to the unique
experience that arises from the relationships among audience, creator, and artwork. It is
distinct from Western aesthetic theory, which tends to focus on the primacy of the artist
in determining a work’s success. Aristotle’s Poetics, written around 335 bce, is perhaps
the best-known Western treatise on aesthetics, focusing on six key elements of tragedy:
plot, character, thought, diction, song, and spectacle. The first writings on rasa were
compiled in a treatise on the performing arts known as the Natya shastra, which was
written between 200 bce and 200 ce by the Hindu sage Bharata.
According to Bharata, only when the spectator has come in contact with the art does
rasa occur. It is helpful to think of three elements—art, creator, and spectator—working
together to create rasa. French Surrealist author and translator René Daumal wrote of
an equation essential to the creation of rasa: an observer capable of grasping and judging
a piece of art, combined with the power of representation, creates an equal sharing
between artist and spectator. The person observing the artwork is just as integral to rasa
as the one who created the artwork.
Rasa is rooted as much in the body as it is in the mind. Daumal noted that in rasa
theory, art speaks to a person through the stomach, throat, and head, in that order. The
stomach, where organic and biological reflexes take place, receives the timbre, intensity,
and gesture of the artwork. In other words, the audience has a “gut feeling.” In fact,
many treatises on rasa compare the act of viewing art to the act of eating: a chef can
follow the recipe exactly as written, but if the diner does not enjoy the food, it was not a
good meal. Rasa implies a similar relationship between artist and audience; if a spectator
doesn’t have an immediate visceral reaction, rasa does not exist in the art. In the Natya
shastra, Bharata describes the correlation between eating and rasa:
Because it is enjoyably tasted, it is called rasa. How does the enjoyment
come? Persons who eat prepared food mixed with different condiments and
28
sauces, if they are sensitive, enjoy the different tastes and then feel pleasure;
likewise, sensitive spectators, after enjoying the various emotions expressed
by the actors through words, gestures, and feelings feel pleasure.
Bharata explains that the ingredients that make up a savory dish are equivalent to the
primal emotions associated with observing a work of art. The final taste and experience
of a good meal are equivalent to the rasa in good art. Bharata delineates eight different
types of rasa:
shringara (erotic)
raudra (furious)
bibhatsa (odious)
hasya (comic)
karuna (pathetic)
vira (heroic)
bhayanaka (terrible)
adbhuta (marvelous)
The tenth-century philosopher Abhinavagupta added a ninth rasa: shanta (quiescent).
Bharata associates rasa with eight primary emotions, or sthayibhavas: love, amusement,
sorrow, anger, dynamic energy, fear, disgust, and wonder. Because rasa is rooted in these
universal, elementary emotions, everyone is capable of experiencing rasa.
It’s crucial to note that feeling sad after reading a melancholy poem is not the same
as experiencing rasa, although such emotion helps give rise to the experience. In her
book Rasa: Performing the Divine in India, Susan L. Schwartz explains the relationship
between the sthayibhava and rasa: “the ultimate experience of rasa becomes accessible,
as described by Bharata, through the experience of emotion. . . . If that emotional
intensity is generated and processed as required, the refinement that leads to rasa is the
result.” The combination of the artist’s skilled production and the emotions inspired
in the spectator allows us to experience the transformation that “visibly and tastefully
occurs.” The transformation can’t be defined with words alone; this ineffable experience
is rasa. Achieving rasa is a complex task, as many poets and philosophers differ in their
ideas of how it can be done. Bharata and Abhinavagupta believed an artist achieves rasa
by intentionally infusing their work with the sthayibhava. Moreover, rasa is generated
only when audiences experience emotions aroused by the art without their personal
experiences or ego-driven perspectives getting in the way. For example, the spectator’s
ability to deeply feel emotions that aren’t necessarily tied to her personal history is proof
that rasa has been evoked.
The primary rasa of the three paintings described in Indian Ink is shringara,
associated with eroticism. Shringara translates to “love” or “beauty,” and although the
erotic is the most common depiction of this rasa, art, culture, good taste, and the love
between mother and child are all elements that help to evoke shringara. It is paired
with the hue shyama (blue-black). Krishna, the incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, is
associated with shringara and is famously depicted with blue skin.
Das explains shringara by quoting the twentieth-century Hindu master of poetics,
Viswanatha: “Shringara requires, naturally, a lover and his loved one, who may be a
courtesan if she is sincerely enamoured, and it is aroused by, for example, the moon,
the scent of sandalwood, or being in an empty house.” The lover and the loved one
symbolize the participants of rasa: the performer and the spectator. In both art and
lovemaking, the two must work together to achieve shringara.
29
Krishna and Radha Lie in a Bower, artist unknown, c. 1750
One of the key elements of rasa is the act of sharing between artist and spectator.
Tom Stoppard has said that in writing Indian Ink, he wanted to “write a conversation
between a poet and a painter. While the poet was having her portrait painted, she
would be writing a poem about having her portrait painted. There would be this circular
situation.” At first, the relationship between Flora and Das is marked by an intellectual
exchange of ideas inspired by their differences. Then, Das shows her the watercolor
nude he painted.
FLORA: Yes. Shringara. The rasa of erotic love. Whose god is Vishnu.
DAS: Yes.
FLORA: Whose colour is blue-black.
DAS: Shyama. Yes.
FLORA: It seemed a strange colour for love.
DAS: Krishna was often painted shyama.
FLORA: Yes. I can see that now. It’s the colour he looked in the moonlight.
30
With much Indian art, viewers are encouraged to slow down and savor the details
and symbols of any given work so as to evoke the full experience of rasa. Flora’s
experience of rasa gradually transforms from an intellectual concept to a visceral
response. This deepens the relationship between Flora and Das and is expressed decades
later, in conversations between Anish and Eleanor about the three paintings in the play.
In teasing out the complexity of the play’s paintings and relationships, Indian Ink reveals
the power of rasa as a communion between artist and observer that is timeless and direct.
SOURCES Aristotle, Poetics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Bharata, The Nātya
Śāstra of Bharatamuni (New Delhi, India: Sri Satguru Publications, 1996); René Daumal, Rasa, or,
Knowledge of the Self: Essays on Indian Aesthetics and Selected Sanskrit Studies (New York:
New Directions, 1982); William G. Kirkwood, “Shiva’s Dance at Sundown: Implications of Indian
Aesthetics for Poetics and Rhetoric,” Text and Performance Quarterly 10:2 (2007); Richard Schechner,
“Rasaesthetics,” The Drama Review 45:3 (2001); Susan L. Schwartz, Rasa: Performing the Divine
in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); G. B. Mohan Thampi, “‘Rasa’ as Aesthetic
Experience,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 24:1 (1965)
31
The Flavor of Love and Pleasure
Shringara and the Legacy of Indian Erotic Art
By Nirmala Nataraj
The rasa of erotic love is called shringara. . . . Shringara requires, naturally, a
lover and his loved one, who may be a courtesan if she is sincerely enamoured,
and it is aroused by, for example, the moon, the scent of sandalwood, or being
in a empty house.
—Nirad Das in Indian Ink, by Tom Stoppard
In India the union of the male and female has become the symbol, from the
earliest times, for the union of all cosmic forces. . . . The concept of original
sin and sexual secretiveness never formed any part of the intense phases of
Indian culture.
—Mulk Raj Anand, historian
The painted caves of Ajanta, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, are among the great
marvels of ancient art. They were discovered in 1819 when a British hunting party
stumbled upon the stunning find deep in the mountain range of the Western Ghats.
There are 31 caves in total, dating back to the second century bce, that offer a visual
representation of the Jatakas (stories from the life of the Buddha). The cave paintings
within the rock-cut temples offer a resplendent array of scenes, from colorful images
of bodhisattvas (enlightened beings) to Indian pleasure gardens teeming with heavybreasted dancing women and nude courtesans.
Although the Ajanta caves were monasteries, the sensuality of the images within
them is not contradictory. Sensuality is often associated with growth, prosperity, and
auspiciousness in Hindu and Buddhist iconography. In fact, erotic symbolism could
be found in all strata of ancient Indian society, from the explicitly sensual sculptures of
Hindu temples to mundane objects such as the hair combs of royal women.
Erotic symbolism in Indian art cannot be viewed as a purely literal description of
human sexuality; rather, it is a vehicle meant to carry humans toward an experience of
the divine. Nowhere is this more evident than in shringara, the rasa (or essential mental
state that characterizes a work of art and a person’s experience of it) of love and erotic
passion. Shringara is the rasa that perhaps most defines the art of India. In the fifth
32
Erotic carving at the Khajuraho group of monuments in Madhya Pradesh, India
century bce, the poet sage Bharata wrote the Natya shastra, an iconic aesthetic text
that emphasizes shringara as the rasaraja (king of rasa)—unabashedly sensual and to
found in everything from lush poetry about the monsoon season to overt descriptions
of lovemaking.
Western Notions of Shringara
Indian erotic art derives inspiration from elements of nature associated with fecundity,
including flowers, gardens, and vibrant colors. In Indian Ink, Eleanor Swan characterizes
Das’s unfinished portrait of Flora as “fairly ghastly, like an Indian cinema poster.” When
Anish weeps at the vibrancy of his father’s work, Eleanor recognizes her faux pas. “It just
goes to show you, you need an eye. And your father, after all, was, like you, an Indian
painter. . . . No, I should not have been disparaging. I’m sorry.” Although Eleanor does
not understand rasa, she recognizes the aesthetic differences that place Indian art under
altogether different standards.
33
In Indian Ink, Stoppard hints at the nature of shringara with Flora’s poem: “Heat
collects and holds as a pearl at my throat, / lets go and slides like a tongue-tip down a
Modigliani, / spills into the delta, now in the salt-lick, / lost in the mangroves and in
the airless moisture, / a seed-pearl returning to the oyster.” Flora instinctively associates
the Indian landscape with her own creative and sexual freedom. When she learns of the
god Krishna’s love affair with the beautiful mortal herdswoman Radha, she asks, “Were
Krishna and Radha punished in the story?” Das replies, “What for?” and Flora archly
responds, “I should have come here years ago.”
Because Judeo-Christian religions view the body as little more than a shameful
obstacle to salvation, it’s no surprise that, while Flora is delighted, early British visitors
were shocked by the art they found in India. A male traveler in the eighteenth century
asserted: “The figures of Gods and Goddesses are shown in such obscene postures, that
it would puzzle the Covent Garden nymphs to imitate them.” Early European accounts
of Indian gods as anti-Christian demons, which were published throughout Europe
well before the advent of the British Empire, influenced travelers’ interpretations. The
British were especially scandalized by India’s temple monuments, where sculptural
reliefs focused on the female form. In his treatise on the Kama sutra, historian James
McConnachie describes these temples as the apogee of erotic art:
Twisting, broad-hipped, and high-breasted nymphs display their generously
contoured and bejeweled bodies on exquisitely worked exterior wall panels. . . .
Beside the heavenly nymphs are serried ranks of griffins, guardian deities, and,
most notoriously, extravagantly interlocked maithunas, or lovemaking couples.
Indian Miniature Painting
While the temples are perhaps the most stunning examples of sexual expression
in Indian erotic art, miniature paintings in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries offer vivid depictions of shringara. In Indian Ink, the Rajah of Jummapur gives
Flora an erotic watercolor taken from an eighteenth-century version of twelfth-century
poet Jayadeva’s acclaimed erotic poem, the Gita govinda. Das also offers Flora his own
nude portrait of her, derived from an older Rajasthani style. From Rajasthan to the hill
states, classical miniatures portrayed the erotic aspects of nature, depictions of courtly
life, and relationships between divine lovers such as Krishna and Radha.
The Kangra school of miniature painting in the state of Himachal Pradesh evoked
natural elements, placing the nayika (the romantic heroine, a central figure of Indian
erotic art) in a landscape that reflected the untamed nature of her longing. Such
paintings include elements such as tall bare trees, small houses in the distance, and lines
attenuated by dark shading to hint at nocturnal dalliances. Pools teem with lotus flowers,
peacocks on the roofs symbolize ardent lovers, and rain falls outside, suggesting fertility
and growth. Vines (usually symbolic of women) wind around tree trunks (symbolic
of men), revealing a world that is ripe with sensual pleasure. Miniaturists were highly
intentional with the symbolism of their work, offering intricate details that prompt
34
viewers to move beyond literal interpretations. This aspect of shringara is detailed in
Eleanor’s conversation with Anish as they examine Das’s nude portrait of Flora:
ANISH: [T]o us Hindus, everything is to be interpreted in the language of
symbols [. . .] the flowering vine. [. . .] Look where it sheds its leaves and
petals, they are falling to the ground. [. . .] This was painted with love. The
vine embraces the dark trunk of the tree.
ELEANOR: Now really, Mr. Das, sometimes a vine is only a vine. [. . .]
ANISH: Oh, but the symbolism!
While the Mughal school of miniature painting offered fewer erotic details, it reveled
in the same symbolic fluency as the Hindu styles. Some historians have claimed that the
arrival of Islam in medieval India led to the wholesale destruction of Hindu temples, but
there is no evidence that Islam adversely affected Hindu erotic art. In the eighteenth
century, explicit images of the Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah making love with
his mistresses were common. It wasn’t until the arrival of Christian missionaries in the
nineteenth century that obscenity laws banning the proliferation of erotic Indian art
came into play.
Claims of Obscenity
Many British scholars romanticized India; however, the country’s erotic art was believed
to be evidence of native depravity and inferiority. Missionary, ethnographic, scholarly,
and official policy discourse described Indian art and religion as barbaric and obscene.
Horace Hayman Wilson, a nineteenth-century English Orientalist who translated the
works of classical Sanskrit scholar and dramatist Kalidasa, disapproved of the blatant
glorification of love and sex in Hindu art and culture. Sir Edwin Arnold, who translated
the Gita govinda (containing perhaps the best-known version of the Krishna-Radha
story), decided to expunge the final canto in which the two lovers have sex—for the
sake of Western propriety.
In 1933 art historian Roger Fry objected to what he viewed as the primitive eroticism
of Indian art, not on moral grounds, but because it detracted from the overall aesthetic
effect:
A great deal of their art, even their religious art, is definitely pornographic
and . . . interferes with aesthetic considerations by interposing a strong
irrelevant interest which tends to distract both the artist and the spectator
from the essential purposes of art.
In the early 1900s, British interventionists attempted to do away with pornographic
literature in the form of books, pamphlets, magazines, postcards, pictures, and dimestore copies of the Kama sutra, but the underground Indian literary establishment
resisted these moves. Eighteenth-century Telugu poet and courtesan Muddupalani
wrote the erotic epic Radhika santwanan, in which Krishna’s consort Radha offers erotic
advice to a female friend. When the epic was republished in 1911, it was banned by
35
British authorities; it was considered especially shocking by virtue of being written by
a woman and positioning the nayika as the subject of desire who relates her amorous
exploits in unequivocal detail. Similar books revealed the rift between British concerns
of morality and the essential philosophy of shringara.
The Flavor of Shringara Today
The art offered by shringara reveals a worldview that is wildly different from Western
aesthetic tradition, which has been informed by intellectual notions of form and
geometry. The raison d’être of shringara offers a range of ways in which to approach
beauty, but it is seldom inextricable from sensuality. This has been met with ambivalence
in the last century. Even now, among Indians, there is denial about the role of eroticism
in premodern India—and perhaps, some embarrassment over the brazen works that have
shaped Western ideas about Indian art and culture. Among Hindus, there was a gradual
shift from the erotic, playful, sexually free nayika to the calm, chaste, and subdued
Hindu wife and mother. The moral code of the artistic canon took this turn in the 1900s,
when the rise of nationalism called for a cultural identity that the West would view as
decent, progressive, and modern. Hindu nationalists, including Mohandas Gandhi, were
in favor of an ennobled middle class worthy of a respect that the British had denied it.
Sensuality, passion, and emotion gave way to morality, purity, and sublimated sexuality.
A new movement at the crossroads of tradition and modernism, rural and urban
forms, and folk and classical art is likely to define future discourse around shringara.
The twentieth-century Progressive Artists’ Group melded Post-Impressionism, Cubism,
Expressionism, and traditional Indian miniature painting into a new idiom reflecting
the complex influences shaping India’s culture. All the same, even among modern artists,
there seems to be an instinctive drive toward certain archetypal images: for instance,
Krishna and Radha taking cover under moonlight, relishing their passion without the
slightest hint of shame.
SOURCES Mulk Raj Anand, Kama Kala: Some Notes on the Philosophical Basis of Hindu Erotic Sculpture
(New York: Lyle Stuart, 1962); Brinda Bose and Subharata Bhattacharya, eds., The Phobic and the Erotic—
The Politics of Sexualities in Contemporary India (London, UK: Seagull Books, 2007); Shyamala Gupta, Art,
Beauty and Creativity: Indian and Western Aesthetics (New Delhi, India: D. K. Printworld, 1999); Katherine E.
Kelly, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001);
Prafulla K. Mishra, Ethics, Erotics and Aesthetics (New Delhi, India: Pratibha Prakashan, 2004); Partha Mitter,
Much Maligned Monsters: A History of European Reactions to Indian Art (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 1977); Susan L. Schwartz, Rasa: Performing the Divine in India (New York: Columbia University Press,
2004); Bernard Soulie, Tantra: Erotic Figures in Indian Art (London, UK: Miller Graphics, 1982)
36
Narrative Art in Indian Ink
A Communion between Poetry and Painting
By Anna Woodruff
Our art is narrative art, stories from the legends and romances. The English
painters had the Bible and Shakespeare, King Arthur. . . . We had the
Bhagavata purana, and the Rasikpriya.
—Nirad Das in Indian Ink, by Tom Stoppard
The Gita Govinda
In Indian Ink, the Rajah gives Flora a miniature painting of a scene from the Gita
govinda, an epic love poem written by Jayadeva in the twelfth century. The poem
chronicles the love story of the god Krishna and a mortal milkmaid named Radha,
whom Flora describes as “the most beautiful of the herdswomen.” Prior to the Gita
govinda, Radha was rarely mentioned in Indian literature, and Jayadeva’s source material
is unknown. But due to the widespread popularity of the Gita govinda, Radha became
an essential figure in Hindu mythology. In giving all her love to Krishna, she represents
the ultimate dedication to God—a dedication that transcends human morality. Later
Indian poets influenced by Jayadeva depicted Radha as a married woman who was so
devoted to Krishna that she openly broke social norms. While their love is exalted, the
primary emotion of the Gita govinda is longing following separation, which sums up the
Krishna-Radha relationship.
The poem opens by introducing the author Jayadeva, who “divines the pure design
of words.” Jayadeva then launches into the love story of Radha and Krishna. Radha
sees Krishna for the first time and falls in love, and Krishna seduces her. Radha is one
of many women loved by Krishna, but it is known among all the others in the village
of Vrindavan (where the story is set) that their love is strongest. Despite this, Radha
becomes jealous when she sees Hari (an affectionate nickname for Krishna) with the
other herdswomen:
Tender buds bloom into laughter as creatures abandon modesty.
Cactus spikes pierce the sky to wound deserted lovers.
When spring’s mood is rich, Hari roams here
To dance with young women, friend—
A cruel time for deserted lovers.
37
Krishna Woos Radha, artist unknown, 1780
Scents of twining creepers mingle with perfumes of fresh garlands.
Intimate bonds with young things bewilder even hermit hearts.
When spring’s mood is rich, Hari roams here
To dance with young women, friend—
A cruel time for deserted lovers.
The story alternates between the lovers’ separation and consummation of their love.
Jayadeva uses the narrative device of an unknown friend (presumably, one of Radha’s
female companions), who tries to soften Radha’s heart and make Krishna more faithful
to Radha. The story ends with one final union between the two lovers; when Radha sees
Krishna’s face, her pride falls and they make love.
Telling a Story through Visual Art
The classic tale of Krishna and Radha’s romance has been a common motif in Indian
art and poetry. It is a portrait of one of the greatest loves of all time, yet it transcends
earthly desires. Their bond of heart, mind, and body is a metaphor for connection with
the divine. Making love to Krishna, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, was equivalent
to making love to the deity. These ideas compelled artists to recreate the songs of the
Gita govinda in Rajput-style painting, which was developed in Indian royal courts of
Rajputana in the sixteenth century. Rajput painting mainly focused on mythical subjects
from epic poems like the Gita govinda, the Ramayana, and the Mahabharata.
38
Indian Ink explores not only the traditions of Eastern narrative art, but also the
relationship between storytelling and art in Europe. Das admires the Pre-Raphaelite
Brotherhood’s artistic movement, which began in 1848 in Britain. Painters like Dante
Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt were inspired by
poetry, literature, and mythology—especially biblical scripture, ancient Greek and
Roman texts, and Shakespeare. Many Pre-Raphaelite paintings introduced human
elements to the depiction of sacred figures in literature and religion. The movement
was controversial among critics at the time, as the Pre-Raphaelites painted sacred icons
in realistic, lifelike ways. Charles Dickens was particularly vocal about John Millais’s
painting Christ in the House of His Parents, which revealed a more realistic portrayal of
Christ and his family than the usual idealized representations. Millais used Rossetti’s
sister, poet Christina Rossetti, as a model for Mary. Dickens described Millais’s Mary
as “so horrible in her ugliness that (supposing it were possible for any human creature
to exist for a moment with that dislocated throat) she would stand out from the rest of
the company as a monster in the vilest cabaret in France or in the lowest gin-shop in
England.”
Both Rajput and Pre-Raphaelite painters used women, usually their own love interests,
as their models for sacred icons. Although this practice was standard in India, Dickens
condemned it as “mean, odious, repulsive, and revolting” in Western art and literature.
39
The Artist’s Model
Many
Rajput
and
PreRaphaelite models represented
famous characters in literature
and mythology, such as Radha,
Ophelia,
and
Persephone.
Rossetti herself modeled for
many Pre-Raphaelite paintings.
In addition to Christ in the House
of His Parents, she also sat for
her brother’s painting Ecce ancilla
domini and many other portraits.
Additionally, she contributed
to the movement by writing
poetry. Rossetti’s poem “In the
Artist’s Studio” describes the
inherent passivity of posing for
an artist. This is echoed in Flora’s
ambivalence about being painted
by Modigliani. She tells Das: “He
painted his friends clothed. For
nudes he used models. I believe
Ecce ancilla domini, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1849
I was his friend. But perhaps not.
Perhaps a used model only.”
Most models of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were viewed as passive objects
of inspiration rather than active creative agents, but their presence was still important.
Scholar Jan Marsh states in Pre-Raphaelite Women: Images of Femininity: “As artists, the
women were less clearly successful than the male Pre-Raphaelite painters. As images,
however, they dominate the scene.”
In Indian Ink, Flora transcends the typical role of the model in nineteenth- and
twentieth-century artwork. When Das paints Flora, he does so in the Indian style, per
her request, but maintains her English identity. Her last lines comment on her role as
an artist and a model: “Perhaps my soul will stay behind as a smudge of paint on paper,
as if I’d always been here, like Radha who was the most beautiful of the herdswomen,
undressed for love in an empty house.”
SOURCES W. G. Archer, The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry (London, UK: Allen &
Unwin, 1957); Jayadeva, Gitagovinda of Jayadeva: Love Song of the Dark Lord, ed. Barbara Stoler
Miller (New Delhi, India: Mortilal Banarsidass, 1984); Steven Kossak, “Indian Court Painting, 16th–19th
Century | The Metropolitan Museum of Art” (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1997); Jan
Marsh, Pre-Raphaelite Women: Images of Femininity (New York: Harmony Press, 1988); Christina
Georgina Rossetti, Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993)
40
Art and Swadeshi
In 1904, Viceroy Lord Curzon awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind (Emperor of India) Medal for
Public Service in India to artist Ravi Varma (1848–1906), in recognition of his service
to the advancement of the British Empire. Varma’s paintings, perhaps similar to
Das’s in Indian Ink, present characters from Indian myths with a European aesthetic.
This appealed to the British, who wanted their Indian art to be both “exotic” and
“authentic” without sacrificing what they viewed as “proper” style in terms of
proportion and lighting.
Art is not created in a vacuum, however. Through the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, British institutions of education increased Indians’ awareness
of their own subjugation, and artists sought a way to assert their cultural identity
in the face of homogenization. Gandhi’s philosophy of swadeshi emphasized the
importance of Indian self-sufficiency, and art was no exception. The practice of
swadeshi was particularly strong in the province of Bengal, where Indian artist
Abanindranath Tagore and British art teacher Ernest Binfield Havell spearheaded
what art historian Partha Mitter deems “the first modern art movement in India.” The
work of the Bengal School, as it came to be known, departed from Western ideals
and instead trained an eye upon India’s history of artistic traditions.
Tagore took inspiration from the Mughal miniature paintings of the sixteenth
century, particularly in his choice of subject matter and the way he painted people.
He was also influenced by other Asian art and utilized Japanese wash techniques to
give his paintings a soft atmosphere. Tagore’s disciples created similar works of art.
The themes and scenes in these works included, according to the National Gallery
of Art in India, “misty and romantic visions of the Indian landscape, historical scenes
and portraits as well as anecdotes and incidents from daily life in the countryside.”
The Bengal School’s influence reached well into the 1920s and 1930s, but
eventually Indian modern art took a different turn. In the 1940s, Bengal suffered
a terrible famine in the midst of the other traumas of World War II, and artists in
Calcutta began to reject the romanticism and idealism to which the Bengal School
was devoted. In their words, “Our art cannot progress or develop if we always look
back to our past glories and cling to our old traditions at all costs.” Instead, they
sought a visual language that could reflect the urban chaos that was their reality.
During the British Raj, Indian artists couldn’t help but be political. Even if it was
not their intent, the style in which they chose to paint reflected either acceptance or
rejection of the colonial aesthetic, and thus, of the British Empire.
SOURCES Sanjoy Mallik, “The ‘Calcutta Group’ (1943–1953),” http://www.theotherspaces.
com/Papers/5/default.aspx; Partha Mitter, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1850–1922:
Occidental Orientations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Partha Mitter,
“Art and Nationalism in India,” British Empire, http://www.britishempire.co.uk/maproom/india/
artandnationalism.htm; National Gallery of Modern Art, “Bengal School,” http://ngmaindia.gov.
in/sh-bengal.asp
41
Dreaming in Color
An Interview with Costume Designer Candice Donnelly
By Shannon Stockwell
From the many hues of rasa to the festival of colors known as Holi, Indian culture is
marked by a love for vibrancy that is truly ancient. For a play set in India, especially one
centered around poetry and art, the visual design vocabulary is of the utmost importance.
A.C.T.’s production of Indian Ink is in the capable hands of costume designer Candice
Donnelly, whose work has brought her to almost every corner of the world, from
Broadway to Buenos Aires to Hong Kong. Previously at A.C.T., she has created costume
designs for Elektra, Endgame and Play, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, The Circle, and Happy End.
We spoke with Donnelly to find out what is behind her costume design and how she
created the visual world of Indian Ink.
What appeals to you artistically about Indian Ink?
I think it’s a beautiful, magical play. It’s a memory play, in a way. It’s about a woman
from another era who is an extraordinary person, and you’re seeing her through the eyes
of her younger sister. The play has an elusive quality regarding the essence of somebody
who’s not here anymore, but the characters are trying to recapture that essence in
many different ways. That’s probably why Flora’s dresses are so wispy, made of very
light chiffons. They’re very dreamy. I didn’t do that intentionally, but I think I did it
subconsciously.
The colors of the costumes are striking, which reminds me of the different colors of rasa
discussed in the play. What was the process of choosing the color palette?
It had to do with rasa. It also had to do with the set, which is blue. I liked the idea of
contrast and having Flora be part of that. India is a very colorful place. Even though
Flora is not necessarily a part of India, in some ways she is, because she dies there. Her
rasa ends up living there. Having Flora wear vibrant colors seemed right.
Are the costumes of the Indian characters equally as colorful?
They are. [Acclaimed fashion journalist and editor] Diana Vreeland once said, “Pink is
the navy blue of India.” So I had to put that color in; the 1930s Rajah wears a hot pink
Indian coat. I have been to India, and it’s very vivid in so many ways. You do see that
42
hot pink a lot, and you see people wearing
saris in that color, working in the fields. It’s
endemic to the country, and that’s part of
what makes it so beautiful. Indians are truly
in love with color.
In addition to your trip to India, what other
research did you do?
I found a lot of old black-and-white photos
on someone’s Flickr account. They are from
the 1930s and feature a combination of Brits
and upper-class Indians. There’s a picture of a
train station with all these people in turbans
and fezzes. When I was there, I didn’t really
see anybody in a fez, but in the old pictures
there are a lot of people in fezzes, which
surprised me. That’s why we ended up putting
Nazrul in a fez. You still see people in turbans.
Of course, in India now, you see people in
modern clothes all the time. The women
still wear saris, and the men wear traditional
shirts and vests; sometimes they wear them
with jeans.
I looked at a lot of fashion magazines
from the era, like British Vogue. Even though
Flora didn’t really have money, she was still
of a certain class that traveled and hung
around with fashionable, forward-thinking,
well-educated people, so her clothes would
have been at least a little bit sophisticated.
There’s a lot of discussion in the play about
“Indianness” and “Englishness.” Does that
come through in the costumes?
We don’t have any Indian women in the play.
If we did, they definitely would wear saris.
There’s a mix with the men; the more education they have, at some point they will wear an
item of Western clothing, whether it’s shoes
Costume rendering for Flora Crewe
(All renderings by Candice Donnelly)
43
or a suit jacket, but it’s not a completely
Western look. It’s mixed with the dhoti pants
(consisting of a long tied loin cloth), or the
kind of shirts that they wear. Sometimes they
just have a Western vest with the rest of it. It
seemed as though the more educated people—those with more money—had Western
shoes. The poor people were all barefoot,
or they had sandals. That’s why I gave the
1930s Rajah expensive English shoes.
I have a book on the rajahs. They had
tremendous amounts of money, and they had
all of their shoes handmade in England. They
had the best suits made for them in England
or Europe. The rajahs aspired to be English,
so European companies like Rolls-Royce
and Cartier would send representatives to
India to sell them things and make things for
them, because they were so spectacularly rich.
And then there was the countermovement
with homemade clothing.
Yes, that came from Gandhi. Indians make
really beautiful fabric, but the English ended
up importing European fabric, robbing
Indians of a cottage industry. Today, Indians
are still trying to encourage these cottage
industries where they make and design
fabrics. I went to some of these places. There
was one woman in the south who ran a
tiny factory of women who wove saris, and
I bought a couple of them. They’re very
beautiful cotton saris. So there’s still that
sentiment, of trying to reclaim that industry.
In Indian Ink, there’s a lot of discussion of
heat and the climate of India. Did that factor
into the costume design at all?
Yes, it did. The characters are mostly wearing
very lightweight cottons. That’s why the
cotton in India is so sheer and lightweight:
44
because of the heat. There’s very little wool.
Even the men’s suit jackets are all linen. The
tuxedos are made out of wool, but that’s all.
Everything else is cotton or a more summerweight material.
The play bounces back and forth between
1930 and the 1980s. Do the costumes
facilitate that?
The only actor that transitions is the Rajah;
the same guy plays the 1930s Rajah and
the 1980s politician. He goes offstage
and quickly comes back in a modern
suit. Everybody else pretty much stays in
their own time zone. There are moments
when the scenes intermingle and overlap,
especially with Mrs. Swan and Anish Das,
so I still had to consider how all the
costumes go together.
The 1980s clothes aren’t necessarily
“high ’80s.” There aren’t a lot of punks or
people with big shoulder pads running
around. Eldon Pike is a nerd, and Dilip
is a bit of an Indian nerd, so they aren’t
fashionable. The only one who is a little
fashionable is the artist, Anish Das. Mrs.
Swan can belong to any era, in a way.
Do the costumes of the Indian characters in
the 1980s have the same sort of colorfulness?
The Rajah is in this hot pink jacket, then
he exits, and then he returns in a charcoal
grey suit. I found a suit that is actually lined
with a hot pink fabric. At a certain point, he
opens the jacket and takes a letter out of his
pocket. I don’t know if people catch that or
not. His shirt is a pink check, so I tried to
relate it a little bit to the jacket. But Dilip is
pretty nebbish. He’s just beige.
LEFT Costume rendering for Nirad Das
RIGHT Costume rendering for the 1930s Rajah
45
What kinds of conversations have you had with Carey Perloff and the other designers?
In the original script, Stoppard refers to Flora wearing a cornflower blue dress. Honestly,
I wasn’t such a fan of that color or the description. Carey actually went to Tom Stoppard
and asked him if we could change that, and he said sure, which was amazing. She’s now
in this yellow, very chiffony, floaty dress. That was a major decision because it’s what she
wears in the portrait Nirad Das paints of her.
The set doesn’t change very much throughout the play. The light changes the color of
the set, but I pretty much knew what I was dealing with, color-wise. I would meet with
Carey and show her research and sketches, and she’d respond favorably or not. Most of
the time, favorably. I went to rehearsal quite often, so I got to talk to the actors, as well.
Sometimes the things that seem simpler are more difficult. The subtleties of Nirad Das’s
costume—which is really just these white pants, a shirt, a Western vest, and a scarf—
took a lot to finesse. Oddly enough, the same thing happened with Eldon Pike. It was
hard to find just the right degree of nebbish.
Is it easier, in a way, to make the big decisions, such as the one about the color of Flora’s
dress?
I did worry about that choice. I looked at a lot of different fabrics, because I wanted the
dress to be yellow, which can be a difficult color. It is a yellow-and-white print; if the
dress was just one giant blob of yellow, it would be awful. So I struggled to find exactly
the right fabric in a color and a print that I liked. The same thing happened with Flora’s
cherry-red/pink dress with an orange underlay—I went around and around with that. In
each case, though, she stands out in the scene.
Have you worked on other Stoppard plays before?
I’ve done Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead twice.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is very different from Indian Ink, but did you
notice any similarities?
There is something metaphysical about the style of writing that identifies it as Tom
Stoppard’s. For example, with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, they know that they’re
dying, and they’re going towards their death and can’t get out of it. From the title of the
play, you know that. And then, of course, Flora Crewe is dead. I’m just thinking about
it now. Stoppard might have some sort of preoccupation with the inevitability of going
to the other side, and with what’s left behind.
I find Indian Ink a completely approachable Stoppard play. It’s a romantic story that
unfolds as you’re watching it. I don’t feel as though you ever lose interest in it, because
the story keeps evolving and it is tied up so beautifully.
46
“Going Native”
Interracial Love in the British Raj
By Nirmala Nataraj
DILIP: In 1930, an Englishwoman, an Indian painter . . . it is out of the
question.
PIKE: Not if they had a relationship.
DILIP: Oh . . . a relationship? Is that what you say? (amused) A relationship!
DILIP almost falls off his chair with merriment.
—Indian Ink, by Tom Stoppard
The stupefaction that Dilip expresses at the suggestion that Flora Crewe, a British
woman, could have had an erotic relationship with Nirad Das, an Indian man, reflects
the British Empire’s strict regulation of race, gender, and sexuality. But although
colonized India is usually characterized by a clear separation between the British elite
and the Indian masses, early contact was infused with a spirit of cooperation between
different groups. While the British East India Company solidified its authority on the
subcontinent in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, company workers
routinely learned the local languages, practiced native customs, and had children with
Indian women. However, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857, making the transition
from a commercial enterprise to a government created mounting anxiety over how to
best manage the colony. A regime based on the careful regulation of Indian and British
interactions was born, resulting in everything from the removal of officials who had
mingled a little too enthusiastically with the Indians, to the denial of economic rights
to deceased British men’s Indian widows and mixed-race children, to the exclusion of
Indians from the public sphere.
Love, Sex, and the Dangers of Cultural Assimilation
In colonial India, interracial relationships were more likely to be between British men
and Indian women—especially because of the dearth of British women in the nascent
days of the Empire. According to historian Harleen Singh, both historical and fictional
accounts of interracial relationships followed three accepted trajectories:
[T]he barbaric pursuit of the Englishwoman by the Indian male; the
charitable love of the Englishman for the dispossessed Indian woman; or the
47
An Indian woman dances for an audience of European men. From Sir Charles D’Oyly’s 1813 The
European in India.
accidental empathy that arose between the Indian prostitute and the sahib
[master].
Although native women are absent in Indian Ink, they were important figures in the
early days of the British Raj. At elite levels, Indian women managed large households
and inherited property, while women of lower rank provided sexual and domestic labor
to soldiers and minor officials. While accounts suggest that the relationships between
British men and Indian women stemmed from the sexual availability of the latter,
Sir Richard Francis Burton (a nineteenth-century linguist and diplomat, famous for
translating the Kama sutra) believed that these were unions of coercion and financial/
social expediency, especially among poor Indian women, as opposed to love and passion.
While the nature of these relationships is debated, men who chose to “go native”
served as cautionary examples of the dangers of cultural assimilation. Warren Hastings,
the first governor-general of India, learned local languages, studied Indian literature, and
exercised political practices that other members of Parliament argued were proof of his
corruption by “Oriental vices.” A series of reforms by Lord Cornwallis, the subsequent
governor-general of India, attempted to create further racial stratification. A common
theme among European families in the postreform era was the “problem” of managing
native consorts and mixed-race children. At this time, the stereotype of the uptight,
prudish, and sexually jealous memsahib (European married woman) became common in
literature and historical accounts, especially as the numbers of English women in India
grew after 1869, when the Suez Canal opened. In Indian Ink, Durance forlornly declares,
“I’ll tell you where it all went wrong with us and India. It was the Suez Canal. It let the
48
women in. . . . When you had to sail round
the Cape this was a man’s country and men
mucked in with the natives. The memsahib
won’t muck in, won’t even be alone in a
room with an Indian.”
While the puritanical mores of the
memsahib were scorned by men who’d
romanticized India as a sexually open land,
British women were merely following their
training as good wives and mothers. In the
earliest days of the Empire, it was easier
for British women to be unconventional;
as it was, their decision to travel to a
distant foreign land differentiated them
from their finicky counterparts back
home. Thus, they enjoyed an unusual
amount of freedom. In the 1830s, Mrs.
James Hall served in the military of the
nizam (monarch) of Hyderabad, where
A European woman gives instructions to
she dressed in Mughal-style clothing and
her tailor. From Sir Charles D’Oyly’s 1813 The
commanded a battalion of women who European in India.
guarded the king’s harem. The story of
Eliza James is just as memorable. In 1837,
James left her husband, a lieutenant in the Indian Army, to be a stage dancer. She
would later become the infamous Lola Montez, a courtesan and the mistress of King
Ludwig I of Bavaria.
Accounts of brave, independent women in India are outweighed by stories of
memsahibs who preferred the safe insularity of their estates to the strange new world
they’d found themselves in. In the 1930s, Julia Maitland wrote to a relative back home
about what she’d seen of India since she arrived: “Thank goodness, I know nothing at
all about them, nor I don’t wish to: really I think the less one sees and knows of them
the better.”
As greater numbers of British women settled in India, unease about the endangerment
of their virtue became a concern. A common fear was that British women would be
tempted by Indian men. In 1893, the maharajah of Patiala announced his plans to marry
Miss Florry Bryan, a music hall entertainer. The government of India implored him to
reconsider, saying that this decision would “render your position both with Europeans
and Indians most embarrassing.” (He married her, anyway.) In 1901, India’s viceroy,
Lord Curzon, revealed his apprehension over sending Indian troops to London for
Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, suggesting that women of a certain class didn’t have
the moral wherewithal to resist potential advances: “Strange as it may seem English
women of the housemaid class, and even higher, do offer themselves to these Indian
49
soldiers, attracted by their uniform, enamoured of their physique, and with a sort of idea
that the warrior is also an oriental prince.”
The notion of intimate relationships between British women and Indian men was
universally condemned, but at the same time, used as titillating fodder. Books like
G. H. Bell’s 1910 Sahib-log has a British woman almost excitedly wondering “what
would be the fate of white women in India, if the balance of power left the Englishman’s
hands even temporarily.”
British women served as important symbols of European morality and superiority,
so it was important to protect them from the dangers of a foreign land. As quick as
British men were to wear local garb and bed native women, they were hyperaware of the
need to demonstrate their class and racial status among white peers. Even those men
who sired mixed-race children relied on their British relatives to rear the children as
socially white, thereby eliminating any sign of their maternal lineage. Marriage between
Britons and Indians continued to be viewed as sexually and socially transgressive, so
many of these relationships were kept under the radar, only to be revealed in the final
wills of British men.
According to literary critic Robert Young, miscegenation was the primary theme
in Victorian and modern fiction about interracial relationships—mirroring the Raj’s
injunction to stamp out intimacy between Europeans and natives. These stories, which
were especially popular in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
featured primarily British protagonists, while Indian characters were relegated to the
exotic backdrop, as silent servants, cunning rajahs, and tragic native women. Such
novels included Sydney Owenson’s The Missionary: An Indian Tale (1811), Maud Diver’s
Lilamani (1911), and Philip Meadows Taylor’s Seeta (1872). Although Diver’s novel
follows the story of interracial love through several generations, most tales in this genre
entail abrupt endings (usually death) for their star-crossed lovers.
Perhaps it’s unsurprising that Dilip would be baffled by the notion of a dalliance
between Flora and Das—especially because, in the declining years of the British Raj, the
Indian nationalist movement was on the rise and intimate relationships between Indians
and Britons were openly discouraged by both groups. While these relationships were
common in fictional accounts, political interests created anxiety around the closeness
between ruler and ruled. Unease over the dangers of assimilation would place interracial
relationships squarely beneath the assumption of European superiority.
SOURCES Susan Bailey, Women and the British Empire (New York: Garland Publishing Company,
1987); Kenneth Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and
Their Critics, 1793–1905 (London, UK: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980); Gautam Chakravarty, The
Indian Mutiny and the British Imagination (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005);
Ronald Hyam, Empire and Sexuality (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1990); Margaret
MacMillan, Women of the Raj (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1988); Anne McClintock, Imperial
Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995); Harleen
Singh, The Rani of Jhansi: Gender, History, and Fable in India (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2014); Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London, UK:
Routledge, 1995)
50
The Hullabaloo over
Hobson-Jobson
By Anna Woodruff
FLORA: While having tiffin on the verandah of my bungalow I spilled
kedgeree on my dungarees and had to go to the gymkhana in my pyjamas
looking like a coolie.
DAS: I was buying chutney in the bazaar when a thug escaped from the
choky and killed a box-wallah for his loot, creating a hullabaloo and landing
himself in the mulligatawny.
FLORA: I went doolally at the durbar and was sent back to Blighty in a
dooley feeling rather dikki with a cup of char and a chit for a chotapeg.
DAS: I concede, Miss Crewe. You are the Hobson-Jobson champion!
—Indian Ink, by Tom Stoppard
It is not common knowledge that many words we use today are derived from HobsonJobson, the Anglo-Indian language of hybrid terms organically developed to bridge the
gap between English and Indian languages in the British Empire during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. Words like “shampoo,” “pajamas,” and “bangle” can be found
in a tome, the full title of which is Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian
Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and
Discursive. It was compiled by Colonel Henry Yule and Arthur Coke Burnell in 1886
and was the culmination of a 14-year project. The combination of Yule’s historical and
geographic knowledge of India and Burnell’s linguistic talents resulted in the perfect
team for compiling this glossary.
The expression “Hobson-Jobson” is an Anglicized corruption of mourning cries
heard at the Shia festival of Muharram (“Ya Hassan! Ya Hosain!”), which memorialize
the killing of the prophet Muhammad’s grandson. Yule claims that Hobson-Jobson was
the result of the Victorian fascination with lexicography, the practice of compiling
dictionaries. Hobson-Jobson indexed common words that had the same meaning in both
English and Indian languages. Its usage promoted cultural and linguistic understanding
between two vastly different cultures, which was especially helpful for British people
in administrative positions. Eventually, these words were brought back to England,
creating a linguistic and cultural bridge between East and West, and emphasizing the
hybrid nature of the English language—particularly as the result of colonial contact.
51
Hobson-Jobson was also used in more intimate environments. In Indian Ink, Flora
and Das playfully transform Hobson-Jobson into a word game. All of the words
mentioned in their conversation can be found in Yule and Burnell’s glossary. Each
entry contains paragraphs on etymology, pronunciation, idiosyncrasies, footnotes, and
sentence examples, giving readers an intimate view of this hybrid language. Below are a
few of the Hobson-Jobson terms that can be found in Indian Ink.
Bazaar: Market.
Gymkhana: A place of public resort,
where facilities for athletics and games
are provided, including a skating rink, a
lawn-tennis ground, and so forth.
Blighty: An affectionate name for
England as home.
Box-wallah: A traveling merchant who
carries merchandise in a large box.
Kedgeree: A combination of rice, cooked
with butter and dhal (a stew of lentils and
spices), with shredded onion and other
ingredients; a common dish all over India.
Bungalow: From the Hindi bangla (low
thatched house).
Char: From the Hindi chai (tea).
Loot: From the Hindi lut (stolen
property).
Chit: A letter or note; also a certificate
given to a servant, or the like; a pass.
Mulligatawny: A South Indian vegetable soup, made chiefly from milagu
(pepper) and thanni (water).
Choky: A police station; a lock-up.
Chotapeg: A half-size drink, usually of
whiskey.
Pyjamas: Loose trousers tied at the
waist, usually worn by Indian Muslims
and adopted by Europeans, often as
sleepwear.
Chutney: A strong relish made from a
number of condiments and fruits.
Coolie: A hired laborer or burden-carrier
(also used as a racial slur).
Punkah: A large cloth ceiling fan,
moved back and forth by pulling on a
cord.
Dikki: Worry, trouble; can also be used
as an adjective.
Thug: A member of a gang of murderers
and robbers in India who strangled their
victims; also cheat, swindler.
Doolally: Mad, crazy, insane.
Dungaree: A kind of coarse and inferior
cotton cloth or blue denim; the plural
form, “dungarees,” refers to pants made
from this cloth.
Tiffin: Luncheon.
Verandah: A long balcony or terrace.
Durbar: A court or levee; also, the
executive government of a native state.
SOURCES Mukti Jain Campion, “Hobson-Jobson: The Words English Owes to India,” BBC News,
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18796493; Josephine Livingston, “How We Got Pukka,” http://
www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/arts-and-books/hobson-jobson-henry-yule-kate-teltscher; Henry
Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases,
and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive, ed. William Crooke
(New Delhi, India: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1968); Henry Yule and A. C. Burnell, Hobson-Jobson: The
Definitive Glossary of British India, ed. Kate Teltscher (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013)
52
An Indian Ink Glossary
Lok Sabha, also known as “House of the
People” in Hindi, is the lower house of the
Parliament of India.
Indian Terms
“I will give him an anna. A rupee would
upset the market.” An anna is a currency
unit once used in India, equal to about
one-sixteenth of a rupee. A rupee is equal
to about 1.5 pennies in U.S. dollars.
The Bhagavata purana is a Hindu text
written between the fourth and tenth
centuries ce, centered around the deity
Vishnu. The title translates to “Divine
Eternal Tales of Supreme God.”
Memsahib is a respectful Hindi term for
a European married woman of high social
status.
Nimbupani is lemonade made with lime
juice.
A punkah-wallah is a manual fan operator;
“wallah” is a Hindi suffix that indicates a
person involved in some kind of activity.
The British Raj is the term that describes
British rule over the Indian subcontinent
between 1858 and 1947.
Rasikpriya is a poem written in the sixteenth
century by Sanskrit poet Keshavdas that
describes the 360 circumstances of love
through the stories of classical Hindu
heroes and heroines.
The Chaurapanchasika is an eleventhcentury poem by the Kashmiri poet Bilhana,
who wrote it after being thrown in prison
for his secret affair with a king’s daughter.
The title translates to “The Collection of
50 Verses by a Love Thief.” The king was
so pleased with the poem that he removed
Bilhana from prison and allowed the poet
to marry the princess.
Arts and Literature
Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912) was
a Dutch-British painter in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries; his style was
noted for its perfectionism and textured
details such as flowers and architectural
elements.
A dak bungalow is a house or inn for
travelers. Flora Crewe stays in one of these
structures during her visit to Jummapur.
Robert Browning (1812–1889) was a
Victorian poet and playwright famous for
his character-driven dramatic monologues.
53
for the introduction of a predominantly
Western style of education in India,
serving as a rebuttal to the notion that
Indian students should continue to be
educated in their own languages and
cultures. Macaulay’s reforms were put
into effect throughout India.
Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) was
an Italian painter and sculptor who
worked mainly in France throughout
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
He is best known for his portraits and
nudes and his stylized, elongated faces
and bodies.
Rajput painting was a style of painting
that flourished in the royal courts of
Rajputana, India. Rajput painting usually
focused on the mythology of epic Indian
tales, such as the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata.
Young Woman in a Shirt, by Amedeo
Modigliani, 1918
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
was a Scottish writer in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, best known for
his popular Sherlock Holmes detective
novels.
The Theosophical Society was an
organization founded in 1875 by Madame
Helena Blavatsky to promote systems
of esoteric philosophy, primarily culled
from Eastern religions, investigating the
mysteries of being and nature.
Emily Eden (1797–1869) was an upperclass English poet and novelist. From
1835 to 1842, she accompanied her
brother George, the governor-general of
India, on his travels through much of the
British Empire. In Indian Ink, Das gifts
Flora with a volume of Eden’s Up the
Country (1866), a book of letters about
her travels through India.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) was
a Victorian poet; he was named poet
laureate of Great Britain and Ireland
during Queen Victoria’s reign. His most
celebrated poems include “Charge of the
Light Brigade” and “The Lady of Shalott.”
Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–
1859) was a British historian and
politician who wrote Lays of Ancient Rome,
a collection of narrative poems based
on early Roman history. His 1835 essay
“Minute on Indian Education” called
H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was an English
writer, futurist, essayist, historian, and
socialist. Also known as the father of
science fiction, he is most famous for his
novels The Time Machine, The War of the
Worlds, and The Island of Doctor Moreau.
54
Daimler was a German car company
founded by German auto pioneers
Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz, who
invented the automobile in 1886. The
Daimler Motor Company was founded
in 1890 and merged with Carl Benz,
creating Daimler-Benz, the predecessor
of Mercedes-Benz.
Geography
Elphinstone College, now a part of the
University of Mumbai, was constituted
in 1835 in order to teach the English
language and European arts and literature
to Indians.
Jummapur (Hindi for “small town”)
is a fictional Indian state modeled on
the many small principalities of India
governed by local rulers. These small
regions of India were known as “native
states” and were not under direct British
rule.
“Et nos cedamus amori” is a quote from the
Roman poet Virgil that translates to “We
too shall yield to love.”
Empire Day was an annual celebration
of the British Empire. The first official
Empire Day was May 24, 1902, in
honor of Queen Victoria’s birthday. In
1958 Empire Day was renamed British
Commonwealth Day.
Kashmir is the northwest region of the
Indian subcontinent.
The Mughal Empire, founded in 1526,
was a Persian empire extending over the
Indian subcontinent.
Goldflake cigarettes are an Indian
cigarette brand designed specifically for
the elite and wealthy.
Rawalpindi is a city in what is now
northern Pakistan.
Madeira is an English sponge cake,
typically served with tea or for breakfast.
The Suez Canal is a man-made canal
through Egypt that connects the
Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.
Building was first attempted in the
thirteenth century bce, but was not
officially completed until construction
began again in 1858.
The March to the Sea was a nonviolent
defiance of the British administration in
India, protesting the English monopoly
on salt. The protest was led by Mohandas
Gandhi on March 13, 1930.
Pi-dogs are stray dogs that frequent
Asian villages.
Windsor is a town in Berkshire, England,
known for Windsor Castle, a residence of
the royal family.
Requiescat in pace is a Latin phrase that
translates to “rest in peace.”
Miscellaneous
Battenberg is a light sponge cake covered
in jam, known for its checkerboard design
when cut.
55
Questions to Consider
1. How are Flora and Das different from the stereotypical English woman and Indian man of
their time? What are the tensions and barriers in their friendship?
3. In what ways does the English language play a critical role in Indian Ink?
4. How does Flora view Das in his “Englishness” and in his “Indianness”?
5. How do the settings and time periods of Indian Ink inform your understanding of life during
and after the British Empire?
6. Das quips, “Only in art can empires cheat oblivion.” Do you agree? If so, how are the three
paintings in Indian Ink a testament to this?
7. What is Eldon Pike missing in his quest to understand Flora and her work? What is Stoppard
attempting to reveal about biography through the character of Pike?
9. How do the characters in Indian Ink experience rasa? In watching the play, did you experience
rasa? Do you think you have ever experienced it?
For Further Reading...
Ballhatchet, Kenneth. Race, Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and Their
Critics, 1793–1905. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1980.
Forster, E. M. A Passage to India. New York: Mariner Books, 1965.
Gupta, Shyamala. Art, Beauty and Creativity: Indian and Western Aesthetics. New Delhi, India: D.
K. Printworld, 1999.
Gussow, Mel. Conversations with Stoppard. New York: Proscenium Publishers Inc., 1995.
Kipling, Rudyard. Kim. New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1959.
Kelly, Katherine E., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2001.
James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
Jayadeva. Gitagovinda of Jayadeva: Love Song of the Dark Lord. Edited by Barbara Stoler Miller.
New Delhi, India: Mortilal Banarsidass, 1984.
Masterpiece Theatre, “The Jewel in the Crown.” 2001. Adapted by Ken Taylor from The Raj Quartet
by Paul Scott. USA: A&E Home Video, DVD.
Schwartz, Susan L. Rasa: Performing the Divine in India. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.
Stoppard, Tom. Indian Ink. London, UK: Faber & Faber, 1995.
Von Tunzelmann, Alex. Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire. New York:
Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2007.
Yule, Henry, and A. C. Burnell. Hobson-Jobson: The Definitive Glossary of British India. Edited by
Kate Teltscher. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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