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With an estimate of nearly two million people killed during the riots that accompanied independence and some fifteen million people uprooted (Darlymple 2015; Mishra 2002, 211), Partition remains, in the words of Bhaskar Sarkar, ‘a festering wound in the collective psyche of South Asia ’(2009 , 1). It is therefore not surprising that, upon its release, Vice- roy’ s House triggered a heated public debate over its representation of the events. In an article published in The Guardianon the very day of its release (3 March 2017), Fatima Bhutto de fined Viceroy ’s House as a‘fi lm of a deeply colonised imagination ’and wrote that it was a ‘servile pantomime ’, also accusing Chadha to blame Partition entirely on Muslims and Jinnah (Bhutto 2017). In response to Bhutto ’s article, journalist and writer Sufi ya Ahmed, a few days later, retorted from the pages of the Huffington Post that Bhutto ’s allegations were a consequence of her inability, as a member of the Pakistani elite, to ‘get the Brit Asian experience ’(2017 ). She especially took issue with Bhutto ’s state- ment about the film reproducing a ‘colonised imagination’– a claim that, Ahmed wrote, was especially insulting for a child of immigrants ‘who lived through the extreme racism of the 60 and 70s ’and was ultimately an attack on all ‘Brit Asians ’(Ahmed 2017). Indeed, Chadha herself had described Viceroy’s House as her own ‘British Asian perspective on Partition ’(Chadha 2017a) and in several interviews given before and after the release of the film, the filmmaker explained that this is, for her, a very personal film, as it was inspired by the su fferings of her own family at the time of Partition.

This article is concerned precisely with the British Asian point of view that Chadha advocates for her film. By analysing its style and narrative structure, the article discusses the interplay between Partition, diaspora, and the representation of the imperial past. The nature of a diasporic perspective on Partition is explored by discussing the ways in which Viceroy’ s House frames colonial India, both visually and narratively, and how it re-con- structs the relationship between and within colonised and colonisers. After an introduc- tion on Partition and its legacy in present-day Britain, the film is contextualised within the socio-cultural context of an increasingly melancholic postcolonial Britain (Gilroy 2004 ) and it is framed within the tradition of heritage cinema. The second part of the article engages in the analysis of the film ’s narrative and discusses the film ’s potential to subvert the ideology embedded in heritage cinema and to ‘rewrite the margins into the centre ’(Hall 1999, 10). Finally, the article will close with a re flection on Chadha ’s approach to heritage cinema in relation to her own diasporic position, questioning what it is that makes Viceroy’s House a British Asian film. Partition, historical memory and the diasporic subjects As the ‘underside of independence ’(Sarkar 2009, 1), the 1947 Partition of British India led to the creation of a new geography of South Asia, with newly drawn borders which, cutting across entire regions (particularly a ffected were Bengal and Punjab) demarcated the terri- tories of the two sovereign states of India and Pakistan. The decision to partition the country in two, creating a new state (Pakistan) for the Muslim minority, was reached after months and months of consultations between the Indian political leaders and the 24 C. CLINI British colonisers, a time during which the relationship between the two main parties which had spent yearsfighting side by side for independence went deteriorating, as did inter-communal relations within the country (see Khan 2017). The period of transition between plans for independence and Partition saw the unleash of unprecedented violence between religious communities, and, on the o fficial publication of the physical boundaries between India and Pakistan (not made public until two days after the British had o fficially left, on 17th August 1947) millions of people crossed these new borders seeking refuge from communal violence.

The scale of the violence was such that now the word Partition is often used metony- mically to refer to the communal violence that accompanied independence. With violence came trauma, and, for decades after 1947, a deafening silence fell on this tragedy, both o ffi cially and uno fficially (Butalia 1998, 9; Mishra 2002, 211). O fficial narratives of nation- alism, rather than addressing Partition violence, focused on the struggle for independence and downplayed it as an exception, ‘an illegitimate outbreak of violence [ …] against the fundamentals of Indian (or Pakistani) tradition and history ’(Pandey 2001, 3). The di ffi culty of making sense of the events was re flected also in the inability of survivors to fi nd a language that would allow them to describe, and make sense of, such violence, an idiom that would allow to speak the unspeakable (Butalia 1998,2005 ; Das and Nandy 1985; Nandy 1999). This is the reason why Partition has been mostly theoretically analysed in terms of trauma, loss, mourning and melancholia (Butalia 1998; Mishra 2002; Nandy 1999; Sarkar 2009; Sengupta 2015). According to Mishra, for example, the down- play of the violence of Partition as an aberration, an exceptional, temporary period of madness, prevented the nation –and its citizens –from the possibility of mourning: This occluded history of India is the unspeakable canker that is silenced through what Don Miller has referred to as the economy of melancholia. If mourning became Electra because she knew what an ‘uncompleted ’mourning was like, then it is melancholia that becomes the India because we tend to carry our loss, unresolved, as painful splinter in our side. It is there for all to see, but we have never confronted it. ( 2002, 211) As such, the legacy of Partition extends to the present day (Butalia 2005; Sarkar 2009; Sen- gupta 2015) casting its long shadow on the lives of those whose families have lived through it –both in the Subcontinent and the diaspora. The relevance of the legacy of Partition in the diasporic context is clear if we think of the signi ficant role that memories and narra- tives of the past play in the formation of diasporic identities. Diasporic communities, as explained by Avtar Brah, are complex formations whose identities emerge at the intersec- tion between present-day experiences, memories and re-memories of the past and real or imagined homelands ( 1996, 181–198). For diasporic subjects the past, Stuart Hall argued, ‘ is always constructed through memory, fantasy, narrative and myth ’(1990 , 226) and if, as he maintains, ‘identities are the names we give to the di fferent ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past ’(1990 , 225), then we see the rel- evance of memories, and narratives, of Partition in the diasporic context.

Gurinder Chadha, a ‘self-identi fied Punjabi ’, born in Kenya and raised in London (Desai 2004, 130) admittedly ‘grew up in the shadow of Partition ’(Viceroy ’s House Press Kit 2017, 1), as her family was directly aff ected by it: forced toflee their home in what was deemed to be Pakistan, they had to relocate to India –one of her aunties starving to death along the way (Chadha 2016). The legacy of Partition, according to the filmmaker, SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA 25 are still of‘huge importance ’in Britain, and yet she feels that ‘the events of 1947 are largely forgotten in the UK ’(Chadha 2017b). This film represents thus for Chadha the means to bring attention to such a pivotal moment in South Asian (and British) history and to address all the parties involved in Partition with the stated aim of o ffering ‘a message of reconciliation ’that would speak to Indians, Pakistanis and British people alike (Viceroy ’s House Press Kit 2017).

Viceroy ’s House, heritage and melancholic Britain Writing about the revival of the British Raj on screen in 1984, Salman Rushdie drew a con- nection between the popularity of narratives of ‘Raj revisionism ’and the social and econ- omic decline of the country at the time, arguing that Thatcherite Britain encouraged people to ‘turn their eyes nostalgically to the lost hour of their precedence ’([1984] 1992 , 92). In light of his comment, the context within which Viceroy’s House was made deserves some re flection. The film was released in Britain not only on the seventieth anni- versary of Partition, but also during a period of growing (post)colonial nostalgia in British public culture. The 2010s in fact have seen the emergence of a number of films, TV series, popular music videos which o ffered a glamorous look at the ‘exotic ’former colony of India 1(Andrews 2016;Jeffries 2015 ; Kumar 2016). This nostalgic wave also encompasses British politics and in fluenced the public debate over the British membership of the Euro- pean Union: in this respect Alexander Davis noted that, in the lead-up to the Brexit refer- endum, colonial nostalgia became the dominant force in British foreign politics ’(Davis 2018 , 162). New dreams of a ‘Global Britain ’project (also known as Empire 2.0) identified former colonial possessions, India in particular, as central for a post-EU British economy, o ff ering a romanticised view of the empire completely whitewashed of its violence, one in which former colonies are described not as imperial possessions but rather as ‘old friends ’(Davis 2018, 154 –155; see also Beaumont 2017; Law 2019).

If, as Baena and Bekyr suggest, ‘nostalgia is less about the past than it is about the present ’(2015 , 261), this wave of colonial nostalgia in British cultural and political life can be read as a response to the challenges faced by contemporary society, undergoing an identity crisis after years of austerity and growing inequalities, combined though with the unresolved issue of coming to terms with the demise of the Empire and ‘to deal with its legacy ’(Gardner 2017, 10). The inability of Britain to process the end of the empire has been thoroughly analysed by Paul Gilroy, who remarkably observed that Britain ’s continuous re-visitations of its imperial past is the melancholic reaction ‘to the loss to a fantasy of omnipotence ’, i.e. the loss of the Empire ( 2004, 99). In an interview given to The Guardian in 2015 regarding the ‘recycled Raj fantasy ’, Gilroy observed that: The idea of the empire gets (re)visited obsessively because its loss remains painful but it cannot be worked through. Britain might learn too many uncomfortable truths about its history if it was known and considered. In the absence of that encounter, phenomena such as the Raj get recycled as fantasy. The lost greatness of the imperial period can thereby be fleetingly restored (Gilroy in Je ffries 2015). The renewed popularity of colonial India in popular culture thus appears related to unmourned loss of the Empire. As a film modelled on the tradition of period dramas such as A Passage to India (David Lean,1984) and Gandhi (Richard Attenborough, 26 C. CLINI 1982),Viceroy ’s House appears to fit in well within this wave of (post)colonial nostalgia.

And yet, the very subjectivity of the filmmaker, as a British Asian woman, has the potential to add layers of meaning to the narrative that complicate melancholic fantasies of the empire. Discussing the in fluence, in terms of style and concept, of period dramas such as Gosford Park (2001 ) and Downton Abbey (2010 –2015 )on Viceroy’ s House, Chadha explained: I love those huge, epic-canvas British films. I think it’s sad that we don ’t make those kind of epic, populist films as much because they somehow help defi ne who we are as a nation. They tell us who we are by going back, looking at our history to understand our present. That is exactly what I wanted to achieve here, to reach out to the broadest audience possible and remind them of this hugely important event that has been largely forgotten. (Viceroy ’s House press kit 2017) Chadha thus aims to use the format of period dramas to make people re flect on Partition and its legacy. Importantly, Partition is here intended as part of a shared forgotten British Asian history. Chadha ’s remark about heritage dramas de fining the identity of the nation is quite interesting because, as much as heritage films do construct an image of the nation, this image is very selective and tends to project an exclusionary national identity.

The visual grammar of heritage cinema, Andrew Higson explains, is aimed at reprodu- cing ‘imperialist fantasies of national identity ’, which emerge as a ‘conservative response to a collective post-imperial anxiety ’(2006 , 104). Heritage films on the British Raj, such as A Passage to India, Jewel in the Crown (1984 ), Heat and Dust (1983 ), invariably display a longing for a stable, idealised past in which the British Empire was still flourishing, and the social structure of society was neatly de fined and unquestioned. Even when these fi lms ‘chronicle the corrupt and last days of imperialist power, a period when that power was already coming under attack ’, they still display a nostalgic tone for a social order which is no more (Higson 2006, 104).

This appears to be in contrast with the contemporary diverse character of British post- colonial society, to which Chadha belongs and to which she has been giving voice since the beginning of her career –so much so that, after the success of Bend it Like Beckhamshe earned ‘the title ‘queen of the multi ’(which can ambiguously mean both multiplex and multiculturalism)’ (Desai2004, 65). And yet, if the diasporic presence in Britain functions as a constant reminder of the imperial past, in a sort of, ‘we are here because you were there ’, as Kobena Mercer suggests (1994, 7), then Chadha ’s film might potentially adopt the period drama formula to subvert its logic, and to expose the human cost of British poli- tics in the subcontinent. Indeed, following Stuart Hall, Chadha ’s adoption of the heritage fi lm style could finally ‘rewrite the margins into the centre [ …] representing more ade- quately the degree to which ‘their ’history entails and has always implicated ‘us ’across the centuries and vice versa ’(1999 , 10). Colonial relations at the end of the empire The opening scene of the film strongly recalls the style of Downton Abbey’s opening credits, as it o ffers a panoramic view of the magni ficent mansion of the viceroy, where an impressive number of Indian servants (hundreds, we are told) are fretting about to SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA 27 get the house ready for the arrival of the Mountbattens. The emphasis on sumptuous man- sions and the careful recreation of costumes and locations is a staple element of heritage films (Byrne 2014, 312), where it is used to emphasise the splendour of the lifestyle of the upper classes but also the greatness of the lost Empire (Higson 2006, 97, 104). This is a sentiment distinctly voiced by Jeet Kumar, the newly appointed valet of the viceroy, who, upon entering the residence, contemplates it in awe and comments that this was exactly what he ‘imagined England to look like ’.

The characterisation of the Mountbattens closely recalls that of the ruling family of Downton, in turn deeply indebted to the heritage films of the 1980s (Byrne 2014, 325).

It is no coincidence that the viceroy is played by the same actor who plays the Earl of Gran- tham in the ITV series, Hugh Bonneville. Just like the Earl of Grantham, the viceroy is a liberal, just figure, who is conscious of his class and status but demonstrates a paternalist benevolence in his relationship with his servants (Byrne 2014, 319). Mountbatten ’s wife Edwina and his daughter Pamela, for example, repeatedly de fine the task ahead of the viceroy in terms of ‘bringing freedom to India ’–with no afterthoughts about the irony of the statement. The Mountbattens also display genuine concern about the political fate of the soon-to be independent country and Mountbatten ’s love for India is remarked upon a few times in the film, both by his friend Nehru and by Cyril Radcli ffe, the lawyer who is appointed the task of drawing the borders between India and Pakistan. Despite being the cousin of the king –Aalia ’s father sharply points out that he has ‘Empire in his blood ’–the viceroy seems not to be acquainted with the policies, and politics, of the empire: his shock at learning that Partition had all been settled by Churchill two years prior to his appointment –Chadha follows the events as narrated in Narendra Singh Sarila ’s book, The Shadow of the Great Game (2006 )– reveals his naïve faith in what he regards as a ‘just ’empire. Indeed, when he expresses his shock at learning that India was divided for oil makes one wonder whether he ever knew what colonialism was all about. In this the film complies again with style of heritage films, which, Higson observes, ‘ seemed to articulate a nostalgic and conservative celebration of the values and lifestyle of the privileged classes, [ …] in doing so an England that no longer existed seemed to be have been reinvented as something fondly remembered and desirable ’(2003 , 12). In this case, England is metonymically the empire as understood by Mountbatten, this paternalist institution looking after its subjects, which is very far from the reality of colo- nialism. And yet, if the film is so much indebted to heritage cinema, it is crucial to note that, despite its association with ‘a nostalgic modern English upper-class ’(Desai 2004, 59) heritage films can also be highly ambivalent and subversive, potentially challenging the very system that they seem to uphold (Dave 2006; Monk 2002). Despite the character- isations of the Mountbattens as the well-meaning colonisers, Viceroy’s House also shows a more brutal aspect of the empire. As a counterpart to the viceroy, the British offi cials who should overlook the transfer of power are not as thoughtful regarding Indians or the fate of India. General Ismay in particular is portrayed as the brutal face of the Empire: he is not concerned about the human cost of Partition, but rather wants to leave the country as soon as possible and make the most of it by dividing the country in two and securing British access to the Arab Sea via Pakistan. In line with the culture of the empire, he also adopts zoological tropes to describe the Indians (who are ‘as slippery as eels ’)a discursive device to strip colonised subjects of their humanity so to justify colonialism. 28 C. CLINI Other references to the violence of the British Empire are made throughout thefilm:

both Nehru and Aalia ’s father (the late Om Puri) had been jailed for supporting indepen- dence, while references are made to the Jallianwala massacre, where Jeet’ s father was killed.

And yet, these references, which have the potential to subvert the characterisation of the colonisers, remain somehow at the margins of the narrative as they are placed in the past, a place remarkably di fferent from the viceroy ’s house. In the film, the residence appears like a peaceful island amidst, we are told, the chaos that is pervading the rest of India, which is visible through the Movietone newsreels. The violence of the colonisers remains firmly out of the house, and so does the violence between communities, except for a few skirmishes between servants. Occupied by the Mountbattens, the viceroy ’s residence is a safe haven amidst the chaos that is descending on the rest of the country. The goodwill of the Mountbattens is reiter- ated when they o ffer their sta ffthe opportunity to bring their relatives at the residence, so to save them from the atrocities which are taking place in the rest of the country. Such a division of space, the threatening outside world inhabited by Indians, juxtaposed to the safety of the house magnanimously opened by the viceroy, resonates uncannily with colo- nial narratives which, as Pramod Nayar noted, drew a ‘clear binary ’between ‘the innocent, heroic, and stoic Englishman versus the barbarous and unfair Indian ’(2012 , 77). Even if the film blames Partition on the British government, it still seems to reproduce the colonial discourse of di fference according to which, as Nayar again observed: ‘the English man or woman, no matter what the provocation, retains his or her civil behaviour ’and keeps stressing ‘the benevolence of the English “conqueror ”’(2012 , 28).

The benevolence of the Mountbattens is nevertheless met with ambivalence by his Indian counterparts, the political leaders. Mountbatten treats them with the same patern- alism with which he treats his sta ff, scolding them like children who are misbehaving when they are unable to agree on the future of India –‘how can we leave –he tells Nehru –when you can ’t agree on what your future should be? ’And yet, they are the ones who remind him of the shortcomings of his beloved empire. Nehru provides Mountbatten with some home truths regarding British imperialist politics: as a response to the Viceroy ’s rep- rimands for their inability to reach an agreement, he reminds him that they ‘have done everything to foster hatred between their di fferent communities: separate schools, elec- tions, that was always your policy: divide and rule ’adding: ‘now you have divided us, you ask mefor a solution? ’ His observation is an important reminder of the devastating e ffect of colonial rule on the social texture of India, where the imported politics of group representation had the eff ect of creating a majority-minority dialectic which turned ‘indigenous ideas of di ffer- ence [ …] into a deadly politics of community ’(Appadurai 1996, 135). As Appadurai observes:

The process by which separate Hindu and Muslim identities were constructed at a macro level and transformed not just into imagined communities but also into enumerated commu- nities is only the most visible pathology of the transfer of the politics of numerical represen- tation to a society in which representation and group identity had no special numerical relationship to the polity (132). And yet, this point is not explored further in the film. In a previous meeting with the cabinet, one o fficial bemoans the fact that ‘this hatred between Hindus, Sikhs and SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA 29 Muslims’was ‘poisoning everything the British had built ’, rather than being the product of their very politics. When the prospect of Partition begins to acquire substance and the echo of disorders reaches the viceroy ’s residence, no reference to British imperial politics is made. Instead, the focus is on the first skirmishes between members of sta ff. No expla- nation is o ffered as to why people are fighting: it all seems to explode out of the blue, especially considering Jeet ’s remark that in his village, just like in many others, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims have been living together like brothers for centuries. 2What is proble- matic about the representation of communal violence is that it is treated matter-of-factly and is not historicised, as Nehru ’s comment would have wanted.

As Partition looms, the sta ffof the viceroy begins to unrest and a feeling of resent- ment towards the British, Mountbattens included, begins to emerge. The only two people who seem immune to this feeling are Aalia and Jeet, who are portrayed as fi rmly trusting the Mountbattens. Jeet ’s admiration for Mountbatten was declared at the beginning of the film, when he praised him for having freed Burma and his upcom- ing task to free India. Even Jeet does not see the anomaly of ‘liberating ’a country that you had conquered in the first place. Incidentally, it is worth noticing that throughout the film Indian independence is described as a something granted by the British, not obtained by the Indians after decades of struggle: despite the references to political marches and to independence supporters being jailed, independence is still presented mainly in terms of the British granting it, except made for lady Mountbatten ’s comment that Gandhi ‘had brought the British Empire to his knees ’. Describing inde- pendence as something that is given rather than taken is an interesting choice because, it resonates with the cultural strategy of colonialism which, as Fanon noted, ‘ wants everything to come from it ’(1965 , 63), meaning, in this case, that even indepen- dence is a gift o ffered by the magnanimous coloniser as part of his civilising mission.

This perspective is certainly in line with the Churchill ’s quote that opens the film, ‘ history is written by the victors ’, but the film remains ambivalent here. It would certainly also be plausible that Indian civil servants would have adopted this perspective and bought into the myth of England just as colonial culture would have wanted, as Macau- lay ( [1835] 1995 ) eloquently explained (see also Lamming [1960] 1992).

Jeet ’s faith in the viceroy remains strong until Partition kills his romantic dream of mar- rying Aalia, thus making it a very personal a ffair rather than a political one. His anger at Mountbatten, at the end of the film, is addressed at the person who has betrayed him – although lady Mountbatten stresses that ‘this tragedy was not of his making ’–rather than at the political system he represents, thus somehow weakening the potential to raise questions about the imperial system in itself. Partition through a diasporic lens After having considered the ways in which colonial relations are portrayed in the film, the task is now to understand what makes the film British Asian. From the point of view of style and concept Viceroy’s House , being fashioned on the model of English heritage costume dramas, undoubtedly provides a British structure to the narrative. The narration of the events through a personalised love story also resonates with many Indian and Pakis- tani films on Partition, which for years have focused on the impact of Partition on ordin- ary people rather than engaging directly with its violence (Viswanath and Malik 2009, 65).

30 C. CLINI Moreover, Viswanath and Malik note that‘the recurrent themes in most post-Partition cinema in both India and Pakistan of films made after 1947 are separation within a single family, or between lovers ’(64), just like Jeet and Aalia. Looking at the film in this perspective, one can see why Chadha calls it ‘British Asian’ .

But by describing Viceroy’s House as her own ‘British Asian’ take on Partition, Chadha also raises the issue of the relationship between the diaspora and the British empire. In doing so, she calls into question ideas of community and nation, which, at a time of resur- gent imperial nostalgia, 3are central to current debates on national identity in Britain. In her notable work on cinema and Partition, Ira Bhaskar observed how ‘cinema not only refracts history through the prism of representation, it also forms a collective memory of momentous events and mobilises memoryfor animagining of thecommunity –both national and local ’(2005 , viii). Portraying Partition does indeed o ffer the opportunity to mobilise memory for the imagining of the British Asian community, especially because it allows to raise questions about the empire and its legacy, and to off er a counter-narrative to uncritical representations of the empire. Yet, tackling Partition is par- ticularly arduous because ‘the corporal, material and psychic losses, the widespread sense of betrayal, the overwhelming dislocations –in short, the deep lacerations in flicted on one ’s sense of self and community –bring up intense and consuming passions ’(Sarkar 2009 , 9), as seen in the debate triggered by the film. The challenge is rendered even more di fficult by the fact that, if we accept Gilroy ’s( 2004 ) and Mishra ’s( 2002 ) suggestions, neither the empire, nor Partition, have been mourned yet, hence the violence which is embedded in both is yet to be confronted, by Britain as well as by its former colonies. In an interview published upon the release of the film Chadha re flected on her take on Partition and its inherent British Asian character in these terms: By using the upstairs, downstairs formula I was able to access both sides of me as a British Asian -that ’s an important point of view that we don ’t often see on the screen. I was able to look at it from di fferent points of view and for me the challenge was to humanise all the char- acters rather than villainise say, the British (Hawes and Curtis 2017). In this light it appears that a British Asian perspective would encompass both the ‘British ’ and the ‘Asian ’point of view. Viceroy’s House certainly put the spotlight on the impact of Partition on both the British rulers and the Indian subjects. It also shows how people belonging to both groups positioned themselves di fferently regarding Partition, a very important reminder that, the ‘British ’and the ‘Indian ’points of view do not represent two monolithic, and necessarily juxtaposed, sets of perspectives. And yet, the film is largely dominated by the struggle of Mountbatten, a principled ruler who only wants the best for his country. The problem is not that the viceroy should have been, in Chadha ’s words, ‘villainised ’, it is the distinction that the film operates between the econ- omic and the cultural aspects of imperialism, the second one strongly advocated by Mountbatten who is portrayed as unaware of the fact that the ‘civilising ’mission was a mere excuse for exploitation, looting, slavery and violence. This way, the film feeds into the very English ‘fantasy that the British Empire represented something ‘noble ’or ‘ great ’about Britain; that it was, in spite of all its flaws and meanness and bigotries, fun- damentally glamorous ’(Rushdie [1984] 1992 , 101).

There is no doubt that Viceroy’s House holds the British empire accountable for Par- tition. Following Sarkar, what is narrated in the film is: SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA 31 An instance of‘colonial ’partition, when a departing colonial power seizes the opportunity a ff orded by competing indigenous nationalisms to produce political and social chaos, to suggest –as a way of legitimizing its own colonial project, now largely denuded –that the colonized are not capable of self-rule ( 2009, 16). But notwithstanding the several remarks that challenge the imperial narrative on coloni- alism, especially in the‘downstairs ’area of the house, the film does not follow up on any of the cracks and fissures that emerge, and which have the potential to subvert the colonial discourse. Therefore, even though the film clearly holds the British responsible for Par- tition, it does not explore for example the roots of communal animosity, which, as Nehru remarks, are grounded in colonial policies. By putting the spotlight on both the upstairs and downstairs parts of the house, Gur- inder Chadha said she was able to look at Partition from di fferent points of view and to ‘ humanise ’all characters. This is perhaps the key to understand her British Asian point of view: as mentioned in the introduction, the aim of the film is to provide a ‘fair ’represen- tation of all actors involved and ‘to o ffer a message of reconciliation ’(Viceroy ’s House Press Kit 2017). By emphasising the personal struggles of the actors involved, the film places all parties involved on a (forced l) equal level that displaces the political dimension of Partition to highlight how everybody was in fact a ffected by it. And yet, by so doing the fi lm unwittingly reproduces an image of colonial India according to which the colonisers were not so bad after all. This way the film, to borrow Ponzanesi ’s words, ‘while addressing the undercurrent of inequalities’ , does not engage with them, leaving them ‘unchallenged and untransformed ’(2012 , 177). Viceroy ’s House might speak to everyone, but not every- one was aff ected in the same way.

Conclusions In her work on postcolonial cinema adaptations ( 2012), Ponzanesi de fines Gurinder Chadha ‘a South Asian diasporic filmmaker who proudly appropriates the many legacies her postcolonial condition o ffers her ’(176). Indeed, her features films, from Bhaji on the Beach (1993 ), toBend it Like Beckham (2002 ) and It’s a Wonderful Afterlife (2010 )offer a complex portrait of diasporic life in Britain, one which, through humour, contributes to ‘ destabilize essentialist notions of identity, including those identities associated with domi- nant and cultural nationalism ’(Desai 2004, 65).

Upon its release, Viceroy’s House triggered a heated public debate on British Asian identity. Ahmed ’s reply to Bhutto ’s criticism of the film in particular emphasised the complex layers that make up the ‘British Asian ’label –for example multiple loyalties and shared memories and experiences with di fferent groups, both in the subcontinent and Britain. At the same time, she also raised the issue of the expectations laid on post- colonial filmmakers as producers of a kind of cinema that turns its gaze back upon ‘imper- ial ways of knowing ’(Ponzanesi and Waller 2012,9)–hence her remark that Chadha ‘was going to make it [the film] her own way ’(Ahmed 2017).

Yet, even if we accept Ahmed ’s argument, and Chadha ’s stated aim to send a message of reconciliation, it is impossible to discard the fact that the film is dominated by Mountbat- ten and his paternalistic approach to colonial India. This way the film ends up replicating the same sort of fantasy of the empire that, according to Higson, permeates certain heri- tage films such as A Passage to India ,orJewel in the Crown (2006 , 104). Just like these 32 C. CLINI films, Viceroy’ s House conveys a feeling of nostalgia for the past that is ‘both a narrative of loss, charting an imaginary historical trajectory from stability to instability –in this case Partition –and at the same time a narrative of recovery, projecting the subject back into a comfortably closed past ’(Higson 2006, 104). This is in stark contrast with Shashi Thar- oor ’s recent description of colonialism in India, one characterised by ‘practices of loot, expropriation, and outright theft, enforced by the ruthless wielding of brute power, con- ducted in a spirit of deep racism and amoral cynicism, and justi fied by a staggering level of hypocrisy and cant ’(2017 ).

Viceroy’ s House has the merit of bringing to the forefront an important part of history that runs the risk of being forgotten, 4and yet, its preoccupation to provide a humanised portrayals of all character hinders the film ’s potential to subvert the ideology that underpins heritage cinema. Chadha explicitly said that she did not want to make a ‘purely political film ’(Viceroy ’s House Press Kit 2017), but a film on Partition (one of the few around) has the political responsibility not to nurture romanticised versions of the empire, especially at a moment in which postcolonial nos- talgia is so strong that, according to data collected in 2014, 49% of the British people still believe that former colonies are better o ff‘for having been part of the empire ’ (Dahlgreen 2014). Notes 1. Most notably Channel 4 ’s Indian Summers (2015 –2016), Stephen Frears ’s Victoria and Abdul (2017 ), but also films suchThe Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden2011) and its 2016 The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (John Madden2015). In popular music, see Rashmee Kumar ’s criticism of Coldplay for reproducing colonial fantasies on the video clip they made for the song Hymn for the Weekend(2016 ). Kavi Raz ’s The Black Prince (2017 ), on the story of the maharajah Duleep Singh, was also released in 2017. While less successful than the aforementioned films, it is notable for providing a counter-narrative to this wave of colonial nostalgia.

2. The idealised image of the multi-religious village complies with Nandy ’s observation that, after Partition, ‘resorting to an idyllic past was a way to relocate people ’s journey through violence in a universe of memory that is less hate- filled, less buttered by rage and dreams of revenge ’(1999 , 323).

3. A 2014 poll conducted by YouGov revealed that 59% of the British public were still proud of the British Empire, with only 19% claiming to feel ashamed of it. Moreover, the same poll revealed that a third of the British population would have liked Britain to still have an Empire (34%), while only under half of it declaring to not wanting it (Dahlgreen 2014).

4. In Britain in particular, where it is not part of the British national curriculum (Elahi 2017). Acknowledgements An early draft of this article was presented at the Challenging Perspectives on Indian Diaspora Con- ference held during 5 –7 October 2017 in the city of The Hague, The Netherlands. The author wishes to thank participants for their precious feedback.

Disclosure statement No potential con flict of interest was reported by the author(s). SOUTH ASIAN DIASPORA 33 Notes on contributor Clelia Cliniis a Research Associate at Loughborough University London, where she works on the project Migrant Memory and the Postcolonial Imagination. Her research interests lie at the inter- section of migration and diaspora studies, South Asian postcolonial cinema and literature, race and gender studies and cultural sociology. Before joining the MMPI project she was a Research Associ- ate at UCL, where she worked on a project on forced displacement, creativity and wellbeing. Clelia has taught Media, Cultural and Postcolonial Studies at John Cabot University and at The American University of Rome. She has also been a visiting lecturer at the University of Venice Ca ’Foscari, the University of Roma Tre and at Vilnius University. She received her PhD in Cultural and Postcolo- nial Studies from the University Orientale of Napoli (2011).

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Bhaji on the Beach , 1993. Directed by Gurinder Chadha.

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Viceroy ’s House , 2017. Directed by Gurinder Chadha.

Victoria and Abdul, 2017. Directed by Stephen Frears.

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