Bhowani Junction
Encyclopedia
John Masters
Lieutenant Colonel John Masters, DSO was an English officer in the British Indian Army and novelist. His works are noted for their treatment of the British Empire in India.-Life:...
, which was the basis of a successful 1956 film. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
withdrawal from India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian
Eurasian (mixed ancestry)
The word Eurasian refers to people of mixed Asian and European ancestry. It was originally coined in 19th-century British India to refer to Anglo-Indians of mixed British and Indian descent....
(Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indians are people who have mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in India, now mainly historical in the latter sense. British residents in India used the term "Eurasians" for people of mixed European and Indian descent...
) community, who were closely involved with the Indian railway system. The American edition was published by the Viking Press, New York.
The film was directed by George Cukor
George Cukor
George Dewey Cukor was an American film director. He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations. His career flourished at RKO and later MGM, where he directed What Price Hollywood? , A Bill of Divorcement , Dinner at Eight , Little Women , David Copperfield , Romeo and Juliet and...
, and was shot on location in Lahore
Lahore
Lahore is the capital of the Pakistani province of Punjab and the second largest city in the country. With a rich and fabulous history dating back to over a thousand years ago, Lahore is no doubt Pakistan's cultural capital. One of the most densely populated cities in the world, Lahore remains a...
, Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
. It starred Ava Gardner
Ava Gardner
Ava Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...
as Victoria Jones, an Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indians are people who have mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in India, now mainly historical in the latter sense. British residents in India used the term "Eurasians" for people of mixed European and Indian descent...
nurse in the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
, and Stewart Granger
Stewart Granger
Stewart Granger was an English-American film actor, mainly associated with heroic and romantic leading roles. He was a popular leading man from the 1940s to the early 1960s rising to fame through his appearances in the Gainsborough melodramas.-Early life:He was born James Lablache Stewart in Old...
as Colonel Rodney Savage, a British army officer.
Plot summary
The book is set in 1946/1947, shortly before India gained independence. Victoria is an Anglo-IndianAnglo-Indian
Anglo-Indians are people who have mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in India, now mainly historical in the latter sense. British residents in India used the term "Eurasians" for people of mixed European and Indian descent...
, the daughter of a railwayman. Patrick, also an Anglo-Indian, considers himself her boyfriend, but her feelings towards him have become ambivalent after she experiences British Army culture (see below). In vigorously defending herself from a British army officer who is attempting to rape her Victoria unintentionally kills him but is persuaded not to report the matter by a subordinate of Patrick's--a Sikh
Sikh
A Sikh is a follower of Sikhism. It primarily originated in the 15th century in the Punjab region of South Asia. The term "Sikh" has its origin in Sanskrit term शिष्य , meaning "disciple, student" or शिक्ष , meaning "instruction"...
, Ranjit, who hopes to marry her and whose family and friends help her to avoid detection.
As presented in the novel (and rather simplified in the film), Victoria had decided to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indian
Anglo-Indians are people who have mixed Indian and British ancestry, or people of British descent born or living in India, now mainly historical in the latter sense. British residents in India used the term "Eurasians" for people of mixed European and Indian descent...
community by joining the British Army during the Second World War--but with the war's end and her coming home, she is confronted with the problem all over again. Her becoming engaged to Ranjit was an attempt to become assimilated in wider Indian society—since British rule is visibly on its way out—until she realises that this marriage would require her to give up her name (and essentially, her identity).
She runs away from the Sikhs and literally into the arms of a dashing British officer, Rodney Savage (commander of a Gurkha
Gurkha
Gurkha are people from Nepal who take their name from the Gorkha District. Gurkhas are best known for their history in the Indian Army's Gorkha regiments, the British Army's Brigade of Gurkhas and the Nepalese Army. Gurkha units are closely associated with the kukri, a forward-curving Nepalese knife...
battalion), becoming both his lover and his unofficial adjutant in the last hectic days of British rule in India. But in the end she realises that she cannot escape her origins, and—rejecting both the Indian man and the British one—chooses Patrick, an Anglo-Indian like herself.
Patrick begins to realise that in the new India, his children might have a chance of becoming anyone they want to, rather than having to stick to the traditional role of Anglo-Indians, working on the railways.
Patrick dies heroically at the end of the film, rather than surviving to marry Victoria as in the novel. The change was presumably required because the book's conclusion was in contradiction with the conventions of Hollywood, in which dashing officers rarely lose out to gauche railway-workers. In the book, the sophisticated Rodney Savage recognises that he is losing out to his inferior, but realises that he is powerless to prevent it.
Themes
Bhowani Junction was modelled on the central Indian railway townRailway town
A railway town is a settlement that originated or was greatly developed because of a railway station or junction at its site.In Victorian Britain, the spread of railways greatly affected the fate of many small towns...
of Bhusawal
Bhusawal
Bhusawal or Bhusaval is a city and a municipal council in Jalgaon district in the state of Maharashtra, India.-Geography:Bhusawal is located at . It has an average elevation of 209 metres ....
.
One of the main themes in the novel is the significance of the developing Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
on post- colonial India. The British are resigned to leaving the country, but are desperate to have an influence on India's future, in particularly with averting the threat of a Communist takeover. The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny had been a stark reminder of Communist mutinies in the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
and in post-World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
.
Throughout the book the British are shown striving to support and sustain the Congress Party
Indian National Congress
The Indian National Congress is one of the two major political parties in India, the other being the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is the largest and one of the oldest democratic political parties in the world. The party's modern liberal platform is largely considered center-left in the Indian...
and its leader Gandhi, who for so long they had vilified and imprisoned. In one passage the British character Rodney Savage reflects upon the irony of his being charged with protecting Gandhi against a terrorist assassination attempt.
Series
The book is a sequel to Nightrunners of BengalNightrunners of Bengal
Nightrunners of Bengal is the title of the first novel by John Masters. It was published in the United States in January 1951 by the Viking Press, New York, and at first attracted severe criticism from some reviewers who objected to what they regarded as its imperialist viewpoint and graphic...
, the first novel in the series (though not chronologically the first). Both novels were set in Bhowani and its environs. Some locations appear in both novels (although the railway, which has a major role in Bhowani Junction, was in the earlier book a metalled road), such as the Tree of the Silver Guru. Furthermore, Bhowani Junction introduces the descendants of characters from the earlier novel. Most significantly, in both books the protagonist is named Rodney Savage, and the WWII colonel is the direct descendent, one hundred years later, of the East India Company
East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
officer Rodney Savage of the Great Bengal Mutiny that was described in Nightrunners of Bengal.
Savage returns in a sequel, To the Coral Strand, where he undergoes a deep personal crisis which ends with his staying on in independent India rather than returning to Britain, and coming to terms with the new reality.
Translations
- Danish: Bhowani-expressen. [198-]
- German: Knotenpunkt Bhowani; Deutsch von Susanna Rademacher. München: Goldmann, 1988 ISBN 3-442-09116-0