Plain Tales from the Raj: Images of British India in the Twentieth Century Charles Allen

THE SHRINE OF THE BAB A-LOG — THE TOMB OF HIS ANCESTORS — POSH — ALIENS UNDER ONE SKY LEARNING THE ROPES — HOUSEHOLD — THE ORDER OF PRECEDENCE — THE LAND OF THE OPEN DOOR — THE CLUB — HAZARD AND SPORT — THE HOT WEATHER — THE HILLS — THE COLD WEATHER — THE MESS — THE BARRACKS — THE FRONTIER — THE LAND OF REGRETS THE DAY’S WORK — INDIANS — “QUIT INDIA” — TOPEES OVERBOARD. – There is still great curiosity about the phenomenon of British imperialism and the very distinctive ruling society that it gave rise to in India. As far as the British are concerned, this curiosity is well founded, since it is a still largely unrecognized fact that the Indian connection has direct or indirect links with just about every family in Britain. There are more than a million British graves in the Indian sub-continent, reaching back through three and a half centuries. Poke among the branches of any family tree – but particularly among the Scots and the Ulster Protestants – and you will find that Uncle Jack did five years hard with the Dorset in Mhow and Secunderabad, that Great-Aunt Elfrida married a medical missionary from Chittagong or that granny’s grandad was a Colonel in the Honorable East India Company’s Bengal Army at the time of the Mutiny. Now that the Raj is firmly established as part of our Indo-British heritage it can be savored as such. As to the charge of revisionism I can only reiterate what has been said before: that Plain Tales from the Raj is not a defense of colonialism in action but simply an evocation, a mosaic put together entirely and only from the evidence of some of those who were there.