Indians were “very pleased” with the ITV drama The Jewel in the Crown, and did not agree with Salman Rushdie’s view that it was “grotesquely overpraised”, according to Foreign Office papers.
Based on the novels of Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown was set against the backdrop of the last days of the British Raj. It was one of the TV hits of 1984 and featured a primarily white British cast including Charles Dance, Peggy Ashcroft and Tim Piggott-Smith.
Writing in the Observer, Rushdie – who had won the Booker prize three years earlier with Midnight’s Children – took exception to the drama as well as to other recent portrayals of India including Richard Attenborough’s Oscar-winning film Gandhi.
They were, according to Rushdie, examples of “Raj revisionism” and the “artistic counterpoint to the rise of conservative ideologies in modern Britain”. Rushdie also put the boot into what he called Scott’s “cliched” prose. The TV series was part of a “zombie-like revival of the defunct empire”.
The Indian government, however, disagreed - at least according to a memo sent in April 1984 by the diplomat Ronald Nash. Nash told his bosses in London: “It’s not my impression that many here share the Rushdie view. If anything people seem slightly flattered by all the attention.”
Nash said he had dropped into Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official home of the president of India. There, the then deputy press secretary, Tarlochan Singh, had told him “the Indians – implying officially – were very pleased with the series and films on India based on various novels”.
“That interest in India on the part of the British had been stimulated was undeniable. The tourist figures were well up. This renewed interest was a stimulus to a relationship that was much deeper than with any other European country.”
Nash continued: “He dismissed the Rushdie romanticising-the-Raj thesis. He said Indians today were of a new generation and were no longer nervous of such harkings-back to the past which represented no threat.”
The diplomat - who went on to be Britain’s ambassador to Nepal and Afghanistan - enclosed a press cutting from the Times of India, headlined “Rushdie’s Complaint”. In playful tones, the editorial noted that Rushdie had created “exceptional literary works” and was entitled to his strong opinions, reminiscent of George Orwell.
The Times did not agree with his criticism, though. It wrote: “It will win him some standing in the left in Britain but some of us in India would perhaps prefer to shrug our shoulders.
“Need Indians, native or expatriate, be so worked up every time white people say something disagreeable about us? They do nice things too – like giving some of us Booker prizes.”
• This article was amended on 24 August 2016. An earlier version named Indira Gandhi as the president of India in 1984; she was prime minister.
