Scroll of Hidden History

Based on archival research carried out for three years by Professor Susheila Nasta,Open University and Penny Brook,British Library in London,the exhibition attempts to throw light on little known points of interaction between the two countries. For curators Nasta and Brook,this is just a tiny reflection of their in-depth research project – ‘Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad’,funded by UK Arts and Humanities Research Council. According to Nasta,the project strace the voiceless figures of that time. “There were so many Indians in Britain who were a part of the country’s fabric – they were not only the artists and educators but commonplace people like aayahs and assistants whose lives have not been documented yet,” Nasta says.

The exhibition was titled ‘Beyond the Frame’ in order to take the discussion away from the well-known facts about the two countries. “History has left several spaces of dialogue unexplored. The Indian population in Britain wasn’t large but it had a significant impact,” says Brook. Accompanying Nasta and Brook at the exhibition was researcher Florian Stadtler. His area of research is popular culture. For this particular project,he studied the contribution of Indians in the British film industry. At the exhibition,he spoke about how racial prejudices are reflected in popular culture. “The first global Indian film star was Sabu. He acted in several films like Alexander Korda’s Elephant Boy,The Drum,The Thief of Baghdad and The Jungle Book,but they were not accepted in India because of the racial overtones. They stereotyped Indians. They portrayed Indians as dark-skinned. The film-makers specifically chose Sabu because he was darker than an average Indian would be ,” Stadtler said.

There are 12 standees at BCL dedicated to this India-British connection. One shows the Indian influence on British architecture,while another lists the literary exchanges between the two nations – The Mirror of British Merchandise and Hindustani Pictorial News,a journal Britain and India published in London,1920; and Mulk Raj Anand’s cookbook,Curries. A life-size image of Abdul Karim stands tall in the middle of the hall. Captured here as a 24-year-old,Karim went on to become Queen Victoria’s secretary and taught her Hindustani. Beside him,Cornelia Sorabji’s portrait is displayed. She was the first woman to study Law at Oxford and also campaigned for the property rights of women in India. A rather old picture of Indian dancer Uday Shankar with Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova at the Royal Opera House,London in 1930 highlights the exchange of arts between the two nations.

The curators spent a long time poring over archival material found at the East India Company’s records kept at British Library,London. Further support for the exhibition came from the Arts & Humanities Research Council,the British Council India,the World Collections Programme and the National Archives of India.