In India, a lot of films have been made relating to independence and Partition in both mainstream Hindi as well as regional languages. Where Bollywood films Garam Hawa, Tamas and mainstream ones like Earth and Train to Pakistan were well received, Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi was the most acclaimed that won several Oscars and did roaring business globally. Jinnah, a 1998 epic biographical film which was released in Pakistan and in the United Kingdom was not released in India. The film had narrations by Bollywood veteran Shashi Kapoor. Now, Viceroy’s House directed by Gurinder Chadha and extensively shot in Jodhpur, Rajasthan depicts the life of Viceroy Lord Mountbatten and the turmoil in the Viceroy House in New Delhi.

A Viceroy is a regal official who runs a country, colony, city province or state in the name of and as the representative of the monarch. In Indian context, the Viceroy represented the British King. The title of Viceroy was awarded to members of nobility. The Viceroys were based in two cities — Kolkata during the 19th century and New Delhi during the 20th century. The two historic residences of the Viceroys that still stand are the Viceroy’s House (Rashtrapati Bhawan) in New Delhi and Government House (Raj Bhawan) in Kolkata. Today, they are used as the official residences of the President of India and the Governor of West Bengal, respectively.

After Bend it like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice, filmmaker Gurinder Chadha is all set to make yet another English film based on Indian characters. She says, “My film talks about Lord Mountbatten’s last few days of stay in India before the country got its independence. The feature drama will chart life inside the Viceroy’s House and the momentous political decisions that led to Partition in 1947.”

Partition as a subject to create literary and cinematic depictions continues to inspire filmmakers in both India and Pakistan. The latest is Gurinder Chadha with Viceroy’s House, writes Prakash Bhandari

As political elites Mahatma Gandhi, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Nehru, Liaquat Ali Khan and Sardar Patel took their seats in the large Viceroy House to discuss the modalities of the partition, a conflict erupted throughout the Viceroy’s House over the birth of an Independent India.

“Mountbatten lived in a majestic mansion with his wife Edwina and daughter Pamela, and in the precincts of the Viceroy House lived a retinue of staff members who were Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and Christians. The staff members included a Muslim girl Aliya (played by Huma Qureshi) and a Hindu young man Jeet (Manish Dayal) who are in love. But the events of 1947 separates them as Aliya goes away to Pakistan and Jeet is left behind in India,” adds Chadha.

Manish Dayal, the US-based Indian-American actor who got acclaim for his role as an Indian chef in France in The Hundred Foot Journey plays Jeet, the romantic lead opposite Huma Qureshi.

Huma Qureshi, 29, besides Viceroy’s House is also working in the Indian remake of the 2013 horror film Oculus and an Indian language film, White.

“Viceroy’s House will be a great launch pad for Qureshi in the international film world. She is a good actress and with this film she will be launched in global cinema. She worked hard to get into the prim and proper British accent,” adds Gurinder.

The talented British actor Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) plays Lord Mountbatten while Gillian Anderson of The X Files plays Edwina. Pakistani-origin British actor Tanveer Ghani plays Jawahar Lal Nehru, while Indian actor Denzil Smith is seen here as Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Neeraj Kabi as Mahatma Gandhi and veteran Indian actor Yusuf Khurram portrays Sardar Patel, aka the ‘Iron Man of India’ who went on to become the Home Minister when India gained independence.

The casting was done in both UK and in Mumbai. Seher Latif was assigned the job of selecting the Indian actors in the film. At one stage Colin Firth and Naseeruddin Shah were gunning for the roles of Lord Mountabatten and Jinnah, and Saif Ali Khan for Jawahar Lal Nehru. But Gurinder chose Tanveer Ghani (Nehru) and Denzil Smith (Jinnah).

Denzil Smith, 55, is an Indian stage and film actor who has been chosen to portray the role of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah. He has a variety of roles to his credit in international productions like Merchants of Bollywood, Life of Buddha, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and the sequel shot in India. He has worked with Omar Sharif and Peter O’ Toole in One Night with the King, besides Bollywood films The Lunchbox and Phantom. He is also an accomplished stage actor who started his career with the famous Indian theatre personality Alyque Padamsee.

“I have a key role in the movie (as Jinnah) and am grateful to Gurinder for choosing me. I have conducted my own research on Mr Jinnah and collected a lot of details about the Quaid-i-Azam from people in Mumbai where he lived before Partition. I also read a lot about him and his ideologies. Working with Gurinder was a great experience as she knows how to extract the best out of an actor,” says Denzil.

The role of Mahatma Gandhi is played by Neeraj Kabi, a theatre artist hailed for his acting in Talvar in which he was featured with Irfaan Khan. “Earlier, I had played the role of Mahatma Gandhi in Shyam Benegal’s TV serial Sanvidhan. For this film I had to get tonsured and reduce weight. Perhaps my performance in the TV serial is what inspired Gurinder to offer me the role.

“While Ben Kinsgley’s portrayal of Mahatma Gandhi was iconic, I want to prove that an Indian actor with an Indian soul and mind would portray the role of Mahatma in a better way. The film centres around the last one-and-a-half month before Partition in August 1947 when Lord Mountbatten’s formula was enforced on the people of the subcontinent. Mahatma Gandhi did not agree with Partition and he refused to join the deliberations with Lord Mountbatten. This film will deal with the roles played by Jinnah, Nehru, Liaquat Ali Khan and Patel,” adds Kabi.

Liaquat Ali Khan is enacted by Ashok Bhagwat while Yussuf Khurram, a TV and film actor who played cameo roles in Ismail Merchant’s In Custody and Mani Kaul’s The Cloud Door is chosen to play Sardar Patel because of a strong resemblance to him.

Viceroy’s House has been scripted by Gurinder Chadha along with her husband Paul Mayeda Berges and Moira Buffini. Gurinder has also bought the rights of two books, Narinder Singh Sarla’s The Shadow of the Great Game and Larry Colins and Dominiue Lapierre’s Freedom at Midnight for scripting purposes.

The film will also touch upon Edwina Mountbatten’s romance with Prime Minister Nehru and feature Mountbatten’s daughter Lady Pamela Hicks. Pamela’s autography Daughter of Empire states that there was no intimacy involved in the love life of Nehru and Edwina as they did not have time for it. But in the book she revealed that her mother was a promiscuous lady who took lovers as and when she wished. Her father Lord Mountbatten was aware of this and at one stage in their marriage he too joined the fun and took on a lover as if to compete with his wife. Both their loves walked in and out of the Viceroy’s House at one time, making it a triangular relationship — a ménage a quatre.

Gillian Anderson, the petite British actress will play the colourful role of Edwina. Gurinder chose to shoot the film in the majestic Ummed Bhawan Palace, the residence of the erstwhile Maharaja of Jodhpur. On an interesting note, the Maharaja tried to merge his royal state with Pakistan in 1947 rather than join the Indian Union after the merger of the Indian princely states.

Located in Jodhpur about 400kms from the Indo-Pak border, the Ummed Bhawan Palace which has now been turned into a luxury hotel was once the world’s largest private residence with 347 rooms. “The architect Henry Vaughan Lanchester was a contemporary of Sir Edward Lutyen, who built the modern New Delhi and also the Viceroy’s House there. Lanchester patterned Ummed Bhawan on the lines of Delhi’s Viceroy’s House by adopting the theme of domes and columns. Perhaps for this reason Gurinder Chadha chose to shoot her film there. Moreover, shooting the film in Delhi’s Rashtrapati Bhawan was also not without trouble because of bureaucratic interventions,” noted Shakti Singh, an official at Ummed Bhawan.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine November 22nd, 2015