Bhowani Junction

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"Bhowani Junction" is a

1952 novel by John Masters, which was the basis of a successful 1956 film. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian (Anglo-Indian) community, who were closely involved with the Indian railway system.

The film was directed by George Cukor, and was shot on location in Lahore, Pakistan. It starred Ava Gardner as Victoria Jones, an Anglo-Indian nurse in the British Army, and Stewart Granger as Colonel Rodney Savage, a British army officer.

Plot summary

The book is set in 1947, shortly before India gained independence. Victoria is an Anglo-Indian the daughter of a railway worker. Patrick, also an Anglo-Indian, considers himself her boyfriend, but her feelings towards him are platonic. In self-defence Victoria kills a British officer who has attempted to rape her, and is helped to avoid detection by a Sikh, Ranjit, who hopes to marry her.

As presented in the novel (and rather simplified in the film), Victoria decides to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Anglo-Indian community by joining the British Army. She becomes engaged to an Indian Sikh until she realises that this marriage would require her to give up her name (and essentially, her identity). She runs away, literally into the arms of a dashing British officer, Rodney Savage, 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 railroads.

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.

Bhowani Junction was modelled on the central Indian railway town of Bhusawal.

One of the main themes in the novel is the significance of the developing Cold War 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 and in post-World War I Germany.

Throughout the book the British are shown striving to support and sustain the Congress Party 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.

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.

In the book Rodney Savage commands a Gurkha Battalion. In the film, however, he commands the famous 1/13 Frontier Force Battalion (Coke's Rifles), which at that time of filming was part of the 7th (Golden Arrow) Division of the Pakistan Army. Also in the movie is the 4th Battalion (Wilde's) 13th Frontier Force Rifles, the band at the Lahore Railway Station with a deer as its Mascot, and the troops taking part in the train accident were from the 4/13th. The battalion has a copy of the book and photographs from both, Ava Gardner and Stuart Granger, autographed by them.

Another interesting detail is the brief appearance of Parveen Alexander (Neelo) as a reporter.Neelo was introduced to Mr Cukor by Mr AH Rana, the Production Manager of the film. This was her first role in a movie; she went on to become one of the biggest ever star of Pakistani movies.

Externel Links

[http://pakistaniat.com/2008/03/02/ava-gardner-in-lahore-for-bhowani-junction/ Review of the film]

Mr Harvey Woods was the Casting Director of Bhowani Junction and Mr AH Rana was his Casting Assistant in Pakistan. Mr AH Rana co-ordinated all the Lahore Railway scenes and scouted for local talent for the film. Mr Rana also introduced Neelo to Mr Cukor for her role. There are many photographs of Mr Rana with all the film's numerous stars as well as with its lengendary Director Mr George Cukor.

Trivia

* The book is a sequel to "Nightrunners of Bengal", 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 obvious conclusion must be that the WWII colonel is the direct descendent, one hundred years later, of the John Company major Rodney Savage of the Great Bengal Mutiny that was described in "Nightrunners of Bengal".