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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: The Dark Dancer, Balachandra Rajan (1958)
Description: Dr. Nalini Iyer rereads South Indian and diasporic experiences of Partition, through Balachandra Rajan's 1958 novel, The Dark Dancer.
Born in British India but educated at Cambridge University, V. S. Krishnan finally returns to his home country on the eve of its independence in 1947. But after many years cut off from his family and culture, this South Indian civil servant has become a typical colonial product - the 'brown-skinned Englishman' and bureaucrat idealised by the likes of Lord Macauley. Krishnan's relationships with women reveal other Indias - of Gandhian independence and Hindu nationalism - that he has never...