Viceroy’s House: Discerning Who the Victors Are

Abstract

Gurinder Chadha’s 2017 film Viceroy’s House opens with the quote attributed to Winston Churchill, “History is written by the victors”. With this provocative beginning, Chadha seems to aim for a strong reaction and, indeed, a review of the critical response to the film suggests that Chadha garnered attention from voices on all sides of the historic events depicted in the film. The film was received with bitter criticism, especially from Muslim and Hindu critics, who considered it an attempt to whitewash Mountbatten’s actions in the Partition of India and the terrible consequences of that decision. However, I contend that the victors in the film are Gurinder Chadha’s family and the survivors of Partition, and that she uses herstory to pay homage to those who suffered the consequences of the decision. Furthermore, Chadha includes narrative and formal devices to underscore that her narration and knowledge are situated, rather than claiming to provide a transparent and objective account of the events that took place in the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The focus of my critical approach, then, will be the analysis of these devices and how the filmmaker ultimately challenges ‘historical facts’ or any attempt at offering the definitive version of history in order to problematise Churchill’s statement and the official British account of Partition.