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This book focuses on the role of class in the encounter between South Asians and British institutions in the United Kingdom at the height of British imperialism. The leaders of Britain's cricketing institutions recognised the validity of ranks in an Indian social hierarchy which they attempted to translate into British equivalents. Achievement of Kumar Shri Ranjitsinjhi, one of the greatest cricketers of all time was truly an imperial one, combining the cultures and societies of India and Britain to propel him to a prominence that he would not otherwise have attained. The most important government institution to interact with Indians in Britain was the India Office. The National Indian Association was the most popular forum for interaction among Indians in Britain and Britons interested in India. The London City Mission and the Strangers' Home for Asiatics were the prominent inner-city missions to reach out to Indians in London. The book explores the extent to which British institutions treated Indians as British subjects, sharing a common legal and imperial identity with the inhabitants of the British Isles. It identifies patterns of compassion among Britain's elite when interacting with needy Indians in the United Kingdom, and establishes the central role of education in the civilising mission, particularly through scholarships to study in Britain. The book focuses on the ambiguous responses of British institutions to Indian students in the United Kingdom, ranging from accommodation of Indian culture to acquiescence in British bigotry.
British culture after empire is the first collection of its kind to explore the intertwined social, cultural and political aftermath of empire in Britain from 1945 up to and beyond the Brexit referendum of 2016, combining approaches from experts in history, literature, anthropology, cultural studies and theatre studies. Against those who would deny, downplay or attempt to forget Britain's imperial legacy, these contributions expose and explore how the British Empire and the consequences of its end continue to shape Britain at the local, national and international level. As an important and urgent intervention in a field of increasing relevance within and beyond the academy, the book offers fresh perspectives on the colonial hangovers in postcolonial Britain from up-and-coming as well as established scholars.
State’s perspective reflected the discourses of social hierarchy that British institutions applied to Indians in the United Kingdom. He began with an implicit contrast between the experience of officials in Britain and those in the dominions. Whereas the latter tended to encounter Indians only from the lowest social ranks, the former did so from a wide variety of backgrounds. He
art except in Greek sculpture, or from the hands of M. Angelo or Leonardo?’ 14 There is some evidence that those persons committed to the encouragement of a national school, and in particular to fostering history painting, were concerned to integrate battle painting into the highest echelons of art on the model of France. The British Institution
The last chapter showed how many British institutions, far from discouraging students from visiting the United Kingdom, actively encouraged them to study there in order to spread Western civilisation to India. This chapter investigates the role of institutions in setting the climate of accommodation or prejudice in which Indian students lived during their stay in
. As with so many other aspects of British governance, including the domestic political constitution and the acquisition of empire, much of this trend occurred on an ad hoc basis as British institutions responded to the new imperial connections that their expansion abroad created. Nowhere were the boundaries of these connections tested more than in the encounter between British
institution, its members and their attitudes deserve close examination at the outset. Collectively, the social background of India Office administrators, the ways in which they expressed and transmitted knowledge about Indian society, and the response of educated Indians in Britain to this body of knowledge, had a profound effect on the behaviour of British institutions toward Indians in
satirical comedies which poked fun at certain British institutions. In reviewing Private’s Progress (John Boulting, 1956), which satirised the army, the Monthly Film Bulletin welcomed the ‘general irreverence of the film’ and considered that Attenborough, along with Terry-Thomas and Kenneth Griffith, all played ‘clever character sketches’.28 The principal characters of Private’s Progress were reprised in the highly acclaimed I’m All Right Jack (1959), also directed by John Boulting, starring Ian Carmichael as Stanley Windrush, which focused on industrial relations and
pocket money to those Springfield residents left at large.80 The Rotarian experience might give those inclined to portray the late 1930s and early 1940s in simple terms as a battleground between European Fascism and democratic values exemplified by British institutions, further cause for thought. Although leading Manchester Rotarians were prepared to thus contextualise their club’s policies, it seems clear that not all Manchester Rotarians were free from the kind of prejudice which, in its more intense form, had inspired Nazism. Of those who were, not all were prepared
’s treatment of two national, integrative, “British” institutions, the empire and the monarchy. It will demonstrate the extent to which the BBC championed the British imperial ideal in its programs, and constructed the monarchy as a guarantor of a peculiarly British individualism, freedom, and pluralism. Both empire and monarchy were multi-national institutions, with Scots in particular taking pride in their contributions to the empire, while the monarchy effectively used broadcasting, with the assistance of the BBC, to promote itself as a symbol of Britain’s cultural