Four Raj Novels

The Omnibus will carry a comprehensive Introduction by Saros Cowasjee, which will place these novels in their socio-historical and literary contexts. The collection will appeal to general readers as well as scholars interested in Anglo-Indian writing, colonial history and literature, and British historiography of India. The four books included in this selection, under the editorship of Saros Cowasjee, have all been out of print for nearly forty years or more. These include "On the Face of the Waters" (Flora Annie Steel, 1896), "Siri Ram Revolutionist" (Edmund Candler, 1912), "Indigo" (Christine Weston, 1943), and "Wild Sweet Witch" (Philip Mason, 1947). Just about the finest novel of the Mutiny, "On the Face of the Waters" is a superb presentation of history in fictional form. In the framework of the siege of Delhi, Flora Annie Steel works out the crisis in the relationship of Major Erlton and Alice Gissing, the later one of the really great women in fiction. First published in 1896, the book was an immediate success and reprinted some six times within the same number or months.
Though the Indian National Congress was founded in 1885, the Indian nationalist as a major character did not appear in Anglo-Indian fiction until Edmund Candler - "Siri Ram-Revolutionist" in 1912. The Portrayal of nationalists was generally unfriendly: they were shown as cowards motivated by self-interest and by no means representative of the people. In this novel, Siri Ram is led into an act of terrorism by Subtler and more unscrupulous minds than his own. He is greatly flattered when, after returning from a term in jail for being the scapegoat editor on an anti-Raj newspaper, he is chosen to kill the kindly magistrate, Merivale. Siri Ram s own pathetic end demonstrates the futility of violence. But if he is guilty of deluding himself that a general uprising is at hand to free India, so is his creator, Candler, in refusing to see that many of the revolutionaries were honest and dedicated men. First published in 1943, "Indigo" has been out of print for some forty years. It is primarily a story of friendship between three boys Jacques, the son of French parents John Macbeth, son of a British army officer and Hardyal, son of a westernized Hindu lawyer.
As they grow up they drift apart: the first into passive disillusionment, the second into unstinting support of the British Raj, and the third into revolutionary patriotism Like Forster in "A Passage to India", Weston too feels that love never has and never will transcend politics not until politics have broken down the barriers which transcend love. But this is only one aspect of this many-faceted novel, full of brilliant characterization and vivid descriptions on the plains and hills of northern India. In love with India, Weston is however not sentimentalist. She is acutely aware of the country s failings she is equally aware of the turgid vitality of its inhabitants. Philip Mason's novel, "The Wild Sweet Witch" portrays the last years of the Raj through the eyes of three generations of Garwali family-the old Patriarch, Kalyanu, his son and his grandson, Jodh Singh. Jodh Singh is the first member of his family to be educated beyond school. The new ideas he is exposed to irrevocably change his outlook towards his friends, his village, his British masters and his old way of life.
He gets involved with groups fighting for the country's independence movement but even this does not resolve his inner war with himself, a struggle that ultimately results in death.