Showing posts with label James Cameron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Cameron. Show all posts

Tuesday, 12 October 2021

The princes stubbornly continued fighting on two fronts: against mythology on the one hand, and democracy on the other

A great deal of dotty folklore had accreted around these curious monarchs and their life-style. According to certain legends these people in their day wore priceless gems for breakfast and conducted their daily business of despotism from the back of elephants, in more-than-Oriental splendour. Another school of though, mainly their own, held that the Indian princes were far-sighted and benevolent rulers and their disappearance mournful. However that may have been (and it was both), one might have thought to have heard the last of the Maharajahs, but not so. Even in the tormented times that so threatened India today the princes stubbornly continued fighting on two fronts: against mythology on the one hand, and democracy on the other.

J. Cameron, An Indian summer (1974), 114

Sunday, 10 October 2021

What Forster had against colonialism was its corruption of individual relation, its destruction of personality

What Forster had against colonialism (since he was a novelist and not a pamphleteer) was its corruption of individual relation, its destruction of personality. What irked Forster about the Raj was that it turned a silly Indian like Aziz into a martyr and a silly Englishman like Heaslop into a tyrant, and neither of them were fitted for roles so important.

J. Cameron, An Indian summer (1974), 110

I expect that is what irked Forster about colonialism, but it's not what I'd put top.