Bhowani Junction

Bhowani Junction is a 1954 novel by British novelist John Masters, which was the basis of a 1956 film starring Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India. It is notable for its portrayal of the Eurasian (Anglo-Indian) community, who were caught in their loyalties between the departing British and the majority Indian population. The Anglo-Indian characters in the novel, like many members of their community, are closely involved with the Indian railway system. Plot summary The book is set in 1946/1947, shortly before India gained independence. Victoria is an Anglo-Indian, the daughter of a railwayman. Patrick Taylor, also an Anglo-Indian, considers himself her boyfriend, but her feelings towards him have become ambivalent since her experience of British Army staff culture (see below). Taylor is represented as a clumsy and resentful personality, tormented by conflicting feelings of social inferiority and racial superiority. In vigorously defending herself from a British army officer who is attempting to rape her, Victoria unintentionally kills him. She is persuaded not to report the matter by a subordinate of Patrick's, a Sikh, Ranjit, who hopes to marry her and whose family and friends help her to avoid detection. Victoria had earlier decided to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Anglo-Indian community by becoming a Women's Auxiliary Corps (India) officer at army headquarters. With the war's end and her return home, however, she is confronted with the problem of her identity all over again. She decides to get engaged to the gentle and serious Ranjit in an attempt to become assimilated in wider Indian society—since British rule is visibly on its way out—but then she realises that such a marriage would require her to give up her name (and, essentially, her identity).