Half a century after the British left India, this middle-class elite appears to be their most enduring legacy. Whom we govern a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and intellect.'' Intention behind setting up Western-style schools and universities in India, as very pragmatically specified by Macaulay, was to have a class of Indians ''who may be interpreters between us and the millions The English-speaking Indian elite Arjun belongs to was a carefully thought-out creation of the British, and was well protected from ideas of personal and political freedom. There is much melancholy truth in this confession. Is not sure that ''we can undo all of that just by putting up a new flag.'' We wanted to be sahibs and that's what we've become.'' He He is aware that ''except for the color of our skin, most people in India wouldn't even recognize us as Indians. Nicknamed Hardy, to desert and join a group of renegade Indians who plan to help the Japanese defeat the British and liberate India.Īrjun hesitates, and with good reasons. He is in Malaya during World War II when he is asked by a much less Anglicized colleague, Ne of the leading characters in ''The Glass Palace,'' Amitav Ghosh's fourth and most ambitious novel, is Arjun, a middle-classīengali, who as an officer in the British Indian Army has learned to dance the tango and to eat roast beef with a knife and fork. The story follows the fortunes - rubber estates in Malaya, businesses in Singapore, estates in Burma - which Rajkumar, with his Chinese, British and Burmese relations, friends and associates, builds up - from 1870 through World War II to the scattering of the extended family to New York and Thailand, London and Hong Kong in the post-war years.FebruThere'll Always Be an England in IndiaĪmitav Ghosh's novel traces the impact of colonialism on middle-class society.

Among the great range of characters are one of the court ladies, Miss Dolly, whom he marries and the redoubtable Jonakin, part of the British-educated Indian colony, who with her husband has been put in charge of the Burmese exiled court. The picture of the tension between the Burmese, the Indian and the British, is excellent. But haunted by his vision of the royal family, he journeys to the obscure town in India where they have been exiled. He is rescued by the far-seeing Chinese merchant, and with him builds up a logging business in upper Burma.

Rajkumar is only another boy, helping on a market stall in the dusty square outside the royal palace, when the British force the Burmese king, queen and all the court into exile.

The acclaimed author of 'The Calcutta Chromosome' and 'The Shadow Lines' has burst out on to the big stage with a major saga on that hidden country, Burma.

The glass palace