Sanjay Subrahmanyam interviewed at Granta:
Editor:
You were born fourteen years after Indian Independence in 1947. What was your impression of the British Empire growing up?
Subrahmanyam:
Growing up in the 1960s, the British Empire was not much of a subject of regular conversation, and people did not usually express violent anti-British sentiments. It was only at the age of eleven or twelve that the subject of the anti-colonial movement came up in our history classes, and most of my classmates were perplexed by the avid nationalism of our teacher, a very intelligent Bengali woman whom I remember fondly to this day. There were actually a few Anglophiles around in our neighborhood, one of whom even grew hybrid roses in the fond hope of exhibiting them in the annual Chelsea Show. When the Indian television, which was run by the government, eventually showed British Top of the Pops programmes in the late 1960s with Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, and the Moody Blues, there was a lot of enthusiasm in some households, and only a few realized that Engelbert had been born in Madras [Chennai]. Within my family, there was a bit of a division. My father was a convinced nationalist who cordially detested the British Empire.
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