ABSTRACT

INTERVIEWEE NAME:Sir Alec OgilvieCOLLECTION: 4700.0584

IDENTIFICATION: Britons in pre-Independence India

INTERVIEWER: Frank De Caro, Rosan Jordan

PROJECT: British Voices in South Asia

DATES: 3/14/78 FOCUS DATES: 1930s

Tape 853, Side A

interview is in London; tradition of family service; Alec was born in England in 1913, but taken to India when he was three months old; vague childhood memories of living in Dehli and Simla; earliest recollection was of living in tents while New Dehli was being constructed; his father was in the Foreigner Political Department through the Army; thus his service was in the loveliest part of India (not British India), but the Indian States; Frank=s interest in India; Alec returned to India after his education and worked in London; he joined a British company in Calcutta when he was 21 (March, 1935); his father was still in India and did not retire until October >35; Alec enjoyed visiting his father who was Agent to the Governor General in (now) Rajasthan, covering all of the most beautiful states; Bikaner, a city; the Maharaja used to give Christmas Shoot [?]; a 24 hour train ride from Calcutta to Dehli, changing trains and going to Bhatinda, changed trains again at the Bikaner State Railway; Christmas party, Father Christmas; after Christmas house party moved out Gajner for three days of shooting by a lake; his father returned to England at the age of 55, but had spent 44 years in India; people say that every year spent in Calcutta after the age of 55 took five years off your life; Alec=s vague childhood recollections, children saw their parents very little; between the ages of 12-18, he saw his father a total of six weeks one summer vacation; children were sent back to England rather than educated in India--this was very difficult; two reasons people sent their children back--1) the lack of adequate schools after age eight and 2) climate; after WWII and the introduction of regular air travel, the gap was closed a bit; Alec lived in Calcutta for thirty years (March 1935- March 1965), but was away while in the Indian Army during WWII (August 1940 - February 1946); life in Calcutta between 1935 and 1940: very similar to contemporary Hong Kong (last remaining outposts of Old British Empire), you worked hard and played hard; Calcutta had simmering political trouble; he preferred the eighteen years of Independent India; his father encouraged him to go into business because he realized that British involvement in government was going to decrease with next generations; living conditions in Calcutta: they had 17 servants; story about the day he arrived in Calcutta: a man greeted him at the railway station who lined up personal servants from which to choose, the one he chose stayed with them until he and his wife left in 1965 (a tearful departure); Alec was a Japanese prisoner of war, and his personal servant tracked him down after his release; it was very rare that a personal servant lasted through the transition from his master=s single life to his married one; Calcutta was not as popular to work in as was Bombay; outbursts usually led to violence; the least popular government job in India in the 1930's was Safety Governor; danger was just a part of life; Calcutta was the capital of India until Dehli became the capital; Bombay was the financial sector, a businessman=s city; when people ask him if he was upset leaving India, he replies that he was sad at going, but not sorry to leave; famines and wars; when Pakistan was divided into two, the refugees from the new Pakistan went to Calcutta but the city was not prepared for the influx of people; the British always retired in their own country; on 15 August, 1947--Independence Day--he went out into the streets of Calcutta and people were shouting ALong live India!@; no feeling against the British unlike the Dutch who had a Avery rough departure@; doesn=t remember any rude Indians; Indians wrote in English; the language question: English, Hindi, Tamil

training grounds in the Northwest Frontier; Rusnuk [?] ascended 8000 feet; RP duty (road protection); going up into the hills with convoys; they went from the frontier to train for the Middle East; they went for days without drinking in order to train; transferred to Burma; they arrived in Malya two months before the Japanese arrived and were held prisoner for three and a half years in Singapore; changes since Independence were gradual; inflation; Americans (GIs) did not Abehave too terribly well@ during the Indian War in Calcutta, so that when the British returned, they were more loved by Indians; British did not like the money that Americans had; story about Americans over-paying servants, affecting the market; American soldiers in captivity; the USS Houston was sunk nearby; he picked up languages such as Hindi; the inexperience of some British officers regarding the many Indian languages and dialects; languages were confusing; serious problems arose when they couldn=t understand the language of the Indian Army; it was easier for him because he had been in India; the gap during the war between the Indian Army officers (with previous experience) and those who just came out from England; stories he would hear about the old Indian Army regulars; in his regiment (unlike others you would hear about), there was no stratification between ECO (emergency commissioned officers) and the Regular Army men; his sister, Vira, was married to a Birdwood [?] whose father had been Commander in Chief in India; before the war, people from businesses and different services did not mix company; they were separate communities; as a young man, he remembers that as a head of a large company one would know the senior ICS people in the government as well as one would know the officers in the fort; memories of singing in a cabaret at the Saturday Club in a production about the army; British India had their own vocabulary; there a lot of Indian words that describe situations better than the English language, but they never use them in front of relations, etc.; story about getting currencies confused when discussing a man=s raise (1000 rupees vs. 1000 pounds); Aprabandhabus@ means Aarrangement@; there were two things he was told to buy in India at Simon Artz [?] Emporium--a topi and an edition of Lady Chatterley=s Lover; the end of the topis came with the war; he returned from captivity to find the airforce mechanics servicing the planes without any head protections; he remembers that as a child, if he went out without a topi, the nurse would probably get fired; railway officials still wear topees as part of the uniform; Simon Artz [?] was probably run by Egyptians; most British reaction to India was positive; British Tea Garden managers [?]; the nearest neighbor was twenty miles away; unionization after the war; isolation; Calcutta was a close-knit society; tea gardens were clubs that you would drive to see your friends, sometimes twenty-five miles; Calcutta was large; the changing of the phrase AEurasian community@ to AAnglo-Indians@ in about the 1940s; seeing people he knew in India in England, friendships based on shared experiences; he belongs to the Oriental Club, which originally stemmed from people who worked in the East, but now half of the members are associated with the medical fraternity; in the next 10-12 years, he expects that members who actually lived in the East will die out; he=s sixty-five years old and most people he=s talking about are older; he realized he was Abecoming archaic@ when his son=s university class referred to WWII as AMod Hist@; his contact with Eurasians was limited; he was most likely to have social relations with Indians rather than Anglo-Indians/Eurasians; they brought back carpets and rugs from India; as a young child, he went along on hunts but did not hunt as an adult; a paper chase is like a treasure hunt with horses and paper; they did it in Calcutta on horses; he met his wife in England when he was sixteen on a chaperoned Swiss party; she was eleven; they married in November 1945 and she joined him in India in 1946; she lived there twenty years and looks on her experience more sentimentally than he does; he was in India thrity-six years and came back to England at age fifty-one; returning to Calcutta; his wife had not gotten it out of her system; his opinion on AThe Plain Tales of the Raj@ radio program; his friend, Evan Charlton, narrated it; it came on too late for him to listen to the whole thing (his sister=s voice was in it); Michael Mason of the BBC is a good contact regarding the interviews for the radio program; the concept of the interviews is similar to Franks=--preservation and recording a period of history; he particularly liked the background noises of the radio show such as the Indian train stations; Frank and Rosan were in India in 1966-67, just after Alec left; living in Calcutta was a unique experience, but not too popular; there was a large English population, much bigger than Bombay; looking out the London window at the playboy bunny girls who walk down the stairs to the Playboy Club--Aa great American export@; reels of videos made in India; small talk about upcoming vacation plans; story about American tourists in India in June when it was 108 degrees--they told him that it was no worse than Texas; end of interview with Sir Alec Ogilvie