SOURCE: Buruma, Ian. “Good Night, Sweet Princes.” New York Review of Books 36, no. 8 (18 May 1989): 9-10, 12.

In the following essay, Buruma discusses the British colonial rule of India and its social and cultural effects as portrayed in Mehta's Raj.

[In Raj: A Novel] Gita Mehta sets the scene well: India, the Roaring Twenties, the Royal Calcutta Turf Club. Jaya, wife of Prince Pratap of Sirpur, is watching the races, dressed in red and indigo, the Sirpur colors. She is joined by her brother-in-law, Maharajah Victor, a gentle man in love with a Hollywood star:

“The Sirpur colors seem to belong on you, Princess. I often think you are the only one of us who knows who you are.”

“But you are the Maharajah, hukam. You are Sirpur.”

He looked at her and Jaya was shocked at the unhappiness in his eyes. “Only by birth and the tolerance of the...