Trace and Tell your Family's Empire Stories
Introduction
My father and mother's families both arrived in India in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. I was born in Calcutta on 15 August 1935, 12 years exactly before independence.
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On Independence Day the whole school met in front of the "parlour steps", the entrance where the important people, teachers and other staff entered the school.
The principal came out with the chief minister of the State of the United Provinces. We were all supposed to cheer when the Union Jack was lowered and the Indian flag was raised. The principal actually said: "Three cheers for the Indian flag".
It was probably the wrong school to do this, as most of the pupils were sons of officers and princes of the Indian state, who would lose their titles. They gave the flag a very low-par greeting. The chief minister walked out, and the principal returned to plead with the boys to give it a proper greeting.
When the chief minister returned, they did so. The chief minister told the boys that if they went down to the village and saluated or salaamed the Indian flag, they would get a lot of free sweets. So, all the boys went and did that, again and again.
The other thing that happened that year was the marriage of Princess Elizabeth to Prince Philip and, although all the brothers were Irish, they were very sympathetic and we had the whole ceremony broadcast on loudspeakers to the school, all day.
