The Raj began in 1818 when the Rajput states of central and northern India and much else of the country came under British "protection," an occupation that ended only in 1948. Many accounts exist of Anglo-Indian life during this period, a time characterized by earnest sincerity and intolerable bigotry alike. Rudyard Kipling's account is on the whole favorable, while E.M. Forster's in "A Passage to India" is so condemnatory that it can be said to have hastened even British acceptance of the end of the Raj itself. The whole gorgeous, hideous panorama is laid out in greatest detail in Paul Scott's "Raj Quartet."
Now, in "Out of India," Michael Foss gives us his bleak but affectionate account of the first years of his life and the last years of the Raj. He grew up in India in what was left of Anglo-Indian society and was in a position to view its massive inequalities.
Foss shows how "a son of a poor gardener became an army officer and an Irish skivvy transformed herself into the officer's lady -- became 'sahib' and 'memsahib.' " These two, his parents, both decent, well-intentioned folk, became their roles, for "how easy it was, in the peculiar relationship between English and Indian, for promise to outrun performance and for small everyday events to fall into misunderstanding, indignity and foolishness."