This episode challenges romanticized notions of British rule in India with the eyewitness account offered by C. Subramania Bharati in his extended English-language essay, "The Political Evolution in the Madras Presidency."  Bharati's article should quickly curtail any nostalgia for empire. It is a stunning narrative of the reality of colonialism in the southern part of India - a story that has been virtually forgotten by the world, but that now demands a fresh hearing in our current time of reckoning with injustice. Even more than police repression, Bharati dwells on the chilling hypocrisy of the British government, which claims free speech and individual rights as core British values, only to deny them to their own colonial subjects. The episode features an extended passage from his essay, as well as a brief excerpt from a second of his essays dealing with colonial rule, entitled "Police Rule in India: A Letter to Mr. Ramsay Macdonald." 

Percussion by tabla maestro Bickram Ghosh and ghatam maestro V. Suresh in a spectacular "jugalbandhi" brings together North and South Indian classical traditions, symbolizing Indian cultural unity.

Executive Producer and Host: Mira T. Sundara Rajan

Engineer: Emma Markowitz

Producer: Bradley W. Vines

Music Credits: Drums of India, Bickram Ghosh on Tabla and V. Suresh On Ghatam.

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