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Abhinaba Chatterjee

MPhil (Delhi University)

Critiquing Colonialism through Cinematic Frames:

Satyajit Ray’s Adaptation of Premchand’s ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’

Satyajit Ray’s adaptation of Premchand’s ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’, in a classic

example of intersemiotic translation, conveys the multiple dimensions of
the causes of colonialism that had befallen to India, considered by many to
be a great nation. While Premchand’s short story seeks to analyse the
shortfalls from the Indian perspective, Ray’s adaptation seeks to play the
role of colonialism in its entirety, not restricting itself to the mere follies of
the Muslim court, but also to the violation of codes of honour by the
colonialist as also the adaptations of the Indian to the new circumstances,
paving the path to the great 1857 mutiny. This paper seeks to identify the
multiple dimensions of colonialism in the adaptation of the short story of
Premchand by Satyajit Ray.

Satyajit Ray’s film ‘The Chess Players’ (1977) is a period film that re-creates the

historical moment of the annexation of Awadh in 1856. On so doing Ray confronts the

fact that Awadh and its last Muslim ruler Wajid Ali Shah, and subsequently the entire

culture of the period, are deeply inscribed sites of the expanded cultural critique in

colonialist discourse.

Assessing colonial histories in complex, innovative and visually interesting ways

is never an easy task in a medium that demands obvious heroes and villains. But Ray’s

adaptation of Premchand’s short story achieves exactly this. The academic discipline of

history goes far beyond the telling of stories set in earlier times. Satyajit Ray would

never have claimed to be a maker of historical films, one whose educated interest in

history might have urged him to make interpretations of the past according, as far as is
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possible, to the conventions of the literary historian or even of the documentary

filmmaker.

Since Premchand’s 1924 short story ‘Shatranj-ke Khiladi’ (‘The Chess Players’)

deals with an actual historical event – the takeover of the kingdom of Awadh and its

capital city of Lucknow by the British – and since the history of Lucknow itself is

reflected through the obsessions of his two main characters, it is important to know

Premchand’s own approach to Indian history and the themes he wished to articulate in

stories like this one. As Govind Narain writes: -

‘Premchand was a keen student of history, and like many thoughtful Indians who

were engaged in intense self-examination to find out why their great country had

become a victim of foreign domination, he reflected on the rise and fall of nations.

But unlike most of his countrymen who, to escape from the painful reality of the

present, were taking shelter in a sentimental glorification of the past, he tried to

look at the past in a critical way. He regarded the past not as an ideal but as a

starting point to discover our roots. History to him was not something to be

idealized but to be learned from: “From history we ought to learn not what we

were but also what we could have been. Often we have to forget history. The

past cannot become the custodian of our future.” (Premchand’s Kuch Vichar or

Some Thoughts).

Ray added a parallel thread story that covers the historical background

concerning the political turmoil of the time (1856) and places things more firmly in a

social context. The screenplay of the film thus depicts three separate courses of

actions:
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 The royal court of the Nawab, Wajid Ali Shah, who is the ruler of Awadh.

 The officers of British General Outram.

 The domestic concerns of the two avid chess players, Mirza Sajjad Ali and

Mir Roshan Ali.

Rarely do these three courses of action come in contact during the film, but on a

thematic level, they are intertwined. They ostensibly tell a straightforward story of how

self-indulgence and decadence on the part of the Indian upper class allowed the

relatively small contingent of British invaders to take over an entire subcontinent. The

Indian upper class is portrayed as effete and almost degenerate, while the British are

portrayed as disciplined, vigorous and pragmatic. But Ray’s adaptation of the story

impresses the fact that being much more than a mere ‘mosaic of quotations’ the film

affects ‘the absorption and transformation’ of the short story in a truly enabling fashion.

The adaptation is directed at giving voice and a different interpretation to an individual

and culture, which is silenced or misrepresented in the colonial discourse.

Colonialist discourses foreclose and disallow the possibility of alternate

understandings of the work/play binary, other than the binary of enterprise as work and

native culture as unproductive play. By 1856, the year of Awadh’s takeover by the

British, the colonialist expanded cultural critique evolved into a full-fledged discourse.

The expanded cultural critique of Awadh was based on scholarship and heresy by

British administrator-scholars who did extensive research into Awadh, only in order to

condemn various aspects of the culture such as dance, poetry, music, all forms of

popular entertainment such as kite-flying, cock-fighting, gambling as well as Hindu and

Muslim practices of dress, food and religion.

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In the opening sequence of the film, Ray delineates the colonial expanded

critique. The sequence establishes the colonialist and nationalist critique that the

nobility, the commoners and the king in the nineteenth-century Awadh were exclusively

involved in the play. The narrator identifies this unproductive play with the Muslim

culture of Awadh by referring Awadh as the last bastion of Muslim culture. We are

invited to associate Awadhi culture not with work but with play. The absence of valued

time in this culture is deliberately underlined in the case of Wajid through the close-up of

the empty throne. It is noteworthy that Ray’s delineation of the colonialist critique of

Awadh’s culture and its passion for play is unlike nationalist representation principally

because he goes on to show the binary opposite of that colonialist discourse in British

enterprise. In the next scene he represents English enterprise via the character of

General Outram. In an extended conversation with his aide Weston, Ray’s Outram

demonstrates that British enterprise relies on extensive documentation and denigration

of other cultures. In Ray’s screenplay, Outram comments on Wajid’s work and play by

analyzing a report submitted by his spies concerning an ‘hour-by-hour account’ of a day

in Wajid’s life. What we get here is the official description of Wajid. Weston’s responses,

however, offer resistance to the damaging portrait of the king that Outram’s discourse is

trying to build. Moreover, Ray works out this dialectic like a chess game, with

appropriate moves and countermoves between the two officials, adding a further

richness to Premchand’s original story.

“Did you know,” Outram informs Weston at the outset, “that the King prayed five

times a day?” The implication is that instead of ruling and administering Wajid is more

interested in trivial and non-monarchial activities like “praying”. Weston’s response to

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this is, “Five is the number prescribed by the Koran, sir.” This categorically affirms

Outram’s ignorance of Islamic religion and culture. Acknowledging Weston’s move,

Outram dips into the official document to come up with the following damaging fissures

in Wajid’s personality:

“His Majesty listened to a new singer, Mushtrari Bai, and afterwards amused

himself by flying kites on the palace roof.” That’s at 4 p.m. Then the King goes to

sleep for an hour but he’s up in time for the third prayer at 5 p.m. And then in the

evening – now where is it? – “His Majesty recited a new poem on the loves of the

bulbul [a Persian nightingale].”

Outram expects Weston to come up with the damaging adjectives and epithets to typify

Wajid as the inappropriate ruler. “Tell me Weston…What kind of poet is the King? Is he

any good, or is it simply because he is the King they say he is good?” But Weston,

using his own authority – for he knows the Urdu language and the people and culture of

Awadh firsthand – informs Outram that, as a poet, Wajid “I think is rather good”. To

prove this he not only recites a Wajid poem in translation but also interprets it for him.

To Outram’s narrow, militaristic British mind, the poem “doesn’t amount to much,” but

when he informs Weston of this, the latter quickly counters by indicating that the poem

“doesn’t translate very well, sir.”

Checked again, Outram’s next gambit is to target the perplexing image cast by

Wajid’s bizarre masculinity. The nonviolent Wajid challenges not only Outram’s concept

of the virile and masculine ruler but also, as Ashis Nandy observes in his brilliant review

of the film, “the dominant concept of kingship in Indian Islam as well as the Hindu

Kshatriya or soldier tradition.” We can see very clearly here why Nandy was so upset
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about Ray’s “effeminate portrait” of Wajid. When Weston insists that Wajid is “really

gifted” as a composer of songs, poems, and as a dancer, Outram’s colonial ire rises.

“Yes, so I understand,” he fires back at Weston, “with bells on his feet, like naked

nautch-girls.” We see very clearly here the colonial intent: How can you call Wajid a king

when in addition to wearing a crown on his head he also wears bells on his feet?

Arriving rapidly at this conclusion, Outram demands: “And what kind of King do you

think that all this makes him, Weston? All these various accomplishments?” When

Weston slyly responds, “Rather a special kind, sir,” Outram stops pacing, stiffens, and

erupts: “Special? I would have used a much stronger word than that Weston. I would

have said a bad King. A frivolous, effeminate, irresponsible, worthless King.” When

Weston tries to protest, Outram, pulling rank as British Resident, warns Weston that

“any suspicion that you hold a brief for the King” would ruin Weston’s chance for any

future promotions “once we take over” Awadh. It is a lamentable victory on Outram’s

part, but the struggle between the two men adds an important layer to Premchand’s

excellent short story.

Ray’s dialogue for Outram is a fictionalized account of a celebrated passage from

a book that came to represent the East India Company’s cultural portrait of the despotic

Awadhi ruler’s “native misrule”. W.H. Sleeman’s ‘A Journey Through the Kingdom of

Oudh in 1849-520’ (1858). Sleeman indicts the Awadh ruler for being unfit to execute

his role as arbiter of justice. As Sleeman builds his argument, he invokes a curious

blend of cultural proofs derived from Wajid’s supposed effeminacy and his frivolity in his

artistic pursuits:
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“The present sovereign never hears a complaint, or reads a petition, or report of

any kind. He is entirely taken up in the pursuit of his personal gratifications…He

lives, exclusively, in the society of fiddlers, eunuchs and women – he has done

so since his childhood, and is likely to do so to the last. His disrelish for any other

society has become inveterate – he cannot keep awake in any other. In spite of

average natural capacity, and more than average facility in the cultivation of light

literature…his understanding has become so emasculated, that he is altogether

unfit for the conduct of his domestic much less his public affairs,,, He sometimes

admits a few poets or poetasters, to hear and praise his verses…his own silly

comedies; but any one who presumes to approach him – even in his rides and

drives – with a petition for justice, is instantly clapped into prison, or otherwise,

severely punished.”

This passage from Sleeman’s journal is the source for Ray’s script. The evidence

is that Outram’s description of Wajid’s activities, “Eunuchs, fiddlers, nautch girls and

‘muta wives’ and God knows what else” echoes Sleeman’s influential and widely quoted

indictment of Wajid, “He lives, exclusively in the society of fiddlers, eunuchs and

women.” This grouping of artists, women and eunuchs contains an unexamined

misogyny as well as fear of Wajid’s androgynous sexuality. Sleeman displays an

automatic assumption that the masculinity of the Asiatic Other is suspect. The above

passage also exhibits the British contempt for Indian art and British incomprehension,

hatred and prejudice against an Asian political economy within which the art of rule

includes the rule of art. Sleeman’s passage allows us to judge the fact that Ray’s

Outram makes a historically resonant formulation that is neither fictional nor

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exaggerated. We are concerned with this formulation because here lies the key to the

colonial discourse of Awadh and the paradigmatic figure of despotism in that discourse

– Wajid Ali Shah, the last and most compelling Muslim ruler of Awadh.

The passage makes a political indictment based on what appears as appropriate

evidence; Wajid is an unfit ruler because he does not perform his duties of

administering justice. In the very next sentence Sleeman’s scrutiny of Wajid’s political

duties veers off into a subjective opinion that the Asiatic ruler spends his time in

“personal gratifications” and not in disinterested duties. Awadh’s cultural renaissance in

this period, Wajid’s reputation as an extremely accomplished poet/ composer – these

facts appear in the grid of Sleeman’s perception as the classic symptoms of Asiatic

decadence. The ruler’s love of art is interpreted as his sleepy laziness, “he cannot keep

awake in any other”. Ray’s Outram is representative of colonial administrator’s frequent

use of the trope of male impotence. The overriding suggestion in Sleeman’s description

is that the Asiatic mode of rule is executed by men who are sexually impotent. That

impotence extends to the Asiatic ruler’s mind and morality, in Sleeman’s words “his

understanding has become so emasculated.” The suggestion in Sleeman’s prose and

Ray’s Outram is of an unsubstantiated and widely diffused impotence.

If it is rather odd that, in thinking of a king and of such 'manly' pursuits as politics,

we should have to talk of 'effeminacy', it would do well to recall that the trope of

effeminacy, the first element of an Orientalist grammar of India, had a particular place in

colonial discourse. Relying upon the accumulated experience of several generations of

European visitors to India and Asia, Robert Orme, Historiographer to the East India

Company, was to provide in 1782 the classic statement on, to appropriate the title of his
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essay, "The Effeminacy of the Inhabitants of Hindustan." I cannot here describe the

complex of ideas, ranged around notions of climate, diet, and constitution, that led Orme

to the argument that "very few of the inhabitants" of India were "endowed with the

nervous strength, or athletic size, of the robustest nations of Europe." As Orme put it in

a famous passage, the European newly arrived in India had only to brandish "his stick in

sport" to put "fifty Indians to flight in a moment." Thus confirmed in "his contempt of

pusillanimity and incapacity of resistance", was the European to be chided if he could

barely recall that "the poor Indian is still a man"? That other fundamental element of the

Orientalist grammar of India, Oriental Despotism, was already well in place; and

together they functioned to produce a picture of Indians as given to a life of sensuality,

indolence, and mindless amusement. "The physical organisation of the Bengalee", as

one English writer was to put it, "is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant

vapour bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movement languid.

During many ages he has been trampled upon by men of bolder and more hardy

breeds. . . . His mind bears a singular analogy to his body. It is weak even to

helplessness for purposes of manly resistance . . ."

These words, from Macaulay's characterization of the Hindu Maharajah Nand

Kumar in his essay on Warren Hastings, could just as well have been used to describe

the monstrosity that the British had conjured up in the figure of Wajid Ali Shah. Thus, in

one of the earliest images in Ray's film, the camera moves to a close-up of the throne --

a throne barren of its occupant, who is in the next shot shown frolicking with the gopis in

an enactment of the rasa lila, and subsequently partaking of the pleasures of

his zenana, the true home -- the sanctum sanctorum -- of the Oriental Despot. The rasa
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lila, the subject of innumerable works of literature, miniature paintings, classical dance,

and songs, is the dance of heavenly enjoyment in which the gopis (cowherdesses)

savor the delights of Lord Krishna's presence in their midst. But the rasa lila and the

associated representations of Krishna as the butter thief, naughty child, the consort of

Radha, and seducer of girls, as in short a playful God, constitute one image of Krishna;

the other tradition is of a stern Krishna, who in the Bhagavad Gita counsels Arjuna to

leave behind his inhibitions to kill and perform his duty as a warrior, and who in

the Mahabharata shows himself as a master of realpolitik, an advocate of the view that

morality must not be allowed to impede conduct in war and politics. In the tradition of

Krishna the lover-God, the androgyny of Krishna is clearly hinted at, and it is Krishna's

feminine attributes that make him attractive to women: in one tradition of Bhakti

painting, Krishna appears in the guise of Radha, while the bashful Radha is shown as

having donned the clothes of Krishna. It is this tolerance of femininity and androgyny

that, as some Indian nationalists were to claim, had made India incapable of defending

herself, and put her perpetually at the mercy of more virile invaders; and only a resolute

will to embrace the Krishna who did not shirk from his masculine duty of protecting the

nation and putting the sword in the hands of her men could provide the grounds for the

emancipation of India from colonial rule. Thus it is arguable that, in choosing to

represent Wajid Ali Shah as one who enacted the role of Krishna the lover-God, Ray

meant to suggest that the King had clearly abdicated his responsibilities, and had

forsworn all interest in politics. Was such a King worthy of the trust reposed in him?

That Wajid Ali Shah is moreover shown enacting Krishna through the Kathak form of

Indian dance, where the performers are women as much as men, certainly suggests
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that Ray could not hide his anxiety and ambivalence about a figure who refused to

surrender to received notions of masculine and feminine behavior.

If effeminate it is for a king to take pleasure in the company of dancing women,

play Krishna to merry gopis, keep a harem larger than the royal stables, and take solace

from music, poetry, and other frivolous pursuits, then Ray's Wajid Ali Shah is surely

effeminate. The famous chronicler of Lucknow, Abdul Halim Sharar, whose work Ray

was to draw upon to a very considerable degree, was certainly inclined to think of Wajid

Ali Shah as a dissolute king, "naturally inclined . . . towards sensuality and the pursuit of

pleasure and amusement."

The masculinity of our two noblemen (jagirdars) undoubtedly appears to be in

question. This first becomes transparent when Mirza and Mir, having finished their

prayers, and about to sit down for a game of chess, are interrupted by the affable

Munshi Nandlal, a character not found in Premchand's story. Although Ray admitted to

having created him in order to signify the friendly relations that existed between Hindus

and Muslims in the reign of Wajid Ali Shah, clearly a ruler who himself, while being a

"devout Muslim", was quite at ease with Hinduism, the Munshi serves as a foil for a

number of other critical interventions by Ray. While the Munshi is desirous of speaking

to Mir and Mirza about the rumors now afloat about the impending annexation of Oudh,

he realizes that their attention is riveted upon chess, and that he can draw their

attention to the manoeuvres being undertaken by the British only by way of speaking

about chess. Much to their astonishment, Mir and Mirza learn from the Munshi that the

British do not play chess by Indian rules. When did a conqueror ever abide by the

customs and laws of the people whom he has subjugated? Where the pawn in Indian
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chess moves one square, in the English form of the game it moves two squares; and

the Minister of Indian chess is to the English the Queen, the consort of the King, the

mistress of the board. What use would a culture of Oriental Despotism have, one might

ask, for a Queen? In the society of the West, moreover, the fortunes of the woman can

change rapidly: one moment she is the tycoon's wife, at the other moment the flotsam

and jetsam of man's lust for youthful beauty: thus each pawn, upon reaching the other

end of the board, can be exchanged for a Queen. It is perhaps fitting that an indolent

people, for whom time moves slowly, should not want to hasten their game. When, at

last, the Munshi is able to bring the discussion around to the political situation in Oudh,

and averts to the possibility of a war, Mirza makes pretense at being a man of intrepid

character, resolutely masculine. When he asks Mir to take down a large sword from a

display on the wall, Mir does not at first follow him; and when Mir does fetch it, taking it

out of its scabbard, it is plainly evident that he has never handled a sword before.

Whatever else Mirza and Mir may be, they are not warriors; nonetheless, Mirza now

moves to put into place a representation of themselves as the progeny of officers in the

army of King Burhan-ul-Mulk, officers so "formidable they stuck terror into the enemy",

and whose blood now flows in their own veins (p. 25). To those who are not masculine,

the affect is everything; and indeed the clumsy demonstration acquires a special

poignancy, for the discourse is directed at a Brahmin, a race of men to whom, on the

colonial scheme of things, the ethos of the warrior would have been all but

incomprehensible.

The juxtaposition of this scene with almost the very next one, which takes place

in the living room and zenana of Mirza's house, moves us closer towards an
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understanding of the political and aesthetic structure of The Chess Players, and Ray's

deployment of the metaphor of the chess game to underscore the nature of sexual

negotiations in Indian society. With chess as her rival for her husband's attention,

Khurshid must summon all her skills to take her husband away from his game and have

him to herself for the night. Yet another round of that accursed game is in progress, and

Mir has just given Mirza check; at this very point, Mirza receives summons from his

wife. Her complaint appears to be the stereotypically feminine one: headache. Certainly,

from Mirza's standpoint, that is little reason to abandon the game; her summons are all

the more incomprehensible because, having chosen to play out his obsession in his

own premises, Mirza has provided her with the assurance that he is not pursing the

pleasures of the flesh at the door of one of Lucknow's famous courtesans. As he puts it

to Mir, "They don't say a word when you spend the night with a whore . . . but when you

stay at home and play a clean game, they pester you" (pp. 27-28). Upon entering the

bedroom, Mirza will find that Khurshid has played a move on him. As he moves his

pieces on board, aiming to find a position most favorable to victory, so Khurshid avails

of all the moves in her repertoire to keep him from departing. In its own way, the game

of chess is to continue. Feigning compassion, Mirza inquires about the well-being of

his begum, his pedestalled wife; she, in turn, complains to him of his indifference to her:

"Even if I were dying, you wouldn't give me a drop of water" (p. 28). This evokes, as it

must, a protest from him, whereupon she moves to the next level of attack, putting into

question the usefulness of a game to which there appears to be neither a beginning nor

an end. But this is only a slightly masked assault upon Mirza's manhood. What is at

stake is not merely his neglect of her, but the duties of a husband to a wife; and if it is
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chess that keeps him from performing those duties, then his pursuit of chess must be

marked as decidedly unmanly.

As Mirza continues to remain unimpressed, Khurshid startles him with the

suggestion that Mir, who is prone to think of his wife as exhibiting an extraordinary

fidelity to him, would do well to acquaint himself with the game that "his wife is playing at

home" behind his back. "Now don't gossip", he admonishes her, and proceeds to return

to her complaint of a headache, the conversation having gone on long enough. It is at

this point that Khurshid admits to having engaged in subterfuge; and when Mirza makes

to go, she grabs hold of him, and after a short tussle, positions herself on him. The

doors to the heaven of heterosexual love would now seem to be open, and the moment

when Shiva and Parvati, Vishnu and Lakshmi, are conjoined seems to be at hand. Not

unexpectedly, despite Khurshid's feverish attempts to consummate with checkmate the

game she has initiated, Mirza cannot be aroused. Mirza, to put it bluntly, can't get his

member to work, and has consequently lost all entitlement of membership to the much

vaunted club of manly gentlemen farmers. Perhaps, in having assumed the role

customarily accorded to men, Khurshid has committed a transgression; or, perhaps, the

poor effeminate Indian that Mirza is, the chill of the evening is more than his body can

handle, and indeed Khurshid has to cover him with a quilt. Mirza's failure to satisfy her

leaves him altogether unperturbed; he attributes his failure to his preoccupation with the

unfinished game that he has left behind, and to his anxiety about the gross dereliction of

manners entailed in leaving his guest unattended. He promises to prove himself on a

future occasion, and acting with nonchalance as manly men must do, he leaves with a
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love song on his lips. Where, as I have said, there is no masculinity, the affect must be

all the more pronounced.

If the chess games of Mirza Sajjad Ali and Mir Roshan Ali serve metonymically to

illustrate the larger battlefield in which are ranged the forces of Wajid Ali Shah and the

British, they point also to yet a third game involving complex negotiations between the

British and the Indians over meanings and constructions of masculinity, femininity, and

sexuality. Colonialism was constituted, to a very substantial degree, on the bedrock of a

homology between sexual and political dominance, but The Chess Players reflects

more than a mere awareness of that; indeed the film suggests that the British sought

not only to assume control of a purportedly ill-governed native state, but also to annex

Indian notions of femininity and masculinity to their own culturally constituted notions of

sexual hierarchy. When, towards the end of the film, Mirza Ali and Mir Ali are shown

playing a fast-paced game of chess, they have consented to a great deal more than just

playing the game as it is played in the West, or even following the rules of realpolitik.

A number of British travellers had said of Lucknow that “this is in fact the most

polished and splendid court at present in India” and “Lucknow has more resemblance to

some of the smaller European capitals”. Thus East India Company ideologues had to

contend with the fact that it was widely known in the British press and parliament that

Awadh was not a primitive society but a highly evolved civilization. Moreover, Awadh

could not be condemned as a bigoted, fanatical, Islamic regime. Awadhi culture was

known as extraordinarily secular culture; consequently the Company could not

factionalize the populace and the ruling elites on sectarian lines. Nor could Company

officials represent the province as insular or technologically backward. Awadh’s

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architecture showed technological innovation and many of its nawabs learnt English and

commissioned the translation of rare and important books to promote cultural cross-

fertilization. Instead of displaying signs of intellectual apathy and laziness, Awadh was

in fact experiencing a cultural renaissance. The flowering of Awadhi culture is one of

those paradoxes of cultural production in conditions of colonialism; Awadh’s cultural

renaissance was in spite the fact that its land, revenue and military capacity had been

stripped by the Company.

A land that was neck deep in the colour of culture, music, arts, poetry, parties,

food and all things superfine, Lucknow at the time of its last Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was

a land that survived on luxury, and luxury alone. It was a city where soldiers and their

stories of bravery might not be rewarded that much, but where chefs, perfume makers,

dress makers, embroiderers, poets, dancers, courtesans were graciously rewarded and

encouraged to excel further in their arts.

In fact, how exactly would you spend your time when all you have to do in a day

is to get up, dress in your finest, eat the richest, drink the most premium and attend the

most high-profile parties! Lucknow was floating on a cloud of excess at that time. It

seemed that the whole city was stoned into a different world. Everybody was busy

enjoying and indulging into this rich lifestyle. This was also the time, when the British

sheer opulence of Lucknow and dubbed it as the “Paris of the East”.

Twenty years before Premchand’s short story was first published, Lord Curzon,

the British viceroy who presided over the disastrous partition of Bengal in 1905, used

the chess metaphor to describe the continuing importance of India as a colonial

possession. Indeed, India had been Britain’s most important colony ever since the East
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India Company had consolidated its trade monopoly there, in the latter half of the

eighteenth century. In order to preserve their hold on such an imperial acquisition, the

officials of the Company had operated a scheme of treaties, engagements and

annexations in their dealings with the mosaic of feudal states which covered most of the

subcontinent.

Even though, as Ray suggests in his film, the nawabs in mid-nineteenth century

Lucknow and in other royal capitals such as Delhi, were ambivalent to the notion of

‘proto-national’ rebellion, we must retain an awareness that ‘The Chess Players’ is an

historical depiction of a people on the brink of cataclysmic domestic war against the

British. With historical hindsight, the intense of calm of Ray’s Lucknow develops as a

constant note of foreboding; the oppressive stillness before a political storm which will

inevitably engulf Awadh and the rest of Northern India.

Perhaps more than anything it was the annexation of Awadh which prompted

Indian sections of the colonial army to rise against their British officers during the dry-

season of 1857. For these soldiers, annexation meant a direct threat to family land-

holdings in Awadh. In this, the soldier’s interests coincided directly with those of the

rural peasant – farmers and indentured labourers. Hence, it was the economic threat,

allied with a sense of common religious persecution, which lent the rebellion its

collective aspect, not simply as a military ‘mutiny’, but as a popular movement against

British rule.

Analysed with the complexity of these cultural and economic factors in mind, the

trope of colonial chess game lifts a conception of colonialism out of the unpleasant

realm of what Conrad termed ‘robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great
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scale’, and onto the level of the abstract, rational war-game. Here, the colonies become

colourful table-top dioramas, across which British openings, strategies and end-games

can be plotted accordingly.

It is this disjunction between abstract colonial representation and political/cultural

actuality which Ray interrogates so successfully in his historical reinterpretation of the

annexation of Awadh. AS the viewer is already aware at the start of the film, Mir and

Mirza’s game of chess is played within a recognized cultural framework of rules and

strategic projections of movement between equal, oppositional forces. Contrasted with

the formal certainties of Mir and Mirza’s game, the colonial capture of Awadh becomes

more obviously a diplomatic game in which a common conception of cultural values and

forms of power over space are dislocated in the interaction between Wajid Ali Shah and

General Outram. This dislocation was primarily a British strategy, and was exploited to

good effect in diplomatic dealings with all the princely states, serving to undercut any

real agency thay might have had on the political ‘chequerboard’ of colonial India.

In The Chess Players, Ray delineates cultural alteration through the observations

of Nandlal, one of the two additional secondary characters that he brought to

Premchand’s original text. Nandlal’s only appearance is at the beginning of the film

when he comes to visit Mir and Mirza, interrupting their interminable chess playing.

Introduced by Ray in order to hint at the wider relevance of the chess metaphor, which

has already been foregrounded in the opening sequence:

“Look at the hands of the mighty generals deploying their forces on the

battlefield. We do not know if these hands have ever held real weapons. But this

is not a real battle where blood is shed and the fate of empires is decided. Mirza
 19

Sajjad Ali and Mir Roshan Ali are only playing at warfare. Their armies are pieces

of ivory, their battlefield is a piece of cloth…While the great-grandsons of Burhan-

ul-Mulk’s officers fought bloodlessly, another game was being played elsewhere.”

Nandlal explains the differences between shatranj and (European) chess to the

two aristocrats. Ray, to reinforce the connections which he builds up between the dual

chess narratives, follows Nandlal’s explanation of cultural differences in chess with his

fearful comments on the impending British takeover:

Mir: I must say the British are clever.

Mirza: But why change the rules?

Nandlal: It’s a faster game.

Mirza: So they find our game too slow?

Mir: Like our transport: now we’re to have railway trains, and the telegraph.

…..

Nandlal: Bad news travels faster…the East India Company plans to take over

Oudh.

The implications of this subtle narrative conjunction are contained in the question

it seems to pose to the audience of Ray’s film; namely, by which set of rules is the

larger ‘game’ of annexation being played? By this kind of internal cross-referencing the

viewer comes to realize that even though this wider ‘game’ may be taking place in the

classical Mughal setting of Lucknow court, in reality the power-struggle taking place is a

colonial game in which King Wajid Ali Shah is actually a political pawn, soon to be

replaced by the direct, symbolic authority of the British Queen.

 20

Ray reflects the political transition from indirect to direct rule in the micro-social

level of the Mir/Mirza narrative in the last game that the two men play, after they have

watched the Company’s army entering Awadh. In the final scene, Mirza holds up his

‘queen’ and speaking of Victoria’s triumph, poposes that he and Mir play a ‘quick’ and

therefore, ‘English’ game. Ben Nyce, in his critique of ‘The Chess Players’ sees this

scene as representative of the fact that ‘The British have indeed taught the Indians to

play by new rules’.

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Works Cited

Cooper, Darius ‘The Cinema of Satyajit Ray: Between Tradition and Modernity’,

Cambridge University Press, 2000

Dube, Reena ‘ Stayajit Ray’s The Chess Players and Postcolonial Theory: Culture,

Labour and the Value of Alterity’ Palgrave, New York, 2005

Hood, John W. ‘beyond the world of apu: the films of satyajit ray’, Orient Longman

Private Limited, Hyderabad, 2008

Narain, Govind ‘Munshi Premchand’, Twayne, Boston, 1978

Robinson, Andrew (ed). ‘The Chess Players and other screenplays’, Faber & Faber,

London, 1989

---- ‘Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye’, Andre Deutsch, Great Britain, 1989