Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

This dissertation focuses on "The Viceroy's House," a film that vividly depicts the historic partition of India and Pakistan. The film begins with the turbulent weeks leading up to Partition in 1947. Jeet (Manish Dayal), a devout young Hindu, arrives in Delhi on the same day as Lord Mountbatten and is hired as a valet trainee. Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville of Downton Abbey fame) comes to Delhi to take on the difficult task of turning over power to India's new leaders while also overseeing England's orderly exit from its 300-year rule.

When Lord Mountbatten meets with Hindu leaders Mahatma Gandhi (Neeraj Kabi) and Jawaharlal Nehru (Tanveer Ghani) and Muslim leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Denzil Smith), he employs all of his gifts for conciliation; he discovers that the latter's ambitions for a separate state are quite strict. Chadha has used all of her cinematic talents to create this big historical drama, which she thinks will stand among films like Gandhi and A Passage to India.