Why India's leaders did not share Rushdie's Jewel in the Crown pain

Archived Foreign Office papers suggest New Delhi brushed off writer’s concern that 1984 TV drama was ‘Raj revisionism’

Indians were “very pleased” with the ITV drama The Jewel in the Crown, and did not agree with Salman Rushdie’s view that it was “grotesquely overpraised”, according to Foreign Office papers.

Based on the novels of Paul Scott, The Jewel in the Crown was set against the backdrop of the last days of the British Raj. It was one of the TV hits of 1984 and featured a primarily white British cast including Charles Dance, Peggy Ashcroft and Tim Piggott-Smith.

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