Rochelle Almeida To Historicise Mumbai\’s Great Performing Minorities

By Rudy Otter

Former Mumbai university graduate Rochelle D’Souza not only enjoyed seeing Western stage shows in her sweltering home city, but she persuaded major Indian publications like The Free Press Journal and Eve’s Weekly to carry her riveting reviews.

She left Mumbai 30 years ago for the United States where she has been chalking up an impressive array of academic and literary achievements. She also fell in love there and got married.

Now Dr Rochelle Almeida, Professor of Global Cultures in the Liberal Studies Program at New York University, and an international freelance feature writer, is back in Mumbai for nine busy months, on a coveted American scholarship, all expenses paid, to write a very special book. It will be deeply researched with her usual scholarly flair, charting the “enormous contribution” of the city’s religious minorities to Western Performing Arts and \\\”bringing back many happy memories of my close involvement with music and drama as a Mumbai theatre critic in those days,\\\” she said.

Rochelle managed to secure, against strong competition, one of the coveted Fulbright-Nehru Fellowships for Academic and Professional Excellence, so named because Senator Fulbright, after World War II, created the program to foster \\\”international peace initiatives\\\”. These fellowships, running from three to nine months, are awarded to American scholars who wish to pursue academic study in India. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of independent India, was an enthusiastic supporter of the program, as was former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, \\\”probably the most eminent \\\’Fulbrighter\\\’ to be hosted by India,\\\” Rochelle said.

Her application, she believes, may have influenced the committee because she mentioned that she had undertaken similar in-depth ethnographic field research in the UK to document the experiences of a mixed-race and widely dispersed community from the subcontinent that resulted in a deservedly acclaimed book entitled \\\”Britain\\\’s Anglo-Indians: The Invisibility of Assimilation.”

Selected Fulbright candidates are hosted by an Indian institution, in her case St Xavier\\\’s College, Mumbai, and placed under a supervisor. Her pure research project runs from September this year until May 2019.

She is planning to interview mainly Christians and Parsees as these two communities have dominated Western performing arts in Mumbai. But Muslims will also feature, especially with regards to English drama,” she said. “One cannot ignore the contribution of Muslims such as Ibrahim Alkazi, the Padamsees and Sabira Merchant, a thespian who won the Padma Shree Award for her long and distinguished drama career in Mumbai.\\\”

The project occurred to Rochelle because she knew that although Mumbai has had a vibrant devotion to Western performing arts such as music and drama, \\\”no attempt, as far as I know, had been made to document or historicise it in depth.\\\” She added: \\\”I did find a few articles on the internet and a couple of books on Parsee Gujarati Theatre, but nothing on Parsee English Theatre. Yet I was aware that Parsees had made an enormous contribution not only to English language theatre in Mumbai but classical music as well. Adi Marzan, for instance, the doyen of Mumbai English theatre, and Coomi Wadia, who was for years conductor of the Paranjyoti Choir are two names that come to mind. The miniscule Parsee community has always culturally inclined towards the West, like the Christians. To my surprise this phenomenon has never been studied, analysed or critiqued.”

Right now, Rochelle is at the very earliest stages of her research, conducting interviews, collecting and collating data and fine-tuning relevant material for her book. After it is completed she will start looking for a suitable publisher. One has already expressed interest, “an encouraging sign”, she said.

\\\”I hope,” said Rochelle, “that my book will appeal both to academics as well as lay people, anyone with an interest in Western performing arts in Mumbai.\\\”

She grew up in Mumbai and still has family members there, an elderly father and a mentally challenged brother. “I shall make sure, in a very busy schedule, that I spend time with them as well as other relatives and friends.\\\”

Rochelle has been invited, during her spell in India, to address various conferences in Hyderabad and Kolkata, as well as speak at the Anglo-Indian International Reunion in Chennai in January 2019.

She was educated at Elphinstone College, University of Mumbai, where she earned a PhD. with a dissertation on Indian Writing in English, and the US (St John\\\’s University, New York) where she earned a Doctor of Arts degree with a dissertation on multi-ethnic US literature. She was appointed Senior Member of St Antony\\\’s College, Oxford, UK. Her fields of research include South Asian studies, Anglo-Indian ethnography, Anglophone world literatures, post-colonial theory, and cultural studies. Author of \\\”Originality and Imitation: Indianness in the Novels of Kamala Markandaya (in 2000); The Politics of Mourning: Grief Management in Cross-Cultural Fiction (2005); Britain\\\’s Anglo-Indians: the Invisibility of Assimilation (2017); she also co-edited \\\”Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular World (2016), and Curtain Call: Anglo-Indian Reflections (2016).\\\” An edited anthology, \\\”Goa: A Post-Colonial Society Between Cultures\\\” is forthcoming. She was named a Global Research Initiatives Fellow to NYU-London in 2016-17 by New York University, and has been an invited guest lecturer at universities in India, the UK and the US. Recently BBC producers sought her advice when preparing a program called A Passage to Britain on immigrants from India who moved to Britain in the mid-20th century.

\\\”When the book I’m working on now is published, Desh Aur Diaspora will be the first to hear about it,\\\” Rochelle assured me.

Rudy Otter, an Anglo-Indian journalist and fiction writer, has been the longest-serving UK correspondent of The International Indian and continues to write for Desh Aur Diaspora.