Bhowani Junction (1956)

Stewart Granger: Col. Rodney Savage

Photos 

Quotes 

• Col. Rodney Savage : The only people who face reality are too dumb to duck when they see it coming.

• General Ackerby : Sit down. Make yourself comfortable. What a very attractive girl. English woman?

  Col. Rodney Savage : No, sir. Indian, with English blood. Or, English, with Indian blood. Half-caste, if you like. Chi-Chi: The race that never belonged to either side and won't belong anywhere, after we pull out.

• Victoria Jones : Why should you stand by me? You're not an Anglo-Indian?

  Col. Rodney Savage : You're an officer under my command.

  Victoria Jones : Say, eh, I, all these weeks I've known you, this is the first time I've realized there's a human being inside you somewhere.

  Col. Rodney Savage : Oh, he's still there, is he? Good. Then, there's hope for us all.

• Col. Rodney Savage : That bitter sense of belonging nowhere, makes Anglo-Indians a touchy, high-strung, lot. It doesn't take much to send them flying off the handle.

• Govindaswami : Their masters and their minds are in Moscow. They want to reduce India to chaos and anarchy so that they can take over. But, all Congress wants, with all due respect, old chap, is to hurry the British, as peacefully as possible, out of India.

  Col. Rodney Savage : Nothing personal, of course.

  Govindaswami : Oh, far from it. Once you're gone, we'll miss you all terribly. I have been called a lackey of British imperialism. I'm not. I work for the day when India will be for the Indians, because, I too, shall we say, am a native, a wog. But, I do not conspire with those that would end British rule in a bloodbath.

• Patrick Taylor : Oh Colonel, jolly good idea, that of yours, you know, what your men did to those Wogs lying on the railway line!

  Col. Rodney Savage : Would you mind not trying to drag me into your mating squabbles.

  [Col. exits] 

  Patrick Taylor : See, it's like that, eh, all open and above board...

  Victoria Jones : Ranjit, would you find a table for us and hold it please.

  [Ranjit exits] 

  Patrick Taylor : Why don't you go to a Wog cinema. That's were you belong, isn't it? Holding hands and chewing betel nuts with your black boyfriend!

  Victoria Jones : Don't you say that about Ranjit, to me, or to anybody else!

  Patrick Taylor : Then, keep him out of here! This is for Europeans!

• Victoria Jones : I don't know what you mean, Sir.

  Col. Rodney Savage : Stop calling me Sir. You're not a chambermaid, are you?

• General Ackerby : I see you're not anti-wog.

  Col. Rodney Savage : I never called the Indians wogs. I never hate in the plural.

• Col. Rodney Savage : The Congress Party's local leader was the darnedest mixture of a really noble patriarch and Donald Duck, Mr. Surabhai. He had a genius for doing all the right things, all the wrong way.

• Col. Rodney Savage : It's about time the Lord started making all human beings the same on the outside as well as the same on the inside.

  Victoria Jones : They'd only change it back again, the moment his back was turned.

  Col. Rodney Savage : I wish I could quarrel with that.

• Col. Rodney Savage : As result of the Indian Congress Party's support of the mutiny, the Government had anticipated nationwide trouble. I was detailed to Bhowani junction with a battalion of Pathans, as emergency reserves for the civil authorities. Things weren't made any easier for us by the Congress Party. They were afraid the British might change their minds about leaving. You remember, we hadn't specified any exact date. So, they were determined to speed us on our way by every peaceful means at their disposal. The day I arrived, a local train had been derailed. The Congress Party, quite naturally, took advantage of this. Wherever the crowd was thickest, you'd always see the Party men in their little white Ghandi hats telling the people the best way to create harmless, but, well-organized confusion. The immediate idea, of course, was to bring the normal operation of Bhowani Junction, as a railway center, to a dead halt by choking it solid with crowds. Big crowds. Passive resistance means strict observance of law and order, mind you. But, in other parts of town, under the guise of genuine Party members, the Communist underground were all ready to turn genuine passive resistance, into a bloodbath.