Arena Season 1, Episode 318

Invisible Ink · BBC Four · Friday, December 4

For 200 years British writers have achieved great success with their accounts of life on the Indian subcontinent. Less well-known are the writings of those Indians who travelled to Britain and recorded their observations throughout the same period. Hardly any of this work has ever been translated, yet it represents a fascinating perspective on how the Indians have seen us. The film includes the witty observations of Mirza Abu Talib, a guest of the aristocracy, on the British class system in 1799; the slavish admiration for Victorian industrial might expressed by Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan ; the disillusion which set in during the 30s with the writing of Sajjad Zaheer ; and the introspective poetry of Mazhar Tirmazi - an outstanding poet of a new generation of writers who have settled or were born here. With specially commissioned translations Arena presents this extraordinary testament for the first time.