Gurinder Chaddha starts casting for her next film, in India

Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha will be in Mumbai soon to finalise the cast of her next film, tentatively entitled The Viceroy’s House.

The film will chronicle the last six months of Lord Mountbatten’s stay in India when the British Raj ended.

Gurinder says she has unearthed an immense amount of hitherto-undisclosed facts about Mountbatten’s final days in India.

"There are the so-called facts that we grew up reading about Montbatten’s closing months in India. But there are secret documents which I have unearthed. These point to another truth that I will reveal in my film," she says.

Gurinder, whose last feature film was It’s A Wonderful Afterlife, has bought the rights of two important books to make her Mountbatten film.

"My husband Paul (Mayeda Berges), who has co-scripted the film with me and I have bought the rights of two books -- Narinder Singh Sarla’s The Shadow Of The Great Game and Larry Colins and Dominiue Lapierre’s Freedom At Midnight. These, plus the documents on Mountbatten that we have unearthed, will serve as the basis of the plot," she adds.

There was talk of casting Colin Firth as Mountbatten, Naseeruddin Shah as Jinnah and Saif Ali Khan as Jawaharlal Nehru but Gurinder is not willing to reveal the cast right now.

"I want actors, who fit perfectly into every part. The acting style has changed tremendously in Indian cinema since I worked with Aishwarya Rai in Bride And Prejudice 10 years ago. I see a lot of very natural actors in India and I am eager to work with them," she says.

Gurinder would also be doing a lot of outdoor location-hunting during her trip to India. “I’ll be shooting in and around Jodhpur and Rajasthan. I am really excited about this one because we have never really had a British view of the Partition of India. Interestingly, that British view would come from me, a director whose cultural allegiance to India and Britain are equally strong.”

The filmmaker says she would have to work very hard to strike a balance between her dual cultural backgrounds. “My take on Mountbatten has to reach out to both Indian and non-Indian audiences, the way Attenborough’s Gandhi did.”

In the picture: Gurinder Chaddha with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photograph: Gurinder Chaddha/ Twitter