I was recently watching Summer ’36, a beautifully made French historical drama set in 1936. Amidst its engaging storytelling, one particular dialogue caught my attention. A husband surprises his wife with tickets to India and says with excitement, “We are going to India and we will watch fakirs and elephants.”
It was a brief line, almost insignificant in the flow of the story. But it stayed with me long after the episode ended, and I found myself wondering: was this really how India was perceived by the world in 1936? Was an ancient civilization, home to millions of people with diverse cultures, ideas, and aspirations, known merely for fakirs and elephants?
Historically, the dialogue isn’t inaccurate. For much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, India was presented to the Western world through a distinctly colonial lens. Travel books, postcards, exhibitions, newspapers, and even films portrayed India as a land of mysticism, snake charmers, wandering fakirs, elephants, maharajas, and magical traditions. It was exotic, colourful, mysterious—and conveniently disconnected from the realities of a nation undergoing profound political and social change.
This image suited colonial narratives. An India depicted as timeless, spiritual, and exotic was easier to romanticize than an India demanding freedom, questioning authority, and producing thinkers, reformers, scientists, artists, and leaders.
But what was really happening in India in 1936?
The country was in the midst of one of the most significant chapters of its freedom movement. The Indian National Congress held its first rural session at Faizpur, sending a powerful message that the struggle for independence belonged not only to urban elites but also to the farmers and villages that formed the heart of India. That same year, Travancore issued the historic Temple Entry Proclamation, opening Hindu temples to communities that had been excluded for generations—a landmark step toward social equality, showing that India was confronting deeply rooted inequalities even while fighting colonial rule.
India also continued to leave its mark on the global sporting stage. Under the legendary Dhyan Chand, the Indian hockey team won another Olympic gold medal at the Berlin Games, earning admiration across the world for its extraordinary skill and discipline.
Broadcasting entered a new phase too, as the Indian State Broadcasting Service became All India Radio, laying the foundation for a national platform that would later inform, educate, and unite millions. Across the country, conversations about democracy, rights, education, industrial development, and social reform were shaping the India of tomorrow.
And yet, despite all these remarkable developments, many people outside India continued to imagine the country through a handful of familiar symbols—fakirs, elephants, palaces, and mysticism.
This tells us something about how history works: it is shaped not only by events but by who gets to tell the story. During the colonial era, India’s achievements rarely became the defining narrative. Instead, the extraordinary diversity and intellectual richness of the country were overshadowed by images designed to entertain, intrigue, or reinforce preconceived notions.
Even today, stereotypes continue to shape how nations are understood. We still see countries reduced to a single image, a single conflict, a single cultural symbol—and social media, for all its speed, has made oversimplification easier, not harder.
Perhaps that one dialogue in Summer ’36 unintentionally offers an important lesson: how powerful narratives can be, and how generations inherit perceptions without questioning them. India has never been just a land of fakirs and elephants. It has always been a civilization of ideas, resilience, diversity, and transformation—written by philosophers and freedom fighters, scientists and entrepreneurs, reformers and ordinary citizens who dared to dream of a better future.
As Indians, we shouldn’t be offended by history; we should understand it. And we should keep telling our own stories—completely, confidently, and truthfully. Because the world often remembers the simplest story, not necessarily the truest one.
Shared by : Aparna Mishra
