Director Mira Nair Addresses ‘A Suitable Boy’ White Writer Controversy
Audrey Cleo Yap “A Suitable Boy,” the six-part series based on Vikram Seth’s 1993 novel, is set against the backdrop of 1950s India, a country finding its identity as a nascent democracy and following its partition into two countries, India and Pakistan. Filmed on location in northern India with a cast of over 100 Indian actors, it has already been regarded as a groundbreaking example of inclusive storytelling: it’s the first BBC period drama to star an all non-white cast.So, when it was announced in 2017 that Welsh screenwriter Andrew Davies would be adapting the book into a series, critics raised concerns about whether a white writer could — or had the right to — effectively tackle such culturally specific material.