Editing John Masters (section)

===History of the British in India===
Apart from the autobiographical works mentioned above, Masters is also known for his historical novels set in India. Seven of these portray members of successive generations of the Savage family serving in the British and Indian Armies in India, in an attempt to trace the history of the British in India through the life of one family. In chronological order of events (but not in order of publication) these novels are:
* ''Coromandel!'' (1955): a 17th-century English youth runs away to sea and ends up in India.
* ''[[The Deceivers (Masters novel)|The Deceivers]]'' (1952): an English officer goes undercover to root out the ritual murders of [[Thuggee]].
* ''[[Nightrunners of Bengal]]'' (1951): a tale of the [[Indian Rebellion of 1857|Indian Rebellion]] of 1857.
* ''[[The Lotus and the Wind]]'' (1953): a tale of [[The Great Game]] of British and Russian agents on the [[North-West Frontier Province (1901–1955)|Northwest Frontier]].
* ''[[Far, Far the Mountain Peak]]'' (1957): a tale of [[mountaineering]] and the [[World War I|First World War]].
* ''[[The Ravi Lancers]]'' (1972): an offshoot of the series, set in the First World War, with one of the protagonists related to the Savages but having a different name.
* ''[[Bhowani Junction]]'' (1954): a romance set in a railway town at the time of [[Indian independence movement|Indian calls for independence]] and the [[Partition of India]].
* ''[[To the Coral Strand]]'' (1962): the story of an ex-officer who refuses to go gracefully after [[Partition of India|Indian independence]].
* ''[[The Himalayan Concerto]]'' (1976): another offshoot, as the protagonist isn't named Savage, a 1970s Cold War thriller about spying on a planned Chinese invasion of India.

One of Masters's last Indian novels, ''[[The Venus of Konpara]]'', is notable for the fact that its principal characters are Indians. The Savage family play no role in the storyline, though it is hinted that a minor unidentified character is a family member. It is set in the nineteenth century during the British ''Raj'', but explores the history of [[Indo-Aryans|Indo-Aryan]] and [[Dravidian people|Dravidian]] identities in the country.{{citation needed|date=February 2021}}

Master's works have come under criticism for their depiction of Indian characters.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=10161|title=poetrymagazines.org.uk}}</ref> However, both ''[[Nightrunners of Bengal]]'' and ''[[The Ravi Lancers]]'' contain sympathetic portrayals of [[Indian nationalism|Indian nationalists]] and portray irreconcilable tensions between British and Indian characters that mirror the conflicts inherent in British India in a manner comparable to [[E. M. Forster]]'s ''[[A Passage to India]]''. The descendant of the hero of the former novel (who is in practice manifestly the same character) experiences the [[partition of India]] with a resigned detachment and later undergoes a deep personal crisis which ends with his staying on in independent India rather than returning to Britain.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.thehindu.com/archive/|title=Archive News|website=The Hindu}}</ref> One Indian novelist ([[Khushwant Singh]]) remarked that while [[Rudyard Kipling|Kipling]] understood India, Masters understood Indians.<ref>''Pilgrim Son'', p. 348</ref>