Rudrani Sarma
What could Dave Carson, a US American minstrel in British India, have in common with Ardhendu Sekhar Mustafi, pioneer of Bengali public theatre? Or with Hindi cinema superstar, Amitabh Bachchan? These seemingly unrelated actors are yoked together across time and space by their distinct Indianized interpretations of the urban dandy, each of which shares an unexpected ancestry with blackface characters like Long-Tail Blue and Zip Coon.