The film, like the original novel, portrays the Anglo-Indian protagonist, Victoria Jones, as tugged in different directions by three suitors, Col. Rodney Savage, Ranjit Kasel and Patrick Taylor, each representing a different ethnic community: British, Indian (Sikh) and Anglo-Indian, respectively.
(In the writer's own depiction, in the (unfilmed) sequel "To the Coral Strand", Rodney Savage does stay on in India after the end of British rule - but he does not marry Victoria, but rather goes through many upheavals and finally finds love with an Indian woman.) .