''I am Indian and I used to go to college. My relatives suffered in colonial India. This theme offended me and brought me to the brink of tears,'' one female student wrote. ''Please, can you all come to our next party? It's Mexican themed, and we'll be celebrating all the abductions and beheadings you can poke a stick at,'' a student responded. "I have this turban and - what luck! - it's just your size," another provoked. Had it not been a letter to the student newspaper, Honi Soit, from an outraged arts student, Mason McCann, the white tie event may have gone unnoticed. ''I do not think the party was a celebration of Indian culture, it was a celebration of imperialism,'' Mr McCann told The Sun-Herald.

''The party demonstrates a serious deep disconnect between the culture of St Paul's and the culture of the University of Sydney. I am deeply offended by it. ''They have a responsibility as a prestigious and old institution to project a positive public image to both the other students and the public, and I think that party succeeded in doing just the opposite of that.'' In response to Mr McCann's letter which was published in full, Hugo Rourke from St Paul's, who as senior student speaks on behalf of his peers, wrote to Honi Soit to justify the party. ''It was a successful event, held in good taste and enjoyed by attendees and employees alike,'' he wrote, seemingly shocked that the event would cause such uproar. The catering company for the event, Sodexo, were similarly taken aback by the suggestion their workers had been forced to don cultural garb.

Its state manager, Ram Devagiri, said his staff, who all have a south Asian backgrounds and work at the college full-time serving three meals a day, were having an ''absolute ball'' at the party and had become ''annoyed'' at the insinuation there were racial undertones at play. ''They are not happy that they are being dragged through this, because they actually had a great time that evening,'' he said. ''We didn't go out looking for a couple of Indian-looking blokes and bring them in. They work there all the time.'' But when it was revealed that Mr Rourke's published response had been edited, the debate shifted to Facebook and racial vilification was exposed. "If you can find me anyone of Indian heritage who was at all offended by the evening at St. Paul's for (Jazz Dinner Dance) I'd be astounded,'' one flabbergasted St Paul's student wrote.

''That's it, ban ALL the upscale parties!!'' another wrote. On Wednesday, the Student Representative Council passed a motion condemning the themed party by writing a letter to the college's spokesman, the warden, Dr Ivan Head, asking for an explanation. ''The meeting was very controversial, there was a lot of debate about it,'' said SRC welfare officer Rafi Alam. ''Most of the people who said it wasn't racist were white people who go to college or have friends in college, but the non-whites were quite upset about it,'' Mr Alam said, who has a Bangladeshi background. It is understood that a handful of students boycotted the dinner.

Mr Alam said the party proved that ''racial subtext'' existed at the university. When The Sun- Herald contacted Mr Rourke, he ''had nothing to say on the matter''. The warden, Dr Head, did not return calls. Does the St Paul's party constitute discrimination? The president of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board, Stepan Kerkyasharian, said that as long as there was no insistence that only people from the Indian subcontinent could serve as waiters, then what happened at the St Paul's function ''would not be discrimination''. Re-enacting a period in history like the British Raj ''may offend some people but I don't think the act itself constitutes discrimination or vilification''. ''I think if [re-enactment] is done accurately and in good faith and the re-enactment itself is not offensive, is not intended to vilify and is not discriminatory, then one has to accept the historical reality,'' Mr Kerkyasharian said.

''If the message here was, 'Look, Indians are slaves … or Indians are only good as waiters' I would find that objectionable. ''But if the intent was to create this historical imagery … I wouldn't see that as deliberately derogatory or deliberate vilification of people of an Indian background,'' Mr Kerkyasharian said. The popularity of re-enactment is growing and the Australasian Living History Federation now boasts 85 member organisations that specialise in eras ranging from the ancient to the medieval, Napoleonic, Victorian, US Civil War, colonial Australia and the two world wars. The federation's secretary, Jessica Robinson, said some re-enactments had caused anger and those with particular potential to offend included the US Civil War, the world wars, the Crusades and colonial Australia. But she is adamant that, when done sensitively, they can all be re-enacted without the performances in any way glorifying slavery, Nazism, religious hatred or the conquest of Aboriginal people.

''Our main rule is that we don't want re-enactment to be a vehicle for any kind of political ideology that someone is trying to force through in the modern era,'' Ms Robinson said. Jeff Yuille is a corporal in the 2nd Virginia Living History Group, which celebrates the Confederate regiment of the same name that fought for the South in the US Civil War. Its members dress in period costume, camp out, eat period food and sometimes stage mock battles against other living history groups representing Union soldiers from the North. Although some believe any celebration of the Confederacy is a de facto celebration of slavery and racism, Mr Yuille said his group had never experienced any protests. Criticism of the British Raj function, he said, sounded like ''political correctness gone mad'' and only represented the view of a ''crazy minority''. ''They are reliving history,'' he said of the event.

Stephen Gapps is a historian and curator at the National Maritime Museum who conducted his PhD thesis on the history of historical re-enactment. ''I think some events are difficult to re-enact because of the long memories of the terrible events, particularly colonial [Australian] stuff and the US Civil War,'' he said. ''Some things should not be re-enacted, like events from the Holocaust,'' Dr Gapps added. But he believes that if controversial topics are tackled with authenticity and sensitivity and ''get people from both arguments involved in the beginning'', they can be cathartic rather than divisive. Dr Gapps said Colonial Williamsburg, an American historical theme park, represented an 18th-century landscape where slavery was common, but previously ''hardly any elements of the presentation dealt with slavery''.

Loading It was decided to get black Americans involved in recreating a slave auction - a move that attracted hundreds of protesters - but they walked away from the performance saying ''it was fantastic and it showed the humanity of the situation''. Holding a British Raj dinner was ''fraught with danger'', said Dr Gapps, because Sydney has a big sub-continental population, so it had to be approached carefully.