Anglo Indians

Anglo-Indians, a designation acquired in the 1911 Indian Census, had previously been known as Eurasians, East Indians, Indo-Britons and half-castes. ‘Anglo-Indian’ had previously denoted, and among some scholars continues to denote, Britons long resident in India. We will define Anglo-Indians as a particular mixed race Indo-European population arising out of the European trading and imperial presence in India, and one of several constructed categories by which transient Britons sought to demarcate racial difference within the Raj’s socio-racial hierarchy. Anglo-Indians were placed in an intermediary (and differentially remunerated) position between Indians and Domiciled Europeans (another category excluded from fully ‘white’ status), who in turn were placed below imported British superiors. The domiciled community (of Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans, treated as a single socio-economic class by Britons) were relied upon as loyal buttressing agents of British rule who could be deployed to help run the Raj’s strategically sensitive transport and communication infrastructure, and who were made as a term of their service to serve in auxiliary military forces which could help to ensure the internal security of the Raj and respond to strikes, civil disobedience or crises arising from international conflict.

The thesis reveals how calls for Indianisation of state and railway employment by Indian nationalists in the assemblies inaugurated by the 1919 Government of India Act threatened, through opening up their reserved intermediary positions to competitive entry and examination by Indians, to undermine the economic base of domiciled employment. Anglo-Indian leaders responded with varying strategies. Foremost was the definition of Anglo-Indians as an Indian minority community which demanded political representation through successive phases of constitutional change and statutory safeguards for their existing employment. This study explores various strategies including: deployment of multiple identities; widespread racial passing by individuals and families; agricultural colonisation schemes; and calls for individual, familial or collective migration.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was common for British Army regiments to recruit Black males to serve as enlisted military musicians. The Irish regiments of the Crown also engaged in the practice, and this study will focus on the Black bandsmen of the 87th (Prince of Wales’s Irish) and 89th (Princess Victoria’s) Regiments of Foot, the antecedent regiments of the Royal Irish Fusiliers. For a more detailed exploration of Black military musicians in Ireland and Irish regiments see Ellis, JD. “The Black, the Red and the Green: Black Red-Coats and Ireland during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.” Irish Sword 23, no.323 (2003): pp. 409-25. Also see www.academia.edu/

The conditions between the two World Wars were ripe enough to trigger off utopian imagination among the Anglo-Indians. Caught between the rulers and the ruled, this marginal group of people were faced with a dilemma. Expectations from the British were high, but seldom fulfilled, although in the initial stages the Community had helped to a large extent to build and maintain the Empire.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, most Anglo-Indian, being a Kolkata based community in Bengal, started to move out of the city in search of new employment opportunities. Some of their destinations were the newly established tea gardens of Darjeeling hills and Assam. Mostly they were appointed as managers in the tea estates. The Anglo-Indian community, not being accepted by both the British or Indian society, started to reimagine their identity while settling down in the hills. However, education of their children was turned into a severe problem for them. Some of the Christian missions came forward and opened boarding schools cum 'home' for the Anglo-Indian children in the Darjeeling hills. Later these mission schools also became a shelter for the orphan Anglo-Indian children of Kolkata and played an important role in their identity formation. The paper highlights whether these initiatives could able to give a new future to the Anglo-Indian community and if the Anglo-Indian community could able to accept Darjeeling Hills as their 'new home'. Further, the paper also discusses other nuances, like how did the indigenous people of the hills and the British Raj look at this identity formation, and what kind of new developments started in the hills with the coming of the Anglo-Indians. The paper is based on the archival sources, like newspapers, education, finance and home department report, missionary documents and memoirs.

Apart from a few disparaging remarks about offensive stereotypes by Anglo-Indian writers and politicians such as Gloria Jean Moore, Frank Anthony and Gillian Hart, critics have paid very little attention to the representation of “mixed-race” Anglo-Indians in the cinema. Drawing on screen theory and recent theories of cinema spectatorship, this essay provides a comparative analysis of how Hollywood, Bollywood and arthouse films represent Anglo-Indians. More specifically, it analyses three paradigmatic films: Bhowani Junction (1956), Julie (1975), and 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981). Combining formal analysis of narrative structure, mise-en-scène and genre with historical analysis, the paper examines the ideological work performed by these texts, which use Anglo-Indians to dramatise specific political conflicts in India such as those generated by the British partition of India in 1947 and the more recent issue of globalisation.

This is an intriguing and groundbreaking study by a scholar who not only is not British nor Indian but belongs to a society that has had its own imperial history as well as having a strong, revitalizing nationalist movement in the 20th c. It is through this prism that Dr Kapakli discusses, compares and contrasts Indian nationalism in three seminal novels. The novels in question are ""Shadow of the Moon"" (1957) by Mary Margaret Kaye, the ""Siege of Knishnapur""(1973) by James Gordon Smith and ""White Teeth"" (2000)by Zadie Smith. The literary analysis undertaken focuses on the changes in attitude and expectation the British writers demonstrate in navigating the issues of race, class, gender, religion, education and age in both Indian and European characters and settings. Especially interesting is the discussion of male/female relationships and the transgressive engeries of nationalism in re determining power and position in pre and post independent India and, indeed, in England itself. Religion is also discussed especially the collision of Christian, Hindu and Muslim practice in the face of historical imperatives and societal tension.

Material from the private archives of Roy Butler, a black American saxophonist who lived in Bombay and Kolkata, elucidates the history of the diffusion of jazz in India. This music, initially reserved for the colonial elite, was soon adopted by local musicians, in particular Anglo-Indians. As listeners and musicians intermingled during the Second World War, a process of “Indianization” started—and jazz has thus become a postcolonial musical form.

The 80th Regiment of Foot was raised as a single battalion regiment in late 1793, in response to the threat posed by the French Revolution. It recruited heavily from the Staffordshire Militia. The regiment was to see extensive service in several theatres during the Napoleonic Wars (1793-1815). Whilst at Quilon in India in the second half of 1816 an inspection of the 80th noted: "Drummers &c – The Drummers & Buglers know the different Beats & Sounds …The Band play Marches in tolerably good time. There is One Man in the Band who, from his Colour, is unfit for the Ranks. Among the Drummers & Buglers, Nine are Blacks, or nearly so."
With that in mind, the reference to the inspection at Quilon in the second half of 1816 which identified ten Black military musicians (one in the Band and nine in the Drums), in the 80th provided a challenge: Was it possible to identify the ten soldiers from regimental muster books and paylists, pension records and parish registers?

Uther Charlton-Stevens presents an extensive review essay on Rochelle Almeida’s recent book, Britain’s Anglo-Indians (Lexington, 2017).  He considers her work on first generation Anglo-Indians who migrated ‘home’ to Britain both important and heretofore understudied. Finding Almeida’s thesis persuasive, that these first generation migrants to Britain formed a hybrid sub-culture of British Anglo-Indianness in contrast to those who went to Canada or Australia, Charlton-Stevens highlights possible intersection points with other scholarship and new areas for further inquiry.

This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. In doing so it emphasises the importance of categories in policing the location of Anglo-Indians within the world of the domiciled and the socio-racial hierarchy of the Raj. The experience of Anglo-Indian women who travelled to Africa and the Middle East before and during World War II, helps to demonstrate how selective identification with Britishness and with India contributed to shaping individual lives and identities. The case of military nurses is particularly foregrounded, based on an interview with Florence Watkins in Jubbulpore in 2010.

L’exploitation du fonds d’archives privées Roy Butler, saxophoniste noir américain ayant joué à Bombay et à Calcutta, permet de contribuer à l’histoire de la circulation du jazz en Inde. S’il fut réservé dans un premier temps à l’élite coloniale, il ne tarda guère à être adopté par les musiciens locaux, en particulier anglo-indiens. La Seconde Guerre mondiale, par le brassage des publics et des musiciens qu’elle a engendré, a permis l’amorce d’un processus d’indianisation du jazz, qui est ainsi devenue une forme musicale postcoloniale.

Anglo-Indians are a mixed-race, Christian and Anglophone minority community which arose in India during the long period of European colonialism. An often neglected part of the British ‘Raj’, their presence complicates the traditional binary through which British imperialism in South Asia is viewed – of ruler and ruled, coloniser and colonised. This book looks at how Anglo-Indians illuminate the history of minority politics in the transition from British colonial rule in South Asia to independence. The book analyses how the provisions in the Indian Constitution relating to Anglo-Indian cultural, linguistic and religious autonomy were implemented in the years following 1950. It discusses how effective the measures designed to protect Anglo-Indian employment by the state and Anglo-Indian educational institutions under the pressures of Indian national politics were. Presenting an in-depth account of this minority community in South Asia, this book will be of interest to those studying South Asian History, Colonial History and South Asian Politics. Available worldwide from https://www.amazon.com/Anglo-Indians-Minority-Politics-South-Asia/dp/1138847224/ or in the UK https://www.routledge.com/Anglo-Indians-and-Minority-Politics-in-South-Asia-Race-Boundary-Making/Charlton-Stevens/p/book/9781138847224 or https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anglo-Indians-Minority-Politics-South-Asia/dp/1138847224/ To request a free copy to use for a magazine, journal, TV or Radio review please fill out this form: http://pages.email.taylorandfrancis.com/review-copy-request quoting the ISBN: 9781138847224

sometimes-distant lands for a variety of reasons. Some move away from real or imagined threats to their very existence. Others seek a better quality of life. And some adventurous souls are inhabited by a restless wanderlust – a desire to roll the dice and see what happens. Such mobility requires fortitude and faith. Migrants move through space and, if they have an aspirational disposition, they attempt to accumulate symbolic capital to move up those social and economic hierarchies that bestow status and prestige within their adopted homes. The migrant journey to Australia often ends with the realisation that one has to make and remake one's identity, and perform a series of adjustments – adjustments in terms of comportment, dress, accent and tells a story about the author's father, A.J. D'Cruz. It draws on historical archives and the material remnants of A.J. D'Cruz's relatively short life (letters, photographs,

Taking as a starting point the Mediterranean and the Atlantic World in the late Middle Ages, and continuing with the colonial regions of the wider world during the modern age, and those territories in which socio-racial categories of European inspiration continue to be used in the contemporary period, the present colloquium aims to shed new light on the construction of these categories by studying them both from a transnational and a ‘longue durée’ perspective.

In his carefully researched intervention on a historical moment in Anglo-Indian history, Satoshi Mizutani reveals the results of a conscious effort made by Anglo-Indians to raise a representative regiment within the British armed forces in India and how the notions of 'whiteness' prevailing at the time affected the outcome of this endeavour.

Material from the private archives of Roy Butler, a black American saxophonist who lived in Bombay and Kolkata, elucidates the history of the diffusion of jazz in India. This music, initially reserved for the colonial elite, was soon adopted by local musicians, in particular Anglo-Indians. As listeners and musicians intermingled during the Second World War, a process of “Indianization” started—and jazz has thus become a postcolonial musical form.

This article explores the lives of Anglo-Indian women in employment in the late colonial period. In doing so it emphasises the importance of categories in policing the location of Anglo-Indians within the world of the domiciled and the socio-racial hierarchy of the Raj. The experience of Anglo-Indian women who travelled to Africa and the Middle East before and during World War II, helps to demonstrate how selective identification with Britishness and with India contributed to shaping individual lives and identities. The case of military nurses is particularly foregrounded, based on an interview with Florence Watkins in Jubbulpore in 2010.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, most Anglo-Indian, being a Kolkata based community in Bengal, started to move out of the city in search of new employment opportunities. Some of their destinations were the newly established tea gardens of Darjeeling hills and Assam. Mostly they were appointed as managers in the tea estates. The Anglo-Indian community, not being accepted by both the British or Indian society, started to reimagine their identity while settling down in the hills. However, education of their children was turned into a severe problem for them. Some of the Christian missions came forward and opened boarding schools cum 'home' for the Anglo-Indian children in the Darjeeling hills. Later these mission schools also became a shelter for the orphan Anglo-Indian children of Kolkata and played an important role in their identity formation. The paper highlights whether these initiatives could able to give a new future to the Anglo-Indian community and if the Anglo-Indian community could able to accept Darjeeling Hills as their 'new home'. Further, the paper also discusses other nuances, like how did the indigenous people of the hills and the British Raj look at this identity formation, and what kind of new developments started in the hills with the coming of the Anglo-Indians. The paper is based on the archival sources, like newspapers, education, finance and home department report, missionary documents and memoirs.

This blog post showcases one of the stories from the ARC DI project Children born of War: Australia and the War in the Pacific 1941 - 1945. Dorothy Townsend nee Franks was a divorcee with an eight year old child when she married Reuben Franklin Beatty Jr in Sydney in 1946. However, the life together they planned for was not to be because of the White Australia policy on immigration. Dorothy's life reveals a woman who could be seen as white but who defied the convention of segregation and social ostracism of people of colour.

In his carefully researched intervention on a historical moment in Anglo-Indian history, Satoshi Mizutani reveals the results of a conscious effort made by Anglo-Indians to raise a representative regiment within the British armed forces in India and how the notions of 'whiteness' prevailing at the time affected the outcome of this endeavour.