Anglo-Indians and Minority Politics in South Asia: Race, Boundary Making, and Communal Nationalism 9781138847224, 9781315726915

Citation preview

Anglo-Indians and Minority Politics in South Asia

Anglo-Indians are a mixed race, Christian, and Anglophone minority community which arose in South Asia 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 is viewed – of ruler and ruled, coloniser and colonised. The book analyses the processes of ethnic group formation and political organisation, beginning with petitions to the East India Company state, through the Raj’s constitutional communalism, to constitution making for the new India. It details how Anglo-Indians sought to preserve protected areas of state and railway employment amidst the growing demands of Indian nationalism. Anglo-Indians both suffered and benefitted from colonial British prejudices, being expected to loyally serve the colonial state as a result of their ties of kinship and culture to the colonial power, whilst being the victims of racial and social discrimination. This mixed experience was embodied in their intermediate position in the Raj’s evolving socio-racial employment hierarchy. The question of why and how a numerically small group, who were privileged relative to the great majority of people in South Asia, were granted nominated representatives and reserved employment in the new Indian constitution, amidst a general curtailment of minority group rights, is tackled directly. Based on a wide range of source materials from Indian and British archives, including the Anglo-Indian Review and the debates of the Constituent Assembly of India, the book illuminatingly foregrounds the issues facing the smaller minorities during the drawn-out process of decolonisation in South Asia. It will be of interest to students and researchers of South Asia, Imperial and Global History, Politics, and Mixed Race Studies. Uther Charlton-Stevens is Professor at the Institute of World Economy and Finance at Volgograd State University, Russia. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland.

Royal Asiatic Society Books

Editorial Board: Professor Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of London (Chair) Professor Tim Barrett, SOAS, University of London Dr Evrim Binbas¸, Royal Holloway, University of London Professor Anna Contadini, SOAS, University of London Professor Michael Feener, National University of Singapore Dr Gordon Johnson, University of Cambridge Professor David Morgan, University of Wisconsin–Madison Dr. BMC Brend Dr. R. Llewellyn Jones MBE The Royal Asiatic Society was founded in 1823 ‘for the investigation of subjects connected with, and for the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to, Asia’. Informed by these goals, the policy of the Society’s Editorial Board is to make available in appropriate formats the results of original research in the humanities and social sciences having to do with Asia, defined in the broadest geographical and cultural sense and up to the present day. For a full list of titles, please see: https://www.routledge.com/asianstudies/ series/RAS

Anglo-Indians and Minority Politics in South Asia Race, Boundary Making, and Communal Nationalism

Uther Charlton-Stevens

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Uther Charlton-Stevens The right of Uther Charlton-Stevens to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him/her/them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-84722-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-72691-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Taylor & Francis Books

To the stalwarts of the All India Anglo-Indian Association, past and present

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

List of illustrations Foreword Acknowledgements Abbreviations

viii ix xiv xvii

Introduction

1

1

East Indians

33

2

The ‘Eurasian problem’

60

3

Becoming Anglo-Indians

99

4

Making a minority

134

5

Escapisms of empire?

173

6

Constituting the nation

212

Epilogue

254

Bibliography Index

283 305

Illustrations

Figures 0.1 0.2 3.1 3.2 4.1 4.2 6.1

Andreas Wimmer on Herderian and Barthian worlds Edwardian-era Anglo-Indians – three generations of Dorseys circa 1914, sat in their garden in Poonamallee Advertisement in the Anglo-Indian Review (December 1929, p. vi) WAC(I) advertisement in the Anglo-Indian Review (April 1943, p. 7) The 88 Association branches in 1929 ‘Seventh Annual Luncheon of the Anglo-Indian Association, London’ Cartoon arguing for the reasonableness of Anglo-Indian demands for temporary safeguards in their memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1928

10 15 127 128 160 163

216

Tables 2.1 2.2 4.1 6.1

Higher appointments of deputy magistrates and deputy collectors Salary scales for the ‘superior staff’ of the Salt Department by racial and communal groupings European, Anglo-Indian, and Indian Christian members – by election or nomination – of provincial legislative councils Estimated cost-of-living breakdown for Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European railway workers furnished to the Royal Commission on Labour

74 89 155

214

Foreword

Contemporary historical interest in patterns of globalisation encompasses many strands of human activity, not least among them the movement of peoples. Since the 18th century, at least, new technologies of travel, and new opportunities for trade, settlement, and the exercise of forms of imperial power led to unparalleled numbers of people moving around the globe and living either temporarily or permanently outside their original homelands. One of the repercussions of this was the possibility for sexual encounter and relationship between people of different enthicities, and the emergence of mixed or hybrid population groups. Not surprisingly there has been much recent theorising about the nature of ‘hybridity’ of different kinds. Uther Charlton-Stevens is well aware of this intellectual background to his work, as well as the salience of the history of other mixed raced groups, as he studies one particular mixed group in the context of European imperialism – the so-called Anglo-Indians who emerged as a group during British rule on the Indian subcontinent and endeavoured not just to survive but to prosper, first under British rule, and then as imperial power waned and Indians inherited power, leading eventually to independence and the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947. The focus of the work is primarily political – dealing with the politics of ‘naming’, of forming a coherent group and dealing with boundaries which were by no means clear, and of creating patterns of political behaviour which seemed productive in the particular situation of colonial South Asia with its emerging ‘communal politics’ in the closing decades of British rule. The mixed race group emerged in India in the 18th century, from legal marriages and illicit sexual unions between European men and Indian women. A few Indian wives were high born and publicly acknowledged and cherished, as were their children. Far more were lowly Indian women, sometimes Christian converts, who married or lived with European soldiers (the largest group of European males on the subcontinent in the era of Company Rule until 1858). By the 19th century interracial unions of both kinds were far rarer, and the mixed race group had essentially become an endogamous group, taking its place among many endogamous groups on the subcontinent, defined variously by religion, caste, language, and region. They were marked

x

Foreword

out by their European-sounding names, their ‘colour’ (though this could vary greatly even within one family), their Europeanised domestic lifestyles, their insistence that English was their mother tongue, and their religion – as all were Christian, whether Anglican or Roman Catholic. The East India Company had in practice acknowledged and even welcomed interracial unions and the emergence of a group who were loyal to the Company and provided it with significant military and clerical manpower. However, by the beginning of the 19th century this had hardened into the prohibition of mixed race persons’ employment in the Company’s service, increasing social closure on their status, and growing European anxiety about racial status and ‘purity’. This combined occupational, social, and ideological assault on the mixed race group stemmed from several factors, including the wish by senior Company men to control valuable patronage, anxieties about ‘loyalty’ fuelled by the rebellion of slaves led by mixed race people in the West Indies, and the hardening of racial attitudes back in Europe. By the mid19th century the mixed race group was seen by the rulers as a growing ‘problem’ – a problem of poverty, of morality, of low education, and limited employment. To an extent the building and running of a vast network of colonial railways on the subcontinent acted as a lifesaver to many mixed race men, offering them skilled work and assured housing in ‘railway colonies’. But for many others there were few opportunities, and certainly no chance of rising to the higher ranks of imperial service either in the army or the civilian administration. After the abolition of the Company and the institution of the Raj proper as a branch of British government under the Crown from 1858, the Company’s armies were replaced by an Indian army made up of ethnically Indian soldiers and officered by British career soldiers, while the Indian Civil Service became an elite administrative corps, entry to which was only available to those of proven British racial and social identity, who had had the advantage of the education which alone enabled success in entrance examinations. This work examines the implications of this changing socioeconomic and political context for those of mixed race, and their responses to the changing situation in which they found themselves. One of the underpinning themes to emerge is the problem of naming and definition. In the 19th century they tended to be called ‘Eurasian’, and the term ‘Anglo-Indian’ was used to denote people of clear British descent who worked in India, often across several generations, but nonetheless kept their British social identity by educating their sons at least in Britain, by marrying into families which were impeccably British, and by retiring to Britain – the so-called ‘dolphin families’ described by Rudyard Kipling. By the 1890s those of mixed descent began to claim this title for themselves to escape the racially pejorative tones of ‘Eurasian’. In the Census of 1911 they succeeded to the extent of being reclassified as AngloIndian – a change of name which played into their claims to European ancestry and lifestyle, and to Britain as ‘home’ – regardless of the fact that the majority had never actually been to Britain.

Foreword

xi

However, this naming and renaming belied the fact that there was no coherent Anglo-Indian group. The boundaries of the mixed race group were fluid and porous, and there were internal controversies about the nature of identity and belonging. Anglo-Indians were divided among themselves by origin and class and colour. But they were resolute that they were superior to Indian Christian converts who might share European-sounding names and clothing styles. They also felt superior to those who bore Portuguese-sounding names; for although there were some of genuine mixed Portuguese and Indian descent originating from places of Portuguese settlement, others were suspected of being aspiring and upwardly mobile Indian Christians. Other Anglo-Indians who had fairer complexions and some educational and economic capital tried, on the other hand, to ‘escape’ from the Anglo-Indian designation and attempted to ‘pass’ as full-blooded Europeans. Often they would claim the status of ‘Domiciled Europeans’, another category used by the colonial state and by individuals to try to classify a racial hierarchy of identity. This was a fraught strategy for social advancement, given the presence of relatives who might look much more Indian, and suspicion by Europeans of people who could not conclusively prove impeccable British origins. It was a strategy which seemed to succeed for more women than men, particularly during the Second World War, when Anglo-Indian women played a significant role in support services to the military, and when lines of ethnicity were becoming blurred by the presence of foreign allied troops in India. The fluidity of the boundaries of Anglo-Indian belonging made it all the more difficult for Anglo-Indian leaders to speak with a clear and coherent ‘Anglo-Indian voice’ in politics. Another key theme of the work is how successive leaders set about ‘making a minority community’ in the sense that the term came to be used on the subcontinent by many other groups, particularly those marked out by religious identity. From the later 19th century the colonial state co-opted representatives of those groups they saw as useful and loyal, giving them seats in the evolving imperial and provincial legislative councils. As more power was devolved to local people through these councils, claiming important minority status became hugely more significant and a pathway to power for individuals and influence on behalf of the ‘community’. Like many others who claimed to speak for significant communities, in the Anglo-Indian case nomenclature and numbers dominated ‘minority building’ through the decennial Census. While in the political arena aspiring AngloIndian leaders claimed ‘representative status’ as they negotiated with the government, and simultaneously tried to weld their group into a coherent whole by constructing a history and identity, and a claim on the imperial state for recognition and protection, alongside the creation of new forms of community organisation to back their claims and to work more broadly for community advancement in such areas as English education and employment. In the Anglo-Indian case the claim on the government stemmed primarily from race (the claim to shared European ancestry and homeland) and proven loyalty to the colonial regime.

xii

Foreword

To a significant extent successive Anglo-Indian leaders such as John Abbott (1863–1945), Henry Gidney (1873–1942), and Frank Anthony (1908–93) achieved considerable results from the strategy of dealing with the political authorities, both imperial and post-imperial, as representative of a significant minority. Anglo-Indians were granted special representation in the various legislative councils, some of which lasted into post-Independence India. However, it became clear that as British power waned the imperial authority would never be able to protect the minority if they persisted in asserting shared European identity and loyalty to the imperial regime as their claim on the state, and when Anthony became the community’s main leader he recognised that they would have to embrace the new Indian state, and present themselves as a loyal but distinctive minority among many within the new nation state. Political representation remained important, but in the longer term the identity and flourishing of Anglo-Indians as a community in the new India depended on the preservation of English as their mother tongue and the provision of English-language education. Inevitably, the issue of crafting various strategies of dealing with political power on the subcontinent is a major theme of this work. But it also sheds new light on another lesser known strategy – that of trying to create ethnic Anglo-Indian homelands. What constituted ‘home’ was a critical trope in Anglo-Indian discourse, and as it became clearer that Britain could never be home in any realistic sense, some Anglo-Indians gave serious thought to creating homelands within India or even elsewhere in the British Empire. Other communities in India were also addressing similar issues, particularly as the idea of Partition became established in political discourse. But overseas examples, particularly the creation of a Jewish homeland, were also an encouragement. A number of settlements planned to be model community homes based on modern agriculture were tried and in general failed. Lack of investment and expertise were in part to blame, as was the disunity within the ‘community’ when it came to practical action. It was perhaps a form of escapism, of establishing a racial redoubt or fortress, rather than coming to terms with the realities of the post-colonial situation. Others took escape far more seriously and literally. In the years after independence in 1947 considerable numbers of Anglo-Indians left mainly for Britain but some for Australia and New Zealand. Only those with considerable social and educational capital, who could pass as European and who had clear European connections, made this radical decision and took the strategy of ‘passing’ to a new level. This work is well researched, using many Anglo-Indian sources which have hardly been used before by historians, and it is both sensitive and realistic. It makes significant contributions to a range of histories and historiographies – the emergence of modern South Asia, the dilemmas and messy outcomes of imperial endings, particularly in complex societies with significant minorities of various kinds, the fluidity and contextual nature of ‘hybrid’ identity, and last but not least the way women have tended to be written out of formal

Foreword

xiii

history making. In the Anglo-Indian case women were critical – from the earliest of the poor Indian women who found European mates, to those who did the daily business of maintaining Anglo-Indian domesticity, to those who stepped up to new opportunities in the mid- to late 20th century and added significantly to the community’s social and economic capital. This study also opens the way to important new avenues of research for which there was no space here. Gender roles are of course one of them. Reference is made to the more Europeanised lifestyles of Anglo-Indian families, but it would be valuable to have this spelt out and illustrated with photos now that the old world of the Anglo-Indian in India is ebbing away. Another issue worthy of more research is the significance of Christian identity for Anglo-Indians – in terms of social and ideological bonding, of forming international linkages, and of the provision of education. Then there is the whole field of Anglo-Indian migration beyond Indian shores, and the reconfiguration of Anglo-Indian identity as memories of India fade and a younger generation have to ask who they are and where they belong. Judith M. Brown Beit Professor Emeritus of Commonwealth History, University of Oxford

Acknowledgements

This book originated with a doctoral thesis submitted to the University of Oxford in 2012. The scope and chronological span of the research involved have expanded significantly since then, with the help and advice of others. I shall remain profoundly grateful to all those who have assisted in its genesis and subsequent development, and who have supported the research which has brought it to its present form. The forbearance and persevering indulgence of family members is essential to most writers and academics, and I would first like to thank my immediate family, and especially my mother, for their unflinching support. I am grateful to my college, St Edmund Hall, for funding the final stages of my research with a Brockhues Award, and to the University’s Beit Fund for their generous sponsoring of my archival and oral history fieldwork in India, and attendance of the 8th World Anglo-Indian Reunion in Perth, Australia, in 2010. I am most indebted to the pastoral care, academic support, and painstaking guidance of my principle supervisor, Professor Judith M. Brown. Her sustained interest and constant encouragement in bringing this subject to life have been indispensable, and her continuing support since I left Oxford has been beyond the call of duty. I would also like to thank Professor Francis Robinson, who took over my supervision in my final year and offered invaluable advice for refining my work in its postdoctoral stages. Dr Jeevan Deol, who supervised me for an academic term, made another disproportionate impact with his crucial suggestion to inject the concept of racial passing, more widely known to those familiar with the historiography of race in the United States. The constructive criticisms and insightful suggestions of my doctoral examiners, Professor Joya Chatterji and Dr Faisal Devji, have shaped the nature of the project’s evolution into its present form. I also benefited from the guidance of Professor John Darwin, Professor Maria Misra, and Dr David Washbrook in the early framing of the project. However, I must thank Professor Chatterji more especially for her pivotal role in prompting my embarkation upon this journey into Anglo-Indian research, by directing me towards my earliest source materials and assuring me of the feasibility of my proposed topic. Happily, the evidentiary base for the present work has grown

Acknowledgements

xv

considerably since I began with her early pointers to Cedric Dover’s Half Caste and the Constituent Assembly Debates. I began my South Asian research on military technology transfers facilitated by European mercenaries (many of whom entered unions with Indian women) in the service of Indian rulers, under the supervision of Professor Tirthankara Roy and with the wholehearted encouragement of Professor Patrick O’Brien, as a student of global history at the London School of Economics’ Department of Economic History. However, my earliest research as an Oxford undergraduate and Harvard Summer School student focused on Cherokee slave owners, their mixed race Chief John Ross, and my thesis that ‘Indian Removal’ was interwoven with the construction of a biracial order in the Antebellum American South. My appreciation of the historiography of race in America was fostered by the inspirational teaching of Professor Jay Sexton and Professor Sally Hadden, and retains a clear resonance with my current work. I am especially indebted to the former Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for West Bengal, famed quizmaster, Managing Director of Oxford University Press, India, and President of the All India Anglo-Indian Association, the late Neil O’Brien, for giving me complete and unfettered access to the Association’s private archive in New Delhi. He was most gratified that, as the London-born, second-generation, diasporic son of an Anglo-Indian who had migrated from Bangalore to the UK in childhood, I maintained identification with, and wanted to tell the story of, my father’s community. As a committed educationalist and lifelong advocate for the Anglo-Indian community and the need for its history to be told, Neil’s personal support to me and for this project from the moment I first arrived in India was unparalleled. He very kindly invited me to participate in and address the 2010 AGM of the All India Association, and introduced me to Anglo-Indian MLAs from across India, including Lorraine Lobo who hosted me in Frank Anthony’s hometown of Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. She in turn helped me to secure an interview with former MLA and Florence Nightingale Medal recipient Colonel Florence Watkins of the Indian Military Nursing Service, who was then still going strong at 98 years of age. Through the AGM I also became acquainted with the DeRozario family who invited me to stay at their residence in McCluskieganj, Jharkhand, where they granted me full access to their private collection of Colonisation Observer magazines and other papers, which have provided another critical source. The staff of several major archives and libraries amply supported me in accessing the necessary materials for this research – in particular the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the (British) National Archives in Kew, the British Library, the National Archives of India, the West Bengal State Archives, and the National Library in Calcutta. There are a great many individuals to whom I owe thanks for their friendship, warmth, long conversations, key introductions, and in a few cases agreeing to formal recorded interviews. I wish it were possible to name them

xvi

Acknowledgements

all, but there are a few more Anglo-Indians in India and the diaspora I am compelled to single out (alphabetically!) for special mention: Malcom Booth, Keith Butler, Shirley Gifford-Pritchard, Denzil Keelor, Michael Ludgrove, Dr Gloria Moore, Withbert Payne, Brian Sweeney, and Blair Williams. I would like to say a personal thank you to Valerie Beecham, Philomena Berkeley, Sybil Martyr, and the other residents of the Lawrence DeSouza Home, Kolkata, and the Grant Govan Homes, New Delhi, for their warm hospitality. I am equally grateful to friends, former classmates, fellow academics, and mentors who have devoted time and energy to proofreading and commenting upon various drafts of the present manuscript, including: Polly Akhurst, Professor Mikhail Anipkin, Professor Yaqoob Bangash, Matthew Bornholt, Jamal Cassim, Professor Anna Elkina, Rumena Filipova, Helena Foster, Professor Brian Hamnett, Ksenia Litvinenko, Nathan Lyons, Jason Pack, Danielle Parkinson, Dr Andrea Pass, Dr Enrico Prodi, Gala Riani, Travis Seifman, Dr Ping Tjin Thum, and Pavel Timachev. This book has also been enriched by discussions and exchanges at several academic conferences and AngloIndian research workshops, with scholars in several disciplines, such as: Jennifer Adkins, Dr Robyn Andrews, Professor Neilesh Bose, Professor Ellen Boucher, Professor Marc Gilbert, Professor Sergey Glebov, Professor Edwin Hirschmann, Liesbeth Jacobson, Professor Jennifer Jones, Professor Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, William Langford, Dorothy McMenamin, Professor Samuel Nelson, Deborah Nixon, Brent Otto, Professor Shailaja Paik, Professor Sally Paine, Professor Aviel Roshwald, Professor Ariel Salzmann, Professor Alexander Semyonov, Professor Juned Shaikh, and Professor Ronald Suny. All mistakes and omissions still to be found are, of course, my own.

Abbreviations

AIF ANS BL, OIOC CSI ICS IMNS MLA NAI NAUK PSC QA VAD WAC(I) YMCA YWCA

Anglo-Indian Force Auxiliary Nursing Service British Library, Oriental and India Office Collection Colonization Society of India, Limited Indian Civil Service Indian Military Nursing Service Member of the Legislative Assembly National Archives of India National Archives, UK Public Service Commission Queen Alexandra [nurses] Voluntary Aid Detachment [nurses] Women’s Auxiliary Corps (India) Young Men’s Christian Association Young Women’s Christian Association

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction

One of the masterpieces of British painting in India. In the richest and most gorgeous of colours, Chinnery presents the two small children in their Hyderabadi court dress … Sahib Allum – an exceptionally beautiful, poised, darkeyed child – wears a scarlet jama trimmed with gilt brocade, and a matching gilt cummerbund; he has a glittering topi on his head and crescent-toed slippers. Round his neck hangs a string of enormous pearls. His little sister, who is standing one step up from Sahib Allum, and has her arm around her big brother’s shoulders, is discernibly fairer-skinned, and below her topi is a hint of the red hair that would be much admired in the years to come. Yet while Sahib Allum looks directly at the viewer with an almost precocious confidence and assurance, Sahib Begum looks down with an expression of infinite sadness and vulnerability.1 William Dalrymple, White Mughals

We begin in 1805 with a painting that captured the moment before the two siblings, aged 5 and 3, parted from their mother Khair un-Nissa and their father James Kirkpatrick. Although Khair was Muslim, an aristocratic ‘Hyderabadi Begum’, and Kirkpatrick was a deist from a Christian background, they had married under Islamic rites, and ‘at the age of sixteen she found herself mistress of her own zenana’, and with no mother-in-law present to interfere with the life she created.2 Being ‘educated and literate and … [writing] frequent letters’ which sadly do not survive, developing and sharing ‘an interest in precious stones’ with her husband, being free to travel to visit friends and family, indulging other traditional interests like pigeon flying – we might argue, as Dalrymple implies, that this was liberating for Khair as a woman, and an intercultural world for both partners.3 Hyderabad was a syncretic site, with a ‘fluid and porous atmosphere’,4 quite alien to the world of communal (a key term in South Asia, loosely approximating to religious) boundaries which were to grow up under efforts to demarcate, enumerate, and codify difference through Orientalist scholarship and colonial instruments like the Census. However, it was not a world devoid of hierarchy, power imbalances, nor patriarchal assumptions and pressures. Any attempt to straddle the worlds of the growing British spheres of dominance in South Asia and of declining Mughal-style courtly life involved making potentially painful choices.

2

Introduction

Specifically, this couple, or perhaps more accurately its patriarch, had the choice to raise the two children ‘as Anglo-Indian Christians and attempt to integrate them into British society, or instead to educate them as fully Muslim Indians, and to propel them as best … [as they] could into the parallel world of late-Mughal society’.5 The latter option was taken by Colonel Gardner for his daughters, as we shall discover in Chapter 1, but this was rare enough to be considered one of his many enigmatic eccentricities. The power dynamics at the interpersonal and interstate levels of these intercultural interactions, and the prejudices of European men about what such a choice would entail for their sons and daughters, usually dictated a Christian and European-style upbringing. Still, even in this early period of so called ‘White Mughals’, the position of the mixed race children of elite Europeans, raised as European Christians, posed many problems. As General Sir David Ochterlony wrote of his two daughters by Mubarak Begum in 1803: My children are uncommonly fair … but if educated [in India] in the European manner they will in spite of complexion labour under all the disadvantages of being known as the NATURAL DAUGHTERS OF OCHTERLONY BY A NATIVE WOMAN [sic.] – In that one sentence is compressed all that ill nature and illiberality can convey.6 It was this context that motivated Kirkpatrick to decide, and his wife to accept, the heart-wrenching prospect of sending the two young children to England, possibly for good. Kirkpatrick had first considered whether they might not be better off living out their lives in England, where he believed race and colour prejudice would be less consequential for them than in the colonial setting. Yet the ultimate decision was for the two young children to follow a common trajectory for the mixed race offspring of relatively elite British men – they would return to India after a ‘suitable’ education in Britain. Dalrymple introduces another contemporary, an exceptional young man: William Palmer … the Anglo-Indian son of James Kirkpatrick’s opposite number in Pune, General William Palmer, by his beloved Mughal wife Begum Fyze Baksh of Delhi … [who was] as fluent in Persian and Urdu as he was in English and French, and educated in both India and England, where he had attended Woolwich Military Academy … equally at home in Mughal and English culture … He was also extremely intelligent, with a flair for entrepreneurial innovation that would later blossom into a banking fortune of almost unparalleled magnitude.7 Kirkpatrick noted, when he arrived in Hyderabad, that Palmer was ‘dark but clever and cultivated’,8 and Dalrymple argues that it was Palmer’s example that persuaded him that his own children might be able to have a future in the land of their birth, but only after education in England. In many ways Palmer

Introduction

3

exemplified what was still possible in the earliest phase of the British presence and expansion in India, as well as embodying the most positive trope (of ascription and self-assertion) about those of mixed race – that they could live intercultural lives, provide bridges, move between worlds and benefit from the condition of mestizaje.9 It was something that was hardly ever to be possible, and certainly not on such an elevated plane, for future generations of mixed race South Asians. Palmer was the quintessential racial and cultural ‘hybrid’, though owing to the subsequent realities of ethnic boundary-making processes in South Asia, almost unique in this respect. Indeed, in later periods, figures like the Indian prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, educated at Harrow and Cambridge, whom Indian contemporaries described as ‘too much a gentleman, and worse, an English gentleman’,10 were arguably more culturally hybrid than the racially ‘hybrid’ group whose history we will be exploring. Most mixed race children of European fathers in South Asia during the rest of the colonial period possessed far less pedigree and privilege, and enjoyed a far narrower world of possibilities and choices. Indeed, most mixed race South Asians would themselves be the offspring of a growing and increasingly endogamous, separated, and subordinated mixed race group. However, endogamy was never complete, and it is crucial to understand that interracial unions of various kinds between European men and Indian or mixed race women continued to a lesser extent throughout the British presence in South Asia. It is the politics of that externally and internally constructed group that provides the substantive focus of the present study. To comprehend their assertions of ‘groupness’, refashionings of self and identity, and the genesis of their politics, we will first attend to debates about their origins and the processes which created their social and economic position under the Raj. India and its civilisation have never been static; India has always enjoyed varying degrees of cultural hybridity, heterogeneity, cosmopolitanism, and diversity. There are and were many Indias. The present work can capture but a small part of the mixed race worlds of Eurasia and Anglo-India conceived of by a particular section of the descendants of interracial unions in South Asia. An evolving group, whose boundaries shifted, expanded, and contracted, whose successive designations were ascribed, contested, and selfasserted, whose politics contended with exclusion and subordination, as well as privilege and patronage. Anglo-Indians, Eurasians, East Indians, and IndoBritons, as they were variously known, created a dynamic politics and refashioned themselves as individuals and collectives, in an ongoing pursuit of identity and belonging. The lens of politics, broadly conceived, helps us to tell their story across the wide chronological span in which it can be more fully comprehended. Necessarily much will be omitted in the process; more could be said of religion, education, local and regional politics, experiences of diaspora and migration, external perceptions of the group, to mention but a few. This is a rich subject for future historical research. A single book can only begin to scratch the surface of what can be said and known, even about one numerically small minority amidst the vast population of South Asia.

4

Introduction

An interdisciplinary literature One of the earliest and arguably most insightful scholarly contributions to Anglo-Indian history appeared in a single chapter in a comparative work of global case studies on Miscegenation,11 by the Jamaican-born Fernando Henriquez (1916–76), whose wide-ranging interests secured him appointments in social anthropology (University of Leeds) and sociology (SOAS, London), and led him to create ‘the new Research Unit for the study of Multi-Racial Societies, later to become the Centre for Multi-Racial Studies’ at the University of Sussex.12 Henriquez came to the subject after having written on Family and Colour in Jamaica,13 drew heavily on the voluminous writings of the Anglo-Indian (self-identifying as Eurasian) and similarly interdisciplinary polymath scholar and activist Cedric Dover, and came to the interesting conclusion that Anglo-Indians were ‘amongst the most unfortunate of the children of Caliban’.14 The Shakespearian allusion in the title of his book makes it clear that by this Henriquez meant to argue that, as compared with other peoples of mixed descent (rather than the majority of South Asians, against whom they were an objectively privileged group), the Anglo-Indian experience had been a particularly tragic and difficult one. Whilst that suggestion could fruitfully be reexamined in another broad comparative work echoing his, it is interesting to note how Henriquez’s work embodies a longstanding set of intellectual connections between issues of colour, race, and mixing in the Caribbean and South Asia. Not only did such analytical comparisons have a long history, but, as we shall see, the connections between these two distant imperial spaces were manifest in the articulation of East India Company policy as far back as the 18th century and found a place within Anglo-Indians’ own conceptions of their position in the world. However, until fairly recently few professional historians had focused as directly on the history of the mixed race group as the late Christopher Hawes.15 Commenting on the paucity and problems of the scholarship that existed in 1998 Hawes opined that ‘in many ways some of the hangovers of British attitudes towards Eurasians still exist amongst historians … [and Eurasians] tend to be dismissed in a footnote or else described as marginal people’.16 Hawes also felt that early polemical works by members of the community, especially Herbert Stark,17 had exercised undue influence on some early authors who focused on Anglo-Indians’ postcolonial plight such as the Anglo-Indian Evelyn Abel,18 and the sociologists Noel Gist and Roy Wright.19 Along with Stark, Hawes argued, the Anglo-Indian leader Frank Anthony’s memoir-cum-history had become the ‘two “Bibles”’ for those who later wrote about the community’s history.20 Several Anglo-Indian authors such as Gloria Moore have sought to tackle what they perceive as the neglect and prejudicial treatment of Anglo-Indians and their history.21 CTR Publishing, set up by the New Jersey-based Anglo-Indian author Blair Williams, has issued several collected anthologies of Anglo-Indian family histories, stories, and academic articles about the community, that seek to express Anglo-Indian

Introduction

5

22

voices on their own terms. The online International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies, now under the editorship of Robyn Andrews and Brent Otto, has gathered a similar mix of scholarly accounts and Anglo-Indian voices representing the community’s present and its past. Colonial Britons sought to obscure the presence of those of mixed race, who were felt to challenge their pretensions to racial superiority. This, along with socioracial passing within the group, has tended to render them less visible in the colonial archive. To the extent that Western historians were aware of the group they tended to be perceived in terms of marginality. Indian nationalists have also had their own purposes in presenting a vision of Hindu caste purity, often embodied in the female as the representative of the nation, surviving the colonial encounter untarnished. Racial mixing has therefore been an uncomfortable subject. In her study of early interracial sex in India (and the so often invisible Indian women in such relationships), Durba Ghosh has argued that for: middle-class Indians, the creation of a modern family – with an educated and spiritually minded mother who protected the spiritual realm of the family and sustained traditions untouched by colonialism – was a necessary part of an emergent Indian nationalism. Because the majority of colonial companions were neither middle-class nor politically desirable within the imperialist or nationalist project, their role in historical narratives of this period has been erased.23 Historians have thus in part replicated the oppositional binaries of ruler and ruled, coloniser and colonised, into which the mixed race group does not easily fit. Race itself, and therefore ‘race mixing’ and ‘interracial’ sex and the ‘racial hybrid’, are all constructs which were historically significant, and often continue to be so in the present. Seen through the lens of Homi Bhabha’s celebration of hybridity,24 the concept as a metaphor for mestizaje, has shed much of its association with the scientific racism of the late 19th century. Such terms are analytically unavoidable in a study of this kind, but should be read as if in inverted commas throughout. Anglo-Indians have also been the focus of pioneering work by anthropologists including Robyn Andrews, Laura Bear, and Lionel Caplan, and geographers such as Alison Blunt and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt. More recently historians such as Elizabeth Buettner and Satoshi Mizutani have explored the group through the prism of those excluded from whiteness. The present work is heavily indebted to this corpus of scholarship. A history on Anglo-Indians in the 19th century has been published by Valerie Anderson,25 which helps to illustrate the growing interest the subject is receiving from historians and South Asianists. Other scholars such as Jill Olumide have cited the AngloIndian example as a case study in the field of mixed race studies, but the growing body of historical scholarship on mixed race South Asians should make Anglo-Indians more accessible for interdisciplinary teaching and

6

Introduction

research. Fruitful connections and comparisons exist between the AngloIndians and mixed (and unmixed) populations in the Caribbean, and the interest in developing these was evident in exchanges at the 129th American Historical Association conference (2015). These and the more obvious comparisons with mixed race populations of the Dutch empire in Asia, which were explored on a panel at the 39th Social Science History Association conference (2014) with Liesbeth Jacobson, will be touched on. It is taken for granted that the experience of even the most aloof and selfsecluding of imperialists is to some degree hybrid. This applies more forcefully to the colonised subject, whether or not they have any direct interface with the colonial state. Though the hybridity of Bhabha’s ‘third space’ neglected the racial ‘hybrid’, it is not surprising that scholars like Mizutani have begun to apply Bhabha’s theories to Anglo-Indians.26 Working within the fields of sociology and global studies Jan Pieterse, who emphasises the importance of his Indonesian-Dutch mixed ancestry to his work, has cited mixed race peoples as evidence for viewing globalisation as not a feature of a recent phase of modernity, but as a more longstanding process that stretches back at least to the European mercantile and colonial enterprises of the 16th century.27 At the same time, intellectually, hybridity is seen by some literary theorists as reflecting ‘a postmodern sensibility of cut ‘n’ mix, transgression, subversion … in Foucault’s terms, a “resurrection of subjugated knowledges” because it foregrounds those effects and experiences which modern cosmologies, whether rationalist or romantic, would not tolerate’.28 The risk here is that we adopt a celebratory tone about the theoretical potential of hybridity to satisfy our own purposes in the present, rather than doing detailed case studies that interrogate what hybridity has meant in practice. Pieterse has rightly argued that more ‘Distinctions need to be made between different times, patterns, types, and styles of mixing … [and how] mixing carries different meanings in different cultural settings’.29 Equally, the mixed, long pathologised as suffering from identity complexes supposed to arise from the internal contradictions intrinsic to their own being, have a history which should not be made to bear any greater burden of preambulatory discourse than any other group. As Olumide argues, the reason for the ‘problems’ of those of mixed race lie not in the mixed themselves, but in the social boundaries and attitudes to which they are subjected and expected to conform.30 The real psychological stresses of the ‘mixed race condition’ cannot be ignored, but at the same time it must be realised how damaging have been the pathologising discourses attached to them. These have provided a reinforcement of their subordinated status (analogous to Orientalist tropes) and a basis for policing racial boundaries, and have provided a primary prism through which much earlier scholarship sought to understand them via problems assumed to be inherent rather than situational. The recognition of this, and the project of creating histories that perceive their position through a less myopic lens, present clear challenges.

Introduction

7

In a work that compares prejudice in India and the United States, Gyanendra Pandey has recently highlighted the reality of psychological pressure to which those of mixed race have been exposed by a less than hospitable environment, often policed from within their group, or even their own family, as well as the wider society.31 Tensions often emerge when an ascribed category based upon externally perceived colour conflict with their own forms of self-identification, or when there is colour-based preferential treatment or stigmatisation of one family member as against another from within the family, the group, or from outside. Malcolm X’s autobiography reveals that his mother displayed favouritism towards her darker skinned children. Tacit favouritism towards a lighter skinned Anglo-Indian child possessing a greater chance to ascend the socioracial hierarchy of British India was not unheard of. More broadly, the socialisation and upbringing of the mixed can and has often led them to identify more with one side of their ancestry than another. In the case of those who are mixed race in the United States, the history of the ‘one-drop rule’ has usually resulted in their ascription to and self-identification with the African American category or a broader sense of being a ‘person of colour’. In the South Asian setting separate categories for the mixed were created, but their relative subordination in relation to whiteness in a far more complex socioracial hierarchy greatly incentivised attempts at ascent through socioracial passing. At the same time as more British, European and white statuses appeared advantageous, at least until the end of empire, the new nation made demands that they reverse this orientation and decisively choose to become Indians. The demand that the mixed should choose, that they cannot be simply what they are – which is possessors of a dual or multifaceted heritage and inheritance – has therefore been part of the ‘problem’ to which they have been involuntarily exposed in various times and places. It bears some relation to the demands of the nation for uniformity and singular allegiance. Not wishing to eulogise empires of various kinds any more than nation states, it is possible to observe that both the Mughal and British Empires were capable of greater diversity than is allowed by many conceptions of the nation. In the former case such heterogeneity took the form of more syncretic, fluid, and less bounded spaces for diversity, whilst in the latter boundedness, essentialisation, and enumerative categorisation fostered divisions and ethnic boundarymaking processes that created hierarchically subordinated spaces for a multitude of demarcated minority groups. Even when the nation is conceived in secular or pluralistic terms, when diversity and multiculturalism is celebrated, or indeed embodied in the activities of the state, it is liable to replicate the unintended incentives of such colonial and imperial patterns of heterogeneity. Whilst arguing for foregrounding the significance of hybridity and a ‘third space’, Bhabha has warned of the essentialism of multiculturalist discourses that assume that immigrant identities are best understood in terms of belonging to bounded minority groups, usually racial or religious.32 Perceiving a form of nascent multiculturalism in the ‘White Mughals’ era would be

8

Introduction

problematic even if that concept was not heavily contested in the political debates of recent decades. For some it has even provided a conceptual link between the communalism fostered by the late colonial state in India, including its aftereffects in the bloodshed of Partition, and the supposed ghettoisation, alienation, and divisiveness of state-sponsored multiculturalism directed towards accommodating immigrant groups in the contemporary West.33 Both comparisons involve the nature and salience of boundaries; positionality in relation to the boundaries; crossings, repositionings, or straddlings; and potential or actual boundary-making processes. However, in each setting it is important to consider the power dynamics of the relationships involved, at the level of personal interaction, and the incentives provided by the state, or those exercising political power and influence. Racial mixedness is ‘essentially an idea, or a creation with no corresponding reality’.34 Olumide points to its close parallels with mixedness of other kinds, most relevant to our purposes with religious (or communal) mixedness. The commonality of experience is based not on the false construction of race, but on the presence in virtually all societies of boundaries with varying degrees of fixity, salience, and porousness, and what it means to challenge, transgress, or straddle those boundaries. When Olumide speaks of the problems ascribed to those of mixed race, it is as if to echo Said that the question is not the relationship between the imagined Orient and the real Orient, it is to dissect dominating and silencing external construction of the Orient by others with the power to do so and to make their own interpretation salient and transformative. In contrast, we are here concerned with the actual experience of people of ‘mixed race’ – itself a construction based on essentialised categories of race. Racial categories are particularly fictitious as compared with other principles of ordering, but are nonetheless made real in lived experience through various processes of boundary construction and policing, and being real in that sense, are consequential, even to the present day. Should we accept Dalrymple’s romantic image of a ‘White Mughals’ era of intercultural possibilities for some Europeans and Indians? Is Pieterse correct to argue that the movements and mixings of peoples of early trade and colonial empires embody a phase of globalisation, prefiguring what many now perceive to be a new and ‘modern’ phenomenon? Did colonialism create Bhabha-esque hybridities of various kinds, for all sides of the ‘exchange’? We can answer a qualified yes to all these questions, but we should be wary of adopting a celebratory tone, or of engaging in anachronistic projections of our own desires, ideologies, and implicit value judgements onto the canvas of past events. We should remind ourselves that there is no necessary connection between racial and cultural hybridity. For there to be a link the category of race (or at least of analytically distinct ‘colour’) must be a salient and consequential means of ordering difference. And for any resulting hybridity to be meaningful it must represent some kind of combination or synthesis of distinctive cultures, rather than more radical conversions for individuals with the power and privilege to make exceptional lifestyle choices.

Introduction

9

Wimmerian approaches to ethnic boundary making in South Asia Ethnographic histories are apt to project the existence or identity of any group further back in time than it belongs, although the same is often true of accounts of the nation. In both cases constructions of history by the nation or group, which function instrumentally to foster identity and solidarity, are implicated. Andreas Wimmer’s formulation of the ethnic boundary-making approach maps a more comprehensively varied empirical landscape. Boundaries can exist even when there is little or no cultural difference on either side of the boundary, but equally a single bounded group may contain a vast spectrum of cultural difference within itself. Wimmer critiques both those who followed in the wake of romantic nationalists like Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), assuming that ethnic groups were real and marked by cultural distinctiveness, and those who followed the social anthropologist Fredrik Barth’s contrary contention that there were no clearly discernible and distinct ethnic group cultures, but rather ‘a landscape of continuous cultural transitions’ (Figure 0.1).35 Recent scholarship has benefited significantly from: Roger Brubaker’s warning that even among contemporary scholars who employ a constructivist approach to understanding ethnicity, race, and nation, there nonetheless remains ‘the tendency to treat ethnic groups, nations, and even races as things-in-the-world, as real substantial entities with their own cultures, identities and interests’.36 Yet the insights of constructivists are not mutually exclusive with Wimmer’s new synthesis. Rather, Wimmer argues that boundaries that appear Herderian and those that appear to fit a social constructivist perspective, seemingly antithetical, both exist in the observable world. To explain this he posits that when boundaries are salient and less porous, and especially over longer periods of time, they foster cultural divergences and trajectories of actual self-reinforcing cultural differentiation that instantiate Herderian patterns. To put it another way, ‘Herder’s assumption that ethnic groups are necessarily characterized by a shared culture’ is false,37 but it ‘is equally problematic to … identify fluidity, situational variability, and strategic malleability as the very nature of ethnic phenomenon as such, as in radical versions of the constructivist paradigm’.38 Equally, given the predominance of the American Academy in Englishlanguage social science scholarship, we should seriously consider Wimmer’s point that the nature and salience of race and racial boundaries in the United States are not a universalist prism through which racial issues should be conceptualised and understood in all times and places. How the boundaries of the nation are constructed to include or exclude is particularly significant in relation to minority questions. It has more often been discussed in terms of the distinction between nationals and immigrants, but this bears close analogy to the relationship of the majority to the minority in the process of nation building. Wimmer suggests that social science has advocated the collapsing of

10

Introduction

Fig. 0.1 Andreas Wimmer on Herderian and Barthian worlds. Revealing boundaries which either accurately map cultural differences between ethnic groups (left side, Herder), or divide those actually more proximate in culture to one another than to some members of their own group (right side, Barth). Source: Reproduced from Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks by Andreas Wimmer (2013): fig. 2.1 (p. 22), by permission of Oxford University Press, USA.

the national-immigrant boundary ‘through “assimilation” (in the United States), “integration” (in Europe), or “absorption” (in Israel)’.39 He critiques assimilation theory for its tendency to overlook ‘the social closure that defines who is “us” and who is “them”’ when assuming that ‘they’ can achieve acceptance within ‘the borders of the nation … [by] becoming and behaving like “us”’; whilst contrastingly: the left-Herderian approach overstates the degree and ubiquity of such closure by assuming that systematic discrimination is necessarily and universally the defining feature of ethnic relations – projecting the African-American experience of the past onto the present and onto all other ethnic communities in the United States and around the world.40 Though historians of the United States could point towards internal hierarchies of ordering within the African American community, and problematise the picture, in broad terms Wimmer is correct in characterising: the shift to a Herderian world brought about by the institutionalisation of the “one drop” rule to determine who belonged to a clear-cut and undifferentiated “black” category in the American South, a shift that erased the various “mixed” categories that had previously existed.41 The broad outlines of this move are not unlike the processes that took place in other colonial and imperial settings. However, a detailed analysis of racial and other forms of ordering in different settings will be bound to uncover differences.

Introduction

11

Ethnic group categories may or may not correspond to bounded or culturally distinct communities, and ethnic boundary-making processes can help us to understand how – through the activities of the state, the control of resources, and through social closure – Herderian worlds can come into existence, but also be extinguished. Wimmer’s use of ethnic boundaries as an inclusive term to cover various possible principles of ordering (racial, colour, caste, religious, linguistic, etc.) is particularly apt in the South Asian setting, as we can see the structural similarities of caste and communal boundaries. These become more salient, less porous, and sometimes more Herderian as a consequence of colonial state-backed projects of demarcating and enumerating communal and other forms of ethnic difference through instruments like the Census, reservations, and separate electorates. Reservations (i.e. ‘positive discrimination’ or ‘affirmative action’) persisted and indeed expanded through the constitutional framework of independent India. Surprisingly AngloIndians, despite enjoying a standard of living far in advance of the average Indian citizen, were able to retain colonial era reservations for their employment by the state through political negotiations with Indian nationalists during the constitution-making process. Less surprisingly, the Census also persisted as a tool of the national state, but Anglo-Indian political leaders did not have the foresight to insist on the continued statutory inclusion of their category, which was discontinued despite their almost uniquely constitutionally recognised status as a minority alongside Dalits and Adivasis. Undoubtedly, hierarchical divisions of access to power and resources preceded colonial rule (particularly based on caste groupings), even if they may have been dynamically reshaped by it, but the colonial state played a significant role in conceptualising and reifying communal groups and caste hierarchies, essentialising them in the process. The reality of, salience of, and primary allegiance towards communal group identities was assumed. Accordingly, the East India Company codified and formalised separate legal systems for Hindus and Muslims, creating the basis for a debate that persists until the present day over the question of enacting a uniform civil code. Colonial Britons, the colonial state, and most significantly the Census reacted with intolerance to prevailing syncretic traditions, fuzzy, blurred, and porous boundaries, and rewarded those whose politics articulated claims to more well-defined and enumerated ‘groupness’, thereby fostering spaces for minority group politics. Whilst an intermediate communal category was not thought fit for religiously syncretic Hussaini Brahmins, politically salient intermediate categories for those that straddled the boundary between Europeans and Indians were created, even though their legal and employment statuses were complex and sometimes contradictory or inconsistent. As Wimmer suggests ‘“Ethnicization” is understood as a self-reinforcing process of focusing and reacting upon the ethnic dimensions of social reality, thus creating “minority problems” in the domains of education, law enforcement, unemployment, and so on’.42 Which is not to say that subordinated groups are not disadvantaged, but to question whether they perceived such

12

Introduction

disadvantage from communal or racial perspectives rather than in socioeconomic or class terms before the idea of separate and distinct group identity was given so much state encouragement. The ultimate reinforcement of boundaries between nations and groups, however, is violence, and a ‘history of repeated communal rioting is as effective as civil and international wars in creating clearly bounded and politically salient ethnic or national groups’, with each outbreak making it harder to rebuild cross-national and cross-communal social networks or to blur the boundaries which have been reinforced by the harshest form of policing. Persisting over time, national communities become more real as cultural entities, and excluded or subordinated minorities can become more culturally distinct, both through social closure against them by the majority as well as by their own counter strategies of resistance – such as greater political organisation and self-assertion of cultural distinctiveness and identity. The question for us here is how the boundaries of the nation were defined and policed, in practical terms (citizenship rights, the issuing of passports, and the delineation of physical borders) and imaginative ones (who was conceived as part of the nation and whether membership was based on unequally applied demands to conform through cultural markers or behaviours). The present study highlights how ethnic groupness can nest inside other constructions such as the nation, which was the basis for the Anglo-Indian leader Frank Anthony’s political project of ‘communal nationalism’ – the preservation of a distinctive culture and identity, nested within a Nehruvian secular construction of the new Indian state. Additionally, it will be seen that the analysis of AngloIndian history benefits significantly from the Wimmerian framework for understanding processes of social closure, boundary expansion and contraction, boundary blurring, and individual or collective attempts at repositioning (or ‘racial passing’) across boundaries.

Between coloniser and colonised The coloniser and the colonised, the ruler and the ruled, these are highly essentialised oppositional categories, crucial to the othering, ordering, and self-perceptions of imperialists and nationalists. Such binaries, mirroring white and non-white, European and non-European, Occidental and Oriental, have certainly held great explanatory power and utility as ways of conceptualising difference and global imperialism. The process of theorising entails positing ideal types and analytical categories that do not neatly encapsulate the complexity of the external world, present and past, insofar as it can be known; all description is generalising, homogenising, simplifying, and ultimately reductionist. To deconstruct we must first construct, and then afterwards if we are to make a meaningful contribution to knowledge beyond mere scepticism we must reconstruct. Academic debate, itself reasonably caricatured by the Hegelian dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, seems often to require an oppositional binary of the kind Wimmer characterised

Introduction

13

between Herderian and constructivist paradigms. To an extent the binary is always a false one, as the concept of hybridity itself suggests. Nonetheless, invoking hybridity as a positive in and of itself, or suggesting it is necessarily and intrinsically a destabilising, subversive, and transgressive mode of resistance, is equally problematic. It is to align hybridity, conceptually or practically, with one side of another binary, with opposition and resistance to imperialism. However, even subject to foreign domination and egregious subordinations and abuses, syntheses emerge which are not simply aligned with either the coloniser or the colonised. Edward Said recounted an encounter he had in the 1980s which illustrated some of the nuances of ‘the post-imperial situation’.43 Said met an Arab Protestant clergyman on a mission to the United States, ‘a member … of the small but significant minority’ into which Said himself had been born.44 From the 1860s missionaries sent and supported by ‘European and American synods and churches’ to the Ottoman Empire successfully converted a portion of adherents from the Greek Orthodox Church (finding almost no success amongst Jews and Muslims) and ‘In time of course these congregations – Presbyterian, Evangelical, Episcopalian, Baptist, among others – acquired their own identities and traditions, [and] their own institutions’.45 Around ‘110 years later … the Western principals of the Arab Protestant communities were encouraging their acolytes to return to the Orthodox fold. There was talk of withdrawing financial support, of disbanding the churches and schools’ – the whole thing, it was decided, had been a mistake.46 Said’s new friend was ‘genuinely aggrieved’, the Church authorities he had come to plead with, in their highhanded way, did not understand, as Said paraphrased:47 that while once we were their converts and students, we have in fact been their partners for well over a century. We have trusted them and our own experience. We have developed our own integrity and lived our own Arab Protestant identity within our sphere … How do they expect us to efface our modern history, which is an autonomous one? How can they say that the mistake they made a century ago can be rectified today by a stroke of the pen in New York or London?48 Distinct from the focus of much of the work that he has inspired, here Said found: an experience of imperialism that … [was] essentially one of sympathy and congruence, not of antagonism, resentment, or resistance. The appeal by one of the parties was to the value of mutual experience. True, there had once been a principal and a subordinate, but there had also been dialogue and communication. One can see in the story, I think, the power to give or withhold attention, a power utterly essential to interpretation and to politics. The implicit argument made by the Western missionary

14

Introduction authorities was that the Arabs had gotten something valuable out of what had been given [to] them, but in this relationship of historical dependence and subordination, all the giving went one way, the value was mainly on one side. Mutuality was considered to be basically impossible.49

Empire left behind many such groups, small minorities scattered around the globe, with identities and histories that placed them in great difficulty, and at times in danger, as the processes of decolonisation and new nation-state formation took place. What is often palpable in such cases is a profound sense of loss and dislocation, which has an emotional content, especially at moments of impact. The present history furnishes another embodiment of this crucial and often overlooked facet of the colonial experience and its aftermath. The material fact is that in a subordinate capacity, but placed above and in supervision of large numbers of Indians, Anglo-Indians buttressed the security of the imperial edifice, assisted in some small degree its formative expansion, and made willing sacrifices in its defence. Conceived of as the offspring of Europeans, Anglo-Indians were severely ill-treated in the process by colonial Britons, but perceived as just another Indian community which had come into being through the colonial presence they received preferential treatment, substantial privilege, and those gainfully employed by the colonial state and the railways were afforded a lifestyle which would have been envied by working-class Britons at the metropole and at times wielded authority over immense numbers of subordinates largely inconceivable to metropolitan British managers and civil servants. The contradictions of the Anglo-Indian experience thus take on hugely different symbolism depending upon your vantage point. We seek to avoid making any ethical or value judgements about their position, but it is argued that the offspring of a Briton and an Indian, and a largely endogamous mixed population arising from such unions, are neither badly treated Britons nor privileged Indians, excepting and crucially insofar as they are constructed to be either British/European, or mixed, or Indian. It is how and why they were ascribed different statuses on this spectrum, and why they aligned themselves with parts of their ancestry in their reformulations of identity at different political moments, that is of interest to us here. We should eschew assumptions about what Anglo-Indians ought to have been, whilst allowing that colonial Britons and Indians held consequential views under this heading. Rather than assuming that Anglo-Indians’ experiences would be most proximate to other South Asian groups, future work should additionally place them in the context of other mixed race peoples in Asia who arose out of European and Western colonisation. Additionally, it is worth considering their analytical proximity to West Indians, whose culture was rooted in the possession of the English language as a mother tongue (however they might modify it) and who had grown up with similar ideas of monarchism and feelings of inclusion to some degree within Britishness (however problematic this might be) and had indeed undertaken strikingly similar education

Introduction

15

Fig. 0.2 Edwardian-era Anglo-Indians – three generations of Dorseys circa 1914, sat in their garden in Poonamallee Source: photo courtesy of Shirley Gifford-Pritchard, author of An Anglo-Indian Childhood (Bloomington, IN, 2005), and daughter of Lilian Dorsey (shown on the lower right-hand side, seated on the lap of her grandmother, Rosamund Adelaide Dorsey – née Holt).

16

Introduction

(including sitting for the same ‘Cambridge Senior’ examinations).50 The potential of black colonial subjects, especially of the middle classes, to develop strong bonds of identification, belonging and affection towards Britain and the imperial connection (without the added impetus afforded by claims to blood and kinship possessed by Anglo-Indians), and the very painful experience of finding their perceptions and identity to be unreciprocated upon migration to the imperial metropole in the postwar decades, bears close comparison to the Anglo-Indian experience of migration to Britain. It might be supposed that Anglo-Indians would have better understood the attitudes of metropolitan Britons from their experiences with colonial British racism and exclusion, but in fact we find that when imagining Britain as home,51 they often distinguished between colonial Britons’ unjust behaviour and what they thought things would be like in Britain, and were shocked to find that Britons had no idea of their existence, of the name for their group, and instead regarded them simply as Indians and (depending on their complexion) treated them as people of colour. In seeking to migrate to Britain Anglo-Indians also faced some of the same challenges as other diasporic South Asians, such as the East African South Asians forced to leave the land of their birth by the rise of anticolonial African ethnonationalism. The threat of violence, the threat of statelessness, the impetus for them to leave, and their own forms of South Asian identity were distinct. However, they shared in common with Anglo-Indians a complex set of identifications and emotional attachment with actual and imagined homelands, a lifestyle that was privileged relative to the local population, and a resistance from the imperial metropole to their migration there. Diasporic experiences of melancholic nostalgia for a time and place are by no means unique, but the Portuguese concept of saudade or the German sehnsucht evokes the kind of longing, explored in the film Mississippi Masala (1991), for something that cannot be recovered, even by a return. Confidential British Cabinet papers agonised over ‘large communities of “non-belonging” United Kingdom citizens with no other citizenship, or with dual citizenship’ comprised of diasporic South Asians in East Africa, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and Cyprus, who were at risk in postcolonial states, and posed the ‘risk’ of opting to migrate to Britain.52 The ‘real problem’, said an internal report, was ‘United Kingdom Citizens of non-British origin’ living in Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Tanzania, and Malawi were estimated to have collectively numbered around 182,000 people.53 We could compare this migration ‘threat’ as it was perceived from the imperial metropole, with the 140,422 Anglo-Indians returned in the last pre-independence Census of India.54 However, those Census figures are themselves highly problematic due to socioracial passing between different categories. It will be argued that the supposedly unmixed group constructed as ‘Domiciled Europeans’, often conjoined with Anglo-Indians as ‘the domiciled community’, contained a substantial proportion of fairer skinned members of more obviously mixed families as well as multigenerational families of white appearance who had

Introduction

17

some concealed or forgotten Indian ancestry. Before 1911 the Census had offered the choice between a clear admission of mixed descent in the form of the ‘Eurasian’ category (a term that became increasingly pejorative in the late 19th century) and the claim to inclusion in the European category. Faced with such a binary choice many of the mixed sought socioracial elevation by selfidentifying as European and returning themselves as such. Mizutani estimated the number of Eurasians in 1911 as 160,000 and the number of Domiciled Europeans as 47,000.55 The Censors of 1911 had only been able to return ‘100,451’ under the replacement category of Anglo-Indian which blurred the boundary between the mixed and the unmixed, but still could not fully overcome ‘the tendency of persons of mixed race to return themselves as pure Europeans’.56 Mizutani’s estimates are entirely plausible for 1911, and in light of the officially observed ‘remarkable fecundity’ of those returned as AngloIndians in the imperfect Census figures,57 it is likely that the 1941 Census also underestimated their numerical strength. Anglo-Indian leaders like Frank Anthony, attempting to enumerate their constituency, had compelling political reasons to make this claim, so the oftcited figure of 200,000 people of mixed race, concealing themselves under different categories, may also be too high, unless it is understood as a boundary-expansion strategy to entirely absorb the ‘Domiciled European’ category. We are clearly dealing with a micro-community in the context of the demography of South Asia. However, as the British prime minister David Lloyd George told the House of Commons in 1922, there were a ‘total of 2,500’ Britons governing India, including ‘1,200 British civil servants’ and ‘700 British police officers’.58 The number of British soldiers in India in 1901 was 60,965.59 In that context, and to the extent that Domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians served as a buttressing adjunct to the imperial state, in strategically sensitive services such as the railways, telegraphs, and customs, and in auxiliary military forces, they can be perceived as having a significance that belies their small number. The British reluctance to accept the prospect of East African diasporic South Asians arriving at the imperial metropole was mirrored by a distaste for the idea of any mass relocation of Anglo-Indians. The total numbers were broadly comparable, and as events transpired in India there was to be far less impetus for Anglo-Indians to emigrate before or after decolonisation. Nonetheless, in spite of the scepticism of his interviewer, Anthony asserted in 1964 that ‘between 100,000 and 150,000’ had left India since independence.60 Such numbers were likely an overstatement. Nonetheless, Blunt estimated that ‘onethird of Anglo-Indians had emigrated by the 1970s, mainly to Britain, Canada and Australia. Many Anglo-Indians imagined themselves to be travelling home, either to Britain or to white dominions of the former British Empire.’61 This was in spite of a longstanding British project to persuade Anglo-Indians that their only future could be in India. Though many specific imperial policies of co-option might be argued to have conveyed more mixed messages, the process of constitutional reform itself and official advice to the

18

Introduction

Anglo-Indian political leadership throughout the late colonial period consistently reinforced the goal of making Anglo-Indians into Indian nationals and citizens. Throughout this period, however, Anglo-Indians continued to conceptualise alternatives involving migration within the Commonwealth or the creation of a homeland for them to colonise, within South Asia or further afield. Perhaps even more striking is that Frank Anthony, working with the Indian Congress leadership, created about the most preferable framework for Anglo-Indians to remain in India that could have been conceived, and yet even this was not sufficient to prevent a significant exodus. After independence Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans were pressured by both the British and Indian governments to embrace Indian citizenship. Nonetheless, many retained or successfully registered themselves as British subjects or ‘citizens of the UK and colonies’, and some believed that the British government had a greater moral obligation to accept mixed race Anglophone Christians who identified themselves as having British or European ancestry than other Commonwealth migrants who were less proximate in their cultural and kinship claims to Britain. As immigration and racial issues have often been expressed in terms of assimilability, the reluctance to admit those who felt a cultural affinity to the metropole forcibly illustrated the underlying issue of colour.

Chapters The first chapter deals briefly with the origins of the group up to their official exclusion from East India Company service in 1791. Such economic exclusion, accompanied by social closure and the construction of distinct legal statuses based initially on illegitimacy (later to be replaced by domicile), demarcated those of mixed race as a separate group. As can be seen from the social and legal statuses afforded to mixed race descendants of Europeans in other colonial settings, such a drawing of boundaries was by no means inevitable. The reasons for this change, which created a massive dislocation in the group’s economic position and especially that of its men, are explored. The Company’s own reason, its fears of the growth of a mixed race population allying itself with local peoples against Company rule, should not be entirely discounted. However, control of the patronage which jobs in Company service provided for the sons of friends and relatives at the imperial metropole was likely the more decisive reason. This furthered the divergence of employment and marriage prospects between mixed race men and women, reinforcing the developing colour, class, and race prejudice against those of mixed race. The arrival of increasing numbers of British women is not a sufficient explanation of the social closure and ethnic boundary-making processes that were to gradually, but increasingly exclude and subordinate those of mixed race. The early 19th century remained a fuzzier and more granulated environment in which individuals who were visibly identifiable as mixed were still able to

Introduction

19

succeed and occasionally to prosper. Contrary and overlapping principles of ordering based on colour, class, race, and gender were expressive of a distinctive and evolving socioracial hierarchy, whose legacy persisted to a limited degree in the increasingly bounded world of late 19th-century scientific racism. The early constituency-building and petitioning politics of the mixed race group, concentrated around 1829–30, are particularly crucial to understanding group formation, and the attempts by both those of mixed race and by colonial Britons to draw contrary boundaries defining a mixed race group and its potential politics. Mixed race women remained freer to achieve hypergamous marriages and so retained a better class standing than their brothers. Yet generally speaking those of mixed race were now incentivised towards a large degree of bounded endogamy, which fostered a sense that they were a distinct class or ethnic group. The co-option of a higher class of mixed race men, those deemed to be the legitimate offspring of Company officers, with metropolitan education (like the children of White Mughals), and who were supposedly entitled to the full civic rights of British subjecthood, was one means of attempting to rhetorically subdivide the potential constituents of a mixed race politics. Interestingly, in all three presidencies (Bengal, Madras, and Bombay) there were petitions to the Company state, which projected a commonality of belonging and interest between those of mixed race across India. The sense that a common all-India group existed was common to all three attempts at political mobilisation, even though the most appropriate designation for the group was internally and externally contested. John Rickett’s petition from the group in Bengal to the British Parliament at the metropole in 1829 deployed the expansive category of East Indians, in a claim to represent the maximum enumerated constituency. Conversely, the group in Madras campaigned to replace the pejorative ‘Half Caste’ with ‘Eurasian’; whilst the governor in council instead ascribed the designation ‘Indo-Briton’, which Company servants believed would help Indo-Dutchmen, Indo-Germans, and others to identify with Britain. So at this early stage the designations which those of mixed race self-asserted were those with greater capacity for inclusion and boundary expansion, whilst the ascribed term had a more circumscribed meaning and a purpose to reorientate the mixed race towards loyalty to Britain. The second chapter begins by interrogating the causes of the Company ban on mixed race employment, before addressing how it induced them to move from careers in military service to being employed as low-ranking clerks. Also discussed are the schemes of Sir John Malcolm, who, as governor of Bombay, proposed the Indianisation of the lower rungs of Company administration by employing the mixed alongside Indian Brahmins from a young age at a cost saving to the Company and to combat the extensive system of patronage and excessive wages for imported British administrators. The opposition of vested interests in London and in India appears to have thwarted his proposals. Yet as both an Orientalist and a believer in the Western modernising projects of

20

Introduction

colonialism, Malcolm came to see the mixed as agents of spreading science and technology, able – with their command of English – to acquire and transmit the latest Western forms of knowledge to ‘Brahmins of learning & respectability’ who would combine attainments in Sanskrit with the new science.62 Responding to the petition of a group of the mixed in Bombay, Malcolm sought to alleviate their economic difficulties by endowing an agricultural training colony at a Company-owned palace at Phoolshair, envisaging a library, lithographic press, and surrounding fruit gardens as a base for the young to be trained and educated as scientific agriculturalists and horticulturalists. Malcolm also noted that the mixed were employed as supervisors of Indians on the Trigonometric Survey of India (as they were later to be in the construction and expansion of the railway and telegraph networks). However, oral testimony in 1829 and subsequent empirical data suggest that the majority were employed as junior clerks. Additionally, many of the stereotypes which would later be applied to so-called ‘Bengali baboos’ were initially applied to Eurasian clerks. By the late 19th century Eurasian had come to replace Indo-Briton and East Indian as the key ascriptive term for the group, and as this period also witnessed the rise of scientific racism, it became inflected with an ill-concealed racial scorn. Literary depictions, especially in the stories of Rudyard Kipling, are used to reveal the complexity and distinctive racialisations applied to those of mixed race, within an emerging socioracial hierarchy of colonial rule. After the end of Company rule, Eurasians were increasingly perceived through the lens of their poverty, unemployment, indebtedness, and supposed improvidence. In parallel with the othering and treatment of the poor back in Britain, they were now perceived as constituting ‘the Eurasian problem’. Economic difficulties which were situational were ascribed to supposed character defects and moral flaws intrinsic to the group itself. Their poverty and visibility as people of European descent threatened to undermine the position of colonial British rulers. Malthusian solutions tasked with preventing population growth within the group centred on the discouragement of early marriages. Eurasians became the principal concern of charitable, educational, and religious authorities who ran orphanages for real and fictive orphans from the mixed race group, believing that if they could be removed from the pernicious home influences of their wayward parents, they could be morally refashioned into frugal and chaste workers in humble stations, cured of their desire for Indian servants and aversion to manual labour. A series of reports on Eurasian poverty culminated in the suggestion to the colonial state that the group should be employed in military occupations, harnessing their loyalty to the British to help secure imperial rule at a cost saving over imported British soldiers. Towards the end of the 19th century the group were being dramatically displaced from their former positions as clerks by Indian competitors, and by the turn of the century proposals for their return to military service had been embraced by the viceroy, Lord Curzon. Concealed objections on grounds of race from the military authorities back in London repeatedly

Introduction

21

vetoed such schemes. However, by the early 20th century the group was increasingly being co-opted, at even less expense, in support of imperial security through their employment in the strategically sensitive railways, customs, and telegraph services, and their virtually compulsory service in parttime auxiliary forces attached to this vital transport and communication infrastructure. The third chapter takes a more thematic approach to defining the boundaries, nature, and culture of the group during the early 20th century. After lobbying the imperial state for decades for a further redesignation from the now pejorative ‘Eurasian’ category, they were finally redesignated as AngloIndians in the 1911 Census of India. Anglo-Indian had been chosen by them as a term which, having previously applied to colonial Britons of long residence in India, possessed great cultural and social capital, signified association with the group to which they had aspired to belong, and facilitated strategies of boundary blurring between them and superordinate colonial Britons. Such a collective strategy had previously been resisted by Curzon, who had echoed earlier attempts to contest a broader and more expansive construction of the group’s identity, by seeking to rhetorically subdivide the component elements of the group and reemphasise the boundaries between those of mixed race and colonial Britons. Curzon questioned whether LusoIndians or Indo-Portuguese Goans could be embraced by a term that signified Britishness. As it happens the lower boundaries of the mixed race group policed entry by those groups to a significant degree and even more fervently sought to exclude Indian Christians who attempted to racially pass into the Anglo-Indian category. By this point the orientation of the group towards Britain was very real, based upon its history, its incentives, and its culture. Despite the ongoing contestation of its boundaries and designation, and despite individual attempts at racial passing and collective strategies of boundary blurring, an ethnic group had now come into being of Anglophone Christians (albeit with a Catholic majority) with a common social existence and a shared culture which was more hybridised than they themselves realised. Nonetheless, as a result of their upbringing and education AngloIndians were more culturally proximate to the West than to the land of their birth. They identified with markers of European culture, frequently constructed Britain as home, and based their claims on grounds of shared history, blood, and kinship. Parallels are drawn with the identities of middle-class black West Indians, who were also Anglophone, underwent an education steeped in British literature and history, and sat for the same external Cambridge examinations as Anglo-Indians. Middle-class black West Indians similarly identified themselves as overseas imperial Britons, without the added claims which AngloIndians could make to British (or European) descent and kinship. Hawes previously argued that Anglo-Indians were, at best, a reluctant community, because they would have preferred inclusion within the fold of colonial British society. The existence of another category of so-called Domiciled Europeans

22

Introduction

functionally served as a buffer group, between those clearly of mixed race and colonial Britons. As Buettner and Mizutani in particular have emphasised, Europeans domiciled in India were excluded from whiteness by colonial Britons because they were suspected of concealed Indian ancestry and displayed markers of cultural proximity to those more clearly identifiable as of mixed race, such as the so-called ‘chi chi’ Anglo-Indian accent. To self-identify as Domiciled European was to make a contested claim to exclusively European descent, and there is ample evidence that this intermediate category was often the first stage in attempts by those of mixed race to racially pass into whiteness. Anglo-Indians would attack Domiciled Europeans as ‘fair’ or ‘albino Anglo-Indians’, and sometimes fairer skinned family members were known to have successfully passed into the Domiciled European or even colonial British groups. The prevalence and success of such attempts to reposition themselves across boundaries increased with the manpower needs of wartime. Yet, as in other settings of racial passing, despite attempting to police the exit of members of the group, there was a marked reluctance to ‘out’ those who had already succeeded and thereby imperil their new social position and higher employment prospects. The exploration of the nature of the Domiciled European category does not refute that there were any such people who in fact possessed no Indian ancestry, but it does highlight its significance as a half-way house in attempts at socioracial ascent, and points us to the highly interconnected social, economic, and political worlds of the two groups who were often conjoined, internally and externally, as ‘the domiciled community’. Equally noteworthy is that many of those who self-identified as Anglo-Indian also denied having Indian ancestry, and the definition of the Anglo-Indian category deployed in the 1935 Government of India Act and the Indian Constitution specified European ancestry in the male line without reference to the presence or absence of Indian ancestry. Thus its definition, carefully crafted so as not to offend the sensibilities of members of the group, facilitated boundary blurring, and repeated attempts to collapse the Domiciled European category into the Anglo-Indian category. Next we explore how domiciled women with fairer skin, as in earlier periods, still possessed a better chance to succeed in ascending the socioracial hierarchy through hypergamous marriage strategies. However, such attempts were fraught with risks, such as abandonment by British soldiers who had married Anglo-Indian women against army regulations. By contrast, other Anglo-Indian women were pioneers in medicine and politics. As Buettner observes, Anglo-Indian women were more likely than colonial British women to pursue careers, and did so in a variety of fields such as dance, secretarial work, and working as assistants in department stores. Even more availed themselves of wartime opportunities to serve in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps (India) or the Indian Military Nursing Service. Chapter 4 moves onto the high politics of the major Anglo-Indian communal organisations of the early 20th century and the power struggles over their leadership and reorganisation. The early Anglo-Indian leader W. C.

Introduction

23

Madge was nominated to the Imperial Legislative Council in 1910, but would be replaced by Jinnah after attempting to put forward a bill against the wishes of colonial civil servants. Nominations were at viceregal discretion and therefore rewarded minority candidates willing to support the colonial state. Nonetheless, within this limited political arena Anglo-Indian leaders continued to press for opportunities for the group in military service. At the start of World War I Anglo-Indian proposals for a communal regiment were at first rejected, causing many individuals to enter various British, Indian, and other imperial forces through racial passing (sometimes after travelling to the metropole). However, as the manpower needs of a global conflict became evident an Anglo-Indian Force was finally sanctioned and sent into combat in Mesopotamia. Demobilisation after the war exacerbated domiciled unemployment, as those seeking to return to railway or other state service were not always readmitted. The Government of India Act of 1919 introduced provincial legislatures with limited spheres in which Indian members could oppose government policy and press for Indianisation of state services. Indian nationalists called for the replacement of Anglo-Indians with Indian Indians in spheres like the railways, despite British insistence that Anglo-Indians were Indians by statute. Such combined threats to Anglo-Indian employment galvanised Anglo-Indian political organisation. During World War I the first early federation of various Anglo-Indian bodies across India was created to organise wartime recruitment. After the war the temporary joint governing structure broke down amidst power struggles between various individual leaders, power centres, and rival organisations. The leader of the most significant and geographically representative group, the Anglo-Indian Empire League, John Abbott, faced opposition from a rival body headquartered in Calcutta, and was eventually supplanted in a bitter power struggle by one of his own vice presidents, Henry Gidney, based in Bombay. The power struggles and processes of amalgamating AngloIndian bodies into a single Association which could claim representation across much of India and Burma are explored as a prism for understanding the emerging politics of the group. Divisions over the boundaries, identity, and orientation of the group, and its relations to other Indian communities, featured as key points of contention, alongside highly personal rivalries. Multiple petitions to the colonial state and the imperial metropole under Gidney’s leadership presenting the economic, legal, and identity problems of the group were met with the clear message from the British that AngloIndians should focus their efforts, not on achieving an intermediate legal status between Britons and Indians, nor on possibilities for emigration to Britain or the so-called ‘White Dominions’, but rather on achieving autonomy and self-sufficiency as a rights-claiming Indian minority community. On this basis Anglo-Indian politics continued to evolve through a process of petitioning and lobbying the colonial state and imperial metropole for protections for Anglo-Indian conditions of employment by the railways and other state services. To secure such ‘safeguards’ and other minority rights

24

Introduction

Gidney lobbied hard both in India and in Britain to achieve Anglo-Indian political representation at every stage of constitutional change. As the Raj’s socioracial employment hierarchy placed Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans in a position of privilege (in tiers of employment, salaries, promotion prospects, and perquisites) relative to other Indian communities, but discriminated against them relative to the terms enjoyed by imported British staff, the continuation of the status quo met with serious opposition from other Indian groups. To evade charges of racial discrimination the colonial state was forced to adapt, and yet often did so through obfuscation or rendering such persisting hierarchies more opaque. For both colonial authorities and Anglo-Indians it made sense to present distinctions that had been openly racial at the beginning of the 20th century as questions of communal difference. The emergence of colonial reservations policies, though primarily aimed at ‘positive discrimination’ (or ‘affirmative action’) in favour of Indian Muslims, provided an arena in which Anglo-Indian privileges could be maintained as the rights of an Indian minority. This would even extend to the award of a communal (or racial) minimum wage for the group, above those of other Indians, which was justified as compensation for their unique liability to serve in the Auxiliary Force. Yet despite his astounding success in lobbying British parliamentarians directly to secure a lastminute House of Lords amendment to the 1935 Government of India Act and to ensure that government conceded that it would justiciable, Gidney and his Association had to be both vigilant and proactive in India, acting like a trade union, in order to secure the implementation of Anglo-Indian employment reservations in practice. At the same time the constitutional separation of Burma from India in 1935 set his ethnic Anglo-Indian rival Charles Campagnac off on a parallel project to secure similar rights for the closely interrelated mixed race group in Burma, who were redesignated legally and politically from Anglo-Indian to Anglo-Burman. Whilst Gidney usually secured their acquiescence to his claims to be the principal representative of Anglo-Indians in India, Gidney also faced challenges from the London AngloIndian Association and from a rival ‘Southern Association’ headquartered in Madras. Chapter 5 interweaves various thematic threads of Anglo-Indian history in its exploration of a series of comparable projects to create Anglo-India or a broader Eurasia in a physical space or homeland. Attempts to settle the land, principally as agriculturalists, yet with a view to a broader self-sufficiency through the development of ancillary industries, first within mainland India, then in the Indian Ocean or further afield, continued to be conceptualised and were sometimes attempted over a vast chronological timeframe, covering – at least – the period of the 1820s to the 1950s. These schemes can be perceived as ‘escapist’ or utopian, seeming to run counter to the main efforts of the group in the arena of constitutional politics, and yet were closely intertwined with the questions of identity and orientation faced by the group as a whole and with the ultimately more consequential urge of many Anglo-Indians to

Introduction

25

emigrate, collectively or as families and individuals. The Phoolshair Palace project supported by Malcolm, and covered in Chapter 2, was the beginning of a series of attempts to turn the group into agriculturalists, and bring together a scattered community mainly living in urban areas and small railway colonies, in order to provide a sense of rootedness in the soil of their birth. In the late 19th century Anglo-Indian leaders sought to persuade the British to turn India into a colony of settlement, in which imported whites would join the mixed race group to create prosperous strategic islands amidst a potentially hostile population of Indians, newly to be feared after the Great Rebellion of 1857. Yet the post-Company imperial state did not significantly deviate from the Company policy of discouraging settlement, proselytisation, or the growth of European planter classes. Whitefield in the princely state of Mysore was begun in 1879, still assuming that India would be ‘Europeanised’ with ‘Eurasians and Anglo-Indians’ as its future ‘natural leaders’. Its namesake, J. White, even spoke of attracting ‘a few Swiss and Flemish peasants’ to the settlement to bring the ethos, character, and methods of European agriculture to India. Yet in many ways the planning for Whitefield anticipated later attempts to found a colony that would be, not so much the vanguard of an advancing European civilisation in India, but the retreat of a communal minority into a confined space of autonomy and self-sufficiency, i.e. the basis for a future homeland for the mixed race group. In the early 20th century Abbott attempted to found a colony in Uttaranchal in the Himalayas, known as ‘Abbott Mount’, which had it been successful would have resembled the so-called hill stations where colonial Britons and the imperial administration annually relocated to escape the heat of the plains in the Indian summer. Amidst several other smaller schemes, including an attempt to settle ex-servicemen in the Andaman Islands, the largest such project, which was substantially enacted and attracted support and investment from Anglo-Indians across India and Burma, was McCluskiegunge in modern Jharkhand. Previously the subject of scholarly attention from Lahiri-Dutt and Blunt, it is revisited here whilst being situated in the context of other colonisation efforts and various Indian and global models that were cited by its founders, particularly the Jewish settlement in Mandatory Palestine. The chapter also revisits the question of why such attempts proved ultimately unsuccessful, alongside the broader question of why these schemes captured the imagination of the mixed race group for such a long period of time. Comparisons are also made with the efforts of British religious philanthropists to train real and fictive orphan children of the mixed race group for agricultural and domestic service with a view to sponsoring their emigration to the largely agricultural and white colonial societies of Australia and New Zealand. John Graham’s Kalimpong Homes have previously been explored by Buettner, Blunt, Mizutani, and in the unpublished PhD thesis of Jane McCabe. Such child emigration was attacked by the Anglo-Indian author Millicent Wilson, whose advocacy and preference for colonisation within

26

Introduction

India were rooted in her view of Anglo-Indians as a force for the Christianisation of India and as an emerging race, which though of mixed origins was ‘progressively’ purifying itself to become a new white race, like Americans and Australians, whom, she noted, were also possessors of non-white ancestry. Wilson’s conception of race centred on the dominance of white genes and processes of partner selection which would ultimately make Anglo-Indians a new white race. Her ideas were thus destabilising to conceptions of white racial purity, whilst embracing eugenics and upholding the hierarchies asserted by advocates of racial purity. Wilson’s views are contrasted with those of the interdisciplinary polymath Cedric Dover, who wrote several books in the 1930s attacking contemporaneous Nazi racial theories of Aryanism and racial purity. Though an Anglo-Indian, Dover advocated for a return to the designation Eurasian as the basis for creating a broader collectivity of mixed race peoples across Asia, inspiring conceptualisations of pan-Eurasianist overseas colonies as late as 1956. Owing to his subsequent career in the United States as a proponent of the even broader collectivities of ‘people of colour’, cosmopolitanism, and international socialism, Dover has attracted a great deal of attention by scholars in North America, most notably Nico Slate. Yet here we see the South Asian and Anglo-Indian-cum-Eurasian roots of Dover’s ideas and politics, which serve to remind us more forcefully that Dover was not only an opponent of theories of racial purity, but also a proponent of beliefs in the genetic superiority of mixed race peoples over so-called ‘pure races’ (i.e. of heterozygosity over homozygosity in terms of modern biology). Studies of Dover’s later career as a ‘coloured cosmopolitan’ may too easily ignore the significance of his belief in the ultimate extinction of racial categories through a process of universal hybridisation of the human species, which also constituted the fulfilment of a kind of mixed race chauvinism, potentially empowering to those of mixed race and to people of colour in his own day, yet not uncontroversial in the ongoing politics of race. The divergent, and occasionally internally contradictory, concepts of Wilson and Dover fed into various intellectual constructions of the nature, meaning, and purposes of mixed race colonisation schemes. Despite its rhetoric of self-sufficiency, these projects almost always anticipated substantial colonial state backing, and even, in the case of the plan to found ‘Eurasia’ in the formerly German colonial territory of New Guinea, sponsorship by the League of Nations and multiple interested national states. Seen in the context of the resources the colonial state had put into the Punjab Canal Colonies, and into promoting concepts of scientific agriculture and unused ‘cultivatable land’, as well as the significant number of population transfers and redrawings of national boundaries which took place for much of the 20th century, they were not as far-fetched as they now appear. Yet the belief of Anglo-Indians in the paternalistic obligations of Britain to their group were never realised, and largely unaided colonies like Whitefield and McCluskiegunge mainly became retirement settlements, rather than dynamic

Introduction

27

foundations for a future mixed race territorial unit that might aspire to autonomy within an Indian federation, the remaining British Empire, or to ultimate independence as a new nation state. Chapter 6 charts the transition from the politics of Gidney to that of his successor Frank Anthony, who exceeded even his own expectations in securing the retention of permanent political representation and transitional employment reservations for Anglo-Indians. The chapter compliments the highly innovative work of Rochana Bajpai on the contraction of minority group-differentiated rights between the late colonial era and Indian constitution making. Bajpai’s theoretical approach eschews the particular, in terms of key individuals, texts, and the impact of specific events, in favour of a broader analysis of political rhetoric, argumentation, and discourse. Her approach yields distinctive and fruitful insights, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive when set against the detailed historical approach to one minority group taken here. However, as might be expected, the present study does tend to reassert the importance of events and individuals, and returns to the more traditional emphasis on the significance of Partition to creating the climate for demands to curtail minority group rights. Bajpai’s main arguments, however, only reinforce the need for us to explain why Anglo-Indians were largely exempted from the wider constriction of minority group rights. As both a numerically small group and one with a better than average standard of living, it becomes all the more necessary to account for the persistence of ‘positive discrimination’ for a relatively privileged group. The chapter does this by combining analysis of historical specificities with structural arguments concerning the incentives and boundary-making (and preserving) imperatives of those at the centre of constructing the new nation. Thus it is argued that, whether consciously or unconsciously, much of the politics of group-differentiated rights in the late colonial period had revolved around two principal issues, the division of political power and state employment between Hindus and Muslims (a question which lost significance and salience at the point of Partition), and the desire of Gandhi, ‘Caste Hindus’, and communal Hindu politicians, to retain Dalits as putative members of the Hindu fold. An understanding of the Poona Pact of 1932, and of the insistence of Congress leaders upon reserved seats within joint electorates (rather than separate electorates) for Dalits, provides a crucial context for understanding the minority provisions ultimately and uniquely extended to Dalits, Adivasis, and Anglo-Indians. The forms of representation and reservation (i.e. ‘positive discrimination’ or ‘affirmative action’) afforded to Dalits, were largely structured so as to: a) incentivise their ongoing inclusion within the Hindu fold; b) favour co-option of their leaders over the development of an independent politics which might foster separatism; and c) to disincentivise their conversion to other religions, but more especially other religions of non-Indian origin. Had the broader category of Christians been awarded state recognition and group rights, Dalits could convert to Christianity with some chance of retaining access to employment reservations. However, the Anglo-Indian

28

Introduction

category was one into which Dalits could not directly enter through conversion. Whilst Indian Christians might gradually seek, through the adoption of cultural markers and the English language, to ‘pass’ into the Anglo-Indian group, this would require two unlikely repositionings from those from Dalit backgrounds. It is no accident that the racial nature of the group, which had been downplayed in the Gidney era in favour of making claims as a communal minority, was reasserted in the 1940s as part of the case that AngloIndians were exceptional and unique. Seen in this light, the retention by Anglo-Indians of minority group rights amidst their wider post-partition contraction becomes more explicable. With such structural considerations in mind, the specific reasons why Anglo-Indians were able to win support from Congress leaders and sufficient acquiescence from other Indian constitution makers are addressed. These appear, on a detailed examination of the evidence and rhetoric of Anthony and his respondents in the Constituent Assembly debates and the independent Sapru Conciliation Committee of 1944–5, to have been a combination of sympathy and self-interest. Anthony’s political project of reorienting his group internally and externally towards an embrace of India within his communal nationalist formula ‘Indian by nationality, Anglo-Indian by community’ was an essential basis for the accommodation he was able to reach with the Congress leaders and with broader Indian opinion. However, his prior work in the (Central) Legislative Assembly had won him widespread respect as a parliamentarian and orator, and his charisma helped him to foster personal ties with the Congress leadership. It is argued that Congress leaders may have been persuaded by the symbolism of co-opting what Anthony promised would be a model minority in the Nehruvian project of civic nationalism and democracy. The transitional nature of the Anglo-Indian case helped to reconcile it with the ideological desire to base the constitution solely or primarily on more universal rights of citizenship. Equally, the small size of the Anglo-Indian group now proved an advantage as the costs of extending them minority group rights were proportionately less than for larger minorities. Epilogue The Epilogue begins by reexamining the nature of Britain’s retreat from empire in South Asia and Burma, before turning to the divergent postcolonial experiences of mixed race peoples in India, Burma, and Pakistan. In 1946, in the immediate aftermath of the war, a Labour government headed by Clement Attlee was elected which was committed to extracting Britain from India in a timely fashion so that it could reallocate British national and security assets elsewhere. The Cabinet Mission sent to India that year to broker a settlement between the major factions, like the wartime Cripps Mission, gave little thought to the plight of Anglo-Indians. Yet a breakdown plan devised with the aid of military authorities and endorsed by former commander-inchief of India, and now viceroy, Archibald Wavell, paints an evocative picture,

Introduction

29

not only of broader British aims, but also of their attitude to Anglo-Indians in a crisis. The plan envisaged that if the British were to lose effective control of the situation, and could no longer rely on the Indian Army, British units would begin a phased evacuation of the Hindu-majority provinces as ‘an operation of war’. Airports and seaports would be secured. Britons, Europeans, Anglo-Indians, ‘& some Indians’ would be collected in ‘keeps’ at various centres, and evacuated by land or air to Pakistan, or to seaports to be embarked for the UK. The Muslims, fearful of attack, it was expected, would support the ongoing British presence in Pakistan. Though purely hypothetical, the order of priority for evacuation has echoes of the actual and more chaotic wartime evacuation of Burma, when despite a great many AngloIndians and Anglo-Burmans being left behind (to suffer disproportionate victimisation by the Japanese), other Indian communities complained of the racially discriminatory preferential treatment shown to them. Yet what both examples suggest is that, in line with longstanding defence policy within India, in times of crisis, when there was a risk to European lives and property, AngloIndians were considered either as extensions of Britons’ own group or at least as representatives of ‘Europeanness’ whom they could not be seen to abandon to the risks of being subject to anti-European violence. Attlee’s priorities clearly remained the desire to avoid the costs of a prolonged ongoing military occupation of India and accompanying ‘repression’ on the one hand, and being seen to ‘scuttle’ and withdraw under the threat of anarchy and violence on the other. If the British could succeed in handing over the reins of power to ‘responsible’ Indian leaders in a suitably ceremonious and seemingly peaceable manner, obscuring their responsibility for any post-Partition communal violence that would follow, they would prefer to hand over mixed race groups as a charge upon the new national governments. Yet, despite the façade of an orderly transfer, the palpable uncertainty surrounding the final phase of decolonisation is a necessary context for understanding the fears, both cultural and existential, of minorities such as the Anglo-Indians. The fate which was to befall the mixed race group in Burma also provides a striking contrast to the generous constitutional settlement achieved for their ‘cousins’ in India, giving instantiation to the kind of fears felt by Anglo-Indians on both sides of India’s Partition borders. Until 1935 Burma had been treated administratively as if it were a province of British India, and many Anglo-Indians had migrated to Burma especially to take up work on its railways. In Burma they mixed socially with, and intermarried with mixed race people of Burmese and European descent, with the conjoined mixed race group being designated legally and constitutionally as AngloIndians. Thus, Anglo-Indian politics, and the claims to representation of the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association, All India and Burma, extended into Burma. Additionally, the mixed race population in Burma experienced a somewhat analogous precursor to the later Partition of India itself. When it became clear that Burma was to be constitutionally separated, rising Burmese nationalism induced the mixed race group there to redesignate

30

Introduction

themselves from Anglo-Indians to Anglo-Burmans. The creation of the AngloPakistani category for the group opting to remain or undertake employment in Pakistan was a response to similar pressures. Before and after 1935, therefore, the designations Anglo-Indian and AngloBurman each took turn as nested social identities within broader constitutional categories, whose positions were reversed. Though an overlapping and intertwined Anglo-Indian–Anglo-Burman life would continue between 1935 and independence, taking on extra significance during World War II and the retreat from Burma, the claims to effective leadership of the mixed race group in Burma coming from Gidney’s Association in India were gradually eclipsed by those of an ethnic Anglo-Indian (married to an Anglo-Burman) who led the similarly redesignated political body, the Anglo-Burman Union. This divergent history, which merits future study, is briefly explored as a counterpoint to the Anglo-Indian experience in India and Pakistan. Another significant postcolonial overlap were Anglo-Burman requests for British support for colonisation projects in 1949, either in the Burmese Shan States or in the Andaman Islands, as a common enterprise with Anglo-Indians in India. Yet in the Anglo-Burman case, owing to the rise of Burmese ethnonationalism, the lack of any status or protections accorded to the group in Burmese constitution making, ongoing civil conflict along ethnic and religious lines, and the ultimate destruction of Anglophone education, both state-supported and private or philanthropic, the British felt compelled to finally accept some degree of the responsibility they felt they had successfully discharged in India, by donating substantial resources to the group, first in a largely vain attempt to help them embrace the new Burma, and belatedly to support their emigration to Britain, the Dominions, and even, in a few cases, to other British colonial territories in Asia. The attempt to secure various forms of British status to facilitate emigration for those of mixed race achieved varying results in the new postcolonial states of India, Pakistan, and Burma. After addressing the situation for Anglo-Indians (or ‘Anglo-Pakistanis’) in Pakistan, which (with no constitutional recognition) can be considered as intermediate to that between AngloIndians in India and the conjoined mixed race group in Burma, our final episode points both to the successes and ongoing postcolonial challenges of Anthony’s communal nationalist accommodation with the new India, and centres on Bombay High Court and Indian Supreme Court rulings in the 1950s over the constitutional status of Anglo-Indian schools and their right to impart Anglophone education to people of all communities. Appearing as a lawyer in both cases Anthony successfully made the case that as the mother tongue of a constitutionally recognised Indian minority, English had become an Indian language and education in English and the right of the group to administer their own state-aided schools, impart education in their mother tongue, and to admit students from other communities, was constitutionally guaranteed. Though Anglo-Indians’ contributions to the new India were significant in multiple fields of public and professional life, especially including

Introduction

31

nursing, the armed forces, and the travel and tourism industries, their position as educationalists in Anglophone schools was to be one of their most visible roles in the eyes of other Indian communities.

Notes 1 W. Dalrymple, White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India (London, 2002), p. 390. 2 Ibid., p. 343. 3 Ibid., pp. 343–4. 4 Ibid., p. 341. 5 Ibid., p. 382. 6 Original emphasis; cited in ibid., p. 382. 7 Ibid., pp. 144–5. 8 Ibid., p. 145. 9 Usually referring to the state of being racially mixed in a Latin American setting, but used here and henceforth to refer more broadly to ‘mixedness’, there being no such established word in English. 10 Dalrymple, White Mughals, p. 37. 11 F. Henriques, Children of Caliban: Miscegenation (London, 1974). 12 Information Office of the University of Sussex, [Obituary:] ‘Professor Fernando Henriques’, Bulletin (15 June 1976). 13 F. Henriques, Family and Colour in Jamaica (London, 2nd edn, 1968). 14 Henriques, Children of Caliban, p. 176. 15 C. Hawes, Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India, 1773–1833 (Richmond, 1996). 16 G. D’Cruz, ‘Christopher Hawes in Conversation with Glenn D’Cruz’, IJAIS vol. 3, no. 1 (1998), available at http://home.alphalink.com.au/~agilbert/hawesint.html. 17 H. Stark, Hostages to India (Calcutta, 1936). 18 E. Abel, The Anglo-Indian Community: Survival in India (Delhi, 1988). 19 N. Gist and R. Wright, Marginality and Identity: Anglo-Indians as a Racially-Mixed Minority in India (Leiden, 1973). 20 D’Cruz, ‘Christopher Hawes in Conversation’. 21 G. Moore, The Anglo-Indian Vision (Melbourne, 1986). 22 See, e.g., M. Deefholts and S. Deefholts (eds), Women of Anglo-India: Tales and Memoirs (Trenton, NJ, 2010). 23 D. Ghosh, Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 255–6. 24 H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, 2004). 25 V. Anderson, Race and Power in British India: Anglo-Indians, Class and Identity in the Nineteenth Century (London, 2014). 26 S. Mizutani, ‘Hybridity and History: A Critical Reflection on Homi K. Bhabha’s Post-Historical Thoughts’, Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space, vol. 4 (2013), pp. 27–48. 27 N. Pieterse, Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange (New York, 2nd edn, 2009). 28 Ibid., p. 55. 29 Ibid. 30 J. Olumide, Raiding the Gene Pool: The Social Construction of Mixed Race (London, 2002). 31 G. Pandey, A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States (New York, 2013).

32 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

Introduction Bhabha, Location of Culture. See P. French, India: A Portrait (New York, 2011). E. Said, Orientalism (New York, 1979), p. 5. A. Wimmer, Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks (New York, 2013), p. 23. Cited in B. O’Keeffe, New Soviet Gypsies: Nationality, Performance, and Selfhood in the Early Soviet Union (Toronto, 2013), p. 14. Wimmer, Ethnic Boundary Making, p. 22. His emphasis; ibid., p. 26. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., pp. 25–6. Ibid., p. 27. E. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1994), p. 41. Ibid., p. 39. Ibid., pp. 39–40. Ibid., p. 40. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 40–1. A. Rush, Bonds of Empire: West Indians and Britishness from Victoria to Decolonization (Oxford, 2011). See A. Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home (Malden, MA, 2005), p. 15. NAUK, CAB/129/154, ‘Arms Sales to South Africa (Contingency Planning) Citizenship and Immigration Questions’, ‘Annex 4’, p. 4. Ibid. Census of India, 1941, p. 99. S. Mizutani, The Meaning of White: Race, Class, and the ‘Domiciled Community’ in British India 1858–1930 (Oxford, 2011), p. 72. Census of India, 1911, p. 139. Census of India, 1931, p. 430. Hansard HC Deb 2 August 1922, vol 157, col 1511. Census of India, 1901, p. 93. R. Wright and S. Wright, ‘The Anglo-Indian Community in Contemporary India’, eScholarShare@Drake (1971), 3, available at http://escholarshare.drake.edu/bit stream/handle/2092/237/Wright%23237.pdf ?sequence=1. A. Blunt, ‘“Land of Our Mothers”’: Home, Identity, and Nationality for Anglo-Indians in British India, 1919–1947’, History Workshop Journal 54 (2002), p. 69. All quotations in these chapter summaries can be located in their respective chapters, usually at greater length, and with full citation.

1

East Indians

We are sometimes recognized as Europeans, and sometimes as natives, as it serves the purposes of the government … There is no distinction made between East Indians and Europeans, on the part of the natives … the authorities … first originate the distinction, and then employ it as an argument for keeping us where we are … but we think it is not expecting too much if we wish to be placed … upon the footing of our fathers.1 John Ricketts, 1830

Designations We shall begin not at the beginning, but in 1825, when Mary Anne Rafs felt ‘compelled to throw herself and family on the humane considerations of Government’.2 She was, she said, ‘left a Widow with 4 orphan children’, whose ‘Husband faithfully served the Honourable [East India] Company for upwards of 40 years’.3 She prayed that as ‘a Country born woman … her destitute state’ might induce the governor ‘to grant some small donation for the future maintenance of herself and family’.4 The adjutant general of the Army, at Fort St George Madras, wrote to a member of the Military Department, revealing the reason for her plight: ‘The Widow being a half cast woman is precluded from the benefit of Lord Clive’s Fund’, and that his lieutenant general had recommended to the governor in council that, in the circumstances, ‘she may be granted a pension equal to the half of what she would have been entitled to had she been born of European Parents’.5 This suggestion was no doubt perceived to be an act of justice and charity under a system in which widows had been required to demonstrate that both their parents were Europeans. In the same year, mixed race members of a Dinner Club meeting at the Town Hall in Calcutta chose to designate themselves as East Indians, a seemingly unimportant event that nonetheless caused disquiet in British colonial circles. Though a term that might have boded better than Anglo-Indian (or Indo-Briton) for the group’s future, it was not necessarily disconnected with

34

East Indians

boundary blurring (or contestation of the early processes of social closure that created a boundary between European men and their mixed race offspring). A Company servant noted that ‘Europeans who have long resided in India are often called East Indians’.6 So the move to appropriate it to themselves might not have been dissimilar to the late 19th- and early 20th-century campaign to redesignate the group as Anglo-Indians (which had also referred to Britons of long residence in India). Two years later, on 13 March 1827, a General Order was issued by the Company’s court of directors, approving the granting of pensions to country-born widows, with ‘the affidavit hitherto required … that their parents were of unmixed European blood [to] be in future dispensed with’.7 The military auditor general at Fort St George appears to have intended to bring home the full financial implications of the decision, and thereby trigger a policy reversal, when he asked the court of directors for further instructions, emphasising that without the requirement to produce any ‘document regarding the birth or parentage of the Widows’ he would have to approve them for any army widow ‘whether she may be a Native of the East or West Indies, Africa or other foreign country’.8 Pending their response the governor in council instructed him to admit ‘widows of European Commissioned and Warrant Officers and non Commissioned rank and file who may be of mixed European Blood commonly called Half Caste … under the denomination of Country born’, but subject to ‘the form of Certificate which in your opinion it may be proper for the Widows to produce’.9 Affidavits were then devised, the precise wording of which was specified as either ‘I do hereby solemnly declare upon oath that my parents were Europeans’ or ‘that I am of Mixed European Blood commonly called Half Caste or Country Born’.10 The decision to require declarations of this kind sparked a ‘humble Memorial of Eurasians, Inhabitants of Madras … [complaining] that the term Half Caste wherever and however applied, is invidious and acknowledged to be expressive of reproach and degradation: when applied in direct conversation it is deemed highly insulting and intolerable’.11 They asserted that its use in the ‘order has tended to inflict a deep wound on the feelings of a large class of the community residing under your Honour’s paternal government’ leaving them ‘feel[ing] humbled and degraded’.12 They also objected to the ‘phrase “mixed European blood” … [as] a solecism implying, if any thing, a commixture that can only take place in countries exclusively European’ whilst half caste was ‘inappropriate; for “Caste” having reference to religious distinction among the Heathen, cannot in whole or in part belong to your Memorialists, whose faith is the same as that of Europeans’, whilst ‘“Country born” though of common usage’ could not provide ‘a serviceable term for national discrimination’.13 As well as highlighting their status as coreligionists, they invoked a recent decision, which they asserted made them eligible as jurors. They emphasised this mark of their civic status under a ‘British Constitution’ which they esteemed for its ‘Liberty’ and argued that ‘an effective and honest discharge of the duty devolving on British Jurors’ made essential a ‘feeling of equality’ with ‘their fellow subjects born in Great Britain’.14

East Indians

35

From the establishment of the Supreme Court in 1774, jurors were selected from ‘British subjects’, which was variously deployed to include and exclude those of mixed race, officially on grounds of legitimacy (though the reality could privilege other forms of social capital). There were repeated appeals for inclusion in this category by those of mixed race, especially between 1816 and 1822. The response to a petition to the British Parliament in 1829 was to uphold the legal dividing line of legitimacy, though in practice access to British subjecthood was also policed in other ways. The Madras petitioners’ main purpose was to request government ‘to sanction the adoption of a term in … future [state] records … as a distinctive appellation for the class of people they represent[ed] … recommend[ing] that of Eurasian as the one to which they … [had] from choice been accustomed’.15 They concluded by appealing to his ‘Honour’s British feeling’ to free them from the ‘special hardship that a stigma and reproach should attach to a rising people for no other crime than the accidental circumstances of their birth’.16 East India Company (henceforth the Company) servants discussed in detail what to call ‘the Indo-British community’, rejecting the term ‘East Indian’ as not sufficiently distinguishing them ‘from other inhabitants of the East Indies’, and settled on Indo-Briton after dismissing the objection ‘that many Indo Britons are descendants of Dutchmen, Germans’, etc., as it was ‘in the interests of such persons to identify themselves with the English nation, as they are permanently settled in a country under the dominion of England and are in fact Britons in language, [and] manners’.17 There was no need to call themselves ‘Indo-Germans’ or ‘Indo-Dutchmen’ as all ‘minor distinctions should be entirely disregarded and all Indo Britons should consider themselves as a branch of the great venerable British oak’, as indeed the writer would himself do if he ‘were the son of a German or Dutchman and a Native Indian’.18 The affidavits required of widows were accordingly amended to ‘I do hereby solemnly declare upon oath that I am of Indo-British birth.’19 However, after the governor in council ordered that they would ‘in future be designated by that term in all public documents’,20 they again wrote requesting he ‘suspend the publication of the General Order’ as ‘a very large portion of the class of people whom we represent … are inimical to the term “Indo Briton”’, regretting that ‘disunion and difference of opinion … exist[ed] among our Brethren as to the term most proper to designate us’.21 They preferred ‘the term Eurasian, deduced etymologically from the words “Europe and Asia” … [which, they asserted] was so far back as the year 1802/3 received and adopted among themselves as a distinctive, general appellation, the most comprehensive, significant, and appropriate’.22 However, their list of options also included: Asians, Anglo Asians, East Indians, Anglo Indians, Asiaticks, and Asiatick Britons. They professed themselves ‘sorry to learn that one party who are favourable to the term “Indo Briton” have entered on private means to establish that term … [in] a procedure improper and unjust’.23 Internal Company correspondence queried ‘whether Government’ or the ‘Supreme Court had [previously] given them any name’ and cited

36

East Indians

‘Mr. Kyd’s advice’ that Indo Britons was ‘by far the most appropriate’.24 Disclaiming their earlier preference for Eurasian the Madras petitioners resolved to accept ‘any [term] which embraces all classes of our mixed race and [would] thus obviate giving umbrage to any party’.25 They requested: a general meeting … be convened by advertising in some of the Public Prints in order to bring the clashing opinions on this head at Madras to a final settlement and ultimately to enter on a correspondence with those descended like ourselves in Bengal, who also we are informed are split into parties on the same subject.26 In 1830 ‘the association of East Indians at Bombay’ petitioned the governor of their presidency to support an agricultural colonisation scheme (see Chapters 2 and 5). The tenth resolution of the Bombay association’s meeting revealed their intent to also approach ‘the opulent, influential and respectable part of the East Indian Community at Calcutta and Madras; and solicit their aid by contributions and general co-operation for the objects of ’ the fund which they had set up.27 In all three presidencies a politics of petitioning marked a seminal moment in the self-conception of these groups, who interestingly felt enough commonality with their ‘brethren’ in the other presidencies to solicit their participation, and even imagine that they might be willing to donate funds for projects to be carried out across a wide spatial separation. Clearly, however, contestation over self-imposed and state-sanctioned designation was considerable. On being curtly informed that the governor in council had ‘not thought proper to comply with the request submitted by them’ the Madras petitioners expressed themselves content that Indo-Briton would replace the humiliating label of half-caste. In Bengal the issue remained unresolved, and when John William Ricketts presented his petition to Parliament in 1829 he was to do so on behalf of the ‘East Indians’. Ricketts’ petition marked a culminating moment in the politics of petition, of identity, and of representation. Who did Ricketts claim to represent, and how plausibly could he do so when the very designation of the group he believed himself to be a member of remained so hotly contested? The petition triggered counter-agitation from those who clearly in some degree identified themselves as actual or potential members of the group Ricketts purported to represent. They again disputed his choice of term (‘East Indians’) as well as the substance of his claims. Additionally, the boundaries between various groups were being drawn both formally and informally along different axes by colonial Britons, English law, and the various representatives of the Company state. The defining social, moral, and legal distinction at this point centred on the dividing line of legitimacy and illegitimacy, and it’s de jure conferral of the crucial status of being a British subject. In practice, the recognition of assertions of British subjecthood was often contingent upon other factors such as class, wealth, education, profession, and colour. In spite of the realities of widespread colour-prejudice (which needs to be understood

East Indians

37

in the context of shifting constructions of colour and race, prior to the advent of ‘scientific racism’ later in the century), the legitimate offspring of an ‘interracial’ marriage were more likely to establish a strictly legal equality when their father was of a higher class and rank in Company service. Social change and reordering of Britons in a colonial setting was at the same time creating a new more hierarchical society, even more gradated and inflexible than that in Britain, and founded upon its own distinct ordering of social capital. The hierarchy of precedence, for example, in presentation and seating at Government House caused frictions between those claiming the aristocratic privileges of possession of or close connection to titles in Britain, and the strict hierarchy of rank in Company service. This was resolved by disregarding other considerations than rank in India, which reinforced the authority of the Company’s hierarchy and rule, and relegated married women to a social position entirely dependent on their husband’s occupational rank, stimulating the growth and salience of hierarchy based upon gradations of employment for men and incentivising hypergamous marriage strategies for women. Though such a world cannot be accurately described as ‘meritocratic’, like reforms which ended the purchase of Army commissions, it replaced a hierarchy of birth with one where young British men possessing substantial social capital to begin with (though far from the top of the social scale) could at times rise to the highest position through talent. Whatever might be the rights of a ‘mixed’ person in theory, they had to be articulated and claimed in the midst of an evolving socioracial order in a state of flux, in which contrary principles of ordering difference founded on different political, social, and generational influences overlapped, interacted, contended, and coexisted. 1830 was also to prove a definitional moment, as certain ordering principles were elevated above others in legal, political, and social discourses in the reactions of Parliament and Company to Ricketts’ petition. The legal and structural choices that were made, and those alternatives that were put forward and rejected, would define the civic, legal, political, and employment status of the mixed race group for the remainder of British rule. To understand Ricketts’ claims, and the counterclaims of his detractors, from inside and outside of the unstable and contested boundaries of his ‘group’, we must first give some indication of who the potential constituents of Ricketts’ politics might be – what mixed race peoples had arisen from the early colonial exchange and who could be and were to be included?

Origins The earliest European presence in South Asia were the Portuguese, who, early in the 16th century and with the help of local allies, conquered Goa and established the main outpost of the Estado da Índia. Whilst we should be wary of presenting the Portuguese, French, and Dutch empires in Asia as simply more tolerant of intermarriage and less formal unions with local peoples, the Portuguese were anxious to establish their rule in strategically

38

East Indians

positioned coastal cities and fortresses on behalf of a mercantile empire focused on seaborne trade routes. Conversion of native peoples as well as intermarriages and less formal unions were an effective way for a small number of Portuguese sailors, traders, soldiers, priests, and administrators to cement their presence in these at times tenuous footholds. The first Portuguese viceroy and governor general, Afonso de Albuquerque, supported marriages between Portuguese men and local women. The result was a significant population of Catholics bearing Portuguese names, some of Portuguese descent, others converts (Indian Christians) – the boundary between the two being hardly salient, except insofar as on a spectrum of colour and conversance with markers of Portuguese culture, those born outside of Portugal gained social capital through greater proximity to ‘Portugueseness’. Nineteenthcentury Britons were to depict, in the language of mockery and caricature, those ‘dark-faced gentlemen, in imitation European dresses’,28 and ‘the wives of Portuguese drummers, and other functionaries of equal rank … arrayed in gowns of blue satin, or pink crape, fantastically trimmed; with satin slippers on their feet, their hair full-dressed, and an umbrella carried over their heads by some ragged servant’.29 The closest of the three Company ‘presidencies’ to Portuguese Goa was that of Bombay, whose governor between 1819–27, Mountstuart Elphinstone, was to opine in 1830 that (in contrast with Calcutta and Madras) ‘the half caste in Bombay are so very few’ – but he had ‘not mean[t] to include’ those of ‘Portuguese blood … under the term half-castes’, whom he estimated at ‘about 50,000 … [as] partly descendants of the Portuguese, and partly converts from the religions of the country, who have assumed Portuguese names, but retain in fact the manners, and in a great measure the religion, of their nation’.30 Any initial prejudice of later Protestant English arrivals towards dark-complexioned Catholic Christians with Portuguese names was not sufficient to prevent the early soldiers of the Company from marrying or cohabiting with ‘Portuguese’ women. Indeed, from 1687 they had some encouragement to do so, for the Company felt the same pressures as the Portuguese to establish its presence in a tangible and durable way: The marriage of our soldiers to the native women of Fort St. George … is a matter of such consequence to posterity, that we shall be content to encourage it with some expense, and … to appoint a pagoda to be paid to the mother of any child … if you think this small encouragement will increase the number of such marriages.31 Still, Christian brides were preferred and they likely favoured those of more ‘Luso-Indian’ appearance over those seemingly more likely to be Indian Christians. Smaller numbers of Christian Indo-French and Indo-Dutch women also provided partners for early Company servants and soldiers. Throughout British rule in South Asia European men outnumbered European women, which helps to account for the overwhelming pattern of unions

East Indians

39

between European men and local Indian women. However, Anne de Courcy locates the ‘first record … of twenty [British] women sent out to Bombay in 1671’ by the Company as ‘prospective brides … divided into “gentlewomen” and “others”’, with those making ‘a Company-approved match provided an allowance of £300 a year … continued for life even if the woman was widowed’.32 Going to such lengths would have made matches with women already in the country appear a more cost-effective solution. It was generally assumed that the alternative to marriage or cohabitation was recourse to sex workers, which was at different times viewed more or less favourably by the military authorities.33 Even by 1830 it could be asserted that a: great many females, the daughters of European fathers by native mothers, were married to European officers high in the service of the Company in Calcutta. Among the officers who held the highest situations on the staff in the Company’s service at Calcutta, there was not at present one who was not married to a female of Indian descent.34 Still the low-level stream of European, primarily British, women travelling to India with the aim of marriage, the so-called ‘fishing fleets’, formed a steady but small trickle until the 19th century, growing substantially with the journeyshortening opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. They did little to redress the gender imbalance amongst the European population, which had the effect of increasing the power of women at the stage of selecting a husband, and of relegating men without position or social capital to the likelihood of bachelorhood. It is safe to assume that where gender imbalances exist, in either direction, they tend to promote hierarchical ordering, because some people will find it harder to find partners for procreation, and differences between prospective mates will become more salient and thereby increase the stakes and rewards in access to (or domination of) power, resources, and social capital. The incentives for power and wealth concentration for the more successful imperial patriarchs were therefore increased, and in the context of patriarchal legal and religious systems regulating marriage, after a marriage was concluded colonial British women’s temporary power (owing to the gender imbalance) at the point of selection would evaporate. Mixed race men suffered from the gender imbalance, compounded with increasingly limited employment prospects (on socioracial grounds), which in most cases made them the least attractive potential partners for aspirants to upwards mobility. Ricketts’ testimony is illustrative of how differing legal statuses created such ‘odious distinctions’.35 Ricketts claimed that under English law the children of European fathers and Indian mothers were British subjects if they were ‘born in wedlock … but practically speaking, they [still] labour[ed] under the same disabilities as those born out of wedlock’.36 Asked whether his petition solely represented the grievances of the ‘illegitimate children’, Ricketts declared it covered the legitimate as well.37 Many of the questions themselves were as revealing as Ricketts’ responses:

40

East Indians

Do not such instances occur among the European soldiers and persons in that rank of life? RICKETTS: They are married to native Christian women, but not to Hindoos and Mohamedans. I mean that they are married to Portuguese women, as they are called. COMMITTEE: The ladies of half-blood are very extensively married to Europeans; are they not? RICKETTS: Yes, they are. COMMITTEE: In their case their offspring become entitled to all the privileges of British subjects. RICKETTS: Yes; but should we marry European women on our part, our offspring are not British subjects.38 COMMITTEE:

Mixed race offspring’s life chances were affected by their gender, by legitimacy, and by the class of their father. It was not unusual for officers to send their mixed race sons to England for education, after which some would return to India. Yet increasingly during the 19th century such young men found themselves excluded from colonial British society and from employment in positions above that of clerks. Ricketts described one individual who, having gone to Britain for medical training, returned in 1825 having ‘obtained the diploma of Doctor of Medicine, and went out to practice, but he found the state of society was such as to compel him to return to Europe’.39 This reinforces Ballhatchet’s research on the difficulties faced by Eurasian doctors, especially with the possibility of their treating colonial British women.40 Many others had followed a similar trajectory, lamented Ricketts, having: been so much disappointed at the state of things … finding that the door was completely shut against them in their own native country … [They were not] altogether excluded [from the society of colonial Britons]; but they soon felt the public pulse on the subject, and they could not brook anything of that kind … [preferring to] return to Europe than drag out an uncomfortable existence like that in India … [being only] received in a certain class of society.41 As social closure began to exclude and subordinate those of mixed race, mixed race women (to a declining degree, but throughout British rule) found themselves more able to escape into hypergamous marriages, which were practically closed off to mixed race men. De Courcy describes how by: the nineteenth century, India was seen as a marriage market for girls neither pretty nor rich enough to make at home what was known as ‘a good match’, the push factor allowing the Company to switch to actually charging ‘a premium’ to those wishing to go out … [Now a] ‘bond’ of £200 allowed passage (would-be travelers also had to pay their fare) …

East Indians

41

and ensured that the young woman would not be a charge on the Company once she arrived.42 Though the establishment of a secluded colonial domesticity made possible through the arrival of increasing numbers of European women, to replace the bibighar and the ubiquitous Indian bibi of White Mughals romance,43 was undoubtedly interwoven with the progressive exclusion of the mixed race group through a process of social closure, such an outcome cannot be simply reduced to the gradually growing population of European women. If European women perceived Indian and mixed race women as competitors, they were also divided amongst themselves along class lines, and other factors are required to explain the boundary-making processes that made socioracial boundaries increasingly salient. Ghosh’s work has highlighted the degree to which Indian women in relationships with Europeans have been rendered invisible by the colonial archive. She argues that in ‘early British India, the absence of native women’s names in colonial archives correlated with the state’s interests to suppress the visibility of subjects who threatened the whiteness of colonial society.’44 ‘Anglican church records, baptismal and marriage records … court records, such as wills and court cases’ crafted a coded language that subtly revealed issues like legitimacy of offspring and offer clues to the historian as to racial status while seeking to obscure the ‘natal forms of identification’ and the presence of native women in interracial unions.45 Anglo-Indians, as they were redesignated in the 1911 Census after further appeals to the post-Company imperial state, would later compound this process in their attempts at what sociology would term ‘boundary crossing, blurring and shifting’,46 and historians have more often referred to as individual or collective ‘racial passing’. Ghosh also illuminates the power imbalances and dynamics of intimate relationships of various kinds between European men and Indian women, from the ‘highranking European officials of the late eighteenth century’ who formed ‘intimate relationships with elite women’, to ‘good patriarchs’ capable of genuine affection within unequal unions involving ‘contractual and coercive aspects’, and to the most tenuous and fraught position of Indian women who engaged in serial monogamous concubinage with rank-and-file soldiers and had little choice but to attach themselves to another man in the same regiment if they wanted to retain contact with their infant children.47 This is a necessary corrective to any overly romantic projection of a ‘white Mughals’ era of more even-handed cultural exchange. Even though Company servants seem to have preferred mixed race brides, younger officers often marrying the daughters of their senior fellow officers, and ordinary soldiers seeking ‘Portuguese’ and Christian women when stationed in localities where they were prevalent, there were of course a far larger number of more or less formal unions with Hindu (often lower caste) and Muslim women of the kind foregrounded in Ghosh’s study. In the context of British socioracial attitudes towards Indians and towards those of mixed race,

42

East Indians

it was always preferable for the mixed to identify themselves with more illustrious and socially elite antecedents, and disavow illegitimacy and low caste origins whenever possible in their construction of individual self and of their formulation of group identity. Ricketts had some interest in refuting the implications of his questioners at a Parliamentary committee hearing in 1830 when they suggested that whilst the Indian partners of ‘officers and gentlemen in the Company’s service’ might generally consist of ‘Mahomedans of respectable families, but reduced fortunes’ this would surely ‘not apply … to the children of all Europeans of the lower order of life’, a ‘considerable portion’ of whose mothers were, they presumed, ‘of very low Hindoo castes’.48 Partly conceding the division along class lines, Ricketts asserted that even amongst the second group there were ‘some Hindoos, but the Mohamedans preponderate[d] in point of numbers’.49 Ricketts was very familiar with the class divisions of Company rule, having attended the ‘Military Upper Orphan School’ in Calcutta,50 which was for the children (real or fictive orphans) of army officers, whilst a separate Lower Orphan School catered for the offspring of private soldiers. He recounted that his father had been ‘an ensign in the Engineers, and died at the Siege of Seringapatnam in the year 1792’.51 In a further reflection of hierarchical ordering, ‘legitimate children … [were] sent to that branch of the institution which is in England’.52 As the orphanages in India were for children of officers and soldiers with native women, in this period they did not take in children whose parents were both of mixed race. Ghosh’s research also provides us with a wealth of detail on the Military Orphan Schools, run by the Military Orphan Society founded by Lieutenant Colonel William Kirkpatrick of the Company’s army, and ‘himself the father of several mixed race children, and twelve other officers’.53 She recounts how officers pooled their private means to provide for their mixed race children in what was to become the Upper School, and the Company was persuaded that it was in its own interests to support the Lower School. Private soldiers ‘of good character and able to support a wife’ could select a wife from the Lower School, but had to choose on a single visual inspection – giving them no time to carry on a courtship, switch their affections from one girl to another, or to change their mind.54 She argues that between 1783 and 1820: marrying off half-caste orphan girls with European soldiers was seemingly uncomplicated by anxieties about promoting miscegenation … [being] seen by military authorities as a way to maintain appropriate male guardianship over female orphans … But as British attitudes towards mixed race persons became increasingly negative … Officials voiced their concerns that supporting Eurasian wives, even if they had been raised in the orphan schools, had never been part of the expressed purpose of the military’s activities.55 Several petitions from soldiers and commanders, supported by:

East Indians

43

the orphan society and the military department … [argued] that Eurasian wives should receive the same allowance as European wives … From 1780 onwards, European wives were granted an allowance of Rs. 8 per month; [and] children, whether legitimate or not, were granted an allowance of Rs. 3 per month.56 In 1810, ‘women who were not descended from Europeans on both sides’ were barred from any support.57 In 1819 a petition from soldiers married to Eurasian wives invoked the fact that they had been: born and raised under the Company’s protection … [and] the commander-in-chief argued that … Government which has deemed the service rendered to the state by the father, sufficient to entitle his daughter to its support in early life is in a certain degree morally bound not to withdraw its assistance and leave her in penury or vice at a mature age … [and that for the soldiers such marriages were preferable] to a system of concubinage, or still more to a promiscuous and hazardous intercourse with the profligate women of the bazar. Several years later a general order for all three presidencies approved a Rs. 4 per month allowance to mixed race wives of soldiers in the Company and royal armies, as against the Rs. 5 per month paid to European wives. However, owing to concern at the growth of the mixed race population, it was decided in the 1830s to end ‘the practice of hosting balls’ which facilitated the marriages of mixed race orphan girls.58 Ghosh suggests that ‘girls from the Upper Orphan School most often married officers, local merchants, or returned to England to marry there’,59 and argues that: separation between officers’ children and non-officers’ children was built on the assumption that the orphans of the Upper School were more likely to be legitimate and by extension of this logic, of pure European extraction. [Though in] fact this was not so; more likely than not, the children of the Upper School were officers’ children but mixed race.60 Though legitimacy was a proxy for class status and the assumed propriety and superior morality of officers, it was also one of several overlapping ways of ordering a hierarchy in which exceptions could still overcome a multitude of perceived markers of stigma, including colour and racially mixed origins.

Exceptions Members of all categories of colonial British society who identified with whiteness, Britishness, and Europeanness,61 to varying degrees and with different levels of social acceptance, could knowingly or unknowingly possess

44

East Indians

Indian ancestry. Given the widespread erasure of mixed race origins by those able to pass as white we are unlikely to ever quantify the full extent of India’s genetic imprint on ‘white Britons’ without genetic studies. The following example furnished by De Courcy is, however, sufficient to illustrate the advantages of deliberate strategies of concealment. Alexander Trotter, the son of a substantial Scottish ‘gentleman’ merchant, ‘arrived in India in 1801’ ‘as a cadet in the Bengal Army’, being ‘promoted to Lieutenant of Infantry in 1803’.62 His will alluded to his cohabitation with ‘a native woman of Hindoostan’, a practice which De Courcy argues was ‘beginning to die out … [but] was certainly not frowned on’.63 With her he fathered a ‘natural son’ in 1814, who became an ‘Assistant to the [Company’s] Military Board’, at only 19 married a young ‘widow of eighteen in the Cathedral at Calcutta and died aged thirty-two in his father’s native Scotland.’64 The son of this marriage, ‘William Henry Trotter, born in 1837’ had a fairly patchy career ‘as a stockbroker … for different banks’ and married a fair-skinned ‘young woman called Sarah Honoria Boote … [whose] father and maternal grandfather were non-commissioned soldiers … Both William’s mother and wife probably also had Indian blood’ and of their six daughters, two, Mabel and Grace ‘were pretty, light-skinned girls who could pass as English … [and being] determined to do so … cut themselves off’ from their darker sisters.65 Born in 1868, at the age of 19 Grace met ‘William Henry Hoare Vincent, born in 1866 … the third son of the vicar of Carnarvon’ who after attending a public school66 on a scholarship, ‘placed seventeenth … of about 200’ in the ICS examination in London.67 He received further education at Trinity College Dublin before arriving in India in 1887. After Vincent had met Grace and been posted to Dacca, the two sisters received an unquestionable stamp of their social capital by being invited on a ‘tiger-shooting trip’ their shikari friend George Sanderson was arranging ‘for Lord Clandeboye, the twenty-two-year-old eldest son of the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin.’68 ‘William Vincent was still pursuing’ Grace and at ‘only twentythree’ (in 1889) was granted the viceregal dispensation needed to marry before 30 as an ICS officer.69 Vincent rapidly rose to become ‘a judge of the Calcutta High Court’ (1909), a knight (1913), a member of the viceroy’s Executive Council (1916), home member for the Government of India and president of the viceroy’s Council (1917), and ‘Speaker or Leader of the Legislative Assembly’ created under the 1919 Government of India Act.70 The ‘now Lady Vincent’ had exchanged a life of subordinated socioracial exclusion for a position near the pinnacle of British Indian colonial society.71 She even attempted to thwart her daughter Dorothy’s marriage to ‘someone in trade’, namely Charles Arthur, who had come to India to work in the business of his unle Sir Allen Arthur, several times ‘President of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce … and … the first Commerce Member of Curzon’s Viceroy’s Council.’72 She did not prevail in this, over the wishes of her daughter and husband, and sadly after retiring ‘to England Grace left her husband, to live in Cheltenham, and rarely saw or spoke to … Dorothy again.’73

East Indians

45

Even amongst those who succeeded through racial passing such a dramatic repositioning must have been truly exceptional. Yet, while only a small number of the group as a whole could ascend the evolving socioracial hierarchy, in absolute terms the number of people who repositioned themselves across boundaries of race, class, domicile, and categories of ‘citizenship’ must have been considerable. At the lower end of the spectrum, the poorest class of those claiming European ancestry could descend into the Indian Christian and ‘Portuguese’ groups. ‘Ross Donnelly Mangles, Esquire … [a former] Deputy Secretary to government in the territorial and judicial departments’ testified in 1830 before a House of Lords Committee that if ‘a half-caste marry a native woman, the children are merged in the native population; if he marry an European woman, they lose the opprobrium of being half caste’.74 This was a vast oversimplification which played to the theme that those of mixed race naturally die out or disappear through merger with one or other progenitor – infertility or intergenerational degeneration of hybrids was often posited in anticipatory refutation of the idea that the mixed could or did form stable new groups where they arose, which was, as Young has argued,75 destabilising for those conceptualising racial difference in binary terms. Mangles attempted to depict the varied treatment of those of mixed race as dependent on the social class of the Britons concerned, with ‘persons of vulgar minds … apt to treat them disrespectfully’, but with ‘a great many … treat[ing] them with as much kindness and attention as Europeans’ and Company servants ‘of high feeling … apt to treat them with … careful and delicate kindness’.76 Asked whether they were ‘generally treated as a degraded class’ he responded that they were ‘not generally on a par with Europeans in mind or body … [nor] considered, as a class, to stand on a level with Europeans; but there … [were] very many exceptions to this rule’.77 Despite his tone of charitable condescension, Mangles is describing a socioracial hierarchy in flux, where class could still trump considerations of colour. Class operated in a dual way here. First, it is the ‘right sort’ of ‘half-caste’ who can transcend his situation – those with education, talent, and the luck to take after their father, who is presumably an officer rather than a common soldier – who can still succeed in life and become one of Mangles’ ‘very many exceptions’. Indian blood does not taint everyone who possesses it, but is sufficient to result in a generally inferior stock ‘in mind and body’ in the majority of cases. This is about good breeding, in class terms, as well as race and colour, and Mangles was likely more disposed to look favourably on the son of a Rajput princess and a British officer. Ideas about race and colour had not yet acquired the fixity of the scientific racism of the later 19th century, colour and mixing is correlative with creating a group of poor racial stock, but the connection is not absolute. Second, class is being invoked alongside correlative markers of social status like ‘education’ to attribute ‘enlightened’ views on and treatment of the mixed to those of a higher class and social standing, whilst implying that the low-born and the ‘vulgar’ are likely to exhibit a crass prejudice towards them.

46

East Indians

Mangles mentioned several prominent mixed race men who considered themselves on terms of equality with Britons such as the son of ‘Colonel Gardner’ who ‘had greatly improved his estate’.78 Colonel Gardner was a British commander of ‘a corps of irregular horse’ who had served in the armed forces of the Mahratta ruler Yashwant Rao Holkar.79 Gardner was an archetypal ‘white Mughal’, of whom rumours and unforgettable ‘anecdotes’ abounded, reputed to adopt ‘the Asiatic costume’ whilst ‘at his own residence, and associating with natives … but while visiting a large military station, in company with the resident of Lucknow … [wearing] a blue surtout, resembling the undress uniform of the British army, but profusely ornamented with silk lace’.80 European officers, like military experts in the manufacture of cannon, were popular at the courts of Indian rulers for imparting the latest best practice in technology and drill to their troops. Although the competition for domination of the military economy spurred Indian technology to overtake that of British canon with the invention of laminated guns, European mercenaries remained popular and were often lavishly rewarded, settling down in native (or ‘princely’) states to father children with local women of varying social statuses. At the outbreak of the Second Anglo-Mahratta War British officers of this kind claimed to be serving ‘under the expectation that they could never be called upon to bear arms against their own country’.81 At the prospect of being called upon to fight for their employers or suffer execution, and hearing also that the Company would otherwise treat them as traitors (characteristically expanding the boundaries of Britishness to those of mixed race when the ‘chips were down’), many defected to the British side, sometimes bringing Indian soldiers with them. Gardner was depicted as having made a dashing escape from imminent execution by hurling himself off a cliff into a river, swimming under fire, and disguising himself as ‘a grass-cutter’ as he made his way to the nearest British outpost.82 Despite such an ordeal he had evidently found time to carry ‘off a Mahommedan princess, the sister of one of the lesser potentates of the Deccan’, who was claimed to have retained: the respect of her associates by … not only continu[ing] … steadfast in the Mahommedan faith, and in the strict observance of all restrictions prescribed to Asiatic females of rank,83 but … [bringing] up her daughters in the same religious persuasion, and in the same profound seclusion, – points seldom conceded by an European father and educated ‘according to the most approved fashion of an oriental court’, which made them ‘eligible to match with the princes of the land’.84 Whatever the precise truth behind this fantastic story and its orientalist narratorial tone, Roberts was probably correct in her judgement that the ‘ceremony’ for this transreligious union was regarded as a ‘binding’ marriage by local people.85 Roberts juxtaposed Gardner with the even more enigmatic ‘Begum Sumroo’ (or Sombre), whom Michael Fisher described as ‘a Muslim

East Indians

47

courtesan-turned-Catholic princess who … ruthlessly ruled … [the] small but prosperous state’ of Sardhana, selectively performing masculinity in her dress and behaviour to establish her authority, skilfully negotiating the survival of her rule and state in connection with an impotent Mughal court and the increasingly domineering Company, whilst providing a home to various European mercenaries and their offspring.86 She adopted a mixed race son of the European commander of her army as her heir, managing to bequeath to him (in the teeth of British opposition) a vast fortune on her death in 1836. Having replaced his father as the commander of her forces, Colonel David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre, was forced to leave India to escape the Company’s grasp. Dyce Sombre was referred to by Britons as ‘Anglo-Indian’, ‘IndoBriton’, and ‘Eurasian’.87 Metropolitan British society debated whether he should be considered ‘European’, Anglo-Indian, or ‘Oriental’.88 His ‘diverse ancestry … [included] a notorious German Catholic and an obscure French Catholic mercenary, a Scots Presbyterian subaltern who died young, and their secluded Indian Muslim or Hindu female partners’.89 Dyce Sombre was hardly unique, but he embodied cultural hybridity to a greater degree than most of our mixed race subjects as a result of his upbringing at the Begum’s court. Immense wealth allowed this ‘dark complexion[ed]’ and Catholic young man to live a life of luxury, travel, and self-indulgence (he contracted sexually transmitted diseases that may have been linked to his fiercely contested mental state).90 He married Mary Anne, ‘the much gossiped about daughter of an English Protestant Viscount, the former owner of hundreds of slaves in Jamaica and defender of slavery in the House of Lords’; and was able to buy ‘election to the corrupt constituency of Sudbury’, though Parliament later ‘repudiated his scandalous election’.91 Nonetheless, this makes him ‘the first Asian and only the second nonWhite ever to be elected to Parliament’.92 Amidst his other troubles ‘his noble wife’s family [now] had him arrested, convicted, and incarcerated as a “Chancery lunatic”’.93 However, he soon escaped to France, though was unable to regain his legal sanity within the British empire, despite roaming the continent, where he continued to move in the highest circles and obtained numerous supportive medical and legal opinions to buttress his case, including a judgement on ‘examination by the entire [Russian] imperial Medical Council of ten eminent doctors … [who] resolved unanimously on 20 February [1845] that he was “in a perfect state of mind”, showing none of the symptoms that they knew indicated lunacy’.94 Though cultural judgements (and the self-interest of his wife’s well-connected in-laws) shaped British perceptions of his sanity, it remains important to note that neither complexion, Indian origins, nor his Catholicism had prevented him from marrying into the British aristocracy at the imperial metropole. Fisher argues that ‘he transgressed boundaries and ventured through worlds where he purchased prominence but never acceptance’.95 Nonetheless, but for culturally mediated behaviour that was perceived to be bizarre – challenging various individuals to duels on implausible grounds, and frequently and persistently accusing his

48

East Indians

wife, who never became willingly estranged from him, despite all reassurance to the contrary, of adultery, and even incest with her own father – it seems probable that he would not have been deprived of his wealth and freedom in Britain. It should be evidently clear that hierarchies of race, class, colour, and wealth in Britain and (distinctly) in South Asia were complex, conflicted and at times fluid, as well as being salient means of ordering difference and creating hierarchy, during this early period of socioracial flux. It has been some of the more unusual cases that have attracted the attention of recent scholarship. Chandra Mallampalli’s work on the court case Abraham v Abraham (1854–63) involves a mixed race family with a successful business supplying alcohol and other provisions to the Army, and presenting ‘the Abraham household as a rather normal feature of life in colonial Bellary’ rather than an example of ‘transgressive interraciality’.96 With no desire to challenge this assertion on the normality of their existence in this South Indian setting, it must be noted that atypically the family was comprised of the son of a Dalit convert to Protestantism who married a Eurasian woman, and whose own son Charles Henry was in all likelihood the first South Asian to study at the University of Cambridge when he enrolled at Queen’s College around 1842. It was his Protestantism and Anglican connections in England that facilitated this, and being a Protestant placed him in a minority, albeit a significantly sized one, amongst those of mixed race, more than half of whom were Catholic. Deriving his European ancestry from his mother was more unusual.97 In all periods there were unions between Indian men and European or mixed race women, but these account for a very small minority of the cases of mixing, and concentrated at the higher and lower ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. The poorest of claimants to European ancestry, such as the so-called ‘kinthal class’ in the Calcutta slums whose European ancestry was contested amongst colonial Britons as well as those of mixed race,98 intermarried with Indian Christians of both genders. More threatening, to the evolving socioracial attitudes of colonial Britons, were the European wives and mistresses of Indian princes.99 Ballhatchet’s work emphasises the degree to which Indian or Eurasian men’s access of any kind to ‘white’ women was profoundly disturbing to the evolving racial sensibilities of colonial Britons, and accordingly it was insisted that there always be ‘pure’ European doctors available for colonial British wives and daughters even in the most remote of settings.100 As these cases were less common and outside of the boundaries constructed, internally and externally, to define the mixed race group as a political minority, they are largely excluded from the present study.

Exclusion Later in the 19th and early in the 20th centuries ethnic boundaries became increasingly salient, as racial ideologies and ideas continued to evolve, and as domicile replaced legitimacy as an ordering principle for boundary making

East Indians

49

and policing, excluding European (mainly males) born in India from full participation in whiteness if they failed to exhibit evidence (such as schooling in England) of non-Asiatic domicile.101 Yet racial passing was rewarded almost from the outset and those of mixed origins would consequently seek to obscure the presence or identity of Indian maternal ancestors. Incorrect or vague entries in a baptismal record facilitated this. For those of fairer complexion a document declaring them to be European rather than AngloIndian, for example, might be all the evidence they needed to succeed in making the ascent. Graham Watson describes a closely analogous process for those designated ‘coloured’ under South Africa’s apartheid regime, where racial elevation could be achieved by ‘undergoing preliminary anticipatory socialization’ and then limiting interactions with the superordinate group ‘segmentally and selectively, in terms of formally defined roles’ initially ‘faceto-face’ but subsequently as one acquired more supporting documentation for the status aspired to ‘in terms of bureaucratic norms’, thereby creating ‘conditions in which innumerable decisions cumulatively’ favoured attempts to win official recognition of the new status.102 For anyone in India of mixed descent or a ‘country-born’ European suspected of having ‘a touch of the tarbrush’, the embarrassed confusion of a potential employer not wishing to challenge a self-asserted domiciliary and/or racial status, or a knowingly acquiescent wartime recruitment officer, could prove decisive. As a result of ethnic boundary making by colonial Britons and the imperial state Anglo-Indians became increasingly (but never entirely) endogamous, marrying among themselves. When they did acknowledge a distant maternal ancestor, they would frequently allude to Mughal and Rajput princesses (sometimes offered in marriage to a gallant officer by a grateful Maharaja, at other times rescued from imminent immolation by sati),103 constructing their origins, history, and identity in glowing romantic terms (much like nationalists). At the same time, they often either refused to recognise the boundary between themselves and colonial Britons (especially their real or imagined heroic ancestors) or deliberately conflated the categories of Britishness/ Englishness, Europeanness, and labels demarcating mestizaje, which colonial Britons were seeking to ascribe and enforce upon them. Essentially, their rhetoric and early constructions of identity, even when asserting their own ‘groupness’, were part of attempts at boundary blurring, in contestation with the boundary-making processes with which colonial Britons were simultaneously engaged, and in a position to enforce (through social closure and through the institutional backing of the state). At the same time those of mixed race would often seek to refute the libellous charge of illegitimacy – a crucial ordering basis for ascribed legal and civic status (which had a lasting impact on subsequent generations in terms of policing nationality and resulting rights to migration), as well as being a deeply charged mark of supposed low morality, religiosity, and virtue that continued to carry the weight of class-based aspersions about bloodlines and character amongst the British, both metropolitan and colonial, well into the

50

East Indians

late 20th century. Regardless of the reality that there would have been a great many informal unions, especially in relationships with Indian women who had not converted to Christianity, the need to build a positive self-identity for the group in response to socioracial subordination (in which illegitimacy was deployed as a marker of inferiority as part of a value-system largely internalised by Anglo-Indians themselves), impelled a myth making, reflected (for example) in Anthony’s impassioned memoir-cum-history,104 and in a history by Stark.105 The defining moment for the mixed race group, both objectively and in the estimation of its subsequent leaders, writers, and thinkers, was in 1791 by which time the Company had decisively reversed its early policy of promoting marriages with local women (Christian or otherwise) and officially barred anyone with a parent who was a ‘native Indian’ from its service (and most significantly its armies, with the exception of musicians and bandsmen). The Company ban was never fully enforced, especially in its less well-remunerated clerkships, but nonetheless imposed a sudden economic dislocation and an increasing social marginality upon those clearly identifiable as of mixed race. The few who still managed to achieve distinction contrasted with an increasing pool of unemployed and underemployed young men whose discontent eventually found a political outlet in Ricketts’ petition. In defending its policy the Company would subsequently attribute it not to any prejudice on the part of Britons, but rather on those of Indians. Thus they could, in an Orientalist vein, ascribe the ban to the caste system and intersecting Indian colour prejudice rather than their own socioracial attitudes: it arose: from the prejudices the natives entertain, from the circumstance that they are generally the offspring of low-caste native women; and many of them are reduced, by the continued admixture of native blood, to a colour more black than any of the natives themselves, [therefore] the natives regard them with no respect.106 A sentiment echoed in Emma Roberts’ account of the exclusion of ‘Indo-Britons’ from Government House in Calcutta: native prejudice has been more considered than the aristocratic feeling which has excluded retail dealers, who boast unsullied descent from European parents. The natives look down, or at least have looked down, with great contempt upon a mixed breed, which, upon the maternal side must have sprung from the lowest or the least virtuous class of society.107 The Calcutta Review spoke of the: depressing influence of European caste, and the feeling in Calcutta formerly regard[ing] … East Indians as a kind of pariahs … the females … [being] fonder of the huka than of letters … [loving] the theatre, dressing

East Indians

51

magnificently, and ‘affording by their sparkling eyes a marked contrast with the paleness and languor of the European ladies’.108 Hindu women who entered relationships with Europeans were likely to come from lower caste backgrounds and would usually lose caste in the process, especially if they converted to Christianity. Their social connections with their natal families were often severed, meaning that mixed race offspring’s connection with wider Indian society often came largely through their mother, an influence which could be removed early in life depending on their education and upbringing and which would be subsequently diluted in the cultural inheritance of subsequent generations. The experience of ethnic AngloIndians living in Burma and ethnic Anglo-Burmans (with whom they shared a political status and social existence) were in many respects quite similar owing to intermarriage, an intertwined history, and a conjoined politics (at least until 1935). However, a very significant difference was that, without the pressures of caste endogamy, ethnic Anglo-Burmans could more easily maintain links with their Burmese relatives. In India, higher caste Hindus may at times have looked down upon those of mixed race, but it evidently was no barrier to mixed race officers leading Indian soldiers, being employed by Indian rulers, or being celebrated as popular and important figures. The most famous of these, Colonel James Skinner (1778–1841), known in later life as Sikandar Sahib, son ‘of Lt-Colonel Hercules Skinner, a Scotchman’,109 significantly asserted that his mother ‘was of the Rajpoot caste, which is the military caste, the second in the scale’.110 Like Colonel Gardner he defected from Mahratta service to the Company and after leading an irregular cavalry unit was rewarded with a large ‘jaghire of land’, was regarded as ‘a man of great influence among the native population’,111 as well as being socially accepted among many colonial Britons. However, one English lady visiting India (1836–42) in her letters home described her encounter with Skinner with ‘savage amusement … at being forced to endure the indignity of meeting self-styled Englishmen and women who are actually “uncommonly black”’.112 Ricketts contested the idea that the prejudice against those of mixed race had originated with Indians, declaring them ‘at times disposed to identify … [the mixed] with their fathers; and it is the marked distinction that prevails which attracts their notice; it is a thing for which they cannot account’.113 Ricketts argued that it had ‘settled down into a fixed habit from long usage, in consequence of our exclusion from the service; and hence a feeling of illiberal prejudice has taken possession of the minds of some Europeans upon this subject’.114 In attempting to persuade Parliament to redress ‘East Indian’ grievances, Ricketts also asserted that ‘in various circles’ those of mixed race were still ‘usually admitted into society upon an equal footing with Europeans’, and even claimed to believe that the prejudices against them had ‘considerably diminished’ in recent years. He made pointed comparisons to suggest ‘that a more liberal policy is adopted by the Dutch and French,

52

East Indians

Spaniards and Portuguese, in all their colonies; and no inconvenience has resulted from it’.115 Ricketts also recounted the example of the British themselves co-opting ‘two-thirds of the council at Ceylon … [from] gentlemen born on the island’, by which he meant the mixed race group, mostly composed of the offspring of prior Dutch and Portuguese colonisers, known as Burghers, who Sir Alexander Johnston told him he had found ‘to be the most efficient instruments in the public service’, providers of ‘much information and assistance’ to government, and whom had ‘enabled him to carry the measure of slave emancipation into effect’ and to establish ‘the jury system’ which came to include the whole population of the island.116 Ricketts’ characterisation is confirmed in the published extracts of letters sent to him by Johnston, which reveal that he thought of the mixed race groups in India and Ceylon as ‘valuable auxiliaries’, agents of furthering colonial projects of introducing ‘European capital, arts, sciences, skill[s], and manufactures’, and had even submitted a plan to Lord Londonderry in 1810 to colonise both groups ‘in the northern provinces of ’ Ceylon (c.f. Chapter 5).117 Johnston, who held various judicial posts in Ceylon from 1801 to 1819, ascending to become ‘President of His Majesty’s Council, [and] Chief Justice of the Supreme Court … [etc.]’, extended (in 1811) jury trials to the whole population, and found ‘amongst the half-castes and native jurymen some of the most efficient and respectable native magistrates in the country, who … at little or no expense to government, administer justice in inferior offenses to the native inhabitants’.118

Dividing lines Ricketts was correct in presenting 1830 as a moment of transition, when a favourable response to his petition could prove decisive. At this time the most popular forms of self-identification for those wishing to formulate a mixed race ‘groupness’, who undoubtedly did not include many others seeking to identify with Britishness and reluctant to accept their social exclusion, appears to have been East Indian. Despite the heated contestation we have seen within the group Ricketts was seeking to claim as his constituency over designations, this is the term he had settled upon to present the group’s petition. When attacked from within his claimed constituency Ricketts disavowed any personal preference between rival designations. He had, he said, bowed to majority feeling at a particular gathering of politically minded members of the group in Calcutta. The Bombay petitioners had also self-designated as East Indian, and referred to their brethren in the other presidencies as fellow members of an ‘East Indian Community’.119 The Madras petitioners had initially asked to be called Eurasians, and it was the governor who had decided to issue an order ascribing the more British designation of Indo-Britons, an act with the power to affect the development of identity, and as we saw Company administrators desired thereby that Indo-Germans and Indo-Dutchmen should be brought round to an identification with the English government of

East Indians

53

the Company. East Indian was attacked by colonial Britons as ‘so capricious as to include every individual who has drawn his natal breath in this region of the sun’.120 East Indian was an expansive category, compatible with assertions to civic status, and can be regarded as a boundary-expansion strategy. Some Britons responded with characteristic ‘divide and rule’ rhetoric that disputed the existence, scale, and asserted boundaries of such a group, and Ricketts claim to represent them. These voices made claims to expertise based upon experience of the situation in India, and thereby sought to defend the Company’s interests from interference by Parliament back at the metropole. The ‘editor of the John Bull’ accused Ricketts of ‘very palpable’ ignorance, rejecting his claims that there were 20,000 Indo-Britons (note the ascription of a term regarding a petition from self-identifying ‘East Indians’) who were ‘daily increasing’ in numbers.121 The Bengal Chronicle condemned his conflation of various distinct classes, particularly emphasising the boundary of legitimacy and illegitimacy, and similarly attacked his claims on population numbers and growth which assumed the group ‘to have doubled nearly in ten years, a rate of increase unexampled, we believe in any country in the world’.122 Instead they asserted it had ‘actually been stationary, if it has not decreased’.123 In attempting to split up Ricketts’ claimed constituency they included better classes of Indo-Britons in a common legal status with colonial Britons asserting that a ‘great majority of Indo-British ladies marry Europeans, and their offspring are in law as much British subjects as those whose parents are both European’.124 The Chronicle challenged one of the petition’s main grievances that English law was extended to Britons in the interior, but not to East Indians. Complaints about access to education were refuted by the assertion that there was ‘not a school in Calcutta at which Indo-British children are not educated’.125 To challenge Ricketts’ claims to represent a more broadly constructed and numerically significant group, they sought to break down ‘the subscribers to the East-Indians’ petition’ into four distinct classes.126 The ‘First Class’ they claimed, were ‘Indo-Britons born in wedlock of aboriginal Indian, other Asiatic, or Indo-British fathers, and also their descendants born in wedlock’.127 Crucially, this group were constructed as ‘virtually British subjects … entitled to all the rights and privileges, and liable to all the disadvantages of European-born Englishmen’.128 As evidence of their supposedly equal civic status prominent individuals of this ‘class’ was said to include: nine attornies of the supreme court, and one commissioner of the petit court. A brother of one of these attornies … [was] in the Company’s army, and … several others in both the civil and military services of this presidency, and in the King’s army. The present envoy to the court of Ava, and his brothers … [were] in the regular service of the Company … the son of a late commissary-general … a staff-officer at Barackpore … [and] One of the aides-de-camp of the present commander-in-chief.129

54

East Indians

As ‘all of this class … [were claimed to] have nothing to do with the petition … their number must be deducted from the delegate’s 20,000’.130 A class boundary was being ascribed solely to the dividing line of legitimacy, but at the same time it was conceded that ‘complexion, education, or family connections’ might reduce an individual’s ‘interest’ in ‘the Company’s covenanted service, or … the King’s’.131 As their last veiled admission suggests, there were clearly other means than legitimacy of policing access to effective exercise of claims to British subjecthood, and to the opportunities to reach such heights in colonial service. Their system of ordering defined the ‘Second Class’ as those whose British male progenitor had not been lawfully married to his Indian, Asian, or IndoBritish partner, which would thereby consign all descendants of this first interracial union, regardless of any subsequent patterns of legally recognised marriage, to the status of ‘natives of India, as the law now stands’.132 Ricketts himself was deemed to be ‘of this class, and the petition to Parliament … the bona fide petition of this class’ alone.133 Its number was estimated as no more than ‘2,000 heads of families in all the provinces under the Bengal government’.134 They were said to include ‘four attornies of the supreme court’, a barrister who had ‘died a few years ago’, ‘a magistrate of Calcutta’, and ‘several [others] … high up in the King’s army, who fought and bled in the Peninsular War, under the Duke of Wellington: and one of the colonels who so gallantly led on his Britons in the late storm of Bhurtpore’.135 The capricious inconsistency of their position was revealed in the observation that ‘there would have been a commissioner of the petit court, had it not been … for the opinion of the chief justice … that the candidate, not being a British subject, could not hold the appointment’, in spite of his having ‘received a liberal education in England’ and his brother being ‘a lieut.-colonel commanding a King’s regiment’.136 Two additional classes mirrored the dividing line of legitimacy, but with their forebears ‘European foreigners’ rather than Britons. The third class of legitimate offspring of such unions being liable to be made ‘prisoners of war’ during hostilities with their father’s country, and the fourth class of illegitimate offspring of this kind being exempted from such treatment. A fifth class was said to include ‘descendants of aboriginal Asiatic Christians from the Malabar coast, from Damaun, the Malayan Archipelago, and from Manilla, Macao’ who had merely ‘assumed the European habiliments, and … [were] vulgarly but incorrectly called Portuguese’.137 Two of Ricketts’ petitioners, Barretto and Lackersteen, they ascribed to this class. Barretto was probably connected with the mercantile house of the same name. Whilst acknowledging that ‘some of all the above five classes have subscribed to the petition, and given their gold to promote its success’, they refused to accept that the petitioners formed one body of interest.138 Ricketts, it was argued, represented only the second (i.e. his own) class, and not those of the other groups who supported him. Therefore, it was charged that the petition had been presented ‘under a deceptious character’.139 The Chronicle

East Indians

55

ascribed the term Indo-Britons to the first two classes, and in seeking to distinguish them from the others argued that each ‘of these five different classes … [were] distinct and dissimilar … [and could not] be amalgamated; no, not even by adopting the whole-body-including appellation East Indian’.140 In essence this was a stereotypically colonial ‘divide and rule’ strategy. Whichever set of boundaries may have been closer to the lived experience of the people concerned, Ricketts’ self-identified designation (East Indian) implied an expanded boundary as against the attempts at subdivision and contracted boundaries embodied in the Chronicle’s construction of the term which it sought to ascribe (Indo-Briton) to Ricketts (and fellow members of his ‘Second Class’). Such attempts to categorise, subdivide, and essentialise deployed various tropes and distinctions with moral and class as well as racial symbolism to their British audience. This totalising scheme aimed to deny the self-asserted ‘groupness’ of the petitioners along lines of legitimacy, nationality, legal status, patrilineal descent, supposed degrees of or absence of mestizaje, and class. Certain members of classes in this system of ordering could be co-opted rhetorically as well as materially, and the prospects of the success for a few in a still somewhat malleable, fuzzy, and fluid hierarchy of difference could be deployed to prevent the political organisation of a more broadly constructed group. Unfortunately for Ricketts, his claims about, hopes for, and efforts to create an upwards trajectory through the politics of representation and petition were thereby confounded. Socioracial exclusion through processes of social closure were to increase the marginality of the mixed race group, but Ricketts’ early efforts to construct them as a political group were to bear fruit later in the century with the proliferation of political and charitable organisations designed to solve their problem. A problem he had astutely judged to arise from the creation and policing of boundaries constructed by colonial Britons.

Notes 1 Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to Inquire into the Present State of the Affairs of the East India Company, and into the Trade between Great Britain, the East Indies and China; with the Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Committee (London, 1830), p. 190, and Second Report from the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company; Together with an Appendix of Documents, and Index (London, 1830), pp. 41, 47. 2 BL, OIOC, F/4/1115, Extract of Fort St. George Military Corrs (20 December 1825), Folio: 11635, no. 16, p. 12. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid., pp. 12–13. 5 Ibid., pp. 10–11. 6 Ibid. (30 November 1827), Folio: 12839, no. 39, p. 346. 7 Ibid. (5 June 1827), Folio: 2841, no. 84, p. 277. 8 Ibid., p. 278. 9 Ibid., no. 85, pp. 280–1.

56 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39

East Indians Ibid. (15 June 1827), Folio: 7008, nos. 51–3, pp. 284–6. Ibid. (30 November 1827), Folio: 12839, no. 39, pp. 331–4. Ibid., p. 333. Ibid., pp. 338–9. Ibid., pp. 335–6. Original emphasis; ibid., p. 339. Ibid., p. 341. Ibid., pp. 346–7. Ibid., pp. 347–8. Ibid. (11 December 1827), Folio: 13180, no. 106, p. 327. Ibid. (30 November 1827), Folio: 12839, no. 41, p. 349. Ibid. (28 December 1827), Folio: 13834, no. 192, pp. 352–4. Original emphasis; ibid. (30 November 1827), Folio: 12839, no. 39, p. 337. Ibid. (28 December 1827), Folio: 13834, no. 192, p. 354. Original emphasis; ibid. (30 November 1827), Folio: 12839, no. 39, pp. 344–6; ‘Mr Kyd’ probably referred to a member of the Kyd family. Two mixed race brothers, James and Robert, were unusually prosperous. They were the sons of the British ‘Colonel Robert Kyd, of the Bengal Engineers, Military Secretary to Government’. James was born in India in 1786 and was sent (with his brother) to be educated in England and trained as shipbuilders, being ‘apprenticed to Mr. Waddell … [the] Company’s Master-builder’ on their return to India in 1800. After Waddell retired the brothers were able to purchase ‘the Dockyard at Kidderpore’ in Calcutta, which along with Kyd Street were named after the family. James became ‘master-builder of the Company in Calcutta’, and their dock launched several ships including ‘the Hastings, a seventy-four gun ship’, in 1818. Quotations from: H. Stark and E. Madge, East Indian Worthies, Being Memoirs of Distinguished Indo-Europeans (Calcutta, 1892), p. 10; Second Report on the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 40; and Calcutta Review, vol. 18 (Calcutta, July–December 1852), p. 283. BL, OIOC, F/4/1115, Extract of Fort St George Military Corrs (28 December 1827), Folio: 13834, no. 192, p. 355. Ibid. BL, OIOC, F/4/1259, Extract Bombay Revenue Consultations (8 July 1829), no. 119, ‘Resolutions Passed at a Convened Meeting of East Indians Held at Bombay on Saturday the 30th May 1829’, Resolution 10, p. 21. R. Burton, Goa, and the Blue Mountains, Or, Six Months of Sick Leave (London, 1851), p. 175. E. Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society, Volume III (London, 1835), p. 20. Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 171. Dispatch from ‘Court of Directors to the President of Madras … 1687’ cited in E. Hedin, ‘The Anglo-Indian Community’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 40, no. 2 (September 1934), pp. 166–7. A. de Courcy, The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj (London, 2012), p. 2. See K. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and Their Critics, 1793–1905 (London, 1980), esp. chapters 1–2 on ‘Lock Hospitals and Lal Bazars’ and ‘The Contagious Diseases and Cantonments Acts in India’. ‘Petition of Indo-Britons’, London Times, 5 May 1830, p. 1. Second Report on the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 47. Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 194. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 195.

East Indians 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

57

Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj, pp. 108–9. Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, pp. 195–6. de Courcy, Fishing Fleet, pp. 3–4. See Dalrymple, White Mughals. Ghosh, Sex and the Family, p. 18. Ibid. Wimmer, Ethnic Boundary Making, p. 48. Ghosh, Sex and the Family, pp. 69–70, 107–8, 231–2. Second Report on the Affairs of the East India Company, pp. 42, 46. Ibid., p. 46. Ibid., p. 42. Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 195. Second Report on the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 45. Ghosh, Sex and the Family, p. 225. Ibid., p. 237. Ibid., p. 238. Ibid., pp. 238–9. Ibid., p. 239. Ibid., p. 238. Ibid., p. 237. Ibid., pp. 229–30. At times a useful distinction. de Courcy, Fishing Fleet, p. 174. Ibid., pp. 174–5. Ibid., p. 175. Ibid., pp. 175–6. British parlance for a private school. de Courcy, Fishing Fleet, p. 176. Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., p. 181. Ibid., p. 182. Ibid., pp. 181–3. Ibid., p. 181–2. Ibid., p. 184. Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, pp. 39, 45. R. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (New York, 1995), pp. 14–16. Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 46. Ibid. Ibid., p. 45. Ibid. E. Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society, Volume II (London, 1837), p. 188. Ibid., p. 189. Ibid., pp. 190–3. Probably alluding to purdah, the practice of secluding elite women from wider society and transporting them in covered palanquins. Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics, Volume II, pp. 192–3. Ibid., p. 193. M. Fisher, The Inordinately Strange Life of Dyce Sombre: Victorian Anglo-Indian MP and Chancery ‘Lunatic’ (London, 2010), p. 1. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 1. Ibid., p. 2.

58 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97

98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117

118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126

East Indians Ibid., p. 3. Ibid. Ibid., p. 1. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 261. Ibid., p. 2. C. Mallampalli, Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India: Trials of an Interracial Family (Cambridge, 2011), p. 4. This would have excluded him from being accepted into the group being constructed as Anglo-Indian in the early 20th century, whose predominant political organisation repeatedly rejected the entry of those of mixed ancestry with Indian fathers. BL, OIOC, P/4089, Report of the Pauperism Committee (Calcutta, 1892), Appendix I, ‘Report of the Statistics Sub-Committee’, p. iv. C. Younger, Wicked Women of the Raj: European Women who Broke Society’s Rules and Married Indian Princes (New Delhi, 2004). Punctuated for emphasis, no direct quotations; Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class under the Raj, pp. 108–9. See E. Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford, 2004), and Mizutani, The Meaning of White. G. Watson, Passing for White: A Study of Racial Assimilation in a South African School (London, 1970). For a depiction of a sati bride in a fictional Anglo-Indian genealogy by an Anglo-Indian writer see A. Sealy, The Trotter-Nama (New York, 1988), p. 128. F. Anthony, Britain’s Betrayal in India: The Story of the Anglo-Indian Community (New Delhi, 1969). Stark, Hostages to India; see also H. Stark, The Call of the Blood, or Anglo-Indians and the Sepoy Mutiny (Rangoon, 1932). Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 186. Roberts, Scenes and Characteristics, Volume III, p. 95. Calcutta Review, vol. 18, p. 283. Dictionary of Indian Biography (New York, 1906), p. 392. Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 45. Ibid. Y. Park and R. Rajan (eds), The Postcolonial Jane Austen (London, 2000), p. 174. Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 195. Second Report on the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 41. Ibid. Ibid. Cited in Alexander’s East India and Colonial and Commercial Journal (London, vol. 1, December 1830–June 1831, April 1831), ‘Injudicious Nature of the Policy of the Honourable East India Company, As exemplified in the Condition of the Indo-Britons’, pp. 467–70. Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, pp. 121–5. BL, OIOC, F/4/1259, ‘Resolutions Passed’, Resolution 10, p. 21. The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australia (London, 1831), vol. 5, New Series, May–August 1831, May, Asiatic Intelligence, Calcutta, ‘The East-Indians’, p. 16. Cited in ibid., p. 14. Cited in ibid., p. 15. Cited in ibid. Cited in ibid. Cited in ibid. Cited in ibid.

East Indians 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140

Original emphasis; cited in ibid. Original emphasis; cited in ibid. Cited in ibid. Cited in ibid. Cited in ibid. Original emphasis; cited in ibid. Original emphasis; cited in ibid. Cited in ibid. Cited in ibid, pp. 15–16. Internal citation of chief justice; cited in ibid. Cited in ibid., p. 16. Cited in ibid. Cited in ibid. Cited in ibid.

59

2

The ‘Eurasian problem’

The poor European and Eurasian population in India are in very special need of the ‘moral police’ which religion supplies. Living often from hand to mouth, surrounded by every temptation to intemperance and vice, scattered so as to be relieved from the influence of the public opinion of their fellows, they are too often on the verge of falling into debauchery, violence, and crime, and of becoming a source of danger to the native population and a public scandal to the British name.1 Theodore Hope, Church and State in India

From soldiers to clerks From the last two decades of the 18th century through the whole of the 19th, people of mixed race experienced economic dislocations, repeated reversals, and a general pattern of decline in their fortunes. The reality of the problems they faced as well as the external construction of a ‘Eurasian problem’ to be solved through technical training for new areas of employment, education aimed at character reformation, and poverty-alleviating philanthropy were inseparable from changing and increasingly racialised attitudes towards them by colonial Britons. Hawes considered the mixed race group to be at most a ‘reluctant community’, who would have preferred inclusion amongst colonial Britons. Nevertheless, the introduction of discriminatory measures by the East India Company caused an economic dislocation, which contributed to increasingly negative and racialised constructions of those of mixed race, providing the impetus for the political expression of a growing sense of separate group identity. The early petitions articulated this self-perceived and de facto ‘groupness’, even whilst often taking the form of boundary-blurring efforts to regain a social, economic, and legal position more proximate to their paternal forebears. What was to be constructed in the 19th century as the ‘Eurasian problem’ and attributed to flaws intrinsic to the group itself, and its supposedly immoral origins, was created by changes in Company policy and a hardening of British attitudes against interracial sex. The earliest Company policy of effectively incentivising interracial unions between its servants and soldiers and local Indian or mixed race (predominantly

The ‘Eurasian problem’

61

Catholic) women was decisively reversed by a series of measures introduced in the last two decades of the 18th century. Writing in 1944, Owen Snell listed: the 1786 order preventing children ‘of the Upper Orphanage school at Calcutta … from proceeding to England to complete their education and thus qualifying for the covenanted services’; the 1791 order prohibiting ‘the Indian born sons of Britishers … from being employed in the Civil, Military and Marine Services of the Company’; and the 1795 order disbarring ‘all persons not descended from European parents on both sides [from service] in the army except as fifers, bandsmen, drummers and farriers’.2 In fact, the Company never implemented these rules completely or consistently,3 partly as a result of known exceptions where it was convenient and partly owing to undetected racial passing. Nonetheless, these official prohibitions combined with harsher policing of legal statuses that functioned to mark out mixed race offspring as distinct from their European fathers. Parallel, intertwined, and gradually shifting socioracial attitudes on the part of colonial Britons helped to foster a separate de facto ‘groupness’ for those of mixed race, however they might individually self-identify. Social closure against them, ongoing through the 19th century, encouraged endogamy and boundary-making processes, further subordinating them and placing restrictions on how successful they could be in the careers still open to them. Prominent individuals still defied these trends, such as Mr Kyd the shipbuilder, military men like Skinner, and others who had established mercantile houses at Calcutta – ‘Baretto’s house was considered one of the wealthiest houses in India; besides which there … [were] Lackersteen’s, Brightman’s, and Bruce and Allan’s houses’.4 However, though there would be prominent individual success stories in the future, the relative economic position of those defined as mixed (though not necessarily those who escaped into whiteness through passing) would not again achieve such heights. Many subsequent Anglo-Indian authors would construct their history as one of persisting loyalty in spite of such ill treatment. Echoing the title of Stark’s first communal history,5 Snell emphasised that though mixed race men disbarred from military service had gone over to the service of Indian princes, when the British went to war with the Marathas the ‘call of blood was too strong … [and many] even braved death to rally to the cause of their father’s people in a national crisis’ and were once again rewarded with dismissal and destitution after the conclusion of the conflict.6 Hawes argued that AngloIndian authors constructing their history for the purpose of ‘polemical’ political advocacy postulated ‘a deliberate policy of destruction, formulated by the British and aimed at eroding opportunities for the Anglo-Indian community … [and that] many cases of repression which were cited by Stark and Anthony … [were] misleading’.7 However, the consequences ‘of acute economic depression’ certainly gave rise to political and intellectual responses from those of mixed race.8 Snell alluded to the establishment of ‘schools, by themselves, unaided either by British or Indian’ patrons, and recounted how Henry Louis Vivian ‘Derozio and Ricketts, those giants in the early days of

62

The ‘Eurasian problem’

Anglo-Indian misfortune, appeared on the scene and laboured incessantly for the uplift of their community … [only to be] met with cold neglect and chilly indifference’.9 Two causes were generally cited by the Company and its critics for the measures which created the ‘Eurasian problem’, as it came to be known. First, and denied by the Company itself, was the desire for control of its valuable patronage as an employer. Twentieth-century Anglo-Indians like Kenneth Wallace argued that ‘the Directors of the East India Company … were mere avaricious people, determined to keep the gains to themselves and their own kind, with the result that Eurasians were shut out of the service of their fathers’.10 The Company’s critics in England saw it as a corrupting influence on life at home. The Extraordinary Black Book (1831) stated that: All the salaries in India are on a much more extravagant scale than in England … [for the] 201,477 … Company [servants] … at home and abroad … [Illustrating] the immense value of India patronage, and the wide field it opens for providing for children, relatives, and dependents … [Trade] has never been an object of so much importance as the military appointments to an army of 150,000 men, the filling up of vacancies in the judicial and police departments, and the numerous situations in the collection and expenditure of a revenue of 24 millions per annum … and so early as 1798, it was notorious that a very extensive and systematic traffic was carried on for places in India … and the sale in offices continued by public advertisements … till at last an office was openly established for the sale and purchase of India patronage.11 Desire to fully control these lucrative patronage networks was certainly a, if not the, major reason to attempt to exclude those of mixed race from the Company’s military and civil positions. However, we should not ignore the Company’s own stated reason for attempting to retard the growth of the mixed race group and limit its prospects – the idea that the mixed race group might itself grow into a ‘problem’. The successful slave revolt (1791–1804) in the French Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue (i.e. the Haitian Revolution) was blamed on the mixed race ‘mulattos’, offspring of a white planter class and their slaves who were prominent leaders of the insurrection. 1791 was also the year of the first of the two orders which functioned to prohibit the employment of those of mixed race by the Company. The Company linked the spread of an uncontrolled planter class in the Indian interior, which sought to evade its legal jurisdiction and effective control, with lower classes of poor whites and their mixed race offspring. Increasingly negative attitudes towards those of mixed race were linked to a wider policy aimed at restricting the growth of a settled white population, or any missionary presence, which could alienate its Indian subjects. A trope almost universally applied to those of mixed race was deployed against poorer sections of the planter class: ‘Europeans of the lower order are sometimes apt

The ‘Eurasian problem’

63

to lose all that is good in the European character, and to acquire all that is bad in the native character, in India’.12 So as not to alienate all whites in India a strategy of class-based subdivision distinguished these ‘men who have not the education, feelings and manners of gentlemen’ from ‘settled’ Europeans in general.13 A former indigo planter in Bengal, Andrew Ramsey, contrasted self-asserted paternalism in ‘making the situation of … [his own] ryots as comfortable as possible’, with fellow planters’ ‘oppressions … towards the natives’, singling out ‘a very different class of persons … [namely] countryborn half-castes, and one or two Europeans’.14 British planters could evade Company laws against them owning land through placing the property in the names of their mixed race sons. Ramsey lamented that a ‘white and mixed’ race was growing, who married the ‘daughters of [fellow] indigo planters … or [he added pointedly] any body they can get’.15 The fierce competition amongst often heavily indebted planters, aggravated by land disputes and overlapping agreements with ryots, led ‘to great violence and great oppression … [by] the different indigo planters and their servants … [and] violent affrays … [with] bloodshed and murder frequently occur[ring]’.16 Though such a class- and race-based inflection of the general lawlessness that prevailed is problematic, the violence was all too real and persistent. In 1841 Emily Eden recounted how an indigo planter had: murdered his wife, a girl of sixteen … beat her to death – and, because she was half-caste, the other planters in the neighbourhood helped him to get away … [and he proceeded to France as] the magistrate took no notice of the murder till the papers got hold of it.17 A later attempt in 1847 to make the planter class appear more respectable claimed that the ‘pure English wife’ was coming to replace ‘those wretched incumbrances which here and there still usurp the place of a wife’, i.e. Indian and mixed race women.18 It was argued that such cohabitations or unions had died out in ‘Calcutta and other large stations … as soon as unmarried ladies began to “come out”, from England, but lingered more tenaciously in out districts and isolated Factories’.19 The defence of the planters collectively again deployed rhetorical subdivision, this time into: men of all nations, English, Irish, Scotch, French, Italian and Portuguese, well educated, half educated, and not educated; men with Factories of their own, acting as plenipotentiaries for Calcutta houses, or merely as assistants … with every variety of national temperament, the shrewd North countryman, the impetuous Southron, [and] the unscrupulous Eurasian.20 Essentialised divisions of class, national ethnicity, and race could in this case elevate a group, by denigrating its lower orders in yet another scheme of hierarchical ordering.

64

The ‘Eurasian problem’

It is well to remember that the British conceived of themselves as superior to fellow Europeans. Irish colonial subjects had been so oppressed that it is common to think of them as having being excluded from British conceptions of whiteness. Southern Europeans were certainly inferior in British eyes, and this was increasingly connected with a hierarchical ordering of races amidst the scientific racism of the late 19th century. However, to conceive of the question purely in terms of whiteness is to transpose the specific kind of race thinking in the US context onto a more complex system of ordering premised on British superiority to all the other peoples of the world (for which colour and race were crucially significant markers, but overlapping with bloodlines, nationality, and class as conceived in British terms as a largely immutable category). This goes beyond the mere observance of intersectionality (which is equally present in the attempts to structure societies according to the ‘onedrop rule’) and the point is not to suggest that the result was any less the racial subordination of non-whites, but to recognise the greater complexity and nuances of intersecting and mutually reinforcing British prejudices towards ‘others’. Hindsight might lead us to discount the Company’s claim that it feared a growing mixed race group could threaten its rule. Yet in 1830, when Ricketts’ petition was being considered by British parliamentary committees, the Company’s most vehement opponents still took this perceived threat seriously. They attacked ‘the sinister influence … [and] egregious errors committed by the merchant-legislators’ who had ‘reap[ed] enmity where friendship might have awaited them, and a source of consternation where, by the adoption of judicious measures, they might have formed the most powerful instruments of support’.21 The Company was warned to study: the case of South America … [where] the malign policy of Spain, which, severing the interests of the Creole from that of the government he contributed to maintain, gave rise to a deadly enmity which has terminated in its total overthrow. The similarity of circumstances … existing between the Creole of the East with the same class in South America … victims of the same species of injustice and cruelty, [and] the same arrogance … In the same way it is usual to encourage erroneous impressions as to the future destiny of the Indo-Briton. The pride of his oppressors recoils at the idea of his ultimately attaining to a station of rank and independence … neither will they admit the probability, because they tremble at it, that men of lofty and commanding intellect may at length spring up among the race they continue so vitally to injure – that the genius of a Bolivar may yet arise.22 This would not have seemed far-fetched in light of the evidence that a mixed race military man like Skinner was popular and influential enough to ‘raise … 10,000 men at any time’.23 Such men, often conversant in Persian and Indian languages, who had served native princes alongside French

The ‘Eurasian problem’

65

mercenaries like Benoit de Boigne, had, through their defection to the British at crucial moments, given the Company an unwelcome reminder of the tenuous nature of its military supremacy. The 1st Horse or Skinner’s Horse, also known as ‘the yellow boys’, was incorporated into the Company’s armies and still exists as an Indian Army Armoured Corps. The Company’s prohibitions had caused such potentially dangerous men to enter the service of Indian princes, and even though their defection to the British side had reversed the trend, that it had taken place at all could not be forgotten. The political organisation of the mixed group and Ricketts’ politically embarrassing and materially threatening 1829 petition to Parliament may only have served, in the eyes of its directors, to retrospectively justify the actions the Company had taken against the group a few decades before. The Company’s critics emphasised how ‘Indo-Britons[’] … claims to political importance … are rejected totally, [and] are … treated with derision’.24 The Company’s own arguments were inverted by suggesting that it was the ill-treatment of ‘Indo-Britons’ who had been placed: virtually in a state of slavery … [as] outcasts from the parents to whom they owe the curse of their existence … [which had impelled them] to break through the first and strongest law of their nature, and to look with abhorrence, scorn, and even horror, on the being who had nurtured them thus bringing about the very threat the Company had sought to prevent.25 Of course what the Company was suggesting was that their earlier change in policy had disincentivised the further growth of a mixed race group into a class sufficiently numerous to challenge its rule by combining with either rebellious natives or uncontrollable white planters. Critics also perceived the Company’s own inversion of logic, whereby ‘the Indo-Briton … [was] reviled, as if he himself were the author of his degradation … and the vices into which by necessity he is drawn … [were] recorded against him with fiendlike malevolence’.26 By contrast they placed the blame squarely upon the Company, as: The lowest offices of the state are deemed superior to them … [and] deprived of every stimulus to exertion, they sink under the utter misery which oppresses them … overwhelmed with calamity! No race of men ever experienced the imputation of so much obloquy. Their very name has become a jibe, a mark of detestation, a brand of infamy! Every-where they are shunned, – scouted, from their rigid, merciless persecutors, to the lowest tribes of their native soil … The very hand which should have been stretched forward to succor him … inhumanly withdraws itself … [To] the servile and hideous systems of policy brought into operation by that fraternity of chartered monopolists is owing all the unmitigated sufferings of this deeply-injured body of men.27

66

The ‘Eurasian problem’

Such impassioned rhetoric may have been justified, but was significantly overstated in economic terms. Later accounts suggest that the Company’s ban on military employment for those of mixed race had never been completely effective. In 1890, Mr Thomas McGuire, Superintendent of the District Charitable Society’s alms-house in Calcutta, reflected on ‘over 40 years’ of acquaintance with the group especially during his previous career in the army prior to 1875:28 there were many Eurasians in my regiment … fully equal to Europeans – in fact some of the smartest and best educated non-commissioned officers and men in the corps were Eurasians, or, as I have been accustomed to call them, East Indians. In my regiment there were … nearly 200 Eurasians out of the 1,000 men. The outlet of the [British] army is closed [to them now] … When I was serving with native regiments, about one-half the bandsmen were Eurasians. The band was the only portion of these native regiments in which Eurasians served.29 Nonetheless, the effects of the attempted ban on military service both aggravated unemployment and caused a significant displacement of the mixed race group into Company and private clerkships. In spite of the 1791 prohibition supposedly applying equally to civil occupations in the Company, this was hardly enforced in subordinate posts amidst increasing demand for those able to read and write in English, as the Mughal-inherited reliance on Persian in Company record keeping declined. These subordinate clerkships came to be known as the ‘Uncovenanted Service’ to distinguish them from those who came out from Britain in superior positions (signing a covenant of service),30 who, in the 20th century, were often referred to by Domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians as the ‘covenanted-wallahs’.31 The House of Lords Report following Ricketts’ petition also furnishes multiple testimonies of the predominance of those of mixed race in the lower rungs of Company administration. They were ‘employed as clerks and copyists to a very considerable extent’ across ‘the several departments of government’, with prominent individuals such as the ‘registrar in the territorial department, a Mr. Francis’ considered ‘a very superior man’ despite being ‘a half-caste’ and earning an estimated ‘five hundred to seven hundred rupees a month’.32 Ricketts himself was the ‘deputy registrar in the office of the Board of Customs in Calcutta’.33 Ricketts responded to questions on East Indian employment by asserting that they ‘are principally employed in subordinate capacities in the public offices of government … As clerks in all the different departments’ and in merchants’ houses, and in ‘very rare cases’ could earn as much ‘as four and five hundred rupees a month’ with most earning much less.34 He estimated that in Calcutta alone ‘there must be about 1,000 or more of them, altogether … in the different public and private offices’.35 Of these Ricketts thought there were ‘about 500’ whose ‘talents’ and capacity for holding ‘situations of trust and responsibility’ was ‘not brought into proper

The ‘Eurasian problem’

67

36

exercise’ owing to official prejudices. For most of the mixed race group the result of the (only partially enforced) Company prohibitions was to create an upper limit on their aspirations, to concentrate them in subordinate positions which were less valuable as sources of patronage, and to create a very considerable problem of unemployment. The process of turning the group into a useful, and mostly cheap, class of clerks, fuelled, and intertwined with, processes of social closure, with both resulting in an impetus towards group formation, greater endogamy, and political organisation.

Malcolm and modernity Sir John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay (1827–30), was ahead of his time in calling for Indianisation of the Company’s administration. He earnestly desired to promote English and scientific and technical education in his province, and argued forcefully that without an occupational outlet, the knowledge and training in the schools and institutions that had grown up under Company rule, would be ‘likely to prove a source of discontent … & the labour & money expended in Education will be worse than wasted, for it will impart information & knowledge which if not secured to the aid of Government will be against it’.37 Malcolm’s rhetoric was embedded in a series of discourses and modalities used to justify and strengthen imperial rule, regarding Indians and those of mixed race as ideal subjects for ‘moral improvement and elevation’, ‘character’ formation, and ‘the imparting of a knowledge of … surgery … science … [and] all branches of useful knowledge’.38 He was particularly pleased to note ‘that several of the natives who have been educated & now belong to the Establishment [i.e. the “Engineer Institution”] are Brahmins of learning & respectability, who are alike distinguished for knowledge in Sanscrit & for their attainment in Science’.39 A student of Persian and Indian languages, and author of voluminous histories, Malcolm balanced a gentleman-scholar-administrator Orientalist’s romantic conception of the value of the preservation of Sanskritic learning with an unbridled faith in the promise of English as a medium for scientific and technological education, striking a far less chauvinist tone than Macaulay’s infamous and more consequential Anglicist Minute on Education five years later. Projecting British conceptions of class onto Indian society, he judged Indians of ‘Birth and Rank … most politic to attach … through the means of employment in the Public Service’.40 As holders of social prestige and power, the loyalty and support of such men would help to secure Company rule. Malcolm hoped to attract them to the Revenue services, expressing ‘no doubt [that] we shall be early able to elevate the Natives in this branch still higher, and to employ them as assistants’.41 He argued that they would have ‘a power of adapting or of modifying … [the Company’s systems] to local circumstances far beyond what a European could ever attain’.42 The recruitment of socially elite Indians alongside East Indians at a young age, to undergo a

68

The ‘Eurasian problem’

gradual assent through merit (rather than seniority), would combat existing British patronage networks and excessive salaries. Boys ‘might be taken as young as ten or twelve’ and recruited in collaboration with the schools that had been established during Company rule.43 Spartan conditions and lower remuneration would be offset by temporary ‘Class of Merit’ bonuses, and medals ‘which though of trifling cost … [would] be greatly prized’.44 These plans had not been embraced by the Court of Directors, and Malcolm had been battling ‘subordinate persons in office [who] had before indulged [hopes] of the speedy rise of their relatives and connections’.45 His lengthy valedictory minute was a last attempt to win Company support and a plea for his successor to carry on his work. Writing at that critical juncture of 1830 when the early petitioning politics of the mixed race group brought matters to a head, it is perhaps unsurprising that they would feature rather prominently in Malcolm’s final thoughts on his time in office. He observed that in the Bombay presidency the group’s horizons were: much limited to employment in the public offices as writers & accountants as sub assistants & Dressers in Hospitals, or in the Quarter Master Generals or Survey branch as subordinate assistants … very respectable lines of life, but not calculated to raise a community to that rank in society to which every class has a right to aspire.46 A petition from ‘the association of East Indians at Bombay’ revealed them to be as politicised as their counterparts in the Bengal and Madras presidencies.47 Malcolm opined that their ‘proceedings have hitherto been marked by moderation and good sense; & they will, I make no doubt, aided by the liberal policy of Government succeed in their rational & laudable means of gradually raising the community to which they belong’.48 Malcolm had directed several measures ‘recently … carried into effect that tend to open new paths to this class of our subjects … [and, he hoped, would] still further extend their means of employment’.49 Specifically he mentioned ‘admitting them as clerks & pursers in the Marine; [and] placing them at the Mint to be instructed in working a steam Engine & in the Dockyard to be educated as Joiners’.50 Malcolm believed ‘their education’ and ‘acquaintance from infancy with the English language’ gave ‘them many advantages over the natives engaged in similar pursuits’, enabling them ‘to refer to every improvement of art & science in Europe’ which ‘until translations are greatly multiplied must remain almost a dead letter to the other inhabitants of India’.51 Invoking a typical trope for the mixed, he hoped East Indians, whom he also supposed to generally possess ‘knowledge of the Native languages & of the manners and usages of India’, could ‘become a useful & connecting link between the Europeans & Natives’.52 He delighted in ‘dwell[ing] on such happy results’ that seemed to embody the intersecting purposes of his great plan:53

The ‘Eurasian problem’

69

East Indians educated by officers employed on Surveys & by the Engineer Institution are now teaching natives with the greatest success in the Provinces; and … accurate surveys are carrying on at very small comparative expense … This survey which some years ago cost nearly a Lac of Rupees & latterly upwards of 30,000, is now carried on by two well qualified East Indians & a number of natives at an expense of about 6,000 Rupees per mensem.54 Sir Alexander Johnston similarly celebrated their role in the Trigonometric Survey of India begun in 1802, with the ‘Surveyor-General of India’ having informed him that he had ‘employed a great many … [East Indians] to survey the country … [and] to collect for him the most valuable materials relative to the history of the people’.55 Thus they were simultaneously agents of furthering the historical modality in the colonial ‘conquest of knowledge’.56 The Bombay ‘East Indians (or Country borns)’ petitioned Malcolm for assistance in establishing themselves ‘as farmers’ aiming to produce ‘by the application of superior intelligence … [and] improvements in agriculture … out of the power of the Native Cultivator’, a variety of crops, and which they argued would benefit ‘the Ryuts’ by their ‘example’.57 Ancillary to agriculture and horticulture they aimed to develop ‘Mechanical Trades, Arts, Manufactures and Commerce’.58 This was calculated to appeal to Malcolm’s conceptions of progress, aligning with those modalities of colonial knowledge generation and improvement which he earnestly promoted and fitting well into his broader plans for development. He accordingly supported the scheme by sending didactic works to furnish a new library (to be followed by a lithographic press) and conditionally made over a palace at Phoolshair (near Pune), ‘rent free for ten years’, its accompanying buildings and 42 acres of land, including already present fruit orchards.59 Though it had been conceived as a colony of farmers and their apprentices, Malcolm’s substantial backing shaped the project in line with his own priorities to create something more like the ‘excellent school of instruction’ set up by the ‘Engineer corps’.60 He hoped Phoolshair would ‘soon become the same, and promote knowledge in all useful arts of life’.61 However, Malcolm’s paternalism intersected with other attitudes, hinting at the possible environmental degeneration of a group ‘a shade inferior to Europeans with whom they have to compete in energy of character & knowledge’, and cautioning the: great importance to the lower classes of this community to preserve … simplicity of clothing & Diet that approximates their mode of living much more to the Natives than the Europeans … [which would] enable them to keep their places as mechanics and workmen in every branch of arts & manufacture.62 They were to be dissuaded from imagining that a secure position could:

70

The ‘Eurasian problem’ be attained through meetings, speeches or memorials, or any grant of privileges or any equality of rights which can be conferred on this class … [Instead] they should be encouraged to look & aided to attain, through persevering industry, [and] frugality … in all the toil & hazard of agricultural & commercial pursuits, as well as in the various branches of art & science … [which would] lead to the attainment of a wealth & reputation which will soon give them a weight and consideration in the community which it is not in their power to obtain by any other means.63

Such comments anticipated much of the later discourses on the ‘problem’ of a group unable or unwilling to ascertain its proper subordinate class status,64 the bounded realities of sensible (technical and mechanical) occupations to which it should realistically aspire, and wedded to profligacy in its attempts to ape European status by seeking to replicate its patterns and standards of life.

Schools and orphanages Orphanages and orphan schools were one of the earliest responses to the perceived problem of mixed race children of the Company’s armies. In addition to the Upper and Lower Orphan schools set up by the Major-General Kirkpatrick there was the European Female Orphan Asylum and the Lawrence Asylum. John Kiernander, the first Protestant missionary to Bengal who arrived in 1758, established a mission school, attracting ‘174 children, some Bengalis, some Armenians, but chiefly Anglo-Indians and Indo-Portuguese. To such an extent did the latter prevail, that Portuguese was the classical language of the school.’65 The author of the Calcutta Review may have revealed more about their own moral attitudes almost a century later when declaring that Kiernander’s ‘heart warmed towards’ the: very lowest class of East Indians, who were uncared for, were out-casts, had no status, and were, in fact, in this light, worse than the members of the very lowest of the Hindu castes … yet Christians, have a double hold on Christian sympathy, assistance and philanthropic effort … innocent of all crime, yet the living monuments of the crimes of others.66 Several such mission schools, alongside the Charity School which was merged into the Free School, Mrs Ewart’s School for Girls and La Martiniere were all listed as charitable institutions that catered to East Indians. However, finding the existing provision insufficient, Ricketts hosted a meeting on 1 March 1823 with ‘DaCosta, Kerr, Sutherland, Heatly, Johnston, Reed and Sturmer’, which: resolved, “That we form ourselves into a society, to promote the education of our children, by projecting an institution, which shall be managed by a committee chosen from among the body of Parents, Guardians and

The ‘Eurasian problem’

71

Friends”. Thus was laid the foundation of an institution by East Indians for their own community, and in this act they were unassisted by any who did not belong to that community.67 Designated the ‘Parental Academic Institution’,68 the school struggled financially until receiving a more generous endowment from Captain Doveton, for whom it was renamed Doveton College prior to 1855. Lord Canning, the last Company governor-general and the first viceroy (1856–62), had seen European poverty as ‘a glaring reproach to the Government’.69 In the wake of the Great Rebellion of 1857, religious authorities and the post-Company state increasingly turned their attention towards the group’s needs, which they felt had been neglected by the Company, looking for ways to solve what was increasingly termed the ‘Eurasian problem’. Christian clergy and educationalists in particular highlighted their worsening situation and sought to expand and build upon existing charitable provision for their education. Bishop Cottons School in Simla was established in 1859. Such new educational establishments were added to the earlier orphan schools and other institutions, increasing the range of free, subsidised, and fee-paying provisions to cover more of the socioeconomic spectrum of what was now often constructed as the conjoined ‘domiciled community’ of ‘poor whites’ and Eurasians. Some new educational establishments set up around the same time were aimed at colonial Britons, rather than being originally intended for those of mixed race, and the sector was designated as European or Anglo-Indian schools. Anglo-Indian being used here in its original sense of referring to Britons of long residence in India, rather than its state-sanctioned transferal to the mixed race group in the 1911 Census. One observer disparagingly commented ‘that there are many more important things to be attended to before the question of establishing a system of Etons and Harrows in the hills for Eurasians can be seriously taken up’.70 As Buettner observes, sending children, especially boys, to study in Britain after a certain age was an important marker for colonial Britons to establish a clear demarcation between their status and that of those domiciled in India.71 She persuasively argues that whites domiciled in India were regarded as racially suspect, i.e. probable carriers of concealed Indian ancestry. This is amply attested to in other even earlier sources such as a colonial anthropologist in 1898 who asserted that ‘of 11 “Europeans” who were under treatment’ at ‘the Government Leper Hospital at Madras … in the years 1890–97’ and who were staying in the portion of accommodation ‘reserved for European and Eurasian lepers … all save two had their birth-place in India or Burma, so that few of them could have been of pure or unmixed European parentage’.72 Nonetheless there was a financial necessity for the more elite schools, such as St Joseph’s College, Darjeeling, to admit children suspected of having Indian ancestry, even as they struggled to attract British children whose families were put off by the presence of anyone suspected of being mixed race. This bears close analogy to the ‘putatively White buffer schools’ in South

72

The ‘Eurasian problem’

Africa where principals knowingly engaged in a similarly difficult balancing act, though under Apartheid the designation of being a ‘White school’ was state-sanctioned whilst in India it was only socioracially policed.73 More opaque and implicit processes of non-state boundary making in India were intertwined with a more granulated set of intersecting class and racial attitudes. Some colonial Britons clinging to assertions of a superordinate non-domiciled status were too poor to send their children to the UK, whilst a few Domiciled Europeans and Eurasians were sufficiently wealthy to do so. Thus, preservation of social capital by Britons was more tenuous and consequently their anxieties over the dividing lines more acute. Blunt and Mizutani have indicated how domicile was coming to replace legitimacy as a crucial ordering principle of difference. It was in this context that the mixed alongside poor whites were often conjoined as constituting a ‘problem’ – morally, socially, and in terms of safeguarding British racial prestige and thereby colonial rule. Charity, education, and (gender-segregated technical or domestic) training for these groups became the major colonial preoccupation and presumed remedy. Private philanthropy sought colonial state backing and insofar as it was received the considerations of safeguarding British racial prestige and thereby colonial rule were undoubtedly a more significant component of the government’s calculations. Around 1879 Joseph Baly, Archdeacon of Calcutta (1872–83), ‘was charged with the preparation of a comprehensive scheme of education for the children of the poorer and middle classes of Europeans and Eurasians’.74 Critics of Baly’s 1880 report asserted that everything he was ‘now saying about schools for Eurasians and “Mean Whites” has been said already far more forcibly and succinctly by Inspectors of Schools and Directors of Public Instruction’.75 Interestingly, Baly subsumed those of mixed ancestry under the term ‘Europeans’, whose unemployed were, he suggested: very largely composed – (1) of the idle, improvident and intemperate who will not work; (2) of the sick, weakly and ignorant who cannot; (3) of those who have lost the employment which they had through their own fault … [and was] disposed to think that when these three classes are eliminated, the number of steady, sober, honest, industrious and ablebodied Europeans who cannot find employment in India is comparatively small.76 He did not think their numbers sufficient to justify the raising of European regiments in India to alleviate their unemployment, and though suggesting it was unnecessary ‘to create new employments’, opined that existing ‘trades [such] as papering’ were particularly suited to the ‘special capacity’ of this class.77 What Baly had failed to recognise was that the mixed race group had once again suffered a serious occupational displacement, as their stereotypical role for much of the 19th century as desk-bound clerks came to an end amidst competition from Indians educated in English.

The ‘Eurasian problem’

73

From clerks to railwaymen Clerkships seem to have been the occupation most universally associated with the East Indians in the first half of the 19th century. In 1852 the uncovenanted were said to comprise: many … Mussulmans and Hindus of divers castes … many are East Indians, born and educated entirely in the country; and some few … Englishmen, who have obtained employment under government by merit or favour, but, probably, after trying their hands at one or two other professions, only to meet there with failure or disappointment.78 South Asianists are usually familiar with the instrumental tropes used to denigrate Indian clerks, and especially the so-called ‘Bengali baboo’. To ensure the educated ‘native’ posed no threat to British pretensions to superiority, such Indian (and stereotypically Bengali) clerks were constructed as effeminate, lacking initiative, and yet capable of cunning and calculation. What is less well known is that such tropes had similarly been applied to those of mixed race. An author in 1878 commented: We are aware that the Anglo-Indians are blamed for their predilection to desk-work, or as some call it ‘quill driving’. It may be mere quill driving or copying of papers; but we know by experience that in many instances, it is not the mere mechanical use of pen and hand only, but purely intellectual brain work as well.79 Such defensiveness indicates the perception of numerous slights concerning the merits of work with which the group had become associated. However the author also asserted that among clerks ‘natives … [were now] preponderating, more especially the Brahmin class, often to the detriment of more deserving Anglo-Indians’.80 Also arguing that ‘since the general introduction of printing, the occupation of scribe … [was] all but gone – [and it was] high time that the Anglo-Indians’ sought other forms of employment.81 So the fulfilment of Malcolm’s hopes for the furtherance of Anglophone education amongst Indians, which was particularly taken up by Bengalis, resulted in a second great economic dislocation for the mixed race group. The 1892 Pauperism Committee Report had compiled statistics from various sources showing the relative and absolute decline in government clerkships in the second half of the 19th century. In 1840 they recorded 683 ‘Indo-Europeans’ holding 99.6 percent of government clerkships.82 In 1850 their number had increased to 748, but fallen proportionally to 73.4 percent. By 1860 a precipitous decline was evident, numerically and proportionally, to 443 or 38.3 percent, a trend that continued until 1870 by which time there were only 342 or 20.6 percent. In the following two decades until 1890 their number grew once more in absolute terms (to 469) but continued to fall proportionally (to

The ‘Eurasian problem’

74

Table 2.1 Higher appointments of deputy magistrates and deputy collectors Year

Indo-Europeans

Natives

Percentage of Indo-Europeans

1862 1870 1880 1890

67 53 42 35

145 142 176 261

31.6 27.2 19.3 11.8

Source: cited in the Report of the Pauperism Committee (Calcutta, 1892), p. 6.

18.2 percent). In the ‘higher appointments of Deputy Magistrates and Deputy Collectors … from 1862 onwards’ the trend was consistent in both absolute and proportional terms (Table 2.1). In the Subordinate Judicial Service, in the civil list of 1862, there were 23 IndoEuropeans and 56 Indians ‘holding appointments with salaries from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 250 a month’, and by 1890 there were 255 Indians and no Indo-Europeans at all, which was attributed to the introduction of competitive examinations.83 The other end of the socioeconomic spectrum is apparent in the 1898 data on southern Eurasians compiled by the colonial anthropologist, Edgar Thurston, which drew heavily on the work of the 1891 Census commissioner. The Madras sample of 130 included 33 fitters, alongside railwaymen, smiths, bakers, boarding-housekeepers, carpenters, evangelists, mechanics, painters, reporters, sadlers, schoolmasters, and stereotypers.84 The Calicut sample of 96 Eurasians earned ‘a modest livelihood, ranging from Rs. 35 to Rs. 12 per mensem’ working as bandsmen, compositors, police constables, bootmakers, copyists, weavers, and petition writers, etc.85 Thirty-nine of these were tailors, tailoring being ‘therefore, to the poor Eurasian of Calicut what “fitting” is to those of Madras’.86 Such southern populations revealed a wider array of less wellpaid, but more technical and craft-based occupations than appears to have been common in the rest of India. However, these sample groups were still predominantly urban dwelling and enjoyed a better standard of living than their neighbours. Thurston quoted Stuart’s judgement that in ‘elementary education, they are more advanced than any other class of the community, and compare favourably with the population of any country in the world’.87 The initial stages of constructing the railway and telegraph created openings for a large number of lucrative technical jobs, but better-paid positions were usually filled by imported experts. Telegraph signallers were ‘brought over from England on terms’ thought sufficient to attract them, though there was concern that: £120 a year may [have] seem[ed] a large sum to a young gentleman in England, but on arrival … he … [would discover] his mistake. He … [would] find that £10 a month … [would] scarcely suffice to support him in respectability as a gentleman … [However, it was conceded that it would be] an injustice … [and] a sweeping condemnation against the

The ‘Eurasian problem’

75

entire East Indian community … to remedy the evil by importing signallers [sic.] from Europe at higher rates of wages.88 The Report of the Railway Commission in March 1846 discussed the: difficulty and expense of securing competent and trustworthy engineers … [and advocated it] be overcome … by sending a few native or East Indian young men to England to be trained, until some engines are ready to be sent to India; upon their return in charge of such engines, and under the supervision of one or two English engineers, there would be laid the foundation for the training of as many native engine drivers as might be required. Such native youths … should not only be instructed to drive an engine, but to repair them.89 ‘In 1867’ on the ‘Railways at Howrah … many Europeans and Eurasians … services were dispensed with to make room for native clerks on smaller salaries’.90 Nonetheless, the 1892 Pauperism Report revealed the growing significance of railways as a source of employment. A letter from the agent and manager of the Madras Railway stood out by revealing they employed two Domiciled European women and 22 Eurasian women (in addition to 111 Domiciled European men and 845 Eurasian men).91 Yet as far as the committee were concerned, in their focus on Eurasian poverty in Calcutta, railway employment provided not a solution, but a problem. The ‘disastrous effects of ’ Indian competition had: been mainly warded off by the new field of employment offered by the railways. The railway authorities all warn us that this opening will in future be closed, and that if anything they will send a surplus to compete with the city populations in other fields of employment.92 By which they meant that the class of Europeans and Eurasians on the railways were becoming self-replicating, their children (who would increasingly be provided for in railway schools) would succeed their parents and might be too numerous for the available openings in the railways. Thus a committee concerned with reducing unemployment constructed sources of employment as part of a Malthusian problem which might compound the group’s urban unemployment. In their concern for restricting the group’s demographic growth they echoed the Company’s earlier objectives. In anticipation of Thurston, they prescribed the Malthusian preventative checks of pre-marital celibacy, combined with postponement of marriages and conjugal restraint based upon family income.

Objects of charity The construction of the ‘Eurasian problem’ as one of charity, placed particular emphasis on population control. The 1892 Pauperism Committee

76

The ‘Eurasian problem’

interviewed various witnesses on the subject of early or child marriage amongst the poorest classes of Indo-Europeans in Calcutta. The overall pattern revealed girls were generally marrying in their early to mid-teens and boys in their late teens or early 20s. Mr. Wyllie McCready, Inspector of Police, feeling unable to distinguish between Catholics who were Indian and Eurasian, recounted having ‘known men of 19 years of age marry girls of 13, and [who were] at 25 … broken down and encumbered with large families’.93 Speaking specifically of Eurasians, Reverand Father Nicholas Hengesch estimated men married ‘at about 23 or 24; the women at about 16 or 17’.94 Robert Joseph Carbery, vice-president of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, thought that ‘early … marriages are on the increase … [with] boys marry[ing] at about 15 or 16, and the girls at a younger age – 14 or 15’.95 This empirical data, collected by the Statistics Sub-Committee, was taken as evidence of a thriftless and improvident disposition of character, to be juxtaposed with ideal virtues that ought to be cultivated (through education and religion) as the solution. Thurston similarly blamed Eurasian poverty primarily on premature marriages which resulted in ‘a plethora of children, brought up in poverty’.96 Of 100 married males Thurston found that 74 had been ‘married at the average age of 22–23’, noting that in only three cases amongst the 74 were there no children, with one couple having had ten children.97 Thurston waxed Malthusian on ‘the number of mouths to be fed … and, whether the rent be paid or no, clothes must of necessity be forthcoming – no mere dhoti, langu-ti, or sari, but clothes of European device’.98 Claiming that Eurasians were often discharged from government service under ‘Rule 39 … that “it is undesirable that a man, who is in a chronic and hopeless condition of indebtedness, should be retained”’, he cited five years of insolvency court records which suggested that about 18 percent of the petitions had been presented by Eurasians (out of all proportion to the size of the group).99 Thurston made Eurasians the object of eugenics, anthropometrics, and phrenology – pseudosciences then interwoven with colonial anthropology – and took seriously the suggestion of the 1891 Census commissioner that ‘Eurasians seem to be peculiarly liable to insanity and leprosy’.100. Nonetheless, his empirical data on Eurasians in the south seems to indicate a population more enmeshed in the local society and economy and less reliant on the colonial state than their northern counterparts were to become. Thurston also cited the Census commissioner’s remarks that: there is only one Eurasian in every 1,337 of the population of the Madras Presidency, and it is more probable that a considerable proportion of those returned as Eurasians are in reality pure Natives who have embraced the Christian religion, taken an English or Portuguese name, and adopted the European dress and mode of living.101

The ‘Eurasian problem’

77

Thurston added that ‘it has been pointed out to me that (as newspaper advertisements testify) … some employers will take Eurasian clerks into their service, but not Native Christians’.102 Seeing the mixed race group through the prism of charity and the ‘Eurasian problem’ often meant taking anecdotal evidence of inconstancy in work habits and alcoholism as representative of the group more generally. Multifarious trajectories of various individual cases contributed to racialised and class-based perceptions of character flaws intrinsic to the group. One such case involved a 32-year-old son of ‘a European soldier’ and a ‘Eurasian’ mother, who after attending ‘the Moorgehatta Orphanage and then … the Calcutta Free School’ left school able to read but not write and was placed by his school at 18 in a ‘fitting shop on the Eastern Bengal Railways … [on] Rs. 10’ per month.103 His other occupations included joining the circus, working as a barman in ‘a native liquor shop’, ‘selling cigars on commission and playing in the “Foo Foo band”’, ‘ordinary coolies’s work’ sporadically ‘on the jetties at night’, and a temporary appointment ‘on the Tirhoot State Railway as a second guard on Rs. 40 a month’.104 He was now reduced to the position of sustaining himself off of the leavings of gentlemen’s tiffin (lunch) boxes, sold by their Indian servants at Dalhousie Square, ‘a good deal of ’ which were ‘untouched’ and could be had for one or two pice.105 A former student of the relatively elite La Martiniere school, who had been ‘born dumb’ and remained so until age 12, worked for the Hackney Carriage Department, the Customs Preventative Service, the Marine and Army Clothing Accounts office, ‘on coasting steamers’ and as ‘book-keeper to a firm of Shipping agents in Liverpool’ in Britain, before working his passage back to India, and serving in the Commissariat Department in the ‘NorthWest frontier’ and in ‘Burmah’, but was later ‘sentenced to three month’s rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs. 150 for the theft of a watch’ and thereafter ‘became more or less addicted to drinking’.106 Such individual failings were being taken to symbolise collective tropes, functioning as markers of asserted cultural distance from the self-perceived qualities of the better classes of Britons (metropolitan and colonial). These discourses were deeply embedded and could therefore shape the views of genuinely humane, hardworking, and philanthropic individuals. Back at the imperial metropole the poor and unemployed were also being othered and rhetorically dehumanised. Whilst rhetorical constructions of poor whites in Britain could be similarly racialised, eugenicist and Malthusian, unsurprisingly this was even more the case for those of mixed race. Despite the question of how representative the individual cases in the report are, what is usefully revealed is the significance of a sizable number of unemployed, underemployed, and low-income mixed race people in Calcutta. Poverty appears to have further blurred the boundaries that colonial Britons sought to demarcate and wealthier members of the mixed race group liked to emphasise to distance themselves not only from other groups but from the least fortunate members of their own group. It does appear to be the case that intermarriage

78

The ‘Eurasian problem’

across boundaries was more usual at the bottom end of the socioeconomic spectrum. The supposed endogamy of the mixed race group or of the domiciled more generally in relation to superordinate colonial Britons was never absolute or uncontested, but intermarriage across other boundaries, with all Indian communities, but especially with Indian Christians and Goans with Portuguese names, was not unusual for those engaged in a more challenging struggle for existence. For those considered by religious authorities to be ‘the poorer classes of Eurasian … work[ing] generally as gunners on the jetties’ doing ‘temporary work … [which was] very poorly paid … very hard and dangerous, exposed to frequent accidents, such as losing fingers’ the notion of preserving social capital through group endogamy was less meaningful. Calcutta was also a more diverse location in terms of non-indigenous groups with whom to socialise or marry. One police inspector observed ‘many cases where Chinamen have married Christian women’, and though he did not believe Eurasians ever married ‘Natives’ he noted that ‘there are some cases where Natives have European names’ and among Roman Catholics he felt unable to distinguish whether they were ‘Eurasians or Native Christians’.107 There were also a group of ‘West Indians, [who] with a few exceptions … [were] pretty well off … [being] employed as gunners on railways on salaries varying from Rs. 30 to Rs. 70 a month’.108 Selfidentifying Anglo-Indians who attend worldwide (diaspora) reunions today include those who descend from intermarriages with the Jewish, Chinese, and West Indian communities in South Asia and particularly Calcutta.109 A list of issues raised by employers about the problems they encountered in hiring Eurasians relegated the most explicit acknowledgement of racial discrimination to the end: Lastly, attention should be drawn to the preference for being served by Europeans, which is believed to obtain among many of the customers of European shops and houses. Some of the firms … pointed out that they are compelled to study the wishes of their constituents in this respect.110 This specific comment came from ‘Moore & Co. (Drapers, Silk-mercers, & c.)’, who despite employing 23 ‘domiciled Europeans and Eurasians of whom 16 … [were] females and 7 males’ and finding the work of many domiciled women ‘exemplary in every sense’ and being willing to hire ‘more Eurasian girls’, noted candidly that there was ‘no disguising the fact that in a business like ours, where so many customers are ladies, there is a decided preference for European attendance’.111 Such discrimination as a cause of Eurasian difficulties was consistently underplayed or ignored. Despite such sentiments the much larger department store ‘Messrs. Whiteaway, Laidlaw and Company’ reported employing ‘20 males and 34 females’ from among the domiciled.112 By the early 20th century frank expressions of racism among colonial Britons became more opaque, especially in public documents and speech, but incidents in everyday life continued – such as colonial British women storming out of shops in disgust because of the

The ‘Eurasian problem’

79

113

presence of an Anglo-Indian female customer. However, the intermediary position of the mixed between Indian and European competitors for employment also garnered them more sympathy than unemployed whites in Britain. Indo-Europeans were acknowledged to be squeezed between competition with the poorest Indians and with imported working- and lower-middle-class Britons. This raised the issue of who the group was and to whom their standards of living and economic aspirations should be compared. Revealingly, Indian competition was perceived to be their primary problem, and one that afforded some excuse for supplementing their low incomes through charity (considered counterproductive in an English setting). However, other problems were placed primarily on the faults perceived within the group itself. In an unconsciously racialised construction, the ‘second prominent cause of destitution … [was] to be found in the deficiencies of character, which are largely traceable among Indo-Europeans’.114 Ignoring the aforementioned discrimination they faced (which was presented as an afterthought) these were taken to explain why even the best educated were so often unable to find employment in British colonial department stores and other occupations for which ‘a very large number of employers of labour … [requiring] assistants and employés with European habits [to] import their assistants from Europe at great expense and risk as regards their health’.115 Employers depicted Indo-Europeans as: 1) ‘Wanting in stability’, always looking to leave their current job for a better one, and thereby alienating employers; 2) ‘Imbued with too good an opinion of their own qualifications and given to claim a higher remuneration than they are worth’; 3) ‘Unwilling to undergo drudgery or do anything approaching menial work’; 4) subject to ‘bad home influences’, and a ‘consequent want of discipline’ (a trope used in this and other contexts in removing children from their parents as fictive orphans); and 5) ‘Improvident and thriftless, especially in contracting marriage’.116 In reality such constructions of the group covered over their devaluation in an evolving socioracial hierarchy of employment which privileged them in relation to Indians and subordinated them to Domiciled Europeans and colonial Britons.

A return to soldiering? Having acknowledged the difficulties faced by the mixed arising from Indian competition and the reluctance of private employers to recruit them, the committee turned to the colonial state for a solution. Its members felt themselves ‘driven to the conclusion that the only one remedy at all adequate to the disease … [was] to provide military employment for the youth of the rising generation as they leave our schools’.117 Rather than approaching the idea ‘from a purely military point of view … The question [they submitted] should first be considered in its social and political aspects’, and that only ‘very overwhelming objections from a military point of view … [could] justify its rejection.’118 They argued that:

80

The ‘Eurasian problem’ Indo-Europeans are obviously marked out by blood and creed as appropriate defenders of the English Government … In pure military qualities the warlike races of India may be their equals or superiors, but no native regiment can be so closely linked to … [us] by interest and sentiment … Military training is one of the best remedies that could be devised for curing the[ir] want of discipline … [and] will check … the improvident marriages … The labour-market, being relieved from the pressure … of those who now receive a charitable education in orphanages and free schools, may prove sufficient to provide employment for those who can pay for their own education in superior schools … [with most of the former] go[ing] straight from school to a training battalion, by which means the pernicious home-influences … would be intercepted … Whatever their other defects … there can be no doubt whatsoever of the[ir] loyalty … [Additionally] the English army in India is expensive … Here on the spot we have a population which … must be a pillar of British rule. Can it be politically wise, right or economical to ignore this resource?119

Advocates of a military solution to the problems of Eurasian employment, both from within and outside of the group, could amass very considerable evidence of their history of, and capacity for, military service. The AngloIndian communal historian Herbert Stark stressed their various roles in the Great Rebellion of 1857, from young trumpeters to ‘the Volunteer Corps at Patna’ and the ‘Uncovenanted men of the Lucknow Volunteer Cavalry’.120 Reflecting on events in 1932 Stark emphasised ‘the amazing way in which Anglo-Indians had risen to the occasion; how they had spontaneously flocked to the Company’s Flag; and how they had acquitted themselves like seasoned soldiers’.121 During the uprising a self-proclaimed ‘Indo-Briton’ wrote to the Daily News, declaring that ‘while the loyal East Indian has always been oppressed’ by the Company ‘my countrymen have always been with the English government … demonstrated by the Eurasians rallying around it, and forming a militia, which has intimidated the thousands of disaffected natives, who might have crushed Madras, while it was protected by only a handful of European soldiers’.122 One oft-cited example was the young telegraph operator George (William) Brendish, surrounded by mutineers and the only survivor of his post, who before escaping got off the last crucial telegraph which reputedly saved the Punjab (for the British) and won him the Medal of the Victorian Order.123 The La ‘Martiniere schoolboys’ (a ‘European school’ catering to the domiciled) defended the residency during the siege of Lucknow.124 In 1907 the Officiating Director of Criminal Intelligence, C. StevensonMoore, recounted that ‘During the mutiny three local corps were formed, viz., Lahore Light Horse, the East Indian Regiment and the Eurasian battery of Artillery … They were disbanded after a short existence – the 1st in 1864, the 2nd in 1865, the 3rd in 1870’ on the grounds that: ‘Eurasian corps cost as much’ whilst not enjoying ‘the same confidence … [as] British troops’; ‘they

The ‘Eurasian problem’

81

could not take up the duties of native troops and required all the elaborate commissariat arrangements necessary for British soldiers’ yet ‘it was impossible to obtain sufficient recruits to maintain even three small corps aggregating less than 700 men’; and lastly ‘the enforcement of discipline in[,] … indeed the very existence of[,] such corps … was of doubtful legality’.125 ‘Inefficiency or unsuitability for military service’, however, were not given as reasons for their disbandment, rather: Lord Canning, Sir Hugh Rose and Lord Napier of Magdala were strongly in favor of the employment of the Eurasians in the military system of India and the excellent services rendered by them during the mutiny and the Bhutan campaign were freely acknowledged.126 Stevenson-Moore was attempting to make the case, after serious riots in the Punjab, for the creation ‘of special police reserves to be composed mainly of Europeans and Eurasians’ to combat civil unrest in times of emergency.127 After the recommendations of the Calcutta Pauperism Committee in February 1892, by August the government (in resolution number 2263) had come to the judgement that ‘a Eurasian regiment would cost about a quarter less than a European regiment and about … double a native regiment’.128 A subsequent estimate in 1899 concluded that a Eurasian company of garrison artillery would cost around ‘1/3 less’ than one composed of Europeans.129 With previous proposals having been nonetheless rejected by the military authorities (officially on grounds of cost) Stevenson-Moore’s plan for quasi-military police units would have shifted the expense onto civil administrations. However, provincial governors were no more eager than the army to take on such additional costs, arguing that in the event of any serious breakdown of civil authority the army would need to be relied upon in any case. Stevenson-Moore documented a series of prior proposals to government on the subject. ‘In 1875 the Anglo-Indian Aid Association of Bangalore and Mysore’ proposed military service for the group, but was rejected by the secretary of state for India ‘on the advice of the Government of India’.130 A ‘Calcutta Association’ made similar pleas to government in 1879, 1883, and 1884.131 An ‘Allahabad Association [also] submitted a representation on the subject [in 1883] and in 1884 similar representation came from Madras’.132 In 1894 the Calcutta Pauperism Committee endorsed the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal’s recommendation ‘that selected Eurasians should be admitted to British regiments’, but a combined ‘deputation of the various Anglo-Indian Associations which was received by the Secretary of State at the India Office’ in London in 1897 which had ‘made the formation of an Anglo-Indian regiment one of the chief reliefs for which they prayed’ found no redress.133 In the first year of his viceroyalty (1899–1905), Lord Curzon began a long and persistent correspondence with the secretary of state for India urging the raising of a Eurasian regiment. Curzon noted ‘the failure, or abandonment of previous attempts, and the opinion of Sir Charles Nairne and the present

82

The ‘Eurasian problem’

Commander-in-Chief, on military grounds alone, against any renewal of them’.134 Like the Pauperism Committee Curzon desired to ‘see the experiment made on political grounds’.135 Curzon was frustrated by the slowness of his own bureaucracy in producing cost estimates for such a scheme, prevarications by the Military Department, and the general reshuffling of paper that seemed calculated to frustrate his efforts. An official communication from the under-secretary of state, Sir Arthur Godley, alluded to a private telegraph of his views on the subject, and concurred with the military authorities resistance to the scheme (officially on grounds of cost relative to fighting ability), though he claimed to ‘quite understand the policy of squandering some money on satisfying the military aspirations of these patriotic hybrids … [and to] keep an open mind’.136 More frank views were expressed in the handwritten internal exchanges found in War Office files in 1886: I most earnestly hope that no attempt may be made to enlist any Eurasian or other ‘man of colour’ … [We] don’t want men of any well known cowardly race introduced into our ranks – of all the dangerous proposals I have ever in anytime heard … this is certainly the most dangerous. By all means let India raise an Eurasian Regt. & officer it with British officers if its Rulers have faith in the fighting qualities of the Eurasian … but in the name of all that is dear to us let us keep our British Regiments [in India] strictly British … [Once] we begin to fill our ranks with alien races, our downfall must soon follow. The India Govt. could call the Eurasian Corps it might raise a ‘local’ corps & so avoid the word ‘Eurasian’ which to the ordinary Englishman who has served in India – certainly to those who fought during the mutiny – sounds as a synonym for a coward of a very poor physique.137 Coming only a few years after the racist outpouring amongst colonial Britons known as the Ilbert Bill controversy, this mitigates any sense that those at the metropole were less subject to racism. The curious contrast is of a generally less racially charged response to Indian visitors to Britain than amongst colonial Britons who opposed reforms by relatively enlightened British viceroys like Lord Ripon. Like India’s last viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten Curzon believed himself to be free of racial prejudice, which both men attributed to those of lower class. Although an arch-imperialist Curzon was less racist than many of his contemporaries, but racial prejudice exists on a spectrum of the conscious and unconscious, and Curzon saw the mixed as an inferior offshoot of British and/or European stock. Despite his very genuine efforts on their behalf Curzon described Eurasians in one missive as ‘a feckless lot’.138 The year before Curzon’s viceroyalty Thurston had concluded from his detailed anthropometric measurements ‘that the average physique of the Eurasians is far below that required for military purposes’.139 Thurston’s

The ‘Eurasian problem’

83

negative conclusion was explicitly responding to a ‘a heated discussion … in the columns of the ‘Pioneer’, over the question of ‘the raising of a division of eight regiments, two of cavalry, six of infantry, four of the latter to consist of specially selected Eurasians only, two of Indo-Europeans only’, which in this case seems to refer to what would come to be known as Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans, respectively.140 Notwithstanding such views or the supposed legal impediments, Curzon was aware that individual Eurasians were still ‘frequently accepted [into the Army] as recruits’.141 The secretary of state for India, Lord Hamilton, blamed the ‘obstinate resistance of the War Office and the Colonial Office and Admiralty’, professing himself ‘the more anxious to soften the racial bar that now exists as regards the army, as we found it was impossible to accede to your proposals to raise a Eurasian Regiment’, and concluded that ‘it would require an Act of Parliament, as for certain purposes the Eurasians have always been either described or considered to be Europeans’.142 The legally anomalous status of the mixed was often cited in explanation for why nothing could be done to change their situation,143 even though their status in the eyes of the imperial state was never static, and was altered at several points when it suited British interests. For most purposes the Indian domicile of Eurasians and Domiciled Europeans made them statutory natives of India, yet they were to be repeatedly co-opted throughout British rule for defence of empire purposes as European British subjects, a status which was said by an early source to have been ‘defined in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1882 … [as] includ[ing] … any Christian of European descent’.144 However, later authorities, shortly after Curzon’s viceroyalty, debated conflicting interpretations of ‘British Subjects’ as either broadly defined by the ‘test of ’ Christianity to include ‘an Armenian, or the legitimate offspring (being a Christian) of English and native parents’, or more narrowly confined to ‘Any child or grandchild … by legitimate descent’ of ‘Any subject of Her Majesty born, naturalized, or domiciled in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, or’ in any of a list of Crown ‘colonies or possessions’ (which happened to coincide with those of white settlement, including the Cape and Natal in South Africa)’.145 The latter definition was acknowledged to be ‘open to much criticism, and’ to ‘err … both by way of redundancy and by way of deficiency’.146 More significantly ‘The term as used in Acts of Parliament was never precisely defined, and perhaps was treated as including generally white-skinned residents or sojourners in the country by way of contradiction to the native population.’147 As we have previously suggested the faith in such legal constructions covered the degree to which in practice they could function as mere proxies of perceived socioracial status. The divergent use of terms in India and at the metropole also suited the convenience of the rulers, even when they might feel themselves bound by the dictates of legal definitions and precedents. Curzon did not accept that any of the obstacles, even that of ‘carrying a Bill through the House of Commons’ (which was famously disinterested in Indian legislation) were really ‘insuperable’.148 Yet finding his efforts finally thwarted,

84

The ‘Eurasian problem’

Curzon hoped to remedy the situation by allocating more to Eurasian education and looking for other avenues of state employment for them, highlighting, for example, the case of ‘Eurasian Engineers who … [were] even now enjoying very high appointments and pay’.149 Invoking terra nullis, Curzon also suggested ‘that Eurasians might be very useful in the peopling of many blank spaces on the map of the British Empire outside of India – say in South Africa’.150

Fictions of race Underlying the perception of a ‘Eurasian problem’ to be fixed by character reformation and charity were a shifting and complex set of ideas concerning race, heredity, environment, class, and culture. To get a sense of the effect of scientific racism on the position of those of mixed race in the latter half of the 19th century we now turn to literature. Indrani Sen draws our attention to the richness of Rudyard Kipling’s short stories as source material for colonial British attitudes to those of mixed race.151 The 18-year-old Kipling’s first published short story (in 1884) is not unusual in explicitly transposing the ‘N-word’ onto Indians,152 juxtaposed with other ethnic slurs such as ‘Chinaman’, ‘yellow man’, and ‘half-caste’, alongside ‘Eurasian’, in the disreputable setting of a Calcutta opium den.153 At the time Kipling was writing colonial Britons routinely referred to Indians as black. Thurston had even compared the typology of degrees of racial mixing between the Caribbean and India: The racial position of Eurasians, and the proportion of black blood in their veins, are commonly indicated, not by the terms mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, sambo (or zambo), etc., but as in the case of cotton, jute, coffee, and other crops, in fractions of a rupee. The European pure breed being represented by Rs. 0–0-0, and the native pure breed by 16 annas (= 1 rupee), the resultant cross is, by reference to colour and other tests, gauged as being half an anna in the rupee (faint admixture of black blood; approaching European type); eight annas (half and half); fifteen annas (predominant admixture of black blood; approaching native type), etc.154 However, we should not remain content to simply observe the obvious racism, dehumanisation, essentialism, and tropes for both Indians and the mixed in Kipling’s stories, for he also displays undoubted familiarity with and insight into the complexities and nuances of the subordination of the mixed within a socioracial hierarchy, which, like the Raj, he represents as a timeless and natural order. In His Chance in life, Kipling deploys the remarkably apposite phrase ‘the Borderline folk’, depicting them as incredibly sensitive to perceived slights and insults.155 It is hard to speak with them ‘without violating some of their conventions or hurting their feelings’.156 Michele D’Cruze, a Telegraph

The ‘Eurasian problem’

85

Signaller on Rs. 35 a month, a poor sickly weed, and very black … [who] looked down on natives as only a man with seven-eighths native blood in his veins can’, is only spurred towards bravery by his love for a ‘Miss Vezzis [who] came from across the Borderline to look after some [colonial British] children’.157 ‘The Vezzis Family … [took] pride … [in] their descent from a mythical platelayer who had worked on the Sone Bridge when railways were new in India, and they valued their English origin.’158 Yet Vezzis is viewed as ‘a bad, dirty nurse, and inattentive’ by the colonial British ‘lady’ who has employed her and who had never considered ‘that Miss Vezzis had her own life to lead and her own affairs to worry over, and that these affairs were the most important things in the world to Miss Vezzis’.159 The fleeting recognition of Vezzis’ agency is soon followed by the observation that she: was as black as a boot, and, to our standard of taste, hideously ugly. She wore cotton-print gowns … and when she lost her temper with the children, she abused them in the language of the Borderline – which is part English, part Portuguese, and part Native.160 Thurston had claimed that colonial Britons avoided employing the mixed as nursemaids,161 but Kipling’s story anticipates the trope-laden ‘Merchant Ivory’ film, Cotton Mary (1999), which caused huge offence to Anglo-Indians in India,162 and ‘was banned in West Bengal and Kerala’.163 Indeed, it contradicts another stereotype that work-shy Anglo-Indians avoided servile domestic positions that they felt beneath their dignity. Cognisance of the stereotypes of such imperialist discourse should not lead us to knee-jerk refutation. Unlike Said we are here concerned not only with their truth effects, persistence, and what they tell us about Kipling and colonial British attitudes, but also with the relationship of the imagined AngloIndian to the real Anglo-Indian. Realities do not always debunk harmful and instrumental stereotypes; they are usually more complex. There can be little doubt that Anglo-Indians did devalue domestic labour, and in part for the reasons the British often attributed – their reliance on Indian servants and the associations of certain tasks with lower castes in the South Asian context.164 Nonetheless, superordinate groups can easily laud the dignity of labour in forms they are not themselves keen to emulate. It is also true that in spite of a general aversion to domestic service there were some ‘Anglo-Indian nannies’, who like Vezzis and Cotton Mary, worked for colonial British families, but who were far from such offensive caricatures.165 In any case it is only the pressure from Vezzis, who though happy that he is ‘in Government employ’, demands D’Cruze achieve a higher salary before she will consider marrying him, that gives him the fortitude to demonstrate, albeit temporarily, the qualities Kipling projects as masculine and as the fruit of his ‘drop of White blood’.166 With no whites present, D’Cruze is able to rise to the occasion, to temporarily embody an unstable whiteness and to represent the Raj. The Indian rioters ‘coming to wreck the Telegraph Office’ are

86

The ‘Eurasian problem’

constructed as childlike, ‘curs to the back-bone’, and engaged in stereotypically communal Hindu-Muslim looting of ‘each other’s shops’.167 An Indian police inspector is described as ‘afraid, but obeying the old raceinstinct which recognises a drop a White blood as far as it can be diluted’. He runs to D’Cruze to ask: ‘What orders does the Sahib give?’ The ‘Sahib’ decided Michele. ‘Though horribly frightened, he felt that, for the hour, he, the man with the Cochin Jew and the menial uncle in his pedigree, was the only representative of English authority in the place.’168 Note that the ‘race instinct’ is old, projected as timeless and unchanging, that Indians are cowardly by default, and Indian men effeminate. D’Cruze shares their projected flaws (as well as additional tropes for the mixed), and is only able to act – even transiently – because of his diluted white blood. Surrounded by unsupervised childlike ‘natives’ he succeeds according to the principle that ‘in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’. He leads ‘seven native policemen … [with] four crazy smooth-bore muskets among them’, fires on the crowd who flee ‘leaving one man dead, and another dying in the road’.169 An Indian sub-judge has barricaded himself in his house during the riot, but now feels able to give a deputation of town elders the opinion that D’Cruze’s actions are ‘unconstitutional’:170 But the heart of Michele D’Cruze was big and white in his breast, because of his love for Miss Vezzis … and because he had tasted for the first time Responsibility and Success … Michele answered that the SubJudge might say what he pleased, but until the Assistant Collector came, the Telegraph Signaller was the Government of India in Tibasu, and the [town] elders … would be held accountable for further rioting. Then they bowed their heads and said, ‘Show mercy!’171 The presence of a man with a trace of whiteness within him is able, whilst performing the white coloniser, to reduce native town elders to a state of childish pleading and to restore their ‘natural’ subservience. When an actual ‘young Englishman’, the white ‘Sahib’, arrives to take full command of the situation, the temporarily emboldened mixed race man has his own turn at being reduced to his ‘rightful’ place of effeminate and childlike deference: Michele felt himself slipping back more and more into the native; and the tale … ended, with the strain on the teller, in an hysterical outburst of tears … and childish anger that his tongue could not do justice to his great deeds. It was the White drop in Michele’s veins dying out, though he did not know it.172 ‘But the Englishman understood’ and following official correspondence D’Cruze received promotion to another ‘up-country’ district and ‘the Imperial salary of sixty-six rupees a month. So he and Miss Vezzis were married … and now there are several little D’Cruzes sprawling about the verandahs of

The ‘Eurasian problem’

87

173

the Central Telegraph Office.’ It may be a stretch to perceive here an echo of the Pauperism Committee’s concern that even gainful employment can compound a Malthusian problem with more young mouths to feed. Yet what is notable in this story, where people of mixed race are allowed to triumph in some small way, by dominating those deemed inferior to them, is that Kipling creates the maximum distance between them and colonial Britons. The happy ending is one in which a ‘natural’ hierarchy is restored, boundaries are maintained, and the mixed are rewarded with an intermediate position between coloniser and colonised with which they are content.

A solution in public service? The kind of position which D’Cruze achieves in the Telegraph Office is the highest to which Eurasians are encouraged to aspire. Kipling has demonstrated through fiction how in such a role, a Eurasian can buttress British rule without being in a more elevated position which they are not, he suggests, temperamentally or racially able to sustain. Mizutani argues that the move from a patronage-based system to one of examinations held in Britain in the mid-1850s had created no new openings in the higher echelons of government service for those educated in India who claimed European descent, instead confirming their exclusion. The reaction to the Great Rebellion of 1857 was a drive for a renewed ‘Europeanisation’ of the public services at the expense of educated Indians. Mizutani reveals the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association unsuccessfully seeking, from its founding in 1876, and ‘at least until the end of the 1910s … [to] transform the ongoing policy of Europeanization into one that would benefit domiciled Europeans and Eurasians’.174 Mizutani locates the sharpest articulation of their collective claims to recognition within whiteness in the proceedings of the Public Service Commission (PSC, 1886–7), and argues that it ‘was particularly in the cases of the Pilot, Forest, and Public Works Departments that the policy of Europeanization emerged as a menace to the position of domiciled Europeans and Eurasians within the Civil Service’.175 Crucially the PSC Report made the case for a division between a more elite ‘Imperial Service’, recruited by examinations held in England (for which Indians were technically eligible, but substantially impeded from taking by low age limits as well as the requirement to travel to the imperial metropole) and aimed at attracting young men from the two oldest universities of Oxford and Cambridge, ‘and the Provincial and Subordinate Services, recruited in India’.176 To the extent that it had been formerly possible for Domiciled Europeans and Eurasians to be promoted into superior services, this organisational bifurcation made it much harder for them to rise above a certain level in any department. In the most elite, the so-called ‘heaven-born’, Indian Civil Service (ICS), no Eurasians and only a handful of Indians where admitted in the late 19th century. Although in the 20th century a ‘D’Souza Scholarship’ was established with a bequest in order to fund Anglo-Indian young men

88

The ‘Eurasian problem’

travelling to England for the ICS examinations, according to the group’s political leader Frank Anthony ‘only 5 Anglo-Indians’ had succeeded by 1947.177 By contrast, the proximate and overlapping group of around 20,000 mixed race people in Burma had apparently furnished eight members of the ICS before 1943.178 Evidence from the Salt Department bolsters Mizutani’s case that the boundary was being drawn to exclude Domiciled Europeans from whiteness and that the conjoined domiciled community could be squeezed between Europeanisation from above and Indianisation from below in attempting to preserve an economic space in the middling tiers of public service employment. The PSC Report determined that cuts in the Salt Department would be achieved by wastage and wage reductions rather than dismissals. In its socioracial hierarchy of employment there is a clear pattern that anticipates that which is to be found later on in the railways. There is also a very clear invocation and awareness of the domiciliary principle of ordering those claiming to be exclusively European. The numbers in each category deployed can be tabulated as in Table 2.2. Below these grades were the ‘subordinate staff’ on Rs. 30–70 per month, judged ‘insufficient to attract Europeans of good character or sufficient ability’, and though a few inefficient Europeans had formerly held such posts it was determined to henceforth only appoint ‘Asiatic Natives of India’ to these positions.179 The Finance Committee of the PSC had determined that salary scales should be reduced to pre-1886 levels, by substituting five grades of superintendents on fixed monthly salaries of Rs. 200, 250, 300, 350, and 400. Opposing the changes was a Mr A. O. Hume, a former commissioner in the Salt Department, who opined ‘that this proposed reduction would be an error of the greatest magnitude. You cannot nowadays get the class of Europeans, and a fortiori not the class of either Eurasians or Natives, at lower initial rates than now obtain.’180 It was further argued that as the work of Salt Department superintendents involved remaining ‘in camp for many months of the year’ in the desert or hot sun ‘principally at the hottest period of the year’ to supervise the salt mines, Indians with English language skills were dissuaded from applying.181 Applicants to ‘the upper grades of the Department … [were] chiefly sons of Military, Civil, and Uncovenanted Officers, both European and Eurasian’.182 Whilst opining that service should not ‘be restricted to any class or race’, Hume claimed that: the best men we get, all round, are pure Europeans; but this is not because there are not equally good Eurasians and Natives to be found, but because, with rare exceptions, the equally good men of these classes can find other, and to them more congenial careers … and though we have had some very good Eurasians, as a rule the Eurasians who apply are not first class.183

The ‘Eurasian problem’

89

Table 2.2 Salary scales for the ‘superior staff’ of the Salt Department by racial and communal groupings, representing the Raj’s socioracial employment hierarchy Position (monthly salary scales in rupees)

Europeans

Domiciled Europeans

Eurasians

Muslims

Deputy and assistant commissioners (500–800) Superintendents, 1st grade (400–500) Superintendents, 2nd grade (300–400) Superintendents, 3rd grade (200–300)

5

3

–

–

4

6

2

–

5

10

8

1

–

11

8

1

Source: constructed from data in the Proceedings of the Sub-Committee, Public Service Commission. Salt Department. Northern India. Part I (Calcutta, 1887), p. 2.

Mr. Ashton, an assistant commissioner, felt that ‘Europeans born and educated in England had more liberal views about work … [and] did not care to what they turned their hands’.184 Whilst Mr Bolster, superintendent of the Mayo Mines in the Punjab Salt Range, ‘ordinarily … preferred non-domiciled Europeans to any other class’.185 We should take note here of the salience of a rhetoric that once again differentiated between Eurasians based on ascribed class statuses, deployed almost as proxy for suitability for employment, of a sober, diligent, and adaptive work ethic. British racial ideologies did not construct a straightforward binary between white and non-white, but rather a series of overlapping hierarchies of difference which were inflected in nuanced and granulated ways, to allow for individual exceptions whilst upholding an overall position of dominance, which is itself made more durable and resilient through its malleability and adaptability. Colour or race were both potent and salient within this framework, but not always determinative. In his study of the period 1793–1905, Ballhatchet argued that ‘English class attitudes … [were] transformed into racial attitudes in an imperial setting’ and that in their pretensions to an aristocratic status the ruling elite sought to distance themselves from the Indian populace, which they considered ‘not only socially appropriate but politically necessary’, and thus those – such as Indian princes seeking European wives, European or Eurasian women suspected of or engaging in prostitution, or those of mixed race (i.e. anyone who might engage in or was the product of interracial sex) – ‘who threatened to bridge that distance aroused great concern’.186 British conceptions of class were also thicker as markers of social location. In practice there were always degrees of social mobility, but in theory class was constructed and conceptualised as being largely immutable – a position into which you were born and ought to remain. In a sense social mobility at the metropole and in colonial settings was a closely related process to racial

90

The ‘Eurasian problem’

passing – acquiring the social capital of success did not change your class, unless your behaviour changed and you attempted (with greater or lesser degrees of success) to pass as a member of the class to which you aspired to enter. When passing as a Briton to relocate yourself in class terms, you were performing and acquiring similar markers (especially changing your accent) as the mixed race or ‘questionably white’ population in South Asia would have to display in order to racially pass. This very British understanding of class is of course entirely distinct from class as the now frequently problematised analytical or Marxian category. The flexibility of the British tendency to combine class with race in subtle, complex, and nuanced ways never entirely disappeared, permitting those of proven success even when found to be racially passing to be accepted as exceptions, but retaining the capacity when they were perceived to blunder socially or morally to revert to condemnations of their character based on their Indian blood. The increasing opacity of the official colonial rhetoric of race in response to the demands of Indian nationalists, especially from the 1920s onwards, did not make British racial thinking any less trenchant. Such sophisticated racism, crucially intertwined with British notions of class, was, we might argue, more difficult to pin down and challenge than the binary thinking of the American one-drop rule, or the attempt at absolute fixity of racial statuses under Apartheid. Though the mixed race and supposedly unmixed Domiciled European classes are selectively conjoined for various purposes by colonial Britons, we need to think of the importance not of one boundary – of white and non-white – but of a system of ordering many boundaries, including those between Domiciled Europeans and the mixed race group, and between the mixed race group and Indian Christians. Boundaries that were similarly consequential, and equally fostered by the instruments of the colonial state, and in part policed by varying degrees of social closure. Having failed to implement his military schemes Curzon turned his attention to other areas of public service in which Eurasians might suitably be employed. He discerned that government had ‘in practice in many of the Subordinate Departments reserved a special proportion of places … to domiciled Europeans and Eurasians’, including ‘a large proportion of the appointments’ in ‘the Subordinate Accounts Department, in the Provincial Branch of the Survey of India, in the Salt Department, in the Customs Department, [and] in the Opium Department’.187 He stated that the Bengal government had twice protested to the government of India in the 1890s over the three quarters of appointments being held open for the domiciled, arguing ‘in favour of recruitment from England, on the ground that sufficiently qualified candidates were not forthcoming’.188 Whether the policies Curzon alluded to here were formal reservations for the group or merely de facto openings to which they might apply, the logic of proportions of state employment being allocated to different groups was embedded in the colonial structure.

The ‘Eurasian problem’

91

Both the Company and imperial state had always needed to retain the senior-most positions in British hands, yet they found it either necessary or financially advantageous to extend the proportion of undifferentiated Indian employees at different points in time. Fixing the proportion in this binary sense was crucial, and strategic considerations were constantly balanced with cost savings, though when Curzon gave his budgetary speeches he now had to reckon with the increasingly loud voices of Indian nationalists like Gopal Krishna Gokhale (a mentor to both Gandhi and Jinnah). In any argument over the relative position of the British and their Indian subjects in state employment, i.e. viewed through the binary of coloniser and colonised, a group constructed as in-between, and especially one small in numbers, was in great danger of being entirely overlooked, or squeezed out, as colonial Britons desired to occupy all the proportion of positions from which Indians were to be de facto almost entirely excluded, and Indians demanded to be given the full number of any positions opened up to them (rather than allow them to be occupied by a group they perceived as a loyal extension of the colonising power). The idea that under imperial rule competition for public service employment, even by examination, could ever be an apolitical and colour-blind exercise of judging merit, was a convenient fiction – as were official defences of the system from charges of racial and communal discrimination. In 1931 Kenneth Wallace described the historical development of a glass ceiling for Anglo-Indians across: Government services … private firms … social relations, [and] even the church. Unfortunately, the position is not entirely altered to-day. Things are more subtly effected. We do not to-day have Government saying in effect, ‘this service is closed to you’, but if you realise the practical handicaps you will see how well adapted they are to European interests and ill-adapted to ours … Occasionally, we do have a lad taking a good degree at an English university, but if he is at all unable to hide his identity … the question of promotion is a vexed one.189 Structurally and analytically speaking, the more formalised reservation system which arose in the early 20th century attempted to diffuse objections to the evident socioracial hierarchy of employment, by channelling arguments into the arena of the relative share to be accorded to different Indian groups, constructed as communal minorities. In this sense the contested spheres of even the lower and middle rungs of state employment embodied in microcosm broader strategies of imperial rule – the promotion of communal difference as a means of defusing collective action whilst creating and co-opting dependent client groups reliant on the colonial state. Responding to Gokhale, in his seventh budget speech, Curzon found it necessary to defend his record of opening up entry in the public services to Indians and declared himself ‘particularly immune from the suspicions to

92

The ‘Eurasian problem’

which’ Gokhale referred of attributing to him ‘personally the appointment of this or that European or Eurasian to some post or other in some part of India’.190 As Gandhi would later do, Gokhale was invoking Queen Victoria’s Proclamation of 1858, when the British state assumed responsibility from the Company after the Great Rebellion, and which promised her new ‘subjects of whatever race or creed’ free and impartial admission ‘to offices in our service’ – though Curzon laid stress on the qualification that followed – ‘the duties of which they may be qualified by their education, ability, and integrity duly to discharge’.191 Curzon even implied that he was unpopular for pushing more extensive ‘native appointments’ (i.e. Indianisation) onto the subordinate and provincial services of various government departments.192 In his sixth budget speech Curzon felt himself compelled by nationalist questions to enumerate the public service posts held by members of different groups, summarising: that of 1370 Government servants drawing salaries higher than Rs. 1000 a month … 1263 are Europeans; of the remainder 15 are Eurasians, and 92 natives. But if I take the ranks below Rs. 1000 a month … [down to] Rs. 75 a month … I find that, out of a total of 26,908 Government servants, only 5205 are Europeans, while of the remainder 5420 are Eurasians, and … 16,283 is native.193 We should note that the division between colonial Britons and Domiciled Europeans was here collapsed, perhaps owing to pressures to disclose the relative proportions of the coloniser–colonised binary. Equally important for Curzon to stress was the trajectory of changes in proportions and salaries. Between 1867 and 1904, the pool of jobs in the public service had grown by 110 percent, and (note the communal division) ‘posts held by Hindus’ had increased 179 percent, Muslims by 129 percent, Eurasians by 106 percent, and Europeans by ‘only’ 36 percent.194 Though, unsurprisingly, the higher up the pay scale the lower the proportion of Indians – Indians held 60 percent of posts paying Rs. 200–300, and only 13 percent of those paying Rs. 700–800. Still, Curzon was able to argue that the average salary ‘drawn by natives has risen from Rs. 173 to Rs. 188, or a rise of 7 per cent, while that drawn by Europeans and Eurasians has fallen by Rs. 2, or 4 per cent’.195 Telling was the omission of the average salary figures in the second half of this parallel, but also interesting is how for this purpose Europeans and Eurasians are combined. To Indians seeking a greater share in the governance and administration of their own country, Eurasians were an appendage to the rulers, and not part of the Indian share of positions in public service – an attitude that would persist, however much the imperial state insisted that not only Eurasians, but Domiciled Europeans too, were ‘statutory natives of India’. Thus constrained by nationalist pressures and, we might argue, well aware of their strategic value to the Raj, Curzon directed Eurasians to the various

The ‘Eurasian problem’

93

private British railway companies, which though backed by Indian state guarantees and under the supervision of a government Railway Board set up in 1901 during Curzon’s regime, had a freer hand in their hiring policies. In 1899 he had: caused a letter to be addressed to the Presidents of the various [AngloIndian] associations throughout India … drawing their attention to the great opening that appear[ed] … to be present to your community for employment, notably in the [Railway’s] Traffic, Locomotive, and Engineering Departments, and to the meagre advantage that has so far been taken of these facilities.196 He spelled out in detail that: out of a total of 308,000 persons employed upon Railways in India, only 7000 are Eurasians, or less than 2½ per cent … [In just] three Departments … there are some 1150 posts on every thousand miles of line in India, the pay ranging from Rs. 30 to Rs. 400 a month, or 25,000 in all, for which Anglo-Indians and Eurasians are free and qualified to compete. Why do you not enter for these appointments? Why, on the contrary, do you allow the European and Native employés to increase … while your numbers have only increased at the rate of less than ¾ per cent? You are mistaken if you suppose that the Railway administration can ever give you a fixed proportion of these appointments for which you can qualify at leisure.197 Thus the highest representative of imperial rule personally directed those of mixed race towards the occupation with which they were to be most associated in the 20th century. Given Curzon’s extensive interest in how they might have been better deployed to buttress the security of the Raj, it is difficult to consider the concentration of the mixed in the three strategic services of railways, telegraphs, and customs services as mere coincidence. Additionally, the domiciled, both mixed and unmixed, came to be relied upon as the bulwark of auxiliary military forces, membership of which was effectively made a compulsory condition of their employment on the railways. Both world wars would provide ample opportunity for more full-fledged military service, often facilitated by racial passing. Curzon’s solutions would prove temporary, however. The first two decades of the 20th century furnished a high point in the employment and incomes of many of the domiciled, against which subsequent decline would once more be measured.

Notes 1 T. Hope, Church and State in India: A Minute (London, 1885), p. 37. 2 O. Snell, Anglo-Indians and Their Future (Bombay, 1944), pp. 11–12.

94

The ‘Eurasian problem’

3 Report of the Pauperism Committee, Appendix I, ‘Report of the Statistics SubCommittee’, ‘Evidence Given before the Statistics Sub-Committee. The 28th September 1891’, pp. xv–xvi. 4 Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 192. 5 Stark, The Call of the Blood. 6 Snell, Anglo-Indians, p. 12. 7 D’Cruz, ‘Christopher Hawes in Conversation’. 8 Snell, Anglo-Indians, p. 12. 9 Ibid., p. 13. 10 Anglo-Indian Review and Railway Union Journal (March 1931), p. 25. 11 The Extraordinary Black Book: An Exposition of the United Church of England and Ireland; Civil List and Crown Revenues; Incomes, Privileges, and Power, of the Aristocracy; Privy Council, Diplomatic, and Consular Establishments; Law and Judicial Administration; Representation and Prospects of Reform under the New Ministry; Profits, Influence, and Monopoly of the Bank of England and EastIndia Company; Debt and Funding System; Salaries, Fees, and Emoluments in Courts of Justice, Public Offices, and Colonies; Lists of Pluralists, Placemen, Pensioners, and Sinecurists: The Whole Corrected from the Latest Official Returns, and Presenting a Complete View of the Expenditure, Patronage, Influence, and Abuses of the Government, in Church, State, Law and Representation (London, 1831), pp. 364–6. 12 Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 105. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid., pp. 230–3. 15 Ibid., p. 233. 16 Ibid., p. 230. 17 E. Eden (ed. ‘by her niece’), Letters from India: Vol. II (London, 1872), ‘TO – ’, Calcutta, Monday, 21st, pp. 247–52, accessible at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/ women/eden/letters/letters.html. 18 Calcutta Review, vol. 7 (Calcutta, January–June 1847), p. 217. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., p. 218. 21 Alexander’s Journal, ‘Injudicious Nature’, p. 462. 22 Ibid., pp. 465–6. 23 Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 45. 24 Alexander’s Journal, ‘Injudicious Nature’, pp. 462–3. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., p. 463. 27 Ibid., pp. 463–4. 28 Report of the Pauperism Committee, Appendix I, Statistics Sub-Committee Evidence, p. xv. 29 Ibid., pp. xv–xvi. 30 Calcutta Review, vol. 18 (Calcutta, July–December 1852), p. 407. 31 BL, OIOC, Mss Eur R189, Nissen, Roy Edward King, b. 1905, interviewed in 1989 on four cassettes covering 1905–60. 32 Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 44. 33 Second Report on the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 36. 34 Report of the Affairs of the East India Company, p. 191. 35 Ibid., p. 192. 36 Ibid. 37 BL, OIOC, F/4/1408/55600, ‘Minute by the Honble the Governor [Sir John Malcolm], dated 30th November 1830’, ‘General’, para. 234. 38 Ibid., paras. 230, 233, 244, 246. 39 Ibid., para. 230.

The ‘Eurasian problem’ 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

95

Ibid., para. 217. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., para. 240. Ibid., para. 218. Ibid., para. 246. Ibid., para. 221. Ibid., para. 223. Ibid. Ibid., paras. 222–3. Ibid., para. 222. Ibid., para. 224. Ibid., paras. 224–5. Ibid., para. 231. Ibid. Cited in Alexander’s Journal, ‘Injudicious Nature’, p. 469. B. Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ, 1996), p. 16. BL, OIOC, F/4/1259, Extract Bombay Revenue Consultations (8 July 1829), ‘From Mr. Henshaw, and Other Indo Britons. No. 118 to Sir John Malcolm: Governor General of Bombay, 16th June 1829’, paras. 1, 4, 5. Ibid., para. 5. Ibid., para. 2. BL, OIOC, F/4/1408/55600, para. 232. Ibid. Ibid., paras. 224–5. Ibid., para. 221. See Mizutani, Meaning of White, p. 162. Calcutta Review, vol. 24 (Calcutta, January–June 1855), p. 300. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 303–4. Ibid., p. 304. Cited in Report of the Pauperism Committee, p. 12. G. Mackay, Serious Reflections and Other Contributions (Bombay, 1881), p. 95. Buettner, Empire Families, chapter 2: ‘“Not Quite Pukka”: Schooling in India and the Acquisition of Racial Status’, chapter 3: ‘Separations and the Discourse of Family Sacrifice’, and chapter 4: ‘Sent Home to School: British Education, Status, and Returns Overseas’. E. Thurston, Madras Government Museum: Bulletin, Vol. II, No. 2.: Anthropology: Eurasians of Madras and Malabar; Notes on Tattooing; Malagasy-Nias-Dravidians; Toda Petition (Madras, 1898), p. 90. Watson, Passing for White, p. 113. Report of the Pauperism Committee, p. 12. Mackay, Serious Reflections, p. 26. ‘Part IX’ of ‘Archdeacon Baly’s … report of the 15th May 1880’, cited in Report of the Pauperism Committee, p. 16. Anon. (‘P. K.’), ‘Art. XI. The Anglo-Indian Question’, Calcutta Review, vol. 69 (Calcutta, October 1879), p. 385. Calcutta Review, vol. 18, p. 407. Anon. (annotated by hand as ‘V. G. Clarke’), The Fortunes of the Anglo-Indian Race: Considered Retrospectively and Prospectively by One of Fifty Years Knowledge and Experience (Madras, 2nd edn, 1878), p. 14. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid., p. 14.

96 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125

The ‘Eurasian problem’ Report of the Pauperism Committee, p. 6. Ibid. Thurston, Anthropology, pp. 74–5. Ibid., p. 98. Ibid. Cited in ibid., p. 73. Calcutta Review, vol. 28 (Calcutta, January–June 1857), p. 44. Cited in Calcutta Review, vol. 7, pp. 325–6. Report of the Pauperism Committee, Appendix I, Statistics Sub-Committee Evidence, p. xix. Ibid., Appendix III, ‘Report of the Avenues of Employment Sub-Committee’, ‘Annexure B. Railways’, p. lxiv. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., Appendix I, Statistics Sub-Committee Evidence, p. xii. Ibid., p. xiii. Ibid., p. xiv. Thurston,Anthropology, pp. 75–6. Ibid. Ibid., p. 76. Ibid., pp. 76–7. Ibid., p. 89. Ibid., p. 73. Ibid., p. 74. Report of the Pauperism Committee, Appendix I, Statistics Sub-Committee Evidence, p. xiv. Ibid., pp. xiv–xv. Ibid., p. xv. Ibid. Report of the Pauperism Committee, Appendix I, Statistics Sub-Committee Evidence, p. xii. Ibid. Author’s first-hand observation and interactions with attendees at the worldwide Anglo-Indian reunions in Perth (2010), Calcutta (2013) and Sydney (2016). Report of the Pauperism Committee, p. 9. Ibid., Appendix III, ‘Report of the Avenues of Employment Sub-Committee’, ‘Annexure C. Miscellaneous’, p. lxxi. Ibid., p. liv. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur R189, Nissen interview. Report of the Pauperism Committee, p. 8. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid. Ibid. Stark, Call of the Blood, p. 154. Ibid., pp. 152–3. Daily News (London, 4 November 1857), p. 2. S. Brendish, ‘George (William) Brendish and the Indian Mutiny of 1857 by Steve Brendish’,International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies 7: 1 (2003), available at http://home.alphalink.com.au/~agilbert/paintin1.html. J. Gorman, The Siege of Lucknow (London, 1941), p. 10. NAI, Political Department, Political Branch (Confidential) 1908, File no. 42, Serial nos. 1–4, ‘Proposal for the Enrolment of a Special Police Reserve Composed Mainly of Europeans and Eurasians’, p. 13.

The ‘Eurasian problem’ 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141

142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162

97

Ibid., pp. 13–14. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur F111/158 (from the Viceroy) no. 6, p. 21. Ibid. (from the Viceroy) no. 29c, p. 130d, and (from the Viceroy) no. 38a, p. 178a. Ibid. (to the Viceroy) no. 35, p. 130b. NAUK, WO/32/6889, handwritten note on file ‘on 5983’, signed ‘29–12–86 Wolseley’. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur F111/159 (from the Viceroy) no. 18, p. 79. Thurston, Anthropology, p. 84. Ibid., p. 80. Speeches by Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy and Governor-General of India: 1898–1901 (Calcutta, 1901), ‘Anglo-Indian Association. 23rd March, 1900’ [to ‘A Deputation of the Anglo-Indian Association (Representing the Domiciled Anglo-Indian and Eurasian Community throughout India), headed by Mr. L. P. Pugh … at Government House, Calcutta, at 4.30 P.M. on Friday, the 23rd March’], p. 256, also in Lord Curzon in India: Being a Selection from his Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India: 1898–1905: With a Portrait, Explanatory Notes and an Index and with an Introduction by Sir Thomas Raleigh, K.C.S.I. (London, 1906), p. 366. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur F111/159 (to the Viceroy) no. 3, p. 9. See the official response to an 1925 Anglo-Indian deputation to the Secretary of State in 1928, cited in Anglo-Indian Review, Supplement (September 1928), p. i. W. Stokes, A Supplement to the Anglo-Indian Codes: 1887, 1888 (Oxford, 1889), p. 41. C. Ilbert, The Government of India: Being a Digest of the Statute Law Relating Thereto: With Historical Introduction and Explanatory Matter (Oxford, 1907), pp. 382–3. Ibid., p. 383. Ibid., p. 382. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur F111/159 (from the Viceroy) no. 7, p. 35. Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, p. 259, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 369. Ibid., p. 262, and Lord Curzon in India, pp. 372–3. I. Sen, Woman and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India, 1858–1900 (New Delhi, 2002), pp. 173–4. Not a direct quote. ‘The Gate of the Hundred Sorrows’, in R. Kipling, Plain Tales from the Hills (North Falmouth, MA, revised edn 1899), p. 276. Thurston, Anthropology, pp. 77–8. ‘His Chance in Life’, in Kipling, Plain Tales, p. 78. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 79–80. Ibid., p. 80. Ibid., p. 79. Ibid. Thurston, Anthropology, p. 74. See ‘Anglo-Indians Wounded by Cotton Mary Portrayal’, Guardian (10 March 2000), accessible at www.theguardian.com/world/2000/mar/10/lukeharding.

98

The ‘Eurasian problem’

163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174

Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, p. 15. See ibid., p. 39. Ibid., p. 57. Kipling, Plain Tales, pp. 80, 82. Ibid., pp. 82–3. Ibid., p. 82. Ibid., pp. 82–3. Ibid., p. 83. Ibid. Ibid., p. 84. Ibid. S. Mizutani, ‘Contested Boundaries of Whiteness: Public Service Recruitment and the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association, 1876–1901’, in H. Fischer-Tiné and S. Gehrmann (eds), Empires and Boundaries: Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings (New York, 2009), p. 88. Ibid., p. 92. Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, p. 259, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 370. Anglo-Indian Review (November 1947), p. 3. Anglo-Indian Review (November 1943), p. 13. Proceedings of the Sub-Committee, Public Service Commission. Salt Department. Northern India. Part I (Calcutta, 1887), p. 2. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. Ballhatchet, Race, Sex and Class, pp. 121–2. Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, p. 260, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 370. Ibid. Anglo-Indian Review and Railway Union Journal (March 1931), pp. 25–6. Lord Curzon in India, ‘Seventh Budget Speech (Legislative Council at Calcutta), March 29, 1905’, p. 162. Ibid., p. 161. Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., ‘Sixth Budget Speech (Legislative Council at Calcutta), March 30, 1904’, p. 146. Ibid., p. 144. Ibid., p. 145. Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, pp. 258, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 368–9. Ibid., pp. 258–9, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 369.

175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197

3

Becoming Anglo-Indians

The Society which you represent has recently acquired a new name … the Imperial Anglo-Indian Association. The choice of this name is the latest phase in a long contention over the question of the nomenclature that it would be best and wisest for you to adopt … I find that the names Eurasians, East Indians, Indo-Britons, Statutory Natives of India, Domiciled British and Europeans, have all at one time or another been, and to some extent still are, employed … it would appear that this has been regarded as a most vital question by many of your number, and that almost as much energy has been expended upon it as upon the practical discussion of the future … I do not myself see why there should be any deep and insidious sting … in the name Eurasian as applied to persons of mixed blood … nor do I understand the great and widespread anxiety to discover a new label … Anglo-Indian is a phrase which is applied in popular acceptance to a particular individual and society, British as a rule in origin, which spends its life, official, professional, or otherwise, in India, and as a rule finally goes home.1 Lord Curzon, to an Anglo-Indian deputation led by Mr L. P. Pugh, 1900, Government House, Calcutta

In 1897 J. R. Wallace travelled to London to petition the secretary of state for India requesting official redesignation of the mixed race group. Wallace sought to escape the increasingly derogatory and racial implications of the term Eurasian ‘by appropriating the label “Anglo-Indians” from resident Britishers who had invented it for themselves’.2 The only immediate result, as Cedric Dover aptly summarised, ‘was the publicly expressed sarcasm of Lord Curzon, then Viceroy of India, and the neglect of the euphuistic appellation outside the community itself … [Yet] Undeterred, the energetic doctor founded on his return ‘The Imperial Anglo-Indian Association’.3 In a stark expression of his boundary-blurring purpose, Wallace declared that ‘Britishers we are and Britishers we ever must be. Once we relinquish this name (Anglo-Indian) and permit ourselves to be styled “Eurasians” or “Statutory Natives of India” we become estranged from our proud heritage as Britishers.’4 Usage of ‘the term ‘Eurasian’, attributed to the Marquess of Hastings (circa the 1810s), was sporadic until the latter 19th century, when it so largely eclipsed East Indian and Indo-Briton ‘that the Association founded by

100

Becoming Anglo-Indians

E. W. Chambers in 1876 adopted it as a communal designation’.5 The more general ascription of Eurasian as a category in the late 19th century coincided with increasing racialisation of the intersectional ordering of colonial society in South Asia. Scientific racism was replacing earlier and fuzzier forms of colour and race prejudice, making race and colour more salient (though they continued to coexist with other principles of ordering, particularly class, legitimacy, and domicile). Eurasian thus became inflected with a seldom concealed racial scorn, of which its objects were highly conscious. Nonetheless, late 19thcentury documents sometimes used the terms ‘Eurasians’, ‘East Indians’, ‘country-borns’, and ‘Anglo-Indians’ almost interchangeably.6 Ricketts had earlier embraced ‘East Indian’ for its boundary-expanding potential, but in 1880 the barrister David Sutherland denounced the term as equally applicable to Hindus and Muslims, and attacked ‘Eurasian’ as ‘a philological monstrosity … [Encompassing] for instance, a cross between a Turk and a Naga, between a Norwegian and a Japanese’.7 Sutherland argued instead for the use of ‘Anglo-Indians, or Indo-Europeans’.8 The term AngloIndians, having previously referred to colonial Britons, enabled his conscious boundary-blurring strategy: all Indian towns are being gradually, if not rapidly, filled with a resident Christian population of pure English or mixed descent, who are English for the most part in their habits and sympathies though doubtless they have inherited many of the infirmities of their Asiatic parentage.9 Dr Chambers, president of the now renamed ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, also sought to blur boundaries in his construction of a new ‘Anglo-Indian race’ which would combine those of mixed and unmixed descent, emphasising the loyalty of the ‘poorest and most despised East-Indian; his one drop of European blood, diluted as it is, and his creed, imperfectly practised as it may be’.10 He advocated the benefits of admitting Eurasians into the Army on European pay and conditions; establishing ‘Anglo-Indian Schools’ in the hill stations for ‘the children of Europeans and Eurasians’; turning the railway and telegraph services ‘into a Reserve Military Service’; encouraging permanent settlement in India amongst retiring British soldiers; and recruiting ‘the better class of East Indians to join the ranks of the Local European Army’.11 Chambers attempted to weld together those of mixed race with ‘the Indianized European population’ or Domiciled Europeans.12 Emphasising a commonality of interest between ‘Poor Whites’ and ‘Eurasians’, he attacked deportation laws and advocated that India become a colony of settlement. Covering a whole range of strategies, some stretching back at least to the 1820s, and many which would continue to be advanced throughout the late colonial period, Chambers also invoked the Great Rebellion of 1857 in favour of his suggestion that settled Europeans and Eurasians were a potential security asset for service in ‘confidential departments’.13 Chambers claimed that ‘many a soldier marries among East Indians, and many there are who

Becoming Anglo-Indians

101

would gladly do so if they saw the prospects of making a happy home in the country’, and argued that such men should be encouraged to settle down together with the mixed in hill stations, to found agricultural colonies that would function as strategic military enclaves.14 Yet the Raj did not reverse Company policy against treating India as a colony of settlement. Curzon had been a particular proponent of militarising the domiciled through one means or another, but he resisted their attempts to an equalisation of status with colonial Britons, firmly reiterating the boundary between them and the non-domiciled class. It was perhaps unsurprising that Curzon could not understand how the term Eurasian had become a racialised epithet, as indeed to a lesser extent Anglo-Indian would be once it had been successfully appropriated by the mixed race group. Curzon was privileged enough to take for granted that ‘the world judges men not by what they call themselves, but by what they are’.15 In 1827 Eurasian had been self-asserted by the Madras petitioners to replace the offensive label of half caste. In the 20th century it still had adherents, most notably Cedric Dover who preferred it for its boundary-expanding potential to encompass a wider mixed race experience across the European empires in Asia. However, in a sense Curzon was right that the attitudes which colonial Britons held about the mixed race group could not be resolved by name changes. Where he was wrong was in failing to see how negative tropes about the group could be easily transferred from one label to another, changes of language did not necessarily eliminate underlying prejudice, often merely rendering its presence more opaque or fostering implicit racism. The belated sanctioning of the Anglo-Indian Force to fight in the First World War in March 1916, and the success of late 19th-century and early 20th-century campaigns for formal redesignation of the group as AngloIndians (both under the viceroy Lord Hardinge) marked the high point of the politics outlined by Mizutani of seeking collective elevation towards the status of superordinate colonial Britons. Alison Blunt argues that Anglo-Indians’ ‘imperial nationalism’ continued well into the 20th century as the group’s principal leader sought to steer them towards a ‘dual affiliation to both Britain and India as home … through images of Britain as fatherland and India as motherland’.16 Her work also emphasises how Anglo-Indians ‘had more complex attachments to both India and Britain’ than ‘imperialist depictions of the pervasive futility of Anglo-Indians desiring Britain as home and feeling out of place in India’.17 Yet political attempts to shift group identity faced resistance from within Anglo-Indian domestic spaces, which was often attributed to the attitudes and influence of Anglo-Indian women over their husbands and children. In the 1940s Anglo-Indians, desirous of reforming mental attitudes and reshaping identity, would often claim that it was older generations who clung to the idea of ‘going home’ to a Britain they had never known, and that these attitudes were declining from their turn-ofthe-century apogee, but in fact such rhetoric was being repeated precisely because so many remained unpersuaded and adhered to their attachment to a

102

Becoming Anglo-Indians

sense of superiority as putative members or extensions of the ruling imperial race. From 1919, with official moves towards a policy of gradual Indianisation of state employment, it became an essential strategy to assert an Indian legal status to seek to preserve their tenuous middling position in the Raj’s socioracial hierarchy of employment. Petitions to the imperial state during the 1920s requesting a clarification of the group’s legal status, suggesting the creation of a separate intermediate legal status in-between coloniser and colonised, and hinting at the possibility collective emigration to dominions such as Australia, were firmly rebuffed. The group’s political leadership was thereby directed and pressured towards a project of constructing the group as a rights-claiming Indian political minority. The major premises of collective political mobilisation and leadership thus conflicted with the persistent realities of divergent cultural affiliation and identity for the majority of those selfidentifying as Anglo-Indian. Even the group’s political leader’s tactics might be seen as problematic in the continuing demands for collective elevation (equalisation of salaries and perquisites to the colonial British level), as well as preserving the existing employment base of the group in the public services (as an Indian minority who would otherwise face complete economic dislocation). Collective political strategies of both kinds, of elevation and of preserving their position as statutory natives of India, were also concurrent with widespread individual attempts to ascend the state employment hierarchy through socioracial passing. Levels of orientation towards Britain as a source of identity, and the move towards greater identification with India advocated by Anglo-Indian leaders from the 1920s onwards, varied over time and between individuals. However, it is important to gain a sense of how deeply felt the attachment to a sense of cultural and racial Britishness through upbringing and real or imagined kinship had become by 1900 and how, in broad terms, it largely persisted amongst a substantial majority of those who could be ascribed to the group throughout the late colonial period. The mixed race group were shaped by their position relative to other groups, by colonial British attitudes and the policies and incentive structures of the imperial state. The superordinate ‘Domiciled European’ category as a buffer group into which and from which mixed race individuals of fair complexion could reposition themselves upwards. In appropriating and seeking to win state recognition of their self-asserted designation of Anglo-Indians, the mixed race group attempted to blur boundaries between themselves, Domiciled Europeans, and colonial Britons. They also drew boundaries against Indian Christians and distanced themselves from potential members of their own political constituency (for example Goans and Luso-Indians) and from those towards the bottom of their own internally stratified group who were judged internally and externally to possess lower social capital (along lines of colour, class, profession, grade of employment and pension, perceived proximity to Britishness or Europeanness, ‘respectability’, geographic location – north or south, city dwelling, residence in villages or remote railway

Becoming Anglo-Indians

103

colonies – and to a lesser extent even by Christian denomination). Contrary tendencies in the political and social spheres are best explained by the need for the political class to enumerate the largest possible constituency in pursuit of a group politics that would increasingly become that of a political minority after 1919, alongside the divergent attitudes towards internal social policing of the boundaries and hierarchy within the group itself which was hugely influenced by British colonial attitudes which were economically consequential to the employment prospects of various individuals and subgroups.

Defining an Anglo-Indian group The main arena and impetus to the politics of claiming, defining, and enumerating ‘groupness’, and subsequently claiming minority status, was the decennial Census. It had similar effects on fostering group formation and organisation among Sikhs, was generally intolerant of those such as the syncretic Hussaini Brahmins who, like those of mixed race, did not fit into its neat categories, and gave people a sense of their numeric strength and geographic dispersal across wider spaces than their own local communities and networks would have revealed to them. It helped to create minorities, and in conjunction with the emergence of political spaces (especially the limited franchise and highly circumscribed legislatures created by the 1919 Government of India Act, henceforth the 1919 Act) in which they could operate, encouraged them to define and enumerate their constituencies as political minorities who could make collective claims upon the imperial state, and ultimately demand protections from the political majority which was created in the same process. Until 1901 the Censors used the term ‘Eurasians’, but despite their efforts 96 individuals managed to return themselves as ‘Anglo-Indian’ in the Punjab and Rajputana.18 Censors also complained of unreliable figures as ‘Eurasians are prone to describe themselves as Europeans, and it seems certain that … a considerable part of the gain recorded at the present census is artificial and is due to … counteracting this source of error’.19 They reported ‘greater success in distinguishing between pure Europeans and persons of mixed descent in Calcutta’.20 When the 1911 Census reclassified the group as Anglo-Indians the Censors explained that the change emanating from ‘the Government of India’ was effected because ‘Eurasian, their former designation … [was] very unpopular amongst them’.21 Some embraced the new designation while asserting its older definition in order to bolster their denials of Indian ancestry. Others continued to claim to be Europeans and those with fairer skin colour might thereby enter the ‘Domiciled European’ group. ‘Anglo’ was intended to reflect or assert the predominantly British paternal ancestry of this mixed race community. However, that the majority of Anglo-Indians were Catholics reminds us of the degree to which their origins were also Irish, French and Portuguese.22 Nonetheless, as Anglo-Indian in turn came to be used pejoratively by colonial Britons there were even suggestions in the 1930s of a further

104

Becoming Anglo-Indians

change to ‘Domiciled Britisher’,23 which would have further emphasised a claim to inclusion in some broader definition of Britishness. Hawes argued that in a formative period (1773–1833) of group identity formation, which culminated in numerous petitions including Ricketts’, Protestantism had been another binding force for ‘British Eurasians’, bringing them closer together and being: central to their claim to membership of the wider British community in India [i.e. boundary blurring]. As other forms of social contact diminished [i.e. social closure] outside the work place attendance at religious worship provided a bridge between Eurasians and Britons and, as members of church … congregations, Eurasians had a standing in their own right. The education of many Eurasians depended on the schools of the missionary societies, which gave some opportunities in adult life as catechists, schoolmasters and missionaries. Most educated Eurasians of British descent were Protestant, whereas the Portuguese were principally Roman Catholic. Where Eurasians of Portuguese descent were accepted into British Eurasian circles, such as Willoughby Da Costa and the Derozio family, they too were Protestants.24 Further work on the religious dimension of the mixed race experience would be needed to rigorously test Hawes’ assertion about the salience of the sectarian boundary prior to 1833, but it would seem that the way the group was constructing itself in the late 19th and early 20th century placed less emphasis on the exclusion of Catholics from group membership. It appears that, in the context of a Catholic majority among those of mixed race, the significance of denominational difference had declined, though it likely remained one among several markers that functioned within internal class ordering. As colonial British respondents had done when faced with Ricketts’ petition roughly 70 years earlier, Curzon questioned the nature of the asserted ‘groupness’, as well as the nature and numbers of political constituents those of mixed race claimed, in seeking to have themselves be once again officially redesignated. Curzon countered the claims of the ‘pamphlet’ submitted to him in which his petitioners claimed to represent a group ‘over a million strong’ with ‘an able essay … upon the Eurasian question by a Mr. Nundy … [estimating Eurasians] as 120,000’.25 He questioned why they had added ‘the epithet Imperial’ to their organisation, which he suggested made their choice of the Anglo-Indian designation less, not more, ‘intelligible’.26 In emphasising their loyalty to the empire at this juncture, Anglo-Indians were arguably seeking to blur the boundary further by identifying themselves as closely as possible with the Raj and its British rulers. Curzon felt that by using a label which was commonly understood ‘in popular parlance’ to refer to (colonial British) ‘Anglo-Indian officials, judges, clubs, newspapers, opinion, and so on’ they would only ‘confuse … friends and wellwishers’.27 He further implied that the group was exaggerating its size by including non-domiciled

Becoming Anglo-Indians

105

‘Englishmen’. Curzon challenged the group to define and demarcate its constituency, questioning whether ‘the Anglo-Indian category’ could ‘embrace Eurasians of … Portuguese descent’ or ‘domiciled foreigners of other races’.29 Echoing the Asiatic Journal of nearly 70 years prior,30 Curzon challenged the commonality of interests of ‘the various classes’ being included under such a ‘very elastic classification’:31 28

The arguments from race do not … apply to the domiciled Europeans; and the interests, and employment, and prospects of the latter depend upon conditions wholly apart from those that retard the advance of the man of mixed descent. Your Society … rests upon two bases which have a priori little in common with each other, viz., domicile and race.32 Curzon displayed no awareness of the prior policy of the Company to ascribe the term Indo-British to the group and to thereby persuade those who might in reality be Indo-Germans to identify with England and the English government the Company represented. Nor was he aware that the self-asserted category of East Indian, which signified no connection to Britain, had been dissected in much the same way as he now sought to subdivide the selfasserted group into its constituent classes. Nonetheless, by 1900 the mixed race group were doubtlessly attracted to a term which could embody their asserted kinship with, and (boundary-blurring) claims to inclusion within, the ruling race. Curzon conceded that there had been a time ‘when the connection between European and Eurasian was more immediate and direct’, but he now suspected that the domiciled group was ‘being gradually bisected into two classes: those who are so near to the European standard that they have not the slightest difficulty in obtaining lucrative employment, and who, therefore, do not protest’ and those who ‘are gradually drifting away from it, and wish to preserve a superiority which they are scarcely competent to maintain’.33 If the orientation of the group or groups to which he referred had at times been contradictory or inconsistent, it could hardly have been as schizophrenic as the attitudes of the colonial state itself, partly the successive decisions of successive viceroys, and partly alternating co-option, exclusion, or more commonly combinations of the two seemingly contrary policies (reconciled through the desire to secure the loyalty and support of a group being subordinated, and largely excluded). Though often framed merely as a question of law, the state at times treated the mixed race category and the category for those of supposedly unmixed descent as a conjoined community, and at other times, like Curzon, questioned the commonality of their interests. There may, however, have been some truth in Curzon’s assessment of the diverging economic trajectories, interests and attitudes of those few in wellpaid state or railway employment, and those who were not. He was wrong to assume that these divisions were absolutely and clearly demarcated along racial lines, that Eurasians were always in the latter category, and that the

106

Becoming Anglo-Indians

blood of all Domiciled Europeans had ‘never been commingled with a native strain’.34 The socioeconomic dividing lines correlated with race, colour, and domicile, because of the socioracial system of hierarchical ordering by colonial Britons and the imperial state. These were not essential, fixed, or bounded categories discerned by the British observer, they were boundaries constructed and made salient by the imposition of enumerating colonial categories to order, and thereby simplify, a more complicated empirical landscape of interracial realities. Transgressions here amounted not to anti-colonial resistance, but individual or collective elevation in the Raj’s socioracial hierarchy, which often meant co-option in its patterns of dominance over Indian subjects. The constructive ambiguity Curzon detected in their ‘casting … [the] net so wide … [to] envelop a larger haul of fish’ – even claiming the numerical addition of colonial Britons – was about aligning themselves with the colonisers, and being sure to claim to represent at least all of the more broadly conceived domiciled group.35 After their formal redesignation as Anglo-Indians in the 1911 Census, Sir John Rees complained in the House of Commons that: ‘the Eurasians … are now described as Anglo-Indians, which is exactly what nobody else calls them’.36 Yet for the group itself the term represented their real and imagined kinship with Britain, whilst allowing them to: (1) blur boundaries with colonial Britons, (2) provide space for denials of Indian ancestry amongst those of mixed race, and (3) thereby facilitate claims to construct a group embracing all of the domiciled, mixed, and those who asserted a contested claim to unmixed descent. In any enumerating exercise Anglo-Indian leaders would usually seek to include the largest number of constituents, however, a socially consequential boundary was policed against Goans and Luso-Indians, whose Portuguese ancestry was often regarded as extremely diluted or fraudulent. A ‘Shipping Master’s Report for 1891–92’ presented figures distinguishing ‘Eurasians’ from ‘Goanese’ working on ship and steamer ‘saloon crews’, with the master further opining to the Calcutta Pauperism Committee that the ‘Goanese … all bear Portuguese names, but it is doubtful whether they are a mixed race’.37 The pattern here was not atypical as there were only 68 Eurasians to 230 Goanese having ‘Shipped’, but it was only a ‘few Eurasians’ in the more senior positions as ‘officers and engineers’.38 As one self-identifying Domiciled European (who may, it will be argued below, have been an AngloIndian engaging in racial passing as he admitted to having a ‘swarthy complexion’) in the 20th century expressed it: ‘Eventually all the … every Indian Christian, especially those from Goa, they … they’d describe themselves as Eurasians … ’ even though they had ‘Not a drop of European blood in them’.39 Thus in the social arena, though there were many Anglo-Indians with Portuguese names, there was also considerable exclusion of claimants to European descent of Goan origins, replicating the boundaries between the mixed and the supposedly unmixed Domiciled European group, and between the domiciled and colonial Britons. To understand why the group constructing itself as a political minority in the early 20th century was content to

Becoming Anglo-Indians

107

reduce its potential numbers (and therefore political bargaining power), we could cite the retention by a smaller number of those privileges the group was able to preserve, but we also require a better understanding of the socioracial values and attitudes that informed and underpinned British systems of socioracial hierarchical ordering.

Effects of education Education was a major dividing line determining class amongst the domiciled group. Dividing the least educated ‘kinthal classes’ of the Calcutta slums and those who had received fewer years of education in orphan asylums, from those attending English-medium railway schools established for the domiciled, and more prestigious fee-paying schools (that were still suspect as de facto borderline schools in the eyes of colonial Britons). A domiciled man recounted experiencing physical and other cruelty at one of his early schools which was run by American missionaries before his father had been able to afford to send him to the elite Bishop Cottons, Simla (est. 1859) by saving a meagre travelling allowance he was able to add to his railway salary through deliberately being away from home most nights of the week.40 Curzon expressed irritation with the Anglo-Indian petitioners’ pamphlet’s claim that government treated their ‘schools with a parsimony that is almost scandalous’.41 By this and other ‘fallacious rhetoric’ that failed to view their ‘position in its true perspective they would alienate the sympathy of government and colonial British society and weaken a case that had ‘much to recommend it in its intrinsic features’.42 He counselled them to avoid: ‘exaggeration’; ‘angry rhetoric’ suggesting ‘that the Government of India and the India Office … [were] engaged in a deep and malignant conspiracy to deprive … [them of their] birthright, [or desired] to stamp upon … [them] the brand of inferiority or subordination, or that as a community … [they were] hunted down and proscribed’; and their tendency when talking among themselves ‘to boil over in rather superfluous fashion’ and make statements that ‘would hardly stand [the] test of a critical examination’.43 Curzon was more equivocal about ‘a complaint as to the unsuitability of the Higher School and Calcutta University Examination for Anglo-Indian boys, and … the desirability of introducing the Cambridge University Local Examinations in this country’ which he opined had ‘some merit’ in establishing ‘a common standard of value. But if you have a system of universities in a country … [Curzon saw] some difficulty in giving them the go-by altogether, and in regulating your education by the standards of a foreign institution’.44 The subsequent wholesale shift in Anglo-Indian schools to the Cambridge Senior examinations was to create serious problems of compatibility and comparison with Indian qualifications, as well as to create greater distance in cultural outlook. Qualifications that were better recognised in Britain held some hope of preserving the possibility of access to more elite civil service jobs, intended to be the preserve of colonial Britons, but into which some of

108

Becoming Anglo-Indians

the domiciled might still manage to enter. By the 20th century possessing English as their mother tongue was a cultural marker defining membership for the mixed race in the group being defined as Anglo-Indian. Many AngloIndian children had at most a smattering of ‘kitchen Hindustani’ or the local language of their province with which to communicate to servants. Anglo-Indian education’s greater orientation towards British examinations did little to encourage the learning of Indian languages. As Blunt suggests the: English language spoken by Anglo-Indians often included Hindi, Urdu and Bengali words and idioms, but, before independence, it was more common for Anglo-Indians to learn French rather than an Indian language at school. Learning a rudimentary form of Hindi, Urdu or Bengali was an important way to domesticate differences between themselves and their servants.45 Like colonial Britons they used offensive informal imperatives, and thus their basic command of an Indian language was entirely unsuited to polite conversation. Since Macaulay British cultural and literary artefacts and subjects had made their way into Indian education at its higher stage, but the AngloIndian schools, run largely by European and British educationalists (many in the service of Christian denominations), and the external examinations known as the Cambridge Seniors, effected a more profound orientation towards ‘the West’. An Anglo-Indian clergyman in 1928 charged that: the education system which has been imposed on … [the Anglo-Indian] has taught him to despise his Indian heritage. It is European education with a vengeance. Great stress is laid on an English public school atmosphere. European masters are imported as largely as possible. Latin and French are taught in preference to the vernacular. English history runs from the top to the bottom of the school curriculum, whilst until recently Indian history found no place in it.46 Speaking to a British audience in London, the then Anglo-Indian leader, Gidney, compared the ‘Irish Loyalists of 1922 and the Anglo-Indian Loyalists of 1933’, emphasising that ‘the Anglo-Indian … owing to his adherence to all that is British and Western and his loyalty, is … considered as much an alien and a foreigner’ as the European.47 By this point in the century he was strongly advocating the forging of closer ties with Indians. In an article on how Anglo-Indian women could help their community, subheaded ‘Gidney’s Outspoken Advice’ and ‘Forget your superiority – if any; learn local vernaculars’ mix with Indians’, Gidney’s message was presented as follows: the Anglo-Indian ‘education system was at the root of the trouble, as it brought up the children of the community in a “sense of pseudosuperiority” and made no effort to bring home the fact that India was the land of their birth, their home, and that Indians were their brothers and

Becoming Anglo-Indians

109

sisters’; ‘compulsory teaching of the local vernacular should be enforced in every school’ to prepare Anglo-Indian youth to be ‘Indian citizens in every sense of the word’; it was the ‘sacred duty that every woman, European or Anglo-Indian … [owed] to India … to get to know the Indian woman’; it was regrettable ‘that both Anglo-Indian and English women seen to feel ashamed to learn the language of India’, it was ‘a short-sighted policy’ which had ‘done much harm in the past’ but which ‘if remedied to-day, and if our women get to know India and win the hearts of the people’ would help make India ‘a heaven indeed for all of us’; under a sub-heading ‘England not our home’, Gidney targeted Anglican schools for letting Anglo-Indian children ‘be brought up in the belief that England is their home’; and lastly told Anglo-Indians to: forget their superiority (if any) over Indians, which was a complex from which many of them especially the women suffered in a marked degree. He begged of them to throw in their lot with the Indians, who after all were their brothers and sisters and stand shoulder to shoulder with them in any constitutional fight for their rights.48 Knowing that Anglo-Indians were unlikely to look beyond these Anglophone and Christian schools, Gidney criticised them for failing to offer options for technical education and for persisting in hiring expensive, imported British teachers. He also came to be opposed to the external Cambridge examination system, and the lack of interface it engendered with Indian higher education (anticipated by Curzon). In Gidney’s view the whole school system was essentially run for the benefit of a British educational establishment in India, with many of its senior educationalists aligned with denominational Christian hierarchies. Though the system relied on the domiciled for the bulk of its students, the headmasters and church figures who dominated the regular education conferences turned a deaf ear to his calls for reform. Gidney advocated replacing imported British teachers and headmasters with Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European teachers to provide for more local employment whilst lowering the costs and fees of the schools. Such changes might also have made Indians in the legislatures less desirous of defunding these seemingly foreign institutions. Creating a bifurcated system which could equip less academic Anglo-Indian children for technical jobs and perhaps further industrial training and direct the more academically inclined towards qualifications at Indian universities seems to have been what Gidney had in mind. However, he was also concerned with increasing the cultural confidence of Anglo-Indian teachers, who were subordinated within existing school hierarchies, and of Anglo-Indian students, who he felt suffered under the influence of imported British educationalists and their assumptions. There remained cases of egregious race and colour prejudice within some schools in regard to admissions and differential treatment of staff and students, but even more opaque and unconscious attitudes could easily be internalised by those of mixed race.

110

Becoming Anglo-Indians

Looking back from the vantage of 1943, the presumably British educationalist Reverend L. J. Hopkins of Bangalore admitted there had been ‘a widening gap between the Anglo-Indian and other Indian communities’.49 Yet Hopkins charged that Anglo-Indian disdain for things Indian and attachment to Britain owed less to their European schoolmasters than to home influences, blaming ‘an ineradicable, instinctive feeling that everything British and Western is necessarily superior, and that everything Indian and Eastern is inferior – even soap and beauty preparations!’:50 Even when there is no actual contempt of things Indian, there is too often a staggering lack of interest … I asked two young people … if they knew which man of letters of international reputation had just died … [i.e.] Rabindranath Tagore, and to my horror I discovered they had never heard of him! But what exasperated me still more was that they made it pretty clear, when they knew he was an Indian poet, that they did not want to know about him.51 Anglo-Indians themselves made similar points that they could read Shakespeare, but not many could ‘read an Urdu newspaper’, that they listened to Beethoven, ‘but how many of us can listen to Indian Music without laughing at it or saying “It is just noise?”’52 Such cultural divergence no doubt went back earlier, but was only being seriously recognised as a problem as India was perceived to be moving towards some kind of self-government. In the same year as Hopkins’ article, a parallel debate was taking place in the West Indies, with the Kandel Committee Report of 1943, which blamed: continuation of a traditionally British status system in West Indian education … on the use (or misuse) of external exams, which, as the report put it, had for so long been ‘passports to public and private employment’ that pupils and parents had no understanding of or wish for education that did not teach to these exams.53 The Committee anticipated opposition to its recommendations that the external examinations (set by the Cambridge Examination Syndicate) be scrapped entirely. As Anne Rush suggests, middle-class West Indians, who identified with Britishness, saw no contradiction in an identity as black imperial Britons, and resisted reform of an educational system ‘driven by concerns about status, and … permeated, to a great degree, by Britishness’.54 One black Barbadian described how at school he: lived the lives of those great men in the History of England book. My mind crawled with battles and speeches … Magna Cartas … Anne Boleyn … Elisabeth Tudor … Mary Queen of Scots – all these were women with whom I was in love. I painted their faces black and put their huge crinolined dresses on the girls I saw around me.55

Becoming Anglo-Indians

111

It was that ‘definition of culture so dear to middle class West Indians … which had led West Indian educators to intertwine social advancement so closely with British cultural identity’.56 When the committee suggested that West Indians discard the current sense of culture as ‘something external, a veneer which has nothing to do with the practicalities of life’, they resisted, implicitly asserting their own co-ownership over cultural products which had been British in origin.57 For both groups, ‘the nature of civilization itself remained essentially British – encased within a class structure and an imperial world outside of which culture seemed impossible’.58 Whilst we should be wary of pushing the parallel too far, Anglo-Indians, like black West Indians, were an Anglophone group who had been ‘born and raised (and had to some degree prospered) within a British imperial system’, a world in which ‘what was commonly recognized as British culture was, perhaps, the most practical tool for’ advancement.59 Education and external examinations with syllabuses set for students in Britain reinforced this. For these groups at least, colonial racism did not prove a serious impediment to identification with Britain, which in the Anglo-Indian case could also rely on claims to shared ancestry, blood, and kinship.

Policing and transgressing group boundaries Buettner has argued that ‘British parents appeared unconcerned about their children mingling with ‘natives at school and focused their reservations on Anglo-Indians’.60 One of Kipling’s stories, Kidnapped, furnishes a salutary lesson on the dangers of such proximity. Here we find a mixed race ‘girl’ of ‘Spanish complexion’, who is painted through Victorian gendered perceptions of feminine virtue as ‘good and very lovely … a very sweet girl and very pious’.61 Castries attracts the interest of ‘a good young man – a first-class officer in his own Department – a man with a career before him’.62 Here Kipling constructs a far narrower gap that comes perilously close to being bridged, which is only tolerable because, in line with his didactic purpose, the disaster of an elite young British civil servant Peythroppe marrying across a socioracial boundary is ultimately averted by the intervention of an aunt-like figure who arranges for several gentlemen of good social standing to take the young man on a hunting trip and forcibly hold him hostage so that he misses the wedding ceremony. Peythroppe had been determined that ‘He was going to marry Miss Castries … and woe betide the house that would not afterwards receive Mrs. Virginie Saulez Peythroppe with the deference due to her husband’s rank’, but failed to realise ‘that marriage in India does not concern the individual but the Government he serves’.63 Kipling’s narration makes clear that assaulting ‘a Commissioner with a dog-whip’ would be less damaging to Peythroppe’s subsequent career than contracting ‘an alliance with the Castries’.64 Castries herself is infantilised as a faultless and virtuous female, who is to suffer her ‘broken heart’ in quiet and unreproachful dignity, yet as a potential wife, Kipling sets forth the

112

Becoming Anglo-Indians

‘many reasons she was “impossible” … All good Mammas know what “impossible” means … The little opal-tinted onyx at the base of her fingernails said this as plainly as print.’65 Yet in spite of beginning with a subtle physiognomic racial marker relating to the heightened colour contrast of an opaly white lunula with a darker nail bed and proximal nail fold, supposed to betray nonwhite ancestry in someone of ‘Spanish’ complexion, most of the reasons which follow relate to class. Earlier on the point is made that ‘Had a Subaltern or a Tea-Planter’s Assistant, or anybody who enjoys life and has no care for tomorrow, done what he tried to do, not a soul would have cared.’66 The problem for Peythroppe is that ‘marriage with Miss Castries meant marriage with … and all the ramifications of the Castries family, on incomes ranging from Rs.175 to Rs.470 a month, and their wives and connections again’.67 Her family are depicted as crassly scheming to bring about the match, whilst her father is mocked for his affectation and desire to stand on ceremony by repetitions of his title: ‘Honorary Lieutenant Castries’.68 Yet when confronting Peythroppe for his ‘breach of promise’ his lowly origin is revealed in utterances ‘vulgar and “impossible” … which showed the raw rough “ranker” below the “Honorary”, and I fancy Peythroppe’s eyes were opened’.69 Before departing he asks ‘for a “peg”’,70 which carries the class-inflected implication that he does not have sufficient self-respect to pass up the opportunity to obtain free alcohol, even from an adversary. Perhaps most fascinating is the invocation of the imperial state itself as the policing agent of its colonial British civil servants’ marriages, extending to a jest that ‘Government should establish a Matrimonial Department, efficiently officered, with a Jury of Matrons, a Judge of the Chief Court, a Senior Chaplain, and an Awful Warning, in the shape of a love-match that has gone wrong, chained to the trees in the courtyard’.71 Social closure, censure, and exclusion is the next line of defence in policing the boundary, as is anticipated in Peythroppe’s determination that his future wife be received in people’s homes. Yet though proximate enough to almost overcome these vast societal pressures, it is her name that helps to keep a crucial distance, even when married she would be ‘Mrs. Virginie Saulez Peythroppe’, and not for example ‘Grace Vincent’ (see Chapter 1). There were many mixed race men and women with British first names and surnames whose mestizaje is as hard to detect from a list of medical assistant surgeons or the membership rolls of charitable societies for a historian today as they would have been at the time, or indeed for Kipling’s readers. To the uninitiated, Kipling’s lack of explicitness over the issue of race in this story might be entirely obscure if he had not marked out, and othered, the Castries with a foreign, Iberian-sounding name (and even in the metropolitan ordering of the socioracial hierarchy of peoples in Europe the Portuguese, Spanish, and southern Europeans of the Mediterranean would have been placed at the bottom). The perceived centrality of this point is especially evident in Kipling’s undeniably comedic description of the young man’s ‘fall’: ‘He met a Miss Castries – d’Castries it was originally, but the family dropped the d’ for administrative reasons.’72

Becoming Anglo-Indians

113

Hawes notes the phenomenon of Anglicisation of non-British, and especially Portuguese names, as an attempt to evade the kind of stigma illustrated in Kipling and to facilitate upwards mobility: Correa became Currie; Leal became Lea; Silva became Silver; Souza became Sauseman; and Govea, Govey.73 Some simply dropped names like Pereira and changed their name to Johnson; a Gomes might become a Fitzpatrick.74 This helps to account for the under-recognition by contemporary scholars of socioracial passing, and the consequent exaggeration of effective exclusion, boundedness, and endogamy. It is those non-British family names known to be held by some of the mixed that remain the most identifiable clues to their presence, but even then distinguishing an Anglo-Indian Anthony, from an Indian Christian Anthony, in the many lists of government employees and wartime recruits, remains to some degree educated guesswork, facilitated by greater exposure to the British and non-British names on membership lists of Anglo-Indian association branches. Internal differentiation within the domiciled groups created hierarchies that replicated or echoed those of British class attitudes, of the metropole and the colonial setting, onto which race and colour were mapped. Some AngloIndians were willing to acknowledge ‘the colour prejudice within the community itself ’.75 Yet the internal socioracial hierarchy also reflected those ordering principles of respectability and class, which correlated with but could sometimes overcome markers of colour, race, and (less proximate) non-British European extraction. More successful individuals at times distanced themselves from those within their own group to whom they ascribed a lower class status (the unemployed or underemployed, those relying on charity, the less educated, and those less proximate to whiteness and Britishness). This did not necessarily mean distancing themselves from the group as a whole, but rather at times the construction of the group in ways that would emphasise its asserted proximity to Britishness and to respectability in class terms. Boundaries were drawn and policed against those whose eligibility for group membership was contested or more broadly rejected. Some of these boundaries were to shift again in the claims of the group’s leaders in the later politics of constituency building, as political imperatives to represent the largest number in principle overrode resistance on the ground to social inclusion in practice. Subsuming those considered proximate to themselves was nonetheless a gradual and never unidirectional process. The question of the Anglo-Indian group’s boundaries remained contested and variable in the late colonial period, and any move to expand its claims to membership (boundary expansion) for the purpose of asserting numerical strength contrasted with jealous guarding of communal resources. As, for example, when Gidney wrote to the Railway Board in 1929 to complain that ‘one vacancy apparently ear-marked for [an] Anglo-Indian was given to a “Goan”’, when he asserted it was a ‘fact that a Goan is not an Anglo-Indian’, that the man in question, named Tellis, had declared ‘himself a “Portuguese Subject” … during the Great War and so evaded conscription in the Indian Defence Force’, and demanded the

114

Becoming Anglo-Indians

government desist from ‘promiscuously allow[ing] … foreigners, i.e. Goans, to compete in such employment as camouflaged Anglo-Indians’.76 An ‘Anglo-Indian resident of Karachi’ had written to Gidney suggesting that if ‘the Railway authorities are pleased to group the Anglo-Indians and Goans together, then the post should have been given to Smith, as possessing the best educational qualifications’ among the candidates. E. Smith had passed his Senior Cambridge, whilst Tellis had only passed ‘6th standard’ at St. Patrick’s High School.77 However, Gidney’s emphasis of Tellis’ foreignness and evasion of war service may say more about how he was seeking to police the boundaries against Goans competing for Anglo-Indian reserved posts. As a civil servant noted on the file the ‘real danger, from the point of view of the Anglo-Indian community, is that Goans masquerade as Anglo-Indians … & may thus reduce the number of vacancies in the public services that are intended for Anglo-Indians’.78 The secretary of the Railway Board replied to Gidney that Tellis had been appointed by the North Western Railway ‘as a permanent Way Inspector apprentice’ solely on merit, but in any case there was ‘doubt whether Mr. Tellis is an Anglo-Indian or a Goan’.79 Policing group membership, especially in regard to reservations, was not a uniquely racial or Anglo-Indian concern. The Punjab government in 1935 addressed the issue of securing ‘only bona fide Sikhs’ for reserved vacancies and, after being repeatedly approached by Sikh organisations, sought to take measures against those who were claimed to have converted solely in pursuit of material advantage.80 The issue of visual identification was also raised in the Sikh case, for Sahajdhari Sikhs did not necessarily display the five symbols of their religion on their person, and might or might not grow their hair and beards. The definition of a Sikh, like that of an Anglo-Indian, or a European, was inescapably a problem for the colonial state, as well as the group itself. Group identity and membership were fostered and strengthened in the dynamic interactions between the minority groups and the colonial state.

Domiciled Europeans? The (non-Census) category of so-called Domiciled Europeans, often taken at their own self-assertions of unmixed descent, by those like Curzon, and by present-day scholars, certainly included fair-skinned people of mixed descent. This facilitated contestation of their whiteness by those more clearly of mixed race and by colonial Britons. The denial of Indian ancestors, as a result of a discriminatory hierarchy of socioracial ordering, is a sufficiently significant phenomenon (not least as Ghosh has highlighted, for the women thus rendered invisible) for us to attempt to make judgements that in part replicate the debates among those belonging to or ascribed to the various socioracial categories of the time. An analytically plausible assessment is that Domiciled Europeans comprised recent fairer-skinned mixed race entrants repositioning themselves across the boundary, and a significant number of multigenerational people mainly white in appearance who were at least as likely,

Becoming Anglo-Indians

115

but probably more likely, to possess some Indian ancestry than early ‘white’ families of several generations in South Africa. Van den Berghe made the case persuasively ‘that every “old family” from White Cape Society has genealogical connections with Coloured families’.81 Similarly, the Review asserted in 1928: There are very few families who have lived in India for two or three generations, as 95 per cent of … [Domiciled Europeans] have done, who have not intermarried into Anglo-Indian families chiefly of the ‘albino’ variety, and 95 per cent of these people, who, spend their lives pretending to be pure Europeans are Anglo-Indians and have mixed blood, but for obvious reasons they are anxious to remain aloof from their darker brothers. There are thousands of such Anglo-Indians masquerading under the euphonious name of ‘Domiciled European’, squeezing into clubs from which, if their coloured relations were known, they would be excluded … We have seen enough and known enough of the antecedents of many of these Domiciled Europeans to be able to put most of them to utter shame. One could even go further and say that 30 per cent of the officers in both the Indian Army and the I.C.S. and other Superior Services to-day are nothing but Anglo-Indians masquerading as Europeans.82 It even went so far as to declare that legally and constitutionally ‘there is no such community as the “Domiciled European Community”, nor is he entitled to any special share of the percentage of appointments’, and further complained that ‘many an upper subordinate Domiciled European who is retained as Statutory Native of India, on getting his promotion to the official grade promptly puts on airs and spends his time nursing a sick headache’, i.e. feigning that they were unused to the Indian climate.83 This was an attempt to collapse the Domiciled European category into the Anglo-Indian category, following the failed attempt to remove them from the title of the body when the Empire League was redesignated as the Anglo-Indian Association at the 1918–19 annual conference at Allahabad. Yet though it was correct that this category received no recognition in the Government of ‘India Act of 1919 … [and] the Criminal Procedure Code’, the claim that they were never recognised ‘in Government records of labour’ rested on less firm ground, as Domiciled Europeans were frequently, though inconsistently, recorded in government and railway employment statistics of various kinds.84 The core of the complaint here was that the Domiciled European category was used as a convenient way to retain statutory native of India status and share in reservations and representation alongside AngloIndians until it became possible to attempt a further ascent, by initially seeking to take advantage of Indian domicile to protect them from Indianisation before attempting to change their domiciliary status when there was a chance of further promotion into grades of service customarily (or formally) reserved

116

Becoming Anglo-Indians

for non-domiciled colonial Britons and Europeans. Successful passing at this stage might give a lucky few access to the ‘Lee Commission concessions’ for British government servants.85 A similar pattern applied on ‘the Railways where many of these so-called Domiciled Europeans are employed … there are cases, where, one, the white brother, is called an European, while the coloured brother is enlisted as an Anglo-Indian’.86 Such individual attempts to pass from one category to another contended with collective attempts to improve the status of the group as a whole through the retention of those with lighter skin and higher employment statuses within its boundaries. Another Anglo-Indian voice from outside the Association suggested in 1928 that so many Anglo-Indians had joined various European associations (presumably mainly created for the non-domiciled) that these should be amalgamated with the Anglo-Indian Association, pointing out that: frequently we find members of the same family included as members of the European Association on the one hand, and of the Anglo-Indian Association on the other, or else the same member enrolled in both Associations … Countless Anglo-Indian families still enter their children in the various schools in India as Europeans. People whose parents and grandparents have been born and bred in India still pose as pure Europeans.87 The same author also said that though there were still ‘hundreds of AngloIndians in the British Army, unclassed as such by them, or the snobs amongst them who pride themselves on being White, with a capital letter’ and though this might easily be proven by fellow members of the group, ‘why advertise the names of those who have attained to positions of ease and security, when doing so may inadvertently expose them to slurs and discomforts otherwise avoided?’88 The reluctance to ‘out’ members of their own group, in spite of regarding them as ‘traitors not only to the fathers and mothers who gave them birth, but to their own community’ mirrors the unspoken code in other contexts of racial passing.89 Aware of how widespread was the practice Gidney could not afford to alienate those who continued to self-identify as Domiciled Europeans, and thereby lose them from his claimed constituency, and so, in the face of another backlash over his comments, had to row back and revert to claiming to represent a conjoined domiciled community including both groups. The policing of the domiciliary boundary by superordinate colonial Britons was more effective in preserving the category as socially consequential. According to Arnold, ‘Indians as well as the European ruling classes in India tended to treat Anglo-Indians and Europeans as pretty much the same social category’.90 Buettner builds on work by ‘Laura bear and Lionel Caplan’ which ‘delineate[d] how domiciled Europeans increasingly converged with the Anglo-Indian community to form an “interstitial group” between … Europeans and Indians in … their social and occupational standing’.91 She explores in detail the length to which colonial Britons in India would go to

Becoming Anglo-Indians

117

place distance between themselves, their children and ‘the ranks of the “domiciled” or “country born”, who included less-affluent Europeans and Anglo-Indians alike’.92 Markers like the ‘chi chi’ Anglo-Indian accent (with a lilting intonation, often compared with Welsh accents) became dangerous pollutants (and proxies for racial difference) from which to protect one’s children. Household management guides warned colonial British women that though a domiciled ‘girl … may make a very satisfactory nurse … [whether] of pure English extraction … [or] mixed parentage. To both the objection of accent applies, for the Eurasian accent is very infectious and small children quickly adopt it’.93 Hence schooling in India was often ruled out. Families under financial constraints would prioritise boys’ education at the metropole to ensure their employment prospects within India. In an inversion of Thurston’s earlier typology of identifying the 16 annas in a rupee with unmixed blackness and zero annas with whiteness,94 ‘those of European descent were [now] metaphorically valued at 8 annas or 15 annas’, referring in popular slang to an Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European background, respectively.95 To colonial Britons the difference between the two ‘amounted to the same small change’, as to be a Domiciled European was to enter a ‘racially amorphous realm’, in which claims to exclusively European ancestry were inherently suspect amidst ‘long-standing British biases against the “country born” … [as being] racially as well as socially inferior’.96 Assertions by Domiciled Europeans of a non-British yet exclusively European ancestry were particularly suspected as illustrated in Scabby Dichson, a 1920s fictional work, recognised by Buettner as a ‘thinly disguised portrayal of the Bishop Cotton School at Simla’,97 in which a policeman angrily states ‘Dutch my grandmother! … That is an old dodge among that sort. They’re always claiming outlandish ancestry – usually Spanish or Portuguese – when there’s a touch of the old [tar] brush in them somewhere.’98 As we have seen the domiciled did often possess diverse European ancestry, but colonial Britons were correct in assuming that many Domiciled Europeans also had Indian ancestry. To say that those of mixed ancestry had bifurcated into two groups, those whose families were mostly white in appearance and who could more plausibly claim pure European descent and thus identified as and were ascribed to the Domiciled European category, and those who were more obviously mixed, might be to overstate the case. However, the Domiciled European category functioned for colonial Britons like the putatively white South African buffer schools for borderline cases of whiteness (including many so-called ‘pass whites’). Officially its membership was regulated by the purely legal principle of domicile, in practice the claims to non-domiciliary status by the multigenerational empire families (also called ‘dolphin families’ because of the tendency for ‘non-domiciled’ boys to be born in India, go back to England for schooling, return to India for work in the higher echelons of public service, and for their own children to repeat the process) were not clear cut, they were a claim to a superior socioracial class status.

118

Becoming Anglo-Indians

Buettner argues that even the ‘“higher-class” hill schools’ had by the 20th century become associated with the ‘chi-chi’ accent.99 The reality was complicated by the fact that not all colonial British families could afford to send their children to the UK for education, and that during the world wars it was felt safer to keep them in India. In such cases colonial Britons sometimes opted to home-school their children, later reflecting that ‘in those days, English children of any family [i.e. of any self-regarding family, as measured in the hierarchy of class] did not go to the hill boarding schools where the children were chiefly Anglo-Indian. There was a curious fear of … contamination.’100 Colonial-born British boys’ future non-domiciliary and socioracial class status and therefore employment prospects depended to a greater extent on metropolitan education; colonial-born British girls were conversely dissuaded from seeking employment, as in the colonial setting it was domiciled women who were more likely to be employed. For example, Calcutta’s ‘schools of dancing were run almost exclusively by Eurasians’.101 ‘Teaching ballet posed … [a] risk’ to British girls of being classed with Anglo-Indians.102 Both world wars accelerated trends in metropolitan women’s education outside of the home, certain gendered professions were increasingly socially acceptable in Britain even for women higher up the British class spectrum, but colonial British society lagged behind in this as in many social changes (upwardly mobile colonial Britons were in part enacting a performance they believed suitable to the higher class statuses they aspired to back in Britain, and basing their imperfect knowledge of them on the period in which they had last left the metropole). Colonial British girls, as long as the class status of their families remained non-domiciled, and they avoided professions associated with domiciled women or contracting any trace of domiciled accents, suffered little in the marriageability stakes. The mercantile classes of Britons living in India were subordinated relative to other colonial British families, and could also be suspect. British planters were judged to be more proximate to the world of the domiciled and of racial mixing, and therefore the most contemptible of whites. Further complicating such attempts at ordering according to domicile was the reality that a few more affluent Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian families had the finances or luck to achieve the crucial marker of metropolitan education that evaded some poorer colonial British families. As Blunt has also observed, Eunice Gomez, ‘an Anglo-Indian young lady of Trivandrum’ proceeded to Oxford and ‘passed the Honours in Language and Literature’.103 Many more Anglo-Indian retirees from government service chose to settle in Britain in the late colonial period, some of whom became members of the separate London Anglo-Indian Association. Their relatives in India thereby had some connection to facilitate future chain migration. Domicile was therefore no clearly and consistently discernible legal principle of boundary demarcation, but more of a convenient fiction that approximated to a socioracial class boundary, for which other markers would suffice in the spaces where colonial British society regulated social interaction (such

Becoming Anglo-Indians

119

as the club, or the hill station). The intermediate Domiciled European category between mixed and unmixed in effect obscured the uncomfortable realities of a more granulated interracial landscape, and made it harder for fairskinned Anglo-Indians to successfully ascend (through socioracial passing) through two boundaries into the non-domiciled colonial British world. Nonetheless, amongst those of mixed race who appeared white in complexion, a few women could succeed in doing so through hypergamous marriage strategies, and even fewer mixed race men might somehow work their way into a pay scale of public employment designed for non-domiciled colonial Britons. Wartime, and the Second World War in particular, with the possibilities of transfers to locations outside of India, for enrolment at the metropole, for transfer from one military or medical service to another (in a wider colonial world), arguably facilitated such repositioning. Imperial authorities attempting to recruit an assistant medical officer in British Honduras noted that they could not obtain European doctors at the advertised salary of £300 and discussed whether to make a case for increasing the salary or satisfying their requirements with ‘well qualified but inexperienced Eurasian or coloured creole doctors’.104 Whilst they may have been referring to East or Southeast Asian Eurasians, we can well imagine that a Domiciled European or AngloIndian of white appearance with a British family name could have taken up the post without ‘detection’. Wallace recalled ‘an Anglo-Indian holding a good appointment by virtue of his passing for a European’ fearful that ‘an old lady who knew his family in the old days’ letting her tongue ‘wag’ too freely might have lost him ‘his promotion … and even his job’.105 He also gave the example of an Anglo-Indian in the ‘A.I.R.O.’ during the First World War, who, when visited by his ‘not very dark’ mother, told his fellows that she was ‘A very old and faithful ayah’.106

Gender, sex, and marriage Roy Nissen (1905–2002) self-identified as a Domiciled European with a Danish paternal ancestor. However, during an interview after his migration to the UK, he reflected that most of his girlfriends had been and 90 percent of his friends ‘were Eurasians and we, we didn’t consider ourselves any, any difference between us at all really … Of course they would never admit that we were a Domiciled European … We were fair Anglo-Indians.’107 As an accounts officer in the Indian railways (1924–60), his wide-ranging testimony provides a crucial source for reconstructing the lived experience of the domiciled community. If Nissen was a Domiciled European his testimony points to a social existence for Domiciled Europeans which was almost inseparable from Anglo-Indians. If Nissen was really a ‘fair Anglo-Indian’ racially passing as a Domiciled European then his experience may have been less representative of the experience of the whole body of self-identifying Domiciled Europeans, but reinforces our case about repositioning across this boundary.

120

Becoming Anglo-Indians

Equally telling was that Nissen constantly sought inclusion and acceptance amongst colonial Britons, despite repeated rebuffs. He gave the example of a colonial British woman telling an ‘Indian shopkeeper “I’ll come back again after you’ve finished with this Eurasian woman over here” and just simply stamped out … we had quite a lot of that.’108 Nissen felt that colonial British ‘women were worse than the men’ in expressing their disdain.109 Asked whether he had ever dated a British woman Nissen replied ‘out of the question, out of the question, good heavens’, laughed and added ‘something so impossible, something so unthinkable’, in their eyes ‘we were just muck’.110 Nissen’s sister (like Nissen probably self-identifying, but perhaps passing, as Domiciled European) was a nurse and a sanatorium matron whom he felt was ‘infinitely more qualified than a good many of ’ the Queen Alexandra nurses, but was ‘treated as dirt in comparis[on] … by, by these Queen Alexandra nurses’.111 Amidst varying depictions of the mixed and racial mixing from the perspectives of multiple narrators Paul Scott’s fiction describes the hierarchy in nursing: the rulers of the roost are the official VADs [Voluntary Aid Detachment field nurses] and the QAs. You should see the airs some of the QAs give themselves. At home they’d simply be ordinary ward nurses … Here they rank as sisters. Neither they nor the voluntary bods are supposed to do anything menial. That’s all left to the poor little Anglo-Indian girls.112 Nissen’s sister left her job in Karachi when she married a colonial British ‘junior clerk with royal insurance’ who: went out covenanted there … a very nice chap when he first went there, but it wasn’t long before he had to conform … along with the rest … and I found there was a great difference between us, in fact a considerable antagonism between us, because he used to put the heavy covenanted across me, which I was never prepared to accept from anybody.113 Both Scott and E. M. Forster explore the theme of recently arriving British women being pressured towards induction into the socioracial values and norms of the Raj, embodied in codes of separation from Indians except through clearly defined official relationships, with the failure of two fictional English women to maintain those boundaries, resulting in their rape at the hands of Indian men. In Forster’s A Passage to India, a dialogue between two Indian characters suggests that the process of acculturation resulting in socioracial aloofness could take up to two years for an Englishman, but as little as six months for an Englishwoman.114 From this point Nissen found himself increasingly estranged from his sister. Her hypergamous marriage secured her access to levels of colonial society and spaces such as more elite colonial clubs to which Nissen was, despite his best efforts, excluded:

Becoming Anglo-Indians

121

She became very covenanted, and, of course she was a member of all the clubs there, and she was my elder sister and I did feel that she used to … but that was because of the influence of her husband … she had to conform, and she had to conform with him.115 Cutting off from family members who could not join in one’s ascent is an observable feature of racial passing in other contexts; had Nissen been darker skinned than his sister the rupture would likely have been absolute. Though Nissen’s sister had fulfilled the aspirations of many other Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian women by ascending into the world of colonial Britons through a successful hypergamous marriage, and though in the context of such pronounced hierarchal ordering this was entirely rational, it could also be a risky strategy. Faced with competition, and sharing the socioracial snobbery of colonial British society, colonial British women tended to further the depiction of domiciled women as either tragically misguided or as dangerous sexual predators. Nissen recalled Anglo-Indian women being referred to as ‘cobras’.116 This dovetailed with wider imperial and patriarchal stereotypes that portrayed mixed race women across Asia as hypersexual and exotic objects of desire. Colonial British women on the housing sub-committee of the aforementioned 1920 Report felt that young Anglo-Indian women were in need of the moral supervision of British hostel superintendents in Calcutta hostels because the ‘opposite sex … [held] great attraction for the Anglo-Indian girls and there … [was] great danger of her going wrong unless safeguarded … The want of a strong sense of modesty should be guarded against.’117 Blunt quotes one of her colonial British interviewees, Betty Loch, who hired a ‘charming’ Anglo-Indian to look after her three children: despairingly attempting to make her take some thought for her own future. It was no good – any little money she had, she ‘invested’ in pink satin dancing shoes or lipstick hoping to attract a husband out of the fast thinning ranks of British soldiers all on their way out of India.118 Darker-skinned domiciled girls than Nissen’s sister had little chance of achieving such a marriage, though they might be seduced into sexual encounters either in hope of marriage or through false promises. Asked by his interviewer if covenanted walllahs would ‘bed the Eurasian girl’ with no intention of marrying her, Nissen concurred. Despite agreeing to their employers’ ‘code of practice’ that (among other things) forbade them to appear in public with Anglo-Indian women, ‘covenanted’ young men would take ‘them round in their cars, along the Maidan, the park, and do a little canoodling there’.119 They ‘used to grab all the girls’ as: we were poorly paid in comparison to the covenanted-wallah, whose salary was much bigger, and he was able to afford it, and as I said the

122

Becoming Anglo-Indians first few years they were not allowed to marry … and of course these girls considered it a great honour to be entertained by a covenanted-wallah, and they wouldn’t mind us coming across to their house – [to] see them from Monday to Friday, but Saturday it was always booked up with the covenanted-wallah, who would take them out, and take them back to the chummery, and probably bring her back Sunday morning.120

As for the fictive Peythroppe, marriage or social discovery of such a relationship would have been fatal to career prospects and meant immediate ostracism by peers who would describe them as having ‘gone jungly’. Blunt quotes an Anglo-Indian woman named Mary whose fiancé, a Scottish teacher in the 1940s, had broken off their engagement, leaving behind a letter from his mother commanding him not ‘to come back with any black lady from India’.121 Another Anglo-Indian woman in Lucknow had succeeded in marrying a British man and migrating to the metropole to discover that he already had a wife, to whom she was introduced as ‘the coloured help that I’ve sent for’.122 Despite many tragic disappointments of being ‘let down’ or abandoned with children, a marriage to a British rank-and-file soldier in the late colonial period remained potentially realisable and highly advantageous. Nissen described how the fathers of Anglo-Indian girls who had found white boyfriends among the privates of the British army jumped at the chance to buy them out of the army and help them to find employment on the railways in exchange for a socially advantageous marriage. The interviewer questioned why ‘the father of a Eurasian girl [was] prepared to spend quite a lot of money presumably buying a British Tommy out of the regiment’, and Nissen claimed that the father ‘went up in status’ in his own community, generalising that ‘she wasn’t very particular so long as he was white … didn’t care whether she loved him or he loved her, so long as he was white’.123 The father might be ‘station-master’ and he would get the young man a job ‘as a ticket-collector, guard … fireman, working the cabin, something like that’.124 In 1929 Gidney wrote to the Army headquarters in Simla to complain that ‘our girls are lured into secret marriages’ and that ‘many marriages … [of] British soldiers in India with our womenfolk [took place] without the consent of the Officer Commanding’ who then refused to recognise the marriage.125 When their husbands left India with their regiments, Anglo-Indian wives were left ‘stranded penniless and without a home, in many cases with one … or more children’.126 Gidney described the resulting ‘tragedy in some stations in which British troops are quartered, particularly in Bangalore, Belgaum, Poona, Allahabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, etc.’.127 He criticised the ‘conduct’ of these British soldiers as ‘reprehensible’, but also attacked ‘the rules regulating marriages in regiments … [that effectively gave] any man the right to marry and then in obedience to his duty … encourage[d] his desertion of his wife and family’.128 If these British servicemen knew their marriages would be subsequently disallowed, engaged in ceremonies they did not regard as legal,

Becoming Anglo-Indians

123

or judged that Indian marriage records might not preclude their ability to marry on returning to Britain, some desertions may have been premeditated. Soldiers might also have hoped to have a marriage accepted by the Commanding Officer after the fact. Gidney perhaps omitted women who had been made promises of marriage that were not fulfilled after sexual relations, but doubtless the problem extended further than the cases on which he felt he could make the strongest possible moral case for redress to the military authorities. Gidney’s description of how the practice tended ‘to lower the morals of these unfortunate, misguided and beguiled women and often … [led] them to lives of dishonor’ may have alluded to them resorting to sex work.129 Clearly, hypergamy as a strategy was not without its attendant risks, the willingness of young women to face such risks further highlights the benefits perceived in successful marriage to white British men of whatever social standing in ascending the socioracial hierarchy. During the Second World War the opportunities for Anglo-Indian women, many serving as nurses or in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps (India) (henceforth WAC(I)), to seek relationships in the hope of marriage with white Allied servicemen greatly increased. Gidney’s successor echoed his earlier fears: ‘many of the girls … seem to labour under the misapprehension that permission to marry American soldiers can be secured easily or as a matter of course’.130 Nissen described many heavily made-up Anglo-Indian girls being photographed with American soldier boyfriends during the war, and commented on ‘lots of trouble’ that ensued.131 The Review warned of the ‘large number of illegitimate children … born to Anglo-Indian girls in Delhi … [whose] putative paternity … [was] almost invariably American’.132 Despite the United States Army authorities banning the marriage of American soldiers to British subjects in India, Anglo-Indian ‘girls between 15 and 20’ were criticised for ‘encouraging “necking” parties thrown by their Yankee admirers’.133 As in Britain and Australia men of their own group resented this, attributing it to the Americans having ‘the dough’ while they did not. Anglo-Indian women were criticised as making ‘fools of themselves by parading about cafes and dance halls having a good fling with these trans-Atlantic Buddies who cannot marry them, and do not propose’.134 While some Anglo-Indian women had managed to marry American servicemen before the ban and might hope to emigrate with them, in 1944 it was fearfully anticipated that the Americans’ withdrawal would leave behind unmarried mothers who might not ‘be able to afford to maintain these children … [and] Another perhaps more menacing aspect … venereal disease’.135 Such concerns were doubtless genuine, but we should also recognise that male Anglo-Indian voices frequently sought to police women’s exit from the group via such ‘marital ambitions’.136 One particularly unrestrained attack on ‘the Anglo-Indian woman’ lambasted her as ‘a complete devastating failure … [and] the principal cause of Anglo-Indian degradation’ as she was ‘susceptible to things, she is utterly ignorant of ’, ‘an egoist’ guided by the ‘principles … By myself, for myself and with myself ’, viewed ‘colour and class distinctions

124

Becoming Anglo-Indians

[as] the order of the day … [and therefore preferred to] marry a European than her own kind … [which was] of paramount importance to her … under the illusion … that a foreigner offers her a vision of supreme endowments’.137 There is a tension between recognising the historical reality of such hypergamous marriage strategies and the negative stereotyping of Anglo-Indian women. We have seen how negative tropes were more generally applied to Anglo-Indians in colonial fiction. However, as Glenn D’Cruz argues, these fed into but were reshaped in the post-independence era, when existing and new stereotypes were developed and embellished by Indian society particularly building upon the issues of women’s dress, behaviour, and supposed promiscuity. Women are often made to carry a greater burden of representing the group or nation. By symbolically standing for a collective, they are seen to embody its morality, dress, and practices in both positive and more often negative ways. The defence of group honour is often identified with the sexual purity of its women according to various notions of femininity, appropriate behaviour, and gendered beliefs in virtue through sexual ideals like female chastity. Depending on the society, even a dance like the jive (commonly associated with Anglo-Indians) can take on a negative imagery of sexual promiscuity and alcoholism.138 From a more detached standpoint there is nothing intrinsically negative about dancing, drinking, wearing certain kinds of clothing, illegitimacy, or in consensual sex outside of marriage. It is only how these are inflected as being somehow negative that is important. Given that, to varying degrees, and in diverse societies, negative tropes have carried a damaging instrumental function in the subordination of particular groups and in justifying sexual and other violence against women, we must highlight how and why they have been so deployed. Still, as D’Cruz argues, projects that consider it ‘politically desirable to produce “positive images” to counter … deprecatory stereotypes … as a form of “cultural activism”’ can be as problematic as a Bhabha-esque celebration of hybridity.139 Rather than denying any empirical basis for negative stereotypes, we should instead focus on the diversity of lived experience, and recognise that the ways in which various behaviours are inflected and perceived says more about those who deploy and instrumentalise stereotypes than the behaviours themselves. It is important to recognise how tropes are deployed historically and consequentially, but not to deny cases of, for example, ‘illegitimacy’, for the sake of purifying the historical record. To attempt to airbrush historical realities for the sake of moral and ethical systems of the past or present is in part to capitulate to those who attempt to present moralising systems for regulating women’s sexuality, dress, and behaviour and to police gender and society more generally. Future work should seek to understand the precise ways in which ascribed behaviours, markers, and attributes, whether real, imagined, or exaggerated, are being constructed, and to what effect. For example, it would be equally possible to interpret the ‘problem’ of illegitimacy as a means of policing social inclusion and inheritance and citizenship rights. Ricketts’ petition to Parliament in 1829 had specifically

Becoming Anglo-Indians

125

complained that the bulk of his group, being denied British subjecthood, was bereft of civil law to recognise the validity of their marriages. There were also the ‘paper marriages’ among the so-called ‘kinthal class’ that were not recognised by Church authorities or the colonial state. Legitimacy, like domicile, functioned as ascribed legal statuses that could be selectively applied, as well as being used to stigmatise and subordinate. By contrast women’s hypergamous marriage strategies can be seen as entirely rational acts of transgression. Anglo-Indian women’s greater freedom in matters of courtship (historical and contemporary), their ‘love matches’, and the possibility of premarital couplings in pursuit of desirable marriage partners, could all just as easily be read as evidence of independence and agency. Anglo-Indian women’s real and imagined sexual, courtship, and marriage behaviours and strategies could be as potentially disturbing and destabilising to imagined worlds of arranged marriages, Hindu caste purity, and the rejection of pre-marital sex in modern South Asia as they were to colonial British attempts to regulate sex across socioracial boundaries. Rather than be drawn into representing Anglo-Indian women through the negation of negative tropes, we should seek to explore the richness and diversity of their lived experiences.

Working women Some of the earliest South Asian female doctors were Anglo-Indians, although they were preceded by the first two Indian women to qualify, both in 1886 – Kadambini Ganguly (in Bengal) and Anandibai Joshi (in the USA). The 1921 Kapurthala returns reveal that ‘Miss G. M. Friend Pereira M.D.’, listed as Eurasian, had been employed since 1901 as ‘Lady Doctor to Her Highness the Maharani Sahiba and Ranis and in charge [of the] Female Hospital’, on Rs. 425 per month as well as ‘House and carriage’.140 In Bahawalpur, ‘Miss. Z. E. Decosta’ had worked as a ‘Lady Doctor’ since 1908, on Rs. 700, with her own personal assistant (a Miss Brown).141 All three women were listed as British subjects, but Decosta and Brown were also declared to be Europeans. It is not a stretch to suppose that Decosta, based on the prevalence of her surname amongst Anglo-Indians, was domiciled, and probably an Anglo-Indian with the social capital and complexion to pass as European, though this must remain a conjecture. Dr May Shave (b. 1884), whose portrait more clearly identifies her as visibly mixed, studied at St Mary’s, Poona, the Wilson College, Bombay, and at the Grant Medical College, ‘where she graduated in 1908’ and having ‘assumed temporary charge of the Rasulkhanji Hospital’ where she served as a ‘House Surgeon’ during a superior’s absence, she was placed in ‘charge of the Lady Aitchison Hospital for five months’ during World War I.142 Shave continued her own ‘substantial private practice in Lahore among all communities’ whilst becoming ‘the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Community [representative] in the Provincial Legislative Council’, president of the Lahore branch of the Anglo-Indian Association, and performing other forms

126

Becoming Anglo-Indians

of public service such as being nominated ‘to the Provincial Board for AngloIndian & European education’.143 The widespread presumption in Britain that women would leave the workplace after marriage did not hold for Anglo-Indian women, as Shave had married a fellow member of her own profession back in 1910.144 The couple’s combined incomes presumably facilitated their ability to send their ‘son of 23 … [to] Loughborough College, Leicestershire, England’ whilst their ‘daughter of 14 … [was] being educated privately’ (presumably in India).145 The gendered pattern of education for their children (at this point at least) was mirroring that of middle- and upper-income colonial Britons. Anglo-Indian women also appear prominently in the teaching profession, with a Miss Angelina Thomas serving as head mistress of a local girls’ school in Faridkot State on Rs. 90 per month, and a Miss J. Reid, head mistress of a girls’ school in ‘Sirmoor [or Sirmur] State’ on Rs. 50 per month (presumably related to a Miss Olive Reid, a ‘Probationer Compounder’, i.e. pharmacist, on Rs. 12 per month).146 The average Anglo-Indian woman’s role in the public space and in work set her apart from the majority of colonial British women (at least prior to the Second World War) and to a great many Indian women (depending on class and with notable exceptions). As Buettner has argued, by the 1930s, although ‘paid work outside the home for unmarried middle-class women had slowly shed some of its stigma in Britain … British women in India’ were likely to avoid ‘teaching, nursing, working in … department stores, and [jobs] as typists and receptionists’ as otherwise they ‘faced inclusion within the category of the racially mixed – in effect judged by the company they kept’.147 Anglo-Indian women were therefore proportionally more likely to be in middle-class employment outside of the home than middle-class Indian or colonial British women (see, for another example, Figure 3.1). Mr S. C. Mitra put in a question to the Legislative Assembly in 1929 asking ‘whether it was a fact that in the Accounts Department Indian clerks are entertained on Rs. 50/- per mensem whereas European or Anglo-Indian and lady clerks are entertained on Rs. 80/- and 100/- respectively’.148 Civil servants formulating an official response noted their view that the suggestion ‘that a discrimination is made on a racial basis is not quite correct & should be contradicted’.149 The official reply was that the minimum starting salaries for Indian clerks ranged from Rs. 40 to Rs. 80, with Rs. 60 for an Indian BA holder and Rs. 80 for an MA holder, whilst Anglo-Indians were ‘generally allowed an initial pay of Rs 70/- to Rs 80/- as it has been found that good recruits of those communities are not available on a lesser pay’ and that no ‘special minimum has been laid down for lady clerks whether European or Anglo Indian’.150 A number of other muddled and from our perspective obfuscatory points were made to defend the discretion of department heads to make these decisions. Whilst there may have been some colonial British rather than Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian lady clerks in government service during peacetime, it was generally the case that the employment of British women in middle-class occupations outside of the home lagged behind in India relative

Becoming Anglo-Indians

127

Fig. 3.1 Advertisement in the Anglo-Indian Review (December 1929, p. vi), of ‘Miss June Knight, an Anglo-Indian girl only 18 years old who… started a dancing Academy of her own in Calcutta’ (p. 9). Calcutta’s ‘schools of dancing were run almost exclusively by Eurasians’. Source: cited in Buettner, Empire Families, p. 104, so that ‘Teaching ballet posed… [a] risk’ to British girls of being classed with Anglo-Indians (p. 103).

to social changes in women’s work taking place at the metropole, especially during the interwar years. Anglo-Indian women were also a pioneering force in nursing, education, and telegraphy during the late colonial period. During both world wars a considerable number of Anglo-Indian women served as nurses, and in the Second World War a great many signed up to serve in the WAC(I) (Figure 3.2). In 1942, reports presented to the War Cabinet in London recorded that of ‘1953 auxiliaries … [there were] 761 Europeans, 256 Indians, 830 Anglo-Indians, and 51 Anglo-Burmans’.151 Rhetorically, Gidney and Anthony would often claim Anglo-Indian women constituted the bulk of the WAC(I), but given that the figures for Europeans likely included Domiciled Europeans and some Anglo-Indians engaging in passing, this was not entirely divorced from the reality. The Indian Military Nursing Service took ‘a very few of them’,152 with most Anglo-Indian nurses being employed by the subordinate Auxiliary Nursing Service. Several women were also prominent in the politics of Association branches, even though during the interwar years the assumption that they would be focused on organising charitable, fundraising, and social events tended to limit their aspirations. In February 1929 only one of 71 district branches had a female president and only six had female district branch secretaries, while

128

Becoming Anglo-Indians

Fig. 3.2 WAC(I) advertisement in the Anglo-Indian Review (April 1943, p. 7). AngloIndian women, and some Indian Christian women who sought inclusion with what they might still perceive as a superordinate group (possessing higher social capital), chose to wear skirts, although ‘Indian personnel’ had the option to wear ‘Saris instead’.

Becoming Anglo-Indians

129

the 15 provincial branches had none, and the central governing body had no female members.153 However, in July, Mrs N. H. S. Barnard, BA, and Mrs Ellen West of Calcutta joined the central governing body.154 West would also represent Anglo-Indians as a Member of the Legislative Council of Bengal until her death almost a decade later in 1938.155 Additionally, in October 1929, ‘Miss Parkinson, Principal, Station Schools’ became the second president of a district branch (Rawalpindi).156 It should be clear that there were formidable and highly successful Anglo-Indian women forging ahead in a diverse array of fields during the late colonial period.157 Caplan’s anthropological work also suggests that after independence Anglo-Indian women increasingly played the crucial economic role of sustaining the community as young men struggled to find good employment.158 In the new India Anglo-Indian women were to become visibly prominent in service industries such as department stores, hotels, and as ‘stewardesses’ for the national carrier, Air India. Anglo-Indian women (and men) also became more prominent as teachers and educationalists in Anglophone schools, as the number of imported British teachers and school heads declined, whilst the demand for Anglophone education was hardly to be dulled by nationalist rhetoric.

Notes 1 Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, pp. 252–3, and Lord Curzon in India, pp. 363–4. 2 C. Dover, Half-Caste (London, 1937); p. 139; also cited in Henriques, Children of Caliban, p. 169. 3 Ibid. 4 Cited in ibid. 5 Ibid. 6 See Chambers, Anglo-Indian Prospects in India: Read at a Meeting of the Board of Direction of the Anglo-Indian Association, pamphlet (Calcutta, 1879), p. 16. 7 D. Sutherland, The Grievances of the East Indian Community. A Paper to Be Read before the East India Association, pamphlet (London, 1880), p. 3. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., p. 4. 10 Chambers, Anglo-Indian Prospects in India, p. 12. 11 Ibid., pp. 12–13. 12 Ibid., p. 12. 13 Ibid., pp. 11–12. 14 Ibid. 15 Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, p. 252, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 363. 16 Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, pp. 52, 24. 17 Ibid., p. 21. 18 Census of India, 1901. Volume I-A. India. Part II. – Tables, p. 541. 19 Ibid., p. 393. 20 Ibid. 21 Census of India, 1911, p. 140. 22 Though Hedin has suggested that those of mixed race gravitated towards the Catholic Church as a result of its philanthropic work and ‘the more liberal

130

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Becoming Anglo-Indians attitude of the Roman Catholic orders toward people of mixed blood’, in Hedin, ‘The Anglo-Indian Community’, p. 171. Colonization Observer (April 1934), p. 1. Hawes, Poor Relations, p. 85. Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, p. 255, and Lord Curzon in India, pp. 365–6. Ibid., p. 253, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 364. Ibid. Ibid., p. 255, and Lord Curzon in India, pp. 366. Ibid. Asiatic Journal, vol. 5 – New Series, May–August 1831, ‘The East-Indians’, pp. 15–16. Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, pp. 253, 255, and Lord Curzon in India, pp. 364, 366. Ibid., p. 254, and Lord Curzon in India, pp. 364–5. Ibid., pp. 259, 263, and Lord Curzon in India, pp. 369, 373. Ibid., p. 253, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 364. Ibid., p. 254, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 365. Hansard HC Deb 19 July 1915, vol. 73, cols. 1275–6. Report of the Pauperism Committee, Appendices, ‘General Department: Miscellaneous – No. 2263’, p. 8. Ibid. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur R189, Nissen, interview. Ibid. Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, p. 261, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 371. Ibid., pp. 254, 263, and Lord Curzon in India, pp. 365, 374. Ibid., pp. 254–5, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 365. Ibid., pp. 261–2, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 372. Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, pp. 57–8. Anglo-Indian Review (August 1928), p. 2. Original emphasis; Anglo-Indian Review (January 1934), p. 4. Anglo-Indian Review (March 1934), p. 14. ‘Anglo-Indian Psychology & Policy’, in Anglo-Indian Review (November 1943), p. 16. Ibid. Sic., original emphasis; ibid. Anglo-Indian Review (October 1944), p. 7. Rush, Bonds of Empire, pp. 97–8. Ibid., p. 101. Cited in ibid., p. 99. Ibid., p. 98. Ibid. Ibid., p. 99. Ibid. Buettner, Empire Families, pp. 87–8. Original emphasis; ‘Kidnapped’, in Kipling, Plain Tales, p. 135. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., pp. 135–6. Ibid., p. 135. Ibid., pp. 135, 138. Ibid., p. 134. Original emphasis; ibid., p. 135. Ibid., pp. 135, 137–8.

Becoming Anglo-Indians 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76

77 78 79 80

81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

131

Ibid., p. 138. Ibid. Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 135. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur F531, Papers of Christopher J. Hawes, Writer and Historian, File 16, ‘Luso Indians with English Names’. Ibid. Anglo-Indian Review and Railway Union Journal (March 1931), p. 26. NAI, Home Department, Establishment Branch, 1929, File No. ‘Progs. Nos. 17’, H. Gidney, Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association, All-India and Burma, 87-A Park Street Calcutta, to the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, Simla (1 October 1929), pp. 2–3. Cited in ibid., p. 4. Ibid., signed ‘G.K. 10. 12. 29.’, pp. 11–12. Ibid., ‘Letter No. 8762.E. dated 7th Dec. 1929; From – The Secy. Rly. Board; To – Lt. Col. H. A. J. Gidney, President, A. I. & D. E. Assn. Calcutta’, p. 15. NAI, Malwa Agency Department, Finance Branch, 1934, File No. Progs. ‘Nos. 107-C’, ‘Copy of a Letter No. 23930 (H.-Gaz), dated the 4th July 1935 from the Chief Secretary to Government, Punjab, Lahore, to (1) All Heads of Departments in the Punjab. (2) All Commissioners, District and Sessions Judges and Deputy Commissioners in the Punjab’, ‘Subject:- Policy regarding the safeguarding of the interests of Sikhs, by seeing that only bona fide Sikhs are employed in vacancies intended for members of that community’, p. 18. P. van den Berghe, South Africa: A Study in Conflict (Middletown, CT, 1965), cited in Watson, Passing for White, p. 18. Anglo-Indian Review (June 1928), p. 2. Ibid., pp. 2–3. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid. M. Wilson, The Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Race of India (Bombay/ Bangalore, 1928), pp. 73–4. Ibid., pp. 91–2. Ibid., p. 29. D. Arnold, ‘European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 7 (1978), p. 106. Buettner, Empire Families, p. 81. Ibid., p. 74. K. Platt, Home and Health in India and the Tropical Colonies (London, 1923), p. 137, cited in ibid., p. 43. See Chapter 2 for full quotation from Thurston, Anthropology, pp. 77–8. Buettner, Empire Families, p. 74. Original emphasis; ibid., pp. 74, 94, 97. Ibid., p. 83. R. Blaker, Scabby Dichson (London, c. 1920s), pp. 34–5, cited in ibid., p. 84. Buettner, Empire Families, p. 86. J. and R. Godden, Two under the Indian Sun (New York, 1966: repr. 1987), p. 63, cited in ibid., pp. 86–7. R. Godden, A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep (New York, 1987), p. 86, cited in Buettner, Empire Families, p. 104. Buettner, Empire Families, p. 103. Anglo-Indian Review (September 1929), pp. 8–9. NAUK, CO/123/276/86, B. Honduras 34397, Asst Medical Officer (19 September 1913), p. 244.

132 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140

141 142 143 144 145 146

Becoming Anglo-Indians Anglo-Indian Review and Railway Union Journal (March 1931), p. 26. Ibid. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur R189, Nissen interview. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. P. Scott, The Raj Quartet, Volume 1: The Jewel in the Crown (Chicago, IL, 1998), p. 98. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur R189, Nissen interview. E. Forster, A Passage to India (London, 1979), p. 6. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur R189, Nissen interview. Ibid. Cited in Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, pp. 40–1. Cited in ibid., p. 68. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur R189, Nissen interview. Ibid. Cited in Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, p. 68. Cited in ibid. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur R189, Nissen interview. Ibid. H. Gidney to the Adjutant-General in India, Army Headquarters, Simla (Calcutta, 26 April 1926), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (May 1929), p. 33. Ibid., p. 34. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Anglo-Indian Review (September 1944), p. 3. BL, OIOC, Mss Eur R189, Nissen interview. Anglo-Indian Review (September 1944), p. 3, cited in Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, p. 67. Anglo-Indian Review (December 1944), p. 35. Ibid., cited in Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, p. 67. Anglo-Indian Review (September 1944), p. 3. H. Reynolds, The Anglo-Indian Manifesto (Lahore, 1946), p. 26. Ibid., pp. 25–6. G. D’Cruz, ‘My Two Left Feet: The Problem of Anglo-Indian Stereotypes in Post-Independence Indo-English Fiction’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 38, no. 2 (April 2003), p. 106. Ibid., p. 107. NAI, Punjab State Agency Department, General Branch, 1922, ‘Return of Europeans and Eurasians and other nationalities other than Indians employed in the Punjab states’, ‘Annual Return of Europeans and Eurasians Employed in the Kapurthala State during the year 1921’, p. 55. Ibid., ‘Supplementary Return of Europeans and Eurasians employed in the Native States in the Punjab during the year 1921’, [supplementary to] p. 72. Anglo-Indian Review (March 1935), pp. 8–9. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. NAI, Punjab State Agency Department, General Branch, 1922, ‘Annual Statement of all Europeans and Eurasians employed in the Faridkot State for the year ending 31st December, 1921’, p. 78, and ‘Return of Europeans, Eurasians and

Becoming Anglo-Indians

147 148

149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157

158

133

other nationalities other than Indian and Statutory Natives of India employed in Sirmoor State during the year ending 31st December, 1921’, p. 52. Buettner, Empire Families, p. 103. NAI, Finance Department, Regulation-II Branch, File No. Progs., Nos. 2(1)-R11, 1929, ‘Question in the Legislative Assembly by Mr S. C. Mitra, No. 57 on Notice List No. 96: Rates of Pay of Indians, Anglo-Indians and Europeans on Admission to the Accounts Department’, p. 12. Ibid., handwritten note, signed ‘13/8/29’, p. 14. Ibid., ‘Reply’, p. 18. NAUK, CAB/68/9/47, ‘War Cabinet. Report for the Month of September 1942, for the Dominions, India, Burma and the Colonies and Mandated Territories’, p. 10. Gidney’s testimony before the Joint Select Committee, cited in K. Wallace, Life of Sir Henry Gidney (Calcutta, 1947), p. 143. Anglo-Indian Review (February 1929), unnumbered front matter. Anglo-Indian Review (July 1929), p. 2. Anglo-Indian Review (March 1938), p. 6. Anglo-Indian Review (October 1929), p. 2. For a more detailed account, see U. Charlton-Stevens, ‘The Professional Lives of Anglo-Indian Working Women in the Twilight of Empire’, International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies vol. 16, no. 2 (2016), available at http://internationa l-journal-of-anglo-indian-studies.org/index.php/IJAIS. L. Caplan, Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World (New York, 2001).

4

Making a minority

It was under my aegis that Sir Henry [Gidney] first abandoned a lucrative medical practice in which he had achieved distinction as an ophthalmic surgeon in … early 1919 … to champion the cause of the then ill-organised and scattered Anglo-Indian community … I remember well – I was going to say to my cost – and also pleasure, the energy and assiduity with which in the earliest days of his public career, he espoused the cause of those members of the community in Bombay who, on the demobilisation of the Anglo-Indian Units from Mesopotamia and elsewhere, found themselves confronted by economic disabilities and difficulties.1 Lord Lloyd, former governor of Bombay, at an Anglo-Indian luncheon in London, 1935

Three successive early 20th-century leaders of the mixed race group (with claims to represent the domiciled more broadly) received the colonial state’s early encouragement and recognition – Mr W. C. Madge, John Harold Arnold Abbott (1863–1945), and Henry Albert John Gidney (1873–1942). In the passage above we can detect a narrative which has previously been applied to Gidney’s predecessor, Abbott. In each case there was a tendency to erase the contributions of their predecessors and to exaggerate the degree to which each had been the originator of organised or substantive communal political activity. Equally, the past was frequently constructed as having been a golden age of employment and opportunity for the group as a whole, with which to contrast an acutely worsening situation that had galvanised a new phase of communal political organisation. The reality was in both cases more complex. Political organisation had a longer history, and like communal employment, had experienced plenty of ups and downs. Still such themes were to be repeatedly invoked in the construction of the history and present plight of the group, which formed an almost compulsory introduction to attempts to petition the colonial state and the imperial metropole in coming decades. In many instances respondents to a petition, particularly at the metropole, needed to be alerted to who the group were, and any answer to that question necessarily intertwined constructions of communal history with formulations of group identity in the present. This was by no means unique, but the burden

Making a minority

135

of preambulatory discourse in presenting the case of a mixed race group, often engaged in boundary blurring with Britons themselves, was greater than for those religious communal minorities (such as Sikhs and Muslims) that the colonial state had itself invested considerable intellectual and institutional means in externally constructing and reifying. The analogous claims of nationalists, in romantically constructing an identity based upon collective history, were often contested by the imperial state’s attempts to divide and rule by raising communal and minority questions. However, the very assumption that there were such a people as Indians, which was the basis of constructing the boundaries of a new (though putatively reawakened) nation, was less open to question than was the existence of a group of mixed race people so small in number as to be often overlooked. In the late colonial period the high politics of the group now constructing itself as the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European community centred on its responses to successive stages of constitutional change along the path to decolonisation. By gradually introducing quasi-democratic institutions and extending influence and eventually limited control over a few less strategically sensitive areas of imperial administration to Indians, the colonial state could present itself as a benign and enlightened guardian ushering its subjects towards responsible home rule within the empire. Conversely, Indian nationalists argued that it was in reality only seeking to preserve its own power with belated and limited measures that consistently failed to meet their aspirations to self-govern, whilst co-opting compliant client groups constructed as minorities in need of its protection. The colonial-made constitutions of 1909, 1919, and 1935 also encouraged communal (religious) divisions and conflict with their introduction of specifically communal electorates, in which Muslims for example would vote for their own representatives in Muslim-only constituencies. Indian nationalists willing to work with the imperial government to achieve reform, such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale, had earlier been co-opted by Curzon to serve on his Council of India. The 1909 Indian Councils Act introduced a larger Imperial Legislative Council and provincial councils in which a minority of seats were reserved for Indian members, including seats to be filled by the first separate electorates for Muslims and Sikhs. AngloIndians were not guaranteed representation. In 1913 the viceroy, Lord Hardinge, gave a speech at Madras to members of ‘The Anglo-Indian Association of Southern India’ (henceforth the Southern Association) declaring that he had not wanted to tie his ‘own hands in the case of the Imperial Council or those heads of provinces in respect of the Provincial Councils by introducing a definite rule in favour of the Anglo-Indian community’.2 However, from among the nominated seats which had been retained ‘in order that representation might be accorded from time to time to the interests and classes which would not normally return many members’ he undertook to grant ‘the Anglo-Indian community … full and fair recognition in the distribution of nominations’.3 Under such a system of patronage putative or genuinely

136

Making a minority

representative minority group leaders could be fostered who would be of use to the colonial state, securing group loyalty and where possible support for the government. Equally, those who became less useful, or even a thorn in the side of government, could be sidelined and deprived of recognition and the highly symbolic as well as materially significant endorsement of nomination by the viceroy.

Making and breaking leaders Hardinge nominated Madge to serve on the Imperial Legislative Council in 1910. According to Hawes’ doctoral research the Madge family were the descendants of ‘Captain E. H. Madge who served in Madras in the late 1770s … [and] owned property in Madge Lane, Calcutta, off Chowringhee’.4 Madge moved a resolution in July 1912 to ‘take up the question of raising from the Domiciled Anglo-Indian Community a regiment in which recruits should be engaged on pay and allowances equal to those of British soldiers, and … local recruiting from the above Community into British regiments serving in India’.5 He was persuaded to withdraw his resolution after being assured that the government would give the proposal their ‘sympathetic consideration’.6 This represented a clear continuation of campaigns for military enlistment opportunities which had enjoyed Curzon’s proactive support. Heightened racism from the late 19th century had, however, contributed to the continuing prohibition on the open enlistment of ‘any Eurasian or other “man of colour”’ into British regiments.7 From the early 20th century expressions of racism became increasingly opaque, yet arguably no less consequential. Madge revealed the degree to which such sentiments had been internalised and had influenced the development of a socioracial hierarchy within the ‘Domiciled Community’:8 sneers have been flung at certain classes of our people, but I feel that what man has done in the past man can do in the future, and the story of the Mutiny … belongs for ever to our class. We have rendered services there that have been amply recognised … with the evidence upon record of the fighting qualities of those of our race who claim some kind of reversion to the British type of character.9 Here a racially inflected class-like ordering within the group was read as a variable pool of racial stock correlating with class status, differentiated by greater or lesser proximity to either British or Indian progenitors. Madge referred to his group as ‘our race’,10 being probably unaware that the concept of ‘reversion’ he invoked was laden with eugenicist assumptions that hybrids were: a) infertile; b) accordingly unable to form a new race; and c) therefore likely to ‘revert’ to one or other sides of their ancestry, culturally or even biologically. Stevenson-Moore’s 1907 plan had earlier called for the raising of nine European and five Eurasian special reserve police units, aiming to provide

Making a minority

137

reliable and loyal forces for internal security at a significantly lower cost to imported Britons.11 In response the officiating inspector-general of police, L. Morshead, cited the advice of ‘General Barker … [who had] some experience of Europeans and Eurasians working in combination, and … [who had] no hesitation in saying that the companies should be mixed … [as] Europeans and Eurasians work well together … and make a useful composite body’.12 Based on his ‘own experience at the Calcutta Custom House’,13 Morshead similarly concluded that: By distinguishing between them, and endeavouring to obtain the Eurasians on less pay than the Europeans, cheapness would, I fear, be secured at the cost of efficiency. Eurasians are sensitive, and the better class would not join a company which they would consider to be in a position of inferiority. Inferior recruits would be obtained, and … the inferior class of Eurasian is not worth recruiting … [Whereas] the better class of Eurasian can do as good work as the European, and each in a measure supplies qualities which the other lacks.14 Amidst resistance to such schemes on budgetary and racial grounds, arguments by Morshead and Madge which would remove the potential cost savings only contributed to their rejection. Yet, in seeking equal pay and conditions with British soldiers, Madge’s resolution was a continuation of a strategy of elevation towards parity with colonial Britons at a time when it may have seemed increasingly achievable. It is apparent why defining equality as equalisation with British rather than with Indian conditions would have been preferable for the group itself. Madge never considered that they might serve on the conditions afforded to Indian soldiers and felt no qualms in presenting his request as one for: ‘fair treatment in a country of strange and odd conditions’, which represented ‘no favour’, but rather ‘a fair field in a fair sense of the term’.15 Yet he also anticipated opposition: as the subject is likely to be discussed in the Indian press I do hope that I can depend on every member of this august Council, and especially the Indian members, to counteract anything like race animosity in this matter. Our Indian fellow-countrymen are stretching forth the tendrils of their hopes towards certain privileges and powers. We for our part are simply claiming the privilege of laying down our lives for our Empire and our King, and I think I may depend upon the goodwill of the Indian members … not to add any bitterness to any controversy that may take place on the subject outside … I have already seen some remarks … characteristic of a type of feeling which I hope will never exist in this Council.16 Madge’s rhetoric deflected the problematic way in which equalisation of the mixed race group towards British conditions of military service would further

138

Making a minority

privilege them in relation to other Indian groups by attributing Indian opposition to ‘race animosity’. Inculcated in his own socioracial values, like many of the domiciled, he was probably insufficiently aware of how what he asserted to be only fair and proper in combating one form of British colonial discrimination would be understood by other groups facing more complete structural discrimination. What now appears to us as contradiction centred on the unresolvable and flawed question of whether those of ‘mixed race’ ought to be treated as belonging to one or other group, when they were in fact something distinct, would likely never have occurred to Madge. With hindsight what we see is that Anglo-Indians were seriously discriminated against in relation to the superordinate group, with whom they were incentivised to emphasise their often real, but sometimes fictive, kinship, and yet relatively privileged to the subordinate group with whom they were incentivised to disavow kinship. It was the elaborate socioracial hierarchy of British rule in India that created such contradictions; where fighting for one form of equality meant further privileging oneself in relation to the great mass of a subject population. However, Madge was in a tenuous position, pushing against both of the larger, more powerful interest groups representing imperialism and nationalism – against what the colonial state was willing to concede to a partially co-opted and very small minority group, and against potential resistance by Indian nationalists, as well as from other less privileged minorities. Yet it was on a non-communal matter which Madge thought a great moral issue of wider significance that he appears to have truly lost the support of the imperial state. On ‘the 18th September, 1912’ he introduced a ‘Bill for the suppression of the Foreign Female Slave Trade’, which met with opposition from six provincial governments as well as ‘the Judges of the Calcutta High Court’.17 Internal government correspondence suggest Madge’s renomination was rejected because it might imply Government of India support for an ‘impossible measure’, containing ‘matter of great difficulty and controversy’, which the Legislative ‘Department has always considered, and still does consider … an ineffective measure which offends against all recognised canons of legislation’.18 Yet Madge’s complaints also precipitated more personal resentment, as several civil servants characterised ‘the worthlessness of the insinuations and charges’ he had made as ‘ungrateful and unjust’, ‘entirely inaccurate’, and ‘gratuitously offensive’, accusing him of having a ‘sense of an exaggerated self-importance’, believing ‘himself to be a sort of apostle of righteousness on a mission’, and echoing a typical trope for those of mixed race, of being ‘extraordinarily sensitive’.19 At the end of Madge’s term, the young Muhammed Ali Jinnah, later leader of the Muslim League and of Pakistan, was nominated in his place on the understanding that he would ‘take charge of the Wakf Bill’ and subsequently ‘resign his seat and the vacancy would then be filled by a representative of the Anglo-Indian domiciled community’.20 Seven provinces were requested ‘to recommend any nominee from the domiciled community of their provinces’.21 Bengal renominated Madge ‘or

Making a minority

139

Mr. W. J. Simmons, Attorney-at-Law’. Punjab recommended ‘Mr. E. W. Parker[,] Advocate and late Legal Remembrancer … [who] was born in England but has spent his life and settled down out here’, and Madras ‘Mr. Albert Edward Rencontre, a Solicitor’ and vice-president of the Southern Association.23 The United Provinces nominated the aforementioned Abbott of Jhansi. Based on the padre’s account at Abbott’s memorial service in 1945 and other evidence from his descendants’ genealogical research Abbott had been born in Edinburgh in 1863 to a quartermaster sergeant born in 1828 in ‘Newton, Midlothian, Scotland’ and a mother born in an unknown location in 1840.24 Birth at the metropole, particularly if combined with white appearance, would place such men above those born in India and of Indian domicile. It was in accord with a strictly legal understanding of the term that some British-born men could be deemed to have acquired Indian domicile through their intention to settle permanently in India, perhaps accompanied by marriage into the domiciled community. However, it appears that with their greater social capital they would be seen by colonial officials as more deserving of leadership roles than those visibly of mixed race. A view sometimes echoed from within the group itself.25 Civil servants alluded to Madge’s recent illness having impaired his ability to serve both on the Council and the Public Service Commission, and argued that his renomination would ‘in all probability be resented by his rivals in the domiciled community’.26 Hardinge decided instead ‘to appoint Mr. Abbott’.27 With viceregal support Abbott became the dominant Anglo-Indian leader. As president of the Anglo-Indian Empire League (henceforth the League) Abbott played a key role in bringing it together into a federation with other Anglo-Indian charitable, social, and political bodies to recruit soldiers for World War I. In 1900 a recently renamed ‘Imperial Anglo-Indian Association’ had petitioned the viceroy.28 The organisation led by Abbott was similarly designated the League. The reality (or perception) of loyalty continued to be rewarded by the colonial state. It should not be forgotten that seeking elevation towards equal citizenship (though expressed in the language of imperial subjecthood) as partners within the empire was in line with Gandhi’s own thinking during his earlier South African campaigns and in his recruiting activities there for the Boer War and in India for the First World War. As Mizutani has argued, AngloIndians at this point were still pursuing a strategy of collective elevation. In Wimmerian terms this was facilitated by boundary blurring between themselves and the imperial rulers in racial and cultural terms, which was easier for a group claiming European (or British) descent. The legal and social recognition of intermediate categories for mixed race ‘Anglo-Indians’ and ‘Domiciled Europeans’ regarded as questionably white, created spaces for sustained and effective boundary blurring by the mixed, particularly as the British felt they could not entirely disavow kinship with these groups, expressed in terms of race and blood. The increased manpower needs of both world wars provided unprecedented opportunities for racial passing and entry into the British, imperial, and 22

140

Making a minority

Commonwealth forces on the same terms as Britons. The day after the British declaration of war, Abbott: wired to His Excellency … offering to raise an Anglo-Indian Regiment for service abroad, as well as a Corps of women Nurses … in a few days over five thousand names of volunteers had been registered, while some hundreds of women, trained and untrained, had applied for permission to serve as nurses.29 Abbott’s offer was initially declined. However, many of the domiciled were able to join British regiments in India, and some even travelled to Britain to enlist. C. T. Robbie of Allahabad, the League’s general secretary, attempted in 1919 to compile a list of Domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians who ‘have rendered War Service other than in the Anglo-Indian Force’ in response to denials of the ‘claim at from 8 to 10,000 Domiciled Europeans and AngloIndians had seen service in one or other of the various War Zones’, claiming it was ‘far short of the actual number as several Schools and Railways have not yet submitted lists’.30 Separating Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans based on Army lists and the records supplied by schools and railways is problematic, as is identifying Anglo-Indians engaged in racial passing. Some of these men had travelled to England, such as two O’Dowds who enlisted at Sandhurst as 2nd Lieutenants in the Royal Military.31 Others joined British regiments at centres in India.32 Three members of the Atkinson family enrolled in the ‘15 French Motor’ Battalion in Rangoon.33 Two members of the Judd family enlisted in Karachi, one for the ‘Royal Flying Corps’, the other for ‘Inland Water Transport’.34 Many more were attached to a wide array of other military or war-related services, such as the Electrical Mechanical Section; the ‘Royal Engineers’; the ‘Motor Ambulance’; the ‘Telegraph, I. E. Force, “D.”’; the ‘Interpretors Section’ [sic.]; and the ‘ISMD [Indian Subordinate Medical Department] Field Force’.35 Most were serving in India or Mesopotamia; some even managed to reach the Western Front such as Lieutenants R. Lutter and H. Oppenheimer who had enlisted in Maymyo, Burma.36 Imperial troops of colour from across the empire were usually restricted to non-combat roles in European theatres of war, and it is interesting that domiciled men seemed often to be judged suitable for, and steered towards, units that provided logistical, transport, engineering, mechanical, and medical auxiliary support roles to frontline British fighting units. However, in non-European theatres, such as East Africa and the Middle East, Imperial Indian troops were deployed in frontline combat roles. After a long campaign for direct and open domiciled enlistment the AngloIndian Force (AIF), which was to see action in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), was belatedly sanctioned in 1916. Initially it consisted of field troops of cavalry, artillery, and infantry, comprising 19 2nd Lieutenants and 1,090 noncommissioned officers and privates. Its advocates evinced obvious

Making a minority

141

embarrassment at the regional and colour composition of the 960 men recruited for the 16 Anglo-Indian Infantry Platoons: quality was sacrificed to quantity with the result that the poor stock sent up from the South had a retrograde effect on recruiting in the North … the class enlisted in Northern India is on average considerably superior not only in physique but in birth and education … but all the same the reports that non-Anglo-Indians were being enlisted wholesale have been proved to be utterly without foundation … all who were proved to be unsatisfactory … were got rid of … Of the 601 enlisted for the Infantry … 47 had been discharged. As a whole the Anglo-Indian Infantry is a Force of which the Community may well be proud. Colour there is in abundance, but there is also a counter balancing ability, and side by side with men from the lowest range of the social ladder, school teachers, undergraduates, and graduates, professional, and business young men are striving to uphold the honor of the Community.37 Here internal stratification is a question of a series of markers of social status, almost amounting to a class system that has subsumed colour and race as significant but surmountable obstacles to higher status within the group and to broader respectability. The writer felt the need to refute allegations of ‘wholesale’ infiltration by Indian Christians passing as Anglo-Indians. The prejudice displayed towards Anglo-Indians from South India reflected the perception, and in part the reality, of differently constructed, and more porous, boundaries. Even though none of Thurston’s observations should be accepted uncritically, it is interesting to note his claims that the ‘division between Native Christians and people of mixed race is … very shadowy in Malabar … [and that] Though the terms are, according to my definition … synonymous and interchangeable, a social distinction is made at Calicut between Eurasians and East Indians’,38 with the latter seemingly referring to a group of Indian Christians into which some Eurasians had intermarried – an entirely different usage than in Ricketts’ petition. With many Anglo-Indians already serving in British and ‘white’ Commonwealth regiments (through racial passing, and the probable connivance of recruiting agents) the Government of India also issued Order No. 6293 in 1916, removing the formal ban on their enlistment. Large numbers had already joined the Dorset Regiment before the AIF could commence recruitment. AIF recruiters lamented: Only members of the community can correctly gauge the strength of the temptation to the Anglo-Indian to be considered a European and while it was possible for Anglo-Indians to join British Regiments as Europeans the wonder is that any of the fairer men came forward for the Anglo-Indian Force at all … Picture to yourselves the poor Anglo-Indian, with invariably several dependant on his earnings for support having to

142

Making a minority choose between the Anglo-Indian Force with its bare Rs. 25/- per mensem and:

the Nursing Orderly Corps at Rs. 70 per month; the supply and transport at Rs. 168 (restricted to Europeans but ‘well known’ to contain ‘some hundreds of Anglo-Indians’); the Mechanic Corps at Rs. 195; the machine gun sections, Volunteer Artillery, and despatch riders ‘all more highly paid, and without the stigma which in some quarters attaches to the Anglo-Indian Force’; as well as lucrative railway work in East Africa and Mesopotamia.39 Undaunted, Anglo-Indian leaders mounted a determined recruitment campaign. The two largest communal ‘organisations were federated into one’ under the leadership of Abbott. W. P. S. Milsted (president of the Federal Council, Federated Anglo-Indian Associations of India) and Abbott (president in chief, Anglo-Indian Empire League, and president of the broader federation between the League and the smaller grouping of already federated associations) together served as chief recruiting agents for India, ‘Burmah and Ceylon’, in charge of 14 regional recruiters (unsalaried but with governmentprovided travelling expenses).40 Abbott’s son Roy became an officer in the AIF’s Artillery Battery, which was dispatched for active service in Mesopotamia in October 1916. The Federation provided a potential model for future all-India Anglo-Indian political organisation. Less than a year later after the AIF entered active service the adjutant general in India informed Abbott that the ‘General Officer Commanding Force “D” has reported favourably on the services rendered by Anglo-Indian Units in Mesopotamia, and has stated that he would be glad to have more of them if available’.41 Gidney would later emphasise the overwhelming involvement of both men and women, claiming that: when the call came, hundreds of Anglo-Indian nurses were freely enlisted in the British Army and went to all theatres of war; many of them getting honours. The moment the War was over the door was closed and they were demobbed. To-day the rules prevent an Anglo-Indian nurse being employed by the British Army.42 Gidney would begin his political career amidst the widespread unemployment following demobilisation, which placed the group in a worse position than before the war. Reflecting on his experience in a letter to the imperial authorities in 1941 after the commencement of World War II, Gidney was to argue that the position of loyal minorities in state employment, especially with regards to ‘communal quotas’, worsened as: Members of minority communities who are militarily minded would during the period of the war naturally prefer to serve in the defence forces. Small communities … will find it difficult to provide candidates to fill all the vacancies intended and reserved for them … [and] it would be

Making a minority

143

unfair if these communities were to be deprived of all those vacancies occurring during the war merely because their desire to serve their King and country during the emergency had prevented them from offering themselves in sufficient numbers for these comfortable civil posts. In other words, a non-co-operator [sic] … will benefit at the expense of the loyal man who prefers to risk his life in defence of the Empire and to volunteer, even for temporary service … [and this] will result in a sudden falling off in its employment strength and a serious dislocation in the community’s economic structure, which, however, may become apparent only when the war is over. The position which faced the Anglo-Indian community in the post – 1914/18 war period … is still fresh in our memory.43 The imperial government encouraged wartime recruitment by suggesting that demobilised men would be preferred for state employment after the war. The only two Anglo-Indian candidates for the ICS in 1919 were passed over because ‘they were not of equal caliber with those finally chosen. Neither of them had any war service.’44 However, many more Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans who had left jobs on the strategically sensitive railways, telegraphs, and customs services to sign up (some of higher and others on lower salaries) experienced difficulty in returning to civil occupations. Their difficulties were compounded by the interpretation of Indianisation as being the replacement of Europeans and Anglo-Indians by other Indian communities in such areas of state employment, and ultimately by the policy of granting the largest communal reservations to Muslims at the expense of the smaller minorities.

Leading the League and Federation A young delegate from the League’s Burma branch to a 1916 meeting of the League in Abbott’s hometown of Jhansi gave the following account of the organisation’s origins and structures: The League had been founded by a lady, who had once been in the Salvation Army and she had the constitution of the League drawn up in the same way … All property and subscriptions of the Branches belonged to the Head Office of the League in Bombay and the Branches were only entitled to retain twenty-five per cent of the subscriptions collected by them … [However, the] associations of Anglo-Indians in Madras and Allahabad … [which] had acquired considerable property … were not willing to place their property in the hands of a new body in Bombay.45 Something which strengthened Abbott’s position as leader was command of, and willingness to deploy, his own capital for political purposes. He was unusual in possessing comparative wealth from a family business which traded under the name ‘Abbott Brothers, Irrigation and Building Contractors’,

144

Making a minority

managing work on various dam projects ranging in cost from around ‘Rs. 35,00,000’ to ‘Rs. 10,00,000’.46 Abbott apparently rescued the finances of the League’s central office (alternately located in Calcutta and Bombay) four times, as in 1918 when he personally settled liabilities of Rs. 3,000, temporarily relocated the operation to Jhansi and within six months achieved a surplus of Rs. 8,000.47 Abbott even had his own ‘printing press’,48 which was invaluable in publishing pamphlets attacking his rivals and in the costeffective production of the League’s journal, the Anglo-Indian Review, which Abbott later claimed to have had a circulation of ‘between 4 and 5 thousand copies monthly’.49 Abbott rose to political prominence after Madge was replaced on the Imperial Legislative Council by Jinnah. Hardinge’s nomination of Abbott to the seat (previously occupied by Madge and then Jinnah) during 1913–16 was a very powerful signal to the constituents that Abbott sought to represent of viceregal support for his leadership. However, Hardinge’s successor Lord Chelmsford wrote confidentially to Abbott in 1916 regretting that though Abbott had acquitted himself with ‘distinction’ on the Council, he had felt compelled to nominate a representative of ‘His Majesty’s Indian Army’ instead.50 Losing his Council seat made Abbott politically vulnerable. When a leadership challenge materialised Abbott’s supporters retrospectively claimed that Abbott had established the League as the first ‘Communal Organisation of any recognised standing’ in 1910 by gradually building it up ‘till it eventually came to be recognised by the’ colonial state.51 Abbott was credited by his supporters with having ‘spared himself no trouble and expense … [and] toured the length and breadth of India, opening out branches everywhere’ despite being ‘a busy man[, as] … a member of the Cantonment Committee, a Municipal Councilor, and having an extensive business to control’.52 Under Abbott’s leadership the League was built up to 70 branches across India, all of which sent delegates to attend a 1916 conference at Abbott’s Jhansi home.53 The League employed a general secretary and a travelling secretary to tour its branches, as well as publishing and distributing its Review, accounting for a collective expenditure of ‘Rs. 12,000’ in the year 1918–19.54 Abbott’s work on the Council primarily concerned the interests of AngloIndians in education and employment, particularly their pay and promotion prospects, yet he also continued to push for greater opportunities for military service. Abbott’s wider achievement had been to bring about a broader basis for claims to leadership of an all-India (and Burma) community. The loose federation of the League with several regional Anglo-Indian Associations had initially come into being to organise wartime recruitment. Despite their cooperation in 1916 the Federal Council of four Anglo-Indian Associations and the General Council of the League ‘each addressed the Government of India directly independent of the other’.55 In 1917 Abbott, prompted by ‘the impending visit of Mr. Montagu to India … took steps to institute a single united Council’ under a new broader federation.56 It had a federal council made up of members from major League branches at Bombay, Karachi,

Making a minority

145

Lahore, Rangoon, and the United Provinces and prominent Anglo-Indian Associations at Allahabad, Calcutta, Madras, and ‘Mysore and Coorg’ (i.e. Bangalore).57 Not all then extant Anglo-Indian organisations were members of the League, the federated associations, or, consequently, the broader federation. However, its structure provided the broadest geographical coverage without duplication where both sides had rival branches in the same provinces. Lionel Ingels, a potential leadership rival as president of the Calcutta Association, objected to the current rules of the broader Federation, which appeared to balance the four votes of the League against the four votes of the federated associations, but in fact gave Abbott control as the wielder of an additional tie-breaking ex-officio vote, and as the head of League branches were ‘not really independent’ and could be relied upon to vote as a block, whilst the federated associations were actually only loosely confederated.58 If Ingels was correct then the ‘League’ was more of a federation and the federated associations were more of a league! Such a structure might not, in any scenario, have remained the permanent basis for much vaunted Anglo-Indian unity, but it owed its existence to the galvanising effect of wartime conditions and the demands to fulfil pledges of a communally recruited military force. It also relied on the accumulated political capital and high standing of Abbott, which had been confirmed by his co-option by the imperial state, his political victories (which included the sanctioning of the AIF), and his honouring with an OBE in 1918.59 Sustaining or further integrating the various Anglo-Indian organisations to form a joint platform from which to present communal views to the imperial state was also complicated by government regulations intended to depoliticise government employees. By design or default these operated to retard the development of communal political organisations, particularly amongst communities heavily dependent on service to the colonial state. Political or nonpolitical status was made of key significance by British attempts to control and channel Anglo-Indian organisation as part of a wider attempt to shape colonial politics. ‘Government Servant’s Conduct Rules’ (specifically ‘rule 21’) prohibited them from taking part in or subscribing ‘in aid of any political movement in India or relating to Indian affairs’.60 Although these could be defended as preserving the neutrality of civil servants they extended far down the chain of state employees and thus served to limit the growth of political movements by prohibiting their participation in and funding of political organisations. These rules were not formulated with Anglo-Indians in mind, but neither were Provincial and Central Government prepared to relax them in the Anglo-Indian case, even though Anglo-Indians were proportionally prominent in the employment of the state and allied services such as the railways which were in the process of being nationalised during the early 20th century. This created a very real problem for Anglo-Indian political organisation as most of the potential leaders of the community and those most able to fund Anglo-Indian political efforts were the more successful Anglo-Indian employees in state service.

146

Making a minority

Reverend Oswald Younghusband (presumably a philanthropically minded Briton), the president of the League’s ‘Punjab Provincial Branch’, argued in 1918 that as the existing ‘Federation could not deal with political matters without endangering the position of the League and the Associations … that the Government be approached with a view to allowing the Federation to be the political mouth-piece of the community’.61 The previous December a decision taken by the League at its Calcutta conference that it ‘should not interfere with politics’ had effectively made the Federation, of which it formed a part, non-political in nature.62 This issue was repeatedly raised as an obstacle to the amalgamation of Anglo-Indian organisations, but the real issue underlying these power struggles was more often which body would effectively assimilate the other, on what terms, with which geographic headquarters, and under whose leadership. In 1910 the Government of Bengal relaxed the rules to allow state employees to join the Calcutta Anglo-Indian Association, and even become office bearers, provided that they ‘abstain from taking any part in’ any political activities by the Association.63 In 1914 the Government of India reiterated that government servants could only be members of the League as long as its activities were ‘confined to the social or material advancement of the Domiciled and Anglo-Indian Community’, such as: the promotion of agricultural colonies for Anglo-Indians, or the enlargement of careers for Anglo-Indian youths, whether in the Army or otherwise. If, however, the League embarks on any political agitation, e.g. for its electoral representation in the Legislative Councils or for or against measures advanced by Government or by members of other communities then the membership of government servants would at once become ‘objectionable’.64 By withholding any relaxation of the rules the government sought to shape Anglo-Indian communal efforts towards its long-standing preference for philanthropic activities. Such rules retarded the growth of effective and unified Anglo-Indian political organisation and structured a context in which early Anglo-Indian political infighting would take place. This context created contradictory incentives, where the organisations which declared themselves non-political were able to attract more members and funds, while those which declared themselves to be political limited their membership, funding, and growth potential but retained the right to speak on behalf of the community. Most Anglo-Indian bodies (the League and the associations of Madras, Allahabad, ‘Mysore and Coorg’) had opted to declare themselves non-political by 1918,65 while owing to the exceptional stance of the Government of Bengal, Ingels’ Calcutta Association sought to maintain its significance by remaining political so that it could purport to represent all Anglo-Indians to the Indian government. As the most prominent leader of the largest unified organisation in Anglo-India, Abbott clearly would not consent to more effective

Making a minority

147

amalgamation unless he remained in charge of the new body and absorbed the associations.

Factional feuding Ingels’ 1918 pamphlet argued for complete amalgamation under his Calcutta Association as the ‘parent body’: his organisation had remained political and been allowed by the Government of Bengal to admit government servants, even as office bearers, provided they abstain from political activities; was recognised ‘by the Bengal Government’ and ‘also by the Government of India as the responsible and representative body for domiciled interests’; was founded in 1876 and had ‘a good record of 42 years’ work in the interests of the domiciled community’; and was headquartered in Calcutta, the former imperial capital, and current capital of Bengal – which had the ‘largest number of the domiciled community’.66 As president of the Federation wielding five votes (including his ex officio vote) to Ingels’ one vote, Abbott had no reason to agree to amalgamation under the Calcutta Association. Ingels, perhaps rightly, accused Abbott of ‘saying he was in favour of amalgamation, whilst tacitly opposing it’.67 Abbott and Robbie (now secretary of the Federation) responded that choosing a ‘head office for all India’ for the Federation or any future amalgamated body could not be done on the basis of eight councillors’ votes but ‘would have to be referred to each of the 70 odd branches, and then rest on a majority of votes’, asking Ingels if he was ‘confident enough’ that Calcutta would be chosen, and declaring that he himself would be happy to abide by the outcome of such a vote.68 In 1918 Abbott offered to host Federation annual meetings in Jhansi, at the same time as another potential rival, ‘the Bombay Councillor … Gidney’, made an early power play by offering to entertain the other councillors if the Federation would opt to have its meeting in his geographic base of Bombay.69 Abbott rejected Ingels’ other proposals for amalgamation on the basis that they were ‘infinitely more ponderous and utterly impracticable’ than the existing federation, as ‘in the event of amalgamation, there would now be 65 to 70 branches, and this number might very soon be largely increased’, making Ingels’ suggestion that ‘each branch send two members as occasion requires to attend Council meetings’ a financially and logistically unrealistic exercise.70 The geographic spread of Anglo-Indians necessitated costly rail journeys, and Abbott and Robbie pointed out that the League’s annual conference struggled to accommodate their approximately ‘40 delegates’, while Ingels was suggesting more regular gatherings of ‘140 delegates’.71 During the whole of 1919 the ‘League or Association’ relocated its headquarters from Abbott’s Jhansi home to Allahabad.72 In April Robbie, on behalf of the League’s ‘Executive’, wrote to remind the viceroy ‘of his promise “to re-nominate Mr J. H. Abbott as Anglo Indian Representative on the Imperial Legislative Council on the first favourable opportunity”’.73

148

Making a minority

Critically, the letter implied that Abbott would be more likely to vote with the government on crucial and unpopular issues, noting that other non-official members had voted against or abstained by their absence from the Council Chamber over the controversial police powers to be retained in peacetime under the Rowlatt Acts, and clearly implying that it would have received Anglo-Indian support.74 However, the League was informed that it was mistaken in supposing any new space had opened up for a new nominated member. Abbott continued as president throughout the year, issuing editions of the Review in his last months in office, including December. At that point Abbott’s vice presidents came from Lucknow and Rangoon. However, at some point Gidney of Bombay was made a vice president and took over the presidency in January 1920. Gidney claimed descent from a grandfather who had died in the siege of Lucknow.75 He had received early encouragement towards a political career from the Governor of Bombay, Lord Lloyd. A bitter and acrimonious struggle between Gidney and Abbott, the roots of which probably preceded the handover, soon became very public. In India the 1919 constitution framework both encouraged Anglo-Indians to come together as a group for electoral purposes, and Domiciled Europeans to join them in the economic sphere by accepting the state-ascribed legal status of ‘Statutory Natives of India’. A small minority of the domiciled, especially those of European appearance, might still benefit from the decreasing pool of elite ‘covenanted’ colonial service positions, but most Domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians were now incentivised to accept an Indian status to resist the process of Indianisation in their middling rungs of state and railway employment. Older and more senior employees in government service were shielded from and therefore less quick to apprehend the implication of these changes. There was an apparent contradiction in claiming Indian status whilst seeking inclusion in the privileges and social capital of more elite Europeans. Some did not understand that the questions of nationality, designation, and identity could be separated, and resisted the notion of being Indians or natives ‘by statute’, considering it to conflict with their sense of identity and their constructions of community (whether AngloIndian, Domiciled European, or more broadly, the domiciled community). Anglo-Indian leaders tended to recognise that the acceptance of Indian domiciliary and ‘statutory native’ status (de facto Indian nationality) did not imply a necessary and absolute change in group orientation (signalled by designations), cultural behaviour, or identity. If the group was constructed as a minority in need of protection of its way of life, in principle it need not change its communal outlook. However, both of the main leadership contenders recognised that the changing colonial environment did make it desirable to navigate a position between imperial loyalty and professed sympathy with nationalist aspirations to ultimate self-government. The Abbott-Gidney conflict did substantial damage to the group’s dominant political body, which was soon and very significantly to be redesignated as the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association. That this was not

Making a minority

149

a mere clash of personalities or of competence, but one of reorientation, is suggested by a letter from W. E. Crawshaw, a council member in the United Provinces for the conjoined domiciled community, to the viceroy in 1920 advocating the nomination of ‘Abbott to the new Council’.76 Crawshaw had been one of Abbott’s two vice presidents in April 1919.77 He branded Gidney as ‘the self appointed Bombay Leader who has tried to pose as President-in-Chief of the Community’, and rival candidates as ‘the would be Leaders in Bengal’, noting that ‘the paper war being waged in the public press’ had culminated ‘in one party dubbing the other “Pro Indians”’.78 The internal politics of the domiciled community, and certainly of those who sought to keep Domiciled Europeans and Anglo-Indians together as a political force, contained powerful elements who, having succeeded individually in life through strategies of boundary blurring between themselves and colonial Britons, were intensely antagonistic towards movements to accommodate Anglo-Indians with the growing demands of Indian nationalism. Therefore, even very subtle shifts in rhetoric and emphasis, seeking to balance loyalty to and identification with Britain with some limited move towards seeing India as a motherland and Indians as ‘fellow countrymen’, if not ‘kinsmen’, or even brothers and sisters, could spark heated exchanges. This was not a matter of merely strategic positioning, because however closely the positions of affluent Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans in colonial state service might intertwine with their putative loyalty to Britain, their resulting identities were very deeply felt. To those outside the group AngloIndians’ sense of self might seem ripe with contradiction, but Anglo-Indians themselves were generally unaware of being afflicted by cognitive dissonance. Certainly their orientation had been structurally incentivised, but longstanding and formative expressions of identity which had built up over time created generational as well as individual divides in perspective.79 Like other groups in early 20th-century colonial India they inhabited a shifting landscape that challenged them to respond, and any broad generalisation we might make covers over a range of individual nuances. However, internal political conflicts played out over more practical and material concerns as well. In 1918 the ‘Association [had endured] its greatest financial difficulties’, but Abbott had allegedly handed over a solvent organisation with ‘Postal Cash Certificates and War Bonds to the extent of Rs. 4,500’ in 1920.80 By 1922 factions supporting Gidney and Abbott were waging a bitter war of recrimination over what had happened in the wake of the transfer of leadership. Abbott wrote to the editor of the Indian Daily Telegraph, Lucknow, at the end of 1922, claiming that the: wonderful and successful Federation of the Calcutta Association, Madras Association, Mysore and Coorg Association, the Allahabad Association and the whole of our League Branches was in force up to the date I handed over to Colonel Gidney, [and] from that date this Federation

150

Making a minority ceased to exist, and Colonel Gidney has been breaking his neck to bring something of the same sort into existence for the last two years.81

Both sides were conducting an all-out war in the press, and seeking to defend his own record from the attacks of Gidney, his executive committee, and general council, Abbott declared that ‘as they have gone out of their way to make accusations against me, falsely … I therefore thirst for their blood’.82 Abbott alluded to the ‘Filose case’,83 or ‘the Filose vs. Filose Case in the High Court at Allahabad in which severe strictures were passed on Col. Gidney’s conduct’.84 It appears that Gidney was the third party to a divorce,85 with all the opprobrium such breaches in social and moral decorum would have then entailed. He was subject to mockery in the Independent, Allahabad, as ‘the gallant Col. Gidney of the Filose Divorce Case fame’, and accused of ‘the hectoring of young ladies’.86 The judge in the case, a ‘Mr. Justice Walsh’ was accused of lacking impartiality owing to his being the ‘President of the Allahabad Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association, a body, who since 1920 had steadily refused to accept … [Gidney] as President-in-Chief ’.87 Various Anglo-Indian organisations appeared to have redesignated themselves as federations, implying continuity with the Abbottled Federation and signalling their support for Abbott in the struggle between the two men. Gidney appears to have compounded the Filose Case Scandal by allowing his supporters to accuse the judge in the case of passing ‘serious strictures upon Colonel Gidney in the course of his judgment, which … were entirely unmerited and uncalled for’ and to promise ‘very shortly to vindicate his personal honour to the satisfaction of the whole world ’.88 More substantively, Abbott complained that the organisation’s finances and accounting were shambolic and that there was now ‘no newspaper, no Travelling Secretary and an underpaid General Secretary, and still they cannot make two ends meet’.89 Whether the deterioration of League/Association finances could be entirely blamed on Gidney’s comparative inexperience in management and accounting and inability to lean on the resources of a successful business when necessary, or was partly the result of his feud with Abbott, remains open to question. From Abbott’s perspective a communal organisation which he had built up with his own time and expense had been run into the ground by the incompetence, self-interest, and scandal engulfing Gidney and his ‘clique’.90 He was most incensed that accounts were not being audited, or at least that no audit report had been placed before the annual meeting at Delhi in 1921, and that Gidney was drawing an ‘Office Establishment at Rs. 200/- a month … for postage, stationary and telegrams’ and had apparently spent a further Rs. ‘42/8’ for a personal ‘typist’ during 1–15 October, whilst Rs. 1,500 had been questionably transferred from an earmarked fund known as the ‘Prince’s casket’ into the general funds of the Association.91 Abbott complained that this spending had not been sanctioned according to the Association’s constitution:

Making a minority

151

I don’t know how much more has gone that way, but as my predecessor and myself received no money from the funds for our offices … stationary, telegrams etc. nor for our travelling expenses, nor can I find any rule sanctioning any money being given to the President-in-chief for the above purposes. The right of the Executive Committee is questioned of making over one pie [i.e. penny] to him without the written resolution prepared by the executive committee and passed at that meeting by a quorum forwarded to every member of the general council, and the executive committee receiving back the sanction by a majority of the General Council.92 Abbott also documented three instances of branches (Hyderabad, Lahore, and Jhansi) which had supposedly passed votes of confidence in Gidney’s leadership in October 1922, whilst being, on the evidence of his contacts, defunct.93 Yet his blaming Gidney for the collapse of the federation was less defensible, because during Abbott’s last year in office he was already being pressed to create a more permanent amalgamation by rivals for leadership like Ingels. As one of the League’s vice presidents, Gidney had presumably learned a great deal from Abbott, having moved into communal politics from a successful ophthalmology practice. Abbott’s experience running a business provided better preparation for the day-to-day administration and financial accounting for a political organisation aiming to become and to project itself as the main politically representative body of a group spread across India and Burma. However, the initially less experienced Gidney was a larger-than-life character possessed of other political talents. He was a formidable campaigner and self-publicist. His achievements were embellished in an effusive profile in the Anglo-Indian Force pamphlet, which began with ‘his early education’ in Bangalore and Bombay, followed by ‘the Calcutta Medical College’, where he had apparently won numerous ‘gold medals … and … an “honours in every subject”’.94 Beginning in the Civil Medical Department he was said to have passed the LSA (London) and LMS, during a ‘6 month furlough to England’, making him a Licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries as well as in medicine and surgery.95 As a lieutenant in the Indian Medical Service (the more elite counterpart to the Indian Medical Department in which most Anglo-Indian doctors were employed), he had ‘served in the notorious Boxer rising in China’.96 After being ‘invalided to England’, Gidney was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, ‘secured the D.P.H. Degree’ from Cambridge University and became a ‘post graduate Lecturer at Oxford University in Ophthalmology’ where ‘he passed the D.O. Examination’ in 1910.97 Gidney’s election to a fellowship of the Royal Society for ‘research work in connection with cataract[s]’ in 1911 was sometimes reported without the clarification that he claimed membership of the Society’s Edinburgh branch.98 As civil surgeon of Kohima feats of bravery were attributed to him during ‘the punitive expedition against the Naga tribes … [where] with only a sub-assistant surgeon and an orderly

152

Making a minority

[he] defended a stockade from 10 a.m. till about 7 p.m. against overwhelming odds’.99 During the war he had been ‘complemented by the Commander-inChief who declared Col. Gidney’s Hospital for Indian Troops the best he had ever seen’.100 He had also ‘been specially thanked by the Governor of Bombay’, Lloyd, for his role ‘on the Recruiting Committee’.101 This glowing biography concluded pointedly that when ‘Anglo-Indians secure[d] representation on the Legislative Assembly few champions would be found better fitted to represent their claims’.102 Being visibly of mixed race Gidney had little prospect of racially passing as a European, but this had clearly not prevented him from being remarkably successful. Yet his racial status made him more vulnerable to mockery than a similarly qualified colonial Briton: ‘Colonel Gidney, I.M.S. (RETD.), C.I.E., J.P., E.T.C., M.L.A., E.T.C., etc … used those sub-sections of the alphabet because he considered the donkey looked better with all his harness on’.103 However, at times Gidney seemed to invite caricature, as when courting the international press in London he gave interviews to Australasian newspapers describing his exploits as a tiger-hunting ophthalmologic surgeon with grandiose hyperbole: ‘One half of my day I endeavoured to devote to killing and the other to curing. But one day I had to perform 62 operations for cataract, finishing by the light of candles … and felt I deserved a little jungle excitement’.104 Gidney went on to describe shooting two tigers in quick succession without reloading, in the presence of the ‘late Maharajah of Mymensingh’, and claimed a total of 53 tiger kills to his name.105 As for his successor, Frank Anthony, emphasising his skill as a shikari elevated Gidney’s social standing through the implicit association of hunting with the imperial elite and the Indian princes. Despite recognising the need to cultivate better relationships with other Indian communities, Gidney continued his predecessor’s policy of emphasising the group’s loyalty to the imperial state. This is apparent in how Abbott and Gidney sought to leverage imperial patriotism and martial service to the empire in their attempts to secure colonial state backing for their leadership. Although the colonial state might wish to await the outcome of internal leadership struggles, its own decision as to who would be nominated to the new Legislative Assembly was the decisive arena of the contest. Abbott forwarded several letters along with the two pamphlets on the AIF and his work on the Imperial Legislative Council to William Marris (ICS) at Simla in 1920 in an effort to be selected for the Legislative Assembly over Gidney. Civil servants noted on the file state that they had received similar from Abbott before and as Gidney was ‘a rival candidate for nomination … [and] the interests of different classes … [had] to be considered’ they should again reply that ‘Abbott’s claims will be duly taken into account’.106 Most League branches sent in recommendations that Abbott be nominated as their chosen representative, but the Central Council passed a resolution that both of their names ‘be put forward’.107 An unspoken dimension of this contest was that it was between a man, Abbott, who was apparently European in appearance, could claim Scottish

Making a minority

153

birth and domicile (though from an ‘empire family’), and who had chosen to marry into the domiciled community and the Igatpuri-born and more visibly mixed Gidney. Gidney’s defeat of Abbott may therefore have marked a shift in Anglo-Indian politics where those who were definitively Anglo-Indian took over communal leadership from religiously or philanthropically minded Britons and Domiciled Europeans. As if to mark this shift at the League’s 1918–19 Annual Conference, held at Allahabad, a resolution was passed to change the name of the organisation to the Anglo-Indian Association and: some Domiciled Europeans demanded to know why the ‘Domiciled European’ had been left out and as there were many covenanted and Domiciled European members of the Association who were obviously not Anglo-Indians, another Resolution was put forward … declaring that the name of the Association be Anglo-Indian & Domiciled European Association. There was a very heated and prolonged discussion and by a small majority the Resolution was passed. The hope that some Domiciled Europeans entertain that, if they form their own Association, they will be more kindly looked upon by covenanted Europeans – ‘our more fortunate brethren’ … is utterly vain … [There] are to-day many hundreds of coloured Anglo-Indians, enrolled in the European Association.108 True Anglo-Indians, the Review argued, ‘would rather be called’ AngloIndians and the community would fight any ‘signs of a separatist movement’ on behalf of Domiciled Europeans, by barring ‘camouflaged Domiciled European[s] or Europeans[s]’ from obtaining ‘the economic advantages of “Statutory Natives of India” unless’ they declared themselves ‘as such and … [were] down on the Anglo-Indian electoral roll’.109 Having criticised ‘these very Domiciled Europeans who think the addition of the name “Domiciled European” to the Anglo-Indian Association is a good “white wash”’, the Association argued that they would soon be ‘begging to be allowed to be included with Anglo-Indians as “Statutory Natives of India”, in order primarily to safeguard the economiic [sic] interests of their children’.110 If the Association could not persuade a group it claimed to be ‘95 per cent … [of] mixed blood’ to embrace the Anglo-Indian category, it would seek to firmly emphasise their common interests and the need for them to accept a conjoined legal and political status and to recognise its claim to represent them.111 Seen through this prism it was also a means of preventing the loss of many, often economically successful, fairer skinned members of the AngloIndian group, thereby maximising the numerical strength of the Association’s claimed constituency.

Constitutional communalism Under the new diarchic constitution of 1919, a limited number of areas such as education, public health, and agriculture were transferred to Indian

154

Making a minority

ministers chosen from elected members of new legislatures at the centre and in the provinces. Those nationalists like Gandhi, who had supported the imperial war effort in the hope of winning far more significant reforms towards self-government, were bitterly disappointed at the Act’s limitations, and were further incensed by the attempt to prolong wartime security powers under the draconian ‘Rowlatt Act’, followed by state repression culminating in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in the same year. However, for AngloIndians the prospect of another nomination to the new central Imperial Legislative Assembly (henceforth the Assembly) created a serious power struggle. The Assembly had European constituencies representing some provinces (Madras, Bombay, Bengal, the United Provinces, Assam, and Burma).112 That the franchise was very limited to elites is further emphasised by constituencies for ‘Landholders’ and ‘Indian Chambers of Commerce’.113 The European representation was intended for, and exercised by, European mercantile and planting interests whose constituents might be members of European associations. Despite occasional accusations to the contrary such bodies did not wish to co-opt the Domiciled European group, even if their attempts at social closure against them could not prevent Domiciled Europeans ‘passing’ into the non-domiciled European group. Across the provincial legislative councils there were a range of communal electorates and nominated seats for minorities such as ‘tribal’ peoples, Dalits, and other groups deemed to be ‘backward’ or ‘depressed classes’. In some provinces Europeans, AngloIndians, and Indian Christians were elected on communal electorates, in others they were nominated. Table 4.1 reveals how varied the combinations were for these specific groups. We could add five seats representing planters in Assam and one in Bihar and Orissa, which likely functioned as de facto European constituencies. Interestingly, in the Punjab there were two nominated seats for the ‘European and Anglo-Indian communities’, which would presumably have been split equally, but in the Central Provinces both together shared a single nominated member.114 The rules for Bengal defined an Anglo-Indian as: any person being a British subject and resident in British India, (i) of European descent in the male line who is not a European, or (ii) of mixed Asiatic and non-Asiatic descent, whose father, grand-father or more remote ancestor in the male line was born in the Continent of Europe, Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa or the United States of America, and who is not a European.115 While a European was also ‘any person of European descent in the male line being a British subject and resident in British India’ who was either born in any of the aforementioned territories ‘or whose father was so born or has or had up to the date of the birth of the person in question such a domicile’.116 These divisions were likely blurred in practice as Anglo-Indians, especially those of lighter complexion, could pass as Domiciled Europeans and thereby

Making a minority

155

Table 4.1 European, Anglo-Indian, and Indian Christian members – by election or nomination – of provincial legislative councils, including three nominated members representing Europeans and Anglo-Indians jointly in Punjab and the Central Provinces Provincial Legislative Council Madras

Total members: elected/ nominated

European members: elected/ nominated

Anglo-Indian members: elected/ nominated

Indian Christian members: elected/ nominated

98 / 6

1/−

1/−

5/−

Bombay

86 / 5

2/ −

−/ 1

−/ 1

Bengal

115 / 2

6/−

3/−

−/ 1

United Provinces

100 / 3

1/−

−/ 1

−/ 1

Punjab

65 / 4

Bihar and Orissa

76 / 9

Central Provinces

54 / 5

Assam

39 / 2

−/ 2 1/−

−/ − −/ 1

−/ 1 −/ −

−/ 1 −/ −

−/ −

−/ −

Note that the total member figures exclude ex officio members (members of the Executive Council) and nominated officials, buttressing the colonial government’s position within the councils. European and Anglo-Indian members were usually expected to provide additional de facto support to the colonial government. Source: constructed from data in Mitra, The Govt. of India Act 1919, ‘Provincial Council Rules’, pp. 185–286.

seek entry to European associations and the European electoral rolls. Other Indian provinces used the same formula. Burma was governed largely as if it were an Indian province prior to its constitutional separation from India with its own separate 1935 Government of Burma Act. We could contrast the separate representation given to Europeans and Anglo-Indians in all but two Indian provinces with constitutional proposals for Burma put forward by the Government of India in 1920, where it was argued that: in order to avoid unpleasant and invidious distinctions, and election petitions based on the objection that a particular European candidate had been returned at the head of the poll by the votes of persons who were really Anglo-Indians, it seems better to amalgamate the European and Anglo-Indian electorates, whose interests are on the whole sufficiently akin … This combined constituency therefore will elect three representatives, two of whom must be Europeans.117 Whilst the plans in India added impetus to the consolidation of Anglo-Indian identity, in Burma a greater degree of boundary blurring between the mixed and

156

Making a minority

Europeans was recognised and reinforced. Here we must ask the question as to whether colonial-imposed structures were reflecting preexisting social dynamics, whilst giving them added impetus, or whether these structures played the decisive role in creating boundaries and shaping divergent kinds of politics. It appears that politics for the mixed in Burma was already intercommunal, involving more cross-communal networks with non-European groups, whilst in India contrast with the purely Anglo-Indian politics was more intracommunal, at least within the Association. The situation was further complicated by the fact that in Burma the political category Anglo-Indians subsumed those who were ethnically Anglo-Burmans alongside the large numbers of Anglo-Indians who had moved to Burma, mainly to work on its expanding railway network from 1877. The political trajectory for the mixed in Burma would diverge even further with its constitutional separation from India in 1935, which brought a redesignation of the intertwined ethnic AngloIndian and ethnic Anglo-Burman groups. Both had existed under the collective political and legal category of Anglo-Indians prior to the 1935 Government of Burma Act, under which they were all to be reclassified as Anglo-Burmans. The change was marked by an apparently acrimonious legal case fought between Gidney and the ‘Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Federation, Burma’,118 in which the High Court of Rangoon twice ruled against Gidney in 1929 and in an appeal in 1930. Until January 1933 Gidney’s Association would proudly list a ‘Burma (affiliated)’ provincial branch in Rangoon, and three district branches in Mandalay, Maymyo and Toungoo, all designated as ‘(Burma Affiliated)’.119 In the following February issue no Burmese branches were listed, heralding the end to effective claims by All India Anglo-Indian leaders to representation of the mixed race group in Burma.120 Back in the India of 1922, whilst Abbott and Gidney were drumming up support from prominent individuals and various Anglo-Indian institutions across India, in order to send in letters of support for their respective nomination to the Legislative Assembly, Gidney blundered by seeming to place Anglo-Indians in direct opposition to the largest Indian minority group, namely Muslims. Critically, this contrasted with Gandhi’s recent efforts to build Hindu-Muslim unity through his support of the pan-Islamic Khilafat movement of Indian Muslims in solidarity with Turkey in the wake of the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Gandhi was imprisoned after calling off his non-cooperation campaign over an episode of violence between demonstrators and police. Despite the resulting collapse in a Hindu-Muslim front, 1922 remained a particularly inopportune time for a small minority to alienate the major forces of opposition to the Raj. Yet this was exactly what Abbott accused Gidney of having done in a letter in early October to the chairman of the Executive Committee of the Association: I have come to learn that Col. Gidney’s obstinacy to resign is owing to the feeling that I am likely to be nominated in his place, and if … he was assured that I would not be nominated, he would immediately resign. His

Making a minority

157

latest indiscretion, i.e. the offer to travel the country and persuade members of our community to join up and fight against the Turks, is … sufficient to cause racial hatred … I feel confident that your Executive Committee could never have been consulted before this offer was published, and … [thus] have no control over our representative. I there fore, as leader of the opposition, see no other way … than [for] Col Gidney to resign immediately, [and] so as to meet your committee half way, I enclose a copy of my withdrawing my request to … be nominated.121 Abbott hosted a meeting at his residence on the same day to discuss the politically serious situation which had arisen as ‘a couple of senior members of the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Community … [had] through the Press brought about ill-feeling between Anglo-Indians and the Mahomedans’.122 Abbott claimed that the meeting had ‘nothing whatever to do with the Anglo-Indian Association or League’, stressing that the rival organisations should ‘not be discussed’.123 Gidney had been the subject of biting satire from Indians in the Anglophone press when he responded to the suggestion amongst some Indian Muslims to raise ‘an Angora Legion’ to fight for the Turks with ‘a similar appeal to the Anglo-Indian community to form a Volunteer Corps to fight against the Turks’.124 At the time Britain occupied the Dardanelles and intended to defend their position there from any Turkish attempts to dislodge them. Gidney had gone so far as to share his letter to the viceroy with the press: On behalf of the Anglo Indian and Domiciled European community in India and Burma, I humbly beg to offer our services to our fatherland [i.e. Britain] for employment in the Near East in any capacity the military authorities may consider suitable … most of the able-bodied men of my community are at present enrolled in the Auxiliary Force … and many of them have had past military experience in the Great War … [I] am prepared immediately to tour India and do my utmost to raise a contingent of at least 1,000 men and a large body of fully trained nurses.125 Gidney may have been trying to replicate the model of leadership provided by his predecessor’s success at recruiting for World War I and harnessing the imperial patriotic and martial sentiments of his group. Gidney clearly thought this was a serious proposal, and therefore it was also in line with AngloIndian efforts to secure employment through military service to the British Empire. Though it seems likely that Gidney, as Blunt has argued,126 had been an agent for balancing Anglo-Indian identification with Britain as fatherland with the cultivation of a sense of India as motherland, in this case Abbott was on the right side of both Indian and imperial government opinion. The whole episode seriously called Gidney’s judgement into question. Nonetheless,

158

Making a minority

Gidney persisted with his own candidacy, and his nomination to the Legislative Assembly confirmed his victory over Abbott. Going forward Gidney would remain the preeminent Anglo-Indian leader until his death in 1942. Additionally, despite their bitter conflict, Gidney continued to learn from his political predecessor. Abbott’s emphasis on working ‘hand to hand’ with ‘our neighbour, be he a Mahomedan, Hindu, [or] Parsi’,127 appears to have fed into Gidney’s later rhetoric of ‘walk[ing] hand in hand with your Indian brother’, which made a more emphatic appeal to common kinship as well as citizenship with fellow Indians.128 Whether or not they accepted Gidney’s gradual shift in rhetoric and emphasis, the way that most Anglo-Indians spoke of Indians continued to connote othering and distance; Indians were still a category of distinction from, not inclusion of, Anglo-Indians. However, Gidney rejected the idea that there need be any conflict between greater identification with India and Indians and continuing loyalty to Britain. Gidney adhered to the hope of Indian aspirations to Swaraj being met by greater autonomy within the empire, even as Indian nationalists now moved on to the demand of complete independence and separation. Gidney also set about the practical work of rebuilding the institutions of the Association as they had existed under Abbott’s tenure as League president, especially resurrecting the Review and seeking to build up a wide network of Association branches with the help of a travelling secretary, and had made substantial progress by 1929.

Association and amalgamation Having survived the bitter contest with Abbott and his own early blunders as leader, Gidney tried to restore communal unity under his leadership. Being more visibly of mixed race than his predecessor, and gradually attempting to shift the rhetoric of group orientation towards a ‘dual identification … [with] India as motherland and Britain as fatherland’,129 Gidney faced the threat of affluent and successful sections of the ‘domiciled community’, particularly those who had been or remained supporters of Abbott, withdrawing their support from the Association. The retention of ‘Domiciled European’ in the title of the Association in 1919 had been key to maintaining a broad coalition of members, allowing the inclusion of Anglo-Indians who sought to pass as Europeans (to achieve higher positions and salaries), and of Domiciled Europeans, who denied having Indian ancestry (often to the scepticism of Anglo-Indians and colonial Britons). Those who self-identified as Domiciled Europeans were particularly likely to break away or feel alienated by any subtle shifts in group orientation or Gidney’s political rhetoric. They were also more likely to be secure holders of more senior posts in government service and important figures within the world of the domiciled. Though aware of the need to maintain a delicate balance, Gidney never quite mastered the art of subtlety. A 1928 issue of the Anglo-Indian Citizen reported that the ‘possibility of a split between Anglo-Indian and Domiciled

Making a minority

159

European has threatened before. Much feeling was aroused among Domiciled Europeans by the uncharitable gibe Albino-Anglo-Indian levelled at them by’ Gidney.130 Gidney claimed to have never ‘applied [it] to the Domiciled European proper, but to that unfortunate unpigmented Anglo-Indian who takes advantage to deny his birth-right and is thus able sometimes to force himself or creep into a community from which his own darker-skinned brothers and sisters are ostracised’.131 Gidney attempted to persuade those who claimed to be Domiciled Europeans to throw their lot in with Anglo-Indians and accept their status as ‘Statutory Natives of India’, arguing that the field for European employment was bound to shrink further as India moved closer to ‘Dominion status’. Gidney also began campaigning for a far more ambitious amalgamation of the various Anglo-Indian bodies, social, philanthropic, and political, than had existed under Abbott’s war-prompted Federation. Amalgamation was a lengthy and ongoing process into the 1930s, but prominent rival political centres would remain independent. For example, the Southern Association with a large presence in Madras, and the London Association which advertised in the Review calling on Anglo-Indians to support their ‘Home Association by joining as an Overseas Member’ with an ‘Annual Subscription [of] 5 shillings only’ to be sent to ‘88, Merton Hall Road, Wimbledon, S.W.19’.132 The advert directly appealed to the widespread sense among Anglo-Indians that Britain was their true ‘home’, a belief which was inculcated in children by their parents even when the family had never left India. Alongside a small resident population in England a few wealthier Anglo-Indians managed to visit for education or holidays, but presumably some Anglo-Indians who would never have a hope of making such a trip signed up. These two external bodies variously cooperated with and argued with Gidney’s Association, but generally backed his efforts during key phases of constitutional change. Amalgamation was important to the Association demonstrating its representativeness and the greatest numerical base of support in any negotiation. There were apparently ‘104 Stations’ across India and Burma represented at a conference held in Calcutta during 3–5 May 1928.133 Amalgamation was also a weapon against dissent and factionalism within the Anglo-Indian community – as an ‘Eye Witness’ to the conference commented, the ‘pages of Anglo-Indian history have been marred with the pitiful fact that any great effort on the part of the community to ameliorate its lot or safeguard its future generations has been hindered and discounted by internal dissentions [sic] and counter movements’.134 A retrospective account of this process, waxing hagiographic towards Gidney, depicted it as: an uphill fight all the way, covering over eight years … an epic story in the history of the Community … [in which] stronghold after stronghold of the opposition fell before the courage and determination of those who, with Lt.-Col. Gidney as their leader, were striving to establish unity and to break down the separatist camps which sought to wreck it.135

160

Making a minority

It was claimed that with the formation in 1926 of ‘the All-Indian body … by the union of the India and Bengal Associations, and a year later the United Provinces Association’, Gidney’s claim to lead ‘the representative communal organisation’ was finally accepted by the Madras and Burma Associations (Figure 4.1).136

Fig. 4.1 The 88 Association branches in 1929, still including four in Burma Note: this is a historical map and is included here for representative purposes. The international boundaries, coastlines, denominations, and other information shown do not necessarily imply any judgement concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such information. For current boundaries, readers may refer to the Survey of India maps.

Making a minority

161

Yet, in spite of such optimism, Association branch reports frequently bemoaned widespread apathy and indifference to communal affairs and the work of the Association. The Review criticised as ‘truly lamentable … the absolute indifference of the community, as a whole in Calcutta, towards any purely communal activity. Our smallest Branch could be an object lesson to them in communal esprit-de-corps.’137 In 1928 the Bangalore branch faulted the city’s supposedly 10,000 strong ‘domiciled community’ for furnishing only 300 members, crying ‘shame on those, who covertly expect to benefit by Col. Gidney’s humanitarian and superhuman efforts while they skulk out of the way, too proud or too indifferent as to who labours as long as they enjoy the fruits of others’.138 The branch president attacked ‘non-members as (1) “grousers,” (2) “disinterested”, [and] (3) “cowards”, the last being the most despicable of all, because they have taken so much out of Anglo-India and refused to give anything back in return, for the pitiful fear of being known as AngloIndians’.139 In 1934, during a contentious debate over the status of Bangalore as a British civil and military station within a princely state, Gidney found himself siding with the Diwan of Mysore against the leaders of the Bangalore branch, privately writing: Words fail me to tell you how upset end [sic] annoyed I am … It seems as if my good work is being frustrated by a few people who call themselves Europeans, but who are nothing else but Mulkies [i.e. natives] or more correctly ‘Albino’ Anglo-Indians.140 Thus it seems likely that the reluctance of many of the domiciled to join was connected with their preferred forms of self-identification being discordant with Gidney’s political project and construction of group identity. Many who did sign up did so for primarily social purposes, to attend local dances, whist drives and other events such as the ‘Tennis Tea held at the Railway Institute … given by the Saidpur Branch’.141 However local branches also took on more serious roles, taking up individual employment cases and often acting almost as a quasi-trade-union for Anglo-Indians working in government or railway service. Only a few of these cases were forwarded to the central office. As well as harnessing social functions towards local and communal charitable causes, Association branches were vital to fundraising for the central office and Gidney’s work. While Gidney was representing Anglo-Indians on the national stage there were also local Anglo-Indian leaders representing the community in various provincial legislative councils, such as ‘Mr. L. T. Maguire, M.L.C.’, who spoke in the Bengal Legislative Council in 1928 on the ‘Revival of the Calcutta Rent Act’ advocating the cause of poor tenants paying unreasonably high rent in overcrowded conditions over that of monopolistic landlords.142 Following Abbott’s organisational model a new travelling secretary was making periodic tours of the far-flung footholds of Anglo-India encouraging the setting up of additional branches or the revival of defunct ones, to

162

Making a minority

strengthen the Association’s representative claims and to place it in a stronger position relative to recalcitrant bodies that refused amalgamation or to recognise Gidney’s communal leadership. District branches sometimes fostered sub-branches, granting them ‘independence’ once they became ‘alive and active’.143 Amalgamation and the setting up of new branches had by 1929 increased the total number of branches from 70 to 88. This process continued through the 1930s alongside membership drives to enrol larger numbers of members within each branch of the Association. Advocates of a looser federation for the Association argued that it would give ‘the Provinces complete Provincial autonomy’.144 The Review countered that provincial branches were reluctant to ‘carry out their [existing] duties … and thereby relieve the Central Office of much of its work’.145 ‘Kolar Gold Fields … [was] the only Provincial Branch’ to send a nominee to serve ‘on the Governing Body’ as Association rules required.146 Forces outside of the Association also challenged Gidney’s leadership. In 1930 the secretary of the Council of the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Federation, Bombay, wrote to the viceroy opposing the renomination of Gidney to the Legislative Assembly, charging that the resolutions and petitions of the Association were ‘mere echoes of Col. Gidney’, that the whole organisation was ‘one man’s show managed and run … from his private residence 28, Theatre Road, Calcutta’, and, citing the Filose and Rangoon legal judgements against him, to argue that he had, ‘by his conduct, proved that he is not a fit and proper person to represent the community’.147 At the metropole Gidney had also to worry that the London Anglo-Indian Association might seek to represent the community back in India. When they submitted a supplementary note to the Indian Statutory Commission (hereafter the Simon Commission, after its chairman), Gidney responded angrily that this was: not the first time the London Anglo-Indian Association has incorrectly reported itself as representative of the community in India and has arrogated to itself, unauthorised and without consultation with the Association in India[,] the issuing of the policy of the community … [which should be] the prerogative of the community living in India and not of a few permanently retired Anglo-Indians resident in England.148 Gidney attacked the London Association’s ‘supplementary note to the Indian Statutory Commission’ which had only asked for 30 years ‘of statutory protection … [of] the economic position … [Anglo-Indians had] occupied in the various grades of Government Services’, which weakened his position of requesting 50 years of protection in his 1928 memorandum.149 However, in Gidney’s subsequent memorandum of 1933 he echoed the London Association’s earlier call for 30 years. Nonetheless, the critical issue to Gidney was who had the right to speak as the group’s representative body.

Making a minority

163

Fig. 4.2 ‘Seventh Annual Luncheon of the Anglo-Indian Association, London’, with Gidney seated third from the (top) left with his back to the first mirror on the left Source: Anglo-Indian Review (August, 1933), p. 4.

In 1931, Gidney presented ‘minimum terms on which the … Association, All-India and Burma, were prepared to co-operate with the London Association and co-ordinate the activities of the two bodies’.150 At a meeting of the governing body it was agreed that Gidney should ‘be authorised to resume negotiations with the London Association when in England’.151 The planned negotiations centred on the London Association recognising Gidney’s Association as the sole representative body for the community in India, including dissociating themselves ‘in every way from the’ Bombay Federation.152 In return for this and their refraining from any direct communication with branches of Gidney’s Association, they would be permitted to act as Gidney’s Association’s ‘Agents in London’ to relay those messages specifically authorised by Gidney to the British government. Gidney’s Association would ‘reserve to itself the right to frame the policy of the community in India in consultation and agreement with the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association of Southern India’.153 Clearly, neither the Southern nor the London Association could be easily absorbed or completely ignored. Yet the Review was keen to dismiss the: many Anglo-Indian societies which spring up with the rapidity of Jonah’s gourd only to disappear as suddenly … [An] Anglo-Indian League has been formed with Mr. H. W. B. Moreno as its ‘General President’. What surprised us, however, was to see a compendious looking report which claimed to be the 21st Annual Report of this organisation and to learn that the League had been in existence from the year 1909 … We were positively staggered. Here was a Society which had been in existence for

164

Making a minority the past 21 years and which had kept the fact such a close secret that we were not even aware of its existence.154

The Review claimed its own investigations to reveal that this new League had ‘had little more than 4 months official existence’ and that Moreno, its putative president since 1909, had been ‘President of the Bengal Branch of the late AngloIndian Empire League’ between 1918–1920, feigning astonishment ‘to learn that he was at one and the same time the President of two rival bodies’.155 The implication was that Moreno had been attempting to construct a false image of continuity by reviving a defunct body under an amended name. Moreno’s League’s Report had apparently claimed that it had ‘181 members, and two branches at Dinapore Cantt and Chakradharpore’.156 The Review later bemoaned the continued appearance of ‘so-called Federations’, a ‘Loyalist Legion’, ‘other mushroom organizations … [and] strange societies with high-sounding names, ideas and ideals’ that sprung up to take credit for the Association’s achievements or to place obstacles in its path.157 In December 1927, with the prospect of the arrival of the Simon Commission, the All-India Association ‘appealed to the Community to unite, in order to consolidate its forces and to submit one memorandum to the Commission’.158 With portraits of ‘Derozio and Ricketts, the great Anglo-Indians of a past day … [looking] down on’ a meeting in Calcutta ‘of all interests in the Community’, plans were developed for the submission ‘of a united memorandum’, which culminated in a special May conference, retrospectively celebrated as having drawn delegates from (and proxies for) over a hundred stations from ‘Quetta in the north-west and Golden Rock in the south’, and resulting in a ‘delegate from the Association of Southern India … [who] had come to Calcutta an opponent of amalgamation … return[ing] to Madras a convert to the need for one communal organisation’.159

Petitioning politics The community’s memorandum to the Simon Commission was one of a series of petitions presented to the colonial state under Gidney’s leadership, representing a form of continuity with the prior political history of the group. The economic dislocations for Anglo-Indian employment in state and railway service in the early decades of the 20th century arose for a variety of reasons. As has been noted above, those who left their civil employment to serve in World War I found it difficult to be reinstated on the conclusion of the war, despite official signals that veterans would be rewarded with preferential employment prospects on demobilisation. There were also wider moves to retrenchment, and the freezing or reduction of salaries in real terms, and these were later made worse by the 1929 Wall Street Crash and its global impact. In Anglo-Indian eyes, these changes disproportionately hit their own employment, but were blamed primarily on the de facto implementation of the policy of Indianisation of government services, beginning with the 1919 reforms. A

Making a minority

165

spike in Anglo-Indian unemployment, which was very visible for a largely urban and yet relatively small minority, induced Anglo-Indians to send a deputation to the secretary of state for India, Lord Peel, in 1923. A second deputation in 1925 to Peel’s successor Lord Birkenhead generated a great deal of paperwork within various departments of government back in India. Gidney’s memorandum to Birkenhead covered a wide array of detailed proposals, such as measures to improve levels of, terms of, and access to tiers of employment on the railways and telegraphs, and in nursing, military, naval, and medical services. Protecting Anglo-Indian education from defunding by Indian-dominated provincial legislatures, by proposing to return it to the central imperial budget, was also a critical demand. Anglo-Indian schools should, Gidney insisted, maintain their European and Christian character by continuing restrictions on the proportion of Indian students to admit. There were also more controversial, yet longstanding, arguments for protecting Anglo-Indians from the ‘demonstrated evidence of racial hostility’ of some Indian jurors by allowing Anglo-Indians to opt for domiciled or European juries.160 These and other proposals echoed and expanded upon Abbott’s earlier efforts on the Imperial Legislative Council. However, the memorandum expressed more existential angst about Anglo-Indians’ future, lamenting the ‘difficulties, economic and otherwise, with which the Community is confronted since the inauguration of the Reforms and the rapid process of Indianisation’, and expressing fears that unless action were taken AngloIndians would become a ‘depressed class’.161 It affirmed Anglo-Indians’ desire to live in ‘peace and amity’ with other Indian communities, to ‘co-operate with any Party in India whose object is to obtain self-government on constitutional lines within the British Empire’, and accepted Indians’ right ‘to secure a larger share in the administration of their own country, and that, in the realisation of this, the interests of other communities must, to a certain extent, be prejudicially affected’.162 However, Gidney also complained of the colour bar to Anglo-Indian emigration to dominions like Australia, and the anomalous status of AngloIndians’ bizarre ‘trinity of existence’ in India, under which they were: AngloIndians for social purposes (their Census designation since 1911); ‘statutory natives of India’ for the purposes of employment and official interpretations of Indianisation; and ‘European British subjects’ for defence of empire purposes.163 Underlying these points was, arguably, a desire for a clear answer from the British and colonial states as to how they would be classified in India as nationals and subjects (analytically as citizens), and what status this would afford them in the country of their birth and in the wider empire. If collective emigration had been offered as a possible solution to Anglo-Indian problems in India, especially with state support, it appears likely that Gidney would have embraced it, but as for his successor Anthony, partial and selective migrations that would disperse and weaken his group could provide no solution. Indeed, endorsing emigration under existing conditions would likely denude the group of members who were likely to have: (a) better

166

Making a minority

documentation; (b) lighter skin colour; and (c) more wealth and professional skills (not necessarily coinciding, but overlapping in some cases owing to the rewards of colonial India’s socioracial hierarchy). All three were primary means by which migration was effectively policed by the immigration systems of ‘the Dominions’ and to a lesser extent the metropole. However, documentation was of more significance in establishing a positive right to emigrate to the UK, whilst colour was more of a barrier to discretionary admission to Australia. Birkenhead, appearing to sense Gidney’s underlying uncertainty about Anglo-Indians’ future, sought to emphatically redirect Anglo-Indian efforts in one direction, namely recognition that the group’s ‘best interests … [would] in the long run be served by throwing in its lot, generally speaking, with the Indian peoples’ and by acceptance that they had ‘a permanent stake in India and in no other country’.164 The full response from government, issued in 1928, acknowledged that the ‘position of the community, as intermediate between pure Europeans and pure Indians, no doubt gives rise to certain anomalies, but these anomalies arise from the attempt to accord recognition to its exceptional position and therefore cannot … constitute a grievance’, and counselled against ‘the suggestion that the community be treated as constituting a third category with status distinct from both Europeans and Indians’ as not ‘practicable or likely to be advantageous’, advising that instead Anglo-Indians focus on ‘achieving for themselves an integral part in the economy and society of the country in which they live’.165 Anglo-Indians were assured ‘that their legal status … [as] “natives of India”’ was ‘essential’ to protecting them from the misapplication of Indianisation, and provided some cover to Gidney from those among the domiciled who were opposed to any ‘Indian’ status with the insurance that this was in no way ‘inconsistent with the maintenance of their individuality as a separate social entity, or with the position which is theirs by virtue of their ancestry, history and peculiar conditions and aptitudes’.166 They were again instructed that they had ‘a permanent stake in India and in no other country’ (i.e. Britain).167 This message confirmed a clear template for Gidney’s political project, namely to position the group as an Indian minority claiming safeguards for their existing and historical position in state and railway service, and claiming guaranteed representation in any further stage of constitutional development in order to maintain these economic interests.

Notes 1 Cited in Anglo-Indian Review (January 1936), pp. 12–13. 2 NAI, Legislative Department, Legislative Branch, April 1913, File no. Progs. nos. 248–60, part A, ‘Extract from His Excellency LORD HARDINGE’s Speech at Madras in November 1913 to Various Addresses Presented to Him’, p. 12. 3 Ibid. 4 C. Hawes, ‘Eurasians in British India, 1773–1833: The Making of a Reluctant Community’, Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1993).

Making a minority

167

5 Cited in ‘Anglo-Indian Regiment. Mr. Madge Accepts Assurance by Government’, Statesman (12 July 1912). 6 Madge speaking in Council, cited in ibid. 7 NAUK, WO/32/6889, handwritten note on file ‘on 5983’, signed ‘29–12–86 Wolseley’. 8 Madge, cited in ‘Anglo-Indian Regiment’, Statesman (12 July 1912). 9 Madge, cited in ibid. 10 Madge, cited in ibid. 11 NAI, Political Department, Political Branch (Confidential) 1908, File no. 42, Serial nos. 1–4, ‘Proposal for the Enrolment of a Special Police Reserve Composed Mainly of Europeans and Eurasians’. 12 Kolkata Archives, Political Confidential, File no. −42, Sn. no. 1–4, Serial no. 3, ‘No. 1132 S.B., dated Calcutta, the 21st July 1908. From – L. F. Morshead, Esq., I.C.S., Offg. Inspector-General of Police, L.P., To – The Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal’, para. 15, p. 5. 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 15 Madge, cited in ‘Anglo-Indian Regiment’, Statesman (12 July 1912). 16 Ibid. 17 NAI, Legislative Department, Legislative Branch, April 1913, ‘Legislative Department Notes’, ‘Nomination of Mr. J. H. Abbott as an Additional Member of the Governor General’s Legislative Council’, ‘Appendix to Notes’, pp. 4, 7–8. 18 Ibid., pp. 4, 8. 19 Ibid., pp. 8–10. 20 Ibid., p. 5. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., p. 14. 24 B. Abbott, ‘Captain John Harold (Arnold) Abbott (b. 10th January, 1863, d. 28th June, 1945)’, Geneology.com, available at http://familytreemaker.genealogy. com/users/a/b/b/Warren-B-Abbott/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0075.html and B. Abbott, ‘Quartermaster Sergeant William Lumsden Abbott (b. 26th July, 1828, d. 25th August, 1880)’, Geneology.com, available at http://familytreemaker.genealogy. com/users/a/b/b/Warren-B-Abbott/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0241.html. 25 See Wilson, The Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Race, p. 15. 26 NAI, Legislative Department, Legislative Branch, April 1913, ‘Legislative Department Notes’, ‘Nomination of Mr. J. H. Abbott as an Additional Member of the Governor General’s Legislative Council’, p. 4. 27 Ibid., p. 5. 28 Speeches by Lord Curzon, ‘Anglo-Indian Association’, p. 253, and Lord Curzon in India, p. 364. 29 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs., no. 85, part-B, The Anglo-Indian Force (Pamphlet, ‘Allahabad 1st January 1918’, with supplementary amendments added in 1919), p. 6. 30 Ibid., supplementary List of Domiciled Europeans & Anglo-Indians (‘Allahabad: 9th July, 1919’), cover page. 31 Ibid., p. 7. 32 Ibid., pp. 1–10. 33 Ibid., p. 1. 34 Ibid., p. 5. 35 Ibid., pp. 1–2, 6–7. 36 Ibid., pp. 6–7. 37 Ibid., The Anglo-Indian Force, pp. 19–20. 38 Thurston, Anthropology, p. 96.

168

Making a minority

39 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs., no. 85, part-B, The Anglo-Indian Force, p. 8. 40 Ibid., p. 5. 41 Ibid., p. 13. 42 Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform [Session 1932–3], Volume IIC: Minutes of Evidence Given before the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform (London, 1934), question 16,521, p. 2015. 43 NAI, Railways Department, Establishment Branch, June 1942, File no. E41CM125/1, part-B, ‘Extract from Sir Henry Gidney’s Letter Dated 24/31st December, 1941’, p. 1. 44 NAI, Home Department, Establishments – A. Branch, February 1920, nos. 357–8, ‘Notes’, ‘Representation from the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association Asking for the Appointment of Two Anglo-Indians to the Indian Civil Service by Nomination’, C. W. Gwynne to the General Secretary, Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association (Delhi, 28 February 1920), p. 4. 45 C. Campagnac (S. Campagnac-Carney, ed.),The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England & Burma: The Memoirs of a Former Mayor of Rangoon (Raleigh, NC, 2010), p. 169. 46 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs., no. 85, part-B, (Copy of) J. Abbott, Jhansi, to W. Marris, Simla (21 June 1920), p. 5. 47 Ibid., Anglo-India in the Imperial Legislative Council. 1913–14, 1914–15, 1915–16. During the Tenure of Office of The Hon’ble Captain J. H. Abbott, V. D. (Pamphlet, 2nd edn, Jhansi, 1920), ‘Speeches Made at an Extraordinary General Meeting of the Jhansi Branch Held at the Y.W.C.A. Hall on Saturday the 10th January 1920. The Chairman’s Speech’, third unnumbered page of front matter. 48 Campagnac, Autobiography, p. 168. 49 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, February 1923, File no. Progs. nos. 5, Deposit, J. Abbott, Jhansi, to the Editor, Indian Daily Telegraph, Lucknow (31 December 1922), p. 12. 50 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs., no. 85, part-B, (Copy of) Chelmsford, Viceroy’s Camp, to J. Abbott, Jhansi (3 August 1916), pp. 6–7. 51 Ibid., Anglo-India in the Imperial Legislative Council, ‘Major Hankin’s Speech’, fourth unnumbered page of front matter. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., ‘The Chairman’s Speech’, third unnumbered page of front matter. 54 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, February 1923, File no. Progs. nos. 5, Deposit, J. Abbott to the Editor, Indian Daily Telegraph, p. 12. 55 Burma (League) Chronicle (August), cited in L. Ingels, Anglo-Indian Amalgamation: The Pressing Need of the Community (Pamphlet, Calcutta, 1918), pp. 21–2. 56 Ibid., p. 23. 57 ‘Letter … from the Federal Secretary to Members’ (15 August), cited in Ingels, Anglo-Indian Amalgamation, p. 30. 58 Ingels, as president, Anglo-Indian Association, Calcutta (15 August), in reply to a ‘Letter … from the Federal Secretary to Members’ (15 August), cited in Ingels, Anglo-Indian Amalgamation, p. 32. 59 ‘Officers of the Civil Division of the Said Most Excellent Order’ of the British Empire, ‘India’, appearing in ‘Supplement to the London Gazette’, London Gazette (8 January 1919), pp. 452–61, available at www.london-gazette.co.uk/ issues/31114/supplements/461/page.pdf. 60 Government of India (1914), cited in Ingels,Anglo-Indian Amalgamation, p. 35.

Making a minority

169

61 ‘Copy of a “Note” by the Revd. Oswald Younghusband, President, Punjab Provincial Branch, Anglo-Indian Empire League’ circulated in a ‘Letter from the Honorary Secretary, Federation, to Members, dated 8th July 1918’, cited in ibid., pp. 24–5. 62 Burma (League) Chronicle (August), cited in ibid., p. 23. 63 ‘From – The Hon’ble Mr. E. V. Levinge, I.C.S., Officiating Chief Secretary to the Government of Bengal’, cited in ibid., p. 19. 64 Original emphases; Government of India (1914), cited in ibid., pp. 35–6. 65 Ingels,Anglo-Indian Amalgamation, p. 25. 66 Ingels ‘to all the Presidents and Secretaries of the Associations and League with its branches’ (10th June), cited in ibid., p. 19. 67 Ingels,Anglo-Indian Amalgamation, p. 9. 68 Abbott and Robbie, ‘individually and as President and Secretary of the Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Federation’, to ‘Lionel Ingels – as President of the Anglo-Indian Association, Calcutta’ (14 June), cited in ibid., p. 14. 69 ‘Letter … from the Federal Secretary to Members’ (15 August), cited in ibid., p. 31. 70 Abbott and Robbie to Ingels, cited in ibid., p. 13. 71 Ibid. 72 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, February 1923, File no. Progs. nos. 5, Deposit, Abbott to the Editor, Indian Daily Telegraph, p. 11. 73 NAI, Legislative Department, Legislative Branch, July 1919, File no. Progs. 4–5, part-B, ‘Proposed Re-nomination of Mr. J. H. Abbott to the Imperial Legislative Council, as a Representative of the Anglo-Indian Community’, C. Robbie, General Secretary, Anglo Indian Empire League, Allahabad, to the Member and Secretary, Legislative Department, Simla (12 April 1919), p. 1. 74 Ibid. 75 Cited in Wallace, Life of Sir Henry Gidney, p. 198. 76 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs. nos. 86, part-B, W. Crawshaw, ‘Member of Council U.P. of Agra & Oudh, Representing the Anglo Indian & Domiciled European Community, “Gulistan”, Lucknow’, to the Viceroy’s Private Secretary, Simla (30 September 1920), p. 3. 77 NAI, Legislative Department, Legislative Branch, July 1919, File no. Progs. 4–5, part-B, ‘Proposed Re-nomination of ’ Abbott, Robbie to the Member and Secretary, Legislative Department, p. 1. 78 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs. nos. 86, part-B, Crawshaw to the Viceroy’s Private Secretary, p. 3. 79 For a fictional representation of such generational divisions see J. Masters, Bhowani Junction (New York, 1954). 80 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, February 1923, File no. Progs. nos. 5, Deposit, Abbott to the Editor, Indian Daily Telegraph, pp. 10–11. 81 Ibid., p. 13. 82 Ibid., p. 5. 83 Ibid., pp. 5–6. 84 NAI, Legislative Department, Council and General Branch, 1930, File no. Progs. nos. 317(1), CG, ‘The Anglo-Indian Federation, Bombay’, to the Viceroy, ‘Baron Irwin of Kirby Underdale’, ‘Clare House, Clare Road, Byculla, Bombay’ (26 May 1930), p. 2. 85 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, November 1922, File no. Progs. nos. 8, Deposit, Independent, Allahabad, cited in Saturday Gazette, Allahabad (circa. September 1922), p. 4. 86 Ibid.

170

Making a minority

87 Ibid., Liddell’s Weekly, Simla, cited in Saturday Gazette, Allahabad (circa. September 1922), p. 4. 88 Original emphasis; NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, February 1923, File no. Progs. nos. 5, Deposit, ‘communique from Simla’ of ‘members of the Executive Committee’ of ‘the Simla–Delhi Branch’, cited in Abbott to the Editor, Indian Daily Telegraph, p. 6. 89 Ibid., Abbott to the Editor, Indian Daily Telegraph, p. 12. 90 Ibid., p. 7. 91 Ibid., p. 15. 92 Ibid., p. 14. 93 Ibid., pp. 4–5. 94 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs., no. 85, part-B, The Anglo-Indian Force, p. 55. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Ibid. (makes no mention of Edinburgh), p. 56, whilst Gidney’s name is absent from Royal Society, 2007, ‘List of Fellows of the Royal Society 1660–2007: A Complete Listing of All Fellows and Foreign Members since the Foundation of the Society’, Royal Society: Library and Information Services, p. 137, available at http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/about-us/fellowship/ Fellows1660-2007.pdfc, cf. Gidney’s later use of the post-nominals ‘F.R.S. (E)’ or ‘(Ed.)’ in Anglo-Indian Review (June 1928), p. 3, Anglo-Indian Review and Railway Union Journal (April 1931), p. 8, and BMJ Publishing Group, ‘Front Matter’, British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 4171 (14 December 1940), p. 1. 99 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs., no. 85, part-B, The Anglo-Indian Force, p. 56. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid. 103 Original emphasis; H. Hobbs, Extracts from my Diary, pamphlet (8 November 1934), p. 1. 104 The Queenslander (Brisbane, 1866–1939), ‘Surgeon’s “Bag” of 53 Tigers: Ambidexterity and Shooting Help Him to Operate’ (2 January 1936), 4, available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article23379997; see also Evening Post (Wellington, 1865–1945), ‘Hunting Surgeon: Record of Tigers Shot’, CXXI:24 (29 January 1936), 10, available at http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl= search&d=EP19360129.2.50&srpos=1&e=—————10–1——2hunting+surgeon–. 105 Ibid. 106 NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs., no. 85, part-B, ‘Notes’, ‘Representation form Mr. H. H. Abbott, Jhansi for a Nominated Seat in the Indian Legislature’ (15 and 18 August 1920), p. 4. 107 Ibid., ‘from the Hony. Secy. Anglo Indian & Domiciled European Community, Allahabad Branch’, ‘Resolution Passed … At the Meeting of the Central Council of the Association Held Two Days after the [Annual] Conference’ (17 January 1920). 108 Retrospective account in Anglo-Indian Review (June 1928), pp. 2–3. 109 Anglo-Indian Review (June 1928), p. 3. 110 Ibid., p. 2. 111 Ibid. 112 H. Mitra (ed.), The Govt. of India Act 1919: Rules Thereunder & Govt. Reports, 1920 (Calcutta, 1921), ‘Rules under the Government of India Act, 1919’, ‘List of Constituencies for the Imperial Legislative Council’, pp. 108–10.

Making a minority 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121

122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149

171

Ibid., p. 109. Ibid., ‘Provincial Council Rules’, pp. 226, 238. Ibid., Schedule II: Qualification of Electors, p. 214. Ibid. NAUK, CAB/24/116, HMSO, Proposals of the Government of India for a New Constitution for Burma (London, 1920), p. 35. NAI, Legislative Department, Council and General Branch, 1930, File no. Progs. nos. 317(1), CG, ‘The Anglo-Indian Federation, Bombay’, to the Viceroy (26 May 1930), p. 2. Anglo-Indian Review (January 1933), p. 2. Anglo-Indian Review (February 1933), p. 2. NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, November 1922, File no. Progs. nos. 8, Deposit, J. Abbott to ‘R. S. D’Arcy, Esq., Chairman, Executive Committee, Anglo-Indian & Domiciled European Association, Simla’ (3 October 1922), p. 1. Ibid., J. Abbott, ‘Notice’ (The Albion Press, Jhansi), ‘Jhansi, 2nd Oct. 1922’. Ibid. Ibid., Independent, Allahabad, cited in Saturday Gazette, Allahabad (circa. September 1922), p. 4. Ibid., Gidney ‘to the Private Secretary to the Viceroy’, cited in Pioneer, Simla 23 September 1922, cited in the transcription of a ‘Speech made by Mr. J. H. Abbott, O.B.E., V.D., at Jhansi’ (3 October 1922), p. 1. Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, pp. 42–3. NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly and Council Branch, November 1922, File no. Progs. nos. 8, Deposit, Abbott, Speech ‘at Jhansi’ (3 October 1922), p. 4. Gidney speaking at an ‘At Home’ at Veeraswamy’s India Restaurant, given by the ‘Anglo-Indian community of London’ on ‘the 3rd February at 4 p.m.’, cited in Anglo-Indian Review and Railway Union Journal (March 1931), p. 31. See Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, pp. 42–3. Cited in Anglo-Indian Review (June 1928), p. 9. Ibid. Anglo-Indian Review (June 1928), p. 12. Ibid., back cover. Ibid., p. 4. Anglo-Indian Review (November 1931), p. 8. Ibid. Anglo-Indian Review (November–December 1928), p. 8. Anglo-Indian Review (June 1928), p. 10. Ibid. NAI, Mysore Residency Department, Bangalore Branch, File no. Progs. nos. 26 (5-c) 1932, part-B, H. Gidney, Simla, to M. Ismail, Diwan of Mysore (Copy) (29 September 1934), p. 2. Anglo-Indian Review (June 1928), p. 21. Anglo-Indian Review (‘November–December’ 1928), p. 14. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. NAI, Legislative Department, Council and General Branch, 1930, File no. Progs. nos. 317(1), CG, ‘The Anglo-Indian Federation, Bombay’, to the Viceroy (26 May 1930), pp. 1–2. Anglo-Indian Review (July 1929), p. 6. Ibid.

172

Making a minority

150 Proceedings of an Ordinary Monthly Meeting of the Governing Body Held at 87-A, Park Street, Calcutta, on 8th September, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (November 1931), p. 26. 151 Ibid. 152 Ibid. 153 Ibid. 154 Anglo-Indian Review (May 1929), p. 5. 155 Ibid. 156 Ibid. 157 Anglo-Indian Review (November 1931), p. 8. 158 Retrospective account in Anglo-Indian Review (Christmas 1928), p. 7. 159 Ibid. 160 BL, OIOC, Mss Eur D/925, Memorandum Relative to the Deputation of the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled Community of India and Burma to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for India, July 30th 1925; cf. The Ilbert Bill. A Collection of Letters, Speeches, Memorials, Articles, & c., Stating the Objections to the Bill (London, circa 1883), p. 110. 161 BL, OIOC, Mss Eur D/925, Memorandum, pp. 2–4. 162 Ibid., p. 3. 163 Ibid. 164 BL, OIOC, Mss Eur D703/42, Deputations Received by Lord Birkenhead at the India Office (Anglo-Indians, Trades Union Congress, Labour Party). 165 ‘The Secretary of States Despatch – Reply to 1925 Deputation’, ‘No. F.-164/28-Estts. Government of India Home Department’, H. Haig to Gidney, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1928), Supplement, p. i. 166 Ibid. 167 Ibid.

5

Escapisms of empire?

It has been said that this solution to the Anglo-Indian problem is in keeping with a certain fashionable development in modern politics called Escapism which consists not in facing a problem but running away from it. I consider this an unfair and unjust criticism. Under the circumstances, the solution appears to me to be, not only the most commonsense one so far advocated, but the most realistic … This, of course, would refer particularly to the colonisation of the Andamans, which … offers the greatest scope to any community of people if they would only grasp the opportunity.1 Owen Snell, Anglo-Indians and Their Future, 1944

A series of projects ran counter to the prevailing politics of the mixed race populations in South Asia and Burma. It is possible to view some of these as forms of ‘escapism’, whereby these populations formulated solutions, sometimes rather utopian, to all their problems in strategies of colonisation and resettlement. The arguments for specific schemes overlapped substantially, in the late colonial period and the early postcolonial period, with those in favour of individual, familial, or collective emigration. Many of them were never enacted substantially or through sustained efforts, but the persistence of similar themes, ideas, and projects over a long chronological timespan suggests that they were neither trivial nor the product of a specific period. The nature of these projects differed over time, and clearly at some points posed greater challenges to group identity, cultural autonomy, and economic sustainability, which gave a greater impetus to calls for enacting strategies of ‘colonisation’. As we saw in Chapter 2, the earliest schemes date back to that pivotal moment (circa 1829) of political awakening with the multiple AngloIndian petitions, and to the initiative of East India Company state actors. However, the most substantially enacted experiment in Anglo-Indian colonisation was during the early decades of the 20th century at McCluskiegunge (in modern Jharkhand), an experiment which has previously been studied by the geographers Lahiri-Dutt and Blunt. Despite apparent failures and repeated disappointments, the idea of a state-sponsored, primarily agricultural colony would persist into the postcolonial period and the politics of the closely intertwined yet politically divergent Anglo-Burman group. This chapter

174

Escapisms of empire?

must therefore tie together multiple threads in order to explain the longevity of a series of related ideas and projects, which provided a crucial, significant, and persisting outlet for large expenditures of time, energy, thought, and capital by mixed race peoples in South Asia and Burma. After the Great Rebellion of 1857 the Company’s policy of seeking to prohibit Christian missionary proselytisation, restrict European settlement, and constrain the growth of a planter class in the Indian interior might have been reversed by the new colonial state. Seeking to harness British anxieties of another uprising, Dr Chambers, president of the Anglo-Indian Association in Calcutta, called in 1879 for the formation of ‘compact centres of European colonization, whence, in times of political emergency, little hosts of English arms might be brought forth to serve the State’.2 Experimental model colonies, settled by ‘Eurasians’ and ‘the Indianized European population’, ex-railwaymen, and retired British soldiers, could develop brewing, ‘vinegrowing, wine-manufacturing … cheese-making, European fruit-growing … and cattle acclimatizing from foreign stock’.3 Yet the colonial state rejected the idea that India could become a colony of permanent European settlement. Colonial Britons responded to the Great Rebellion by further secluding themselves in the increasingly aloof world of colonial spaces such as the club, the cantonment, and seasonally, the ‘hill station’. Heightened social closure against Indians extended to those of mixed race. Chambers nonetheless argued that an ‘Anglo-Indian race’ was coming into being, combining the domiciled of mixed and unmixed descent, which he constructed as the inheritors of British blood and culture, and a valuable extension of the ruling race.4 An 1878 book entitled The Fortunes of the Anglo-Indian Race had argued that: The great panacea for existing evils among Anglo-Indians is, in the first place, to discourage their predilection for desk-work; secondly the establishment … of Industrial Schools … Schools of Agriculture, [and] Model Farms … So far back as 1829 … an attempt was made to establish an Agricultural Farm with a view of inuring the rising generation to such labor. The Government was pleased to grant the association in perpetuity, free of rent; the Palace of Phoolshair … and 42 acres of ground, but under this condition that the association were not to dispose of their right in this property either by sale or transfer; and also the sum of 2,000 Rupees for the repairs of the Palace,– a fund was raised which amounted to upwards of 30,000 Rupees.5 The failure was ‘attributed entirely to bad management’ as the: School Master did not possess any of the qualifications necessary … The Superintendent had very little knowledge of mechanics; the gardener (an Anglo-Indian) in consequence of ill usage from the Superintendent was

Escapisms of empire?

175

unfortunately opposed and inimical to all his system as respected the training of the boys to agriculture and the Government apothecary was an alcoholic.6 Malcolm himself noted that the Company’s court of directors had acquiesced to the ‘settlement of East Indians at Phoolsheher … as a seminary of education; but … prohibit [ed] the Government of Bombay from granting to the Amelioration Society formed by this class any more land’, an order which he ‘greatly regret[ed]’.7 It was also recounted that ‘similar attempts were made in Calcutta’ and that a ‘Philanthropic Association’ had been founded in Madras, ‘after a very large meeting of the Anglo-Indian community’, with the ‘avowed object’ of establishing ‘large agricultural farms for the benefit of the community’.8 This apparently resulted in a similar fiasco after: The Governor [of Madras] contributed 7,000 Rupees; [and] subscriptions were raised, which amounted … to 35,000 or 40,000 Rupees. A large committee was formed, and after preliminaries were arranged, some ten or twelve were sent to the Shevaroys [i.e. hills in the Salem district] as Pioneers with necessary implements, but not one among them … [nor] a single member of the committee … had any practical knowledge of agriculture; [yet] great were the expectations … that the race of AngloIndians in Madras were no longer to be serfs at the desk – but were to become farmers, and in time independent and have holdings of their own.9 The lack of success of the ‘emigrants … lead [sic] to a division and disruption of the general committee of management; one portion of which possessed themselves of the balance of the fund which was reduced to 16,000 Rupees’, resulting in ‘angry meetings, and endless disputes for years’.10 After ‘the whole thing collapsed’ the Rs. 16,000 ‘was transferred … to the Madras Civil Orphan Asylum for apprenticing boys and Industrial training’ in 1844.11 Despite these previous failures, the author remained persuaded that though it was unsuited to adults, a better managed venture to train children to agriculture was: ‘Unquestionably … one of the chief means for the[ir] amelioration’, and as they matured there would be ‘no difficulty about … [the] ultimate success’ of similar projects in ‘hill stations (the Neigherries, the Shevaroys, the Pulnies) … where large tracts of land … [were] still available … [and with] the construction and improvement of roads … [agricultural] produce would always command a ready market’.12

‘Fictive orphans’ and child migrants The same author also documented an early experiment to send ‘two batches [of] about 250 of the poorer and destitute Eurasian boys as emigrants’ to Australia in 1851–2 when a gold rush had led ‘to the desertion of domestic

176

Escapisms of empire?

and farm servants’.13 Apparently some of these children already had experience as ‘printers, or compositors, [and] were consigned to agents in Sydney, and were readily … employed in different capacities’.14 In constructing children as malleable subjects for agricultural and technical training, but also for character reformation and moral elevation, plans for Anglo-Indian colonies overlapped and intertwined with related charitable and paternalistic projects to shape Anglo-Indian children in orphanages for employment in India or for emigration to the still largely agricultural dominions of Australia and New Zealand. The 1892 Pauperism Committee Report had also made similar suggestions, with a ‘Mrs Ruxton … almost unaided, [having] worked out to an advanced stage, [a project] of sending very young orphan children to Australia … [where they were to] be brought up and made self-supporting at a comparatively early age’.15 A ‘well-known lady, Mrs. Rowe, [had already] consented to receive children at her institution at Brookside, on the guarantee … of ten shillings a week’.16 This was, however, considered a high price to pay for mixed race children from India, as it would amount: to Rs. 30 a month or Rs. 360 a year, to which … [would have to] be added at least Rs. 150 per child for transport to Australia. In other words, at least two children would be provided for in India at the same expense as one in Australia.17 The idea that some of the children ‘would probably be adopted into European families’ was thought to be ‘excellent’, but the issue of cost was considered ‘a formidable impediment’.18 Miss Morris suggested that if the children were instead: boarded out on the same terms as those taken charge of by the Australian Government … the cost would be reduced to five shillings a week, or about the same that children cost in Calcutta, so that the extra expenditure would be the original cost of sending the child to Australia.19 With many of these Anglo-Indian children being ‘fictive orphans’ the move to sponsor their emigration was part of a much wider phenomenon of British government-funded charities at the metropole sending as many as 100,000 children (often of the working classes or unmarried mothers) to the settler societies of ‘Greater Britain’ between 1869 and 1967.20 Though unintended by the charitable organisations which sent them to what they likely believed would be a better life, for an examination of the sufferings of these children the reader must refer to Ellen Boucher’s landmark study.21 The distinction for us here is in the perceived racial status of the mixed race children from India, and how this affected their acceptability to the ‘White Dominions’ and, in all likelihood, their treatment upon arrival. Boucher was familiar with the prior work which had been done by Mizutani on the Scottish missionary Reverend

Escapisms of empire?

177

Dr John Graham’s St Andrew’s Colonial Homes at Kalimpong which aimed at remoulding mixed race children for lives in Australasia.22 The Kalimpong Homes had also been earlier addressed by Buettner and Blunt,23 and the experiences of the Kalimpong child migrants to New Zealand have been more recently explored by McCabe.24 The themes of a moral and physical refashioning of participants anticipated the rhetoric of later colonisation attempts. The transformational process would continue as the children migrated to healthy agricultural environments overseas. By 1938 the Review was reporting that: New Zealand has won the affection of the Kalimpong emigrants … [However, Australia] stated that [only] an Anglo-Indian of three quarters white parentage would be allowed to land, if in sound health, of good character and in possession of a British passport … [How do they] propose to measure … white parentage[?] … It is well known that children of a European father and an Anglo-Indian mother, at times, vary considerably in their complexion. From the point of view of parentage, there may be no difference between the light complexioned child and the darker one. But the Australian Government may be prepared to welcome the former and refuse permission to his less fortunate brother or sister.25 Nonetheless, 11 of Graham’s charges were sent ‘to Australia, four to the United States, and one to South Africa’.26 Yet most went to New Zealand, and in late 1938 the largest, and, according to Graham, ‘the best’ group thus far, ‘a party of 14 (nine boys and five girls)’, embarked at ‘Bombay per S. S. Strathmore’, contributing to the already ‘108 Kalimpong boys and girls in New Zealand and 50 or 60 “grand children”’.27 Four being ‘matriculates at the Calcutta University. They have worked in farms and intend to do farming … One boy has passed the Board of Apprenticeship and the higher grade examinations. All the girls are diplomaed children’s nurses.’28 However, by September 1939 the New Zealand government had ‘decided not to give permits to Anglo-Indians to emigrate to that Colony’:29 The decision … must be very disappointing to Dr. Graham … This colour bar is the outstanding weakness of Britain’s colonial policy. The mother country is apparently helpless in the matter of removing any ban against the entry other British subjects into the Dominions … even when such a ban is based on colour prejudice. We … do not favour emigration of Anglo-Indians to any Colony particularly if such emigration is to be on sufferance.30 Millicent Wilson of Bangalore, author of The Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Race of India, criticised Graham’s emphasis on domestic training for Anglo-Indian girls as possibly suitable for the fortunate few who could emigrate ‘for service in the Colonies … but for the rest who happen to be

178

Escapisms of empire?

dark skinned and cannot get away … Is it not a species of cruelty to condemn them to a life long equality with the Indian menial in India?31 Wilson offered a diametrically opposed view: What self-respect or ambition is left to the soul of a child ground down to the most menial duties … while conscious of all the qualities and birth right of a child of British heritage and birth? This self same material is lost to the community and India through sheer lack of understanding and insight into the glorious possibilities of these poor children, given vocational training, and fitted to be farmers and settlers of the soil of their birth. Most of them also are of planter and agriculturalist origin. What more promising and fitting material from which to produce satisfactory settlers!32 In speaking of children as ‘material’ and emphasising that their ‘British heritage’ should exempt them from the menial work of Indians, she was directly challenging the attempts of British philanthropists like Graham to remould them away from the perceived indolence, aversion to menial work and overreliance on servants with which such colonial Britons associated even poorer Anglo-Indians. At the same time, both Graham and Wilson were advocating that the children be utilised for the broader purposes of imperial or communal settlement, and both opposing constructions of them precluded them having or developing their own agency. Both shared an image of moulding them into ‘humble colonial settlers … “pre-industrial” labourers … [and] independent farmers’.33 If there was an ideological (perhaps ‘Burkean’) purpose to such pastoral ideals,34 it was also not apparent early in the 20th century that agriculture was destined to decline so greatly in relative economic significance. Indeed, the colonial state itself gave the opposite impression by promulgating concepts of ‘culturable wasteland’ which could be profitably cultivated with modern, ‘scientific’ methods. Wilson argued that the ‘universality of the AngloIndian … not [having] tilled the land nor earned his living purely as a farmer … [was] merely a condition which time and the pressing force of circumstances is fast tending to eliminate’.35 As evidence she cited Whitefield: a small tract of land in the Mysore State … [where] some seventy odd Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian settlers have existed in fluctuating fashion, for the past forty years. Fruit and poultry farming, crop raising, fuel supplying tracts, and even intensive culture such as potato crops, are experimented with. Indeed … a certain retired railwayman has successfully run a supply store and bakery, ousting rival Indian competition, which is as it should be in what is intended to be an experimental and purely A. I. settlement.36

Escapisms of empire?

179

However, Wilson conceded that Whitefield ‘should be ten times the success that it is’.37 In explanation she cited ‘Lack of capital and funds to create a permanent and regularly dependable water supply … [as] causes which retard the full development and success of this promising settlement’.38 She lauded: its original founder, Mr. White, [as] a worthy President of the Mysore and Coorg A. I. and D. E. Asstn … [observing that the] Adjoining tracts named after other ambitious and devoted presidents of the same Asstn., such as Sausman, Glen Gordon, [and] Duckworth, have temporarily been abandoned for lack of support.39 Religion is a central theme of Wilson’s text, and she lamented that the abandoned extensions of the Whitefield settlement ‘“call us to deliver” our land and community “from error’s chain”’.40 This echoed an 1820 hymn by Bishop Reginald Heber which also included ‘From India’s coral strand’, which she had placed in full at the beginning of her work as a ‘prophecy [that] would literally come to be fulfilled!’41 Wilson further asked: ‘Who will rise as a Moses amongst us and lead on to victory against the Philistines of apathy, sloth, mental inertia and disunity which threaten to retard and disrupt a virile community … ?’42

Anglo-India in mainland India In 1879 the ‘Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association of Southern India’ was established with the chief goal ‘of settling Eurasians and Anglo-Indians on the land … [in order] to lead them into Agricultural and Industrial pursuits and to remove for ever the feeling of anxiety as regards their own future and that of their children’.43 In 1882 its ‘Mysore Branch (Bangalore)’ (henceforth the Mysore branch, listing 170 members), ‘in Union with the Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – London’, published a 208-page Guide to the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Villages, Proposed to be Established in the Province of Mysore.44 The Mysore branch president, a ‘Mr. Standish Lee’ edited the Guide, whilst Mr. ‘J. White’ was only one of 30 executive committee members.45 Lee ‘originally intended’ to cover ‘several other subjects’ but as ‘operations in the villages had [already] commenced’ he had proceeded to press, somewhat ambitiously leaving: Dairy-farming, Poultry-rearing, Grass and Fodder-farming, Food and Feeding of cattle, Rabbit-breeding, Knacker’s yard, Tanning Dog and Pig skins, Curing Furs, Growing and Grafting fruit trees, Growing the India Rubber-tree, … Sauce-making, Tinning Vegetables and Meats, Growing Medicinal plants, Flower-farming for Perfumery, Mustard growing and preparing, Preserving figs, Wattle-farming, Wicker and Basket-work, and making Pomatum [to] be taken up in a second volume.46

180

Escapisms of empire?

As it was the Guide’s 37 chapters and three appendixes covered a wide range of subjects. The first nine covered the origins, plans, and details of the scheme itself. Chapters 10 through 21 (and 37) presented reports and guidance on various forms of agriculture including fish farming; cattle, sheep, pig, and ostrich farming; the breeding of horses, ponies, and mules; the rearing of silk worms; coffee growing; and bee-keeping. Also covered were education, sanitation, social support funds, and a summary of relevant laws for development and irrigation. Last came professional (and beautiful) architectural drawings of the proposed ‘School house and Model Cottages’ in appendix III.47 Significantly, the colony’s location was to be in a princely state. The Mysore branch had approached His Highness Chamarajendra Wodyar, Maharaja of Mysore, as the representatives of ‘a community of mixed European and Indian descent, and of domiciled Europeans in Southern India … [with the] chief hope … [of] ameliorating the condition of the poorer classes of our Community … [through] Agricultural and Horticultural schemes’.48 They argued that with: the great interest taken, and the expenditure incurred by, the late Government to improve Agriculture … the failure of the late Experimental Farm was, in great measure, owing to the conservative habits of the Agricultural classes, whose prejudices in favor of the system of their forefathers prevented their adopting the improved methods presented by Western Agricultural Science; whereas, an intelligent people, such as we represent, without prejudices or preconceived notions, would be far more likely to adopt a scientific system of Agriculture.49 In his reply the Maharaja expressed his sympathy with their objectives, agreed to ‘become a patron of … [their] Association’, and lauded agriculture as ‘the healthiest and most ennobling occupation for any class of people’.50 He cautioned them, however, that it required ‘steady and patient industry, moderate aspirations, and provident habits to which people accustomed to miscellaneous pursuits are not trained without considerable difficulty’, that they would have to ‘be prepared for occasional failures and disappointments’ and that if they ‘hope[d] for anything more than the very mode[st] rate [of] return with which the industry of the ryot [is] now rewarded, it … [could] only be secured by increased labour, greater intelligence, and the application of science, and machinery to the pursuit’.51 With those provisos he offered his personal ‘support in your efforts’ and the ‘careful consideration’ of his government for ‘any reasonable proposals’ they submitted, on the understanding ‘that whilst some encouragement may be required at the start, the industry, as a permanent institution, must rest upon commercial principles, with out any special advantages or favours’.52 Fears of being reduced to ‘the cooly’s wages’ were countered by White’s assertion that ‘the business of the settler, or colonist, while doubtless comprising in numerous cases a high degree of active exertion … [would be] principally to lay out capital, to supervise, and to

Escapisms of empire?

181

53

follow for himself the most highly remunerative occupation’. Both the Maharaja’s cautions and the implication that some, presumably better off, colonists would manage the labour of Indian ryots, foreshadowed problems which were to be encountered with both this and future schemes. Undeterred, the Mysore branch’s secretary presented a proposal for ‘lands in three different blocks … 3,900 acres bearing an assessment of Rupees 2,764 … reported … [to be] unoccupied and available’, they received a grant of the lands free of assessment for two years, with a gradual increase from ‘¼ assessment for the 3rd and 4th years’ to the full rent by the seventh.54 Two of the tracts were close to one another ‘in the Wartoor Hobli of the Bangalore Taluk, near the Kadgodi Railway Station’, the third had ‘no source of water supply’ and was thought ‘questionable … for an agricultural settlement … but the Association … [was] desirous of taking up this land on account of its large area and its proximity to Bangalore’.55 The Guide showed maps demarcating plots of land at the proposed settlements. One was named ‘Sausmond’ (after one of the branch’s two vice-presidents Mr J. Sausman) and located ‘5 miles from Cadgoody Station on the Branch Railway between Madras and Bangalore’.56 Another map located ‘Glen-Gordon … on the road leading to Magadi 8 miles from Bangalore’.57 That Whitefield was listed as ‘near Cadgoody Station’ may indicate it was closer to the railway than Sausmond, which could explain why it was the more successful site and provided the name by which the whole project would come to be known. We might speculate that Whitefield’s name association with whiteness also played some role in its eclipse of Sausmond and Glen-Gordon. In any event ‘field’ was more English-sounding than the ‘gunge’ which would later be named for Earnest Timothy McCluskie. The three site maps were technically accomplished, organically following the topography of the land, and shaping agricultural plot sizes accordingly. However, another map of the ‘proposed village at Whitefield’ epitomised the planned community, with the near uniformity of 90 plots for cottages achieved by placing them in-between three concentric ring roads with a circus at the centre containing a perfectly round site for a school and library.58 White himself penned the detailed introduction to the Guide, providing an expansive vision of how settlement would solve the Anglo-Indian problem in its totality. Not only addressing their economic needs, but also reshaping Anglo-Indians themselves and removing their anxieties and sense of alienation from the soil of India: With a collective footing on the soil … an equivalent change of character will take place … The land of their birth or adoption has not owned them, and they have often sung ‘Home! Home! Sweet Home!’ feeling the magic of the sentiment, but, alas! without [sic] ever having realized what Home is … For what does the formation of a settlement mean? It means[:] the first systematic attempt to remove the foreign character of a people which has as true an interest in the soil as any other … the formation of a

182

Escapisms of empire? social orgainzation [sic] in which the distinctions of position and color will vanish in the bond of self-interest … the birth of a new race to a position of physical and mental independence … [and] the happiest of all revolutions, a peaceful, moral and progressive one, the influence of which must continually extend. European civilization having touched the country and awakened it, there can be no halting until it is completely Europeanized; and in this great march who but Eurasians and Anglo-Indians, those with the qualities of good citizenship and representing the most advanced views, can be the natural leaders.59

In addition to agriculture was to be added infant ‘manufacturing industry’, and he argued that ‘For the purposes of living in comfort … the resources are in the Combination of Capital, Co-operation, and in the Use of Steam or other motive power’.60 White thus predicted the possibility of preserving ‘at the very least, a middle-class’ status for ‘individual workers’.61 At the core of White’s concept was that through hard work, good habits of living, and reinvestment in their own estate, Anglo-Indian settlers would come to be in ‘possession of valuable property … and above all the community, for the first time in its history … [would] have become rooted to the soil, and in truth a part of the life of the country and of the Indian people’.62 Yet even whilst seeking to escape from reliance on state employment, the scheme sought to attract retired government servants, suggesting they could put their pensions to good use by settling on the land and supplementing their incomes with the fruit of agriculture and artisanal manufacturing. This call rested on the reality that most AngloIndians who could invest some of their own capital would in fact be retired government servants, and it was that reality and its consequences which bedevilled this and future attempts at colonisation. To facilitate this White put forward the idea of the absentee colonist, who, though unable to ‘retire immediately … [could] spend the interval in preparing the homes which … [would] eventually receive them’.63 To attract settlers and facilitate their making a start, the branch offered cottages ‘at a nominal rent with the option of purchase for a very moderate amount’, and even ‘Cattle, implements, and animals for stud and stock-raising purposes, at starting – free!’64 White observed that it was ‘very remarkable that the Anglo-Saxon race and its descendents [sic] find it possible to live and thrive without adventitious assistance in America and Australia, but not in India’.65 Imaginatively, he further suggested that had: the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian community … been drawn, not from the blood of feudal England, but from the Swiss, Norwegian, or Flemish peasantry, the certainty is that it would, long ago, have done what the Association now seeks to lead it into doing; and if but a few Swiss and Flemish peasants could be brought over to live in the first settlement … the gain would undoubtedly be enormous.66

Escapisms of empire?

183

Decades later in 1930 Sir Mizra M. Ismail, Mysore’s Dewan (prime minister) visited Whitefield, and in the Review’s account, looked: upon the Anglo-Indian settlers in Mysore as the best subjects of the Mysore Durbar and from what we have been told, the State would welcome Anglo-Indians colonising in Mysore. The climate is ideal, it has one of the most powerful electric installations, and the supply of water is excellent.67 However, clearly the colony had not taken off in line with the more extravagant visions which White had conceived for it. In the early 20th century Abbott had attempted to form an Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European colony in Uttaranchal in the Himalayas by buying up tracts of land and subdividing them to sell as scenic retirement homes to the domiciled. The interests of Abbott’s family construction business dovetailed neatly with his philanthropic efforts and political ambitions. ‘Abbott Mount’, close to Nepal, now being advertised as a tourist retreat consisting of ‘a cluster of thirteen Cottages set in the midst of five acres of marvellous woods … [with] a lovely church’, is in what is now the Champawat district.68 This fits with Abbott’s personal use of letter-headed paper giving the address ‘The Abbey, Abbott Mount, Lohaghat’ which is adjacent to the present site in Champawat district.69 However, boundaries may have shifted as Wilson had located the ‘tract of land granted by Government and named Abbott Mount’ in the neighbouring ‘Almore [Almora] District, United Provinces’.70 According to Lahiri-Dutt, Abbott also established ‘settlements in the Jhansi and Bina districts’.71 H. Hobbs who later visited the Anglo-Indian property agent Ernest Timothy McCluskie’s agricultural colonisation scheme, McCluskiegunge (now McCluskieganj in modern Jharkhand) and levelled harsh criticisms against its founder, had contrastingly judged ‘Abbott of Jhansi’ to be ‘a very decent fellow’ who had ‘started the same thing years ago … [but] eventually bought all the property back at his own price’.72 The Statesman would later link Abbott and McCluskie’s schemes – ‘farming according to Mr. McCluskie and Mr. Abbott is a means of investment’.73 Photographic evidence reveals McCluskie to have been, much like Gidney, a discernibly mixed race gentleman.74 McCluskie was a member of Gidney’s Association serving as a member of the Legislative Council of Bengal. Hobbs claimed to have ‘known him more than 45 years’, and said McCluskie had once been ‘in the tie dept. of an outfitter’s shop … [but was] reputed to have won a prize in the Calcutta Sweep, [i.e. lottery,] and became a house agent out of it’.75 As with Abbott’s construction business, McCluskie’s experience with the property market positioned him well to promote investment in land colonisation. When McCluskie determined to proceed with a colonisation scheme without the support of Gidney and the Association he founded ‘the Colonization Society of India, Ltd.’ (henceforth CSI), though for some time the organisation remained unregistered as a society or company.76 Gidney’s

184

Escapisms of empire?

cautious approach, varying opposition with limited support for colonisation arose from the perceived failures of prior schemes. Gidney had to defend himself from accusations (by Hobbs among others) of involvement in an early abortive attempt to settle destitute Anglo-Indians in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 1923–4. Twelve ex-servicemen with no agricultural knowledge had been housed in former prison buildings – some succumbing to tropical disease before the venture was abandoned. Gidney later disavowed any personal or Association involvement in the project, which he claimed had been ‘a gesutre [sic] of appreciation of Anglo-India’s services during the Great War by the ex-Services Association’, and blamed its failure on the lack of any provisions or equipment whatsoever for the men apart from ‘Re. 1/- per diem’.77 Nonetheless, the Association’s 1929 annual general meeting appointed a sub-committee (whose members included McCluskie) ‘to consider the question of a Communal Co-operative Land Colonisation Scheme’.78 They investigated whether agriculture was ‘of such economic importance as a means of livelihood as to justify its preference to employment in Government Offices and Public Departments, as in the past’ and investigated the questions of ‘Land’ and ‘Finance’.79 Their 1930 report summarised the inefficiency of Indian agriculture by global standards: with crop yields substantially below those of Java, the United States and Egypt, England, and Japan.80 ‘Indian Economists ascribe[d]’ low yields to underinvestment in ‘good seed’, sufficient ‘manure’, ‘improved implements’, ‘good working cattle’, and ‘facilities for irrigation’ rather than any deficiency in the Indian ryot (peasant cultivator).81 The imperial state’s assessment, that of ‘61,95,94,000’ acres of professionally surveyed land in India and Burma there were ‘11,55,87,000’ acres ‘of culturable waste’, was particularly emphasised.82 B. Farmer singles out the ‘concept of culturable waste’, extensively promulgated by the imperial state through its annually published statistics, as of central importance to the understanding of colonisation ‘because of the misconceptions and false conclusions that it … engendered’.83 The report’s envisaged solution was the introduction of more modern and efficient methods with sufficient investment to increase production and profitability. Though Whitefield may have provided the intellectual model for later Anglo-Indian colonisation attempts, these were carried out in the context of the colonial state having expended significant resources during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in large-scale irrigation schemes which allowed for the creation of agricultural ‘Canal Colonies’ in the formerly arid regions of western Punjab for the resettlement of ex-soldiers and former government employees as farmers. By 1918 total government investment in just one of these colonies, Chenab, ‘amounted to more than Rs 325 lakhs’.84 In Chenab Colony, ‘estimated at over 2.2 million acres’, the population ‘grew from 112,000 in 1891 to over 1.1 million in 1911, of which the majority were migrants from other parts of the Punjab’, and the ‘annual value of crops … came by 1915 to more than twice the total capital expenditure incurred on the colony’.85 The imperial state deployed ‘Colonization officers’ chosen from

Escapisms of empire?

185

among young ICS men such as William Hailey, who between 1901 and 1906 attempted to turn ‘Jhelum colony’ into a breeding ground for high-quality army horses.86 Faced with repeated outbursts of plague which killed and frightened off colonists, Jhelum was predictably less successful than Chenab, and Hailey complained of the unsuitability of many of the colonists, expressing his hope ‘that Government will some day be able to devise a more appropriate method of rewarding the retired Meteorological Observer, the superannuated ticket collector, or the blameless but very unagricultural individual whose life has been passed in the cloistered retreats of the AccountantGeneral’s Office’.87 Hailey could just as easily have been characterising the majority of Anglo-Indian settlers in McCluskiegunge almost three decades later (many of them retired clerks, railwaymen, and engineers). Gilmartin argues that although Canal Colonies relied heavily on state investment, planning, and supervision, the state’s rhetoric emphasised the decisive importance of a powerful ‘colonizing spirit’ alongside the ‘enterprise and perseverance’ of the colonists.88 Gilmartin explores the ‘social engineering rhetoric of canal colony settlement’, in which colonisation was depicted as a means of forging a new agricultural modernity that would ‘transform the settlers themselves’.89 Although as we have seen similar rhetoric had been earlier deployed in Whitefield, the continuing investment and rhetoric of the colonial state was not without impact. Such rhetoric would later be echoed in the marketing material of the CSI which stressed the moral and transformational potential of colonisation for the settler. The CSI advanced a vision of the moral and physical reshaping of the colonist who would create a flowering agricultural colony through modern scientific methods, sheer willpower, and dogged determination. An observer of the Chenab Colony in the 1920s described how in ‘less than a generation’ the settlers had ‘made the wilderness blossom like a rose’.90 In addition to their quest for modernity and the pioneer spirit the instigators of Anglo-Indian colonisation also felt the biblical resonance of their task. The colonial state also promoted the global co-operative movement. An Indian contributor to the CSI magazine, the Colonization Observer (henceforth Observer), A. Sinha, writing on ‘Rural Uplift through Co-operation’, cited the benefits of co-operative credit societies for agriculture in Europe stating that they ‘had transformed slums of poverty in Denmark into happy villages in 30 or 40 years’ and benefited Holland, Germany, and Ireland before coming to the more proximate examples of Punjab and the United Provinces.91 Co-operative stores and principles had been invoked by White, and the authors of the Association’s 1930 report also lauded the idea. They warned that ‘appreciable numbers of the Community [who each year] retire from service with capitals representing Provident Fund contributions, Bonuses, and life savings of from ten to fifty Thousand Rupees’ [sic] could not afford to live on the interest of their capital and had lost their savings through individual investments in ‘Dairies, Boarding Houses, Taxis, [and] Lorry Services’.92 ‘Large numbers of the Community … [who had] invested not inconsiderably sums in South African Orange Gardens, New Zealand Timber,

186

Escapisms of empire?

Dairy Farms and Australian Apple Orchards … [were also] sadder for their investments.’93 One Anglo-Indian retiree: with a capital of Rs. 40,000 which, without any previous experience in the business … invested in Cattle Breeding, Dairy and Poultry Farming with the result [that] in about 5 years time owing to the outbreak of disease among his stock he lost the major portion of his capital.94 Such cases, they argued, demonstrated the need for: an efficiently organized and intelligently directed Agricultural settlement … [in which] a hundred such persons combining on a co-operative basis could with a resulting capital of 40 lakhs of rupees have easily not only have had the whole time services of a veterinary Expert but also the services of all the expert staff necessary for conducting such a business.95 They concluded ‘That Agriculture is a profitable undertaking’ and ‘That large tracts of land are available for a Communal Agriculture Settlement’.96 Burma, with ‘the largest area of culturable waste’ was dismissed owing to anticipation of its possible separation from India.97 Assam was judged to be ‘unhealthy’, lacking in communications and to suffer from ‘extremely heavy rainfall’.98 The Central Provinces was championed as having good soil; a temperate climate; moderate rainfall; and ‘three of the most important Indian Railway systems traversing it, connecting it with the principle towns in India and connecting up all parts of the Province with the ports of Calcutta, Bombay and Vizgapatam’.99 They also put forth detailed plans for the structure, ordering, and management of a colony, envisaging a magnitude that ‘would require a large capital … [of] at least a crore of rupees’.100 Pre-empting scepticism about the possibility of raising such a sum it was argued that ‘a thousand persons possessed of a capital of Rs.10,000 each’ would suffice, but that a wider issue of ‘shares of Rs. 10 each’ split into ten monthly instalments of Rs. 1 would allow ‘even the most sceptical or diffident member of the Community … to participate’.101 The report envisaged an organisation, possibly ‘registered under the Co-operative Societies Act’, but certainly with ‘Articles of Association’ based upon the Act.102 Voting power would be restricted to one shareholder one vote. Annual profits would provide rebates or bonuses to ‘producing members’ (50 percent); dividends for all shareholders would ‘be restricted to 6 ¼ % per annum’, and all remaining funds (25 percent +) would be carried to a development account.103 Government was expected to make a direct grant of land, which would be surveyed and plotted out, ‘preferably by an experienced Anglo-Indian Settlement Officer on the retired list, assisted by subordinate Surveyors of the same category’, into holdings of 50 and 100 acres with future roads to be marked out.104 They hoped that ‘a retired Irrigation engineer’ might also be found to survey the land for irrigation.105 As the government colonisation officers had

Escapisms of empire?

187

done in the Canal Colonies they intended to prevent the future subdivision or alienation of the orderly regular plots that had been thus laid out. Settlers would require a prior investment in shares of Rs. 10 per acre in order to acquire plots of land. It was assumed that the society or its colonists’ rental payments would ‘not exceed annas two in the rupee per rent per acre payable to Government’.106 Practical details were outlined: all agricultural operations, such as, preparation of land, sowing, irrigation, harvesting, should be done on a contract basis by labour and with appliances provided by the organisation … Prospective settlers having applied for and been allotted their land and paid … [the] Society would, on the execution of the necessary bond put up the necessary farm buildings … the interest on such cost should be 7% per annum … [and] undertake also on a contract basis, to breake [sic] up the necessary land and prepare it for seeding … supply reliable seed[, irrigate] and manure at favourable rates … [through] its wholesale purchasing power … [The] Association … [should take] over all produce at current market rates and dispose … of it to the best advantage. The profits … being divided into two equal moieties between the producing Settlers, in the shape of a pro rata bonus, and the Society.107 The potential spin-offs of related ancillary businesses in processing sugar into ‘Rum and Spirits’ to be sold in ‘a Central Stores in Calcutta’ would make the Colony profitable and provide additional avenues of employment for AngloIndian youths.108 It was proposed that ‘the entire staff from Directorate to Workers should be salaried’, from ‘a Managing Director on a salary of Rs. 1,500 rising to Rs. 2,500 per month’ down to ‘an Assistant Secretary on Rs. 500 to Rs. 750 per month’ on five-year contracts, with four additional directors to be elected at two-year intervals.109 After the report itself a series of meetings were held to canvas support and gauge the level of potential investment in a new scheme, the results of which were initially disappointing. Gidney’s growing opposition to another colonisation attempt was reflected in articles he allowed to be printed in the Review. Two consecutive articles written under the initials ‘T. D. A.’ revealed the depth of Anglo-Indian existential fears for their future, but came to the opposite conclusion to Wilson, rejecting a colony in India in favour of wholesale emigration to a Christian country: I have tried to visualise our Community after fifty years of Hindu rule … as their hewers of wood and drawers of water, exactly what we have been to the British … [However,] We despise the one and respect the other, and we do not mind serving those whose morals and traditions are more or less synonymous with ours, and whose children we claim to be, but it goes intensely against the grain to visualise our children working side by side in poverty with those whom we at one time engaged as our servants …

188

Escapisms of empire? [Once] away from India, we would be able to work out our own salvation in the same way as other colonies have done … [Remaining,] we are by no means assured of the co-operation of the Indians … we wish to live apart from them in their own country … to trade with them … yet keep them at arms length as far as our colony goes … Such a system of ostracism would result in utter isolation, for they would immediately boycott us … [and] will always regard us as aliens. Assuming that we are able to prosper … may not this … breed a feeling of envy and jealousy … [leading to] opposition with the object of destruction? … [The] future Rulers of India [may] say, ‘These Christians are gradually spreading themselves over our land, and drawing away our people and taking away some of our living, we must exterminate them.’ They are almost saying it to-day.110

Nonetheless, despite criticisms from the Association, McCluskie determined to proceed, and founded the CSI as an independent body and registered it under the Company’s Act in April 1933.111 A detailed history of McCluskiegunge must be the subject of a future study. Yet what principally concerns us here is the meaning of the project in the context of conceptualising rival visions for the Anglo-Indian future. McCluskiegunge was conceived of as a homeland for Anglo-Indians, and the Observer would later use the Hindi term ‘our Mooluk’ on more than one occasion.112 However, whilst fostering a sense of connection with India, it also deployed slogans like ‘Independence is the goal we are striving for’ and referred to the enterprise as a ‘Nation-Building Scheme’.113 One of the most fully formulated expressions of what could be hoped for was spelled out by B. Leadon in 1940: ‘to strive for the establishment of a small Anglo-Indian colony or State in India as a protectorate of the Indian Government’.114 Leadon, president of the Delhi branch and a prominent radio journalist, argued that it had to be recognised that under dominion status Britain would not be able to prevent India from abrogating any constitutional safeguards for Anglo-Indians, but: What Britain could have done, and can still do, is to create in some very small corner of India an Anglo-Indian State or colony. It would be a very small price to pay the community for its past services to the British people and Government. Such a State could be developed with loans granted by the British Government, and, he anticipated, would receive the consent of ‘the Indian Legislature’.115 Earlier colonisation enthusiasts’ ideas were less elaborate but did envisage a self-contained and self-sustaining colony as a means to protect Anglo-Indians economically and culturally. This desire was in some measure a wish to escape from the uncertainties of a self-governing India and the pressure to integrate more with their fellow Indians through socialising and adopting different modes of living. For those to whom this was most threatening, characterised

Escapisms of empire?

189

by Leadon as the ‘typical Anglo-Indian’ whom he dubbed ‘the patriotic Mr. Jones’,116 the idea of a self-sufficient and co-operative Anglo-Indian world was particularly appealing. A significant portion of Anglo-Indians already lived in small railway colonies or particular enclaves in cantonments or city suburbs, and such communal clustering combined with the CSI’s pastoral idyllic imagery may have provided them with a potential vision for colony life. The Observer described McCluskiegunge as ‘the racial home of our people’ while still embracing India as ‘our Motherland’.117As McCluskiegunge began to take off fundraising efforts sought to build up the wherewithal to build amenities for the settlers. By 1937 pledges had been received for a school, hospital, and Anglican and Roman Catholic churches.118 The ‘new Colony’ was heralded as ‘the first of its kind in India’ and though bound to encounter difficulties was surely destined for a bright future and rapid growth, in which ‘close co-operation by the Settlers with the Welfare Committee … should remove all reasons for unhappiness and selfishness’.119 The Observer listed a large number of visitors to the colony, signalling a wider engagement beyond those who actually considered settlement. One letter to the editor from five ‘young unmarried men’ in Pyinmana, Burma, ‘a little jungle station … where Anglo-Indians … [were] few and far between’, described how:120 the August magazine … strayed into our midst like an answer to prayer … Colonization, we have always felt to be our only salvation … Our visions of an independent Anglo-Indian settlement, happy and prosperous … [would provide] the Mecca of generations to come. Its stabilising influence should soon rout the sense of insecurity of a hitherto nomadic people … It would do a great deal to improve matters here could a descriptive pamphlet dealing only with the Scheme and its results so far be circulated widely throughout Burma.121 There was also considerable scepticism and criticism of McCluskiegunge and colonisation more generally. Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that McCluskiegunge was perceived by many at this point to be a forward-looking and inspirational success. We have seen the religious as well as the secular, scientific, and modern language in which colonisation was conceived. In 1938 the CSI directors approached Mr E. Williams, deputy superintendent of telegraphs (East Indian Railway) and his wife, and secured ‘a handsome donation of Rs. 300 … Rs. 200/- to the Cemetry [sic] Wall and, Rs. 50/- each to the Churches of England and Rome’.122 McCluskie himself had died in 1935, and his memory was kept alive in Founders’ Day celebrations and memorials in the Observer years later. The CSI continued to be run by a Colony committee of directors and had at least 39 representatives in 36 locations across India and Burma in 1937. Having undoubtedly been behind the Association’s repeated critiques of the project Gidney eventually became the chairman of the CSI himself and visited

190

Escapisms of empire?

McCluskiegunge with great fanfare. A Gidney Club was set up in the colony and there were proposals to build a large residence for Gidney himself to be called ‘Gidney Castle’. The scale of the endeavour to settle McCluskiegunge was impressive, highly organised, and liable to be overshadowed by the eventual demise of the scheme amidst the pressures of Anglo-Indian wartime service and large-scale emigration. Lahiri-Dutt interpreted McCluskiegunge as fundamentally ‘a utopian concept’, whose failure was inevitable and predetermined by lack of preparation and thought about its economy and unrealistic fantasies about ‘terrific crops which never saw the light of day’.123 Her research reinforces one key factor in the colony’s demise, it attracted retirees rather than Anglo-Indian youths, and therefore like Whitefield became more of a sleepy retirement settlement than one characterised by thriving agriculture. The agricultural endeavours which did take place ended up relying on ‘the native coolie and the bania shop for supplying labour and provisions’.124 Still, it is well to remember that however unrealistic the project may seem with the benefit of hindsight, its planning had been meticulous and it was substantially enacted. It carried the support and hopes of a considerable portion of the community beyond those who actually took steps to purchase land, and the smaller number who relocated there. Anglo-Indian colonisation schemes were not an intellectual or material aberration. Their advocates could and did draw upon both Indian and global models, as well as prior experience and historical memory within the Anglo-Indian group. In 1939 the Observer detailed a ‘land colonisation experiment started two years ago by the Travancore War Service Men’s Association’ to settle: ‘An area of about 55 acres … surveyed and demarcated into 12 three-acre plots and … a demonstration farm … [with] ten colonists with their families … [growing] Pepper areca-nuts, cocoa-nuts, ginger, turmeric and plantains … [and] conducting subsidiary industries like bee-keeping, poultry farming and buffalo rearing.’125 Though small in scale it was thought to be making ‘excellent progress’, and was supported by government land grants and the presence of ‘two young men … trained in agriculture at the Government agricultural schools’.126 Yet, the Observer seemed keener to emphasise the supposed commonality between Anglo-Indian colonists and the white settlers of empire, with positive photographs of New Zealand and Australian farming presented alongside reassurance that hardships and problems had also been encountered in those countries. For example – this ‘fever may be put down to the same jungle fevers which prevail in Australia during the monsoons when no tree felling operations are carried out’.127 McCluskie ‘often cited’ examples from the United States, such as ‘a commune in the western pinceclad highlands of Louisiana’ established in the first decade of the 20th century, and the 8,000 acre ‘Ozark Mountains Colony near Eureka Springs, Arkansas’.128 Zionism furnished another global example to emulate. Anglo-Indians often interacted with, and occasionally intermarried with, Jews in India. Growing Nazi antisemitism was sympathetically covered in the Review and AngloIndians’ consciousness of the persecution of Jews by the Nazis formed part of

Escapisms of empire?

191

the context for their own apprehensions about how nationalist governments might behave towards minorities. The Observer reprinted a lengthy account ‘of a scheme of colonization in Palestine’:129 The Jewish people who were thought to regard a colonization scheme with scorn as a crazy experiment are now flocking in thousands to the New Palestine Homeland … a very bright spot in the black Jewish world of oppression and tyranny … [providing] the salvation of the Jewish victims of the Nazi Terror … To-day some 200,000 Jews have settled … There are some 200 of these agricultural settlements … At work … are men and women who have forsaken … [books] for the plough – the initiators of a new race, divorced for centuries from the soil. 130 The Observer attributed such success to ‘sheer enterprise’ and pointedly asked readers: Does it not stand to reason that if a barren country, in the course of less than 20 years, can by enterprise of a Community be made to support a population of 200,000 souls, the Domiciled Community can also achieve the same result by the same perseverance and determination.131 The Figure 200,000 was also an oft cited estimate of the total Anglo-Indian population in India, and the scattered nature of Jews across the world and Anglo-Indians across India was undoubtedly noted. The Observer similarly constructed Anglo-Indians as ‘a homeless and wandering Community’ who, through colonisation, were ‘given the chance of getting a real stake in their own country’.132

Racial visions Successive Anglo-Indian colonisation attempts drew on each other’s influence in planning as well as in providing intellectual models. In this process seemingly distinct visions of the Anglo-Indian future often blurred together. Competing and overlapping with the idea of Anglo-Indians developing as a group apart and distinct from Indians and Britons were two more radical constructs: a) pan-Eurasianism and b) full merger into whiteness. The first projected the Anglo-Indian future as part of a broader mixed race collectivity (boundary or category expansion), and the second envisaged that the group would eventually find full acceptance within whiteness (repositioning of the group across the boundary). Central to both were colour and race. The shifting constructions of race and racial thinking are usually far less clear cut than they appear in our analysis. The texts of key thinkers on race are, in their turn, hardly reflective of the lived experience of racial boundaries nor of more muddled and ambivalent constructions of race by those for whom racial difference is most salient as a means of ordering their lives. Nonetheless, we must deploy some

192

Escapisms of empire?

generalised ‘ideal types’ here to analytically separate the competing intellectual assumptions that underpinned various colonisation projects. The most rigorously conceptualised set of ideas on race by an Anglo-Indian were those of Cedric Dover, whose Half-Caste (1937) and Know This of Race (1939), among other works, entered a global discourse on eugenics at a critical time, constituting forceful and cogent attacks on the contemporaneous Nazi racial theories of Aryanism and racial purity. Around the turn of the century British colonial anthropologists, such as the aforementioned Thurston, had been building on the scientific racism of the late 19th century and objectified the mixed race group in their pursuit of the kind of anthropometric evidence that fuelled such eugenicist pseudoscience: the direct result of re-crossing between European man and Eurasian woman … [is offspring] that all are, some slightly, others considerably above the average … [demonstrating] that the product of alliances between British men and Eurasian women show the least signs of physical degeneration, and possess broader shoulders, hips, and hands, greater chest-girth, wider forehead, and more muscle, as the result of re-vivification of the stock by direct British intervention.133 Though such data was gathered on many South Asian groups, it was no accident that being at the boundaries of constructed racial difference, the mixed could be instrumentalised to prove or disprove racial science and emerging eugenicist ideas. Nor was it surprising that voices from within the group such as Dover should emerge to contest such interpretations. Dover was born in Calcutta, but ‘spent much of his life in England’.134 He had initially ‘Trained as an entomologist and a forester’, but his broad interest in race and hybridity set him on an interdisciplinary track of study and publication, marking him out as a polymath.135 Dover’s subsequent career in the United States as a scholar and activist at Fisk University and the New School for Social Research, campaigning for the rights of African Americans and people of colour, have attracted significant attention from scholars such as Nico Slate. Slate provides evidence of Dover’s friendship and correspondence with Nehru and notes how he had ‘suggested that Nehru and Gandhi send birthday greetings on the occasion of [W. E. B.] Du Bois’s … seventieth birthday’.136 Slate describes Dover as ‘A self-proclaimed disciple of ’ the prominent African American scholar and activist Du Bois and ‘among the most important links between Black and Indian socialists and, next to Du Bois himself, the most persistent champion of colored cosmopolitanism’.137 This broad project of a global coloured solidarity movement led by Du Bois, Dover, and others is the subject of Slate’s fascinating study, which emphasises transnational intellectual connections and movements. However, if this broader conception of a common coloured cause and collaborative future owed something in Du Bois’s case to pan-Africanism in the first instance, in Dover’s his initial project had been that of pan-Eurasianism.

Escapisms of empire?

193

Dover’s rejection of the Anglo-Indian designation in favour of Eurasian must crucially be located in the politics of his mixed race group back in India. To opt for the pre-1911 Census category, which the majority of Anglo-Indians in India now took to be pejorative, as laden with the heavy associations of British racial tropes, was both deliberate and consequential. It laid the basis for his failed project of pan-Eurasianism, in which Dover sought to persuade his group that they had more in common with Eurasians from other colonial empires in Asia, even with the Dutch-speaking Eurasians of Indonesia, than with Indians or Britons. Dover’s ideas fed into projects for pan-Eurasianist colonies in Asia, in the hope that a single Eurasian nation might come into being. Thus whilst Dover’s earlier project made moves to create transnational solidarities amongst mixed race Asians, it also sought to create or maintain distance from Indians and other Asian peoples. This can too easily be obscured by his subsequent role in bringing together prominent Indian nationalists and African American thinkers and activists. Dover’s embrace of the Eurasian category provided a basis for a kind of boundary expansion to encompass a larger group, but, unlike Anthony’s communal nationalism, did not attempt to fit that group into the Indian nation. Read in this light, Dover’s subsequent construction of himself in an even broader collectivity as a ‘man of color’, in comradeship with African Americans, was part of the same trajectory of ever increasing boundary expansion. Whilst Anthony would call himself ‘Indian by nationality, Anglo-Indian by community’, Dover was nesting his broader transnational mixed race category of Eurasian into the truly global one of coloured cosmopolitanism. What Slate calls Dover’s ‘antiracist socialism’, again following Du Bois,138 was also a move to create much broader collectivities of belonging in a global political arena – whilst he and his arguments for the readoption of the designation Eurasian by Anglo-Indians remained largely peripheral to the politics of his own group back in India. Slate argues that ‘In Half-Caste Dover methodically dismantled racialist pseudoscience’ and notes that ‘Dover’s rejection of racial purity’ had begun through his analysis of ‘his own … racial hybridity’ in ‘his first major book, Cimmerii: Or Eurasians and Their Future, published in Calcutta in 1929’.139 However, Slate does not emphasise that Dover did so not by rejecting genetic hierarchisation altogether but by arguing that ‘people of mixed “ethnicity”’ enjoyed hybrid vigour (or what geneticists today would call the benefits of heterozygosity).140 Whilst such arguments were fundamentally destabilising to Nazi and eugenicist theories of race purity current at the time, and were often perceived as empowering, therefore, not only to those of mixed race, but to other peoples of colour, they remain problematic and controversial. Slate argues that ‘For Dover, the achievements of African Americans augured the eventual hybridization of humankind’ which would ultimately end the salience of race.141 Dover is quoted as (1) writing that ‘The Negro owes his rapidly advancing position mainly to the efforts of mulattoes’, i.e. mixed race African Americans, epitomised by ‘Booker T. Washington’ and Du Bois, and

194

Escapisms of empire?

(2) prophesying that ‘the inter-racial difficulties of the world will be solved by the development of mixed breeds, and that the removal of racial friction by marriage will ultimately lead to the peaceful occupation of the whole world by one composite race’.142 Slate does not examine the first quote as evidence for Dover’s continuing belief in the genetic superiority of mixed race peoples, and interprets the second merely as a prediction of the ‘future demise’ of race, without exploring how the universal hybridisation of the species would also fulfil Dover’s assertions of hybrid superiority.143 It is important to see Cimmerii primarily for what it was, a political manifesto for Dover’s own group in India. The year before an entirely contrary view of the Anglo-Indian future and of racial theory had been published by Wilson in Bangalore. Wilson was not herself a race theorist, but her ideas on that head were no less consequential for that. She likely reflected a wider constituency within the Anglo-Indian group than Dover. Gidney wrote an endorsement preface for Wilson praising her book as part ‘of an awakening in the Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Community … [expressed in its] desire … to learn more of itself, [and] its past history’, and arguing that while ‘We may not all agree with some of the opinions expressed by Mrs. Wilson … [they were] obviously an honest and frank expression of her opinions’.144 Gidney especially endorsed her chapter on Anglo-Indian sporting achievements, which in parallel to Dover were important in building the self-confidence of the group by disproving British tropes of Anglo-Indian’s physical inferiority. Yet while Dover championed racial hybridity, Wilson took for granted the superiority and desirability of whiteness, and argued that Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans were in fact ‘a distinctive class and race of white people … [using] the term “white”, advisedly and deliberately’.145 Even whilst making a particular kind of eugenicist case for Anglo-Indians’ inclusion and future within whiteness, however, Wilson’s arguments could be potentially destabilising for proponents of racial purity. She deconstructed the asserted whiteness of colonial settler populations claiming that white AngloIndians, i.e. ‘the best type … [would] ultimately evolve and become fixed, just as Americans and Australians now claim to have no mixed blood but are considered a white race … [despite] a certain amount of miscegenation at the start … [which was now] steadily being removed’.146 She martialled AngloIndians’ European descent, Christianity, and other cultural markers to support their ‘claim to be a white people, quite as much as Americans and Australians claim to be white people’.147 As well as asserting their cultural whiteness, Wilson made eugenic arguments for the dominance of white blood even in mixed families: it is wonderful or perhaps … only natural how the white strain predominates … hundreds of these coloured girls or men will not marry unless they can secure white mates, and more especially is this the case with the girls who are bent on securing European husbands. Consequently there is a general tendency for the coloured element in the population to

Escapisms of empire?

195

work back to its original white. Needless to say that atavism produces occasional tragedies, when a very dark or almost black child is born to parents apparently both white. Such tragedies have occurred in well known South African families. The white strain still is dominant to such an extent that even when both parents are distinctly coloured, the children tend to be white or less coloured, though there seems to be a limit to the bleaching process unless fresh white blood is introduced. Most Anglo-Indians … are trying to work back to the pure white category … There is a decidedly strong sentiment amongst the coloured Anglo-Indian for racial purity, and thus, what might easily have been a stupendous problem for this community is gradually solving itself, and in another century the majority of Anglo-Indians will be of pure blood, even though coloured to some degree.148 Distinctively, Wilson’s arguments centred on the supposed dominance of white genes in those of mixed descent, leading her into contradictory interpretations of the fundamentally similar realities of two parents of one complexion having children of another. Nonetheless, her bid for inclusion within whiteness has parallels with Indians who used ideas of Aryanism to blur boundaries with, or assert inclusion within, whiteness. Slate documents how ‘a growing number of middle-class Indians [thereby] managed to use the binary nature of American race relations to claim the privileges of whiteness. At least sixty-nine Indians gained U.S. citizenship in the years between 1908 and 1922.’149 Wilson commented that ‘In America and Australia the white population has kept so strictly apart that the white is a distinct race … while in India the aborigines have reached a high state of civilization’ and matters were ‘complicated’ by many Indians being ‘of pure Aryan descent’.150 Yet like many colonial Britons she also created an elaborate hierarchy of sub-categories of Anglo-Indians with differential claims to inclusion within the group under ‘three distinct branches, each … linked up with the other, and all … descended commonly from European ancestors’.151 She refuted Gidney’s (supposed) ‘mistake in thinking that all Anglo-Indians have mixed blood’, further inflecting these groupings in intersecting racial and class terms by arguing that ‘The best Anglo-Indian families are of pure white blood, and the whole community is tending to the pure white strain.’152 Wilson claimed that those ‘without any admixture of coloured blood … [were already] the dominant type of Anglo-Indian’, even prophesying that it was ‘the pure blooded Anglo-Indians who will eventually be leaders of the community’.153 This contradicted the recent rise to power of the visibly mixed Gidney, whom she praised as having: done an inestimable amount of good work for the community in various spheres of activity … culminating [in his] success in leading a deputation to England in the face of untold opposition, and most difficult of all from various A. I. Associations, bodies existing to function separately and apart from the All-India and Burma one … [as] an ever memorable achievement.154

196

Escapisms of empire?

Wilson’s mix of disagreement and praise, perhaps, explains why Gidney had endorsed her in a similar manner – but whilst their ideas on the racial identity of the group were clearly divergent, her sentiments would not have been shocking to Gidney, indeed they represented a more sizable proportion of Anglo-Indian opinion than Dover was to, and a constituency that Gidney had to placate and co-opt if possible in his projects of shifting Anglo-Indian identity. There was also considerable overlap in their politics, for Wilson asserted in her chapter on the subject that Anglo-Indians were, in order: a) ‘Indians first’, b) ‘British’ and destined to ‘stand or fall by the British Crown’, c) ‘loyal … stand[ing] for the principle that India must remain within the Empire, and form an integral part of that Empire’, and d) ‘Christians, by birth, race, custom and education’ which was the ‘surest bond to our European forefathers’ and what distinguished Anglo-Indians as ‘a distinct and separate community from the indigenous Indian’.155 Apart from her emphasis on Christianity (which, by tying race to faith, rendered invisible other Indian Christians) this was much in line with Gidney’s own projection of the group. She opposed emigration in favour of colonisation, declaring we ‘have now become Indian in the sense that this is now our home land, and we intend to stay here … We are the true swarajists … [recognising] the true prosperity of India, viz. that she remain within the Empire.’156 Crucially, she echoed Gidney’s key message that Anglo-Indians needed to unite behind one (i.e. his) Association ‘with every available genuine Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian enrolled in its membership’.157 The ideal future for the group would combine this with: one actual Anglo-Indian regiment on parade, and the first full and proper settlement of farmers, pure and simple, on the land of India, our motherland, forming a complete link and whole with our fatherland England under our regally simple titled King Emperor – Bande Mataram!158 If Dover’s vision was for a pan-Eurasianist future, and Wilson’s for the evolution of the group into a white race at the forefront of a Christian India destined to remain within the empire, the largest-scale colonisation project of the 20th century was predominantly animated by a desire to secure AngloIndians’ future as a race apart, from both Indians and whites. However, there was no complete separation of these intellectual strains in the rhetoric and enactment of colonisation projects.

Anglo-India in the Indian Ocean In May 1930 the Review carried a detailed summary of the proceedings of that year’s annual general meeting of the Association; item 6 on the agenda was another even more ambitious ‘Land Colonisation Scheme’:

Escapisms of empire?

197

The President explained that … the Association had been considering for a long time what would be the best means of antidoting the closure to the community of the doors of the various Government services. It was with this intention that a few years ago he approached the Government of India with a view to making the Andaman Islands including the Nicobar, Car-Nicobar and others – a Crown Colony for the Community. The Government made confidential enquiries. Major Barker … at Port Blair reported that it would cost more than £2,000,000 to render the Islands malaria-free and the Government replied that it would be practically impossible to consider the proposal.159 A later letter to the editor advocated the colonisation of the Andamans as the ‘only one solution’ to the problems of unemployment, ‘soup-kitchens and our demoralisation’ following the ‘abnormal depression’ which had resulted from the Wall Street Crash.160 Yet the letter also revealed ambivalence about identification with India as a key impetus: The community as a whole is a misfit … we have no roots in this or in any other soil and … calling ourselves Indians is not going to alter the fact. We are flotsam and jetsam in an ocean of foreigners … [Our] determined effort should be the colonisation of the Andamans, before our savings vanish. One hundred young men should be recruited, who can pool say Rs. 300 each … to purchase agricultural implements, seed, sheep and cattle and food … The colony need worry only to be self-supporting at first … [before seeking] commercial expansion … We must sow quick-growing crops … The cattle, poultry, and sheep will give us meat milk and butter and eggs and the sea will yield us fish. The ‘hundred’ must be all sorts … farmers … mechanics and blacksmiths and carpenters[,] backwoodsmen and fishermen … A [managing] trust should be formed … [and ultimately] an effort must be made to produce for the Indian market, – butter, cheese, soap, cooking oil from cocoanut, coir-matting, tinned fish … [and] every Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European … [in India should] support the colony by buying colonial produce … I offer myself … I can build boats, log huts and make furniture.161 The writer seems to have felt that creating a colony on which to focus the group’s collective energies and attention would be more productive than an artificial and unprecedented assertion of Indianness by Anglo-Indians. The anticipated result would be ‘a homeland, unity and nationality’ and ‘an anchor’ for those remaining in mainland India.162 Even non-colonists would invest in their national homeland from a distance – the new Mecca or Zion becoming a focal point of identity for the wider diaspora. Gidney’s editorial response is also illuminating: We gladly publish this letter and in presenting it to the careful consideration of … the entire community, we not only invite criticism but

198

Escapisms of empire? have no hesitation in giving it our wholehearted support but with the warning that such a scheme needs very careful preparation and thought lest it end in another fiasco.163

Despite protestations to the contrary, Gidney had probably encouraged the 1923–4 attempt to settle the Andamans. We can see here that he remained keen on a well-equipped, well-funded, and well-thought-out settlement of the Andamans – more enthusiastic than he had been about McCluskiegunge prior to McCluskie’s death. Gidney was perhaps encouraged by the prospect of a bridgehead that might be expanded and ultimately receive some support from the British or British Indian government in a region which could more realistically aspire to some kind of autonomy or even separation from India than a landlocked mainland colony. Despite his cautious support for the idea of an Anglo-Indian homeland in the Indian Ocean, no further scheme to colonise the Andaman Islands materialised during Gidney’s lifetime. Soon after Anthony took over the Association he became a vocal critic of any new attempts at colonisation. He inherited and reiterated Gidney’s proposals to the British that they make generous grants of lands and funds to support existing Anglo-Indian colonies such as McCluskiegunge as well as to endow new Anglo-Indian educational institutions. He also echoed the case that Anglo-Indian veterans should be given individual land grants in recognition of their service in World War II, according to a precedent already established for other Indian communities. However, finding these proposals completely rebuffed or ignored Anthony’s strategy quickly developed into an embrace of Indian nationalism which ran counter to the escapist isolationism from Indians which colonisation implied. Anthony feared further dissipation of the community’s meagre resources and saw colonisation overseas as, like emigration, a threat to the survival of the Anglo-Indian community within India. Anthony and his new editorial voice for the Review were consistently critical of the Andamans idea. During World War II, S. Perry was given a full page to critique the topicality of ‘Anglo-Indian Emigration to the Andaman Islands’, especially ‘among the many papers of South India’, including an article in the Madras Diocesan Magazine by ‘Col. D. M. Reid the Commanding Officer of the Anglo-Indian Army’:164 thoughts are centreing round an Utopia … as have so many Schemes as ‘McCluskiegunj’, ‘Clements Town’ etc … But puerile games as imagining ourselves self sufficient and ‘Lords of all we survey’ in an island of our own … should be left to the School children. The idea of independence is most attractive … [but what of the] difficulties in obtaining the island … [and] in providing the whole community … the wherewithal to emigrate; the capital for a number of years of growth into independence and self sufficiency … [Can] the Andamans or any other available island … exist as a separate entity[?] … Trade is essential … we might succeed in Twenty

Escapisms of empire?

199

Years time. Can the community exist for that number of years with no government to provide jobs … I can boldly say 95% of the community have no adequate … savings … Is the Scheme only for the rich[?] … Then let the deserters go their way … [and] let the community not expect any help from any government, nation, bank institution or mission … once landed on the island do we repeat the farce of our other Anglo-Indian Colonies? … Suppose we are a success … are we not then after years of toil fair game for any government or nation? Are we to be in the British Commonwealth of nations or subject to the Government of India – or are some insane enough to think of forming a republic?165 Perry attributed such ideas to ‘unsociability and isolationism’ aimed at preserving ‘high handed European qualities and claims’, which would distract the group from the more achievable object of seeking ‘an equal status in the future independent India’.166 However, in the final years of British rule, a rival faction within the community in Calcutta, uncomfortable with Anthony’s new prescription and his distancing of the community from its traditional ties to Britain, created a new body called the ‘Britasian League’, led by its president, Captain G. Ambler, who attempted to found an Anglo-Indian colony in the Andamans.167 In December 1946 a group of major Anglo-Indian figures in Bengal (including four Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs)), mainly from within the Association, but including the president of the Anglo-Indian Federation and the secretary of the ‘Anglo-Indian Civic Union’, co-signed a letter attempting to obtain as much information about Ambler’s efforts from the British chief commissioner of the islands as possible.168 The letter, copied to Anthony, Vallabhbhai Patel (then home member, Government of India), and A. Porter (secretary, Home Department), was couched simply as a fact-finding exercise, but suggests that its signatories were prepared to support such a scheme if it could be carried out with some hope of success.169 The authors declared that while they did ‘not subscribe to Capt. Ambler’s objective … [of] founding … a Home Land for British Eurasians in the Andaman and Nicobar Island[s]’, they could not ‘be indifferent to the growing unemployment among AngloIndians and especially among the demobilised’, and apprehended ‘a considerable body of Anglo-Indian opinion in Calcutta and elsewhere which believes that settlement on land in the Andaman Islands is a practicable proposition, the land being cheap and fertile and, in comparison with most parts of India, plentiful’.170 They went on to say that they considered: that with adequate training and capital there is no reason why the peculiar difficulties of settlement in the Andaman Islands should not be successfully overcome … [nor] why Anglo-Indians, being as they are Indians of European descent should not receive a fair share of whatever land is available for post-war settlement in a part of their own country and on the same terms … as are laid down for other Indian nationals.171

200

Escapisms of empire?

Nonetheless, the signatories were sceptical of the Britasian League’s ‘factual information’, organisation, and capability to ‘divert … a considerable part of the Anglo-Indian community to the hitherto novel occupation of agriculture’.172 They worried that any ‘failure … would … react very unfavourably on the community as a whole’, that they shouldered a responsibility ‘to advise the community whether or not to trust themselves, their money and their future generations to such schemes’, and pleaded for the commissioner’s personal ‘advice and opinion as to the … feasibility of Anglo-Indian colonisation of the Andamans and Nicobar Group’.173 The commissioner’s reply in January 1947 was lengthy and discouraging.174 The commissioner reported that the Nicobar Islands were ‘inhabited by a simple aboriginal people and not suitable for settlement at all’; that almost the entire area of the Andamans was ‘covered by dense tropical jungle’; that the islands were recovering from ‘Japanese occupation’ and all government efforts and resources were being utilised in repairing damage to its ‘physical assets … buildings, roads workshops, saw mill etc.’; and that there was not sufficient cleared land available for it to be practicable for any large-scale settlement to take place nor during the next two to three years of reconstruction would the administration allow persons, other than those ‘known to be of proved value’, to come to the islands.175 The commissioner also voiced doubts as to whether the two main types of agriculture (paddy growing and coconut plantations) could ‘provide an adequate livelihood for’ Anglo-Indian ‘agriculturalists’.176 The commissioner also recounted that ‘after some correspondence’ two Britasian League representatives came to visit the islands and that: After considerable discussion as to the objects, composition and financial status of the Britasian League and of the Britasian Development Company … [he had] agreed to a small number of 15 to 20 Anglo-Indian Members of the Britasian League to come … [and] work on a small coconut plantation and estate which is recorded in the name of Mrs. Deakes and on whose behalf one of the two representatives held a Power of Attorney.177 Most of the 20 men remained thus occupied, but the commissioner sent back ‘a small number [who] were found to be persons who had no intention of working on Mrs. Deakes’ estate’.178 ‘The only other members of the Britasian League … [settled on the islands were] a small number of motor mechanics, motor drivers and skilled technicians who … [had] been given definite daily rated posts in various branches of the Administration.’179 The commissioner had also agreed with the League that any future would-be agricultural settlers would have to apply to him directly or through the League with details of their financial resources and prior experience before travelling to the islands. Anthony presumably published these letters to highlight the small scale of the Britasian League’s activities and the discouraging official response to any large-scale settlement.

Escapisms of empire?

201

Otto emphasises the contestation of ‘political authority’ embodied in multiple challenges to Anthony’s claims to communal leadership at this time.180 Countering the British government’s sole recognition of Anthony’s Association were several ‘pro-emigration groups’.181 Anthony’s opposition to collective emigration schemes arguably suited the (colonial and metropolitan) British and prospective Indian governments in their shared objective of integrating Anglo-Indians into the new nation. Rival factions used Anthony’s colonial government-nominated position as having been ‘thrust upon the people by the very British authorities who … [were] leaving’ to deny that he had been chosen ‘by the free election of the people’.182 Otto furnishes evidence that the ‘Progressive Loyalist Association of Mussoorie’ also backed the Andamans’ colonisation.183 Charles Campagnac, leader of the Anglo-Burman Union (representing ethnic Anglo-Burmans and ethnic Anglo-Indians of Burmese domicile, who were collectively constructed politically as Anglo-Burmans after 1935), asked in 1949 for British assistance either for a mass relocation of the group to the UK, Australia, and/or New Zealand, or for ‘an Anglo-Burman settlement in the Shan States’, or ‘whether the Government of India would consider taking a number of Anglo-Burmans in their proposed settlement in the Andaman Islands’.184 Although Anglo-Burmans and Anglo-Indians were deeply intertwined and overlapping ethnic groups, who were each in turn subsumed under the political category of the other before and after Burma’s constitutional separation from India, this raises the question of whether a broader collectivity of mixed race peoples in Asia might have come into being.

Pan-Eurasianism The idea of pan-Eurasianism surfaced several times in the Review and in the writings of Cedric Dover, but appears never to have attracted widespread support. After some correspondence with Gidney, J. Moore was invited to share his view that ‘the problem of the Anglo-Indian is the same problem facing all Eurasians throughout the East and, perhaps, instead of seeking a solution for the security of one section if we concentrated on a major issue concerning all, there would perhaps be a greater stimulus’.185 Writing in ‘Johore, Malaya’, and undoubtedly entirely self-conscious of the parallel he evoked, Moore titled his article ‘Utopia via “Eurasia”’.186 Describing himself as ‘a Eurasian patriot’ in contrast to the usual ‘dog-like loyalty of the Eurasian’, Moore argued that ‘If we focused all our energies on “Eurasia” instead of dissipating them in the circumscribed political, economic and social areas of our very shadowy homes there would appear to be better scope for progress’.187 Against this was set the existential threats of absorption ‘by a dominant race or … being exterminated by an overwhelming alien majority’.188 History had proven that ‘Emigration with a view to building a new and unhampered home … [was] the only salvation for minorities.’189 At the same time Moore was highly critical of his own group, their position, and

202

Escapisms of empire?

history. Moore described how Eurasians’ ‘upbringing’, ‘education’, ‘environment and … economical and social conditions … [were] not conducive to critical introspection’, and went on:190 Our existence is artificial though we appear to be unaware of this very patent fact and this artificial complex is apt to lead us to imagine that we are Europeans and to arrogate to ourselves the pantomimic assumptions and privileges of the dominant race … [Yet] we have to go on our knees and plead for the merest crumbs from the banqueting table for we are neither hosts nor guests but mere mendicants … In short we have developed into a servile and parasitic race … We are the outcome of the greed of the West exploiting a passive East and now … we, who have had no choice in our being, are being regarded as a necessary evil and are to be left to our fate.191 Like Dover, Moore attempted to build a distinctive, non-European, nonIndian, Eurasian consciousness and self-confidence through his writing, emphasising Eurasian achievements, and how these had been underplayed by the British. Finally, Moore proposed the precise location for Eurasia: Where are we to make our new home for there is no land left for colonization? All the best lands have been taken by the white races … At most we number much less than a quarter of a million and consequently our requirements are modest. At first my thoughts were directed to the northern territories of Australia … [But] would they accept us? … [Then] I accidentally came across … German New Guinea … [As] Eurasians are really the outcome of the League of Nations its paternal instincts should react kindly to us … [It] is by no means an ideal site for Eurasia but beggars cannot be choosers … the greater part is virgin tropical forest, a phenomenon which is not strange to us. Being a neighbour and near bred to Sol the climate of New Guinea will not hasten the pigmentation of our skin any more than the sun in our present homes … The country is wild and undeveloped and its opening out is the work of the pioneer … There would be … risk, very hard work and privations but there would be one great consolation – all our efforts would be for our own benefit and … [cumulatively] would give us a country of our own … The colonization of such a place would necessarily be a slow process and would primarily be for the youths from our schools … in the form of aided and controlled settlements run under strict supervision and discipline … May God crown our efforts in search of emancipation!192 The idea of obtaining League of Nations support was novel, and with proposed settlement of a land under a League mandate by a scattered people without a home evokes the work of the Jewish Agency in relation to Mandatory Palestine. Though, interestingly, Moore saw Jews as ‘The only minority

Escapisms of empire?

203

race which has been able to survive as a separate entity and to keep its religion and customs without a home of its own’.193 Jews, Moore argued, were bound by loyalty to their race, while Eurasians had been made servile through constant loyalty ‘to an overlord’.194 Otto also cited the case of ‘Col. Georges L. Fleury [who] put forward a proposal for Anglo-Indian migration to Brazil en masse’ in autumn 1946.195 Fleury appears to have been representing Anglo-Indians in Burma, many of whom were longstanding multigenerational families who could be deemed to have acquired Burmese domicile and some of whom, like Campagnac (the ethnically Anglo-Indian, but self-proclaimed Anglo-Burman), had intermarried with ethnic Anglo-Burmans. Before 1935 ethnic Anglo-Burmans were subsumed as a nested social category under the political and legal status of Anglo-Indians. After 1935 Campagnac secured recognition for the mixed (of Indian or Burmese) ancestry under the Anglo-Burman category in an astute move to position them as a Burmese minority. Fleury was concerned about the fate of both groups in Burma and their suffering and displacement during the Japanese occupation of Burma. The Japanese singled out mixed race peoples from across the European empires in Asia and subjected them to specific cruelties and differential treatment. Those Anglo-Burmans who did not manage to evacuate from Burma (or had not died attempting to trek out on foot) were eventually interned by the Japanese in concentration camps. The ‘ravages of war’ and its more dramatic impact on reshaping Burmese politics were cited by Fleury in his calls for British ‘diplomatic and financial assistance’ for a mass migration to Brazil.196 The war also brought Eurasians from Southeast Asia and Hong Kong into a greater proximity with AngloIndians and Anglo-Burmans. ‘Anglo-Malayans’ served alongside them in the branches of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and young, male Hong Kong Eurasians sought escape from Japanese occupation to join up with allied fighting forces in Burma. When Campagnac was evacuated to Bangalore he found that the then picturesque ‘Pensioners’ Paradise’ was also hosting ‘a number of Eurasians and Chinese refugees … from Singapore, Penang and other parts of Malaya’ who were being ‘looked after’ by a ‘Mr. Stark … who had been a Civil Servant in Malaya’ and was the brother of the famous AngloIndian communal historian and educationalist Herbert Alick Stark.197 There could not have been a greater impetus to think about a broader Euro-Asian collectivity. It is not clear whether Fleury had been directly influenced by Dover’s panEurasianist ideas, but his chosen category of Britasian was only marginally less expansive than that of Eurasian, and carried the potential to bring together Anglo-Indians, Anglo-Burmans, and other Eurasians in the British colonies of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaya. It would not have been as suitable for the Dutch Eurasians, but it could have embraced the part-ethnic Dutch Burghers of Sri Lanka who had become an Anglophone group. The Company’s servants had earlier argued for the category Indo-Britons because it had the potential to lead those who were more accurately, for example,

204

Escapisms of empire?

Indo-Germans to identify with the English government. Fleury was probably thinking primarily of the utility of Britasian as a collective category for Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmans, to contrast with their conjoined political construction as Anglo-Burmans by Campagnac. Yet closely paralleling, if not invoking Dover’s pan-Eurasianism was Fleury’s self-proclaimed project of ‘Mestizism’. As Otto argues Fleury ‘chose Brazil because of its tropical climate, Catholic Christian majority and the apparent absence [of] colour prejudice … [and] called the movement “Mestizism”, to emphasise the racial nature of Anglo-Indian perceptions of their own difficulties’.198 His use of this term fascinatingly connects the history of Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmans with the history of racial mixing in the Americas, but functionally it was much like Dover’s pan-Eurasianist intellectual project, and his subsequent embrace of the even broader category for collective experience and solidarity – that of ‘people of colour’. However, Mestizism here suggested that specifically mixed race groups would find a natural commonality of experience that would help them to live in harmony with one another. Though Fluery managed to enlist the support of Godfrey Nicholson, MP, to present the case of Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmans in parliament, the British ambassador to Brazil countered Fleury’s optimism about the suitability of the mixed race country for settlement by a mixed race group by observing that a colour bar ‘does exist in Brazil, not socially indeed but the considered policy of the Brazilian Government is to “whiten” the stock’.199 Colonisation schemes for Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmans would continue to be put forward at least as late as the 1950s. Campagnac requested British and international support for colonisation or collective emigration in 1949. However, in India Anthony had set the policy of the Association against all attempts at emigration or overseas colonisation. In 1946 the Review published a letter to its editor asking if British withdrawal meant that Anglo-Indians should: put our ‘tails between our legs’ like whipped curs, and run to Australia or Brazil? Has not one lesson been sufficient that we must now emigrate to foreign countries, to be duped and exploited by other Powers – as we have been by the British – and then discarded after we have redeemed their shortcomings?200 An editorial the following year entitled ‘Stop This Emigration Nonsense’ sought to persuade Anglo-Indians of the value of the concessions Anthony was winning from Congress leaders and to denigrate those talking: glibly of emigrating to England or Australia or even Brazil … forget[ing] that 2/3rds of the Community is coloured. That even the lime-complexioned Anglo-Indian is classified as a black man even in England … What the Anglo-Indian can do in Australia, whith [sic] its avowed White Australia Policy, can better be imagined than described … Some unbalanced people

Escapisms of empire?

205

have talked of Brazil, a country about which the Community knows nothing, a country which every now and then throws a Coup d’etat, and where the language is a foreign one.201 Another critic pointed to ‘the Khojas, the Memons, the Parsis and the Bohras’ in India and the ‘Jews in Europe’ as examples of successful minorities that had maintained ‘comparative prosperity’ in the face of larger communities, and advocated that Anglo-Indians set up light industry factories requiring low start-up capital to manufacture goods like ‘toothpaste’ and ‘chocolate’ rather than squandering their resources on utopian schemes. They insightfully summarised how: Since the beginning of the Anglo-Indian movement no suggestion gained greater popularity … because it seemed to guarantee everlasting happiness. No one thought of its practicability, everyone frantically voted for it only because the scheme very effectually appeared to segregate the AngloIndian from the Indian … [However,] nobody can give a correct estimate of the cost, and above all if the colonisation is to be done in India itself the Anglo-Indian will soon realise painfully that even after Colonisation the Indian figures very prominently in his life. I believe … it is much better to abandon the Colonisation Scheme altogether. However it should never be believed that settling in India ultimately means subordination to the Indian.202 Yet splinter groups continued to be formed to oppose Anthony and the Association’s policy, such as the ‘Eurasian Collectivist Party’, headquartered in Bangalore, whose printed letterhead proclaimed the motto ‘Unity-LibertySufficiency’; their establishment in 1947; that they had branches in India, Thailand, Burma, Pakistan, Ceylon, Malaya, and Indonesia; that they were ‘Pioneers of a scheme for the emigration of the Eurasians of the East to New Guinea’, ‘Publishers of “Vanguard”’, and ‘A progressive Eurasian Socialist Party dedicated to the Eurasian people’s right to self-determination in an extra-territorial National Homeland of their own’.203 Without corroborating evidence it seems prudent to conclude that the Party’s claimed branches across Asia were prospective or merely aspirational. Nonetheless, their ‘Founder and Leader’ R. G. Chatelier wrote to the British prime minister in 1956, having previously addressed Prime Minister Nehru and the UK’s high commissioner, on behalf ‘of the Eurasian Community, a microscopic minority, [to ask] for the establishment of a separate state or national homeland of its own in British New Guinea’.204 Chatelier described how the ‘balkanising of India into Linguistic States under’ a pending bill in the Lok Sabha and the post-independence throttling and displacement of the group by the Hindu majority had made ‘a farce’ of their constitutional safeguards, leading to ‘thousands of our people … fleeing to the United Kingdom, their Fatherland’.205 They could not adjust their ‘language, culture,

206

Escapisms of empire?

customs and religion [to the demands] of these 16 states which … [were] now in the process of formation’.206 They were therefore pursuing ‘Emancipation’ to preserve themselves from ‘annihilation’ and appealed to Britain to cosponsor ‘a ten year plan … [with] India, Pakistan, [and] Australia’.207 British civil servants succinctly noted on the file that it was not a matter which ‘Eden would consider appropriate to raise with’ Nehru.208 Such persistent popularity can be explained by colonisation’s promise of a comprehensive solution to multiple problems, material and existential. It was seen to address the economic problems of the community which would ultimately promise self-sufficiency; the perceived threat of being swallowed up by larger Indian communities; the preservation of their social existence through escape or segregation from others; and the desire for a homeland as a source of pride and identity. For some this identity would centre around broader imagined collectivities (pan-Eurasianism or Mestizism), for others an embrace of their own hybridity as a unique mixed race group, whilst still others undoubtedly envisaged colonisation as providing spaces in which Anglo-Indians might indulge their own longstanding boundary-blurring assertions of Europeanness, Britishness, and whiteness without having to face the judgements and restrictions of the Raj’s socioracial hierarchy, or a prospect that caused them greater anxiety – the threat of a new Hindu Raj. Such motivations placed colonisation and schemes of collective emigration in direct opposition to Anthony’s communal nationalist project to secure a future for Anglo-Indians as an integral and integrated minority group within the new Indian nation. Yet the appeal of colonisation to the imagination helps to account for the persistence (into the postcolonial era) of intellectual projects which continued to look to a collective Anglo-India or even Eurasia as a future state within the nation, a continuing outpost of the British Empire, or the basis for creating a new nation. Anglo-Indians looking around at contemporaneous examples like Jewish settlement in Palestine saw that with sufficient determination and the virtue of necessity great things could be achieved which might astound posterity. If Anglo-Indian ideas for colonisation were utopian, they appeared to be within the realm of the possible when Anglo-Indians looked globally to other examples of settlement within the British Empire and outside of it. Anglo-Indians also never achieved the level of state backing and support which they expected to follow the establishment of an even marginally successful bridgehead. They saw the level of state investment which had gone into earlier agricultural colonies such as those in the Punjab and felt that the British owed them an even greater debt of loyalty and obligation. The Andaman Islands scheme pointed towards the scale of their ambition, but also their hope that the British would materially back a venture on a large scale once it had been embarked upon.

Notes 1 Snell, Anglo-Indians, p. 47.

Escapisms of empire? 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44

207

Chambers, Anglo-Indian Prospects in India, pp. 11–12. Ibid., pp. 12–13. Ibid., p. 12. Anon., The Fortunes of the Anglo-Indian Race, pp. 18–19. Ibid., p. 19. Major-Gen. Sir John Malcolm, The Government of India (London, 1833), p. 83. Anon., The Fortunes of the Anglo-Indian Race, p. 19. Ibid., pp. 19–20. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid. Ibid, p. 21. Ibid., p. 30. Ibid. Report of the Pauperism Committee, para. 78, p. 20. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. E. Boucher, Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869–1967 (Cambridge, 2014). Ibid. Communicated during a Q&A session at ‘Author Meets Critics: Ellen Boucher, Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare and the Decline of the British World, 1869–1967 (Cambridge, 2014)’, Children and Childhood; Race and Ethnicity panel, Thursday, November 6, 2:45–4:45pm, at 39th Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association: Inequalities: Politics, Policy, and the Past: Toronto, 6–9 November 2014. Buettner, Empire Families, p. 12, and Blunt, Domicile and Diaspora, p. 115. J. McCabe, PhD thesis: ‘Kalimpong Kids: The Lives and Labours of Anglo-Indian Adolescents Resettled in New Zealand between 1908 and 1938’, University of Otago, Dunedin (2014). Anglo-Indian Review (February 1938), p. 5. Mizutani, Meaning of White, p. 170. Anglo-Indian Review (October 1938), p. 6. Ibid. Anglo-Indian Review (November 1939), p. 7. Ibid. Wilson, The Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Race of India, p. 87. Ibid. Mizutani, Meaning of White, pp. 168–9. Ibid., p. 168. Wilson, The Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Race of India, p. 2. Ibid., pp. 2–3. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., Introduction, p. i. Ibid., p. 3. BL, OIOC, W/2388, The Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association, Mysore Branch (Bangalore), S. Lee (ed.), Guide to the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Villages, Proposed to be Established in the Province of Mysore (Madras, 1882), Introduction, p. 5. Ibid., cover and List of Members, pp. 1–2.

208 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81 82 83

Escapisms of empire? Ibid., cover. Ibid., Preface, p. 3. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., Chapter III: Address of the Mysore Branch to H. H. the Maharajah of Mysore, p. 6. Ibid. Ibid., Chapter IV: His Highnss [sic] the Maharajah’s Reply, p. 7. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., Introduction by D. S. White, p. 2. Ibid., Chapter V: H. H. the Maharajah’s Order on the Eurasian Land Scheme, p. 8. Ibid. Ibid., Map of Sausmond: Being the Eurasian and Anglo Indian Settlement: Proposed in the Wurthoor Hobly: 5 Miles from Cadgoody Station on the Branch Railway: Between Madras and Bangalore, Plate no. 4. Ibid., Map of Glen-Gordon: Being the Eurasian and Anglo Indian Settlement: Proposed on the Road Leading to Magadi: 8 Miles from Bangalore, Plate no. 5. Ibid., Plan of the Proposed Village at Whitefield, Plate no. 6. Ibid., Introduction by D. S. White, p. 4. Ibid., Introduction by D. S. White, p. 2. Ibid. Ibid., Introduction by D. S. White, p. 3. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Anglo-Indian Review (June 1930), p. 11. Must See India, 2011, ‘Abbott Mount, Uttaranchal’, Roam Space Travel Solutions Pvt Ltd, available at www.mustseeindia.com/Abbott-Mount. NAI, Legislative Department, Assembly Council Branch, February 1921, File no. Progs. no. 85, part-B, J. Abbott, Lohaghat, to an Unnamed Colleague of W. Morris, Simla (10 July 1920), pp. 3, 7. Wilson, The Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Race of India, pp. 16–17. K. Lahiri-Dutt, In Search of a Homeland: Anglo-Indians and McCluskiegunge (Calcutta, 1990), p. 42. Hobbs, Extracts, p. 12. Cited in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1933), p. 3. Colonization Observer (January 1941), p. 5, cf. Anglo-Indian Review (June 1928), p. 3. Hobbs, Extracts, pp. 4–5. Ibid., p. 4. Anglo-Indian Review (November 1932), p. 34. Cited in the 1930 ‘Report of the Sub-Committee Appointed by Resolution No. 16 Passed at the Annual General Meeting of the Association held at 28, Theatre Road, Calcutta, on the 13th of July 1929 (Second Day’s Proceedings)’, in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1930), p. 13. Cited in ibid., para. 2, p. 13. Report of the Indian Industrial Commission 1916–18, p. 57, cited in ibid., para. 4. 1930 Report of the Sub-Committee, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1930), para. 5, p. 13. Ibid., para. 10, p. 14. B. Farmer, Agricultural Colonization in India since Independence (London, 1974), p. 29.

Escapisms of empire?

209

84 D. Gilmartin, ‘Migration and Modernity: The State, the Punjabi Village, and the Settling of the Canal Colonies’, in I. Talbot and S. Thandi (eds), People on the Move: Punjabi Colonial, and Post-Colonial Migration (Karachi, 2004), p. 5. 85 Ibid., p. 4. 86 J. Cell,Hailey: A Study in British Imperialism (New York, 1992), pp. 26–8. 87 Cited in ibid., pp. 28–9. 88 Talbot and Thandi,People on the Move, p. 5. 89 Ibid., pp. 9, 17. 90 Cited in ibid., p. 5. 91 Colonization Observer (November 1938), pp. 8–9. 92 1930 Report of the Sub-Committee, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1930), para. 20, p. 15. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid., para. 19, p. 15. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid., para. 13, p. 14. 97 Ibid., para. 10, p. 14. 98 Ibid., para. 11, p. 14. 99 Ibid., para. 12, p. 14. 100 Ibid., para. 23, p. 17. 101 Ibid., para. 24, p. 17. 102 Ibid., para. 25, p. 17. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid., para. 27, p. 17. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid., para. 28, p. 17. 107 Ibid., paras. 29–30, pp. 17–18. 108 Ibid., para. 30, p. 18. 109 Ibid., para. 32, p. 18. 110 Anglo-Indian Review (Christmas 1931), pp. 31–2. 111 Anglo-Indian Review (September 1933), p. 3. 112 Colonization Observer (March–April 1939), p. 44. 113 Colonization Observer (September 1934), p. 1. 114 Anglo-Indian Review (December 1940), p. 23, republished in Colonization Observer (April 1941), p. 5. 115 Ibid., p. 22, republished in Colonization Observer (April 1941), p. 3. 116 Ibid., republished in Colonization Observer (April 1941), p. 4. 117 Colonization Observer (January 1941), p. 1. 118 Colonization Observer (August 1937), p. 23. 119 Colonization Observer (July 1934), p. 6. 120 Colonization Observer (October 1934), p. 8. 121 Ibid. 122 Colonization Observer (August 1938), p. 32. 123 Lahiri-Dutt,In Search of a Homeland, p. 101. 124 Ibid. 125 Colonization Observer (February 1939), p. 6. 126 Ibid. 127 Colonization Observer (September 1934), p. 8. 128 Lahiri-Dutt, In Search of a Homeland, p. 42. 129 Colonization Observer (October 1934), p. 2. 130 ‘The Triumph of Jewry’s National Home: Palestine – The Promised Land’, John Bull (date unspecified), republished in ibid., p. 3. 131 Colonization Observer (October 1934), p. 2. 132 Colonization Observer (September 1934), p. 1.

210

Escapisms of empire?

133 Thurston, Anthropology, p. 83. 134 N. Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Cambridge, MA, 2012), p. 83. 135 Ibid., p. 85. 136 Ibid., p. 84. 137 Ibid., p. 83. 138 Ibid., pp. 140–1. 139 Ibid., pp. 83, 87. 140 Ibid., pp. 83–4. 141 Ibid, p. 83. 142 Cited in ibid. 143 Ibid. 144 Wilson, The Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Race of India, Preface by H. Gidney dated 3 February 1928, pp. i–ii. 145 Ibid., p. 1. 146 Ibid., p. 14. 147 Original emphasis; ibid., p. 1. 148 Original emphasis; ibid., pp. 32–3. 149 Slate,Colored Cosmopolitanism, p. 28. 150 Wilson,The Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Race of India, p. 33. 151 Ibid., p. 28. 152 Original emphasis; ibid., p. 30. 153 Ibid., pp. 11, 15. 154 Ibid., p. 17. 155 Ibid., p. 58. 156 All original emphasis; ibid., pp. 64–5. 157 Ibid, p. 79. 158 Ibid. 159 Anglo-Indian Review (May 1930), p. 23. 160 Anglo-Indian Review (November 1932), p. 34. 161 Ibid. 162 Ibid. 163 Ibid. 164 Anglo-Indian Review (November 1943), p. 19. 165 Ibid. 166 Ibid. 167 G. Wilks, MLA, President of the Bengal Provincial Branch of the Association, and nine other prominent Anglo-Indians, including three other MLAs, the President of the Anglo-Indian Federation, and the Secretary of the Anglo-Indian Civic Union, to N. Patterson, ICS, Chief Commissioner, Andaman Islands (18 December 1946), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (June 1947), p. 11. 168 Ibid., pp. 11–12. 169 Ibid. 170 Ibid., p. 11. 171 Ibid. 172 Ibid. 173 Ibid., pp. 11–12. 174 N. Patterson, Chief Commissioner, Andaman Islands, to G. Wilks, MLA, President of the Bengal Provincial Branch of the Association, D.O. no.I/233/47 (Port Blair, 28/29 January 1947), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (June 1947), pp. 12–14. 175 Ibid., pp. 12–13. 176 Ibid., p. 14. 177 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 178 Ibid., p. 14.

Escapisms of empire?

211

179 Ibid. 180 B. Otto, MSc thesis: ‘Anglo-Indians in the Tumultuous Years: Community, Nationality, Identity and Migration, 1939–1955’, International History, London School of Economics, University of London (2010), p. 46. 181 Ibid. 182 BL, OIOC, L/PJ/7/10647, Hon. Sec. Mr. Cardus, Britasian League, 9 Marquis Street, Calcutta to Secretary of State for India, London (5 June 1947), cited in ibid., p. 47. 183 Otto, MSc thesis, p. 46. 184 NAUK, FO/643/140, Confidential: Minutes. ‘Record of Meeting between H.E. and Deputation of the Anglo-Burman Union in H.E.’s Office on Monday 7th March, 1949’, p. 30. 185 Anglo-Indian Review (Christmas 1934), p. 35. 186 Ibid. 187 Ibid. 188 Ibid. 189 Ibid. 190 Ibid. 191 Ibid., pp. 35–6. 192 Ibid., pp. 36–7. 193 Ibid., p. 35. 194 Ibid. 195 Original emphasis; Otto, MSc thesis, p. 45. 196 Ibid. 197 Campagnac,Autobiography of a Wanderer, pp. 297–8. 198 Otto, MSc thesis, p. 45. 199 BL, OIOC, L/PJ/7/10647, D. St. Clair Gainer, British Ambassador to Brazil, to Sir William Croft, India Office (30 October 1946), cited in ibid., pp. 45–6. 200 Anglo-Indian Review (August 1946), p. 26. 201 Original emphasis; Anglo-Indian Review (November 1947), pp. 1–2. 202 Anglo-Indian Review (May 1934), p. 11. 203 NAUK, DO/35/6163, R. G. Chatelier, ‘Founder & Leader, Eurasian Collectivist Party’, ‘Head Quarters: 30/B. Cubbon Road, Bangalore-1, (Mysore State,) South India’, to Sir Anthony Eden, Prime Minister, 10 Downing Street, London (16 June 1956), pp. 1–2. 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid., p. 1. 206 Ibid., p. 2. 207 Ibid. 208 Ibid., ‘DRAFT 3rd person note’, GEN T/26, U.K.H.C., New Delhi, Copy to M.S.46, CRO, Downing Street (3 July 1956), handwritten, para. 2.

6

Constituting the nation

When in 1942 Gidney asked Cripps for one seat in the Constituent Assembly even that was refused … Every minority was repeatedly given a solemn pledge … that no settlement would be reached in India until the position of the minorities was first guaranteed. The British Bania forgot all his pledges … without worrying if any of the minorities such as Anglo-Indians, Sikhs, Indian Christians, Scheduled Castes, would be fairly treated or destroyed … The British who owed to us a great deal gave us nothing, while Congress who owed us nothing have given us a great deal.1 Anglo-Indian Review, November 1947

The last colonial-made constitution of India was the 1935 Government of India Act. When the Constituent Assembly of India convened in December 1946 to debate the content of the first Indian-made constitution for the new nation (henceforth the Constitution), a comprehensive range of international precedents were subjected to scrutiny and debate. The 1935 Act came under considerable criticism and yet was also often cited as a positive precedent. Critics who desired a more complete break with the colonial state frequently lamented the extent to which, they argued, the constitution’s drafters, most notably the Dalit leader Dr Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, had drawn on the 1935 Act. Yet, as Bajpai notes, the most significant change between the two was a dramatic ‘attenuation in the rights of religious minorities during constitution-making’.2 In that context, where India’s religious (or communal) minorities generally experienced the loss of colonial state-granted rights to separate electorates and reservations in employment, the achievement of Anglo-Indian politicians in rowing against the currents of the contraction of minority group differentiated rights is all the more striking. Not least because Anglo-Indians were a numerically insignificant and relatively privileged group in comparison with the great mass of the Indian population. It is less surprising that one of the largest and most disadvantaged groups, Dalits, were to retain such rights. In the case of Dalits the grounds for such positive discrimination/affirmative action was their underrepresentation and structural disadvantages, but for Anglo-Indians it comprised a more problematic demand to retain a position of privilege in order to protect the group from a

Constituting the nation

213

rapid deterioration in its employment, economic position, and standard of living. Under the headings Scheduled Castes (Dalits) and Scheduled Tribes (India’s diverse aboriginal populations often known collectively as Adivasis), groups that suffered both from socioeconomic deprivation and from structural discrimination were granted reserved seats and special measures to secure them a share in employment by the state. Dalits had never enjoyed the separate electorate accorded to them in the British-imposed Communal Award of 1932, owing to Gandhi’s overwhelming and coercive pressure upon Ambedkar to agree to the so-called Poona Pact of the same year, under which Dalits were instead given reservations within a combined Hindu constituency. When other communal groups lost their separate electorates Dalits retained reserved seats, which were also granted to Anglo-Indians by nomination, both in the lower house of the central legislature (the Lok Sabha) and in provincial legislatures. Yet Anglo-Indian reserved employment in the Constitution was to be spelled out in greater detail than the due ‘consideration’ afforded to Dalits and Adivasis in ‘appointments to services and posts in connection with the affairs of the Union or of a State’.3 Anglo-Indians were to enjoy ‘posts in the railway, customs, postal and telegraph services of the Union … on the same basis as immediately before the fifteenth day of August, 1947’, i.e. a continuation of the colonial reservations achieved by Gidney, though with the proviso that they would be reduced ‘as nearly as possible’ by 10 percent successively every two years and expire fully after ten years.4

Colonial reservations for Anglo-Indians During Gidney’s politics of petitioning the colonial state and lobbying at the imperial metropole he consistently pushed for statutory employment reservations in recognition of his claim that the policy of Indianisation that had begun with the 1919 Government of India Act had operated to deprive Anglo-Indians of their former positions of state employment in key strategic areas, particularly the railways, telegraphs, and customs services. Where Anglo-Indians were not being actively discharged, Gidney complained that their younger generations were being prevented from entering in the same proportions as previously (or shut out entirely) and those offered employment were facing a significant reduction in salaries. He argued for revisions in wage scales to level up Indian wages to the Anglo-Indian level whilst undoubtedly recognising that in practice, without specific policies to perpetuate the existing system, the converse was far more likely. Gidney therefore found himself making the even more difficult case for a communally specific Anglo-Indian wage. In this context, it was important to deemphasise any racial distinction, and to portray any differences purely as concessions to a communal minority, analogous to others, such as the so-called ‘martial races’ that as a result of earlier colonial policies had come to be disproportionate in certain areas of state employment.

214

Constituting the nation

So Gidney brazenly set about seeking to prove that Anglo-Indians could not live on wages as low as other Indian groups. As a member of the Royal Commission on Labour, Gidney asked several questions of a ‘Retired Station Master’ and a driver who conceded that ‘the Anglo-Indian community [was] very much in the hands of the money-lenders’, but attributed this to their ‘low rates of pay’ rather than ‘extravagance in living’, and asserted that no ‘Anglo-Indian lad living alone … [could] live [on] under Rs. 70 a month’ and even on this wage ‘he cannot feed himself too well’.5 Gidney therefore suggested that Rs. 33 per month ‘would be a starvation wage for an Anglo-Indian lad’.6 The Bombay branch submitted a memorandum on behalf of domiciled employees of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway, insisting that the minimum monthly wage for Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans ‘should be at least Rs. 75 … in up country stations’, but ‘Rs. 100’ in Bombay (Table 6.1).7 Table 6.1 Estimated cost-of-living breakdown for Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European railway workers furnished to the Royal Commission on Labour Item of expenditure Food per month Clothes of all kinds Dhoby [launderer] Sweeper Soaps, etc. Boots, etc. Railway deductions [compulsory payments to a Provident fund] House rent Servants Water Total Rs. Breakdown of daily expenditure on food Chota Hazree – one cup of tea and two slices of bread and butter Breakfast – one plate of curry and rice Afternoon tea and bread and butter Dinner curry and rice Total p.d.

Rs.

As.

P.

45 12 3 2 5 2 10

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0 0 0 0

10 10 1 100

0 0 0 0

0 0 0 0

Rs. 0

4

As. 0

P.

0 0 0 1

8 4 8 8

0 0 0 0

Particularly striking is the assumption that an absolute minimum wage for domiciled employees should include (in addition to the dhoby and sweeper) an expenditure on servants that equals that for rent. Formatting and punctuation modified. Source: cited in Anglo-Indian Review (December 1929), p. 45.

Constituting the nation

215

In 1932 civil servants responded to Anglo-Indian calls for clear and fixed reserved percentages in state employment, declaring that government had: never been prepared to set aside any definite percentage of appointments for any particular community. Their policy has been restricted to securing that no one community should obtain an undue preponderance; and reservation of posts has been made for qualified members of minority communities generally … of one-third of the total number of appointments … and the Anglo-Indian community will share with the other minority communities the protection that it secures. The Government of India realize that the AngloIndian case is special in so far as the community has tended from natural causes to flow preponderatingly into certain channels of employment … [Though] increased competition from Indians proper must tend to diminish the field of employment of Anglo-Indians in the public services.8 The avowed intention to prevent undue preponderances while simultaneously acknowledging that existing Anglo-Indian public sector employment consisted of such preponderances did not evince any particular intention to cushion AngloIndians from a harmful pace of change. The Anglo-Indian future was envisaged as merely one of many minorities who would compete to retain a portion of one third of the jobs in the services they were currently employed in. The priority for the government was to co-opt and placate the far larger and more politically consequential Muslim minority with measures that would reserve a specific percentage of vacancies for them in the Superior Railway Services. Chandulal Trivedi noted in 1933 that ‘The reservation of one-third of vacancies for minority communities is not likely to help the Anglo-Indians to any considerable extent, since 25 per cent. of total vacancies will now be reserved for Muslims … I do not see what more could be done’.9 Maurice Hallett replied: ‘I regret that I had forgotten the existence of this file during the discussion regarding recruitment for the public services which have now resulted in the decision that a percentage should be fixed for Muhammadans’.10 Harry Haig responded that: recruitment of Anglo-Indians for the Telegraph Service has at the moment ceased, that the system which admittedly gave them very preferential treatment has not only been reduced … but is now to be completely abolished, and that the new system … ‘will not preclude the employment of Anglo-Indians and that nothing will be done to discourage their admission’. This assurance is not one on which we can lay much stress. Anglo-Indians have at the very least equal rights with other communities … and we cannot take credit for the fact that they will not be precluded from employment … The intention of the correspondence of 1927–28 was that they should be helped over a difficult transition period, and that necessary reductions in recruitment should be made gradually. The recommendation of the Services Sub-Committee of the

216

Constituting the nation Round Table Conference … was that their special position should be recognised and that special consideration should be given to their claims.11

Now to be scrapped was the General Service, a branch of the Telegraphs for Anglo-Indians which granted them higher pay on the presumption that their loyalty would buttress Raj security through ensuring reliable communications for the civil and military administration. The Anglo-Indian case for safeguards, ensured through political representation, and justiciable rights to reserved employment, was clearly a difficult one in the face of the competing demands of the largest minority (Muslims) and, less politically pressing, the similarly sizable and most disadvantaged group (the Dalits, then referred to as the ‘Depressed Classes’). However, Anglo-Indian political rhetoric could at times prove highly ingenious, as can be seen in Figure 6.1.

Fig. 6.1 Cartoon arguing for the reasonableness of Anglo-Indian demands for temporary safeguards in their memorandum to the Simon Commission in 1928 Note the barefooted ethnic caricatures contrasted with a very European-looking shoeclad boy representing Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans. The primary audience, i.e. the British, are depicted as umpires holding the starting gun, which is exactly how they liked to perceive and portray their mediating role between India’s communal groupings, and was the claim that Gandhi most sought to refute. Source: digital enhancement of the original in Anglo-Indian Review (Christmas 1928), p. 17.

Constituting the nation

217

The metaphor of a handicap race is here used to suggest that it is the smallest minority that is most deserving of a head-start, and yet being more reasonable is only asking for ‘a small start’. Presenting Anglo-Indian demands as of a ‘temporary’ and transitional nature was a key plank of the Anglo-Indian case and would remain so, even after earlier estimates of its planned expiry had long since passed. Intellectually, this framing would be crucial to reconciling the demands for uniformity of citizenship with policies of positive discrimination in later constitution making for independent India. It was also crucial to political lobbying towards the colonial power at the metropole. Nonetheless, Anglo-Indian demands for 50 years of reserved employment in areas like the railways, which the memorandum claimed supported 68,000 Anglo-Indians, were criticised in the Anglophone Indian press. The Week judged it to represent ‘all the fears and prejudices of good communalists, with not a few of their hankerings after privileges … which must engender Indian opposition’.12 The Bengalee dismissed the memorandum as asking: for the impossible; by pitching its demands on a higher key than it ever should have done, it has paved the way for their not being taken seriously by either Sir John Simon or the public. Any community which asks for constitutional safeguards for fifty years … can only court rebuff … The whole of India cannot wait for another half a century because the Anglo-Indians have not been wide-awake enough all this time.13 More unnerving were suggestions that Anglo-Indians’ cultural orientation should preclude them from seizing ‘what spoils they can by posing, when it suits them, as Statutory Natives of India’ and that ‘if Anglo-Indians would like to preserve their separate entity in every way, socially, politically and economically, they should be prepared for gradual displacement in the services’.14 While this echoed nationalist demands in the legislatures for Indian-Indians instead of Anglo-Indians for the railways, it came dangerously close to demanding complete cultural change in order to secure rights to nationality. It was the diametric opposite of Lord Birkenhead’s response to the 1925 deputation that Indian nationality was simply a legal fact for the domiciled and provided space for a distinctive cultural identity as a Christian minority of European descent. An anonymous ‘Anglo-Indian’ writing in the Englishman responded to Indian criticisms by equating the group’s rights to European education reflective ‘of their European culture, traditions, outlook, religion and descent’ with the rights of Hindus and Muslims to their own forms of education.15 Securing a clear legal status should be insisted upon ‘without the repudiation of either their European heritage or their present position as Natives of India’.16 However, the writer recognised ‘the ever-present danger’ in AngloIndians’ ‘dual status’ as Statutory Natives of India and European British subjects (contrived to facilitate their defence role on behalf of the imperial

218

Constituting the nation

state), which might be reversed leading to ‘the community being disowned and disinherited by both the European and the Indian’.17 A later article under the same penname defended the Anglo-Indian memorandum to the Simon Commission with the claim it could never have met ‘with Indian approval and support’ without abandoning communal electorates and minority protections, and advocating ‘the immediate grant of full self-government to India. But [hoped nonetheless that] when the first hysterical outburst has subsided, the dispassionate and mature judgment of Indians … [would] recognise that the Domiciled Community … [had] supported the legitimate aspirations of Indians for self-government’.18 In a similar vein to the cartoon in Figure 6.1, the Anglo-Indian position was presented as being more moderate and reasonable than that of the Muslim community, and the author sought to turn the domiciled group’s small size into an advantage by arguing that the number of reservations they could be granted were ‘so infinitesimal that … [they would] hardly be felt … [and yet would] equip the community to be a valuable asset in the future India’.19

Lobbying at the metropole Both the Simon Commission (comprised of British parliamentarians visiting India) and the resulting invitation of various communal groups by the British to represent what they depicted as the crucial constituents of Indian life, faced considerable opposition from Indian nationalists. An all-British committee deciding on Indian constitutional developments was an affront, and the resulting round table conferences in London were perceived as the ideal arena for the British to prolong their rule by undermining Congress claims to speak on behalf of all Indians and making intercommunal negotiations the stumbling block to further movement towards Indian self-government. Whatever the instrumental benefits to the imperial power of such a framework for the gradual, but limited, devolution of power into Indian hands, the representatives of the minorities could not but view proceedings through an entirely different prism to Congress. Whether embraced or boycotted by the more consequential players, Anglo-Indians felt it necessary to present their case as forcibly as possible at every stage of constitutional consultation. Gidney travelled to London to attend the round table conferences and again to lobby the British Parliament when the 1935 Government of India Act was being deliberated upon. During this time he conducted a vigorous campaign to disseminate his message and educate (or propagandise) the British public and parliamentarians on the Anglo-Indian community and its moral claims upon Britain. Gidney pressed his case through the London Times,20 for example attacking Gandhi for having ‘challenged the right of representatives of some of the communities concerned to speak in their name’ and intimated that he would ‘campaign to detach these communities from the claims made on their behalf ’ and for allegedly having said ‘during his discussions with the Muslim group’ that Gidney did ‘not represent the claims of

Constituting the nation

219

Anglo-Indians’. In response to the Nehru Report’s suggestion of ‘a single electorate’ the Review responded with a leading article entitled ‘The Minority Block’, arguing: 21

that the Hindus are in such an overwhelming majority that there would be a serious danger of the interest of the minority communities being overlooked. Obviously such a complete identification with an infinitely larger unit, whose average is admittedly very much below par, would be fatal to the progress and prosperity of the Anglo-Indian community.22 The minority block strategy foresaw the necessity of ‘Muhammadans, the Depressed Classes, the Indian Christians, the Europeans, the Anglo-Indians, the Parsis, the Sikhs and others … closing their ranks and showing a united front’.23 This was soon amended to exclude Muslims who Gidney opined were ‘not a minority in the strict sense of the word … [and] with a total population of nearly 70 millions … [would be] quite able to look after’ themselves as they had ‘done in the past’.24 The ‘durability of a community’, it came to be argued, would depend ‘on the staunchness of its allies and the firmness of its setting in the larger life of the composite nation’.25 At an Empire Parliamentary Association meeting in 1931 he warned against overlooking ‘the problems of the other minorities’ which are ‘of almost equal importance to that of the Hindu-Muslim’ problem, declaring that ‘unless these problems are dealt with in a resolute and generous manner, the new conditions in India will result in the creation of a number of Ulsters’.26 Gidney claimed to be the ‘father of the [Minority] Pact’ of 1931, having realised the ‘need of a union of all minorities so as to present an united whole which would stand or fall together in demanding their rights … [and] therefore, drew up a “Declaration of Rights for all Minorities” excluding Muslims’.27 Having been rebuffed by European delegates, Gidney took his ‘Fundamental Rights over to the other Minorities … [including] the late Dr. Paul, Dr. Ambedkar, Mr. Srinivasan, Mr. Ramchandra Rao and a Muslim member of the Friends of India Society’, but initially they were ‘not favourably received’.28 Gidney then went with ‘Dr. Datta (Indian Christians’ representative on the R.T.C.) to … [meet] the Aga Khan … [where they] sowed the seeds of the Minority Pact’.29 The Aga Khan would later formally introduce the final document ‘at the Minority Sub-Committee on November 13’, but Gidney acknowledged that before this Sir Hubert Carr, of the European Group, belatedly stepped in and took ‘over complete control of the movement’, devoting ‘much toil and labour’ to the final drafting of the Pact at a meeting at the Ritz Hotel where it was signed on 11 November.30 Gidney’s estimation of his own originating and galvanising role in the Pact’s genesis needs to be tested by further research. At an informal meeting during the second conference Gidney and Gandhi addressed one another directly, and Gidney complained to Gandhi that Congress’s ‘extraordinary policy’ of conceding communal electorates ‘to

220

Constituting the nation

Muslims, Sikhs and Sind Hindus’ but not Anglo-Indians and other minorities, was inequitable and illogical.31 After the third and final conference Gidney was relieved that the British-imposed ‘Communal Award’ of 1932 improved Anglo-Indians’ representation from three elected seats, four nominated seats, and one ‘shared with Europeans’ (i.e. 6.5 seats) to 12 elected seats, whilst bemoaning the fact that so-called ‘Bhai Bhunds’ (Anglo-Indians passing as Europeans, who had joined European associations instead of Gidney’s Association) had denuded the group of even greater strength and representation on the electoral rolls.32 Anglo-Indians and other minorities granted communal electorates escaped the coercive impact of Gandhi’s fast resulting in the Poona Pact (1932) with Dr Ambedkar, who felt compelled to renounce separate electorates for Dalits in favour of reserved seats within a single Hindu electorate. Neither Gidney nor other minority leaders felt willing or able to intervene on Dalits’ behalf as the prospect of Gandhi’s fast to death created fears of intercommunal violence. In subsequent constitutional lobbying Gidney remained concerned that the smaller minorities would be overlooked as the Hindu-Muslim issue continued to dominate British concerns. He demanded adequate safeguards and guarantees that the economic rights of the minorities be secured by statute of the British Parliament and that Parliament remain responsible for ensuring their enforcement under any new constitution. While in Britain Gidney did not hold back on emotive claims upon Britain, arguing for: the special claim the Anglo-Indian community has on the British Parliament and … public. We are the sons of those pioneer Britishers who went to India … We have shed our blood in the building up and maintenance of the British Government in that country. The history of the development of India and its communications will tell you better than I can the great and abiding part the community has played and the loyal services it has rendered to both India and England … [yet] on account of its steadfast loyalty to England, [it] is to-day looked upon by certain sections of Indians as no less alien for employment purposes than the purest European. The past few years have shown how the advance of self-government in India has prejudiced … [our] economic position … We have given of our best to England … Will England desert us in our hour of trial and need?33 Gidney argued that the Government of India had in its recent pronouncements effectively acknowledged its inability to protect Anglo-Indians’ economic position and ‘placed us as a special obligation on the British Parliament’.34 Gidney quoted the ‘Prince of Wales … on his visit to India in 1923’:35 You may rest assured that I now understand the conditions under which you live in India and the useful and honoured place which you fill as citizens in the British Empire … You may be confident that Great Britain

Constituting the nation

221

and the Empire will not forget your community, who are so united in their devotion to the King-Emperor … [as demonstrated] by their great sacrifices in the War.36 Gidney ‘now ask[ed] the British Parliament to honour that promise … All we ask for is adequate protection till we get on our feet, after which we are prepared to sink or swim with the rest of India’.37 Gidney met with numerous sympathisers in both Houses of Parliament, many of whom he persuaded to speak up on behalf of Anglo-Indian claims. His support mainly came from Conservative die-hards, and those with a religious interest in the well-being of Christianity within India, as well as amongst old India hands who had prior acquaintance with Anglo-Indians. In preparing to give his evidence before the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform in 1933 Gidney appears to have had substantial input from prominent British supporters, such as the former viceroy Lord Hardinge. Hardinge submitted his own concise and cogent memorandum in 1934 and supplied ready-made testimonials in support of Gidney in the guise of questions during Gidney’s examination before the Committee, such as: The Anglo-Indian and domiciled community in India is a small community in numbers but it has a fine record and has been a source of strength in the past. Now it is being slowly but surely sacrificed on the altar of political expediency, and unless special measures are taken for the protection of their economic future they must necessarily disappear … Parliament … [should] not repeat the error made in Ireland in regard to the Irish Loyalists in the South. What is needed is that their representation in the various Government Departments, both Central and Provincial, should be guaranteed to them for a certain number of years, and in view of their great services to India in the past this does not appear to be an exaggerated demand. It should, if possible, be part of the Constitution of India. I wish to know whether Sir Henry agrees with that statement?38 Gidney followed with the uncharacteristically succinct response, ‘Entirely.’39 There was also strong support from the non-official British community in the form of a memorandum submitted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India, which closely buttressed Gidney’s claims and provided significant details to support its argument that the sought-after protections were ‘a very reasonable request, to which there should be little, if any, opposition’.40 Gidney’s 1933 memorandum included another lengthy list of demands, reiterating most of the suggestions made to the Simon Commission, including various means by which Anglo-Indians could undertake military service. Indian questioners queried his call for every European or Indian British subject to have the right to choose whether to be tried by a European or Indian jury, perceiving it as a more neutral means of framing Anglo-Indian desires to be tried by European juries. He also asked for a clearer definition of

222

Constituting the nation

Anglo-Indians in the electoral rules, and suggested one calculated to bolster Anglo-Indians’ numerical strength. Most consequentially Gidney asked for safeguards by statute in the new constitutional Act including maintenance of their existing numbers in the railways and particular sections of the Telegraphs Department, with at least 50 annual domiciled recruits to the Telegraphist Section and 50 percent of appointments in the Preventative and Appraisers Sections of the Customs Service, for a period of at least 30 years. Gidney also pursued his ‘minority block strategy’ by demanding collective representation for the smaller minority communities by at least one member in all cabinets and public service commissions. Finally, Gidney argued that the governor-general should have a councillor holding a portfolio to ensure the implementation of minority interests. These latter demands were aimed at what he perceived to be the inability of provincial governors to exercise their duty under the so-called ‘instruments of instruction’ to protect minority interests, as for example when Indian legislators interpreted Indianisation to exclude Anglo-Indians and frustrated their recruitment to provincial services. Lloyd described Gidney going ‘From conference to conference, from India Office to House of Commons; House of Commons to House of Lords, and all the way back and between, educating and assisting those sympathetic to his cause, and gathering the views of those who supported him’.41 When Gidney’s Commons supporters failed to achieve any amendment to the Bill he obtained the support of Lloyd and others in the House of Lords in order to secure a critical last-minute amendment, proposed by Lloyd in the second and third readings. Having been extensively briefed by Gidney, Lloyd was able to present a very detailed case on the decline in the Anglo-Indian position on the railways, even including a list of salary reductions such as that of Anglo-Indian firemen previously recruited on Rs. 80 ‘rising to 120 in five years … now going to be reduced to 30 rupees rising to 50’.42 Lloyd recounted the recommendations of the Joint Select Committee that protection of Anglo-Indians’ current: 8.8 per cent., of the subordinate posts on the rail-way … be obtained by fixing a separate percentage (i) for each railway … [and] (ii) for each branch or department of the railway service … so as to ensure that Anglo-Indians continue to be employed in those branches in which they are at present principally employed, e.g., the Mechanical Engineering, Civil Engineering and Traffic Departments.43 He then expressed Gidney’s fears that the Government of India were seeking instead to distribute Anglo-Indian reservations equally across whole departments so as to scatter them from their existing (privileged, strategic, and better remunerated) positions into lower-paid areas in which they had never previously sought employment. In effect, ‘safeguarding’ managerial and technically skilled jobs in the telegraphs, by offering reserved employment as junior postal clerks.

Constituting the nation

223

Lloyd made an emotive case stressing Anglo-Indian loyalty, wartime sacrifices, British obligation, and ties of blood and kinship, citing his own experiences: Who stood by us in the general strike in Bombay on the railway, and during the Amritsar disturbances? I have the bitterest memories of those anxious days and nights … when all the telegraph staff up the lines who were not Anglo-Indians were tapping out Congress and disloyal messages to one another, paralysing the railways, spreading the strike, leaving the Anglo-Indians alone to do their best in great danger. Many of them, or at least some of them, fell at their posts … This is the community who are going to be scattered among the minor classes and taken away from their jobs. They are a small community, but they are utterly vital to our existence in India.44 Regardless of how one considers its merits, this was one of those great parliamentary moments when government is swayed by the mood of the house. The secretary of state for India, the Marquess of Zetland, attempted to persuade the Lords that singling out the Anglo-Indians for special protection might increase Indian prejudice against them and do more harm than good, and feeling that he could not oppose the amendment on the third reading he sought to: make it clear that of course these words are purely declaratory … they do not bind anyone to anything, but merely state in the Statute what is the intention of Parliament … the words which have been added to the Amendment with regard to remuneration cannot be held in any way to be a promise that special rates of pay will be provided.45 However, Gidney and his parliamentary supporters did not let this assertion of its non-justiciability rest, and finally obtained a statement from the British government that it ‘was not merely declaratory but rather mandatory in effect, because it laid upon the Railway Board and the Viceroy the obligation in law to carry out the intention of Parliament’.46 The passing of the amendment constituted Gidney’s greatest political achievement, presented by supporters as Anglo-Indians’ ‘economic Magna Carta’.47 However, Gidney warned his community to heed Lloyd’s words ‘to be active, united and ever vigilant, if it is to secure that in spirit as well as in letter, the Government’s pledges are fully honoured in India by the Indian Government’.48 The resulting reservations, some of them continuations or alterations of earlier quotas already in force, would now be approximately ‘8 1/3 per cent in the Railways, 5½ per cent in Posts & Telegraphs and a majority in the Preventative Branch of the Customs Department’.49 These were intended to apply in those branches and tiers in which Anglo-Indians had historically been employed, which were of course disproportionately posts of middling remuneration. Actually monitoring the implementation of such measures, in

224

Constituting the nation

the face of some resistance from within the colonial administrative bureaucracy, as well as from Indian nationalists, was to prove an uphill struggle, and required the Association to engage in constant correspondence with the various departments of government and the railways, and with their own members. Mr. E. Bower, Gidney’s deputy and temporary replacement on the central Legislative Assembly, wrote to Gidney on 6 September 1935 to say: although there is a quota for us in the India Bill, there is no adequate means of enforcing that quota. You, I am sure, have considered the problem of passive resistance in the future from Indian departmental heads … The Instruments of Instructions will … have to be very carefully worded if the astute Indian is to be held fast by it.50 To combat the downwards pressure to lower Anglo-Indian wages to the Indian level in the reserved jobs Gidney also managed to secure ‘a minimum starting wage of Rs. 55 … a month for all telegraphists … of every community’ and most controversially, the same starting wage on the railways exclusively for Anglo-Indians.51 Justified as ‘a “quid pro quo” for … Anglo-Indian railway employee’s compulsory … service in the Auxiliary Force’,52 the measure could equally be interpreted as a communal or racial minimum wage. Between 1932 and 1933 the Government of India had been attempting to bring the various railways in line ‘with other Departments’ by ending higher starting salaries for ‘(1) European and Anglo-Indian clerks and (2) [university] Graduate clerks’, initially ‘not insist[ing] on absolute uniformity as long as the principle of avoiding racial and other discrimination … [was] accepted by the Railway Board’.53 Gidney’s demands could thus easily be interpreted as either a reversion to older discriminatory structures, or a retention of practices which may have been still ongoing in more opaque ways whilst having been officially discountenanced. Not surprisingly, such measures provided a strong impetus to further obstruction and resistance by Indians.

The Cripps mission In 1942 Sir Stafford Cripps, a senior Labour Party minister in Churchill’s wartime coalition cabinet, came to India to make an offer of ‘Dominion status’ (effective self-government in the case of the existing ‘White Dominions’ including Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) for India on the conclusion of the war if Congress and the Muslim League would agree to co-operate fully in the war effort. Whilst Cripps was sincere in his efforts it is doubtful that Churchill actually wanted the negotiations to succeed, having felt American pressure to make such a gesture. Gidney’s bargaining position, if not his expected outcome, when he met with and wrote to Cripps reflected his confidence in Anglo-Indians’ position as enthusiastic supporters and participants in Britain’s war effort. Gidney asked for the existing safeguards for Anglo-Indians to be continued for 50 years, and hoped some structure could be devised to avoid

Constituting the nation

225

other Indian parties repudiating them after any effective transfer of power. It might be argued that Gidney was still prepared to respond positively to any British move to resettle Anglo-Indians en masse within the empire. The early 20th century and the aftermath of World War II (which Gidney would not live to see) were a period of large-scale population exchanges and the repeated redrawing of international borders. We saw in Chapter 5 the extent to which Jewish settlement in Palestine and settler colonialism within the British Empire inspired various Anglo-Indian projects. During the Cripps mission ‘A section of Anglo-Indians in Calcutta … waited on the Metropolitan of India with a suggestion for the mass emigration of Anglo-Indians from India and also wished to wait on Sir Stafford Cripps’.54 The metropolitan supported the idea and ‘opined that the emigration would have to be financially aided (by the British Government presumably) and he undertook to write to the Archbishop of Canterbury on the subject’.55 Failing any such grand state-backed scheme for Anglo-Indian migration, Gidney expressed his hopes to Cripps that the British government could be induced to provide a substantial severance package of funds and land grants in recognition of Anglo-Indians’ past and present services to the colonial state and in fulfilment of a paternal obligation to ‘a racial minority’ which the British had brought into being which would be left in ‘a peculiarly disadvantageous position in India’ in the event of British withdrawal.56 Gidney asked Cripps for £10 million to endow Anglo-Indian education and protect it in perpetuity from future defunding by Indian legislators. This amount had been settled on at an All-India Conference of Anglo-Indians in New Delhi in March 1942, to which the most sympathetic parties to the group had been invited – ‘Sir Frederick James and Mr. Lawson of the Central European Group … [and] Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru’ of the Indian Liberals.57 Sapru was sympathetic, whilst echoing many other Indians in advising the group ‘to identify themselves with the Indian population – in the north to cultivate the language and culture of the people of the north, and inferentially in the south the language and culture of the people of the south’.58 It was expected that Anglo-Indians would have to adjust their habits of social life and lower their standard of living. The European guests advised unity within the group and to work in close relation to themselves to secure constitutional safeguards. The idea of mass emigration was again raised; Gidney opposed it on the grounds of the ‘colour and race prejudice’ of the dominions that would preclude them admitting ‘any large number of ’ Anglo-Indians, ‘but he was all in favour of a reserved area in India itself for Anglo-Indians’.59 In requesting such a large sum from the British government Gidney used the precedent of their ‘similar grants to people of the West Indies and East Africa’ of Dutch financial support for Eurasians in Indonesia, and argued that ‘Anglo-Indian[s] had a stronger case to consideration than either the Ulster minority or the Jews in Palestine’.60 We have already noted the similarities between the imperial British identities of middle-class West Indians and the external ‘Senior Cambridge’ examinations they shared with Anglo-Indians.

226

Constituting the nation

Anthony would also stress that the existing education system in which the Anglo-Indian culture was embedded, but which had been shaped for the group by British educationalists and religious authorities, was of ‘much higher … per capita cost to Government … [amounting to] Rs. 72 for an AngloIndian pupil and Rs. 14 for an Indian’.61 Anglo-Indians were distinguished from average Indian students because they mostly attended boarding schools, were more likely to progress to the senior years of secondary education, required expensive Anglophone teachers (who despite Anglo-Indian aspirations were predominantly colonial Britons or members of religious orders), and contributed to at least 50 percent of the costs of their schools through parent-paid fees. Anthony claimed that in 1937 the government grant for AngloIndian education ‘was approximately 45 lakhs … [i.e. hundred thousands, whilst] the Anglo-Indian parent paid, in fees, almost 63 lakhs’.62 Gidney also felt that Anglo-Indians would be in a far more vulnerable position than the Muslims, who constituted a majority in two large areas of the country, and that if they felt the need to call for Pakistan, it was reasonable for the British to further assist with a ‘grant of 200,000 acres of land in India’, preferably around the existing site of the Anglo-Indian colony of McCluskiegunge.63 His rhetorical flourish contrasted a future for Anglo-Indians ‘as proud standard bearers of the Great British nation and its connection to India’ with the prospect of them becoming ‘Great Britain’s bankrupt legacy to this country’.64 Echoing Hardinge,65 Gidney asked whether Britain was willing ‘to offer the annihilation of her offspring … as her sacrifice on the altar of India’s political expediency’.66 As Gidney’s vice president expressed it, approaching Cripps: on these lines … he was … doomed to disappointment … Cripps could give him no hopes, no assurances, no promises; the Anglo-Indian just did not enter into his scheme of things … Gidney was accustomed to dealing with British Conservatives and Liberals, he understood them, their sympathies and ways, but a British socialist was something totally different, and socialism Gidney abhorred.67 Gidney realised that the Cripps proposals if they were to go ahead meant an immediate end to all of the measures he had so far achieved. His vice president thought that though he might have been contemplating ‘making another journey to England … he felt momentarily defeated’.68 It was no flight of fancy to suppose that his health declined from this moment on, until he died ‘in the morning of fifth May, [1942,] his overstrained heart at last giving out’ at the age of 68.69 Gidney’s political opponents paid fulsome tributes, which, going beyond the usual formulaic utterances of such occasions, seem to indicate the degree to which he was considered a significant figure of the Indian political scene and of the life of the nation. A memorial in the Review a year later recounted the tributes the late leader had received from ‘Leaders of the different parties

Constituting the nation in India and of all shades of political opinion’. celebrated Gidney in the following words:

70

227

His successor Anthony

He weathered all the storms on behalf of the Community and brought us through every conceivable obstacle to place the Community definitely on the political and economic map of India. It is no exaggeration to say that few persons have ever had to face and surmount the obstacles that beset him both in his public and private life – obstacles largely placed in his way by his own people.71

Frank Anthony Anthony inherited a substantial set of policy ideas from Gidney, especially plans for reinforcing Anglo-Indian education as a bulwark of communal life and the group’s economic future. Despite Anthony’s own longstanding interest in education, his eventual founding of the Frank Anthony public schools in Delhi (1959), Calcutta (1965), and Bangalore (1967) owed a substantial debt to the ideas generated by his predecessor in the last years of his life. However, though he faced no obvious challenger for the leadership and had been almost Gidney’s political heir apparent, Anthony took over in a moment of crisis. He lost no time in taking charge of the editorial voice of the Review and immediately initiated a radical shift in tone and rhetoric, and more gradually a shift in the message. Anthony spoke frankly and did not pull his punches, beginning with some sharp criticisms of Anglo-Indians who remained aloof from or opposed to the Association. If Gidney had adopted a softly-softly approach to shifting the self-identification and problematic elements of Anglo-Indian socioracial attitudes, Anthony issued more ultimatums and firm instructions and warned of dire consequences should he be ignored. Anthony also continued to press government on almost identical issues as his predecessor, but as a successful lawyer could perhaps be said to have adopted a more forensic style. In January 1943, having been elected president-in-chief, Anthony embarked on a frenetic tour (of southern India, Bengal, and Bihar) with a tight itinerary – in just over a month Anthony visited 21 Association branches.72 Rajahmundry, which had not been on the itinerary as its Anglo-Indian population consisted of ‘a comparatively few Railway families’, had evidently displayed great enthusiasm as they ceremoniously donated over Rs. 578 to Association funds and ‘the whole body of people went to the station to see Mr. Anthony off’.73 Anthony gave speeches everywhere he went, stayed in some stations for less than a day, visited schools, a vocational institute for women, the mines of Kolar Gold Fields, railway workshops, a ‘British Evacuee Camp at Coimbatore’, and ‘the Ernakulam Municipal Corporation’.74 At the Bangalore Bowring Institute Anthony was reported to be forthright in criticising the lack of Association members relative to the city’s ‘very large Anglo-Indian population’.75 Anthony complained that ‘Bangalore could and should be one of

228

Constituting the nation

the main bulwarks of Anglo-India’ were it not for the indifference of the community there:76 His discourse was refreshingly exhilarating: his frankness and outspokenness generally appreciated … [and] challengingly provocative … The community cannot be too often or too severely provoked. It is yet, as a whole, too indifferent to the need for organisation; its members too prone to quarrel amongst themselves, too reluctant to subordinate personal and petty jealousies and rivalries … the awakening to reality is too slow … [We must make] Bangalore Anglo-Indians ‘community’ conscious, which alas! they are far from being today. The Branch has to shatter prejudices … it must dissolve complexes … of colour, pay and pension grade … It was no exaggeration on the part of Mr. Anthony to describe the future for Anglo-Indians as grim of prospect.77 While praising Gidney’s efforts and foresight Anthony warned Anglo-Indians to wake up to the coming reality, telling them that in the future India they would sooner or later lose the hard-won safeguards and have to fend for themselves. Anthony’s ‘maiden speech’ as president-in-chief provoked controversy and was attacked in a letter by Mr E. Few, MLA and president of the Punjab branch (in Lahore).78 The central governing body of the Association responded angrily that Few’s comments were ‘a gross misrepresentation of the President’s policy’ and that ‘the Punjab Branch in adopting a resolution of a threatening nature and circulating this to the [other] Branches was thoroughly incorrect, unconstitutional and not conducive to good discipline within the Association’.79 Few perceived Anthony’s position to be a departure from AngloIndians’ traditional loyalty to Britain towards a more Indian and Congressfriendly position. Anthony’s governing body denied that they were being ‘pro-this or pro-that but only pro-Anglo-Indian – the policy of enlisting maximum help from and friendship of all communities, Indian and European’.80 At the next meeting of the governing body Few asked why his actions had been deemed ‘incorrect and unconstitutional’ and the honorary general secretary replied that ‘it was not in the interest of the Association for any President of a Branch to resort to certain propaganda to other Branches with the object of influencing them in any particular way’.81 Few responded ‘that the Lahore Branch was not satisfied with the policy enunciated by the Presidentin-Chief as reported by responsible newspapers … if this was the correct exposition of the President’s policy, then the Lahore Branch could not support him’.82 Few argued ‘that the policy of the Association should be proGovernment and pro-British’.83 Anthony responded that the newspapers had misrepresented his speeches and assured Few: ‘that his policy was certainly not “pro-Congress” or “pro-Muslim League”’; that any alignment with a particular party ‘would be unwise and incorrect at this juncture’; ‘that we as a Community must naturally support the Government’, which he had done by

Constituting the nation

229

emphasising ‘the great part the Community was playing in the war effort’ to the viceroy; but that Anglo-Indians could no longer rely on safeguards and had to develop a more self-reliant position.84 After assurances that this would be clarified in the Review Few withdrew his objection. Gidney had expressed frequent and conservative-sounding devotion to Britain and had limited his criticisms of government. Whatever protestations were made to the contrary the shift in tone and message initiated by Anthony, his fervent attacks on government, and his increasing outreach towards fellow Indians must have been obvious to other Anglo-Indian politicians. At the Association’s 1943 AGM Anthony declared: I am told by one or two people outside the fold of the Association that I am preaching defeatism … [I] preach realism. What were we told by Sir Stafford Cripps? … [That] we could not expect our safeguards and our present protection to continue … we asked for a breathing space in which to set our economic house in order, and the failure of the Cripps proposals has offered us that breathing space … Cripps … caught us unawares … If those proposals had been accepted we would have been caught of[f] both legs. Economically we would have faced extinction … we must prepare from now … so that we may not … [face] the hopeless situation with which we were confronted when Cripps came to this country.85 Anthony had realised at this point that safeguards would go and the British would have little power (and in his own view less inclination) to do much for the Anglo-Indian community going forward. While Gidney had spoken of a ‘minority block strategy’ and threatened the emergence of numerous ‘Ulsters’ should the British let the community down, Anthony understood that the future of Anglo-Indians within India would depend upon relations with the Congress Party. Gidney had spoken of India as motherland and Britain as fatherland; Anthony would move towards a solitary identification with India based upon nested identities expressed in his communal nationalist formula: Anglo-Indian by community, Indian by nationality. To this he added the argument that Anglo-Indians were in fact the most national of Indian communities, owing to their geographic dispersal across the length and breadth of India as against the provincial and linguistic localism of most other Indian groups. This approach, and Anthony’s attempt at burying the term Domiciled European, met even more contestation and bitter opposition within the community than Gidney’s more cautious moves to foster identification with India. At this point the collective strategies pursued by Anthony came into sharp conflict with the individual and familial strategies (especially emigration) of a significant proportion of the community who opposed his message and tone. When Anthony’s new tone and approach garnered Indian support, this could also create a backlash within the group, or amongst those who selfidentified as Domiciled European. With Anglo-Indian and Domiciled

230

Constituting the nation

European ‘die hards’ who were closer to Gidney’s politics or in some cases more reactionary than Gidney, Indian endorsements could only be read as a sign that Anthony was in some sense betraying the values and identity of his own group. Indeed, a common line of attack was to suggest that Anthony was not in fact an Anglo-Indian, but an Indian Christian engaging in passing. This was more vehemently claimed by Domiciled Europeans when Anthony sought to entirely collapse the Domiciled European category into the legal and constitutional designation of Anglo-Indian. After Gidney’s death he began referring to ‘so-called Domiciled Europeans’.86 Probably disingenuously, given that he was a lawyer and had long been acquainted with the status of Domiciled Europeans within the Association, Anthony suggested that if there were any such category of persons as Domiciled Europeans they were not ‘Statutory Natives of India’ and therefore not entitled to continuing state employment in India. Noting the ‘dense, impregnable wall of social and economic discrimination’ which meant that Anglo-Indians’ only escape from being ‘life-long subordinate[s]’ had been ‘claiming to be Europeans’.87 Anthony recognised the systemic incentivisation of such repositioning, complained to European associations that they had been encouraging such defections to inflate their numerical constituencies, but also ascribed blame to those engaged in the process by labelling it pejoratively as ‘renegadism’.88 After independence the Review declared: That independence would upset a certain element in the Community was inevitable. There has always been a renegade element which looked away from the Community. This element today is naturally in a state of psychological convulsion. So-called Domiciled Europeans cannot find it in themselves, even at this late stage, to shed their false complexes.89

The Sapru Conciliation Committee of 1944–5 As an Indian Liberal Sapru opposed Gandhian non-co-operation and supported a solely legal and constitutional path to Indian self-government, which meant relying on negotiating the pace of change with the British. Sapru’s co-option by the imperial state through his career and his retention of British titles (like Gidney) likely made him seem a supporter of the British in Congress’s eyes. However, he was able to play a useful mediating role between the Congress and the British at the round table conferences, and after the breakdown of the Gandhi-Jinnah talks Sapru was well placed to instigate a relatively neutral third-party committee to suggest a constitutional compromise. Forming a committee with others who were not affiliated with the larger or communal political parties, Sapru gained Gandhi’s non-committal support for his attempt to achieve a breakthrough. However, the committee’s proceedings were entirely boycotted by Jinnah and the League from the outset and its report proved unpalatable to Congress and entirely objectionable to the Hindu Mahasabha. Its ultimate impact on wider developments is

Constituting the nation

231

debateable, but for Anglo-Indians it provided another significant arena to present their case, and this time to an exclusively Indian audience. Sapru was sufficiently sympathetic with the group to have attended the 1942 AngloIndian Delhi conference, where he advised Anglo-Indians to embrace an Indian status and future. Gidney had been willing to make common cause with the League, even as he focused on presenting a united front with the other minorities, and he had even linked the demand for Pakistan to Anglo-Indian colonisation within India. In contrast, Anthony’s submissions (a lengthy memorandum and supplementary questionnaire response) to the Sapru Committee presented an eloquent and prophetic attack on the League’s demand for Partition: the minorities problem would be as acute, perhaps much more acute, in both Pakistan and Hindustan … The Muslim claim would lead to the Balkanising of India. A potentially powerful India will be emasculated as an international power … in spite of differences, India has achieved a very definite ethnic unity … The division of India will lead to the probability, if not the certainty, of war between Hindustan and Pakistan and to the propagation of narrow and fanatical economic and political ideologies.90 We might also perceive in Anthony’s arguments the beginnings of a shift from the need to deemphasise the racial aspect of the Anglo-Indian group in favour of more communal political minority rhetoric under Gidney (which was calibrated against Indian interpretations of Anglo-Indian reserved employment as a continuation of racial discrimination and privilege) to a reemphasis that AngloIndians were ‘a real racial minority’.91 This should be contrasted with the Sapru Report’s use of arguments that Muslims were not a real racial or ethnic group distinguished from their Hindu neighbours, having often come from proximate caste groupings, as part of their rejection of the ‘two nation’ theory. The Sapru Report noted that if Muslim claims to be a nation were founded not on racial difference, but on religion alone, they would also logically apply to the other communal minorities such as Christians and Parsis. This shift in emphasis by Anthony intersected with those arguments being made in relation to the other minorities, and were to become more important in the argument for treating Anglo-Indians as a special case in the later debates of the Constituent Assembly. In principle there was no reason why Anglo-Indians as a group should have become such a significant category in legal and constitutional terms, over and above the more typically communal Indian Christian category – counterfactually Anglo-Indians might have been granted no recognition except as part of that broader religious group. Whether Anthony had yet perceived this danger, we should note the importance of his now claiming to be a (perhaps the only) genuine racial minority group in India. Anthony also worked on gaining Indian sympathy in making his case:

232

Constituting the nation We cannot be blamed for the fact that our mother-tongue is English and our culture is a culture derived from the West. The history taught in our schools has been British history. But, today, the Anglo-Indian Community has awakened to the fact that it is one of India’s communities and that the hopes and aspirations of India are also our[s] … With the proper reconstruction of our education system, which this Association is, today, pleading for, will be swept away the harmful complexes which have made understanding between us and our fellow Indians difficult.92

The Committee responded that it ‘appreciate[d] these sentiments cordially’ and recognised the Anglo-Indian demand for ‘justiciable’ constitutional rights to maintain English language schools facilitated by ‘proper allocation of public funds’.93 In response to Anglo-Indian demands for political representation at various levels and continued reserved percentages (based upon those achieved by Gidney in Section 242 of the Government of India Act, 1935) in railway, telegraphs, and customs services the Committee stated: that the Anglo-Indian Community must, in our opinion, elect to be treated under the future Constitution as an integral part of the Indian Community and if they do so, they must receive adequate protection in all matters affecting their position in respect of, e.g. representation in the Legislature, the Executive and the Services, etc.94 Anthony had also asked for ‘four Anglo-Indian representatives … on the Constitution-making Body’ and stressed ‘the vital need for direct election’ of these representatives by a communal electorate, rather than by a vote of AngloIndian representatives (i.e. political delegates) who ‘might easily be influenced by mala fide considerations’.95 Contrastingly, Anthony was not invited to the Simla Conference of 1945. Fearing that Anglo-Indians were being left out of crucial negotiations and might not be represented on a future constitution-making body, Anthony sent an urgent and lengthy telegram in a tone of panic and desperation: Make earnest appeal on behalf of Anglo Indian and Domiciled European Community … Exclusion from Simla Conference bitter blow and incomprehensible because of status of community recognised by Indian leaders and his Majestys Government … Request his Majestys Government not to deny us what Indian leaders already granted. Sapru Conciliation Committee consisting of most eminent Indians granted community separate seat in central cabinet because of recognised importance and services to the country. Sapru Report acceptable to majority of Indian parties including Congress. Past history and present war effort entitle community to representation … Real strength approximately half a million … Auxiliary Force drawn from community maintained administration in last war … Railways would have been paralyzed but for

Constituting the nation

233

communitys effort in this war … Representation … vital to protect economy of community [w]hich entirely dependent on central services … Greater right to seat than numerically larger communities [w]hose services to the state and war effort nothing like ours … Earnestly request acceptance of appeal otherwise future economic and constitutional position of community jeopardized.96 Both Anthony and Ambedkar had urged that their communities be represented in ‘the Viceroy’s Expanded Executive Council’ a few years before, and had been disappointed, Ambedkar decrying Dalits’ exclusion in 1941 ‘as “monstrous”’.97 However, Anthony was made a member of the viceroy’s larger ‘National Defence Council’.98 Anthony argued that though small in number, Anglo-Indians’ current and past services ‘to India and the Empire … [gave them] a much greater claim to consideration than many of India’s larger communities’.99 By November 1945 Anthony had travelled to London to lobby the secretary of state, Lord Pethick-Lawrence, who wrote to the viceroy, Viscount Wavell: I of course gave no undertakings or assurances … he said that his community felt great disappointment that they had not been given an opportunity of expressing their views at the … Simla Conference … [and] that they felt that they ought to have a seat upon your Executive and said that the Sapru Committee had recommended that, but I hardly think they can mean this very seriously. He did, however, urge that when you conferred with representatives after the elections on the nature of the constitution-making body, the Anglo-Indians should have an opportunity of making their voice heard … Anglo-Indians have about 10 representatives in the Legislatures. I am not sure whether this would give them a seat on a constitution-making body elected in accordance with the Cripps’ offer … I feel myself that they have some right to be heard in regard to the nature of the constitution-making body … On the educational problem … We clearly could not include any specific safeguards … in an Indian-made constitution.100 As president of the Association’s Jubbulpore branch (in his hometown) in 1936 Anthony had expressed ‘the unswerving loyalty of the community to the British Crown’.101 As long as he was making a case to the British he spoke of the role of famous Anglo-Indians such as ‘Brendish who saved the Punjab’ in 1857, who, among ‘many other[s] … answered the call in one of the Empire’s darkest hours’.102 A pamphlet he had published during World War II was significantly entitled ‘Will Britain Tarnish Her Honour?’,103 and ultimately much later in his career as a parliamentarian of independent India his political memoir-cum-history carried the emotive title Britain’s Betrayal in India.104 One could see this as merely a symptom of political repositioning, of the construction of a narrative that would facilitate the collective reformulation of

234

Constituting the nation

Anglo-Indian identity that he sought to inspire and lead. However, it appears plain that Anthony’s development of a narrative of being ‘let down’ by and betrayed by the British was more deeply felt and left him with some (perhaps justified) bitterness. Certainly it was not an optimally instrumental argument, as its force was unnecessarily harsh when measured against straightforward utility and pragmatism, and unavoidably alienated a significant portion of Anglo-Indians and Domiciled Europeans, beyond potential emigres. Anthony’s own personality seems to have been intolerant not only of dissent, but of polite differences of opinion, and he therefore took others’ decisions to emigrate (including former friends) as a personal slight. Anthony had strong reasons to feel disappointed. Having repeated Gidney’s 1942 requests for a seat in the Constituent Assembly and a substantial grant of land in 1946, they had fallen on deaf ears. As the Review would reflect a year later: Their whole policy has been one of using the Community and then treating it with ill concealed contempt … The British were only concerned with scuttling out of this country, and have left behind a sordid trail of broken pledges … While the British mountebanks, who made up the Cabinet Mission, refused the Community one seat in the Constituent Assembly, Mr. Anthony approached the Congress leaders for representation. Instead of one seat the Community was granted 3 seats.105 In 1946 the recently elected Labour prime minister Clement Attlee had sent three members of his cabinet (the ‘Cabinet Mission’) to treat with Indian leaders and devise a plan for the British to hand over power. The Review also condemned these representatives of the new government for refusing ‘a paltry 100,000 acres of land … [requested by] Gidney, and repeated by Mr. Anthony … in recognition of the War services of the Anglo-Indians’.106 Through the Review Anthony attacked some Anglo-Indians for ‘circulating deliberate lies’, especially with the suggestion ‘that the President-in-Chief was offered emigration for Anglo-Indians’, protesting (perhaps too much) that Anthony had never requested a mass resettlement for the group.107 British attention to Anglo-Indians was now limited, and probably desirous of handing the group and its problems over to what they would hope to be a responsible Indian administration. Anthony had recognised this and redirected all his efforts towards Congress. The key question for us to turn to next, therefore, is why, given their past reluctance to include Anglo-Indians ‘as a “recognised” minority’,108 Congress leaders decided to allocate three seats to them on the constitution-making body and to ultimately grant them rather exceptional protections. With opposition from within the Congress Party, and objections from most of the other minorities who ultimately received no such measures, the concessions to Anglo-Indians were even more astounding than Gidney’s successes with the British Parliament. Whilst Anthony repositioned his group to enable him to make the best case he could on Anglo-Indians’ behalf, he had not been optimistic about securing a continuation of reserved

Constituting the nation

235

employment, and the scale of his success and of Congress’s willingness to embrace him appears to have surprised even him. Having had little or no bargaining power Anthony’s achievement must therefore be understood as a mix of beneficence and cold calculation from the Congress leadership and closely associated major constitutional framers.

Constitution making As in the case of Gidney, and regardless of differences of political opinion, Anthony’s at times lengthy contributions in the Legislative Assembly soon acquired him the reputation of a respected parliamentarian. This was reflected when at the Constituent Assembly’s first session Anthony was proposed and accepted as deputy chairman by the House.109 One Constituent Assembly member who sought to place a time limit on provisions for Anglo-Indians described ‘our Friend Mr. Anthony … [as] a persona grata with most Members of the House’ and expressed his belief that after ten years Anthony would be able to obtain election in a general constituency.110 Anthony was also nominated to the 15-member ‘Committee for Framing Rules’,111 as well as the ‘Advisory Committee’ on Minorities and ‘the Minority Sub-Committee’.112 When Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel presented the Report of the Advisory Committee to the Constituent Assembly, he was pleased that despite ‘bitter controversy’ on some issues, he could claim that in the end ‘a general consensus of opinion between the minorities themselves and the majority’ had been reached.113 The most consequential decision being that communal electorates should be entirely replaced by joint electorates. Bajpai distinguished her approach from that of the historian, and identified her detailed analysis of political rhetoric in the Constituent Assembly debates as an ‘approach … akin to the social scientist’, keeping ‘information about agents and context … to a minimum’.114 Her methodology yields distinct and not necessarily mutually exclusive insights, but the historical approach we have taken here would tend to reemphasise the significance of contingency, and the specificities of the political change, personalities, and projects. Bajpai rejected the ‘usually cited’ Partition as ‘a sufficient explanation’ for the curtailment of minority group rights.115 However, though that case may have been overstated in the past, it retains its explanatory power for the historian. The end of the need to conciliate the largest minority, Muslims, with the departure of the League and the certainty of Partition fundamentally changed the atmosphere with regard to minority group rights. Conversely, had a looser federal structure, retaining the Muslim League and the Muslim-majority provinces within the Indian body politic, been achieved, it appears unlikely that communal electorates would have entirely disappeared. It was not only the fact of no longer needing to conciliate a recalcitrant negotiating party, but the violence of the Partition process itself and indeed the growing belief that Partition and its accompanying violence were the fruit of the kind of communal politics fostered by, and reflected in, communal electorates, that help to explain their abandonment.

236

Constituting the nation

Communalism and communal measures became strongly associated with a universally deplored ‘religious separatism’.116 The congressman and fervent linguistic (Hindi) nationalist, Raghunath Vinayak Dhulekar, gave expression to widespread feeling when he stated: In 1916 … Congress conceded to the Muslims their demand for separate electorates and reservation of seats. Within the last thirty years, this vicious system has brought the country to the verge of civil war and partition … [and] made the two sister communities thirsty for the blood of each other.117 The idea that the remaining minorities voluntarily surrendered communal electorates as a result of their own volition and inclinations, in Patel’s words ‘that they wanted neither weightage nor separated electorates but in the general upheaval that is taking place they want to merge themselves in the nation’, remains about as credible as an argument that Ambedkar had felt himself under no duress in agreeing to the Poona Pact. Perceiving the aggravated mood of the majority Hindu community, on the streets, in the press, and in the Constituent Assembly, was sufficient for the minorities to be persuaded by Patel that such seemingly patriotic voluntary renunciation would be in their best interests. There was a very definite need for all the remaining minorities to strongly distance themselves from the Muslim League and the kind of politics it had represented, by instead signalling their patriotism and loyalty to the project of creating a unitary Indian nation. There was also the implicit threat, if not of an extension of actual ongoing communal violence, then at least that a failure to accept the revised deal could further prejudice their own interests and protections. Ambedkar and others made the point that a constitution was only as good as those who implemented it, with the implication that without the goodwill of the majority paper safeguards might prove worse than useless. The other consequential decision that had been reached, as Patel outlined, was in favour of continued ‘reservation for certain communities’, which he judged ‘necessary – particularly [for] the Anglo-Indian community and the scheduled castes’.118 The latter was incontrovertible to anyone who could accept positive discrimination (or affirmative action) in principle. The former acknowledgement represented an astounding achievement of Anglo-Indian political leadership, rowing against all the currents of the changing attitudes to minority rights in Indian constitution making, which as Bajpai observes involved a ‘a dynamic of containment’ and ultimate reversal of the colonial extension of group-differentiated rights – ‘a cutting back on the regime of preferential provisions that existed before’.119 We can accept that the case itself, although a difficult one, might have been persuasive to those inclined to sympathise with Anglo-Indians, as arguably Nehru was. Nehru’s childhood experiences of Anglo-Indians had combined familiarity – his father’s ‘Eurasian housekeeper’120 – with a consciousness of the ‘overbearing character

Constituting the nation

237

and insulting manners of the English people, as well as Eurasians, toward Indians’ especially on account of one of his cousins who ‘loved to pick a quarrel with an Englishman, or more frequently with Eurasians, who perhaps to show off their oneness with the ruling race, were often even more offensive than the English … especially during railway journeys’.121 Nehru maintained a longstanding collaborative correspondence with Cedric Dover whose politics and ideas, as we have seen, diverged starkly from that of the Association.122 A meeting in Calcutta between Nehru and ‘Mr. Barton’ in 1929 was critiqued in the Statesman as a: lunch party to which the Anglo-Indian lambs and the Swarajist lions sat down in Calcutta on Sunday, but … [one where the] speeches delivered on both sides were admirable in tone and temper … point[ing] to a possibility of co-operation between two Indian groups which have hitherto been as the poles apart.123 Gidney’s letter to the paper’s editor attacked his rival ‘Barton … President of the Anglo-Indian Federation … [and] General Secretary of the Indian Telegraph Association’ for purporting to be ‘representative of the community’, and, while asserting that he held Nehru and ‘Dr. K. S. Roy … in high regard and esteem’, dissociated himself ‘and the community organization in Calcutta from this unauthorised gesture towards the Independent Party’.124 The Review was less restrained in condemning Barton’s proposed ‘alliance or even … flirtation with the extreme section of the Congress … [as] sheer noon-day madness’.125 Nonetheless, Nehru continued to make overtures to Gidney – writing to the Association to assure them that Congress had ‘no disposition to replace Anglo-Indian by Indian nurses’.126 In Anthony Nehru would find a more receptive partner, yet for any implicit or explicit agreement between the two to win broader acquiescence, there are some other arguments that must be brought into play. These may, if accepted, shed further light on the issues raised by Bajpai’s work.

A transitional case Many of the key arguments presented by Anthony, were substantively the same as those put forward in prior phases of constitutional change by his predecessor. Obviously the emotive emphasis on service to Britain and the empire and impassioned appeals to Britain’s paternalistic obligations to the group, which were stressed when Gidney and Anthony interacted with Britons at the metropole and in the colonial setting, had to be jettisoned when addressing the Indian audience. This was generally substituted with: (a) the idea that service to the colonial state had amounted to service to India, (b) the observation that other Indian communities and those serving in the armed forces were not as likely to be charged with disloyalty to the Indian nation as were Anglo-Indians, and (c) the downplaying of Anglo-Indian agency in

238

Constituting the nation

relation to their co-option by the imperial state with the added observation that Britain had treated Anglo-Indians with ingratitude. What remained was the core of the argument itself that Anglo-Indians were currently disproportionately employed in certain branches and tiers of state and railway service; that they had been brought up in a costly education system over which they had had little control, which was necessary to the preservation of their distinct culture and English mother tongue; and that any sudden displacement of the group from its current areas of employment, as would be occasioned by an immediate end of reserved posts, would cause a radical economic dislocation that could turn a relatively educated and reasonably affluent group into a depressed class. The most important and persuasive element in the Anglo-Indian case was that their demands were, as they had been in the 1930s, couched as transitional and temporary measures. In constitution making the idealised principle of equality before the law and as citizens of the state (which was deployed against communal electorates and reservations) contended with the need to redress pervasive and persistent structural inequalities in the society (most especially the discrimination and subordination inflicted upon Dalits). Secularist democratic socialists like Nehru, and communists to his left, might hope to replace the issue of caste-based discrimination and structural inequality with a focus on class-based (or socioeconomic) inequality alone. Nehru expressed his general view on the minorities question to the Constituent Assembly thusly: [Some] still think in terms of separatist existence or separate privileges … This very Objectives Resolution set out adequate safeguards to be provided for minorities, for tribal areas, depressed and other backward classes. Of course that must be done, and it is the duty and responsibility of the majority to see that … they win over all minorities which may have suspicions against them, which may suffer from fear. It is right and important that we should raise the level of the backward groups in India and bring them up to the level of the rest. But it is not right that in trying to do this we create further barriers, or even keep on existing barriers, because the ultimate objective is not separatism but building up an organic nation, [though] not necessarily a uniform nation because we have a varied culture.127 It seems likely that Anthony was able to successfully make a case directly to Nehru for treating Anglo-Indians as another exception to such general principles. Despite his recollections concerning Anglo-Indian socioracial slights towards Indians, Nehru also had positive experiences of Anglo-Indians in his youth. His greater cultural proximity to the mixed race group, being an Anglophone (public school and Cambridge educated) cultural ‘hybrid’, would have facilitated communication between the two. Both, like Gandhi, had attended the Inner Temple to qualify as barristers at the metropole. Given

Constituting the nation

239

that some kind of deal seems to have been reached at the leadership level to accommodate Anglo-Indians, Nehru seems more likely than Patel to have been the driving force behind the concession of a generous set of provisions to Anthony. Analysing the question at the level of high politics, there were several ways in which Anthony could be usefully co-opted in support of Nehru’s secular nationalist and culturally inclusive project, as well as his political, economic, and diplomatic triangulation of his own and India’s politics between the West and the Communist bloc. Both prior and subsequent to Indian constitution making Anthony was a strident advocate of democracy and a critic of the Soviet Union and communism, especially as it was to be imposed on the Soviet-occupied states of Eastern Europe.128 This would later allow him to defend Nehru’s government’s democratic socialist economic and internationalist non-alignment policies, via more virulent and moralistic rhetorical flourishes against communist critics to the left of the Congress Party.129 Whilst Anthony adopted anti-colonial critiques of Britain and the United States, particularly on issues of racism (for example, regarding the Commonwealth’s muted response to South African Apartheid), he was (not unexpectedly) a strong supporter of Nehru’s decision to remain in the Commonwealth and celebrated the virtues of imperfect Western democracy as against Soviet totalitarianism. Thus, politically speaking, though to the right of Nehru on many issues, and understood to be an independently minded voice (for example criticising Nehru’s misguided overoptimism on Sino-Indian relations), Anthony was sufficiently proximate to, and supportive of, Nehru to be a valuable asset as a future nominee to the Lok Sabha (i.e. the lower house of independent India’s parliament). More significantly, by the time of Indian constitution making Anthony’s reformulation of an Anglo-Indian communal nationalism was well placed to fit into Nehru’s vision of a secular, culturally pluralist India. Anthony was also capable of articulately presenting Nehru’s case on a broad range of issues. He could calibrate his rhetoric so that AngloIndians, if granted his basic demands, could play the role of a ‘model minority’, generally supporting Nehru and the government, whilst simultaneously charting an independent political course that gave Anthony the latitude to take on Nehru’s political opponents with more direct criticism. However he might shape the Anglo-Indian case in the Constituent Assembly, Anthony’s expressions in the early 1940s to a British audience offer us a franker assessment of his concerns: Let us face the facts in India. Communalism is not only existent; recently, it has become more intense than ever before. Some enlightened public men subscribe to the ideal of a common nationality and that every citizen should be judged on merit alone, irrespective of caste or creed. Unfortunately, this is still a distant ideal … The author has been acclaimed as a liberal and a nationalist. But even a liberal cannot escape disillusionment under present conditions. A slight process of scratching is sufficient to

240

Constituting the nation reveal most, if not all, of the leaders, however idealistic their professions, as ardent and incurable communalists. So long as communal intolerance stalks the land, we are faced with the task of resisting the sectarian claims of larger communal bodies, which might seek to overrun us at any time.130

Anthony recognised that the enlightened views of Nehru were neither reflective of the Congress as a whole, nor binding on subsequent generations of Indian political leaders. By contrast in the Constituent Assembly, and in line with Bajpai’s theory, Anthony’s rhetoric was increasingly inflected to mirror the kind of sentiments with which his audience of fellow Indian constitution makers desired to associate themselves. If Constituent Assembly members could imagine that communalism would be overcome by a neutral state which did less to recognise communal difference, such sentiment was less credible, even theoretically, when applied to caste-based oppression. Those who rejected communal measures for religious groups felt it necessary to grudgingly concede their necessity for ‘that section of Hindus … who are called Harijans … [i.e. Dalits, where they were] really backward … [However,] That too should be for some time only’.131 However, even in the Dalit case there was considerable opposition from some members to even transitional measures for Dalits. Shri Mahavir Tyagi objected: that when the idea of giving separate reservation to the scheduled castes was first introduced, the intention was that it should last only for twenty years. After that period they were expected to become absolutely one with the Hindus. It was in the year 1933 and now it is 1949 … According to the old scheme of the British Government reservation for the Scheduled Castes should go in 1952, why are we now giving it a further lease of ten years?132 Such opposition to even temporary measures help to explain why Ambedkar, who ‘personally was prepared to press for a larger time’, had accepted this compromise.133 The convenient fiction in the case of caste, which reflected the more genuine idealism of Gandhi himself, was that caste prejudice and the practice of untouchability could be purged from Indian society and politics within a single generation or short span of time. Even some Dalits themselves seemed to be overoptimistic about the possibility for rapid social change; as one of its signatories said the: Poona Pact … produced a great awakening in this country … one question was in the mind of everybody, whether … [it would] show signs of a change of heart by caste Hindus in this country. Today I may assure you, Sir, that that change has come, though not full 100 per cent, at least more than 50 per cent.134

Constituting the nation

241

Yet another speaker, displaying greater foresight, asked fellow members if ‘they really believe[d] that the grievous social disabilities under which these classes of people have been suffering for thousands of years will be removed in the coming ten years?’135 Creating a mechanism for the review and extension of the provisions for Dalits was further debated, but the headwinds against a longer period remained considerable. Thakur Das Bhargava stated his opposition to any measures for Dalits which were ‘not only for the first ten years but for all times … [which would] be a blot on our Constitution’.136 In this context, the Anglo-Indian case being about transitional measures was fundamental to its acceptance. Though measures concerning AngloIndians were discussed relatively infrequently (and at times overlooked entirely), there were repeated criticisms of special measures for one of the ‘most advanced communities in India’.137 Das Bhargava asserted that, having been ‘a member of the Minorities Committee’, based on his own recollections and subsequent consultations with ‘some of the prominent Members who took part’, that when the measures concerning Anglo-Indian reserved employment, education, and nominated seats had been decided ‘it was made absolutely clear that this … [would] be only for ten years’.138 He explained that ‘not want[ing] to disturb the agreement among our leaders we refrained from moving amendments’.139 Anthony attributed this agreement, whereby ‘the Congress Party meeting on the evening of 15th June [1949] … endorsed unanimously’ the retention of Articles 297 and 298, containing the Anglo-Indian safeguards, in unamended form, to his having made ‘many good friends among the Congress leaders and … back-benchers … [and through] ardent canvassing … secured the support of Dr. Ambedkar … Mr. K. M. Munshi … and others’.140 Anthony also asserted that though Patel ‘was away during this critical period for us’ he had written him an urgent letter and telegram, which had induced him to telephone Nehru on Anthony’s behalf.141 Whatever balance we accord to structural causes, Anthony’s own charismatic lobbying was certainly impressive, and he had even ‘been accorded the courtesy and privilege of attending the Party meetings’, though not a member of Congress.142 However, by late August Das Bhargava was objecting that ‘instead of ten years they are getting twelve and more’ and that the power of nomination of one or two seats to Anglo-Indians to be vested in the president and state governors, was being given no definite expiry, and such a singular and potentially perpetual measure ‘disfigured’ the constitution.143 Shri T. T. Krishnamachari countered ‘that he was trying to direct a heavy machine-gun against a small mosquito’ in regard to ‘merely a permissive provision’ which was not justiciable and remained at the sole ‘discretion’ of the president and governors.144 Krishnamachari asserted it ‘is a very small matter … [and] There is nothing wrong in allowing the Anglo-Indian community of India this very doubtful privilege which is conferred ex gratia by the executive of the day for a period longer than ten years if it be necessary’.145 Making it seem that any concessions to such a small group would have little impact on the Indian polity and society was an important element in the

242

Constituting the nation

success of the Anglo-Indian case more generally. Krishnamachari did not dwell on the possibility that the executive might find such nominations a useful form of patronage and a slight buttress to any government’s majority in a legislature – a subsequent unintended consequence observable from the fact that the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has since found it politic to foster and co-opt its own class of Anglo-Indian MLAs (i.e. members of state legislatures). However, Krishnamachari did make a very sympathetic case for the adjustment Anglo-Indians would have to make: while the Scheduled Castes are members of the Hindu Community and are part and parcel of ourselves … the Anglo Indians happen to be a distinct community. Because … we are supposed, in the years to come, to go farther and farther from the European civilization … The difference in the way of life of the Anglo-Indian community and in the way of life of the other communities of our country will be more and more glaring hereafter and the possibility of assimilation of the Anglo Indian community in the body-politic will be difficult. It all depends on whether our standards of living approximate to the ideas obtaining in the West … It would be cruel to ask these people to completely merge themselves in the body-politic of our country, if the future standards of life are … anything less than our present standards.146 Yet such levels of empathy were not the norm. Other minorities, such as the Gurkhas, expressed resentment at the exceptional treatment of Anglo-Indians. Despite being far behind Anglo-Indians ‘educationally and economically’,147 Gurkhas were another small culturally semi-detached group, trusted by the British to engage impartially in military and policing actions against all other Indians during civil unrest. Damber Singh Gurung, president of the All India Gurkha League, and their sole representative in the Constituent Assembly, made a strikingly similar case to Anthony. Defending his group from accusations that they had ‘been the stumbling block on the path to freedom’ he emphasised the importance of securing their disciplined military service to ‘Free India … to do the same thing as we were asked to do under the British … [defending the state against] any disrupter of the constitutionally established Government’.148 Like Anglo-Indians they were ‘scattered throughout India’, and having made willing sacrifices ‘to keep the British rule in India’ Gurung similarly rhetorically minimised their agency and criticised the British for putting them in the position of being seen as ‘butchers by Indians’ whilst ‘very sadly’ neglecting their interests.149 Gurung complained in the first session of Indian constitution making (prior to the dramatic post-Partition curtailment in minority rights) that: Before the election of Members to the Constituent Assembly … [we] approached the Congress High Command to give adequate representation to the Gurkhas too in the Constitution Assembly but our claim was

Constituting the nation

243

totally ignored and not a single seat was given for 30 lakhs of Gurkhas, whereas as many as 3 seats were given to the Anglo-Indians whose population is only 1 lakh 42 thousand in India. I do not think that Gurkhas will, any more, tolerate this kind of injustice … When the AngloIndians with only 1 lakh 42 thousand population have been recognised as a minority community, and Scheduled Castes among the Hindus have been recognised as a separate community, I do not see any reason why Gurkhas with 30 lakhs population should not be recognised as such. The Gurkhas whose total population including Nepal is 15 millions shall have to play a very very important part in Free India.150 Gurung concluded his appeal with an attack on Jinnah, stating ‘that no minority will support the fantastic claim for Pakistan … We stand for a united India’ and offered the services of the Gurkhas to ‘fight it out’ if it came to ‘civil war’.151 That Gurung had also approached the sovereign of an independent state (Nepal) for support, and linked the numerical strength of Gurkhas in India to their co-ethnic group across the border, was less well calculated to win concessions from Congress leaders. Yet it does further emphasise the need to locate structural reasons why Anglo-Indians were given such unique concessions.

The structural implications of minority recognition The politics of Anglo-Indian minority rights was, in other ways, intimately bound up with the treatment of other groups in Indian constitution making. If minority politics before Partition had been dominated by the HinduMuslim question, with Muslims being the primary beneficiary of both special representation and economic reservations policies by the colonial state, relations between caste Hindus and Dalits became the most significant arena for defining and curtailing the scope of minority group rights. At the structural level Anglo-Indians were the unexpected beneficiaries of a new, more limited minority group politics, centred on Dalits, and the imperatives of securing their position within Hinduism and the Indian nation. Sensitivity to the prior invocation of the untouchability issue by the departing imperial power, as well as to international opinion more generally, was combined with the Gandhian moral case for social reform. Gandhi’s definition of true Swaraj (self-rule) often placed greater emphasis on the ethical reformation of the individual than on the importance of the formal transfer of power itself. Yet, even he had been partly motivated to prioritise the issues of Dalits by the prospect that separate electorates (under the Communal Award of 1932) could remove the exploited and oppressed group from the Hindu fold. The concessions to Dalits – reserved seats under joint electorates, like the nominated seats for Anglo-Indians – ensured that the caste Hindu majority or those of their representatives who held the levers of power, would influence, if not control, the selection of these minority candidates. The challenge for the minority, that

244

Constituting the nation

its representatives might not be truly representative of the wishes of the group itself, was recognised by them at the time. The Minorities Sub-Committee at the Round Table Conference, whose members included Gidney and Ambedkar, had rejected reserved seats within joint electorates as providing ‘no guarantee that the representation would be genuine, but that it might, in its working, mean the nomination or … election of minority representatives by the majority communities’.152 Yet as under the Poona Pact, the price of special protections for Dalits was that once again they were structured so as to disincentivise a separatist politics for the group, and instead encourage a degree of dependence, underlying ideological and nationalist conformity and political patronage. However such minority candidates might pose politically and rhetorically, such a system set the stage for a politics of intermediating collaboration between elected governments (and the state machinery) and their putative constituents. In this role they might distribute loaves and fishes, but, at least by design, radical (or separatist) opposition to the government or the state in the name of their group would imperil their position to a greater degree than for their fellow parliamentarians. We need to understand the form of concessions granted to Dalits as structurally designed to retain them within the Hindu fold. Though comparatively of far less significance to the nation and to Congress leaders, the willingness to extend similar provisions to Anglo-Indians similarly moved to anchor the small group within the Indian nation, which may, like Kashmir, have been symbolically valuable in Nehru’s eyes, for projecting the vision of the pluralist, minority-endorsed, secular state he wished to bring into being. With Dalits the stakes were very high, and the very real price must have been considered worth paying – in part owing to the easily imagined alternatives, of mass religious defections and/or the condemnation of international opinion. The possibility of mass exodus of the nested group of Dalits from their contested inclusion within the larger Hindu group did indeed become a post-independence strategy for Ambedkar, who, after considering Sikhism, very publicly converted to Buddhism in 1956, seeking in the process to lead as many of his fellow Dalits as possible with him. In the eyes of Hindu nationalists, Buddhism and Sikhism were at least genuinely Indian religions. The prospect of mass conversions to Islam and Christianity, whose holy places lay outside of mother India, and despite their centuries-long syncretic presence in the subcontinent were to be constructed as eternally foreign, was perceived as a far greater danger. This is crucial to understanding the acceptability, if not the reasons for, the exceptional concessions made to Anglo-Indians as the only other group besides Dalits and Adivasis to be afforded a specific constitutionally defined and protected status. It helps to explain why the counterfactual possibility of the overlapping category of Christian subsuming that of Anglo-Indian was not a serious prospect. Recognition and special measures for Christians would, in some degree, facilitate or encourage Dalits to convert to Christianity. The issue of conversion, and the Christian asserted right to proselytisation as an essential component of their faith (which was

Constituting the nation

245

supported by Anglo-Indians), was one of the most controversial and contested issues in Indian politics at the time, and has remained so. Mr P. R. Thakur, a Dalit member of the Constituent Assembly, lamented ‘that the victims of these religious conversions are ordinarily from the Depressed Classes. The preachers of other religions approach these classes of people, take advantage of their ignorance, extend all sorts of temptations and ultimately convert them’, hoping that such practices would be constitutionally defined as ‘fraud’.153 The incentivisation of conversion, through charity, especially the provision of food for the hungry and the religious education of orphans, was attacked for its perceived coercion, and linked with fraud and acts of deception. Despite the official tenets of their faith, certain subgroups of Sikhs retained an awareness of their pre-conversion caste status, and in the cases of those of Dalit ancestry, remained subjects of discrimination, both within and outside of their religious group. Much the same often applied to converts to Christianity and Islam in South Asia. In some stages of Indian constitution making, there were proposals to include some such subgroups of Sikhs within the same reservation system being devised for Dalits. The ultimate abandonment of such provisions fit into the wider curtailment of minority group rights, but would also disincentivise Dalit conversions to Sikhism. The subsequent move to reverse this decision in a 1956 amendment which reinstated the inclusion of Dalit Sikhs to the protections of scheduled caste status does not alter our analysis of the original framing of the 1950 Constitution. With constitutional benefits dependent on their recognised status as Dalits conversion would now cause the immediate loss of those protections and, in the realities of the South Asian context, no commensurate emancipation from the oppressions of their Dalit background as they continued to be treated as de facto second-class Sikhs. Constitutionally recognising the Anglo-Indian group, rather than the broader category of Christian, held no such dangers for those seeking to retain Dalits as (albeit contested) members of the Hindu group (which was constructed as being at the core of the nation itself). Anthony’s reemphasis, at least as early as the Sapru Committee, of Anglo-Indians’ unique status as a racial minority, distanced them from increasingly discredited and detested religious minority communalism, and also highlighted the fact that whilst there might be blurring and crossings of the boundary between Anglo-Indians and their fellow Indian Christians, this was a difficult process for the individuals concerned, and there could be little or no moves from the Dalit group directly into the Anglo-Indian category. At the very least there was certain to be no prospect of mass conversion from any other group into the AngloIndian group. Anglo-Indian was thus a uniquely uncontentious category for formal state recognition and reserved employment, when viewed solely through the prism of the potential impact on religious conversions and the preservation of Hindus’ numerical dominance of the new nation through their retention of Dalits within the Hindu fold.

246

Constituting the nation

The small numbers of Anglo-Indians now also became an advantage, as the potentially highly symbolic co-opting of one minority came at a very low cost, in terms of the number and scale of reserved state and railway posts. Additionally, the changes taking place with both Partition and decolonisation, may have suggested advantages in retaining Anglo-Indians in their middling positions in the railways and other state services. Whilst a gradual process of ‘Indianisation’ had prepared a significant number of Indians to inherit the apparatus of the colonial state, especially the elite Indian Civil Service, there were considerable managerial deficits with the departure of British administrators and military officers. In fact, owing to the ultimately consensual nature of the ‘transfer of power’, and the acceptance by Nehru of the creation of two dominions as the transitional mechanism for sovereignty in 1947 and the life of India’s constitution-making Constituent Assembly (1946–50), there was a period in which many British officers and colonial administrators remained in place. Members of the armed services as well as the colonial state were given the opportunity to make an irrevocable choice as to which of the two new states they would serve. The new dominion of Pakistan was even more reliant on the retention of British officers to help create its own army from those individual soldiers and officers who opted for Pakistan. As Nehru and the bulk of the Congress leadership had so recently been imprisoned by the colonial state, their initial distrust of and distaste for the Indian ICS officers who had worked with and for the British was only to be expected. However, the acute crises they faced in Partition violence and the palpable sense of the fragility of the state with the breakdown in law and order which such mass violence and population movements entailed presented the more frightening prospect of a total loss of control. Naturally, they had to use the tools which were to hand, and the Mountbattens had done such remarkable work of personal diplomacy so as to win over Nehru to Commonwealth membership for India, and for Mountbatten to be invited to stay on for a year as governor general of the dominion. Indeed the criticism would be that the new Indian Republic created in 1950 owed too much to the colonial state; that the continuity of the civil service tended towards the perpetuation of an extractive police state with little or no experience of promoting broadly shared and based economic development or more than very limited public goods. For the areas in which Anglo-Indians worked, however, the British departure and the creation of Pakistan would compound a managerial deficit in these less prestigious branches of the former colonial state. Earlier in the century supervising positions on the railways were still being filled by Britons, whom Anglo-Indians were apt to complain were young and inexperienced. Such posts could be considered a lower order of patronage, for those unable to secure more prestigious positions, though officially such imported men were defended as bringing latest best-practice knowledge of railway developments from the metropole. Whilst army officers might ‘stay on’ beyond 1947, along with members of the planter class and employees of British mercantile

Constituting the nation

247

firms, Britons would no longer be occupying managerial posts in areas like this. Indianisation had provided a large number of Indian railway ‘subordinate’ officers who would now be promoted. However, the new state of Pakistan was keen to attract these men to run its railways. Until 1947 the two primary beneficiaries of the employment reservations for minorities had been Muslims, for whom the largest number of positions were reserved, and Anglo-Indians, whose percentages of employment in the more senior middle-management positions were being protected (however imperfectly). Thus Partition would denude India of the significant proportion of Muslims that the colonial state had positively discriminated in favour of for railway service, and Pakistan would seek to attract skilled and experienced Anglo-Indian railwaymen on more favourable terms. As can be seen in British Foreign Office files, some of the Anglo-Indians who opted to serve in Pakistan, most of whom would likely have been currently serving in or proximate to territory that would become Pakistan, would live to regret their choice.154 British officials reluctantly conceded that the Pakistani state deliberately frustrated the obtaining of Pakistani passports by non-Muslims, especially if they were thought to be desirous of emigration.155 The official Indian attitude to those who opted for Pakistan is that they had irrevocably lost their right to Indian citizenship and clearly indicated where their loyalties lay, but intellectually and practically Hindus and Sikhs on the Pakistani side of the new border were initially regarded as being Indian by default and judged differently. For our purposes here, it suffices to emphasise that with the loss of a great many Muslims, presumably all Britons, and a few Anglo-Indians from its railway services, the Indian state was in need of experienced railwaymen and managers. In this context the concession of a further extension of Anglo-Indianreserved railway posts in Indian constitution making to such a numerically small group appears even less costly. Anthony would even find that the continued reservations he unexpectedly secured were not fully utilised by Anglo-Indians in the years following independence. By 1953 Anthony was lecturing his constituents on how, despite widespread unemployment within the community, he had ‘extract [ed] figures from the Railways … show[ing] that hundreds of vacancies reserved for Anglo-Indians … [had] not been filled’ and the same was true ‘in the P&T Department’.156 Equally, although perceived privilege is usually resented by those currently excluded from and subordinated to it, the perpetuation of the status quo is seldom as politically costly or problematic as a policy that creates new classes of direct winners and losers. There was no other class here to be displaced from their current positions; rather, continued employment reservations for Anglo-Indians meant a continuation of present practice, amidst a time of serious challenges and uncertainties, not least for the trains that contributed to the colossal population exchanges taking place, and subject to the violent attacks of roving bands of communal paramilitaries. One last largely counterfactual consideration was the alternative to granting Anglo-Indian demands. The cost of placating Anthony, we have argued, was not great in material terms for Indian constitution makers or the new

248

Constituting the nation

state. Nor did it affect the crucial logic of wider minority policies, being defined as transitional (like the measures for Dalits), which was of intellectual significance, and having no impact on the fraught issues of securing Dalits as a nested category of the nation’s majority group (largely coterminous with the cultural and ethnic definitions of the nation) and preventing their defection by religious conversion. So, what might have been the anticipated cost of rejecting Anglo-Indian demands in their entirety? Anglo-Indians were possessed of some key forms of cultural and social capital, their command of English being of particular significance. Additionally, in their national leaders AngloIndians had been blessed with headstrong, persistent, and highly vocal advocates. Both Gidney and Anthony had lobbied hard at the imperial metropole, and neither could be easily silenced by the departing British or Congress leaders. Gidney had been devastated by the Cripps mission, and Anthony had been similarly disappointed by declining official British interest in acting on AngloIndians’ behalf amidst the broader issues of their ultimately precipitous withdrawal. Yet Gidney had been immensely successful in courting the attention of the international Anglophone press (gaining coverage in British and Australasian newspapers) and British parliamentarians. Though Anglo-Indians were not an elite group (their privilege in India had been relative), their social and cultural capital remained such that they would be able to continue to draw attention to their situation after independence, especially if they had been able to marshal the emotive rhetoric of their complete abandonment by the British being compounded by what they would have depicted as the depredations, dispossessions, and discriminations of a hostile majority. Though even Anthony’s communal nationalist formula and his impressive constitutional concessions from the Congress leaders were not sufficient to prevent a significant scale of Anglo-Indian emigration in the post-independence period, a more desperate and wholesale attempt to abandon the new Indian nation en masse, in fear and panic, would have been of considerable embarrassment to Nehru, India, and the British. It would have attracted negative international press attention of significant resonance and symbolism in Britain and, from the perspective of the two states (Britain and India), wholly disproportionate to the size of the group. Whether this counterfactual projection persuades us with its realism or not, it is sufficient for such a possibility to have been entertained by Indian leaders, whilst being weighed against the costs of securing Anthony as a loyal advocate of the new Indian nation and of the Nehruvian project of a culturally pluralist, secular democratic state.

Notes 1 Anglo-Indian Review (November 1947), p. 2. 2 R. Bajpai, Debating Difference: Group Rights and Liberal Democracy in India (Oxford, 2011), p. 23. 3 The Constitution of India (1st edn, 1950), Article 335.

Constituting the nation

249

4 Ibid., Article 336 (1). 5 ‘Examination by the Royal Commission on Labour on a Memorandum Submitted by the Ajmer Provincial Branch of the A.-I. & D. E. Association, AllIndia Burma, on Behalf of Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Employees of the B. B. & C. I. Railway Metre Gauge on the 12th November, 1929’, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (December 1929), pp. 34–5. 6 Ibid., p. 35. 7 ‘Memorandum Submitted by the Bombay Provincial Branch of the AngloIndian and Domiciled European Association, All-India and Burma, for the Consideration of the Chairman and Members of the Royal Commission on Labour in India’, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (December 1929), p. 44. 8 NAI, Home Department, Establishment Branch, Progs., no. 389, part-I (1932), Serial nos. 1–7: ‘Representations from the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association, All-India and Burma, Regarding the Employment of AngloIndians, in the Public Services’, Serial no. 5. – Office Memorandum from the Railway Department, no. 1399-E.G. (13 February 1933), Government of India letter (September 1928), pp. 16–17. 9 Ibid., Serial nos. 3–5, C. Trivedi (20 March 1933), para. 3, p. 4. 10 Ibid., Serial no. 6 – O. M. from the Railway Department, no. 1399-E.G. (23 March 1933), M. Hallett (13 April 1933), p. 4. 11 Ibid., Serial no. 6, H. Haig (29 April 1933), para. 3, p. 5. 12 Week (2 August 1928), cited inAnglo-Indian Review (September 1928), p. 11. 13 Bengalee (24 July 1928), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1928), p. 11. 14 Calcutta Commercial Gazette (30 July 1928), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1928), p. 13. 15 Englishman (21 June and 5 July 1928), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (August 1928), p. 4. 16 Ibid. 17 Ibid. 18 Englishman (23 July 1928), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1928), p. 9. 19 Ibid. 20 See, e.g., ‘Anglo-Indian: A Misused Term’, Times (London, 12 September 1933), p. 8. 21 ‘Mr. Gandhi’s Claims’, Times (London, 20 November 1931), p. 15. 22 Anglo-Indian Review (October 1929), p. 5. 23 Ibid., p. 6. 24 ‘The Problem of Minorities in India, with Special Reference to the Anglo-Indian Community: Address by Lt.-Col. H. A. J. Gidney, M.L.A.: At a Meeting of the Empire Parliamentary Association, at the Rooms of the Association, Westminster Hall, on 5th February, 1931’, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (May 1931), p. 7. 25 My emphasis; Anglo-Indian Review (October 1929), p. 5. 26 ‘The Problem of Minorities in India’, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (May 1931), p. 9. 27 Anglo-Indian Review (May 1932), p. 1. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., p. 2. 30 Ibid. 31 ‘Speech Delivered by Colonel Sir Henry Gidney before the Informal Minorities’ Meeting and Mr. Gandhi on the 5th October, 1931’, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (November 1931), p. 16. 32 Anglo-Indian Review (September 1932), p. 16. 33 ‘The Problem of Minorities in India’, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (May 1931), p. 11. 34 Ibid.

250 35 36 37 38 39 40

41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50

51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65

Constituting the nation Ibid. Cited in ibid. Ibid. JCICR, Volume IIC: Minutes of Evidence, question 16,195, p. 1992. Ibid. ‘Memorandum on the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Community Submitted by the Associated Chambers of Commerce of India’, cited in Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform [Session 1932–3], Volume IIA, Minutes of Evidence Given before the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform (London, 1934), Appendix B., pp. 657–60. ‘Lord Lloyd’s Speech’ at a Luncheon for Gidney Given by the London AngloIndian Association, at Cordwainer’s Hall, with British and Indian Guests, and Chaired by Lloyd, ‘on Friday, December 13th’, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (January 1936), p. 13. HL Deb 18 July 1935, vol 98, col 577. HL Deb 18 July 1935, vol 98, col 574. HL Deb 18 July 1935, vol 98, col 578. HL Deb 24 July 1935, vol 98, col 840. Lord Eustace Percy’s ‘statement, on behalf of the Government’, cited in Madras Mail, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (February 1936), p. 12. F. Sheldon, ‘The New Anglo-India and Its Economic Problems’, Anglo-Indian Review (February 1936), p. 13. ‘Lord Lloyd’s Speech’, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (January 1936), p. 13. F. Anthony, Will Britain Tarnish Her Honour? (Being a Brief Review of the History, Present Position and Needs of the Anglo-Indian Community in India and of Britain’s Solemn Obligations to the Community) (New Delhi, handwritten 1943), p. 31. NAI, Central Board of Revenue Department, Customs Establishments Branch, File no. Progs., nos. 28-C.E. (1936), ‘Complaints of Sir Henry Gidney Regarding the Working of the Home Department Resolution of 4th July 1934 so Far as Anglo-Indians Are Concerned’, Unofficial Memorandum, Home Department, File no. F.14/17/35-Ests(s) (30 January 1936), ‘Copy of extract from a letter from Mr. E. Bower, M.L.A., to Sir Henry Gidney, dated 6.9.35’, p. 8. Anthony, Will Britain Tarnish Her Honour?, p. 31. Ibid. NAI, Railways Department, Establishment Branch, File no. 1059-EG-2027, part B (1920), ‘Discontinuance of the practice of granting rates of pay higher than the minima (i) to Europeans and Anglo-Indians and (ii) to Graduates’, Serial nos. 20–22: Office Memorandum, Finance Department (29 November 1932); Director, Railways Board to Agents of various Railways and other senior officials (4 February 1933); and ‘Extract from Notes on the Finance Department File No. F.38-XXVII-Ex.I/32.’; pp. 2–5. Wallace, Life of Sir Henry Gidney, pp. 244–5. Ibid., p. 245. Ibid., p. 243. Ibid., p. 242. Ibid. Ibid., p. 245. Ibid., p. 242. Anthony, Will Britain Tarnish Her Honour?, p. 27. Ibid. Wallace, Life of Sir Henry Gidney, p. 243. Ibid. JCICR, Volume IIC: Minutes of Evidence, question 16,194, p. 1992.

Constituting the nation 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

251

Wallace, Life of Sir Henry Gidney, p. 243. Ibid., p. 244. Ibid. Ibid., p. 258. Anglo-Indian Review (May 1943), p. 5. Cited in ibid. Anglo-Indian Review (February 1943), pp. 15–18. Ibid., pp. 15–16. Ibid., pp. 15–17. ‘Anglo-India’, Daily Post (5 February 1943), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (March 1943), p. 13. Ibid. Original emphasis removed; ibid. ‘Minutes of the Governing Body Meeting Held on the 11th February, 1943, at 6:30 p.m. at the Anglo-Indian Club, New Delhi’, ‘Mr. Few’s Letter, Dated 21st December, 1942’, para. 10, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (March 1943), p. 18. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Minutes of the Meeting of the Governing Body of the A.-I. & D.E. Association, All-India and Burma, Held on the 5th March, 1943, at 6:30 p.m., at the AngloIndian Club, New Delhi’, ‘Confirmation of Minutes’, para. 1, cited in Anglo-Indian Review (March 1943), p. 18. Ibid. Ibid., p. 19. Ibid. Original emphasis removed; Anglo-Indian Review (May 1943), pp. 15–16. Anthony, Will Britain Tarnish Her Honour?, p. 34. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid. Anglo-Indian Review (November 1947), p. 1. Cited in T. Sapru et al., Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee (Bombay, 1945), chapter VII: Minorities and Fundamental Rights, para. 357, p. 250. Cited in ibid., para. 354, p. 249. Cited in ibid. Ibid., para. 355, p. 249. Ibid., para. 356, p. 250. Cited in ibid., para. 357, p. 251. BL, OIOC, L/PJ/7/7880, Telegram from F. Anthony, New Delhi, to the Secretary of State for India, London, CD202/VWK1246/H (received: 5 July 1945), pp. 1–4, 6–8. Anglo-Indian Review (June 1943), p. 3. BL, OIOC, L/PJ/7/7880, Anthony to Secretary of State (1945), p. 1. Ibid. BL, OIOC, L/PO/10/22, Private and Secret Weekly Letters between the Secretary of State for India and the Viceroy (printed), no. 78, Secretary of State for India to the Viceroy (8 November 1945), para. 6, pp. 323–4. Anglo-Indian Review (April 1936), p. 3. Anglo-Indian Review (June 1943), p. 3. Anthony, Will Britain Tarnish Her Honour? Anthony, Britain’s Betrayal in India. Anglo-Indian Review (November 1947), p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 2.

252

Constituting the nation

108 NAUK, CAB/67/5/23, Secret: W.P.(G)(40)73, ‘War Cabinet: Congress and the War: Memorandum by the Secretary of State for India’ (11 March 1940), Copy no. 13, ‘Appendix A. Telegram from the Governor-General to Secretary of State for India, Dated March 8, 1940’, para. 4, p. 1. 109 CAD, vol. 1, part 1 (9 December 1946), the Chairman (Dr Sachchidananda Sinha), p. 9. 110 Ibid., vol. 9, part 18 (25 August 1949), Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava (East Punjab), p. 11. 111 Ibid., vol. 1, part 3 (11 December 1946), the Chairman, p. 21. 112 Ibid., vol. 5, part 8 (27 August 1947), Mr F. R. Anthony (C. P. & Berar), p. 7. 113 Ibid., the Honourable Sardar Vallabhbhai J. Patel (Bombay), p. 2. 114 Bajpai, Debating Difference, p. 19. 115 Ibid., p. 23. 116 CAD, vol. 1, part 9 (19 December 1946), Mr Somnath Lahiri (Bengal), p. 8. 117 Ibid., vol. 2, part 2 (21 January 1947), Mr R. V. Dhulekar (United Provinces), p. 15. 118 Ibid., vol. 5, part 8, Patel, p. 3. 119 Bajpai, Debating Difference, p. 23. 120 J. Brown, Nehru: A Political Life (New Haven, CT, 2003), p. 35. 121 J. Nehru, Toward Freedom: The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru (New York, 1941), pp. 20–1. 122 See Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism, pp. 84–5. 123 Statesman (27 or 28 August 1929), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1929), p. 6. 124 H. Gidney to the Editor of the Statesman (Simla, 31 August 1929), cited in Anglo-Indian Review (September 1929), p. 6. 125 Anglo-Indian Review (September 1929), p. 6. 126 Wallace, Life of Sir Henry Gidney, p. 225. 127 CAD, vol. 7, part 4 (8 November 1948), the Honourable Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (United Provinces), p. 30. 128 See ‘House of the People: Debate on the President’s Address: Mr. Anthony’s Speech: India and Communism’, cited in Review (February 1953), pp. 6–8. 129 Ibid. 130 Anthony, Will Britain Tarnish Her Honour?, p. 35. 131 CAD, vol. 7, part 16 (30 November 1948), Dr Dharam Prakash (United Provinces), p. 20. 132 Ibid., vol. 8, part 9 (26 May 1949), Shri Mahavir Tyagi (United Provinces), p. 28. 133 Ibid., vol. 9, part 18 (25 August 1949), the Honourable Dr B. R. Ambedkar (Bombay), p. 21. 134 Ibid., vol. 5, part 8, Shri V. I. Muniswami Pillai (Madras), p. 6. 135 Ibid., vol. 9, part 18, Dr Monomohon Das (West Bengal), p. 8. 136 Ibid., vol. 8, part 13 (1 June 1949), Pandit Thakur Das Bhargava (East Punjab), p. 32. 137 Ibid., vol. 9, part 18, Das Bhargava, p. 11. 138 Ibid. 139 Ibid. 140 Review (July 1949), p. 16. 141 Ibid. 142 Ibid. 143 CAD, vol. 9, part 18, Das Bhargava, p. 11. 144 Ibid., Shri T. T. Krishnamachari (Madras), p. 13. 145 Ibid., p. 14. 146 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 147 Ibid., vol. 1, part 9 (19 December 1946), Mr Damber Singh Gurung (Bengal), p. 19. 148 Ibid.

Constituting the nation 149 150 151 152

153 154 155 156

253

Ibid. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid. NAUK, CAB/24/224, ‘Indian Round Table Conference: 12th November, 1930– 19th January, 1931: (Sub-Committees’ Reports; Conference Resolution; and Prime Minister’s Statement)’ (London 1931), ‘Sub-Committee No. III (Minorities). Report Presented at Meetings of the Committee of the Whole Conference, held on 16th and 19th January, 1931’, para. 7, p. 47. CAD, vol. 3, part 4 (1 May 1947), Mr P. R. Thakur (Bengal), p. 18. NAUK, DO/35/6163, ‘Confidential: The Plight of ANGLO-INDIANS in East Pakistan and Elsewhere’, notes by A. Ross (7 January 1953), pp. 1–3. Ibid., GNL 19/199/1., J. Murray, UK High Commission, Karachi, to A. Morley, CRO, London (11 March 1954), para. 4, p. 1. Original emphasis removed; Review (October/November 1953), p. 14.

Epilogue

[On] … the Anglo-Indian,/Anglo-Burman problem … The position of these communities is tragic. They grew up in a certain milieu – the British Empire in Asia – which has disappeared practically overnight. They must inevitably adjust themselves to a new environment; either to the new India and Burma, where they cannot expect to retain their old privileged position … or they must uproot themselves entirely, throw aside all their notions of soft living, and brace themselves to face and master the severer conditions of life in more advanced countries with a temperate climate. Many of the abler and more energetic ones will be able to transplant themselves, but I am certain in my own mind that the majority of these communities will be far better off in the long run if they resign themselves to absorption into the general society of the country of their origin. They will no doubt have to face an extremely disagreeable few years … Many of them will probably make matters worse for themselves by attempting to cling to their former habits.1 Peter Murray, 1949

Imperial retreat For many Anglo-Indians, the Second World War brought a high point of opportunities and affluence. It also reemphasised the claims of the majority to an identity and a destiny more interwoven with Britain and its empire than with the idea of an Indian nation. The openings that eventually became accessible for Anglo-Indians to serve in the war effort, to engage in racial passing, and for women to engage in hypergamy were unprecedented. The group could now aspire to almost full employment and a range of middling and higher salaries, and for the large part of the domiciled group the embrace of this was no mere mercenary calculation, but a wholehearted validation of their perceptions of self and of what they desired to be. Any such broadly framed interpretation is, by its nature, a generalisation. Discordantly, the Anglo-Indian Captain Cyril John Stracey rose to become a colonel and ‘senior staff officer in the INA’, reporting directly to Subhas Chandra Bose.2 Bose rejected Gandhian non-violence entirely and sought to expel the British by force in collaboration with the Axis powers, and fought alongside the

Epilogue

255

Japanese in Southeast Asia, Burma, and eastern India. As one of his vice presidents noted, given Gidney’s ‘mendicancy and obsequiousness at times’ in expressing ‘Anglo-Indian loyalty to the British … A Col. Stracey in the I.N.A. was beyond his imagination’.3 Most Anglo-Indians would have been more likely to share Gidney’s outlook, but even for some of these the experience of serving alongside Britons, especially those who had little conception of India and no awareness of the existence of a mixed race Anglophone group, could also cause alienation from Britain and moments of solidarity and identification with India as home. In 1946, in the aftermath of the war, the recently elected Labour prime minister Clement Attlee sent three members of his cabinet to treat with Indian leaders and devise a plan for the British to hand over power. Their initial proposals, presented to Congress and the Muslim League on 16 May, envisaged a unitary Dominion of India as a loose confederation with two highly autonomous groupings of Hindu-majority and Muslim-majority provinces, which would balance one another at the federal centre. Unable to secure agreement on this basis, the Cabinet mission urgently telegrammed Attlee’s government requesting ‘some plan of action … against the contingency of a failure to reach an agreement’ between the Muslim League and Congress.4 They had concluded that British ‘military and civil resources in India were insufficient to enable … [a] policy of repression’ if faced with ‘widespread opposition sponsored and directed by Congress’, yet feared that any sudden complete withdrawal in such circumstances ‘would produce administrative chaos, famine and civil war’.5 Ideas for a phased withdrawal were treated with scepticism, nor did they approve of referring the matter to the fledgling United Nations. The Cabinet mission and the viceroy (Wavell) instead: both recommended that in the situation envisaged the best course would be to allow the six Hindu provinces of Madras, Bombay, Central Provinces, United Provinces, Bihar and Orissa to become self-governing in every respect, but to maintain for the time being the existing constitution in the remainder of British India, and the existing relations with certain of the Indian [Princely] States. This would mean in effect granting independence to Southern and Central India and maintaining the existing position in North-West and North-East India.6 The mission asked for the immediate response of the British Cabinet to these proposals as ‘a dangerous situation might arise quite suddenly and it might then become necessary for prompt action to be taken, with little time for consultation with … London, as any hesitation might endanger the lives of Europeans in India’.7 As Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary, astutely observed, what the Cabinet was ‘really [being] asked to accept is Pakistan’ and that no prior British government had ‘favoured that’ solution.8 Attlee continued to express aversion to conceding Pakistan, but firmly grasped that

256

Epilogue

the final recommendation of the Cabinet mission was that in the ‘last resort’ Britain would have to ‘abandon Hindustan, defend [the] Moslem Provinces & maintain [the] central Gov[ernmen]t’.9 The reports from Wavell indicated he was ‘seeking [a] middle course between repression & scuttle’ after concluding the former was ‘hopeless’.10 The deputy prime minister, Herbert Morrison, appeared to invoke the prospect of another Jallianwala Bagh – if the British appeared weak-willed and indecisive Indians might conclude they had ‘no guts’, and the situation could deteriorate, resulting in a ‘massacre’.11 Once again the Raj would have to rely on bluff, or as Morrison put it ‘propaganda’ and ‘firm talking’, on the part of the Cabinet mission.12 Attlee noted that they were being ‘Told [that a] crisis may arise in the next few days’.13 Hugh Dalton, chancellor of the exchequer, warned colleagues to ‘Beware of [the] words – repression, [and] scuttle’, but these two polarised alternatives were being presented as the only options if no deal could be made and the imperial state faced the prospect of losing control.14 Domestic political considerations and the threat of a colossal loss of international prestige militated against either course, but it was judged that ‘economically, financially, [and] militarily’ Britain could not afford to deploy significant reserves of British ‘troops … in lengthy operations’.15 If the British were to announce their firm intention to stay in India until a settlement between the parties was reached, warned James Chuter-Ede, the home secretary, they would need 200,000 additional British troops ‘almost at once’ and if there was ‘widespread trouble further re-inforcements’ [sic] would soon need to follow.16 Atlee’s Cabinet interrogated ‘the Chiefs of Staff and Field Marshal Auchinleck … [on] the military implications of the proposals put forward by the Cabinet Mission’.17 Auchinleck estimated they would need ‘4–5’ additional divisions to restore order after ‘trouble had broken out’, but they did not have ‘enough B. [i.e. British] troops to put down [a] general rising’.18 There were two brigades in Malaya and one in Palestine, further redeployments would mean withdrawing from Greece or Palestine. Attlee would also have been aware that the majority of British servicemen stationed in Asia, exhausted by the fighting of World War II, had voted him into office precisely with the expectation that it would help to secure their early demobilisation. Without the co-operation of Congress, Auchinleck suggested, British ‘withdrawal … would become an operation of war and it was impossible to predict precisely how it would be achieved’.19 Nonetheless, contingency ‘Plans had been made’,20 and ‘tried out on paper’,21 particularly in anticipation of anti-European violence. The Army, the ‘only non-communal organ[isation] … in India’, was not expected to mutiny, but it was considered ‘unwise to count on [its] Hindu element’ and there were ‘few separate units’.22 British troop numbers were judged insufficient to ‘control munition dumps or factories’.23 The breakdown plan therefore called for a staged evacuation. Europeans would be guarded in ‘keeps’; Britons, ‘Europeans, Anglo-Indians & some Indians requiring prot[ection]’ would be collected at ‘centres … eventually to evacuate … [from] ports to U.K. or to Pakistan’.24 The plans also provided

Epilogue

257

‘for holding key airports’, but ‘If Congress [was] hostile’ communications were expected to ‘be paralysed’.25 The British troops guarding concentrations of European, Anglo-Indian, and chosen loyalist civilians would ‘fight it out or wait to be extricated … by air to ports’ from whence they would be evacuated, many to the Muslim-majority provinces, where the Raj would make its last stand in the subcontinent.26 Indian Muslims were thought likely to ‘welcome’ the British ‘in Pakistan … because [they would be] frightened of Hindustan’ who could be expected to ‘attack in say 5’ years, and ‘to invite foreign aid’.27 Auchinleck was perhaps alluding to the left wing of Congress inviting Soviet intervention, as Bevin would later refer to Stalin’s implied threat of a ‘separatist movem[ent] … in India’ and link it to concerns over the ‘defence of N. W. India’.28 Alan Brooke, chief of the imperial general staff, highlighted indications ‘of slight[ly] increased concent[rations] … of Sov[iet] … troops north of Afghanistan’, and Bevin added that Soviet ‘agents [were] moving down via Persia’.29 Whilst all prudent governments engage in contingency planning, the seriousness of these discussions underlines the uncertainty about what would happen in the final stages of decolonisation. Whether Britain would be able to stage a seemingly orderly and suitably ceremonious end to their formal rule in India, or would face a humiliating rout, put the questions of the smaller minorities in the shade. Attlee’s Cabinet concluded that they could not afford to commit ‘British troops to a long series of operations in India’, nor exclude the possibility of approaching the United States or the United Nations for help. They also expressed a revealing priority: We must at all costs avoid a situation in which we had to withdraw from India under circumstances of ignominy after there had been widespread riots and attacks on Europeans. It must be clear that we were going freely and not under compulsion.30 This imperative is critical to an understanding of Mountbatten’s brief in 1947 when Attlee appointed him as the last viceroy, with plenipotentiary powers, charged with extricating the British with dignity. His dramatic bringing forward of the date of independence and concealment of the line of the border being drawn until after the handover was calculated to minimise the appearance of British responsibility for the communal violence which would accompany and follow Partition. Neither the new Labour government, nor its Cabinet mission, nor Mountbatten, had much time or thought for one of India’s smallest minorities. This provides a crucial context for understanding the seeming indifference of British policymakers and actors to Anglo-Indians. However, it makes it all the more revealing that Auchinleck’s breakdown plan included the evacuation of Anglo-Indians as secondary to that of Britons and Europeans. Other Indian groups in this context were an afterthought, they might have included Parsis, wealthy loyalists, or Muslims also seeking evacuation to Pakistan. It was reminiscent of what had happened during the withdrawal from Burma,

258

Epilogue

when the imperial authorities had been sensitive to the charge of ‘racial or class’ discrimination in leaving behind large numbers of Indians, whilst prioritising ‘the problem[s] of Europeans, Anglo-Indians, and high-class Indians’.31 Official protestations that dismissed Indian claims that Britons and Europeans were being evacuated first, and Anglo-Indians (and Anglo-Burmans) second, rang hollow. Both actual and planned evacuations seemed to convey that in a crisis, Anglo-Indians were regarded as an extension of the British/ European group, or at least a group for which the British retained the most responsibility after their own people. Imperial internal security plans had long prioritised ‘the protection of European and Anglo-Indian lives and interests in the event of serious trouble amounting to a rebellion … [in which] British civilians, and loyalists generally’ would be most at risk.32 If, as late as 1938, Anglo-Indian had intended to refer to colonial Britons here, then that only serves to emphasise the boundary-blurring potential of the category the mixed race group had secured for themselves in 1919. Though the fate of Anglo-Indians was but a small matter amongst these tumultuous considerations, a plausible argument would be that in extreme circumstances the British felt an obligation towards the mixed race group, but they would rather hand over Anglo-Indians to a responsible Indian government prepared to work for their integration into the new national state. Such a solution would salve British consciences and mitigate any future financial liability. Attlee’s government rejected approaches from Anglo-Indians outside of Anthony’s Association, which had embraced a constitutional future for the group within India and opposed Anglo-Indian emigration. The interests of Nehru, Attlee, and Anthony therefore coincided in that settlement of the ‘Anglo-Indian question’. This did not prevent waves of Anglo-Indian emigration, predominantly to Britain and later Australia (though including New Zealand, Canada, and to a lesser extent the United States). Anthony attempted to persuade Anglo-Indians to reject emigration and not to seek to retain any British status which he warned would disbar them from employment under the reservations he had achieved for them in state service. Anthony was also worried that those most likely to leave were the affluent and successful individuals and their families, the kinds of people who had provided role models, benefactors, and leadership in regional Anglo-Indian politics. Yet the barriers for Anglo-Indians to a) retaining British subjecthood after independence and, b) more onerously, acquiring British citizenship and passports, were considerable. They generally revolved around the construction of law, again drawing dividing lines around issues like legitimacy and the more practical problem of locating documentary evidence concerning distant European progenitors.

Anglo-Burman divergence A detailed history of the closely overlapping and intertwined group of mixed race people in Burma, which included both ethnic Anglo-Indians and ethnic

Epilogue

259

Anglo-Burmans, must be the subject of a separate study. However, the group’s divergent experience of the end of empire is highly revealing. The mixed race population in Burma had been politically designated as Anglo-Indians prior to Burma’s constitutional separation from India in the 1935 Government of Burma Act. Anticipating this, Charles Haswell Campagnac (1886–1970), an ethnic Anglo-Indian of Burmese domicile married to an ethnic Anglo-Burman, had astutely demanded the conjoined group’s redesignation as Anglo-Burmans. Encouraged by a Burmese member of the ICS (later Burma’s first minister of foreign affairs), U Tin Tut, at a conference in Simla in 1944,33 and the civic nationalist vision of the Burmese leader Aung San,34 Campagnac’s AngloBurman Union had initially adopted an analogue of Anthony’s communal nationalism. However, Aung San and Tin Tut were both assassinated and superseded by uncompromisingly ethnonationalist Burmese politicians, creating a climate of civil ethnic conflict and, ultimately, a large-scale insurrection by the large and partly Christian Karen minority. Having already discovered that Anglo-Burmans were to lose any special status and all state support for their education during the final stages of Burmese constitution making, Campagnac secretly approached the British in 1947 requesting that they grant passports to all Anglo-Burmans (and AngloIndians) in Burma, and finance their collective resettlement in an Anglo-Burman colony in the Shan states of Burma, or in conjunction with Anglo-Indians in the Andaman Islands, or elsewhere in the empire (for example, Australia).35 He specifically emphasised that ‘Unlike [Anglo-Indians,] their brethren in India, the position of Anglo-Burmans … [had] altered fundamentally’.36 Campagnac asked that the British accept Burmese customary unions as conferring legitimacy for the purpose of claims to a British status, and hoped to persuade the British to accept all those who fell under the 1935 Government of Burma Act designation of Anglo-Burman (precisely copied from the parallel definition of Anglo-Indians in the 1935 India Act). As a British civil servant tellingly noted in the margin of a file in 1949 – Campagnac: wants the illegitimate descendants of King Thibaw’s French, Italian & German adventurers and & their Burmese concubines to be recognised as British subjects (which would now mean as Citizens of the UK) on the same level as the sons of Englishmen or of Anglo-Indians born in British India. I do not think … [the Foreign Office] will look at the idea – why should they?37 Since Burmese independence there had been official opposition to ‘any wide extension of British nationality to Anglo-Burmans’.38 One official in Rangoon opposed to any wider extension of the practice of granting assisted passage to Anglo-Burmans as distressed British subjects was grateful to have been granted the discretion ‘to be economical with taxpayers’ money, and also not to send to the U.K. totally unsuitable persons for settling there – as

260

Epilogue

undoubtedly some of our applicants are’.39 The official gave instances of ‘numbers of married women and girls of very dark Anglo-Indian or in some cases Goanese-Indian extraction, who have a daughter or sister who managed to marry some British soldier in Rangoon’.40 Even with such a close relation having migrated to the UK, family reunions were not to be aided when the daughter or sister was ‘obviously living in a poor quarter in some big town, or even … Married Quarters in Army barracks, where they can clearly not guarantee accommodation’.41 Absent was any recognition that although ‘against the law, a colour bar … exist[ed] in many residential areas in London and other cities … [and] that non-white workers … [had] to congregate in slum areas’.42 Most revealingly, the desire for assisted passage was presented as ‘a big’ problem and likely to grow:43 if Burma and India continue to go the way they are going, with commercial prospects for Europeans and Eurasians and general living conditions deteriorating, corruption and nationalist prejudice increasing … There may also be an increasing exodus of British subjects of all kinds from China and other parts of S.E.Asia. It will be hard enough for the small British Isles to absorb all the pure-European types … much less accommodate thousands upon thousands of Anglo.Indians [sic], AngloBurmese and Anglo-Chinese etc, some of whom are poor specimens of humanity incapable of pulling their weight or even earning their real keep in [Britain] … Then thousands of these people, born and brought up for several generations in more easy-going, sub-tropical conditions will pine to go back to Asia – and is the poor British taxpayer to find millions of pounds and hundreds of ships to do this for them, supposing the new Republics will let them return – which may be doubtful?44 Nonetheless, a letter in October 1949 by R. Dunbar at the Foreign Office enunciated a policy agreed with the Home Office, which aimed at a relaxation of legal barriers to the retention of a British status: Since there is no possibility of any amendment of the Burma Independence Act for the purpose of giving the offspring of ‘unions according to Burmese custom’ the right to retain British nationality, all that can be done is to relax our requirements in the matter of evidence of legitimate descent from a father or paternal grandfather born in British territory outside Burma.45 What came to be known as ‘the Dunbar ruling’46 gave British Consular officials wide discretion to treat as legitimate the offspring of marriages before the baptism of the child, on the basis of baptismal records alone (i.e. without marriage certificates). Foreign Office officials often suggested that Anglo-Indians in Burma who were not eligible to be Burmese or British citizens had an unexercised

Epilogue

261

(theoretical) legal right to claim citizenship in India or Pakistan, with the implication that they should migrate to India or Pakistan. However, the Dunbar ruling gave an advantage (in claims to British subjecthood and citizenship) to political Anglo-Burmans who were ethnic Anglo-Indians, or as a later embassy dispatch more neatly put it ‘Anglo-Indians of Burmese domicile’.47 Individual cases where assisted passage was granted suggest that the primary concerns were that would-be migrants had family already in the UK, would have accommodation upon arrival, and the means to earn a living. Social capital measured in terms of professional qualifications and experience as well as cultural proximity to Britishness were more significant than colour as means of discriminating between candidates. Colour remained consequential, however, as ‘appearance’ was often taken as evidence of claims to ‘United Kingdom ancestry’ where documentation was lacking.48 However, other desirable signifiers of social capital included factors like one candidate having a brother already serving ‘in the Royal Air Force’ in Britain.49 Assisted passage had been available to British subjects who were in ‘distressed’ financial circumstances and had no funds with which to return to the UK. Embassy officials in Rangoon pressured London in 1953 as ‘a matter of urgency’ for the adoption of a: more liberal repatriation policy … recommend[ing] that, in future, AngloBurmese British subjects, (including Anglo-Indians of Burmese domicile), who are employable but unable to obtain employment in Burma by reason of Burmese labour policies … be granted passage loans to enable them to re-settle in the United Kingdom or other suitable territory.50 The more liberal policy would not extend, however, to the ‘many AngloBurmese and Anglo-Indians’ who had taken ‘Burmese nationality and merged themselves in the Burmese way of life’ as a consequence of ‘the resolution passed at the Simla Conference in 1944 by the then leaders of the AngloBurman community … [for whom] Her Majesty’s Government have no responsibility’.51 It was only those who had rejected British pressure at the time to become Burmese that might now be helped. Even in 1947 the British Foreign Office had recognised that some Anglo-Burmans would seek to emigrate, and approached the Australian government, who upheld the White Australia Policy by only considering ‘applications for admission … by AngloBurmans who are predominantly of European descent … on the merits of each individual case, having regard to the applicant’s character, occupation, financial standing etc.’.52 From ‘1949’ sustained efforts were also made to resettle ‘individual Anglo-Burmans in North Borneo’ where they could be employed by another colonial state in similar capacities.53 In 1956 the British embassy in Rangoon sent a confidential note to a colonial official in Singapore ‘on what had happened to the Anglo-Burmans since Independence, with particular reference to the similar problems … likely to arise for the Eurasians in Malaya’.54 It summarised the numbers and

262

Epilogue

destinations of those who had been helped by the ‘Special arrangements for assisted passages … up to mid-1950’:55 A total of 497 Anglo-Burmans were sent to the United Kingdom … 27 to Australia and New Zealand, 23 to India and 14 to Borneo … Most Anglo-Burmans in this class went to the United Kingdom where they found employment without much difficulty … Many of them find much to complain of in Britain, – the cold, the want of servants (it was a very poor Anglo-Burman family that could not afford at least one servant before the war), the small, crowded houses, and the comparative insignificance of the jobs they have to take, compared to the more responsible positions they were used to filling … A few of the weaker ones failed to adapt themselves, and returned to Burma … Those who were unable to establish a claim to British nationality (often because their British fathers had not formally married their Burmese mothers) and who left promptly were of course able to submit applications for naturalisation after twelve months in British territory.56 Around 7,000 Anglo-Burmans were thought to have left Burma ‘at an early stage’ with their own resources.57 The lengthy note divided the remaining Anglo-Burmans into multiple categories, the first, ‘those who “went Burmese”’ were estimated at 8,000.58 It was asserted that some of these had been ‘Burmans with no British blood’ who had engaged in passing ‘for their own purposes’, and who ‘naturally reverted to being Burmese. But the great majority … were those whose Burmese blood was dominant, who found European habits uncongenial and who were perhaps genuinely glad to return to a way of life and thought they had always secretly preferred’.59 The instrumental function of these statements, in salving British consciences, as well as the way in which they echo the racial rhetoric of unstable hybridity where the mixed must ultimately revert to type as one or other side of their ancestry predominates and causes a ‘reversion’, tells us more about the author than the subjects. Doubtless, the observation that there was passing into the Anglo-Burman category was correct. It is plausible that, unhampered by caste endogamy that had contributed to severing Anglo-Indians from their Indian relatives, the greater proximity of some Anglo-Burmans to their Burmese relatives meant that the boundary between the two had been softer and more open to blurring. However, in the main this assertion spoke to a convenient fantasy, in the context of the binary demand that the mixed choose one or other side of their ancestry and seek to subsume themselves within it. Another 4,000 were estimated to ‘have taken Burmese nationality but retained their British names and way of life’.60 Finally there remained: those who claimed British nationality but remain in Burma … [who numbered] about 2,600, including the difficult category of about 1,000

Epilogue

263

‘British subjects without citizenship’, – individuals of mixed British and Indian ancestry who do not qualify for either Burmese or United Kingdom British nationality, but have a claim to Indian or Pakistani nationality which cannot yet be asserted.61 The embassy considered them ‘the most difficult category to handle, because … [they were] primarily … those who refused to face the choice in 1948’.62 In the immediate aftermath of Burmese independence British policy attempted to compensate for the loss of Burmese government funding for Anglophone education with a ‘grant of £10,000 for the rehabilitation of the Anglo-Burman community’.63 The British government grant was designed to cushion the group’s integration into the new Burmese nation during a transitional period, ‘not [to] encourage too much a policy of “apartheid” among the Anglo-Burmans’.64 However, tellingly, it was also recognised as ‘a valuable resource for H.M. Consul-general if faced with a sudden flood of Anglo-Burman refugees in an emergency’.65 Accordingly an ‘Anglo-Burman Grant Fund Embassy Committee’ was established with representatives from four charities (the British Legion, Salvation Army, YMCA, and YWCA) alongside senior embassy staff, to support education and other schemes that would assist the group in finding employment in Burma.66 Yet as Anglo-Burmans’ situation worsened, with the nationalistation of remaining non-state-aided Anglophone schools, which were compelled to adopt the Burmese language, the grant money was increasingly redirected to sponsor the emigration of the individuals and families who best fit the aforementioned tests of suitability for settlement in the UK. In 1967, Clare Swann, Her Majesty’s Consul in Rangoon, was criticised by the Foreign Office for having ‘gone rather further than intended in the regulations’ in attempting to assist Anglo-Burman emigration by enlisting ‘the aid of … charities’.67 They complained that she should at least have cleared the drafts with London and though they felt compelled to ‘support her action in this case’ told ‘her not to do so in future without reference to us’.68

Partitioning Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Pakistanis Following Partition Anglo-Indians who resided in or opted for Pakistan felt similar pressure to redesignate themselves as the mixed race group in Burma had done in 1935. When an organisation was first formed on behalf of Anglo-Pakistanis it was the subject of jibes from the Anglo-Indian Association, yet retaining a communal designation that retained the word Indian in the new state of Pakistan would not have been prudent. This group found itself cut off as most of the Anglo-Indian political ‘organisation and … leaders were in India’, and whilst Anthony’s Association ‘had funds at its disposal for charitable work, there seem[ed] to have been very little in Pakistan’.69 Neither had all of the group embraced redesignation, and in 1954 there was still:

264

Epilogue an Anglo-Indian Association of Pakistan with its headquarters at Lahore … [unable] to exercise any under influence outside the Punjab, [and] although it had at one time a branch in Karachi … through [the] general apathy of its members and discord among its executives … [it was] now virtually defunct.70

Thus Partition left the group politically ‘ill-organised’ in the bisected wings of Pakistan, and though British consular officials thought it desirable for them ‘to have an efficient association’ the High Commission felt they could ‘play little part in stimulating such an organisation’.71 However, the same letter had also suggested that, more clandestinely, ‘unobtrusive encouragement might perhaps be given, e.g. through the clergy, if any initiative were shown’ from within the group.72 ‘Many Anglo-Indians, [were] attracted to East Pakistan [modern Bangladesh] after partition by a promise of work’ yet found themselves unemployed a few years later.73 As a British official noted: ‘In practice the term Pakistani means Moslem and Anglo-Pakistanis are retrenched whenever a Moslem is trained to take his place.’74 A process of ‘Pakinstanisation of businesses’ was also underway.75 Foreign office officials in Karachi observed how: The position of these people is frequently complicated in that they were born in the territory which now forms the Republic of India, but have for some time been resident in Pakistan. In these circumstances they very often fall between two stools, and fail to qualify for citizenship of either country.76 Some Anglo-Indians were from what was to become India, but had been working on, or opted to work on the Pakistani side of the new border. In principle, India would not necessarily accept the return of such people, as was indicated in the Constituent Assembly debates where it was similarly assumed that only Hindus and Sikhs (and possibly Buddhists) might retain the right to migrate to India having remained in, or opted for, Pakistan after Partition. Nonetheless, in 1949 Anthony’s Association managed to have a number of individual Anglo-Indians who had opted either ‘provisionally’ or ‘finally for Pakistan’, reinstated to positions in various Indian railways and the posts and telegraphs department after they returned to India.77 In India it appears to have been made harder for the mixed race group to obtain or retain some kind of British status than for ethnic Anglo-Indians resident in Burma (who had an advantage over ethnic Anglo-Burmans in this regard). Yet some Anglo-Indians domiciled in Burma also managed to move to India to apply for Indian citizenship. British officials noted that ‘the term Anglo-Indian should … be read to cover Anglo-Pakistani’, when referring to the group now resident in West or East Pakistan (now Pakistan and Bangladesh, respectively).78 This included those born on the Indian side of the new border, who had been residing on

Epilogue

265

the Pakistani side at the time of Partition, or opted to move to the Pakistani side on promises of government or railway work. As for ethnic Anglo-Indians in Burma, the complexities of the then evolving British nationality law and its multiple statuses appear to have made it easier for such people to retain claims to British subjecthood or establish UK citizenship, especially if they did not attempt to establish citizenship of Pakistan (or Burma). However, such a course exposed them to the risk of becoming, at least temporarily, stateless. If they accepted Pakistani citizenship they remained, as did ‘all Pakistanis’, British subjects according to British law, as Pakistan opted to remain a dominion until 1956.79 However, a declaration of ‘national status as a British subject by birth’ on a document by an Anglo-Indian or AngloPakistani, was (in at least one instance) treated as a refutation of Pakistani citizenship and grounds for rejecting an application for a Pakistani passport.80 In both India and Pakistan a minority of ‘Anglo-Indians and AngloPakistanis’ could qualify and register themselves as UK citizens ‘under Section 12(6) of the British Nationality Act’, 1948.81 In theory it was easier for the group to assert a British status of some kind in Pakistan, but despite this between 1952 and 1953 ‘only 46 applications were received from AngloPakistanis and [only] 13 were approved’.82 However the same source estimated that ‘of the two to three thousand Anglo-Indians in East Pakistan … some three to four hundred … [were] citizens of the United Kingdom and Colonies, who if they met the other conditions, [would] be eligible for assistance in travelling to the United Kingdom’.83 During the 1950s Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Pakistanis could travel to Britain without restriction on Indian or Pakistani passports and complete naturalisation after arrival. British sources asserted that the Indian government made ‘it extremely difficult for illiterate Punjabis to get passports … [but issued] them to Anglo-Indians without delay and without even seeking the guarantees that other Indians have to give’.84 In contrast they perceived that ‘The difficulty for anyone trying to emigrate from Pakistan … [was] likely to be rather in getting out of Pakistan than into the United Kingdom’, as they could land with documents other than a passport and successfully establish their eligibility as British subjects.85 However, leaving Pakistan without a passport was difficult and the Pakistani state required that its nationals travelling overseas declared their intention to return as a condition of issuing passports. British officials observed ‘evidence that the grant of a passport to Pakistani citizens, especially those who were not Muslims, is somewhat capricious’.86 More generally they observed that ‘The United Kingdom doctrine, that anyone more or less, gets a passport with Commonwealth validity who applies for it … [was] incomprehensible to’ the Pakistani government who did not consider the issuing of passports ‘a right … of … citizenship’ but rather a discretionary gift of the executive.87 Religious sympathisers with the group alleged that ‘the cost of possessing a Pakistani passport can run into hundreds of rupees, and that the time required to “complete the deal” may take years’.88 British consular officials conceded that ‘The Pakistani

266

Epilogue

authorities do put unnecessary difficulties in the way of Anglo-Pakistanis who apply for passports … They have a rooted objection to granting a passport to a person, particularly a non-Muslim, who states that he intends to reside permanently outside Pakistan.’89 Thus Anglo-Pakistanis’ applications were being rejected on the (often correct) assumption that they were intent on emigration. However, this was not always the case, as was complained of in correspondence between the Commonwealth Relations Office and the UK High Commission in Karachi. As in Burma, some of the mixed race group were intent on remaining in the postcolonial state, but wanted to establish a British status to secure their (and their family’s) rights to future emigration as an insurance against an uncertain future: the divergent practice at the Passport Office of issuing full validity ‘British Subject’ passports has caused us some embarrassment. For instance … Timothy O’Rielly a Anglo-Indian … applied here for registration as a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies … in 1949 and was rejected. In March 1952, he represented that he was going to the United Kingdom for permanent residence and was granted an Emergency Certificate for the journey. In October of last year he returned to Karachi with a full validity ‘British Subject’ passport whereupon several members of his family descended upon the High Commission demanding similar facilities with … awkward consequences … [as] under existing instructions we felt unable to grant passports of any sort to these persons.90 As is implicit in the above the apprehension concerned the potential scale of emigration by Anglo-Indian and Anglo-Pakistani populations far more numerous than the Anglo-Burmans. In India the Association was trying to prevent Anglo-Indians registering under British statuses, as Anthony wished to maintain the numerical strength of his community as a minority in the new nation and prevent its weakening through the loss of the wealthier members of the group who were most likely to have the means to emigrate. Anthony warned Anglo-Indians that any attempt to hedge their bets by seeking to retain, register, or assert the statuses of British nationals, subjects, or citizens under ‘the British Nationality Act’ would cause them to lose ‘their Indian Citizenship’ and disqualify them from employment by the Indian state and the reserved posts he had secured.91 As the Review expressed it in 1949: Apart from those who contemplate leaving the land and the community, another element has cropped up … which while enjoying the benefits of the privileges granted to Anglo-Indians in the matter of services, education etc., choose to say that they are ‘registered as British Subjects’. These registrations, apart from further reducing the numerical strength of the community, will be a constant menace to the community … It is needless to point out that it behoves them, as registered British subjects, to

Epilogue

267

renounce the[se] privileges … just as they had renounced their communal label. It is also felt that the British authorities are doing a gross piece of injustice by driving a wedge into the community and creating a canker.92 Anthony had previously used the term renegadism to refer to Anglo-Indians racially passing as Europeans, and by 1955 he was referring to the registration of a British status as ‘criminal renegadism … [which had] disastrous repercussions on the rest of the Community’ and its prospects for continuing government service.93 He cited an instance of ‘an Anglo-Indian, [who] was promoted to be the Head of one of the most important departments of the Government, where vital information and secret codes … [were] specially dealt with’, until it was discovered that he was ‘masquerading as an Indian citizen’ having clandestinely ‘acquired U.K. citizenship’, and thereby ‘abused the hospitality and trust of the Indian authorities’.94 Anthony’s opposition to the registration of any kind of ongoing British status was vehement. The Indian Constitution precluded dual citizenship, and the Review consistently warned Anglo-Indians of the perils of an automatic renunciation of Indian citizenship and consequent loss of rights to employment. Anthony threatened to ensure that such people would not retain positions held under the constitutional Anglo-Indian minority status, in an attempt to police the boundaries of the group (and access to its constitutionally awarded resources) to include only those who embraced ‘Love of … [India as their] supreme and transcendent loyalty’.95 Yet even whilst trying to persuade Anglo-Indians to follow his instructions, he continued to lobby the Indian government on behalf of those who had not done so, by submitting ‘a special note’ to a ‘Joint Select Committee of both Houses’ of the Indian Parliament arguing that many had ‘acquired U.K. Citizenship after Independence, without appreciating the full implications or real significance of such a step, [and] should be given an opportunity of retaining their Indian Citizenship’.96 Remarkably, these efforts once again secured enough sympathy to win another ‘special concession … [in] an amendment … [to the Indian Citizenship Act of 1955] that Anglo-Indians who had acquired U.K. citizenship during the period 1947 to the 26th January, 1950, would continue to be citizens of India’.97 British officialdom therefore had every excuse to argue that assisting Anglo-Indian emigration would be contrary to the desires of the Association, as well as likely to damage relations with the Indian Republic. Nonetheless, British consular and Foreign Office staff concluded that the Nationality Act had ‘spread the net pretty wide’, observing that they had: assisted a very large number of these people to trace the birth in the U.K. and Colonies of some remote ancestor … [and] also assisted monetarily over 2,500 families to come to the United Kingdom and start afresh – say 10,000 bodies – many [originally ‘most’]98 of whom are now a charge on the National Assistance Board.99

268

Epilogue

Christian authorities, who perceived their economic position to be deteriorating, continued to press the British state on behalf of Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Pakistanis. At the metropole senior political figures such as Viscount Waverley were pleading on their behalf. Lord Ogmore, who had visited more impoverished Anglo-Indians in Calcutta, later raised Britain’s moral responsibility to the group in the House of Lords in 1957.100 Generally speaking, consular officials on the ground in South Asia (and Burma) were more likely to be sympathetic, but civil servants in London were not. Whilst some advocated pressuring the Pakistani authorities to issue passports to the group so that they could emigrate, others argued that ‘Any general relaxation in the issue of Pakistani passports might lead to a rise in the number of pedlar-type Pakistanis’ coming to the UK.101 Civil servants in London responded by outlining the growing opposition to non-white migration to the UK ‘among [Government] Ministers’ reflecting public ‘feeling’ that there should be a ‘winding up, or further circumscribing, [of] the Assisted Passage Scheme, so far as non-Europeans are concerned’.102 Proposals were ‘afoot to restrict further the scope of that scheme in a way that would exclude all Anglo-Indians except those few who may have veritable and recent roots in’ the UK.103 As a result instructions to Karachi expressed that London was ‘reluctant … to see any general approach to the Pakistan authorities about the relaxation of their practice in the issue of passports, however harshly it may bear on individuals, particularly non-Muslims’.104 They further instructed that though passports should not be withheld: from any Anglo-Indian or Anglo-Pakistani who is a U.K. citizen (whether or not he is also a citizen or potential citizen of Pakistan or India) or, indeed, a passport of limited validity from anyone who falls into a category to which you have already been authorised to grant such passports the issuing of emergency certificates for travel should be more rigorously restricted to those who could ‘show, by the production of shipping reservations or otherwise, that they intend to proceed to the U.K.’.105 In the clearest statement thus far of British policy the High Commission was told: in future to refrain from granting emergency certificates to persons not of pure European race and not citizens of the U.K. and Colonies for the purposes of … permanent settlement, unless you are satisfied that the applicant either (a) has sufficient means of support for himself and his family, or (b) has reasonably assured prospects of employment which will enable him to maintain himself and his family, or (c) has a near relative in the U.K. who is willing and able to support the applicant and his family indefinitely.106 Thus future emigration to the UK would be restricted to families of higher social capital, more employable skills, and to chain migration among such

Epilogue

269

classes of people – influenced by colour and race, but not wholly determined by it. In Britain R. Brown of Lanarkshire echoed the racial boundary-blurring ideas of Millicent Wilson,107 in a letter to the editor of the Manchester Guardian seeking to educate the British public on how the group were in part descended from ‘Indian women of royal blood’ and their ‘Indian pigmentation … [was] largely a skin tan since they are racially akin to ourselves … [and had] been dominated by the light complexion of and hair of British stock’.108 Undoubtedly it was easier for those Anglo-Indians who had lighter skin to migrate to Britain, Australia, and elsewhere, with a corresponding impact on the colour profile of the group remaining in India. However, this was complicated by the common occurrence of difference in colour among siblings and other immediate family members. Thus a lighter-skinned family member, or a darker-skinned family member in possession of professional skills that demonstrated their employability, might be the first to migrate and begin a process of chain migration for their more proximate family members. Other civil servants pointed towards collusion with the Indian and Pakistani governments to restrict migration. The amendments to one draft are particularly revealing. The unamended version asserted that the increasing number of Indians and Pakistanis coming to the UK had: greater difficulty in fitting in than the coloured folk from the West Indies … [and though the] position may be a little different with Anglo-Indians having different background & traditions from Hindus and Moslems … the difficulty of [1] absorbing them is still great. Hence we should [2] welcome any obstacles the Govt. of India may place in the way of AngloIndians [3] seeking travel documents to emigrate … which is of a piece with our [4] efforts to get the Govt. of India (and the Govt. of Pakistan) [5] to tighten up their procedure for granting passports to people who wish to settle here.109 The full force of the offending lines had been watered down or obfuscated with: (1) ‘turning them into active and useful members of our society’; (2) ‘not be displeased to see’; (3) ‘experiencing difficulty in obtaining’; (4) ‘wish to see’; and (5) ‘maintain or even strengthen’.110 In the margins of a sympathetic letter from a British consular official in New Delhi, which stated that ‘Indians … [too were] inclined to put obstacles in the way of those seeking travel documents to emigrate’, one (presumably London-based) civil servant pencilled in ‘& we are very glad that they do!’, similarly noting next to the suggestion of accepting ‘a lesser degree of proof ’ from Anglo-Indians in India (pace the Dunbar Ruling) ‘Heaven forbid!’111 When the letter’s author wrote sympathetically of the ‘sad story of a community to which we clearly have moral obligations’ the civil servant underlined the statement and responded tellingly in the margin: ‘Have we?’112

270

Epilogue

Embracing India, preserving Anglo-India By now we should readily perceive that mixed race groups which arose in European colonial empires in Asia, such as Anglo-Indians, being the product of their own particular histories, were not simply European or indigenous people. Hybrid groups were not either one thing or the other, except insofar as they were externally constructed as such, under the pressures of binary thinking and the evolving and conflicting demands of imperialism and nationalism. A confidential assessment by foreign office officials, focusing on the Anglo-Burman group, expressed some key facets of British thinking about mixed race people in newly independent states: Nationalist feeling will tend to discriminate against those who remain if they retain European habits; even more so if they retain British (as opposed to taking local) nationality. It seems desirable that the leaders of such a community should be consulted at an early stage, and should be persuaded to induce the members of the community to face and make the inevitable – and irrevocable – choice between their European and Asian ancestries at the earliest possible moment. Those who insist on postponing the choice and linger on will suffer … The real problem for H.M. Government is with those who are not really fit to face either a new life abroad or a new regime at home. Perhaps the kindest course – though a difficult and distasteful one – would be to advise them to remain, regard themselves as Asians with British blood (and not vice versa as hitherto), and transfer their allegiance to the new Government.113 As a prescription, some of the points being made might be perceived to be practical, even sound, advice – for example, the need, as Anthony had done, to embrace the new nation state. However, it is laden with binary formulations of what such groups were and ought to be, and it is instrumental to British purposes of tying up loose ends and transferring responsibility for inconvenient populations which no longer served British purposes, yet would be hard to fit into Asian nationalist priorities. As with Said’s Western missionary authorities ‘in New York or London’,114 the implication is that the fostering of such hybrid groups had been a mistake that would be better undone. For the decolonising colonial power such people had outlived their usefulness and it would now be convenient for them to simply abandon their cultural distinctiveness and attempt to fully reconstruct themselves as closely as possible to the cultural markers of the ethnic majorities of the new postcolonial states. This would avoid the unwanted consequences of maintaining consular support for groups with many members who had the legal right to retain claims to British subjecthood and in some cases would later be able to acquire British citizenship and passports as a result of their descent. It would ease relations with new Asian nation states, which would be complicated by any British attempt to observe and intervene diplomatically over the

Epilogue

271

wellbeing of such groups, potentially over a long period of time. It would seek to escape an ongoing financial liability which might arise should these groups make a moral case for individual or collective resettlement when and if they could not adjust to the postcolonial environment, the new demands upon them by the nation state or politically influential ethnonationalists, or if they faced credible threats of violence or victimisation. For nationalists of various kinds such groups could most easily be constructed either as perpetually alien and foreign (the offspring and lackeys of former colonial oppressors), or as ‘bad’ and misguided compatriots requiring renunciation and reform in order to recognise the truth that their foreign blood and ‘quaint mimicry’ of Western culture in no way removed the essential truth that they were Asian people. Both attitudes existed amongst nationalists, and particularly ethnonationalists of various kinds, during decolonisation and in the postcolonial setting. What neither lens could comprehend was that, whatever the significance of their attitudes to and orientation towards the departing colonial power, these groups were now possessed of a particular hybrid culture which could no more be easily jettisoned by them than by any other ethnic group. Nor was the pressure or demands upon them to do so any more ‘just’ simply because it came from an anticolonial nationalist movement and a newly created independent nation state. Both the departing empire and the new nation state tended to divide populations ethically into the patriotic and the disloyal. The ideology of imperial loyalism (often linked to an allied monarchism) was at first inverted by nationalists so as to construct supporters of the imperial state as traitors to the nation. Then, in the success of its project, nationalism tended to efface memories that the empire too had commanded the loyalty of a significant portion of its subject population and drawn many of them into whole-hearted belief in the moral force of loyalty to a monarchical empire. As in most struggles over the fate of a society the large swathes of people who vacillated or selectively realigned themselves depending on the success and prospects of the opposing sides were also obscured by the rewriting of history by which most would subsequently claim to have always been on the winning side. However, for those who were clearly marked out to have collaborated with imperialism, nationalism would reconstruct their prior loyalty (self-interested or otherwise) to the empire as disloyalty to the nation. They would henceforth be suspect, with a greater burden even than other minorities in general, to prove their loyalty to the nation (which for those in other groups proximate to the ethnic construction of the nation would be assumed). It was easy, therefore, for Indian nationalists to construct Anglo-Indians as at best prodigal sons, and less sympathetically as ‘bad Indians’ who could now be taught to be good Indians, if they would consent to very significant changes in their cultural orientation, in particular in which languages they spoke and to what degree. Anthony’s communal nationalist formula had the potential to avoid the binary choice of abandoning the hybridised European and British facets of

272

Epilogue

Anglo-Indian culture. Having achieved a constitutionally recognised status for a minority Anglophone group, Anthony the lawyer set out to prove that English, whilst it should never be the national language, was now a recognised and protected Indian language, especially in the educational sphere. Through the pages of the Review, in the post-independence decade, Anthony railed against: the trend of language fanaticism, particularly in some of the Hindispeaking States. Although a special guarantee has been given under Article 30 of the Constitution to all minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice, insidious policies are being pursued by certain States to stultify this guarantee. I want to make it quite clear that since the Anglo-Indian community is one of India’s recognised minorities, it proposes to administer Anglo-Indian schools permanently through the medium of the mother tongue of the community, which is English. At the same time I wish to underline the fact that as compared with other minority institutions we are in the vanguard in the matter of teaching Hindi.115 Anthony also sought to combat the ‘attitude of hostility to the English language … [that was] a favourite demagogic device in India … by overworking the much-abused word “foreign”’.116 He went on to emphasise, in lawyerly tones, that English: is not a foreign but an Indian language, because it is the mother tongue of a recognised Indian minority. Either the guarantee of recognition to the Anglo-Indian community and implicitly to our mother tongue was meant to be honoured or it was meant merely as an empty gesture to the profession of secular democracy, to be resiled from according to political convenience.117 We might conjecture here, in the context of the heated arguments over the language question during the Constituent Assembly debates, that had Hindi advocates anticipated Anthony’s future line of legal argumentation for the preservation of the English language in India, they might have been less willing to extend to Anglo-Indians their constitutionally recognised minority status. Anthony was responding in particular to the announced intention in 1953 of ‘the Chief Minister of Bombay … to eliminate English, as a “foreign” language from the course of study’.118 By January of the following year the Bombay government had issued an order restricting ‘admission to Englishteaching schools … to Anglo-Indian children and children of citizens of nonAsian descent’.119 The measure was designed to remove from Indian parents the choice of English-language education for their children, so as to compel students to study in the language of the Indian state in which they lived.

Epilogue

273

However, given that many schools which Anglo-Indians attended were not really under the control of the community or the Association, and that they relied on sizable proportions of children from other communities in order to maintain their financial viability, such a measure would effectively mean the closing or conversion of key English-medium schools into Marathi and Gujarati medium schools. The impact on Anglo-Indians, who relied upon the existing colonial inherited English-medium schools, known as Anglo-Indian schools, to maintain their language and culture, would have been devastating. Making full use of its mother tongue the Review characterised the administration’s ‘self-righteous priggishness … sadistic glee … [and] neurotic sadism which … [took] a perverted delight in inflicting unhappiness and humiliation’.120 Both sides attempted to depict the other as representing communalism, as it was argued that: A favourite device of Hindu communalists … [who were] increasing in strength and numbers, when trying to oppress a minority is to stigmatise as communalism the attempts of the minority to fight back and save itself … . The ‘Harijan’, a paper once associated with no less a person than Mahatma Gandhi, is reported to have accused the Leader of the AngloIndian Community of being on a communal warpath. And yet what is the truth? Mr. Anthony is on the warpath … not for but against communalism. He is fighting this order because it seeks to communalise Anglo-Indian schools … [by] convert[ing] these schools into educational ghettoes, where the children of the Community will be segregated from the rest of India.121 According to Anthony, the creation of linguistic states across India, and pressing Marathi and Gujarati on the Bombay state specifically, represented ‘regionalism and parochialism run amuck’, which would prevent ‘Hindi spreading effectively to become the real language of the whole country’.122 By resisting such moves to impose regional Indian languages at the state level, the national language (Hindi) would be safeguarded and they would also save ‘English for an appropriately important place in the life and culture of a really great Country … [and thereby] prevent the wanton contraction of the Country’s mental and educational horizons to suit the vandal patterns of obscurantists and morons’.123 If Anthony was showing even less reserve than usual, it was because the preservation of English-language education for an Anglophone minority was (along with freedom of religion) the most vital issue to the cultural integrity of his group, and the success of his entire project of securing its future in India. Anticipating a legal battle ahead the Review reprinted an article from the Times of India citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26(3), that ‘parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children’ and suggested it was echoed in Article 29(2) of the Indian Constitution.124 Lawyers on behalf of Indian parents and schools such

274

Epilogue

as the Barnes School, Deolali (est. 1925) with 212 Anglo-Indian and 203 nonAnglo-Indian students (in December 1953),125 were preparing a case against the Bombay government. Anthony had come to Bombay to co-ordinate with others seeking to mount legal challenges to the order. Over the course of several days Anthony ‘met and addressed the heads of all the Anglo-Indian schools … [then] trustees of the Diocesan schools … [next] the Englishteaching schools … [and finally culminating in a] mammoth meeting, of about 5,000 people’.126 Attendees included a ‘solid phalanx of the middle class, Maharashtrians, Christians, Parsis, Jews and Anglo-Indians … [among whom] women were almost in equal number’.127 Anthony shared a platform with ‘Shri Dayabhai Patel, the leader of the Congress Party in the Bombay Corporation and the son of the late Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Shri Barucha, the leader of the Opposition in the Bombay Legislature’.128 The younger Patel had publicly condemned the order two days before after meeting with Anthony. Patel felt the move would further the cause of linguistic states, which both he and Anthony opposed. Patel also declared the English language’s ‘international importance’ crucial to making ‘their voice felt outside India’.129 Anthony’s deputy Mr Barrow spoke, emphasising that the order fettered ‘the right of the Anglo-Indian community to share their cultural heritage with members of other communities … [and] deprived them of the opportunity to make in a humble way a contribution to the complex mosaic of national life and culture’.130 Contradicting his earlier argument that resisting the imposition of state languages would advance the nationwide spread of Hindi, here Anthony described the order as ‘part of a conspiracy on the part of Hindi fanatics and Hindi imperialists to murder English’.131 The Bombay state had a total of ‘1403 schools out of which 1285 … [taught in] mediums other than English’.132 Anthony argued that though ‘the 30 Anglo-Indian schools in the State’ with about 3,000 Anglo-Indian students might initially resist the wholesale destruction of other English-teaching schools (including ten Anglo-Indian Railway-maintained schools), students from other communities made up ‘two-thirds of the pupils necessary to maintain those schools’ and once they were prohibited from attending Anglo-Indian schools the community ‘could not possibly maintain more than five to ten schools in the State’.133 There was also a contradiction with the ‘obligation [already] imposed on Anglo-Indian schools to admit 40 per cent of pupils of other communities’.134 Anthony highlighted that English was also the mother tongue: of thousands of other people such as Jews, East Indians and Hindus … [and] stated that the tragedy … [was] that in this so-called secular democratic State political tyrants … [were] engaged in the heart-breaking game of telling the people what their mother-tongue should or should not be.135 Anthony also argued that:

Epilogue

275

English was, perhaps, one of the greatest unifying factors in India … [Whilst under] the impact of regionalism and of language fanaticism the mortar of this unity was already crumbling … English must be treated on a par with the mother-tongue of any other Indian minority. If non-AngloIndians are to be prevented from attending Anglo-Indian schools then legally and logically no Telegu child could attend a Tamil school in Bombay or Bengal.136 Anthony attacked the order as introducing ‘educational apartheid’ and also made the case, from social justice, that Anglo-Indian schools provided access to much desired English language education for ‘the children of the poor and the middle class … [whilst already] the wealthy were making arrangements to send their children outside the State [or even abroad] for their studies’.137 In February the Review was able to celebrate Anthony’s victory on behalf of the English language, Anglo-Indian, and Anglophone schools, as the Bombay High Court’s ruling had declared ‘the Bombay Government’s education order illegal and void’.138 The judgement affirmed that Article 29 (2) gave any citizen the right to admission ‘to a State-aided institution irrespective of religion, race, caste or language’, and the right, under Article 30 (1), of Anglo-Indians and other (recognised) minorities ‘to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice’.139 Anglo-Indian schools were also recognised as having a ‘distinctive and special position … [under] Article 337’.140 The judges recognised that Indians who were not Anglo-Indians could, regardless of community, possess English as their mother tongue, and noted the Census record of ‘47,387 persons speaking English as their mother tongue in the State of Bombay’, and though they were no longer enumerated separately in the Census they accepted the statement of the petitioner’s lawyer, ‘Mr. Palkhivala’, that there were no ‘more than 25,000 Anglo-Indians’ in the state, leaving ‘at least 22,000’ non-Anglo-Indians who claimed English as their mother tongue.141 Referring to the case of the daughter of a ‘Major Pinto … [who was] not an Anglo-Indian’, the court challenged the Bombay government’s contention that as English could not be considered ‘the language of the Indian Christian community’ more generally, they had been justified in making an affidavit that English could not be ‘the mother tongue of the [particular] child’ in this case.142 Anthony had also argued ‘before the Judges … that it would be a negation of the recognition and the very existence of the Anglo-Indian Community unless English … [was] accepted as an Indian language’.143 The judges opined that whilst English might be ‘a foreign language’ in its origins, ‘in the Constitutional sense’ it was ‘an Indian language today … and as much entitled to protection as any other language spoken by any other section or community in this country’.144 They noted (with a degree of self-interest) that it was also ‘the language of the Courts … [and] of legislation’, and ‘of the States till the States replace it by some other language’.145 Anthony also used this judgement to emphasise to educationalists that their schools must remain under the

276

Epilogue

designation of Anglo-Indian schools or lose ‘guarantees of any description’.146 This was a potential means by which Anthony could seek to gain greater communal (and specifically Association) control over Anglophone schools, most of which were still being run by European and British educationalists and religious denominations and had been decidedly resistant to bringing Anglo-Indian teachers into their governing structures. In the summer of 1954 the Review jubilantly reported that India’s Supreme Court had dismissed all three related appeals by the Bombay government.147 The judgement rested upon a number of specific considerations. First, it was absolutely dependent on the fact that Anglo-Indians had been formally recognised as an Indian minority in the Constitution, and that it could not be reasonably denied that English was the mother tongue of the group. The interests of one of the parties, ‘Major Pinto … [of] the Indian Christian Community … [who also claimed] that his entire family … [spoke] and use[d] English at home’ as their mother tongue, would have been far less defensible had Indian Christian, and not Anglo-Indian, been the constitutionally recognised communal category, as though individual Indian Christians might make similar claims, the group as a whole would have found it practically impossible to be similarly designated as an Anglophone ‘linguistic minority’.148 Thus, whilst Gidney had presented Anglo-Indians as a communal group, and Anthony had later found it politic to reassert their racial distinctiveness, it was now essential that he assert their claims to be a linguistic minority. The Court recognised Anglo-Indians as a minority principally on the basis of their ‘religion and language … [with] the fundamental right to conserve its language, script and culture, under Article 29 (1) and … to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice under Article 30(1)’.149 Equally, Article 337, a measure which had been designed to combat the remnants of socioracially discriminatory admissions policies by Anglo-Indian schools, by compelling them ‘to admit at least 40 per cent of non-AngloIndians annually as a precondition of the receipt of [state] grants’ was now deemed to safeguard ‘the fundamental right … to any citizen [whether of the majority or a minority group] to be admitted into any educational institution receiving aid out of State funds’.150 This ensured that ‘Dr. Mahadeo Eknath Gujar’, a Hindu whose mother tongue was Gujrati, possessed an equal right to enrol his son in an Anglophone school.151 Thus Anglo-Indians and their status were at the core of a publicly supported Anglophone educational system which could not have survived financially without its broader intake of a more diverse and intercommunal group of Indian students. For Anthony, the intertwined issues of language and education were a fundamental test of the Nehruvian promise of civic nationalism and his own project of communal nationalism, and of the constitutional and judicial basis for enshrining the rights he believed he had secured. Concerns over the language, content, and quality of education for their children were a key consideration for those among the mixed race groups of South Asia and Burma fortunate enough to have the option of migration or of acquiring an ongoing

Epilogue

277

British status as an insurance against any deterioration in their position if they intended to remain. The constitutional settlement devised to accommodate Anglo-Indians and secure their loyalty to the new India contrasted dramatically with the situation of Anglo-Burmans in Burma, where Campagnac had emphasised the immediate loss not only of reserved employment, but the ‘severe set-back … [of] losing their grants-in-aid for English Schools … [in a] system of State Schools … [which made] no provision for the existence of English Schools for Anglo-Burmans’, and a climate where even charitable, religious, or private Anglophone schools would ultimately be extinguished through nationalisation and an end to their primary use of the English language.152 For both groups the issue was felt to be an existential one of survival as a group, and Anthony’s communal nationalist formula of Indian by nationality and AngloIndian by community required that the space granted to the group to preserve and maintain its cultural autonomy be preserved through Anglophone education, and (of which he had less immediate cause to doubt) the protection of minority religions, their institutions, and places of worship. Contemporaries and modern readers may hold a range of views on the desirability of the preservation of the English language and the institutional culture of Anglophone schools inherited from the colonial era. Linguistic nationalists, as well as many scholars of postcolonialism concerned with the decolonisation of the mind and the internal class barriers that are strengthened by divides between those in South Asia who speak English and those who do not, may be less than happy with the result. Those who celebrate the global reach and success of modern India’s information technology and telecommunications industry, and those who argue that the English language is an advantage India has over many other emerging markets given the ongoing significance of English in global business, aviation, and diplomacy might be more sanguine about this hybridised facet of postcolonial South Asia. Yet regardless of how it is viewed it cannot be doubted that Anglo-Indians, colonial-era Anglophone schools, and the new Frank Anthony public schools set up since Independence provided, alongside the judiciary (in its operations and its decisions), key conduits for the preservation of the English language in South Asia and its wider dissemination amongst a broader cross-section of Indian society than merely the, often practically bilingual, English-speaking uppermiddle classes. Anglo-Indians continued to make visible contributions to the new India in multiple spheres of professional and public life, including nursing, the armed forces, entertainment, and the travel and tourism industries. However, one of the most common means by which other Indian communities would be closely familiar with Anglo-Indians in the post-independence decades was through Anglo-Indian educationalists and schools.

Notes 1 NAUK, FO/643/140, British Embassy, Rangoon, File No. 4405/49, Anglo-Burmans, Minutes, Note by P. Murray (12 May 1949), pp. 20–1.

278

Epilogue

2 K. Noles, ‘“Waging War against the King”: Recruitment and Motivation of the Indian National Army, 1942–1945’, British Empire at War Research Group, Research Papers, no. 6 (2014), p. 21. 3 Wallace, Life of Sir Henry Gidney, p. 232. 4 NAUK, CAB/128/7, C.M.(46) 55th Conclusions: Confidential Annex (5 June 1946, 10 a.m.), p. 1 or 20 (here and hereafter referring to page number internal to document, followed by marked page number within the file, where the same pages are numbered twice). 5 Ibid., p. 2 or 21. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid., p. 3 or 22. 8 NAUK, CAB/195/4, C.M. 55(46), ‘India: Constitutional Problem’, Cabinet Minutes in Note Form (5 June 1946), p. 234. 9 Ibid., p. 230. 10 Ibid., pp. 230, 233. 11 Ibid., p. 234. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., p. 232. 14 Ibid., p. 235. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., p. 234. 17 NAUK, CAB/128/7, C.M.(46) 55th Conclusions: Confidential Annex, p. 3 or 22. 18 NAUK, CAB/195/4, C.M. 55(46), ‘India: Constitutional Problem’, p. 232. 19 NAUK, CAB/128/7, C.M.(46) 55th Conclusions: Confidential Annex, p. 3 or 22. 20 Ibid. 21 NAUK, CAB/195/4, C.M. 55(46), ‘India: Constitutional Problem’, p. 230. 22 Ibid., pp. 230, 232; Auchinleck probably meant the Gurkhas, as he acknowledged the segregation of Muslim soldiers into new and efficient army units would take years. 23 Ibid., p. 230. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., p. 231. 28 Ibid., p. 235. 29 Ibid., p. 232. 30 NAUK, CAB/128/7, C.M.(46) 55th Conclusions: Confidential Annex, para.(b), p. 7 or 26. 31 NAUK, CAB/66/23/40, ‘11th April 1942: War Cabinet: Evacuation of Indians from Burma: Memorandum by the Secretary of State for Burma’, p. 184. 32 NAUK, CAB/24/278, ‘Committee of Imperial Defence: Chiefs of Staff SubCommittee: The Defence of India: Report’ (July 1938), p. 44. 33 Ibid. 34 Aung San, ‘Address Delivered at a Meeting of the Anglo-Burman Council, at the City Hall, Rangoon’ (8 December 1946), retrieved from www.aungsan.com/ Anglo_Burmans.htm. 35 NAUK, FO/643/140, C.H. Campagnac, M.B.E., Barrister-at-Law, President, [Anglo-Burman Union], Rangoon, ‘Most Confidential: A Note on the Present Position of the Anglo-Burman Community’ (4 September 1947), pp. 48–50. 36 Ibid., p. 48. 37 Ibid., signed (19 March) in margin of Confidential Minutes, note on ‘Anglo-Burmans and British Nationality’ by L. Glass (16 March 1949), p. 25. 38 Ibid., note by P. Murray (12 May 1949), p. 21. 39 Ibid., signed note (11 May), pp. 19–20.

Epilogue

279

40 Ibid., p. 20. 41 Ibid. 42 Original emphasis removed; ‘Colour Bar In Britain: A Growing Problem’, Hindustan Times, New Delhi, cited in Review (August 1953), p. 18. 43 NAUK, FO/643/140, signed note (11 May), p. 20. 44 Ibid.; cf. British National (Overseas) or BN(O) status created in the Hong Kong Act 1985, which enacted a status affording passports without any corresponding ‘right of abode’ in the UK. 45 Ibid., Confidential, R. Dunbar, Foreign Office, London, to R. Bowker, Rangoon (13 October 1949), p. 2. 46 NAUK, FO/369/5223, P. Hudis, Home Office (Nationality Division), London, to W. Richardson, Foreign Office, London (12 November 1955). 47 NAUK, FO/369/4904, Confidential, 16120/2, ‘Despatch No. 258’, British Embassy, Rangoon, to Anthony Eden, Foreign Office, London (21 December 1953), para. 2, p. 1. 48 NAUK, FO/369/5223, ‘Copy’ of Office Minute on ‘Mr. Kerry Ivan Tate’ (undated, circa 1955). 49 Ibid., Confidential, W. Richardson, Foreign Office, London, to P. Hudis, Home Office (Nationality Division), London (4 November 1955), p. 4. 50 NAUK, FO/369/4904, Confidential, 16120/2, ‘Despatch No. 258’, British Embassy, Rangoon, to Anthony Eden, Foreign Office, London (21 December 1953), para. 2, p. 1. 51 Ibid., para. 3, p. 1. 52 NAUK, FO/371/69480, ‘Anglo-Burmans and Anglo-Indians Wishing to Leave for Permanent Settlement in Australia’, Draft ‘U.K. High Commissioner’s Telegram No. 66’, His Majesty’s Ambassador, Rangoon, to the Secretary of State for Burma, London (4 December 1947), p. 5. 53 NAUK, FO/369/4421, ‘Possibility of Resettling Anglo Burmans in N. Borneo’, M. Scott, Under-Secretary of State, Foreign Office, London, to Colonial Office, London (14 April 1950). 54 NAUK, FO/371/123374, ‘Copy of a Letter to Sir R. Scott, Singapore. Encloses Copies of Notes on Anglo-Burmans and the Problems of Claimants to British Nationality in Burma’, Confidential, KO824/3/56, British Embassy, Rangoon, to R. Scott, Singapore, and Copied ‘to the High Commissions at New Delhi, Karachi and Colombo and to the South-East Asia Department’ (23 July 1956). 55 Ibid., Confidential Note on ‘The Anglo-Burmans’ (circa 1956), para. 12, p. 3. 56 Ibid., paras. 12, 13, 15, p. 3. 57 Ibid., para. 12, p. 3. 58 Ibid., para. 7, p. 2. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., para. 8, p. 2. 61 Ibid., para. 10, p. 2. 62 Ibid., para. 11, p. 2. 63 NAUK, FO/643/140, Note by P. Murray (12 October 1949), para. 1, p. 7. 64 Ibid., para. 3, p. 7. 65 Ibid. 66 NAUK, FO/369/4904, ‘The Twenty-Eighth Meeting of the Anglo-Burman Grant Fund Embassy Committee’ Minutes (6 October 1952), p. 1. 67 NAUK, FCO/15/56, Burma: Political Affairs (Bilateral): UK: Anglo/Burmese in Burma, E. Green to P. O’Keeffe, South East Asia Department, Foreign Office, London (5 July 1967), pp. 1–2. 68 Ibid., p. 2. 69 NAUK, DO/35/6163, GNL 19/199/1, J. Murray, UK High Commission, Karachi, to A. Morley, CRO, London (11 March 1954), para. 10, p. 3.

280 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

Epilogue Ibid. Ibid., para. (e), p. 5. Ibid., para. 10, p. 4. Ibid., Note no. 1, by A. Ross (7 January 1953), para. 1(a), p. 1. Ibid., para. 1(c), p. 2. Ibid., GNL 19/199/1., J. Murray, UK High Commission, Karachi, to A. Morley, CRO, London (11 March 1954), para. 6, p. 2. Ibid., GNL. 19/1., A. Smith, UK High Commission, Karachi, to D. Wickson, CRO, London (22 December 1953), para. 3, p. 1. Original emphasis; Review (August 1949), pp. 6–8. NAUK, DO/35/6163, Note no. 1, by A. Ross (7 January 1953), para. 1, p. 1. Ibid., para. 4(c), p. 3. Ibid., ‘True Copy’, K. Mahmood for the Political Agent, Quetta, to Mr. P. Lemondine, Quetta, (30 April 1953). Ibid., Note no. 2, by A. Morley (12 January 1954), para. 1, p. 1. Ibid., GNL 19/199/1., J. Murray, UK High Commission, Karachi, to A. Morley, CRO, London (11 March 1954), para. 9, p. 3. Ibid. NAUK, DO/196/76, ‘The Position of Anglo-Indians’, Confidential: A Memorandum on Anglo-Indians (undated, forwarded with a cover letter of 5 July 1960), p. 2. NAUK, DO/35/6163, Note no. 2, by A. Morley (12 January 1954), para. 2, p. 1. Ibid. Ibid., G2015/22., ‘Extract from Letter from’ A. Brown, Karachi, to A. Morley, CRO, London (16 September 1953), para. 2, p. 1. Ibid., ‘A Brief Statement Concerning the Conditions of the Anglo-Indian Community in East Pakistan’ by A. Howland, Chaplain, Christ Church Parsonage, Chittagong, East Pakistan (26 November 1953), para. 4, p. 2. Ibid., GNL 19/199/1., J. Murray, UK High Commission, Karachi, to A. Morley, CRO, London (11 March 1954), para. 4, p. 1. Ibid., GNL 19/1., A. Smith, UK High Commission, Karachi, to D. Wickson, CRO, London (22 December 1953), para. 8, p. 3. Review (September 1949), p. 2. Original emphasis removed; Review (October/November 1949), p. 7. Original emphasis removed; Review (September 1955), p. 18. Ibid., pp. 1, 18. Original emphasis removed; Review (December 1955), p. 1. Ibid. Ibid. N.B. ‘most’ in the original typed draft was struck through and amended by hand with ‘many’. NAUK, DO/35/6163, GEN. T/26, Draft, ‘For the Secretary of State’s Signature’ to Viscount Waverley, London, para. 4, p. 2. HL Deb 16 December 1957, vol 206, cols 1189–90. NAUK, DO/35/6163, Confidential: GNL 19/199/1, J. Murray, UK High Commission, Karachi, to A. Morley CRO, London (11 March 1954), para. 5, p. 2. Ibid., Con 23/5, A. Morley, CRO, to J. Murray, UK High Commission, Karachi (21 April 1954), p. 1. Ibid., Note no. 8, to Mr. Gibson (14 June 1954). Original emphasis; ibid., Con 23/5, A. Morley, CRO, London, to J. Murray, UK High Commission, Karachi (21 April 1954), p. 1. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 1–2. Wilson, The Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Race of India; see Chapter V.

Epilogue

281

108 R. Brown, ‘The Anglo-Indians’, Manchester Guardian (3 November 1954), in NAUK, DO/35/6163. 109 My emphasis on lines which were struck through by an original author editing the draft; NAUK, DO/35/6163, Draft no. 309 in NAT 154/64/1 ‘Confidential’: J. Gibson, to ‘H. Smedley’, UK High Commission, New Delhi (signed: 10 February 1958), p. 3. 110 Ibid. 111 NAUK, DO/35/6163, Confidential: Gen.15/6, H. Smedley, UK High Commission, New Delhi, to D. Wickson, CRO, London (22 January 1958), p. 3. 112 Ibid. 113 NAUK, FO/371/123374, Confidential Note on ‘The Anglo-Burmans’ (circa 1956), para. 16, p. 3. 114 See Introduction; Said, Culture and Imperialism, p. 41. 115 Original emphasis removed; Review (October/November 1953), p. 13. 116 Ibid., pp. 13–14. 117 Original emphasis removed; ibid., p. 14. 118 Ibid. 119 ‘An Iniquitous Move’, Times of India (8 January 1954), cited in Review (January 1954), p. 3. 120 Original emphasis removed; Review (January 1954), p. 1. 121 Original emphasis removed; ibid., pp. 1–2. 122 Original emphasis removed; ibid., p. 2. 123 Original emphasis removed; ibid. 124 Original emphasis removed; ‘An Iniquitous Move’, Times of India (8 January 1954), cited in Review (January 1954), p. 4. 125 Judgement of the Bombay High Court (henceforth Bombay judgement), ‘Coram: Chagla C. J. & Dixit. Monday 15th February 1954’, cited in Review (February 1954), pp. 5–7. 126 Review (January 1954), p. 5. 127 Ibid., p. 8. 128 Ibid. 129 Paraphrased in ibid., p. 12. 130 Original emphasis removed; paraphrased in ibid., p. 8. 131 Original emphasis removed; cited in ‘Mr. Frank Anthony Flays New Education Order: English-Speaking Schools Will Be Destroyed’, Times of India, cited in ibid., p. 9. 132 Bombay judgement, cited in Review (February 1954), p. 5. 133 Original emphasis removed; Review (January 1954), pp. 9–10. 134 Original emphasis removed; ibid., p. 10. 135 Original emphasis removed; ibid., pp. 10–11. 136 Original emphasis removed; ibid., p. 11. 137 Original emphasis removed; ibid., p. 12. 138 Review (February 1954), p. 1. 139 Ibid., pp. 1–2. 140 Original emphasis removed; ibid., p. 2. 141 Bombay judgement, cited in Review (February 1954), p. 6. 142 Ibid., p. 7. 143 Review (February 1954), p. 2. 144 Bombay judgement, cited in ibid., p. 10. 145 Bombay judgement, cited in ibid. 146 Original emphasis removed; Review (February 1954), p. 2. 147 Judgement of the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India: Supreme Court of India Civil Appeals Nos. 64, 65 and 66 (26 May 1954) (henceforth Supreme Court judgement), cited in Review (June/July 1954), p. 2.

282 148 149 150 151 152

Epilogue Original emphasis removed; ibid. and editorial from the same issue, pp. 1, 4. Supreme Court judgement, cited in Review (June/July 1954), pp. 9–10. Review (June/July 1954), p. 1. Supreme Court judgement, cited inReview (June/July 1954), p. 4. NAUK, FO/643/140, British Embassy, Rangoon, File No. 4405/49, ‘AngloBurmans’, C. Campagnac, President of the Anglo-Burman Union, Rangoon, ‘Most Confidential: A Note on the Present Position of the Anglo-Burman Community’ (4 September 1947), p. 1 or 48.

Bibliography

Primary sources Private archive of the All-India Anglo-Indian Association, New Delhi Anglo-Indian Review, Anglo-Indian Review, Railway Union Journal, and Review (monthly journal of the All-India Anglo-Indian Association, published in Delhi, 1929–the present). Private collection of DeRozario family, McCluskieganj, Jharkand Colonisation Observer (monthly journal of the Colonisation Society of India, selected issues, 1934–41). Hobbs, H., Extracts from my Diary, pamphlet (8 November 1934). McCluskie, E., The Dawn of a New Era, pamphlet (Revised edn, 1 July 1934), as a supplement within the Colonization Observer (July 1934). National Archive of India, New Delhi Central Board of Revenue, Customs Establishments Branch Progs., Nos. 165-C.E. (1935). Progs., Nos. 28-C.E. (1936). Progs., Nos. 502-Admn (C.E.), Part-A (1937). Central India Agency, Finance Branch Progs., No. 146-C (1934). Finance Department Progs., Nos. 80–1 (February 1885). Finance Department, Regulation Branch, II Progs., Nos. 2 (1) – R11 (1929). Progs., Nos. 5 (XVI) – R11 (1929).

284

Bibliography

Foreign and Political Department, Establishment Branch Progs., No. 241 (1931). Progs., No. 128 (1932). Foreign and Political Department, External Branch Progs., Nos. 103-X (1930). Home Department, Education Branch Unnumbered file relating to scholarships. Home Department, Establishment Branch Progs., No. 21 (July 1908). Progs., No. 27, Deposit (February 1918). Progs., Nos. 357–8, Part A (February 1920). Progs., No. 389 (1923). Progs., Nos. 11–15 (1929). Progs., No. 266 (1929). Progs., Nos. 16–12 (1932). Progs., No. 192 (1932). Progs., No. 389, Part-I (1932). Progs., No. 528 (1932). (R), Progs., Nos. 5/13/47 (1947). Home Department, Police Branch Progs., Nos. 11/XI (1931). Legislative Department, Assembly Council (Speeches), Progs., No. 85, Part-B (February 1921). Legislative Department, Council General Progs., Nos. 255(1)-CG (1928). Malwa Agency, Finance Branch Progs., Nos. 170-C (1934). Political Department, Political Branch (Confidential), Progs. 42, Nos. 1–4 (1908). Private Secretary to the Viceroy, Honours Branch (Secret), Progs., Nos. 18(13) – H (1946).

Bibliography

285

Punjab State Agency, General Branch Unnumbered file (1922). Railways Department, Establishment Branch 1059-EG-2027, Part B (1933). E-35CM-126, Part-B (August 1935). Reforms Department, Franchise Branch Progs., Nos. 156-R (1933). Progs., Nos. 41-F (1935). National Archives, United Kingdom Cabinet papers (non-exhaustive list of the most relevant) CAB/24/116: C.P. 2230: Cabinet: Circulated by the Secretary of State for India (2 December 1920), Enclosing HMSO, Proposals of the Government of India for a New Constitution for Burma (London, 1920). CAB/24/158: C.P. 58(23): Cabinet: Legislature in India to Remove Racial Distinctions in Criminal Procedure (January 1923). CAB/24/224: C.P. 272(31): Cabinet: Government Policy at the Indian Round Table Conference (11 November 1931). CAB/24/232: C.P. 266(32): Cabinet: Communal Decision (July 1932). CAB/24/278: C.P. 187(38): Cabinet: India: Defence Questions (29 July 1938), enclosing Committee of Imperial Defence: Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee: The Defence of India: Report (July 1938). CAB/66/23/40: W.P.(42)160: War Cabinet: Evacuation of Indians from Burma (11 April 1942). CAB/66/26/13: W.P.(42)283: War Cabinet: Report on Mission to India (6 July 1942). CAB/66/65/40: W.P.(45)290: War Cabinet: White Paper on Burma Policy (8 May 1945). CAB/67/5/23: W.P.(G)(40)73: War Cabinet: Congress and the War: Memorandum by the Secretary of State for India (11 March 1940). CAB/67/8/1: W.P.(G)(40)201: War Cabinet: India and the War (27 July 1940). CAB/67/9/69: W.P.(G)(41)69: War Cabinet: India and the War (16 July 1941). CAB/68/9/47: W.P.(R)(42)47: War Cabinet: Report for the Month of September 1942, for the Dominions, India, Burma and the Colonies and Mandated Territories (26 October 1942). CAB/128/7: C.M.(46)55th Conclusions: Confidential Annex (5 June 1946, 10 a.m.). CAB/129/154: C.P.(70)122: Cabinet: Sale of Arms to South Africa (31 December 1970), see Section IV: Citizenship and Immigration Aspects, pp. 18–20, and Annex 4, pp. 1–5. CAB/195/4: C.M. 55(46): India: Constitutional Problem, in Note Form (5 June 1946). Dominions Office, Commonwealth Office, and Commonwealth Relations Office, etc. CO/123/276/86: General: B[ritish]. Honduras 34397: Assistant Medical Officer (19 September 1913)

286

Bibliography

CO/968/142/3: Defence & General: Miscellaneous: File no. 14516/49/5: Demobilisation: Malaya: Eurasian Volunteers (1946). DO/35/6163: General Dept.: file no. GEN T/26: The Plight of Anglo-Indians in East Pakistan and Elsewhere (file begins: 4 January 1954). DO/196/76: South Asia Dept.: file no. SEA 44/5/2: The Position of Anglo-Indians (file begins: 5 July 1960). Department of Education ED/54/72: O.400/341–370: Further Education & Training Scheme: General (1947–8). Foreign Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office FCO/15/56: Foreign Office: South East Asia Dept.: File no. DB ¾: Burma: Political Affairs (Bilateral): UK: Anglo/Burmese in Burma (1967). FO/369/4421: K Consular Department: Burma: KG. 17945/1: Possibility of Resettling Anglo Burmans in N[orth]. Borneo (1950). FO/369/4904: K Consular Department: Burma: KG. 791/6: Welfare of the Anglo-Burman Community in Burma (1953). FO/369/5223: Foreign Office (Consular Department): Burma: file no. KG 1791/2: Richard George Gyi: Request for an Assisted Passage; and Subsequent Related Files (1955). FO/371/69480: F: Burma: F 309/309/79: Anglo-Burmans and Anglo-Indians Wishing to Leave for Permanent Settlement in Australia (1948). FO/371/83206: F: South-East Asia Department: Burma: FB 1601/1: Regarding the nationality, and Passage to the UK, of Carlyle Seppings; and Subsequent Related Files (1950). FO/371/111998: D: South-East Asia Department: Burma: DB 1482/1: Far Eastern War Damage Schemes (1954). FO/371/123374: D: South-East Asia Department: Burma: DB 1821/1: Copy of a Letter to Sir R. Scott, Singapore … [and] Copies of Notes on Anglo-Burmans and the Problems of Claimants to British Nationality in Burma (1956). FO/643/140: British Embassy: Rangoon: file no. 4405/49: Anglo. Burmans (1949). FO/916/786: K.W.: K.W. 59/22: Welfare of Eurasians in the Far East: General Questions (1943). War Office and Admiralty papers ADM/1/8690/208: ‘Admiralty. 208/25.: Ex – N.4620/25.: Anglo-Indians (Eurasians) – Entry into R[oyal].N[avy].– Genl. Service’ (1925). WO/32/6889: ’27.Gen.No. 8550: Enlistment of Eurasians into British Regiments’ (1886–95). WO/361/2227: Prisoners of War, Far East: General Information; Locally Enlisted Eurasians (1945). State archives of West Bengal, Calcutta Political Confidential: File no.M-25, Serial no. 1–2. Political Confidential: File no. 314/1909, Serial no. 1–10. Political Confidential: File no. 42, Serial no. 1–4.

Bibliography

287

Official Papers Reading Room, Bodleian Library, Oxford British parliamentary papers Hansard Report on Indian Constitutional Reforms (London, 1918). Reports of the Indian Round Table Conferences First Session (London, 1931). Second Session (London, 1932). Third Session (London, 1933). Reports of the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform Volume IIA: Minutes of Evidence given before the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform (London, 1934). Volume IIC: Minutes of Evidence given before the Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform (London, 1934). Reports of the Select Committee on Colonization and Settlement First Report–Third Report (London, 1858), Fourth Report (London, 1859). Indian Institute Library, Bodleian Library, Oxford Census of India (1891, 1901, 1911, 1921, 1931, 1941). IND Bengal.K.2: General Report of Public Instruction for Bengal, for 1875–76 (Government of Bengal, Calcutta, 1876). IND B.2: India in 1926–27: A Statement Prepared for Presentation to Parliament in Accordance with the Requirements of the 26th Section of the Government of India Act (Government of India, Calcutta, 1928). IND Bengal.K.3: Quinquennial Reviews of Education in Bengal (Government of Bengal, Calcutta, five reports, 1902–22). IND 75.E.41: Royal Commission on Public Services in India: Vol. I. Report (London, 1917). Mansergh, N., Lumby, E., and Moon, P. (eds), India: The Transfer of Power 1942–1947, 12 vols (London: HMSO, 1970–1983). Waterfield, H., Memorandum on the Census of British India 1871–72 (London, 1875). Pamphlets (loose and bound), 8287 c50 and 08023 aaa46 Bishop Chatteron, E. D. D., Anglo-Indian and Eurasian Origins (Westminster, 1937). Chambers, Dr, Anglo-Indian Prospects in India: Read at a Meeting of the Board of Direction of the Anglo-Indian Association (Calcutta, 1879). Sutherland, D., The Grievances of the East Indian Community. A Paper to be Read before the East India Association (London, 1880). Ingels, L., Anglo-Indian Amalgamation: The Pressing Need of the Community (Calcutta, 1918).

288

Bibliography

Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library, London Anglo-Indian Journal (monthly journal of the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association of Western India, published in Bombay, 1897–1901). F/4/1259: Extract Bombay Revenue Consultations. F/4/1115: Extract of Fort St. George Military Corrs. F/4/1408/55600: ‘Minute by the Honble the Governor [Sir John Malcolm], Dated 30th November 1830’. L/PJ/7/7880: Telegram from Anthony, F., New Delhi, to the Secretary of State for India, London, CD202/VWK1246/H (received: 5 July 1945). L/PJ/7/10647: D. St. Clair Gainer, British Ambassador to Brazil, to Sir William Croft, India Office (30 October 1946). L/PO/10/22: Letters between the Viceroy, Viscount Wavel and the Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick-Lawrence. Mss Eur D703/42: Birkenhead Collection, Deputations Received by Lord Birkenhead at the India Office (Anglo-Indians, Trades Union Congress, Labour Party), Proceedings at a Deputation from the Anglo-Indian Community to the Secretary of State for India, 30 July 1925. Mss Eur E238/55A (III), pp. 619–632: Reading Collection: Memorandum Submitted to the Joint Select Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform by Lt. Col. Sir Henry Gidney. Mss Eur F77/106: Simon Collection: Memorandum Submitted on Behalf of the AngloIndian and Domiciled European Community of India for the Consideration of the Chairman and Members of the Indian Statutory Commission, from Lt. Col. Sir Henry Gidney, 25 June 1928; Letter from Hon. Mr H. G. Haig, Secretary to the Government of India, to Gidney, 11 September 1928. Mss Eur F84/64: Elgin Papers: Letters between the Viceroy and the Secretary of State for India. Mss Eur F111/158–161: Curzon Papers: Letters between the Viceroy and the Secretary of State for India. Mss Eur F531: Papers of Christopher J. Hawes, 1750–2004, Writer and Historian. Mss Eur R189: Nissen, Roy Edward King, b. 1905, Interviewed in 1989 on Four Cassettes Covering 1905–1960. P/W/588: Memorandum Relative to the Deputation of the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled Community of India and Burma to the Rt. Hon. the Secretary of State for India, 30 July 1925. P/4089: Report of the Pauperism Committee (Calcutta, 1892). V/6: Viceregal Correspondence with Secretary of State for India. V/9: Government of India, The Legislative Assembly Debates (Official Report) (1920–1947). V/27/720/28: D’Souza, F., Government of India: Railway Department (Railway Board): Review of the Working of the Rules and Orders Relating to the Representation of Minority Communities in the Services of the State-Managed Railways (New Delhi, 1940). V/27/861/1: Report on the Existing Schools for Europeans and Eurasians throughout India (Calcutta, 1873). W/2388: The Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association, Mysore Branch (Bangalore), Lee, S. (ed.), Guide to the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Villages, Proposed to be Established in the Province of Mysore (Madras, 1882). 8285/g/43: Report of the Calcutta Domiciled Community Enquiries Committee, 1918–1919 (Calcutta, 1920).

Bibliography

289

Newspaper Microfilm Reading Room, Widener Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA Times of London or London Times (London, 1788–present). Statesman and Friend of India (Calcutta, 1878–92 and 1894–1909). Statesman (Calcutta, 1909–23 and 1941–51). Online Anglo-Indian journals Anglo-Indian Wallah: A Journal of Anglo-Indian Fiction, 8 vols (2001–12), available at http://home.alphalink.com.au/~agilbert/jwal13.html International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies, 16 vols (1996–present), vols 1–14 (1996–2014) available at http://home.alphalink.com.au/~agilbert/indexold.html, and vols 10–16 (2010–16) available at http://international-journal-of-anglo-indian-stu dies.org/index.php/IJAIS/issue/archive Published sources Abbott, B., ‘Captain John Harold (Arnold) Abbott (b. 10th January, 1863, d. 28th June, 1945)’, Geneology.com, available at http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/ users/a/b/b/Warren-B-Abbott/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0075.html, and ‘Quartermaster Sergeant William Lumsden Abbott (b. 26th July, 1828, d. 25th August, 1880)’, Geneology.com, available at http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/a/b/b/Wa rren-B-Abbott/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0241.html Alexander’s East India and Colonial and Commercial Journal (London, vol. 1, December 1830–June 1831, April 1831). Almeida, R. and Cassity, K. (eds), Curtain Call: Anglo-Indian Reflections (Trenton, NJ, 2015). Ambedkar, B. R., Annihilation of Caste (London, 1936). Anglo-Indian Christian Union, Fifth Report of the Anglo-Indian Christian Union for Promoting the Spiritual Interests of Europeans and Other English-Speaking People in India, 1875 (Edinburgh, 1876). Anglo-India, Social, Moral and Political; Being a Collection of Papers from the Asiatic Journal, 3 vols (London, 1938). Anon. (annotated by hand as ‘V. G. Clarke’), The Fortunes of the Anglo-Indian Race: Considered Retrospectively and Prospectively by One of Fifty Years Knowledge and Experience (2nd edn, Madras, 1878). Anthony, F., Britain’s Betrayal in India: The Story of the Anglo-Indian Community (New Delhi, 1969). Anthony, F., Will Britain Tarnish Her Honour? (Being a Brief Review of the History, Present Position and Needs of the Anglo-Indian Community in India and of Britain’s Solemn Obligations to the Community) (New Delhi, handwritten 1943). ‘A Traveller’, The Widow of Calcutta; The Half-Caste Daughter; and Other Sketches, vols I–II (London, 1841). Aung San, ‘Address Delivered at a Meeting of the Anglo-Burman Council, at the City Hall, Rangoon’ (8 December 1946), available at www.aungsan.com/Anglo_Burma ns.htm Blaker, R., Scabby Dichson (London, c. 1920s). BMJ Publishing Group, ‘Front Matter’, British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 4171 (14 December 1940), pp. 1–2.

290

Bibliography

Burton, R., Goa, and the Blue Mountains, Or, Six Months of Sick Leave (London, 1851). Butler, K., The Secret Vindaloo: Tell Me What You Eat and I’ll Tell You Who You Are (Auckland, 2014). Calcutta Review, vol. 7 (January–June 1847), vol. 18 (July–December 1852), vol. 24 (January–June 1855), vol. 28 (January–June 1857), and vol. 69 (October 1879). Campagnac, C., The Autobiography of a Wanderer in England and Burma: The Memoirs of a Former Mayor of Rangoon, ed. Campagnac-Carney, S. (Raleigh, NC, 2010). Campbell, D. and Bartley, A. H., ‘Indian Medical Department’, British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 4175 (11 January 1941), p. 67. Carter, M., Archives of Empire: Volume II. The Scramble for Africa (London, 2003). Carter, M. and Harlow, B. (eds), Archives of Empire: Volume I. From the East India Company to the Suez Canal (London, 2003). Craik, D. M. M., The Half-Caste: An Old Governess’s Tale (Memphis, 2012). Cross, J., Secret Daughter: A Mixed-Race Daughter and the Mother Who Gave Her Away (New York, 2006). Dady, D. S., Scattered Seeds: The Diaspora of the Anglo-Indians (New Delhi, 2007). Deefholts, M. (ed.), Haunting India: A collection of Short Fiction, Poetry, Travel Tales, and Memoirs (Trenton, NJ, 2003). Deefholts, M. and Deefholts, G. (eds), The Way We Were: Anglo-Indian Chronicles (Trenton, NJ, 2006). Deefholts, M. and Deefholts, S. (eds), Women of Anglo-India: Tales and Memoirs (Trenton, NJ, 2010). Deefholts, M. and Staub, S. W. (eds), Voices on the Verandah: An Anthology of Anglo-Indian Prose and Poetry (Trenton, NJ, 2004). Dictionary of Indian Biography (New York, 1906). Dover, C., American Negro Art (London, 1960). Dover, C., Brown Phoenix (London, 1950). Dover, C., Cimmerii or Eurasians and their Future (Calcutta, 1929). Dover, C., ‘Eugenic Legislation in India’, Quarterly Review (January 1935). Dover, C., Half-Caste (London, 1937). Dover, C., Hell in the Sunshine (London, 1943). Dover, C., Know this of Race (London, 1939). Dover, C., ‘Population Control in India’, Eugenics Review, vol. 26, no. 4 (1935), pp. 283–285. D’Souza, T., The Silence beyond the Pain: Waiting for Answers (CreateSpace, 2013). Eden, E., Letters from India: Vol. II, ed. ‘by her niece’ (London, 1872), available at http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/eden/letters/letters.html Edwards, T., ‘Art. VI. – The Eurasian Movement of 1829–30’, Calcutta Review, vol. 76 (January 1883), p. 151. Edwards, T., Henry Derozio, the Eurasian: Poet, Teacher, and Journalist (Calcutta, 1884). Enriquez, C. M., Burma Invaded: 1942 (CreateSpace, 2012) Forbes-Mitchell, W., The Gospel of Regeneration of the Anglo-Indian and Eurasian Poor (Calcutta, 1900).. Forster, E. M., A Passage to India (London, 1979). Gandhi, M. K., ‘The Future of India’, International Affairs, vol. 10, no. 6 (November 1931), pp. 721–739. Gardner, C., A Handful of Dust (New Delhi, 2008).

Bibliography

291

Gidney, H., ‘Indian Medical Department’, British Medical Journal, vol. 2, no. 4171 (14 December 1940), p. 850. Gleig, G. R., The Life of Major-General Sir Thomas Munro, Bart. and K.C.B., Late Governor of Madras: With Extracts from His Correspondence and Private Papers, 2 vols (London, 1830). Godden, J. and Godden, R., Two under the Indian Sun (New York, 1966). Gorman, J. T., The Siege of Lucknow (London, 1941). Hope, T., Church and State in India: A Minute (London, 1885). ‘Hunting Surgeon: Record of Tigers Shot’, Evening Post (29 January 1936), available at http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/paperspast?a=d&cl=search&d=EP19360129. 2.50&srpos=1&e=—————10–1——2hunting+surgeon– Ilbert, C., The Government of India: Being a Digest of the Statute Law Relating Thereto: With Historical Introduction and Explanatory Matter (Oxford, 1907). Imperial Council of Agric Res, Agriculture and Animal Husbandry in India 1937–38 (Delhi, 1938). Johnson, J. W., The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Boston, MA, 1912). Kenneison, R., Playing for Malaya: A Eurasian Family and the Pacific War (Singapore, 2012). Kipling, R., Plain Tales from the Hills (North Falmouth, MA, 1899). Lok Sabha Secretariat, Constituent Assembly of India Debates, originally published in 12 vols (Delhi, 1946–50), available at http://164.100.47.132/lssnew/cadebatefiles/ca debates.html Lord Curzon in India: Being a Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy and GovernorGeneral of India: 1898–1905: With a Portrait, Explanatory Notes and an Index and with an Introduction by Sir Thomas Raleigh, K.C.S.I. (London, 1906). Lumb, L. (ed.), More Voices on the Verandah (Trenton, NJ, 2012). Lumb, L. and Van Veldhuizen, D. (eds), The Way We Are: An Anglo-Indian Mosaic (Trenton, NJ, 2008). Lyons, E. M., Bitter Sweet Truth: Recollections of an Anglo Indian Born during the Last Year of the British Raj (New Delhi, 2001). M., J., A Few Local Sketches (Calcutta, 1844). Mackay, G., Serious Reflections and Other Contributions (Bombay, 1881). Maher, R., These Are the Anglo-Indians (Calcutta, 1962). Mains, A. A., A Soldier with Railways (Chippenham, 1994). Malcolm, Sir J., The Government of India (London, 1833). Malthus, T., An Essay on the Principle of Population, as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and Other Writers (London, 1798). Masters, J., Bhowani Junction (New York, 1954). Masters, J., The Road Past Mandalay: A Personal Narrative (London, 1961). McGready-Buffardi, P., Hearts Divided in the Raj (Bloomington, IN, 2004). Mitchell, D., Tea, Love and War: Searching for English Roots in Assam (Leicester, 2012). Mitra, H. (ed.), The Govt. of India Act 1919: Rules Thereunder & Govt. Reports, 1920 (Calcutta, 1921). Montagu, V. (ed.), Montagu, E. S., An Indian Diary (London, 1930). Moon, P. (ed.), Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal (London, 1973). Moreno, H. W. B., Anglo-Indian Education: An Open Letter to All Educational Authorities (Calcutta, 1920).

292

Bibliography

Moreno, H. W. B., Anglo-Indians and the Housing Problem (Calcutta, 1917). Moreno, H. W. B., Freemasonry Revealed! Being a Series of Short Stories of Anglo-Indian Life Concerning Masons and Masonry (Calcutta, 1907). Moreno, H. W. B., The Call to Arms for Anglo-Indians (Calcutta, 1916). Moss, P., Bye-Bye Blackbird: An Anglo-Indian Memoir (Lincoln, NE, 2004). Muller, C., The Jam Fruit Tree (Mumbai, 1994). Muller, C., Yakada Yaka: The Continuing Sage of Sonnaboy Von Bloss and the Burgher Railwaymen (Mumbai, 1994). Nehru, J., Toward Freedom: The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru (New York, 1941). Nehru, J. and Khosla, M. (eds), Letters for a Nation: From Jawaharlal Nehru to His Chief Ministers 1947–1963 (Gurgaon, 2014). Nevil-Chambers, H., Usury, and Its Relations to Anglo-Indian Poverty (Calcutta, 1913). Nisbet, H., Experiences of a Jungle-Wallah by “Nibs” (St Albans, 1936). Nissel, A., Mixed: My Life in Black and White (New York, 2006). Oehlers, F. A. C. J., That’s How It Goes: Autobiography of a Singapore Eurasian (Singapore, 2008). ‘Officers of the Civil Division of the Said Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, India’, London Gazette (8 January 1919), pp. 452–461, available at www.london-ga zette.co.uk/issues/31114/supplements/461/page.pdf Oman, J. C., The Education of Eurasians and of Europeans Domiciled in India (Agra, 1877). Platt, K., Home and Health in India and the Tropical Colonies (London, 1923). Proceedings of the Sub-Committee, Public Service Commission. Salt Department. Northern India. Part I (Calcutta, 1887). Pyke, J., The Tea Planter’s Son: An Anglo-Indian Life (Gurgaon, 2014). Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords Appointed to Inquire into the Present State of the Affairs of the East India Company, and into the Trade between Great Britain, the East Indies and China; with the Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Committee (London, 1830). Reynolds, H., The Anglo-Indian Manifesto (Lahore, 1946). Roberts, E., Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society, Volume II (London, 1837) and Volume III (London, 1835). Rodriguez, H., Helen of Burma: The Autobiography of a Wartime Nurse (London, 1983). Royal Society, ‘List of Fellows of the Royal Society 1660–2007: A Complete Listing of All Fellows and Foreign Members since the Foundation of the Society’, Royal Society: Library and Information Services, available at http://royalsociety.org/uploa dedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/about-us/fellowship/Fellows1660-2007.pdfc Sadleir, H. W. M., Inter-Provincial Board for Anglo-Indian and European Education Report: Commission Appointed by the Board for the Purpose of Carrying Out a Survey of Anglo-Indian Education in India with a View to Its Post-War Reconstruction (1946). Sapru, T. et al., Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee (Bombay, 1945). Sarsfield, M., No Crystal Stair: A Novel (Toronto, 2004). Scott, P., The Raj Quartet, 4 vols (Chicago, 1998). Sealy, A., The Trotter-Nama (New York, 1988). Second Report from the Select Committee on the Affairs of the East India Company; Together with an Appendix of Documents, and Index (London, 1830).

Bibliography

293

Shemain, A., Boarding School Boy: In the Days of the Raj (Bloomington, IN, 2011). Shepard, E., A Marooned People: (The Anglo-Indian Community) (Westminster, 1930). Shires, R., The Leopard’s Call: An Anglo-Indian Love Story (Bloomington, IN, 2005). Singh, S. N., India’s Fighters: Their Mettle, History and Services to Britain (London, 1914). Skipton, H. P. K., Our Reproach in India (Oxford, 1912). Snell, O., Anglo-Indians and Their Future (Bombay, 1944). Speeches by Lord Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy and Governor-General of India: 1898–1901 (Calcutta, 1901). Stark, H. A., Hostages to India: Or the Life Story of the Anglo-Indian Race (Calcutta, 1936). Stark, H. A., John Ricketts and His Times: Being a Narrative Account of Anglo-Indian Affairs during the Eventful Years from 1791 to 1835 (Calcutta, 1934). Stark, H. A., The Call of the Blood, or Anglo-Indians and the Sepoy Mutiny (Rangoon, 1932). Stark, H. A. and Madge, E., East Indian Worthies, Being Memoirs of Distinguished Indo-Europeans (Calcutta, 1892). Stokes, W., A Supplement to the Anglo-Indian Codes: 1887, 1888 (Oxford, 1889). ‘Surgeon’s “Bag” of 53 Tigers: Ambidexterity and Shooting Help Him to Operate’, Queenslander (2 January 1936), available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-a rticle23379997 The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register for British and Foreign India, China, and Australia (London, 1831). The Constitution of India (1950). The Extraordinary Black Book: An Exposition of the United Church of England and Ireland; Civil List and Crown Revenues; Incomes, Privileges, and Power, of the Aristocracy; Privy Council, Diplomatic, and Consular Establishments; Law and Judicial Administration; Representation and Prospects of Reform under the New Ministry; Profits, Influence, and Monopoly of the Bank of England and East-India Company; Debt and Funding System; Salaries, Fees, and Emoluments in Courts of Justice, Public Offices, and Colonies; Lists of Pluralists, Placemen, Pensioners , and Sinecurists: The Whole Corrected from the Latest Official Returns, and Presenting a Complete View of the Expenditure, Patronage, Influence, and Abuses of the Government, in Church, State, Law and Representation (London, 1831). The Ilbert Bill. A Collection of Letters, Speeches, Memorials, Articles, & c., Stating the Objections to the Bill (London, circa 1883). Thorpe, O., Paper Boats in the Monsoon: Life in the Lost World of Anglo-India (Victoria, Canada, 2007). Thurston, E., Madras Government Museum: Bulletin, Vol. II, No. 2.: Anthropology: Eurasians of Madras and Malabar; Notes on Tattooing; Malagasy-Nias-Dravidians; Toda Petition (Madras, 1898). Tweed, I., Cow-Keeping in India: A Simple and Practical Book on Their Care and Treatment, Their Various Breeds and the Means of Rendering Them Profitable (1911). UCL Library Services, ‘Report of Proceedings Connected with the East Indians’ Petition to Parliament, Read at a Public Meeting Held at the Town Hall, Calcutta, March 28, 1831: with an Appendix’, Hume Tracts (1831).

294

Bibliography

University of Cambridge, Centre of South Asian Studies: Oral History Collection, Interview: Bishop Newbigin – 1978 (created digitally: 14:37, 12 August 2009), available at https://sms.cam.ac.uk/media/654746 Wallace, K. E., Brave New Anglo-India, in a Brave New India, in a Brave New World (Calcutta, 1935). Wallace, K. E., Life of Sir Henry Gidney (Calcutta, 1947). Whitworth, G. C., An Anglo-Indian Dictionary: A Glossary of Indian Terms used in English and of Such or Other Non-Indian Terms as Have Certain Special Meanings in India (London, 1885). Wilson, M., The Domiciled European and Anglo-Indian Race of India (Bombay/Bangalore, 1928). Woolley, P. W., Some Problems of the Domiciled Community (Calcutta, 1912). Yang, V., Memoirs of a Eurasian: A Novel (CreateSpace, 2003). Yule, H. and Burnell, A. C., Hobson-Jobson: Being a Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases and of Kindred Terms; Etymological, Historical, Geographical, and Discursive (London, 1886). Unpublished sources Hawes, C. J., PhD dissertation: ‘Eurasians in British India, 1773–1833: The Making of a Reluctant Community’, Department of History, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (1993). McCabe, J., PhD thesis: ‘Kalimpong Kids: The Lives and Labours of Anglo-Indian Adolescents Resettled in New Zealand between 1908 and 1938’, University of Otago, Dunedin (2014). Mizutani, S., D.Phil. thesis: ‘The British in India and Their Domiciled Brethren: Race and Class in the Colonial Context, 1858–1930’, University of Oxford (2004). Otto, B., MSc thesis: ‘Anglo-Indians in the Tumultuous Years: Community, Nationality, Identity and Migration, 1939–1955’, London School of Economics (2010). Secondary sources Abel, E., The Anglo-Indian Community: Survival in India (Delhi, 1988). Abraham, J., ‘The Stain of White: Liaisons, Memories, and White Men as Relatives’, Men and Masculinities 9(2006), pp. 131–151. Adas, M., Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca, NY, 1989). Alibhai-Brown, Y., Mixed Feelings: The Complex Lives of Mixed Race Britons (London, 2001). Alter, S., Neglected Lives (New York, 1978). Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983). Anderson, C., Subaltern Lives: Biographies of Colonialism in the Indian Ocean World, 1790–1920 (Cambridge, 2012). Anderson, V., Race and Power in British India: Anglo-Indians, Class and Identity in the Nineteenth Century (London, 2014). Andrews, R., Anglo-Indian Residential Care Homes: Accounts from Kolkata and Melbourne (Aotearoa, 2011).

Bibliography

295

Andrews, R., ‘Anglo-Indian Reunions: Secular Pilgrimages?’, South Asian Diaspora (2012), pp. 1–15. Andrews, R., ‘Christianity as an Indian Religion: The Anglo-Indian Experience’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 25:2(2010), pp. 173–188. Andrews, R., Christmas in Calcutta: Anglo-Indian Stories and Essays (New Delhi, 2014). Andrews, R., ‘Quitting India: The Anglo-Indian Culture of Migration’, Sites: New Series 4:2(2007), pp. 32–56. ‘Anglo-Indians wounded by Cotton Mary portrayal’, Guardian (10 March 2000), available at www.theguardian.com/world/2000/mar/10/lukeharding Arnold, D., ‘European Orphans and Vagrants in India in the Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 7(1978), pp. 104–127. Arun, J., Constructing Dalit Identity (Jaipur, 2007). Aspinall, P. and Song, M., Mixed Race Identities (London, 2013). Australian Anglo Indian Association, A West Australian Tapestry of Anglo-Indian Memories: From Both Sides Now (Greenwood, WA, 2004). Bagley, C., The Dutch Plural Society: A Comparative Study in Race Relations (Oxford, 1973). Bajpai, R., Debating Difference: Group Rights and Liberal Democracy in India (Oxford, 2011). Ballhatchet, K., Race, Sex and Class under the Raj: Imperial Attitudes and Policies and Their Critics, 1793–1905 (London, 1980). Bandyopadhyay, S., Decolonization in South Asia: Meanings of Freedom in Postindependence West Bengal, 1947–52 (Abingdon, 2009). Banerjee, M., ‘The Trial of Derozio, or the Scandal of Reason’, Social Scientist, 37:7/8 (July–August 2009), pp. 60–88. Bayly, C. A., Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1988). Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford, 2004). Bayly, C. A. and Harper, T., Forgotten Armies: Britain’s Asian Empire and the War with Japan (London, 2004). Bear, L. G., ‘Miscegenations of Modernity: Constructing European Respectability and Race in the Indian Railway Colony’, Women’s History Review, 3:4 (1994), pp. 531–548. Berlin, I., Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA, 1998). Bhabha, H. K., The Location of Culture (London, 2004). Bhattacharya, D. K., ‘The Anglo-Indians in Bombay: An Introduction to Their Socio-Economic and Cultural Life’, Race and Class 10(1968), pp. 163–172. Bidwell, S., Swords for Hire: European Mercenaries in Eighteenth-Century India (London, 1971). Blunt, A., Domicile and Diaspora: Anglo-Indian Women and the Spatial Politics of Home (Malden, MA, 2005). Blunt, A., ‘Geographies of Diaspora and Mixed Descent: Anglo-Indians in India and Britain’, International Journal of Population Geography 9(2003), pp. 281–294. Blunt, A., ‘Imperial Geographies of Home: British Domesticity in India, 1886–1925’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 24:4(1999), pp. 421–440. Blunt, A., ‘“Land of Our Mothers”: Home, Identity, and Nationality for Anglo-Indians in British India, 1919–1947’, History Workshop Journal 54(2002), pp. 49–72. Blunt, A. and DowlingR., Home (New York, 2006).

296

Bibliography

Bose, S., His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2011). Bose, S. and Manjapra, K. (eds), Cosmopolitan Thought Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation of Ideas (London, 2010). Boucher, E., Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869–1967 (Cambridge, 2014). Brookes, S., Through the Jungle of Death: A Boy’s Escape from Wartime Burma (London, 2000). Brown, J. M., Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (New Haven, CT, 1989). Brown, J. M., Global South Asians: Introducing the Modern Diaspora (Cambridge, 2006). Brown, J. M., ‘Imperial Facade: Some Constraints upon and Contradictions in the British Position in India, 1919–35’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 26 (1976), pp. 35–52. Brown, J. M. (ed.), Mahatma Gandhi: The Essential Writings (Oxford, 2008). Brown, J. M., Nehru: A Political Life (New Haven, CT, 2003). Brown, P., Anglo-Indian Food and Customs (New Delhi, 1998). Brown, W., Anglo-Indian Race Preservation Course (Raleigh, NC, 2010). Brown, W., The Secret Race: Anglo-Indians (Raleigh, NC, 2010). Buettner, E., Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford, 2004). Buettner, E., ‘Problematic Spaces, Problematic Races: Defining ‘Europeans’ in Late Colonial India’, Women’s History Review, 9:2(2000), pp. 277–298. Camper, C. (ed.), Miscegenation Blues: Voices of Mixed Race Women (Toronto, 1994). Cannadine, D., Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire (New York, 2001). Caplan, L., Children of Colonialism: Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World (New York, 2001). Caplan, L., ‘Creole World, Purist Rhetoric: Anglo-Indian Cultural Debates in Colonial and Contemporary Madras’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1:4 (December 1995), pp. 743–762. Caplan, L., ‘Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women: Gender Constructs and Contrasts in a Changing Society’, Modern Asian Studies, 34:4(2000), pp. 863–892. Caplan, L., ‘“Life is only abroad, not here”: The Culture of Emigration among Anglo‐Indians in Madras’, Immigrants and Minorities, 14:1(1995), pp. 26–46. Carbado, D. W. and Gulati, M., Acting White? Rethinking Race in Post-Racial America (New York, 2013). Carton, A., Mixed-Race and Modernity in Colonial India: Changing Concepts of Hybridity across Empires (New York, 2012). Cell, J. W., Hailey: A Study in British Imperialism (Cambridge, 1992). Chatterji, J., The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967 (Cambridge, 2007). Chaudhuri, R., ‘The Politics of Naming: Derozio in Two Formative Moments of Literary and Political Discourse, Calcutta, 1825–31’, Modern Asian Studies, 44:4 (July 2010), pp. 857–885. Coelho, G. M., ‘Anglo-Indian: A Nativized Variety of Indian English’, Language in Society, 26:4(December 1997), pp. 561–589. Cohn, B., Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (Princeton, NJ, 1996). Copland, I., Mabbett, I., Roy, A., Brittlebank, K., and Bowles, A., A History of State and Religion in India (New York, 2012).

Bibliography

297

Coronado, M., Guevarra, R. P., Moniz, J., and Szanto, L. F. (eds), Crossing Lines: Race and Mixed Race across the Geohistorical Divide (Santa Barbara, CA, 2003). Cressey, P. F., ‘The Anglo-Indians: A Disorganized Marginal Group’, Social Forces, 14:2(December 1935), pp. 263–268. Dalrymple, W., White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India (London, 2002). David, R., A Land I Once Called Home (Madras, 2005). D’Costa, ‘Anglo-Indian Nostalgia: Longing for India as Homeland’, Presented to the Second Annual Rhizomes: Re-visioning Boundaries Conference of the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Queensland, Brisbane (February 2006). D’Cruz, G., ‘My Two Left Feet: The Problem of Anglo-Indian Stereotypes in PostIndependence Indo-English Fiction’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 38:2 (2003), pp. 105–123. de Courcy, A., The Fishing Fleet: Husband-Hunting in the Raj (London, 2012). Devji, F., Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (Cambridge, MA, 2013). Devji, F., The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptation of Violence (Cambridge, MA, 2012). Dictionary of Indian Biography (New York, 1906). Doctor, V., ‘How Amul Became Utterly Butterly Delicious and Salty’, Economic Times (2007), available at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2007-07-21/ news/27671277_1_butter-milk-dairy-operations Dreisinger, B., Near Black: White-to-Black Passing in American Culture (Amherst, MA, 2008). D’Souza, A. A., Anglo-Indian Education: A Study of Its Origins and Growth in Bengal up to 1960 (New Delhi, 1976). Ehlers, N., Racial Imperatives: Discipline, Performativity, and Struggles against Subjection (Bloomington, IN, 2012). Erikson, E., Between Monopoly and Free Trade: The English East India Company, 1600–1757 (Princeton, NJ, 2014). Ernst, W., Mad Tales from the Raj: the European Insane in British India, 1800–1858 (London, 1991). Faithful, E., Anglo-Indians: A Life Lived through Six British Monarchs (Delhi, 2003). Farmer, B. H., Agricultural Colonization in India since Independence (London, 1974). Fazal, T., ‘Nation-State’ and Minority Rights in India: Comparative Perspectives on Muslim and Sikh Identities (New York, 2015). Fischer-Tiné, H., ‘“White women degrading themselves to the lowest depths”: European Networks of Prostitution and Colonial Anxieties in British India and Ceylon ca. 1880–1914’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 40(2003), pp. 163–190. Fischer-Tiné, H. and Gehrmann, S. (eds), Empires and Boundaries: Rethinking Race, Class, and Gender in Colonial Settings (New York, 2009). Fisher, M., The Inordinately Strange Life of Dyce Sombre: Victorian Anglo-Indian MP and Chancery ‘Lunatic’ (London, 2010). Fleming, L. (ed.), Last Children of the Raj: British Childhoods in India: Volume I 1919–1939 (London, 2004). Fleming, L. Last Children of the Raj: British Childhoods in India: Volume II 1939–1950 (London, 2004). French, P., India: A Portrait (New York, 2011).

298

Bibliography

Frick, G. D., Steinbach, M. K., Dwyer, R., and Phalkey, J. (eds), Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies (New York, 2015). Gaikwad, V. R., The Anglo-Indians: A Study in the Problems and Processes Involved in Emotional and Cultural Integration (London, 1967). Ganachari, A., ‘“White Man’s Embarrassment”: European Vagrancy in 19th Century Bombay’, Economic and Political Weekly, 37:25(22–8 June 2002), pp. 2477–2486. Gardner, F., Life and Legacy of Col. William Linnaeus Gardner (Mumbai, 2009). Gaskins, P. F., What Are You? Voices of Mixed-Race Young People (New York, 1999). Gehman, M., The Free People of Color of New Orleans: An Introduction (New Orleans, 1994). Ghosh, D., Sex and the Family in Colonial India: The Making of Empire (Cambridge, 2006). Gifford-Pritchard, S., An Anglo-Indian Childhood (Bloomington, IN, 2005). Ginsberg, E. K. (ed.), Passing and the Fictions of Identity (Durham, NC, 1996). Gist, N. and Wright, R., Marginality and Identity: Anglo-Indians as a Racially-Mixed Minority in India (Leiden, 1973). Godden, R., A Time to Dance, No Time to Weep (New York, 1987). Goodall, F., Exodus Burma: The British Escape through the Jungles of Death 1942 (Staplehurst, 2011). Graham, R. (ed.), The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870–1940 (Austin, TX, 1990). Greenwood, N. (ed.), Shades of Gold and Green: Anecdotes of Colonial Burma: 1886–1948 (New Delhi, 1998). Grimshaw, A. D., ‘The Anglo-Indian Community: The Integration of a Marginal Group’, Journal of Asian Studies, 18:2(February 1959), pp. 227–240. Guha, R., Gandhi before India (London, 2013). Gupta, S. K., Marriage among the Anglo-Indians (Lucknow, 1968). Haberly, D. T., Three Sad Races: Racial Identity and National Consciousness in Brazilian Literature (Cambridge, 1983). Hale, G. E., Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890–1940 (New York, 1998). Hall, W., Passing for Black: The Life and Careers of Mae Street Kidd (Lexington, KY, 1997). Harris, B. and Ernst, W. (eds), Race, Science and Medicine, 1700–1960 (London, 1999). Hawes, C., Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India, 1773–1833 (Richmond, 1996). Heath, D. and Mathur, C. (eds), Communalism and Globalization in South Asia and Its Diaspora (New York, 2011). Hedin, E. L., ‘The Anglo-Indian Community’, American Journal of Sociology, 40:2 (September 1934), pp. 165–179. Henriques, F., Children of Caliban: Miscegenation (London, 1974). Henriques, F., Family and Colour in Jamaica (2nd edn, London, 1968). Hodes, M., White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (New York, 1997). Horne, G., The End of Empires: African Americans and India (Philadelphia, 2008). Huntingdon, S., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, 1996). Hutchins, F. G., Spontaneous Revolution: The Quit India Movement (Delhi, 1971).

Bibliography

299

Information Office of the University of Sussex, ‘Obituary: “Professor Fernando Henriques”’, Bulletin (15 June 1976). Jalal, A., The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life, Times, and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide (Princeton, NJ, 2013). Jalal, A., The Struggle for Pakistan: A Muslim Homeland and Global Politics (Cambridge, MA, 2014). Jarnagin, L., Portuguese and Luso-Asian Legacies in Southeast Asia, 1511–2011, Vol. 2: Culture and Identity in the Luso-Asian World: Tenacities and Plasticities (Singapore, 2012). Jayaram, N. (ed.), The Indian Diaspora: Dynamics of Migration (New Delhi, 2004). Jayawardena, K., Erasure of the Euro-Asian: Recovering Early Radicalism and Feminism in South Asia (2nd edn, New Delhi, 2007). Jeffrys, M., ‘Where Do Coloureds Come From?’, Drum, 102–6, 108(1959). Johnson, K. R., Mixed Race America and the Law: A Reader (New York, 2003). Joseph, B., Reading the East India Company 1720–1840: Colonial Currencies of Gender (Chicago, IL, 2004). Kapila, S., Educating Seeta: The Anglo-Indian Family Romance and the Poetics of Indirect Rule (Columbus, OH, 2010). Kawash, S., Dislocating the Color Line: Identity, Hybridity, and Singularity in AfricanAmerican Literature (Stanford, CA, 1997). Keay, J., Midnight’s Descendants: South Asia from Partition to the Present Day (London, 2014). Kennedy, R., Interracial Intimacies: Sex, Marriage, Identity, and Adoption (New York, 2003). Kennedy, R., ‘Racial Passing’, Ohio State Law Journal, 6:1145(2001), pp. 1–28. Kerr, I. J., Engines of Change: The Railroads that Made India (Westport, CT, 2007). Khan, Y., The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War (London, 2015). King-O’Riain, R. C., Small, S., Mahtani, M., Song, M., and Spickard, P. (eds), Global Mixed Race (New York, 2014). Kudaisya, G., Region, Nation, “Heartland”: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body Politic (New Delhi, 2006). Kuracina, W. F., The State and Governance in India: The Congress Ideal (New York, 2010). Lahiri, S., Indians in Britain: Anglo-Indian Encounters, Race and Identity, 1880–1930 (London, 2000). Lahiri-Dutt, K., In Search of a Homeland: Anglo-Indians and McCluskiegunge (Calcutta, 1990). Lal, P. H. H., The Doon Valley Down the Ages (New Delhi, 1993). Lambton, A. K. S., ‘Major-General Sir John Malcolm (1769–1833) and “The History of Persia”’, Iran, 33(1995), pp. 97–109. Lee, V., Being Eurasian: Memories across Racial Divides (Hong Kong, 2004). Leong-Salobir, C., Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A Taste of Empire (New York, 2011). Levine, P., Prostitution, Race and Politics: Policing Venereal Disease in the British Empire (New York, 2003). Lopez, I. H., White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York, 2006). Madge, E. W., Henry Derozio: The Eurasian Poet and Reformer (3rd edn, Calcutta, 1982).

300

Bibliography

Mahtani, M., Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality (Vancouver, 2014). Malcolm, J., Malcolm: Soldier, Diplomat, Ideologue of British India: The Life of Sir John Malcolm (1769–1833) (Edinburgh, 2014). Mallampalli, C., Christians and Public Life in Colonial South India, 1863–1937: Contending with Marginality (New York, 2004). Mallampalli, C., Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India: Trials of an Interracial Family (Cambridge, 2011). Marshall, P. J., ‘The White of British India, 1780–1830: A Failed Colonial Society?’, International History Review, 12:1(February 1990), pp. 26–44. McCarthy, B. L. C., Let Us Yak about India! (Beechboro, Australia, circa 2000s). McCarthy, M., My Eyes Only Look Out: Experiences of Irish People of Mixed Race Parentage (Dingle, Ireland, 2001). McCkintock, A., Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, 1995). McMenamin, D., ‘Identifying Domiciled Europeans in Colonial India: Poor Whites or Privileged Community?’, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, 3:1(June 2001), pp. 106–127. Metcalf, T. R., Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge, 1994). Mijares, L., ‘“You are an Anglo-Indian?” Eurasians and Hybridity and Cosmopolitanism in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children’, Journal of Commonwealth Literature 38(2003), pp. 125–145. Mizutani, S., ‘Historicising Whiteness: From the Case of Late Colonial India’, ACRAWSA e-journal, 2:1(2006), available at www.acrawsa.org.au/files/ejournalfiles/ 85SatoshiMizutani.pdf Mizutani, S., ‘Hybridity and History: A Critical Reflection on Homi K. Bhabha’s Post-Historical Thoughts’, Ab Imperio: Studies of New Imperial History and Nationalism in the Post-Soviet Space, 4(2013), pp. 27–48. Mizutani, S., ‘Rethinking Inclusion and Exclusion: The Question of Mixed-Race Presence in Late Colonial India’, University of Sussex Journal of Contemporary History, 5(December 2002). Mizutani, S., The Meaning of White: Race, Class, and the ‘Domiciled Community’ in British India 1858–1930 (Oxford, 2011). Montague, A. and Alibhai-Brown, Y. (eds), The Colour of Love: Mixed Race Relationships (London, 1992). Moore, G. J., Anglo-Indians: The Best of Both Worlds (2nd edn, Melbourne, 2009). Moore, G. J., From India with Love: The Story of the Sellers Family (Melbourne, 2006). Moore, G. J., The Anglo-Indian Vision (Melbourne, 1986). Moore, G. J., The Lotus and the Rose: An Anglo-Indian Story (Melbourne, 1986). Moore, R. J., Churchill, Cripps and India, 1939–45 (Oxford, 1979). Mörner, M., Race Mixture in the History of Latin America (Boston, MA, 1967). Morning, A., The Nature of Race: How Scientists Think and Teach about Human Difference (Berkeley, CA, 2011). Mukherjee, S., Nationalism, Education and Migrant Identities: The England-Returned (Abingdon, 2010). Must See India, 2011, ‘Abbott Mount, Uttaranchal’, Roam Space Travel Solutions Pvt Ltd, available at www.mustseeindia.com/Abbott-Mount.

Bibliography

301

Muthiah, S. and MacLure, H., The Anglo-Indians: A 500 Year History (New Delhi, 2013). Mylonas, H., The Politics of Nation-Building: Making Co-Nationals, Refugees and Minorities (New York, 2012). Naidis, M., ‘British Attitudes toward the Anglo-Indians’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 62:3(Summer 1963), pp. 407–422. Nandy, A., The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism (New Delhi, 1983). Nielson, P. M., The Dispossessed: Cultural Genocide of the Mixed-Blood Utes an Advocate’s Chronicle (Norman, OK, 1892). Noles, K., ‘“Waging War against the King’: Recruitment and Motivation of the Indian National Army, 1942–1945’, British Empire at War Research Group, Research Papers, 6(2014). O’Brien, E., The Anglo-Indian Way: Celebrating the Lives of the Anglo-Indians of India (New Delhi, 2013). O’Keeffe, B., New Soviet Gypsies: Nationality, Performance, and Selfhood in the Early Soviet Union (Toronto, 2013). Olumide, J., Raiding the Gene Pool: The Social Construction of Mixed Race (London, 2002). O’Toole, J. M., Passing for White: Race, Religion, and the Healy Family, 1820–1920 (Boston, MA, 2002). Palit, D., The Golden Life (New Delhi, 2004). Pandey, G., A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States (New York, 2013). Park, Y. and Rajan, R. S. (eds), The Postcolonial Jane Austen (London, 2000). Peacock, O., Minorities and National Integration in India (Jaipur, 1991). Pearse, H. W., The Hearseys: Five Generations of an Anglo-Indian Family (Edinburgh, 1905) Peers, D. M., India under Colonial Rule: 1700–1885 (New York, 2013). Peppin, B., Black and White: The “Anglo-Indian” Identity in Recent English Fiction (Milton Keynes, 2012). Perdue, T., Mixed Blood Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South (Athens, GA, 2003). Phoenix, A. and Tizard, B., Black, White or Mixed Race?: Race and Racism in the Lives of Young People of Mixed Parentage (London, 1993). Pieterse, N. J., Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange (2nd edn, New York, 2009). Poole, D. (ed.), A Companion to Latin American Anthropology (New York, 2008). Prasad, C. (ed.), Mixed: An Anthology of Short Fiction on the Multiracial Experience (New York, 2006). Quan, H., Native Chiefs and Famous Metis: Leadership and Bravery in the Canadian West (Canmore, Canada, 2003). Rai, R. and Reeves, P. (eds), The South Asian Diaspora: Transnational Networks and Changing Identities (Abingdon, 2009). Rappa, A. L., Saudade: The Culture and Security of Eurasian Communities in Southeast Asia (Singapore, 2013). Roychowdhury, L., The Jadu House: Intimate Histories of Anglo-India (New York, 2000). Rush, A., Bonds of Empire: West Indians and Britishness from Victoria to Decolonization (Oxford, 2011).

302

Bibliography

Saada, E., Empire’s Children: Race, Filiation, and Citizenship in the French Colonies (Chicago, IL, 2012). Saberwal, S., Spirals of Contention: Why India was Partitioned in 1947 (New Delhi, 2008). Saha, J., ‘Madness and the Making of a Colonial Order in Burma’, Modern Asian Studies, 47:2(2013), pp. 406–435. Said, E., Culture and Imperialism (New York, 1994). Said, E., Orientalism (New York, 1979). Sanyal, T. K., Anglo-Indians of Kolkata: A Study of Their Social Alienation (Calcutta, 2007). Sarila, N. S., The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition (London, 2006). Scammell, G. V., The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion c.1400–1715 (London, 1989). Sen, I., ‘Devoted Wife/Sensuous Bibi: Colonial Constructions of the Indian Woman, 1860–1900’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies 8(2001), pp. 1–22. Sen, I., Woman and Empire: Representations in the Writings of British India, 1858–1900 (New Delhi, 2002). Sen, S., Military System of the Marathas: With a Brief Account of Their Maritime Activities (Calcutta, 1928). Seth, V., Europe0 s Indians: Producing Racial Difference, 1500–1900 (London, 2010). Sharfstein, D. J., The Invisible Line: A Secret History of Race in America (New York, 2011). Simpson, A. (ed.), Language and National Identity in Asia (Oxford, 2007). Simpson, G. E. and Yinger, J., Racial and Cultural Minorities: An Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination (4th edn, New York, 1972). Sinha, B. (ed.), South Asian Transnationalisms: Cultural Exchange in the Twentieth Century (New York, 2012). Slate, N., Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Cambridge, MA, 2012). Slate, N., The Prism of Race: W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and the Colored World of Cedric Dover (New York, 2014). Smith-Pryor, E. M., Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness (Chapel Hill, NC, 2009). Sohi, S., Echoes of Mutiny: Race, Surveillance, and Indian Anticolonialism in North America (New York, 2014). Spear, J. M., ‘Colonial Intimacies: Legislating Sex in French Louisiana’, William and Mary Quarterly, 60:1(January 2003), pp. 75–98. Speirs, M., Lucknow Families of the Raj (CreateSpace, 2013). Spencer, J. M., The New Colored People: The Mixed-Race Movement in America (New York, 1997). Stoler, A. L., Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley, CA, 2002). St Stephen’s Community House, It’s Not All Black and White: Multiracial Youth Speak Out (Toronto, 2012). Subramanian, N., Nation and Family: Personal Law, Cultural Pluralism, and Gendered Citizenship in India (Stanford, CA, 2014). Sycamore, M. B. (ed.), Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Berkeley, CA, 2006).

Bibliography

303

Talbot, I. and Thandi, S. (eds), People on the Move: Punjabi Colonial, and Post-Colonial Migration (Karachi, 2004). Tarlo, E., Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India (London, 1996). Taylor, J. G., The Social World of Batavia: European and Eurasian in Dutch Asia (Madison, WI, 1983). Teng, E., Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842–1943 (Berkley, CA, 2013). van den Berghe, P., South Africa: A Study in Conflict (Middletown, CT, 1965). van der Veur, P. W., ‘The Eurasians of Indonesia: Castaways of Colonialism’, Pacific Affairs, 27:2 (June 1954), pp. 124–137 Varma, L. B., Anglo Indians: A Historical Study of Anglo Indian Community in 19th Century in India (New Delhi, 1979). Wade, P., ‘Rethinking Mestizaje: Ideology and Lived Experience’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 37(2005), pp. 239–257, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/ S0022216X05008990 Wald, E., ‘From Begums and Bibis to Abandoned Females and Idle Women: Sexual Relationships, Venereal Disease and the Redefinition of Prostitution in Early Nineteenth-Century India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review 46:1(2009), pp. 5–25. Wald, G., Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Culture (Durham, NC, 2000). Washbrook, D., ‘Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India’, Modern Asian Studies 15(1981), pp. 649–721. Watson, G., Passing for White: A study of Racial Assimilation in a South African School (London, 1970). Wehnert, K., Passing: An Exploration of African-Americans on Their Journey for an Identity Along the Colour Line (Hamburg, 2010). Wertheim, W. F., ‘The Indo-European Problem in Indonesia’, Pacific Affairs, 20:3 (September 1947), pp. 290–298. Wheeler, R., The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth-Century British Culture (Philadelphia, PA, 2000). White, B., A Collection of Anglo-Indian Roasts, Casseroles and Bakes (Bangalore, 2005). White, B., Anglo-Indian Delicacies: Vintage and Contemporary Cuisine from Colonial India (Bangalore, 2007). White, B., Flavours of the Past: The Very Best of Classic Colonial Cuisine Featuring Railway Mutton Curry and Other Popular Delicacies (Bangalore, 2006). White, B., Kolar Gold Fields: Down Memory Lane: Paeans to Lost Glory! (Milton Keynes, 2010). White, B., The Anglo-Indian Festive Hamper: Cakes, Sweets, Puddings, Cookies, Homemade Wines and More … (Bangalore, 2007). White, B., The Anglo-Indian Snack Box: Simple Snacks, Nibbles and Short Eats (Bangalore, 2009). White, B., The Best of Anglo-Indian Cuisine: A Legacy (Bangalore, 2004). Williams, B. R., Anglo-Indians: Vanishing Remnants of a Bygone Era: Anglo-Indians in India, North America and the UK in 2000 (Monroe, NJ, 2002). Williams, G. H., Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black (New York, 1995).

304

Bibliography

Wilson, K., The Island Race: Englishness, Empire and Gender in the Eighteenth Century (Abingdon, 2003). Wilson-deRoze, G. A., Origins of the Anglo-Indian Community (Calcutta, 2001). Wimmer, A., Ethnic Boundary Making: Institutions, Power, Networks (New York, 2013). Wright, P., Passport to Peking: A Very British Mission to Mao’s China (Oxford, 2010). Wright, R. D. and Wright, S. W., ‘The Anglo-Indian Community in Contemporary India’, eScholarShare@Drake (1971), available at http://escholarshare.drake.edu/bit stream/handle/2092/237/Wright%23237.pdf ?sequence=1 X, Malcolm, and Haley, A., The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York, 1965). Young, R. J. C., Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (New York, 1995). Younger, C., Wicked Women of the Raj: European Women who Broke Society’s Rules and Married Indian Princes (New Delhi, 2004). Zack, N. (ed.), American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity (Lanham, MD, 1995). Zack, N., Race and Mixed Race (Philadelphia, PA, 1993). Ziv, A., Breeding between the Lines: Why Interracial People Are Healthier and More Attractive (Fort Lee, NJ, 2006).

Index

Page numbers in bold indicate tables; page numbers in italics indicate figures. 1919 Government of India Act (Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms) 23, 103, 115; 1919 Reforms 164, 165; Indianisation 213 1935 Government of India Act 22, 212, 218; amendment to 24; criticism 212; Section 242: 232 Abbott, John xii, 134; Abbott/Gidney conflict 148–51, 156–7; Abbott Mount 25, 183; AIF 140, 142, 145, 152; Anglo-Indian Association 149, 158, 161; Anglo-Indian Empire League 23, 139, 143–5, 146–7, 148; Federation 139, 142, 147, 159; Imperial Legislative Assembly 152, 158; Imperial Legislative Council 144, 147–8, 152, 165; settlement schemes 183 Abbott, Roy 142 Abel, Evelyn 4 accent 90; ‘chi chi’ Anglo-Indian accent 22, 117, 118; Eurasian accent 117; see also English language Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes) 11, 27, 213, 244; see also minority group Aga Khan 219 agricultural colony 26, 36, 173, 175; Abbott’s settlement schemes 183; Anglo-Indian Association 183–4, 188, 189, 196–7, 204, 205; Anthony, Frank 198, 200–201, 204, 205; Burma 25, 186; Canal Colonies, Punjab 26, 184–5, 187; child migration 175–8; Communal Agriculture Settlement 186–7; Communal Co-operative Land Colonisation Scheme 184; co-operative movement 185–6, 189; criticism 178,

183, 189, 198–9; culturable waste 178, 184, 186; failure 26–7, 174–5, 179, 180–1, 184, 185, 190; Gidney, Henry 183–4, 187, 189–90, 197–8, 226; Land Colonisation Scheme 196–7; orphanage/ orphan 175–8; Phoolshair Palace 20, 24, 69, 174–5; scientific agriculture 26, 178, 180; self-sufficiency 25, 26, 188–9, 206; see also agriculture; Andaman Islands; colonisation scheme; McCluskiegunge; Whitefield agriculture: agriculturalist 20, 24, 25, 178, 200; Europeanisation of India 25; planters 63, 65, 118; see also agricultural colony AIF (Anglo-Indian Force) 101, 140–2, 145, 152; colour 141; Mesopotamia 23, 134, 140, 141, 142; recruitment campaign 142; see also Army Albuquerque, Afonso de 38 Allahabad 115, 147 Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji 212, 213, 219, 220, 233, 236, 240, 241, 244 Ambler, G., Captain 199 Andaman and Nicobar Islands 25, 184, 197–201, 206; Anglo-Burmans 30, 201, 259; Anthony, Frank 198, 200; Britasian League 199, 200; Progressive Loyalist Association of Mussoorie 201; see also agricultural colony; colonisation scheme Anderson, Valerie 5 Andrews, Robyn 5 Anglo-Burmans 24, 30, 51, 156, 173, 201, 203, 204, 254, 259, 262, 264, 270, 277; see also Burma

306

Index

Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association 29, 160, 163, 164 Anglo-Indian Association 29, 87, 99, 100, 104, 116, 144; Abbott/Gidney conflict 148–51; Abbott, John 149, 158, 161; All India and Burma 160, 163, 164; amalgamation 159–60, 162, 164; Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association 29, 148, 149, 153, 156, 158, 160, 163, 164; Anglo-Indian Empire League 115, 153; Anthony, Frank 227–8, 263, 264, 266; Association branches 160, 161–2; Burma 30, 156; colonisation scheme/ agricultural colony 183–4, 188, 189, 196–7, 204, 205; criticism 161; dissent and factionalism 159, 161; financial difficulties 149, 150; Gidney, Henry 30, 156, 158–9, 161, 162–3; split between Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European 158–9; see also Abbott, John; Anglo-Indian Empire League; Anthony, Frank; Federation; Gidney, Henry Anglo-Indian Citizen 158–9 Anglo-Indian Empire League 144–6, 164; 1918–19 Annual Conference, Allahabad 153; Abbott, John 23, 139, 142, 143–5, 146–7, 148; Anglo-Indian Association 115, 153; headquarter 147; origin and structure 143; see also Anglo-Indian Association Anglo-Indian Force pamphlet 151 Anglo-Indian Review 115, 123, 127, 128, 144, 148, 153, 158, 161, 163–4, 226–7, 237; Anthony, Frank 227, 230; citizenship 266–7; colonisation scheme 177, 183, 187–8, 190, 191, 196–7, 198, 204; Constituent Assembly 212, 234; English language 272, 273–4, 275, 276; ‘The Minority Block’ 219; pan-Eurasianism 201 Anglo-Indians ix, x, xi, 3, 21–2; 1935 Government of India Act 22; Anglo-Indian future 179, 187–8, 191, 194, 196, 215, 273; boundary blurring 21, 22, 100, 102, 104, 106, 139, 206, 258, 269; ‘colour’ x, xi, 16; embracing India, preserving Anglo-India 270–7; European culture 21; full merger into India 242, 254; hybridity 21; identity xi, 14, 16, 101, 102, 149, 196, 206, 234; Indian ancestry, denial of 22; Indian Constitution 22; ‘… the most

unfortunate of the children of Caliban’ 4; scholarship on 4–5; superiority of 108, 109, 110; ‘trinity of existence’ 165 Anglo-Indians as minority group xi, xii, 1, 3, 7, 9, 106–107, 135; Anglo-Indians as linguistic minority 276; Anthony, Frank 228–30, 231, 234–5, 241, 276, 277; Census 11, 103; constitutionally defined and protected status 244, 272, 276; Gidney, Henry 166, 218–22, 229, 276; minority group rights 27, 28, 102; resentment at Anglo-Indians’ privileges 242, 247; see also minority group; political representation; reservations Anglo-Indians, naming and definition 83, 99; 1911 Census 17, 21, 41, 165, 193; Anglo-Indian x–xi, 3, 17, 21, 22, 34, 41, 99, 100, 101, 153, 154; Anglo-Indians in Burma 29; Britasian 203–204; ‘country-born’ 33, 34, 49, 100, 117; defining an Anglo-Indian group 103–107; disputes on 36; Domiciled Britisher 104; Domiciled European 114–15; East India Company and 35–6, 105, 203–204; East Indian 3, 19, 33–4, 52–3, 55, 99, 100; Eurasian x, 3, 17, 19, 20, 21, 26, 35, 52, 99–100, 101, 193; government 33, 36; Indo-Briton 3, 19, 35–6, 99, 105, 203–204; legitimacy 35, 36; pejorative terms 17, 21, 193; self-conception 36; see also Statutory Natives of India Anglo-Mahratta War 46, 51, 61 Anglo-Pakistanis 30, 264–6, 268 ANS (Auxiliary Nursing Service) 127 Anthony, Frank xii, 4, 17, 61, 127, 152, 227–30, 233–4, 270; Anglo-Indian Association 227–8, 263, 264, 266; Anglo-Indians as minority group 228–30, 231, 234–5, 241, 276, 277; colonisation scheme/agricultural colony 198, 200–201, 204, 205; communal nationalism 12, 28, 30, 193, 206, 229, 239, 248, 271–2, 276, 277; Constituent Assembly 234, 235, 240; constitution making 28, 232, 234–5, 237, 240, 241, 247, 248; Domiciled European category 229, 230; education 30, 227, 272, 276; English language 272–3, 274–6; Frank Anthony public schools (FAPS) 227, 277; Gidney, Henry 227; Imperial Legislative

Index Assembly 235; ‘Indian by nationality, Anglo-Indian by community’ 28, 193, 229, 277; Indian nationalism 198, 231–2; lobbying by 233, 241, 248; memoir-cumhistory Britain’s Betrayal in India 4, 50, 233; Nehru, Jawaharlal 237, 238–9; political representation 27, 233; renegadism/criminal renegadism 267; reservations 27, 234–5, 258 apartheid 49, 71–2, 90, 239, 263; ‘educational apartheid’ 275 Army: 1st Horse/Skinner’s Horse 65; American soldiers 123; Anglo-Indian women xi, 22, 122, 140, 142; Anglo-Indians x, 23, 83, 116, 136, 140, 254–5; Auxiliary Force (India) of AF (I) 24, 157, 224, 232; ban on military employment for those of mixed race 66, 136, 141; British evacuation 29, 256–7; British retreat from India 256; British soldiers x, 17, 22, 100; Commonwealth regiment 139–40, 141; Company Army x, 38, 50, 65; demobilisation 23, 134, 142, 143, 164, 256; Domiciled European 83, 93, 140; equality 137–8; Eurasians 80–3, 100, 137; European soldiers ix, 40, 42, 80, 77; from soldiers to clerks 60–7; Imperial troops of colour/Imperial Indian troops, roles of 140; Indian Army x, 29; interracial union ix, 38–9, 42–3, 100–101; marriage to a British soldier 22, 122–3, 260; nursing 22, 127, 140, 142, 157; Partition 246; racial passing 23, 61, 93, 116, 139–40, 141, 254; return to soldiering 79–84; Turkey 156–7; War Office 82, 83; see also AIF; World War I; World War II Arnold, David 116 Asiatic Journal 105 assimilation 10, 18, 242, 254 Attlee, Clement 28, 29, 234, 255–6, 257, 258 Auchinleck, Claude, Field Marshal 256, 257 Aung San 259 Bajpai, Rochana 27, 212, 235, 236, 237, 240 Ballhatchet, Kenneth 40, 48, 89 Baly, Joseph 72 Barth, Fredrik 9; Barthian world 10 Bear, Laura 5, 116 Begum Sumroo (Sombre) ruler of Sardhana 46–7; see also Dyce Sombre

307

Bengal 19, 36; association of East Indians 68; ‘Bengali baboo’ 20, 73 Bengal Chronicle 53, 54–5 Bengalee 217 Bevin, Ernest 255, 257 Bhabha, Homi 5, 8, 124; ‘third space’ 6, 7 Birkenhead, Lord 165, 166, 217 BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) 242 Blunt, Alison 5, 17, 25, 72, 101, 108, 118, 121, 122, 157, 173, 177 Bombay 19, 23, 134, 272–6; association of East Indians 36, 68; East Indians 52; see also Malcolm, John, Sir Bombay High Court 30, 275 Bose, Subhas Chandra 254–5 Boucher, Ellen 176–7 boundary blurring 12, 17, 41, 49, 60, 135, 139, 149; Anglo-Indian category 21, 22, 100, 102, 104, 106, 139, 206, 258, 269; Burma 155–6, 262; Census 17; Domiciled Europeans 139; East Indian category 33–4; see also boundary-making process boundary expansion 12, 17, 19, 113, 191, 193; Census 17; East Indian category 53, 55, 100; Eurasian category 101; see also boundary-making process boundary-making process 7, 8, 18, 27, 41, 53–4, 61, 90, 102, 106, 113; caste 11; Census 11; class boundary 53–4; colonial Britons 53, 55, 71; colonial state 11; ‘divide and rule’ strategy 53, 55; dividing lines 52–5, 63, 72; domicile instead of legitimacy 48–9; endogamy 49; East India Company 53–4; ethnicization 11; nation and 12; social closure 90; socioracial boundarymaking 72; state and 11, 49, 90; violence 12; Wimmerian approaches to ethnic boundary making in South Asia 9–12; see also boundary blurring; boundary expansion; social closure boundary policing 6, 8, 12, 48–9, 55, 61, 103, 111–14, 124; policing of the domiciliary boundary 116; reservations 113–14; social closure 112 Brahmins 67; clerk 73; Hussaini Brahmins 11, 103; Indian Brahmins 19–20 Britain x; British culture 110–11; British Empire xii, 7, 84, 196; British rule decline ix, xii; British thinking about mixed race people 270; conceptions of class 89–90, 113, 118; disappointment at/betrayal by the British 226, 233–4,

308

Index

248; education in 2, 3, 15, 16, 19, 40, 49, 71, 72, 117, 118; as fatherland 101, 157, 158, 196, 205, 229; as homeland xii, 16, 21, 101, 109, 159, 205; migration to xii, 2, 16, 17, 118, 166, 205, 258, 260, 262, 263, 266, 267–9; racism 16, 60, 62–3, 78–9, 82, 89, 90, 136; retreat from Burma 28, 257–8; socioracial attitudes x, 41–2, 48; see also colonial Britons; European women Britain, loyalty to: Anglo-Indians x, xi, xii, 14, 19, 20, 61, 67, 80, 104, 139, 149, 196, 206, 220, 223, 229, 233; Gidney, Henry 108, 152, 158, 255 Britasian League 199, 200 British retreat from India 28, 225, 246, 248; Anglo-Burman divergence 258–63; Anglo-Indians 258; Anglo-Indians evacuation 29, 256, 257, 258; British evacuation 29, 256–8; Congress 255–7; Pakistan 29, 255–6, 257; violence 255–7 British subjecthood 18, 35, 36, 39, 40, 53, 54, 123, 177, 217, 263, 270; AngloBurmans 259–61; Anglo-Indians 165, 217, 258, 266–7; Anglo-Pakistanis 265, 266; Britons 34–5; definition 83; renegadism/criminal renegadism 267; women 125; see also citizenship Britishness 14, 21, 43, 46, 49, 52, 102, 104, 110, 113, 261 Brown, Judith M. ix–xiii Brubaker, Roger 9 Buddhists/Buddhism 244, 264 Buettner, Elizabeth 5, 22, 25, 71, 111, 116–18, 126, 177; Empire Families127 Burma/Myanmar: 1935 Government of Burma Act 155, 156, 259; Andaman Islands 30, 201, 259; Anglo-Burman Grant Fund Embassy Committee 263; Anglo-Burman Union 30, 201, 259; Anglo-Burmans 24, 30, 51, 156, 173, 201, 203, 204, 254, 259, 262, 264, 270, 277; Anglo-Indians 29, 30, 51, 156, 201, 203, 259, 260–1, 264, 265; AngloIndians’ migration to 29, 156; assisted passage 259–60, 261–2; boundary blurring 155–6, 262; Britasian 203–204; British citizenship 259, 260–1, 262–3, 265; British retreat from Burma 28, 257–8; Burmese ethnonationalism 29–30, 259; colonisation scheme/ agricultural colony 25, 30, 173, 186, 189, 201, 204; constitution making 30,

259; education 263, 277; Gidney’s Anglo-Indian Association 30, 156; ICS 88, 259; independence 30, 261, 263; Indian citizenship 264; Japanese occupation of 203; McCluskiegunge 25; migration from 30, 259–62, 263; minority group rights 30; mixed race 24, 29–30; Partition 29; political representation 23, 29; racial passing 262; railway employment 29, 156; separation from India 24, 29–30, 155, 156, 186, 201, 259; Shan states 30, 201, 259; wartime evacuation 29, 30; World War II 30; see also Campagnac, Charles Haswell Cabinet Mission 28, 234, 255–6, 257 Calcutta 23, 50, 66, 77–8, 84, 175; East Indians 52; railway employment 75 Calcutta Association 81, 145, 146, 147, 149 Calcutta Review 50–1, 70 Cambridge University 3, 48, 87, 151, 238; Cambridge Examination Syndicate 110; Cambridge Senior examinations 16, 21, 107, 108, 109, 114, 225; see also education Campagnac, Charles Haswell 24, 201, 203, 204, 259, 277; see also Anglo-Burmans; Anglo-Burma Union, Burma/Myanmar Canal Colonies, Punjab 26, 184–5, 187; see also agricultural colony Canning, Charles John, Lord 71, 81 Caplan, Lionel 5, 116, 129 the Caribbean 4, 6, 16, 84; see also West Indies caste 5, 11, 50; boundary-making process 11; caste-based discrimination 238; caste endogamy 51, 262; caste Hindus 27, 51, 240, 243; caste prejudice 240; half caste 19, 33, 34, 36, 38, 45, 52, 63, 101; high caste 51; low caste 41, 42, 50, 51, 70, 85; military caste 51; untouchability 240, 243; women 50, 51 Census 1, 16, 275; 1891 Census 76; 1911 Census 17, 21, 41, 103, 106, 165, 193; 1941 Census 17; Anglo-Indians xi, 17, 21, 41, 103, 106, 165, 193; boundary blurring 17; boundary expansion 17; boundary-making 11; Domiciled European 17, 103; ‘Eurasian’ category 17, 103; minority group 11, 103; socioracial passing 16–17

Index Ceylon/Sri Lanka 52, 142, 205 Chambers, E. W. 100–101, 174 Chatelier, R. G. 205; see also Eurasian Collectivist Party; Pan-Eurasianism Chelmsford, Lord 144 child migration 25–6, 175–8 children 43, 122; affected by gender, legitimacy and father’s class 40; child marriage 76; favouritism towards lighter skinned Anglo-Indian children 7; illegitimate children 39, 41, 123; legitimate children 19, 41, 43 Christians/Christianity x, 1, 13, 70, 103, 141, 187–8; Anglicans 41, 48; AngloIndians 196; Anglophone Christians 18, 21; Catholics 21, 38, 47, 103, 104; Christian brides 38, 41; Christian converts ix, xi; Christianisation of India 26; conversion to 27–8, 46–7, 51, 76; education and 108, 109, 165; European Christians 2; Indian Christians xi, 2, 21, 28, 38, 45, 48, 102, 141, 231, 276; interracial union 78; mass conversions to Christianity 244–5; mission school 70, 104, 107; the Portuguese 38; proselytisation 25, 174, 244–5; Protestantism 48, 104; see also religion Churchill, Winston 224 Chuter-Ede, James 256 citizenship 16, 28, 165; 1948 British Nationality Act 265, 266, 267; 1955 Indian Citizenship Act 267; boundarymaking process 12; British citizenship 258, 259, 260–1, 262–3, 265, 266, 270; citizenship rights 12, 124–5; dual citizenship in Indian Constitution 267; equal citizenship 139; Indian citizenship 18, 148, 217, 247, 264, 266, 267; nationality 49, 55, 64, 217; naturalisation 262, 265; Pakistani citizenship 265; statelessness 16, 265; see also British subjecthood; passport class 7, 45, 48; British conceptions of class 89–90, 113, 118; class-based/ socioeconomic inequality 238; class boundary 53–4; education and 45, 107; high class 19, 45; ‘kinthal class’ 48; low class 45, 113; low class and interracial union 77–8; Malcolm, John, Sir 67–8; male’s higher class 37; middle-class 5, 21, 110, 126, 182, 195, 225; markers of 90, 141; planter class 63; as principle of ordering 19, 100, 104,

309

113; social mobility 89–90; women ix, 1; see also socioracial hierarchy clerks/clerkship: 1791 ban on military employment for those of mixed race 66; 1892 Pauperism Committee Report 73–4; ‘Bengali baboo’ 20, 73; Brahmin class 73; ‘covenanted-wallahs’ 66; discrimination 126; East India Company 66; East Indians 73; ‘Eurasian problem’, clerks displaced by Indian competitors 20, 72; female clerk 126; from clerks to railwaymen 73–5; from soldiers to clerks 60–7; low-ranking clerk 19, 20; mixed race people 40, 68–9, 73–4; ‘Uncovenanted Service’ 66 colonial Britons 11; Anglo-Indians 21, 49; boundary-making process 53, 55, 71; civil service 107; employment 74–5; mixed race and 5, 14, 19; superiority of 64, 77; see also colonial state colonial state 135; boundary-making 11; ‘divide and rule’ strategy 53, 55, 135; see also Britain; colonial Britons; state; state employment colonisation schemes 25–6, 173–4, 189, 204–206, 225; Anglo-India in the Indian Ocean 24, 196–201; AngloIndian future 179, 187–8, 191, 194; Burma 30, 173, 189, 201, 204; colonial state backing 26, 174, 178, 184, 185, 186–7, 206; escapist/utopian schemes xii, 24, 25, 173, 188, 190, 198, 206; failure of xii, 25, 26–7; homeland 24, 181, 188, 196, 197, 198, 206; moral and physical refashioning of participants 177, 178, 181, 185; popularity of 206; racial visions 191–6; railway colony x, 25, 189; see also agricultural colony; Jews; pan-Eurasianism coloniser/colonised binary 5, 12–18, 87, 91, 92, 102 Colonization Observer 185, 188, 189, 190, 191 colour 7, 8, 18, 38, 45, 48, 50, 89; AngloBurmans 261; Anglo-Indians x, xi, 16; black colour/blood 10, 16, 21, 50, 51, 84, 85, 110–11, 122, 195, 204; Brazil 204; colour bar to Anglo-Indian emigration 165, 166, 177–8, 269; colour-prejudice 36–7, 43, 51, 100, 109, 113, 204, 225; favouritism towards a lighter skinned Anglo-Indian child 7; ‘one drop’ rule 7, 10, 64, 90; people of colour 16, 26,

310

Index

192, 204; as principle of ordering 8, 11, 19, 100, 113; see also whiteness Commonwealth 18, 239; Commonwealth regiment 139–40, 141 Communal Award (1932) 213, 220, 243 communal electorates 135, 154, 218, 219, 220, 232, 236, 238; Partition 235; see also political representation communal nationalism 12, 28, 30, 193, 206, 229, 239, 248, 271–2, 276, 277; see also Anthony, Frank; communalism; nationalism communalism 8, 239–40, 273; ‘communal’ 1; communal boundaries 11; communal politics ix, xi, 151, 235; communal violence 236, 247; Constitutional communalism 153–8; religious minority communalism 245; religious separatism 236 Congress, Indian National (Congress Party) 212, 229, 230, 234, 239, 241, 274; Anglo-Indians 234–5; Anthony, Frank 234–5; British retreat from India 255–7; Congress leadership 18, 28, 234–5, 241, 246 Constituent Assembly of India 28, 246; Anthony, Frank 234, 235, 240; debates of 28, 212, 231, 240–1, 264, 272; Gidney, Henry 212, 234; language question 272; minority group rights 235, 238; Nehru, Jawaharlal 238–9; political rhetoric in 235 constitution making 235–7, 246; AngloIndians 27, 28, 212–13, 217, 232, 233, 234, 236, 237–8, 241–2, 243, 244, 247–8; Anthony, Frank 28, 232, 234–5, 237, 240, 241, 247, 248; Burma 30, 259; Dalits 236, 238, 240–1, 243–4, 245, 248; Gidney, Henry 218–19, 223, 248; Gurkhas 242–3; Hindus/Dalits relationship 243, 244; Indian audience, arguments for 237–8, 240; minority group rights, curtailment of 27–8, 212, 236, 243, 244, 245; Muslims 219; political representation 27, 212, 217, 241–2, 243–4, 245; railway employment 247; religious conversion 244–5, 248; reservations 11, 27, 212, 217, 236, 238, 245, 246–7; Sikhs 244, 245, 247; structural implications of minority recognition 243–8; transitional and temporary measures 238, 240–2, 248; see also 1919 Government of India Act; Adivasis; Anglo-Indians as

minority group; Dalits; political representation; reservations Constitution of India 22, 28, 212; 1909 Constitution 135; 1919 Constitution 135, 148, 153–4; 1935 Constitution 135, 212; 1950 Constitution 245; Amendment 223, 245; Anglo-Indians as minority group 244, 272, 276; Article 29: 273, 275, 276; Article 30: 272, 275, 276; Article 337: 275, 276; Constitutional communalism 153–8; dual citizenship 267; Joint Committee on Indian Constitutional Reform 221; see also 1919 Government of India Act; 1935 Government of India Act constructivism, social 9, 13 Cotton Mary 85 Council of India see Imperial Legislative Council Cripps mission 28, 224–7, 248 Cripps, Stafford, Sir 212, 224, 225, 226, 229, 233 CSI (Colonization Society of India, Limited) 183, 185, 188, 189–90 culture: British culture 110–11; cultural hybridity 3, 47, 238; cultural marker 12, 22, 28, 38, 77, 108, 270; European culture 21; Indian culture 110; Portuguese culture 38; racial/cultural hybridity link 8, 9, 10–11, 10, 12 Curzon, George Nathaniel, Lord 20, 81–4, 107, 135, 136; Anglo-Indian category 99, 101, 104–105; Britishness 21; public service employment 90, 91–3 customs department/service 21, 93, 143, 222, 223 Da Costa, Willoughby 104 Das Bhargava, Thakur 241 D’Cruz, Glenn 124 Dalits (Scheduled Castes) 212, 242; constitution making 236, 238, 240–1, 243–4, 245, 248; constitutionally defined and protected status 244; conversion to Christianity 244–5; ‘Depressed Classes’ 216, 245; Hindus/ Dalits relationship 243, 244; minority group 11, 27–8; political representation 27, 213, 216, 220, 233, 243–4; religious conversion 244–5, 248; reservations 27, 213, 216, 236; retention of Dalits within the Hindu fold 27, 244, 245, 248; see also minority group

Index Dalrymple, William: White Mughals 1, 2, 8 Dalton, Hugh 256 De Courcy, Anne 39, 40–1, 44 decolonisation 14, 17, 29, 135, 246, 257, 270, 271, 277 demography: East India Company, discouraging growth of the mixed race group 62, 65; gender imbalance in European population 38–9; population control 20, 75–6, 77 Derozio, Henry Louis Vivian 61–2, 164; family 104 Dhulekar, Raghunath Vinayak 236; see also communal violence; Partition; reservations; religious separatism; separate electorates diaspora 16, 17, 78, 197; see also migration discrimination 45, 126, 138, 248; castebased discrimination 238; economic exclusion 18, 50; East India Company 60; employment 24, 39, 40, 50, 66–7, 78, 88, 91, 92, 126, 224; the ‘Eurasian problem’ 66–7, 69–70, 78, 79; mixed race group 55; ‘positive discrimination’/ ‘affirmative action’ 11, 24, 27, 212, 217, 236; racial discrimination x, 24, 39, 50, 224; religious discrimination 245; social discrimination x, 39, 50; socioracial exclusion 55, 69–70, 87; United Sates 10; see also stigma diversity 3, 7 domestic work 85, 175–6, 177–8 domicile 83, 88, 125; domicile instead of legitimacy 48–9, 72; as principle of ordering 100, 118–19 Domiciled Britishers 104 Domiciled European Association 29, 148, 163 Domiciled Europeans xi, 16–17, 83, 105–106, 114–19; 1911 Census 17, 103; Anglo-Indian category and 115–17; Anthony, Frank 229, 230; Army 83, 93, 140; boundary blurring 139; a buffer group 21–2, 102, 117; civil service 107–108; education 71, 117; employment 24, 78, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 119; gender, sex, and marriage 119–25; nurse/nanny 117, 121; racial passing 22, 115–16, 117, 119, 120–1; railway employment 75, 93, 115, 116; whiteness 22, 88, 114–15, 117; women xi, 22, 78, 118, 119, 120–1 the Dorseys 15

311

Dover, Cedric 4, 99, 192, 196, 237; Cimmerii 193, 194; a ‘coloured cosmopolitan’ 26, 193; ‘Eurasian’ as term 26, 101; Half-Caste 192, 193; hybridity 26, 193–4; Know This of Race 192; Nazi racial theories of Aryanism and racial purity 26, 192, 193; pan-Eurasianism 25, 192–3, 201, 203, 204 Du Bois, W.E.B. 192, 193 Dunbar, R.: ‘Dunbar ruling’ 260–1, 269 the Dutch 6; Burghers 52, 203; see also Ceylon/Sri Lanka; Eurasians Dyce Sombre, David Ochterlony, Colonel 47–8 East African South Asians 16, 17 East India Company x, 11, 60, 62–3; Anglo-Indians, naming and definition 35–6, 105, 203–204; Army x, 38, 50, 65; ban on mixed race employment x, 18, 19, 50, 61, 62, 66; boundary-making 53–4; Bombay 38; Calcutta 39; clerks/ clerkship 66; Company’s hierarchy and rule 37, 42; criticism 62, 65; discouraging growth and prospects of the mixed race group 62, 65; discouraging settlement, proselytisation, and growth of European planter classes 25, 174; discrimination by 60; gender-related issues 37; Indianisation 19, 67; interracial union 39, 42–3, 50, 60–1; legal statuses 18; legitimate offspring of Company officers 19; men 37; patronage 18, 19, 62; social capital 37; socioracial hierarchy 37; threat from mixed race group 64–5; widows 33, 34, 35, 39; women 37 East Indians 3, 19, 52, 55; boundary blurring 33–4; boundary expansion 53, 55, 100; clerks/clerkship 73; East Indian Community 52 East-Indians’ petition (Ricketts’ petition) 53–5; see also Ricketts, John economy 105, 153, 166; economic dislocation/depression 50, 60, 61, 73, 102, 134, 164, 238; economic exclusion 18, 50; women 43, 129 education x, 107–11; access to 53, 109; Anglo-Indian education 21, 165, 225, 226, 238; Anthony, Frank 30, 227, 272, 276; Burma 263, 277; Christianity 108, 109, 165; class and 45, 107; Constitution of India 272, 273, 275,

312

Index

276; Domiciled European 71, 117; education in Britain 2, 3, 15, 16, 19, 40, 49, 71, 72, 117, 118; education in English xii, 30–1, 67, 232, 272–7; ‘educational apartheid’ 275; English education xi, xii, 108, 109, 111, 117; English education, Burma 30; the ‘Eurasian problem’ 72, 76, 84; Eurasians 74, 84; gender and 117, 118, 126; Gidney, Henry 109, 165, 225, 226; Macaulay, Thomas Babington: Minute on Education 67; Malcolm, John, Sir 67–9, 73; race and colour prejudices 109; Ricketts, John 70–1; right to European education 217; Sapru Conciliation Committee 232; West Indian education (Kandel Committee) 21, 110–11, 225; women 1, 2, 5, 46, 118; see also Cambridge University; examination; orphanage/ orphan school; Oxford University; school Elphinstone, Mountstuart 38 employment x, xi; Anglo-Indians/ Eurasians’ privileges 24, 79, 92; communal employment 134; competition 79, 91; East India Company, ban on mixed race employment x, 18, 19, 50, 61, 62, 66; discrimination 24, 39, 40, 50, 66–7, 78, 88, 91, 92, 126, 224; Domiciled Europeans 24, 78, 87, 88, 90, 92, 93, 119; Eurasians 74, 77; Europeans/ Britons 74–5; socioracial employment hierarchy 24, 89, 102; threats to Anglo-Indian employment 23; women 78, 118, 125–9; see also reservations; state employment; unemployment; wage endogamy ix, 3, 14, 19, 49, 61, 67, 78; caste endogamy 51, 262 English language 68, 88, 248, 277; Anglo-Indians as linguistic minority 276; Anthony, Frank 272–3, 274–6; Bombay government 272–5; Constitution of India 272, 273, 275, 276; as cultural marker 108; education in English xii, 30–1, 67, 232, 272–7; English-sounding names 76, 113; hostility to 272; as Indian language 272, 275; as mother tongue x, xii, 14, 30, 108, 232, 238, 272, 274, 275, 276; see also accent; language Englishman 217

equality 34, 37, 46, 70, 137–8, 238; inequality 238 ethnicity xi, 9; ethnic groupness 12; ethnicization 11; ethnonationalism 16, 30, 271; see also identity; race eugenics/‘scientific’ racism 26, 76, 77, 136, 192, 193, 194 ‘Eurasia’ 24, 201, 206; German New Guinea 26, 202, 206; Moore, J. 201–203; see also pan-Eurasianism Eurasian Association 87 Eurasian Collectivist Party 205; see also Chatelier, R.G.; pan-Eurasianism the ‘Eurasian problem’ x, 20, 60, 71, 72, 173, 201; British racialised attitudes towards mixed race people 60, 62–3; Calcutta 77–8; supposed character defects and moral flaw 20, 60, 63, 76, 77, 79; charity 20, 75–9, 84; clerks, displaced by Indian competitors 20, 72; customs employment 21, 67, 93; discrimination 66–7, 69–70, 78, 79; East India Company 60, 62–3; education 72, 76, 84; fictions of race 84–7; from clerks to railwaymen 73–5; from soldiers to clerks 60–7; improvidence 20, 76; indebtedness 20, 76, 79; loyalty to Britain 20, 61, 67, 80; Malthusian problem 75, 87; Malthusian solutions 20, 75, 77; military solution: return to soldiering 20–1, 79–84; origins 62–7; philanthropy 60, 72; poverty 20, 76, 77–8; public service as solution 87–93; railway employment 21, 75, 93; socioracial exclusion 69–70; telegraph employment 21, 74–5, 87, 93; unemployment 20, 66, 67, 72, 75, 77, 79, 80; see also Malcolm, John, Sir; orphanage/orphan school Eurasians x, 3, 19, 20, 21, 26, 35, 52, 99–100, 105, 106, 193; 1911 Census 17, 103; in Hong Kong and China/ Anglo-Chinese 78, 203, 260; in Singapore and Malaya/Anglo-Malayans 203, 261; Army 80–3, 100, 137; boundary expansion 101; employment 74, 77; a pejorative term 17, 21; prejudices against 82–3; Protestantism 104; a racialised epithet 101 Europe: anxiety about racial status and ‘purity’ x; European culture 21; European soldiers ix, 40, 42, 80, 77; Europeanisation 25, 87

Index ‘European’ category: clothing style xi, 38, 76, 216; ‘East Indian’ 34; European ancestry 18, 22, 45, 48, 117, 258; European-sounding names x, xi, 76; ‘Europeanness’ 29, 43, 49, 102, 206; lifestyle x, xiii, 70, 76; upbringing 2 European women 41; acculturation 120; arrival of increasing numbers 18, 41, 63; British women 38–9, 40, 78–9, 117, 126; colonial British girls 118; economic support to 43; European doctors for European women 40, 48; Indian languages and 109; racism 78–9, 120; wives and mistresses of Indian princes 48; unlikely to work in India 126 examination 87, 91, 107, 108, 111; Cambridge Examination Syndicate 110; Cambridge examinations, 'Junior Cambridge' and 'Senior Cambridge' 16, 21, 107, 108, 109, 114, 225; from patronage-based to examinations system 87; ICS examination 44, 87–8, 143 The Extraordinary Black Book 62 Federation 23, 145, 146; Abbott, John 139, 142, 147, 159; see also Anglo-Indian Association Few, E. 228–9 Fisher, Michael 46–7 Fleury, Georges L., Col., 203–204; Britasian 203–204 Forster, E. M. 120 Fort St George, Madras 33, 34, 38 Foucault, Michel 6 Gandhi, Mohandas 91, 92, 139, 154, 192, 218, 238; Dalits 27, 240, 243; Gandhi/Jinnah talks 230; Hindu/ Muslim unity 156; non-violence 254; political representation 219–20; Swaraj (self-rule) 243 Gardner, William Linnaeus, Col. 2, 46, 51 gender-related issues: acculturation 120; East India Company 37; education and 117, 118, 126; gender imbalance in European population 38–9; see also men; women Ghosh, Durba 5, 41–2, 43, 114 Gidney, Henry xii, 23, 27, 108, 113–14, 116, 123, 127, 134, 142, 163; 1931 Minority Pact 219; 1935 Government of India Act 232; Abbott/Gidney

313

conflict 148–51, 156–7; Anglo-Indian Association 30, 158–9, 161, 162–3; Anglo-Indian Association, Burma 30, 156; Anglo-Indians/Indians relationship 158, 165, 166; Anglo-Indians as minority group 166, 218–22, 229, 276; Anthony, Frank 227; colonisation scheme/agricultural colony 183–4, 187, 189–90, 197–8, 226; Constituent Assembly 212, 234; constitution making 218–19, 223, 248; death 226–7; education 109, 165, 225, 226; Filose divorce case 150, 162; Hindu/Muslim relationship 156–7; Imperial Legislative Assembly 152, 158, 162; Indian Statutory Commission/Simon Commission 162, 221; lobbying by 218–24, 248; loyalty to Britain 108, 152, 158, 255; Nehru, Jawaharlal 237; personal profile 151–2; political representation 24, 218–22, 224; reservations 213–14, 222, 223–4; Wilson, Millicent 194, 195–6 Gilmartin, D. 185 Gist, Noel 4 globalisation ix, 6, 8 Gokhale, Gopal Krishna 91–2, 135 Gomez, Eunice 118 government: Anglo-Indians, naming and definition 33, 36; competition for public service employment 91; Europeanisation of public services 87; Indianisation of public services 92; Salt Department 88, 89, 90; see also PSC; state Graham, John 178; Kalimpong Homes 25, 177; see also child migration Great Rebellion (1857) 25, 71, 80, 87, 92, 100, 174; see also rebellion/revolt ‘groupness’ 3, 11, 49, 52, 55, 60, 61, 103, 104–105, 113; ethnic ‘groupness’ 12; group identity 12, 42, 60, 101, 104, 114, 134, 161, 173 Gurkhas 242–3; All India Gurkha League 242 Gurung, Damber Singh 242–3 Haig, Harry 215–16 Hallett, Maurice 215 Hardinge, Henry, Lord 101, 135, 136, 139, 144, 166, 221, 226 Hawes, Christopher 4, 21, 60, 61, 104, 113, 136 health related issues 71, 76; European doctors for European women 40, 48;

314

Index

female doctor 125; medical service 119; venereal disease 123 Henriquez, Fernando 4; Family and Colour in Jamaica 4; Miscegenation 4 Herder, Johann Gottfried 9, 10; Herderian world 10, 11 hierarchy 48; hierarchical ordering 39, 42, 43, 63–4, 106, 107; see also socioracial hierarchy Hindus 27, 73; Anglo-Indians/Indians relationship 158, 165, 166, 188; caste Hindus 27, 51, 240, 243; Hindus/ Dalits relationship 243, 244; Hindus/ Muslims relationship 86, 156–7, 219, 220, 243; Hindu Raj 206; legal system for 11; women 41, 51; see also caste Hobbs, H. 183, 184 homeland xii, 24; Anglo-Indians xii, 18, 21, 101, 109, 181; Britain as homeland xii, 16, 21, 101, 109, 159, 205; colonisation scheme/agricultural colony 24, 181, 188, 196, 197, 198, 206 Hopkins, L. J., Reverend 110 hybridity ix, 6, 13, 206, 270; Anglo-Indians 21; Bhabha’s ‘third space’ 6; binaries and 13; celebration of 5, 6, 124; cultural hybridity 3, 47, 238; Dover, Cedric 26, 193–4; ‘hybrid’ identity xii; hybrid superiority 194; imperialism and 6, 13, 270; racial/cultural hybridity link 8, 9, 10–11, 10, 12; racial ‘hybrid’ 3, 5, 6 Hyderabad 1, 2, 151 ICS (Indian Civil Service) x, 87, 152, 185, 246; Burma 88, 259; ICS examination 44, 88, 143 identity x, xi; Anglo-Indians xi, 14, 16, 101, 102, 149, 196, 206, 234; European identity xii; ‘hybrid’ identity xii; religious identity xi; self-conception 36; self-identification 7, 52, 161, 227; see also ethnicity; ‘groupness’; race Ilbert Bill controversy 82 illegitimacy ix, 42, 49–50, 124–5; illegitimate children 39, 41, 123; illegitimate interracial union ix, 42, 49–50, 54, 121, 122, 123; as marker of inferiority 50 immigrants 7–8, 9, 10; see also migration IMNS (Indian Military Nursing Service) 22 Imperial Legislative Assembly 28, 126, 162, 199, 224; Abbott, John 152, 158;

Anglo-Indians 154–5; Anthony, Frank 235; Burma 155–6; European representation 154; Gidney, Henry 152, 158, 162; minority group 154; MLA 199, 228, 242 Imperial Legislative Council xi, xii, 23, 135, 136; 1909 Indian Councils Act 135; Abbott, John 144, 147–8, 152, 165; Jinnah, Muhammed Ali 23, 138, 144; Madge, W. C. 22–3, 136–8, 139, 144; provincial legislative councils 155 imperialism ix; global imperialism 12; hybridity and 6, 13, 270; imperial loyalism 271; minority group 14 India 3, 196; Anglo-Indians’ contributions to 30–1, 129, 277; Anglo-Indians/ Indians relationship 158, 165, 166; boundary-making 27; Christianisation of 26; as a colony of settlement 100–101; Dominion status 159, 188, 224; English language 277; Europeanisation of 25; independence and separation 158, 230, 257; Indian Christians xi, 2, 21, 28, 38, 45, 48, 102, 141, 231, 276; Indian citizenship 18, 148, 247, 264, 266, 267; Indian culture 110; as motherland 101, 157, 158, 189, 196, 229; Muslim Indians 2, 156; new India xii, 12, 30, 248; post-Independence India xii, 17, 248, 258, 270, 272; self-government 218, 224, 230; transfer of power 29, 225, 243, 246; a unitary Indian nation 236; see also British retreat from India; Partition Indian nationalism 5, 11, 90, 92, 148, 149; Anglo-Indians as ‘bad Indians’ 271; Anthony, Frank 198, 231–2; see also communal nationalism; Indianisation; nationalism Indian Statutory Commission (Simon Commission) 162, 164, 216, 218, 221 Indianisation 115, 165, 222, 246; 1919 Government of India Act 213; East India Company 19, 67; railway 23; state employment 23, 92, 102, 143, 148, 164, 213; Statutory Natives of India 166 Ingels, Lionel 145, 146, 147, 151 interracial union x, 2, 38–9, 41, 78; Army ix, 38–9, 41, 42–3, 100–101; colonial period 3; concubinage 41, 43, 44; Christians 78; East India Company 39, 42–3, 50, 60–1; European man/ Eurasian woman union 192; illegitimate

Index union ix, 42, 49–50, 54, 121, 122, 123; Indian man/European or mixed race woman union 48; legal marriage ix, x, 1, 39, 53, 111–12; low class and 77–8; the Portuguese 38, 40, 78; socioracial hierarchy 37; see also marriage; mixed race; women the Irish 63, 64, 103, 108, 221 Ismail, Mizra M., Sir 182–3; see also Mysore Jacobson, Liesbeth 6 Jallianwala Bagh (Amritsar, 1919 massacre) 154 Jews 202–203, 225; Jewish settlement in Mandatory Palestine xii, 25, 190–1, 202, 206, 225 Jinnah, Muhammed Ali 91, 243; Gandhi/ Jinnah talks 230; Imperial Legislative Council 23, 138, 144 Johnston, Alexander, Sir 52, 69 jurors 34–5, 52, 165 Kandel Committee Report (1943) 110, 111; see also education; West Indies Kiernander, John 70 kinship 18, 158; Anglo-Indians’ claim to British blood and kinship 16, 21, 138 Kipling, Rudyard x, 20, 84; His Chance in Life 84–7; Kidnapped 111–12, 113, 122 Kirkpatrick, James 1, 2 Kirkpatrick, William, Lieutenant Colonel 42, 70 Krishnamachari, Shri T. T. 241, 242 Kyd family (Mr Kyd) 36, 56n24, 61 Lahiri-Dutt, Kuntala 5, 25, 173, 183, 190 language 108, 271; Bengali 108; Constituent Assembly, language question 272; French 108; Gujarati 273; Hindi 108, 188, 272, 273, 274; Indian languages 108, 109, 110, 225; language fanaticism 272, 275; linguistic states 205, 273, 274; Marathi 273; Portuguese 70; Sanskrit 20, 67; Urdu 108, 110; see also English language leadership (Anglo-Indian) xi, xii, 11, 22–3, 102, 134, 148; making and breaking leaders 136–43 Leadon, B. 188–9 League see Anglo-Indian Empire League League of Nations 26, 202 Lee, Standish 179

315

Legislative Assembly see Imperial Legislative Assembly legitimacy 125, 258, 260; Anglo-Indians, naming and definition 35, 36; boundarymaking: domicile instead of legitimacy 48–9; class boundary and 53–4; legal marriage and interracial union ix, x, 1, 39, 53; legitimate children 19, 41, 43; as principle of ordering 100 Lloyd George, David 17 Lloyd, Lord 134, 148, 152, 222–3 lobbying see petitioning and lobbying Lok Sabha 205, 213, 239 London Anglo-Indian Association 24, 118, 159, 162–3; Seventh Annual Luncheon 163 Macaulay, Thomas Babington 108; Minute on Education 67 Madge, W. C. 134, 136; ‘Bill for the Suppression of the Foreign Female Slave Trade’ 138; Imperial Legislative Council 22–3, 136–8, 139, 144 Madras 19, 36; Association of East Indians 68; Indo-Britons 52–3; Madras Railway 75; Southern Association 24, 159 Malcolm, John, Sir 19–20; agricultural colony, Phoolshair Palace 20, 24, 69, 174–5; class 67–8; education 67–9, 73; the ‘Eurasian problem’ 69–70; Indianisation of the Company’s administration 67 Malcolm X 7 Mallampalli, Chandra: Abraham v Abraham 48 Mangles, Ross Donnelly 45–6 marriage 121–5; Anglo-Indian girls 122–3; British soldiers 22, 122–3, 260; child marriage 76; colonial British girls 118; Christian brides 38, 41; hypergamy 19, 22, 37, 40, 119, 120–1, 123, 124, 125, 254; illegitimacy 124–5; legal marriage ix, x, 1, 39, 53, 111–12; mixed race brides 41; orphans 42, 43; ‘paper marriages’ 125; see also interracial union; women McCabe, Jane 25, 177 McCluskie, Ernest Timothy 184, 188, 189, 190 McCluskiegunge 25, 173, 181, 183, 188–90, 198, 226; criticism 183, 189; failure 26–7, 190; Jharkhand 25, 173, 183; ‘Nation-Building Scheme’ 188;

316

Index

settlers in 185; a sleepy retirement settlement 190; success 189; see also agricultural colony; colonisation scheme men ix, 49; Indian men/European or mixed race women union 48; male European ancestry 22; planters 63; see also gender-related issues mestizaje (‘mixedness’) 3, 5, 49, 55, 112 ‘Mestizism’ 204, 206; see also panEurasianism migration 24–5, 229; assisted passages 259–60, 261–2, 265, 267, 268; Australia, migration to xii, 17, 25, 102, 165, 175–7, 204, 258, 262; Brazil, migration to 203, 204, 205; Britain, migration to xii, 2, 16, 17, 118, 166, 205, 258, 260, 262, 263, 266, 267–9; Burma, migration from 30, 259–62, 263; Burma, migration to 29, 156; Canada, migration to 17, 258; chain migration 118, 268–9; child migration 25–6, 175–8; collective migration 24–5, 30, 102, 165–6, 173, 187–8, 201, 204–205, 206, 225, 234; colour bar to Anglo-Indian emigration 165, 166, 177–8, 269; Commonwealth 18; documentation 166, 247, 265, 269; New Zealand, migration to xii, 25, 177, 258, 262; opposition to non-white migration to the UK 268; Pakistan, migration from 247, 265–6, 268; policing 166; post-Independence India xii, 17, 248, 258; restricting migration 269; right to migrate to India (from Pakistan) after Partition 264; South Africa, migration to 177; United States, migration to 177, 258; see also diaspora; immigrant; passport the military see Army minority group xi, xii, 7, 9, 23–4; 1931 Minority Pact 219; Anglo-Burmans 29–30; assimilation into ethnic majorities of new postcolonial states 270; Constituent Assembly and minority group rights 235, 238; constitution making and minority group rights 27–8, 212, 236, 243, 244, 245; Gidney, Henry 218–19; imperialism 14; Partition 27, 231, 235; political representation 135–6; religion and 231; see also Adivasis; Anglo-Indians as minority group; Dalits; Gurkhas; political representation; reservations

Mississippi Masala (film, 1991) 16 mixed race 2–3, 5, 6, 102; Anglo-Indians 14; British thinking about mixed race people 270; Burma 24, 29; the Caribbean 4, 6, 84; children 43; clerks/clerkship 40, 68–9, 73–4; concealment strategies 44–5, 49; discouraging growth and prospects of the mixed race group 62, 65, 75; discrimination 55; divergence of employment and marriage prospects for mixed race people 18; dual/ multifaceted heritage 7; nationalism and 270, 271; pathologising discourses on 6; politics 19; prejudice against 18, 42, 50–1, 67, 77, 82, 101, 109; ‘problems’ of 6–7, 8; scholarship on 5–6; social closure 40, 41, 174; superiority of mixed race people 26, 194; see also hybridity; interracial union; mestizaje; racial mixing; reversion Mizutani, Satoshi 5, 6, 17, 22, 25, 72, 87, 88, 101, 139, 176–7 Moore, Gloria 5 Moore, J. 201–203 Moreno, H. W. B. 163–4 Morrison, Herbert 256 Mountbatten, Louis, Lord 82, 246, 257 Mughal Empire 1–2, 7–8, 41, 46, 47, 49, 66 mulatto 62, 84 multiculturalism 7–8 Muslim League 138, 224, 228, 235, 236, 255 Muslims/Islam 1, 42, 73, 135, 231; constitution making 219; Hindus/ Muslims relationship 86, 156–7, 219, 220, 243; legal system for 11; mass conversions to Islam 244; Muslim Indians 2, 156; pan-Islamic Khilafat movement 156; Partition 231, 235; political representation 27, 216, 243; reservations 24, 27, 143, 215, 218, 243, 247; women 41, 46 Mysore 81, 161; Whitefield 25, 178, 179–82, 183 Mysore and Coorg Association 145, 146, 149, 179 Nairne, Charles, Sir 81–2 nation 9; boundary-making process 12; membership 12 nationalism 135, 270, 271; Anthony’s communal nationalism 12, 28, 30, 193,

Index 206, 229, 239, 248, 271–2, 276, 277; Burmese ethnonationalism 29–30, 259; civic nationalism 28, 276; ethnonationalism 16, 30, 271; imperial loyalism 271; mixed race people and 270, 271; see also Indian nationalism nationality see citizenship Nehru, Jawaharlal 3, 192, 205, 206, 258; Anglo-Indians and 236–7, 238–9; Anthony, Frank 237, 238–9; civic nationalism 28, 276; Constituent Assembly 238–9; Dover, Cedric 237; Gidney, Henry 237; new Indian state 12, 248; Partition 246; single electorates 219 Nissen, Roy 119–20, 121–2, 123 Ochterlony, David, General Sir 2, 47 Olumide, Jill 5, 6, 8 ordering 10, 12; hierarchical ordering 39, 42, 43, 63–4, 106, 107; principles of 8, 11, 19, 100, 102–103, 113, 118–19 Orientalism 1, 6, 8, 19, 46, 50, 67 orphan: child migration 175–8; fictive orphan 20, 25, 42, 79, 176; marriage 42, 43 orphanage/orphan school 42, 245; colonisation scheme/agricultural colony 175–8; the ‘Eurasian problem’ 20, 70, 71; European Female Orphan Asylum 70; Lawrence Asylum 70; Lower Orphan School 42, 70; Moorgehatta Orphanage 77; Upper Orphan School 42, 43, 61, 70; see also school othering 12, 20, 158 Otto, Brent 5, 201, 203, 204 Ottoman Empire 13, 156 Oxford University 87, 118, 151; see also education Pakistan 138, 231, 243; Anglo-Indian Association of Pakistan 264; AngloIndians 264; Anglo-Pakistanis 30, 264–6, 268; British citizenship 265, 266; British retreat from India 29, 255–6, 257; dominion of Pakistan 246; East Pakistan/modern Bangladesh 264, 265; migration from 247, 265–6, 268; non-Muslims 247, 265, 266, 268; Pakistani citizenship 265; Pakistani passport 247, 265–6, 268; ‘Pakinstanisation of businesses’ 264; partitioning Anglo-Indians and

317

Anglo-Pakistanis 263–9; railway employment 246–7, 265; right to migrate to India after Partition 264; see also Partition Palmer, William 2–3 pan-Africanism 192 pan-Eurasianism 191, 192–3, 196, 201–204, 206; Anglo-Indian Review 201; Dover, Cedric 25, 192–3, 201, 203, 204; see also ‘Eurasia’; ‘Mestizism’ Pandey, Gyanendra 7 Parliament: Acts of Parliament 83; mixed race people at 47 Partition (1947) ix, xii, 8; Army 246; Burma 29; communal electorates 235; creation of two dominions 246; façade of orderly transfer 29; minority group rights 27, 231, 235; Nehru, Jawaharlal 246; partitioning Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Pakistanis 263–9; reservations 246–7; violence 29, 235, 246, 257; see also Pakistan passport 12; boundary-making process 12; British passport 177, 258, 265, 266, 270; Emergency Certificates for travel 266, 268; Pakistani passport 247, 265–6, 268; restricting migration 269; travel documentation 166, 247, 265, 269; see also citizenship; migration Patel, Sardar Vallabhbhai 199, 235, 236, 239, 241, 274 Patel, Shri Dayabhai 274 patriarchy 1, 39, 41, 121 patronage 67, 68, 87; East India Company 18, 19, 62; from patronage-based to examinations system 87; political patronage 244 Pauperism Committee (1892) 73–4, 74, 75–6, 81–2, 87, 106 Pethick-Lawrence, Lord 233 petitioning and lobbying 23, 36, 53, 55, 68, 102, 104, 134–5, 164–6, 173; Anthony, Frank 233, 241, 248; constitution making 218–24, 233; Gidney, Henry 218–24, 248; Ricketts’ petition 36, 37, 39–40, 42, 50, 51–2, 53– 5, 64, 65, 104, 124–5; unemployment and 164–5, 213; see also political representation; politics; reservations Pieterse, Jan 6, 8 police 80–1, 136–7; police state 246 political representation xii, 11, 23, 55, 135–6; Adivasis 27, 213; Anglo-Indians

318

Index

xi, 135, 216, 220–2, 241–2, 245–6; Anglo-Indians, ‘a handicap race’ 216, 217; Anthony, Frank 27, 233; Burma 23, 29; constitution making 27, 212, 217, 241–2, 243–4, 245; Dalits 27, 213, 216, 220, 233, 243–4; Gandhi, Mohandas 219–20; Gidney, Henry 24, 218–22, 224; minority group 135–6; Muslims 27, 216, 243; ‘positive discrimination’/‘affirmative action’ 11, 24, 27; Sapru Conciliation Committee 232; see also communal electorates; politics; separate electorates politics xii, 3, 19, 102–103; Anglo-Indian political organisation 23, 65, 67, 134, 142, 145–6, 153; Anglo-Indians, full merger into Indian body-politic 242; communal political organisation 145; ‘Government Servant’s Conduct Rules’ 145; political patronage 244; see also communalism; minority group; petitioning and lobbying; political representation Poona Pact (1932) 27, 213, 220, 236, 240, 244 the Portuguese xi, 37–8, 45, 103, 113; Catholicism 38; Estado da Índia 37; Goa 37, 38; Goans 21, 78, 102, 106, 113–14; Indo-Portuguese 21, 70; interracial union 38, 40, 78; LusoIndians 21, 38, 102, 106; Portuguese culture 38; Portuguese language 70; Portuguese names 112, 113; ‘Portugueseness’ 38 poverty x, 20, 76, 77–8 prostitution/sex work 39, 43, 89, 123 PSC (Public Service Commission) 87, 88 Punjab 114, 184; see also Canal Colonies QAs (Queen Alexandra nurses) 120 race xi, 5, 9, 45, 48, 89; Anglo-Indian as emerging, new white race 26; British socioracial attitudes x, 41–2, 48; Nazi racial theories of Aryanism 26, 192, 193; ‘one drop’ rule 7, 10; as principle of ordering 8, 11, 19, 100; racial categories 8; racial/cultural hybridity link 8, 9, 10–11, 10, 12; racial hybrid 3, 5, 6; racial mixing 5, 8; racial purity 26, 192, 193, 194, 195; United States 9, 10, 64, 90; see also colour; ethnicity; identity; interracial union; mestizaje; scientific racism; whiteness

racial passing xii, 7, 12, 21–2, 41, 49; Anglo-Burman 262; Army/military service 23, 61, 93, 116, 139–40, 141, 254; colour and 49; concealment strategies 44–5, 48, 76, 113, 119, 121; Domiciled European 22, 115–16, 117, 119, 120–1; Indian Christian 21, 28; policing 22; social mobility and 89–90, 113; socioracial passing 5, 16–17, 102, 113, 119; women 22, 44 racism 101, 239; British racism 16, 60, 62–3, 78–9, 82, 89, 90, 136; European women 78–9, 120; literature and 84–7; race prejudice 18, 100, 109, 225; racial discrimination x, 24, 39, 50, 224; racial superiority 5, 26, 64, 77, 108, 109, 110, 194–5; 'scientific' racism 5, 19, 20, 37, 45, 64, 84, 100, 192 railway 21; 1892 Pauperism Committee Report 75; Anglo-Indian politics 23; Burma 29, 156; Calcutta 75; constitution making 247; cost-of-living for Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European railway workers 214; discrimination 224; Domiciled European 75, 93, 115, 116; employment by x, 14, 17, 20, 23, 75, 92–3, 113–14; Indian state 247; Indianisation 23; Madras 75; Muslims 247; Pakistan 246–7, 265; Railway Board 93, 113–14, 223, 224; railway colony x, 25, 189; railway school 75, 107; reservations 215, 217, 222, 223, 224, 246–7; a Reserve Military Service 100; women 75 Raj x, 3, 92, 101, 257; Hindu Raj 206; socioracial hierarchy 24, 84, 102, 106, 206 Rafs, Mary Anne 33 Rawdon-Hastings, Francis Edward, 1st Marquess of Hastings 99 rebellion/revolt x, 62, 63, 65; Haitian Revolution 62; police reserves to fight against 80–1, 136–7; see also Great Rebellion Rees, John, Sir 106 religion 76, 179; constitution making and religious conversion 244–5, 248; minority group 231; religious discrimination 245; religious identity xi; religious minority communalism 245; religious separatism 236; see also Christians/Christianity; Buddhists/ Buddhism; Hindus; Muslims/Islam; Sikhs/Sikhism

Index reservations: Adivasis 27, 213; AngloIndian wage 213–14, 216, 222, 223, 224; Anglo-Indians 27, 166, 212, 213, 222–4, 234–5, 236, 245–6, 247, 258; Anglo-Indians, colonial reservations for 213–18; Anglo-Indians, ‘a handicap race’ 216, 217, 218; Anthony, Frank 27, 234–5, 258; boundary policing 113–14; constitution making 11, 27, 212, 217, 236, 238, 245, 246–7; customs 222, 223; Dalits 27, 213, 216, 236; ethnic boundary-making 11; Gidney, Henry 213–14, 222, 223–4; Lloyd, Lord 222–3; lobbying at the metropole 218–24; Muslims 24, 27, 143, 215, 218, 243, 247; Partition 246–7; ‘positive discrimination’/ ‘affirmative action’ 11, 24, 27; railway 215, 217, 222, 223, 224, 246–7; Sapru Conciliation Committee 232; socioracial hierarchy of employment 91; telegraph employment 216, 222, 223, 224; wartime 142–3, 224; see also constitution making; employment; wage reversion 136, 224, 262 Ricketts, John 33, 39, 61–2, 66–7, 164; 1829 petition to Parliament 36, 37, 39–40, 42, 50, 51–2, 53–5, 64, 65, 104, 124–5; ‘East Indians category’ 19, 52, 53, 100; education 70–1 Robbie, C. T. 140, 147 Roberts, Emma 46–7, 50 Rowlatt Act of 1919 148, 154 Royal Commission on Labour 214 Rush, Anne 110 Said, Edward 8, 13–14, 85, 270 Sapru Conciliation Committee (1944–5) 28, 230–5, 245; education 232; political representation and reservations 232; Sapru Report 231, 232 Sapru, Tej Bahadur, Sir 225, 230 Scabby Dichson 117 school 61, 70–2, 117–18; Anglo-Indian School 30, 71, 100, 107, 108, 165, 272, 273, 274, 275–6, 277; Anglo-Indian teachers 109, 276; Anglo-Indian women as teachers 126, 129; Anglophone school 31, 129, 263, 275, 276, 277; ballet/school of dancing 118, 127; Bishop Cottons School 71, 107, 117; Charity School/Free School 70, 77; Constitution of India 272, 275, 276; Doveton College 71; elite school 71;

319

Frank Anthony public schools 227, 277; home-schooling 118; La Martiniere school 70, 77, 80; mission school 70, 104, 107; Mrs Ewart’s School for Girls 70; Parental Academic Institution 71; railway school 75, 107; St Joseph’s College, Darjeeling 71; St. Patrick’s High School 114; see also education; orphanage/orphan school Scott, Paul 120 self-sufficiency 23, 24, 25, 26, 206 Sen, Indrani 84 separate electorates 27, 135, 212, 213, 220, 236, 243; ethnic boundarymaking 11; see also political representation sex: interracial sex 5, 60, 89, 121, 122; pre-marital sex 125; see also prostitution/ sex work Shave, May 125–6 Sikhs/Sikhism 103, 114, 135, 212, 219, 220, 264; constitution making 244, 245, 247 Simla Conference (1944) 232–3, 261 Simon, John, Sir 217; see also Indian Statutory Commission Sinha, A. 185 Skinner, James, Colonel (Sikandar Sahib) 51, 61, 64, 65 Slate, Nico 26, 192, 193–4, 195 Snell, Owen 61, 173 social capital 35, 38, 39, 44, 72, 78, 90, 125, 148, 268; Anglo-Burmans 261; Anglo-Indians 21, 248; East India Company 37; higher social capital 128, 139; lower social capital 102 social closure 10, 11, 12, 18, 34, 55, 61, 67, 104, 154; Anglo-Indians 49; boundary-making process 90; boundary policing 112; mixed race 40, 41, 174; socioracial exclusion 55 social science 9–10 sociology 4, 6, 41 socioracial hierarchy 7, 19, 22, 45, 79, 106, 107, 112, 113, 136, 138, 166; East India Company 37; employment 91; hierarchy of precedence 37; hierarchy of rank in Company service 37; interracial union 37, 123; Kipling, Rudyard 84; late 19th century 20; Raj’s socioracial hierarchy 24, 84, 106, 206; socioracial employment hierarchy 24, 89, 102; socioracial flux 48, 123; see also hierarchy

320

Index

source materials xii, 5–6, 84 South Africa, apartheid 49, 71–2, 90, 239 South America 64 South Asia xii, 48; boundary-making 3, 9–12 Southern Association (Anglo-Indian Association of Southern India) 24, 135, 159, 163, 164, 179 Soviet Union/USSR 239, 257 Stark, Herbert 4, 61, 80, 203 state: boundary-making 11, 49, 90; colonisation scheme and state backing 26, 174, 178, 184, 185, 186–7, 206; police state 246; state-sponsored multiculturalism 8; see also government state employment 14, 17, 27, 84, 90–1, 102, 182, 213, 215, 230; Anglo-Indians as minority group 166; ‘Government Servant’s Conduct Rules’ 145, 146; Indianisation of 23, 92, 102, 143, 148, 164, 213; wartime 142–3; see also customs; railway; telegraph Statesman 183, 237 Statutory Natives of India 83, 92, 99, 102, 148, 153, 159, 165, 166, 217, 230 Stevenson-Moore, C. 80–1, 136–7 stigma 35, 43, 113, 125, 126, 142, 273; see also discrimination Stracey, Cyril John, Captain/Colonel, Indian National Army (INA) 254–5; see also Bose, Subhas Chandra Supreme Court 30, 35, 53, 54, 276 Sutherland, David 70, 100 Swann, Clare 263 Swaraj (self-rule) 158, 196, 243 syncretism 1, 7, 11, 103, 244 Tagore, Rabindranath 110 telegraph 17, 20, 21, 87, 93; Europeans/ Britons 74–5; reservations 216, 222, 223, 224; a Reserve Military Service 100; women 127 Thakur, P. R. 245 Thurston, Edgar 74, 75, 76–7, 82–3, 84, 85, 117, 141, 192; see also anthropology; eugenics Times of India 273 Tin Tut 259 Trigonometric Survey of India 20, 69 Trivedi, Chandulal 215 Trotter, Alexander 44 Trotter, William Henry 44 Turks 156–7

Tyagi, Shri Mahavir 240 unemployment 50, 113; demobilisation and 23, 142, 164; the ‘Eurasian problem’ 20, 66, 67, 72, 75, 77, 79, 80; petitioning and lobbying 164–5, 213 United Nations 255, 257 United States 7, 195, 257; American soldiers 123; migration to 177, 258; race 9, 10, 64, 90 Universal Declaration of Human Rights 273 VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment field nurses) 120 Van den Berghe, P. 115 Victoria, Queen of England and Empress of India 92 Vincent, William Henry Hoare 44 violence 16; boundary-making 12; British retreat from India 255–7; communal violence 236, 247; indigo planter 63; Partition 29, 235, 246, 257 WAC(I) (Women’s Auxiliary Corps, India) 22, 123, 127, 128 wage 75, 213–14; racial minimum wage 24, 224; reservations and AngloIndian wage 213–14, 216, 222, 223, 224; salary scales 88, 89, 92; see also employment; reservations Wall Street Crash of 1929 164, 197 Wallace, J. R. 99 Wallace, Kenneth 62, 91, 99, 119 Watson, Graham 49 Wavell, Archibald 28–9, 233, 255, 256 West Indies x, 14, 78; middle-class black West Indians, education 21, 110–11, 225 White, D. S. 179, 180, 181–3, 185 White, J. 25, 179 Whitefield 25, 178–9, 183, 184, 185; failure 26–7, 179, 180–1; Guide to the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Villages 179–80, 181; Mysore 25, 178; Mysore branch 179–82; a sleepy retirement settlement 190; see also agricultural colony; colonisation scheme whiteness 43, 49, 64, 113; Domiciled European 22, 88, 114–15, 117; ‘a drop of White blood’ 85, 86, 100, 106; exclusion from 5, 22; full merger into 191, 195; superiority of 194–5; see also colour

Index Williams, Blair 4–5 Wilson, Millicent 25–6, 174–5, 177–9, 187, 194–6, 269; Gidney, Henry 194, 195–6; see also child migration; Christianity; colonisation; eugenics; mixed race; race; whiteness Wimmer, Andreas 9–13; Herderian and Barthian worlds 10; Herderian world 9, 10, 10, 11, 13; see also boundarymaking process; constructivism, social Wodyar, Chamarajendra, Maharaja of Mysore 180–1; see also agricultural colony; agriculture; colonisation schemes; Mysore women: native women ix, xii–xiii, 37, 38–9, 41, 42, 101; Army xi, 22, 122, 140, 142; British subjecthood 125; caste 50, 51; class ix, 1; Domiciled European xi, 22, 78, 118, 119, 120–1; economy 43, 129; education 1, 2, 5, 46, 118; female clerk 126; female doctor 125; female teacher 126, 129; half caste 33; Hindus 41, 51; as hypersexual and exotic objects of desire 121; Indian languages 109; interracial union ix, 1, 42–3; invisibility of 5, 41, 114; low caste 50; Muslims 41, 46; native/European

321

women competition 41, 50–1, 63, 121; negative stereotyping of 123–4; nursing 117, 127, 140, 142, 177; pursuing a career 22; racial passing 22, 44; railway employment 75; telegraph employment 127; widows 33, 34, 35, 39; working women 78, 118, 125–9; World War II xi, 123; see also European women; gender-related issues; marriage World War I 23, 119, 125, 139–40, 143, 164; Anglo-Indian Force (AIF) 101, 140; communal regiment 23; see also Army; WAC(I) World War II 30, 119, 139–40, 198, 224, 225, 254–5; women xi, 123; see also Army Wright, Roy 4 YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) 263 Young, Robert 45 Younghusband, Oswald, Reverend 146 YWCA (Young Women’s Christian Association) 263 Zetland, Marquess of 223