2. History of the Anglo-Indian community.  

The Anglo-Indian community is part of the large amount of minority groups that populate the Indian subcontinent. Where most of the minority groups have a history which goes far back in time, the Anglo-Indian community has a relatively short history. It started at the end of the 15th century when the Portuguese arrived on the subcontinent.

In the introduction is already mentioned that the history of the community is divided into four periods. This division is also used to construct this chapter. The second paragraph describes the first period, from 1500 up to 1785, and the third paragraph deals with the following period up to 1857. The fourth period is the era of this inquiry and is described in the third paragraph. The fourth period, after 1920 is described in the fifth paragraph.

Soon after the arrival of the Portuguese the soldiers mixed with the Indian population. This was promoted by the Portuguese leaders who had various reasons for this policy. The two main reasons were influenced by economic and religious purposes. Through mixing with the Indian population the Portuguese expected to learn more about the, for them almost unknown subcontinent and its inhabitants. They gained knowledge and insight in various aspects of society, like languages, habits and economy. This knowledge helped the Portuguese to establish advantageous economic relations.

The second advantage of miscegenation was a religious one. Firstly because the offspring of miscegenation became Christian and secondly because these newly born Christians could be very helpful for other missionary activities.

Although these two advantages are obvious and plainly described in the literature there seems to be a contradiction with another phenomenon that is commonly accepted. It concerns the rejection of the Indian women by their own community after mixing with the Portuguese or other Europeans. Through this rejection the women with their children were forced to live with the Europeans or amongst themselves.

Therefore it appears that the offspring of miscegenation was of little use for the Europeans because they were raised by European standards and rejected by their Indian progenitors. The informative advantage seemed to have been unsatisfying because of their European education and their alienation from the Indians. The rejection by Indians must also have hampered the missionary advantage of these Anglo-Indians, as this people with Indian and European blood are called since 1911. But somehow the advantages were utilized which is also indicated by the fact that the Portuguese, and later on also the Dutch and the British, paid a certain amount of money for every child that was born as a result of miscegenation. Another requirement for this financial support was the child should be baptized.

Besides the two advantages of miscegenation it was also seen as inevitable, with regard to the sexual needs of the soldiers. In the beginning of their presence in India, in the 17th century, the East India Company tried to compensate this shortage by sending British women to India. But after some time this appeared to be too expensive.

The first period is characterized by the positive attitude of the British towards Anglo-Indians. As a result of this the Anglo-Indians almost lived their life like the British in India. They were educated according to European standards, either in India or in England. As a result of their education many Anglo-Indians worked with the East India Company in executive and army functions.

Around 1776 there were various reasons why the British started to change their attitude towards Anglo-Indians. Firstly the British had become a minority compared with the amount of Anglo-Indians. This meant that the extension of British power became a threat to this same power; other colonies also experienced the danger of a mixed community. In Haiti, for example, this fear was realised in 1791 when the Mestizo's played an important role in the uprising against the colonial power. With this example in mind the British began to fear the growing Anglo-Indian community, who could do the same in India. In 1792, for example, the editor of The Calcutta Chronicle wrote: "If forthwith drastic measures are not put into operation to keep down the East Indian (Anglo-Indian) race, they will do to the British in India what the Mulattoes have done to the Spaniards in San Domingo." Such an alarming prospect made it necessary to restrict the possibilities of Anglo-Indians, also outside the East India Company.

Another reason to expel Anglo-Indians from their positions within the East India Company had its origin in England. Governors and shareholders of the Company wanted to reserve these positions for their own sons. A third reason to remove Anglo-Indians from their privileged position was that they were despised by Indians, according to British officials. As a result a less favourable era for Anglo-Indians started, which corresponds with the second period of the community's history.

The restrictions that were imposed on Anglo-Indians in this period had their impact on the youth as well as on the adults of the community. It was forbidden for children to get an education in England and adults were excluded from jobs with the East India Company. This attitude of the British led to different reactions within the community. One was that Anglo-Indians offered their services to Indian princes. Some Anglo-Indians even occupied important positions in the armies and administration services of the different Indian princes.

Another reaction of members of the community was that they began to feel the need to become independent from the British. Not by removing the British from India but by means of providing their own necessaries of life. They were supported in this need by missionaries and by British officers who thought it was their personal duty to help the community. This cooperation led to the establishment of schools based on the British Public Schools system. Education was seen as an important factor in the process of becoming independent.

This era was also the period in which for the first time in their history the Anglo-Indians tried to organize themselves. In 1829 J.W. Ricketts went to England to present a petition to the Houses of Parliament in which were summed up the social, political and economic disabilities of the East Indians, as Anglo-Indians were called at that time. Unfortunately for the Anglo-Indians the petition came at the wrong time. Important political matters were discussed in England which made the problems of the Anglo-Indians insignificant for the Members of Parliament. Besides this there was also some political commotion which resulted in changes in Parliament soon after Ricketts was heard by committees of the House of Lords and the House of Commons.

The petition was the main activity of the East Indian movement of 1827-1830 as it is designated. Not in the least because its leaders - Derozio, Ricketts and Kyd - all died within a few years after the petition. So up to the Mutiny in 1857 nothing really changed in the position of the Anglo-Indians, they remained in a position between the British and the Indian communities.

With the Mutiny the third period started which lasted to 1920. During the Mutiny the Anglo-Indians choose side with the British. Although it is suggested that they were forced to choose this side because the Mutiny was also directed against Anglo-Indians, there are also examples of Anglo-Indians who took part in the Mutiny. But it is obvious that the general attitude was pro-British, although the description of the 'heroic' role Anglo-Indians played during the Mutiny seems to be exaggerated in The Call of the Blood, by the community's main historian, H.A. Stark.

However, the proved loyalty was the reason for a change in the attitude of the British towards the Anglo-Indians. The British rewarded the Anglo-Indians for their pro-British attitude by providing jobs for them and by establishing schools based on British principals. The jobs that were given to Anglo-Indians were mainly with the railways, post and telegraph, customs and police. The British were able to do this because the jobs were mainly new jobs which means that the employment of Anglo-Indians was no menace to British subjects. Besides this the Anglo-Indians only received jobs in the lower grades of the Services. "In other words the Anglo-Indians were offered employment in the subordinate grades of the Public Services without disturbing any existing interest."

Another reason for the mass representation of Anglo-Indians in the construction and maintenance of the railways was that Indians were not interested in modern innovations concerning transport facilities. They thought of them as threatening to their caste system and their religion. So the British only recruited Indians from the poorer sections to do manual labour.

At the end of the 19th century the privileged position of Anglo-Indians began to diminish. This was the result of Indianization that started in the last few decades of this century. The Indianization process was the result of demands that were made by Indian nationalists concerning the role of Indians in the government of British India. They, especially the educated Bengalis, wanted to be more involved with the government of their own country. Besides this the Anglo-Indians also had to compete with Indian labour in general.

Through this competitive struggle many Anglo-Indians lived in poverty. The Bengal Pauperism Committee investigated pauperism in Calcutta in 1891 and concluded that 22.3 percent of the Anglo-Indians in this city were paupers, "...an enormous percentage which can scarcely be paralleled in any other community in the world." Also outside Calcutta the economic position of Anglo-Indians in general was poor.

At the same time there was a discussion going on among members of the community about their position in Indian society. This was stimulated by growing Indian nationalism which forced Anglo-Indians to think about their role and identity in a possible independent Indian society. "Anglo-Indians were being urged on all sides to wake up from their torpor and engage in campaigns of self-help and to avail themselves of the grants and stipends offered in the European and Anglo-Indian schools."

The discussion was mainly taking place among members of the various associations that were established throughout India. The one of great matter was the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association established in Calcutta in 1876. Its influence was partly due to the fact the Government of India had its headquarters in Calcutta and partly due to the comparatively large amount of Anglo-Indians that lived in the capital. Still the Eurasian and Anglo-Indian Association did not pretend to represent the Anglo-Indian community of India in general, in fact they didn't want to represent the Anglo-Indians from all over India.

In the other urban areas in the colony there also sprung up different associations which claimed to represent the community in their area. Even in Calcutta a rival organisation was founded in 1898 but it disappeared with the death of its founder, Dr. J.R. Wallace, in 1903. Although the associations were not concerned with politics it is obvious that their main deficiency was disunity. They could not agree how to take care of the social, cultural and material welfare of the community members. An exception to the a-political approach was the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Association of Southern India, founded in Madras in 1879. Its founder, D.S. White, even attended the first Indian National Congress meeting in 1885 almost immediately after he had organized a disappointing conference to come to some agreements with the other Anglo-Indian associations. In the following years the Madras based association continued to support the Indian National Congress and they never joined the other associations.

With the beginning of the First World War the position of Anglo-Indians improved slightly. This was partly due to the fact different British subjects went to Europe, and partly because the British Empire was in need of soldiers. The possibility to fight in the British army was taken hold of by the community's leaders and spokesmen. H.W.B. Moreno, for example, starts his propagandist booklet The Call to Arms for Anglo-Indians with these words: "While the greatest War in the record of history is being waged, the greatest cry has come, at last, to Anglo-Indians, the highest demand that can come to a community - Your King and Country call you. After years of persistent agitation for the privilege that the Anglo-Indian might fight by the side of his British brother, suffer and die, if need be, with him, the right has been obtained in the end."

When the war was over many Anglo-Indians lost their jobs and had to live in poverty again. The results of an inquiry in 1918-1919 indicate the bad conditions in which members of the lower class of the community in Calcutta lived. One of the conclusions of the committee members regarding employment was that competition with (educated) Indians was increasing. This situation was not exceptional compared with Anglo-Indians in other parts of the Empire.

So the position of Anglo-Indians was already diminishing when the fourth period started in 1920. During this period the Government of India made more concessions to the Indian nationalists. This also meant the Anglo-Indian situation became worse concerning job possibilities and social position. The fact that they were regarded 'natives of India' didn't help the Anglo-Indians to maintain their jobs. In fact, it even made their position less clear as one can conclude from an official definition about the position of the Anglo-Indian community. The Secretary of State for India defined the position of Anglo-Indians in 1925 as follows: "For purposes of employment under Government and inclusion in schemes of Indianization, members of the Anglo-Indian and Domiciled European Community are Statutory Natives of India. For purposes of education and internal security, their status, in so far as it admits to definition, approximates that of European British subjects."

Their 'formal marginality', as Gist and Wright call it, did not restrain the community from organizing themselves in order to improve their situation. In 1926 almost all associations united themselves in the All India Anglo-Indian Association. The association based in Madras, however, was not accepted because they had Native Christians, people without European blood ties, among their members.

The All India Anglo-Indian Association, headed by Henry Gidney, succeeded in arranging special safeguards for Anglo-Indians with regard to education and employment in the Government of India Act, 1935. To attain this representatives of the Association, mainly Gidney, appeared before all statutory commissions and round table conferences. During the last decade before independence the leaders of the community emphasized the Indian origin of the community. With this they chose to be Indians whose 'home' was India.

That the idea of India as 'home' did not apply to all Anglo-Indians is, of course, obvious. Within the community people were still looking for an identity which suited the Anglo-Indians best. The most important authors of the community in this era, Stark, Wallace, and Dover all wrote books which were dealing with this search for identity. They all agreed about the fact that the most important obstacle for an Anglo-Indian identity was the removal of prejudices about Anglo-Indians. Prejudices not only of the British and the Indians but also prevailing among themselves. The most common prejudices or failures of Anglo-Indians were 'no pride of race' and 'a lack of initiative and confidence'. All the authors used the same sort of arguments to remove these ideas in order to create an Anglo-Indian identity. C. Dover plainly introduced them in his foreword of CIMMERII? or Eurasians and their future: "It is, therefore, as an attempt to foster a proper appreciation of the Eurasian community and its problems, both in the Eurasians themselves and in the people of other communities and nationalities, and to quicken a mutual understanding, that I offer this essay - penned under the searching scrutiny of biological and historical facts." All the authors used both biological and historical facts to undo the Anglo-Indians of their 'inferiority-complex' as K.E. Wallace called it. Biological and historical arguments are also found in H.A. Stark's work, he used phrases like "The Call of the Blood" and "The Anglo-Indian Race".

Although the authors used the same sort of arguments, they did not agree about the position and the future of the Anglo-Indians in India. This also becomes clear from the different designations the authors used for their community; the name 'Eurasian' is used by Dover and Wallace, while Stark used the name 'Anglo-Indian'. The latter because he wanted to emphasize the all-important connection with the British and the resulting privileges Anglo-Indians should receive. In this context Stark's final words in some of his books are characteristic, like: "And we are confident, come what may in the days to follow Anglo-Indians will unfailingly prove that, The blood a hero sire hath spent - Still nerves a hero son.", and "O England! who are these if not thy Sons?"

Dover and Wallace, on the contrary wanted to become independent from the British. They wanted to constitute an 'Eurasian race' which didn't commend itself on its British origin. In the words of Cedric Dover: "Let us teach Colonel Gidney and Mr. Stark that protection weakens a people; that it reduces competition, increase inertia, and produces a false sense of security...The great truth must be learned that the road to Eurasian emancipation lies not in supplication, nor only in righteous demands for fair and just treatment, but in developing themselves to be at least as good as the other fellow." With their different opinions and recommendations it appears the Anglo-Indian authors wanted to prove one of their main arguments was right, a lack of unity hampered the community.

After the death of Gidney in 1942, Frank Anthony became the leader of the All India Anglo-Indian Association until he died in December 1993. During his reign, as many Anglo-Indians call his leadership nowadays, he attained important things for the community. He played a significant role in the formation of the Constitution of India. This is also one of the reasons why the community still enjoys guarantees in the field of political representation and education. Since independence the Anglo-Indian community has two nominated seats in the Lok Sabha.

Anthony has also developed an educational scheme for Anglo-Indians with the All India Anglo-Indian Education Society which he founded in 1958. Besides this he played an important role in the protection of the English language which the Indian Government wanted to replace by Hindi in 1958. Although he has done a lot of good things for the community there is also a lot of criticism to his leadership. He ruled the Association like a dictator and he didn't accept any contradiction. But, as Abel concludes, "...the Anglo-Indian community emerged re-fortified and strengthened under the umbrella of a strong and virtually unchallenged leadership of two men - Henry Gidney and Frank Anthony." However, this does not apply to the entire Anglo-Indian community; before and after independence most of the wealthy Anglo-Indians migrated to start a new life in England, Canada or Australia.