CONTENTS

PARADOXES OF BELONGING, INDIVIDUALITY AND COMMUNITY IDENTITY By Rochelle Almeida
Framing Oral Histories as Autobiographical Accounts in Raj Days to Downunder: Voices from Anglo-India to New Zealand By Dorothy McMenamin
Movement and Stillness, Speaking and Silence By Deborah Nixon
Stereotypes and Countertypes: An Analysis of The Year Before Sunset By Cheryl-Ann Shivan

EDITORIAL

Editorial - International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies, August 2013

By: Robyn Andrews and Brent Howitt Otto

In January 2013, immediately following the 9th International World Reunion, a workshop for researchers with an Anglo-Indian focus was held at St Xavier’s College, Kolkata. Over the course of an afternoon and early evening, papers were presented on current research by scholars from around the world: USA, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, as well as India. As co-convenors of the workshop, and encouraged by those attending, we agreed that we would endeavour to publish the presented papers, making it possible for a wider audience to read about the current projects. Naturally we thought of this publication. We are grateful to editor Susan Dhavle, and website creator Adrian Gilbert, who were enthusiastic about the idea and agreed that we could act as guest editors for this edition of the journal.

Although the workshop in January had not been organised around particular themes, most of the papers presented fell into two topic areas: one was around the collection and writing of Anglo-Indian life histories, and the other was the focus on nationalism and national identity for Anglo-Indians.

For this issue (and the next as a result of receiving too many papers for a single issue) the focus is on Anglo-Indian life story collection and life writing. In addition to papers from the Kolkata workshop we also invited papers presented at other events, in particular the Anglo-Indian Reunion symposium, and at the 8th Biennial Conference of the International Auto/Biography Association ‘Framing Lives’ conference, held in Canberra, Australia, in July 2012.

In this issue we have Rochelle Almeida’s “Paradoxes of Belonging—Individuality and Community Identity” which is based on interviews she carried out in the wider London area over the last few years with Anglo-Indians who migrated to the UK between 1947 and 1964. She argues that those early migrants had limited choices in how to settle, identifying two principal tropes: one of rejection of Anglo-Indianness so as to assimilate, and another of creating an ethnic subculture with other Anglo-Indians. The second article is Dorothy McMenamin’s: she writes about the process of working with life stories collected from New Zealand’s Anglo-Indians to producing the increasingly well-known and popular work: Raj Days to Downunder: Voices from Anglo-India to New Zealand. She shares some of her experiences with the narrators (or their families) of the stories she wished to include. This article provides a valuable set of considerations and insights for would-be collectors and presenters of Anglo-Indian life stories. The third article in this issue is from Sydney-based Deborah Nixon, who draws on her PhD research to write about taking a set of pre-Independence family photographs back to India and how it contributed to interviews with Anglo-Indians about their own experiences during the same era. Nixon’s experience exemplifies the valuable contribution of the photo-elicitation method.

Also in this issue is a book review essay by Cheryl-Ann Shivan of the 2005 novel “The Year Before Sunset” by Anglo-Indian writers Hugh and Colleen Gantzer. Shivan explores the ways in which this novel, through its rich tale about Anglo-Indians in 1946 facing the coming of Independence, counters some of the typical stereotypes of Anglo-Indians found in both Indian and European literature.

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Dr. Robyn Andrews holds a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Massey University in New Zealand, where she is now a lecturer in anthropology. Her Ph.D. thesis was on the Anglo-Indian Community (2005), about which she continues to research and write extensively in collaboration with other scholars in Anglo-Indian Studies who belong to various disciplines.

Brent Howitt Otto, S.J. holds a dual M.A./M.Sc. in history from Columbia University and the London School of Economics (2010), where his research and thesis was on the Anglo-Indian Community (from which his maternal ancestry derives). He teaches history occasionally at St. Peter’s University, U.S.A., while currently also a postgraduate student of theology at Santa Clara University, U.S.A. He is a Jesuit seminarian, preparing to be ordained a Catholic priest.