Paper presented at conference on
Anglo-Indians, Calcutta. Dec. 2007
The Roots of Anglo-Indian Cultural
Practices and Attitudes
By Dorothy McMenamin, Christchurch, N.Z.
During the
British period in India Anglo-Indians, together with the British, have been
accused of racial prejudice because they rarely chose to marry or even mix
socially with native Indians. This
raises a puzzling anomaly because to be part of the mixed race community
implies some Indian ancestry. It is also
surprising that Anglo-Indians tracing their genealogy have usually failed to
identify an Indian ancestor.
Genealogists suggest this is because Indian women linked their social
status to the European father of their children, and adopted a Christian name.[1] This change of Indian name to Christian has
camouflaged the maternal lineage. In
some instances there is evidence that the Indian heritage was deliberately
obscured.[2] What I want to explore is why the Indian links amongst the
majority of Anglo-Indians were blurred and remained obscure despite mixed
marriages occurring for a period of over four hundred years. Then I will look at the impact of these mixed
cultural unions upon the fledgling Anglo-Indian community.
Anglo-Indian genesis
What is
significant for my argument is that the Eurasian offspring from these unions,
now called Anglo-Indians, retained their paternal European culture, and
subsequent generations remained essentially endogamous, marrying within the
father’s group or the ever-growing mixed race population.[3] No doubt some fathers failed to support their
progeny who were raised in the Indian fold and we can only speculate about
these lives as very little, if anything, is recorded. What we do know is that early in the British
period, children recognized as fathered by Europeans were taken from their
mothers and placed in special schools, euphemistically called orphanages,
although some of these children were in fact abandoned, left at schools and
churches.[4]
The first of
these schools was established in Madras in mid 18th century, the
fathers reported as being “soldiers and lower order of people” who neglected
“their offspring and suffer them to follow the caste of their mothers”.[5]
This statement reveals the identity of the parents which this paper will
amplify. In 1783 an Orphan Society was
formed, and with due respect to British and Indian social hierarchies, here in
Calcutta the Upper Orphanage for officers’ children was established, and the
Lower Orphanage was for children of lower ranks. [6]
The practice of separating children from
their mothers has been criticized but it originated in good faith to give
neglected mixed-race children the benefit of a formal education.
What is
significant for my argument is why
these children came to be neglected. The
answer is perhaps obvious as stated in the above quote: that the Indian women
available to lower class European men were poor, and without any means of
support. Their children were on the streets or rejected. Certainly upper class Indian women, whether
Hindu, Muslim or Sikh, were unlikely to be accessible to ordinary European
males, and herein lies the nub.
Initially European males met upper class Indian women with whom they
formed semi-permanent relationships or married.
These pioneering European males established contacts with influential
Indians and were often offered access to harems, some forming their own harems.[7] What becomes clear is the distinct
demarcation between upper class mixed liaisons and the liaisons between Indian
women and lower class European males, the latter being due to the large influx
of British soldiers and adventurers into India after 1780s and post-1857.[8]
Upper class liaisons
Many
historians including Hawes, Holmes, Brendon,
Dalrymple, Gilmore and Kincaid have
provided vivid descriptions of early mixed race liaisons at the higher echelons
of British and Indian society where the maternal ancestry is identified. Three
examples are:
(1)
James
Skinner (1778-1841), son of a scotsman Lt. Col. Hercules Skinner who married
the daughter of a Rajput land owner,
zamindar. James achieved success
setting up Skinner’s Horse regiment and had fourteen wives and eighty children.[9]
(2)
General
Sir David Ochterlony, British Resident in Delhi in 1821 at home with some of
his thirteen wives.[10]
(3)
James Kirkpatrick, made famous through
Dalrymple’s White Mughals, married
Hyderabadi aristocrat Khair un-Nissa.[11]
What became
known about these liaisons was that the welfare and fate of the mixed race
children caused their parents a constant worry and dilemma.[12]
The sons often faced difficulty obtaining good posts, whilst the plight of
daughters who were married according to the mother’s traditions, worried the
fathers as their daughters could be placed into veiled seclusion, purdah. Conversely, British practices produced
different tragedies. A wife of Skinner
committed suicide when her daughter was sent to a British school as she thought
Rajput honour had been jeopardised.[13] The salient feature of these higher class
liaisons is that the Indian ancestry is known.
This was because, as I will explain shortly, the mother’s family status
was upheld as her marriage was to a high class European.
Other liaisons
In contrast
to upper class liaisons, the identity of females in association with ordinary
or lower class British males was lost because the mother adopted a Christian
name or the children were raised in orphanage schools. Numerous British males took Indian women into
their homes as wives or concubines, bibis,
and it is these women who usually changed their names.[14] This cartoon in Kincaid’s account provides a
comical slant where instead it is the paternity of the bibi’s newborn babe which is blurred![15]
Eventually,
problems facing the future of mixed-race children appear to have deterred
inter-marriages which decreased in the 19th century but conversely
may have produced more abandoned children.
There were very few European women to the proportion of British males,
so men continued to find solace in the arms of Indian women, or more often, they
married Anglo-Indian women.[16]
These
explanations partly answer the puzzling anomaly about Indian ancestral
identity. However, it is the
circumstances which drove Indian women to either abandon their children or
reject their own culture for a Christian identity, that needs further
scrutiny. This involves looking at
Indian cultures, particularly Muslim and Hindu marriage practices. The impact of these local practices upon
British and Anglo-Indian attitudes and behaviour has in the past, I believe,
been overlooked and underrated.[17] I shall briefly outline relevant Muslim
customs, dominant Hindu practices, and then look at British attitudes.
Muslim practices
In Muslim
society a daughter was usually betrothed at a young age to a Muslim male of
appropriate social rank, the only exception being to a male of much higher
social standing, as in examples quoted earlier, but certainly not to ordinary
British soldiers. Dowries were not paid
for marriages to non-Muslims, who were classified as dhimmis. In the Islamic
realm dhimmis were second class
citizens with whom marriage was taboo, although occasionally expedient.[18] No
Muslim family would consider a non-Muslim an appropriate match for their
daughter because great honour, izzat, is
at stake when selecting a suitable groom.
A Muslim woman who consorted with a male outsider, if she survived being
scarred or killed by her family, sadly as still reported today, would certainly
be ostracized by her own kin. Since
there was no respectability available to her children within Muslim society, a
mother would shift into the society of the father of her children, whether she
formally converted to Christianity or just nominally adopted a Christian
name. This provided security and status
for her while the children were entitled to education in Anglo-Indian schools.
Muslim
practices in India had of course inevitably been influenced by the dominant
ancient Indian culture, various forms of Hinduism which was the religion of
approximately ninety percent of the population.
Muslims remained outsiders, and a minority, having arrived on the
subcontinent from the 8th century onwards, but their influence had
attracted large numbers of Indian converts.
The majority of conversions came from the lower classes because
originally conversion to Islam could gain privilege under Muslim rule, but
particularly, it offered escape from low Hindu status.[19] The escape from low status in the pervasive
hierarchical Hindu caste society creates the crux of my argument.
Hindu practices
The earliest
ancient texts originate from oral traditions claimed to be over 5000 years
old. They contain prescriptions for
rituals essential for all caste members to perform during their lives. A person is born into their parents’ caste
which cannot be changed during one lifetime.
If caste Hindus do not adhere to the rules pertaining to ritual purity,
they become ritually impure and need to undergo specific cleansing rituals to
regain their caste status.[20]
These
beliefs, duties and associated rituals originate in one of the oldest Hindu
scriptures, the Laws of Manu in the Rig Veda. [21] Manu gives the original account of how
humanity was created by the mythic sacrifice of the cosmic man Purusha through
which the four-fold order of caste/varna came
into being.[22] From Purusha’s mouth came the pious Brahmins,
priests at the top of the caste hierarchy deserving utmost respect and revered
by other Hindus; the Kshatriya warrior caste derived from Purusha’s arms, being
kings/rajas and warriors whose duty it was to maintain order in the kingdom;
third in the hierarchy are the Vaisyas, the merchant caste formed from the
lions and responsible for trade and economic success. These three upper castes are considered twice
born, the pure castes, who should be served by the fourth and lowest caste born
from the feet, Sudras, the serving caste.
Within each of these castes are thousands of sub-castes, jatis.[23] To maintain this sacred order, strict rules
and duties, varna-ashrama-dharma,
prescribe the behaviour of people from each caste, such as where you worship,
what food you eat, who cooks your food, where you live, plus countless rituals
and practices associated with daily life within the home and of course death
rituals.[24] What is vital to sustain the order is that
marriages are arranged whereby daughters are betrothed to sons of an
appropriate jati so that the
daughter’s honour and the honour of her family are upheld. The bride’s parents pay a dowry for a
suitable groom as vividly described in Vikram Seth’s acclaimed novel A Suitable Boy. Everyone outside the four castes are ritually
impure – untouchables or mlecchas.[25]
As early as
4th century BC Buddhism and Jainism arose in opposition to the caste
system.[26] Both retained the Hindu worldview in their
cosmologies, albeit with adaptations, but rejected the oppression of the
majority of the population on the basis of birth, i.e. low born or mlecchas.[27] All foreigners such as Muslims, Parsees and
later the Europeans arriving on Indian soil remained outside the Hindu fold
because strict marriage practices proscribed inter-marriages with mlecchas.
Hindus who married or even associated with outsiders would lose
their caste status.[28]
New-comers to India mlecchas
The
entrenched caste system and its strict rules of endogamy prevented newcomers
from integrating. In response to being
ostracized, newcomers maintained their separate customs, built their own places
of worship and lived in separate areas.
In this way outsiders retained their own social status, whilst at the
same time not polluting high caste Hindus by their mleccha presence. Even the
British formed their own cantonment areas, and here in Calcutta today, there
are separate districts, paras, for
Hindus, Muslims, and Anglo-Indians.
The ideology
of caste and ritual purity that are embedded in Hinduism and especially the
polluting status of mlecchas,
excluded those of mixed race from any respectable status in Indian
society. Moreover, high caste Indian
women who entered relationships with ordinary European men lost their caste
status. So the only option available to Indian women who had lost their status,
or lower caste women seeking status, was to take on the identity of their male
partners and enter the Christian fold in the British communities. For these reasons Anglo-Indians aligned themselves
with their paternal cultural heritage because their mixed status was
unacceptable, even polluting, to traditional Hindu society.
These
cultural traditions which excluded mixed races and Europeans on the basis of being
dhimmis or mlecchas, challenges the idea of racial prejudice by Europeans
against Indians. In fact the reverse
seems more accurate. However, it is
apparent that the term racial prejudice, with all its derogatory implications,
does not correctly reflect the conflict between different cultural practices
and beliefs which underpin the reasons why different groups or races do not
socialize together. Caste is an ancient
and deeply hierarchical discriminatory system influencing all Indian practices and
attitudes which in turn profoundly affected the culture and attitudes of
newcomers into India.
British attitudes
Certainly
the British brought with them Victorian class attitudes, frequently summed up,
simplistically, as snobbery. But
snobbery when faced with Hindu notions of caste purity created intense rivalry
and challenges – in fact the practices rigidified, trying to outdo one another
in the purity stakes. An example is a
Brahmin arriving with a servant carrying a bowl of water for his Indian master
to wash and purify himself after shaking hands with any British Raj
officials. This Brahmanical superiority
made an impression on the British arrivals.[29]
One response by the British was to establish their own elitist clubs and to further
stamp their exclusivity; the clubs barred Indians, except as servants.[30]
This had the
additional benefit of retaining and promoting traditional British class
practices, according to which lower rank officers, merchant classes and
soldiers, were also excluded. Such
practices contributed to ICS officers being aligned with the elite Brahmins and
referred to as the “heaven born”.[31] The lower ranks and Anglo-Indians had little
option but to follow suit and establish their own clubs.[32]
These practices permeated British colonial society and engendered what have
been perceived as pretentious, elitist and insular attitudes by Anglo-Indians.[33]
Anglo-Indian practices
It is
important not to forget that another reason for establishing their own clubs
was the different cultural behaviour of the British and Anglo-Indians. Clubs were places where European women could
openly socialize with men, a practice taboo for Indian women. European and Anglo-Indian men and women
socializing and eating together at clubs, especially unmarried couples dancing
in each other’s arms, was a complete anathema to traditional Hindus and
Muslims. Women who behaved in such a
manner with Indian men would have been perceived as wanton or even
prostitutes. Islam prescribed that women
should be veiled, observe purdah, and traditional Hindus although not as strict
as in Islam, often advocated public veiling for their women, but neither would
have allowed their women to socialize in public with males outside the
family. Although there have always been
exceptions, during the colonial period these were insufficient to change the
normative codes of Hindu and Muslim behaviour and practices. British and Anglo-Indian women therefore
avoided Indian male company for reasons resulting from custom and culture, rather
than simply due to racial prejudice.
The
perceived lower status of women within Hinduism and Islam, where veiling was
observed and harems acceptable, was another cultural reason that deterred
Anglo-Indian women from marrying Indian men.
These cultural differences perhaps contributed towards racial prejudice,
and this paper is not intended to deny that forms of racial and colour
prejudice existed within British and Indian society.[34] My focus has been to draw attention to
traditional Hindu and Muslim practices that impacted on the embryonic mixed
race community, forming the roots and moulding Anglo-Indian insular behaviour and
attitudes.
Concluding remarks
Caste was
legally abolished by the Indian constitution in 1948 soon after India became
independent, and it is interesting to read in anthropological works since the
1990s that gradually it is becoming
more acceptable for Anglo-Indians and Indians to inter-marry.[35] These reports nevertheless affirm that
endogamy remains the norm for caste Hindus, Muslims and Anglo-Indians,
explicitly demonstrating just how deeply embedded caste attitudes were and
remain even today.
In these
circumstances it is not surprising that Anglo-Indians developed a cultural identity
that was Christian, mother tongue English and dress style Western. These were symbols that distinguished Anglo
Indians from the surrounding Indian
cultures and provided status for Anglo-Indians in British India. Western dress for women was a tacit sign that
allowed them to remain unveiled often unescorted in public without evoking a
corresponding loss of status. A positive outcome of this Anglo-Indian
culture has been that when the majority of the population in India migrated to
the west after independence, they were able to integrate easily into western
society.
-----------------------
Bibliography
Anthony,
Frank, Britain’s Betrayal in India: The
Story of the Anglo-Indian Community, Bombay, Allied Press, 1969
Basham, A.L,
The Wonder that was India, London,
Sidgwick & Jackson, 1969
Brendon,
Vyvyen, Children of the Raj, London,
Phoenix, 2005
Caplan,
Lionel, Children of Colonialism:
Anglo-Indians in a Postcolonial World, Oxford and New York, Berg, 2001
Charles,
Geraldine, “Anglo-Indian Ancestry” in Genealogists’
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Dalrymple,
William, White Mughals: Love and Bterayal
in Eighteenth Century India, London, Harper Collins, 2002
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Rupert, The Foundations of Buddhism,
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Gilmour,
David, The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives
in the Victorian Raj, London, John Murray, 2005
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Christopher, Poor Relations: The Making
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Richard, The British Soldier in India,
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Keay, John, India: A History, London, Harper
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Dennis, British Social Life in India
1608-1937, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973
Mcmenamin,
Dorothy, “Identifying Domiciled Europeans in Colonial India: Poor Whites or
Privileged Community? In New Zealand
Journal of Asian Studies, Vol 3, no 1, June 2001
Olivelle,
Patrick, trans, The Law Code of Manu,
Oxford University Press, 2004
Sen, Amartya,
The Argumentative Indian: Writings on
Indian Culture, History and Identity, London, Penguin Books, 2005
Thapar,
Romila, A History of India, Vol 1,
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Blair describes the Anglo-Indian Community as insular in “Insularity and
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-----------------------
Dorothy McMenamin holds an MA in
history and specializes in modern South Asian history and religions. She has
lectured on associated topics at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and
is a freelance oral historian. Her research interests focus on trans-national
identities, especially migrants from South Asia to New Zealand. Projects and
publications encompass the cultural identities of Anglo-Indian societies in
British India and New Zealand, as well as migrants and refugees from the Indian
subcontinent into New Zealand.
Dorothy was
commissioned by Oxford University from 2004-2006 to record oral histories
regarding the life experiences of leprosy sufferers in the South Pacific
region. In 2009 she completed a Masters
thesis which has been adapted for general publication by McFarland Publishers,
due out in 2011. The book is viewable on listings at www.mcfarlandpub.com Dorothy McMenamin can be contacted at dorothym@inet.net.nz