Sheila Pais James
Department of Sociology
Flinders University
Abstract
With the British leaving India thousands of
Anglo-Indians left for safe shores – Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
This paper traces the dilemmas of identity among these diasporic people from
their origins in India, through the period of the British leaving India and
India’s Independence and finally the dilemmas here in Australia. It looks at
the relevance of the issue of whiteness and skin colour to the Anglo-Indian
community. It explores Caplan’s conceptualisation of the Anglo-Indians as
transcolonial migrants who have left India in the face of globalising
influences. Finally, regarding the survival of this community, the loss of
their homeland may result in the construction of a number of ‘little Anglo-Indias’ corresponding to
the different experiences of Anglo-Indians in the places of their migration and
keeping the link with the country of their birth.
Introduction
This paper initially gives a preliminary
outline of the discourses surrounding the Anglo-Indians and their dilemma of
identity and explores the possibility of an identity dilemma among the
Anglo-Indians in Australia. It looks at the relevance of the issue of whiteness
and skin colour to the Anglo-Indians. In the next section this paper explores
Caplan’s conceptualization of the Anglo-Indians as colonial transnationals as
part of the globalising process. Both sections are linked, as the dilemmas of
identity of the Anglo-Indians in their country of migration can be understood
in light of the dilemmas they faced in their country of origin. Also, the
experiences of these diasporic people in Australia can be examined in relation
to an article of Eade and Allen on ethnicity and global migrations and in
relation to their survival as a community.
Historical
Background: Before 1947
The Anglo-Indians were brought into being by
the direct policies of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British traders and
colonists. The Directors of the British East India Company (which had been
founded around 1629) paid one pagola
or gold mohur (a guinea, coin) for
each child born to an Indian mother and a European father, essentially, a
family allowance. (Younger, 1984)
Warren Hastings was the first to use the term ‘Anglo-Indian’ in the 18th century to
describe both the British and their Indian-born children. These children were
“country-born” and amalgamated into the Anglo-Indian community, forming a
bulwark for the British Raj (rule), a
buffer but also a bridge between the rulers and the subjects. According to
Stark, the Anglo-Indians’ local knowledge of India and its people made them an
invaluable asset to the British, who used and reared them in the atmosphere of
trade. (Stark in Lyons, 1998)
Younger notes that the encouragement, and ready
employment given to the Anglo-Indians by the East India Company, as well as the
fact that they were treated no differently from the British ensured the growth
of a mixed community. Also, until the mid-18th century Anglo-Indian children
were often sent to England to receive further education with no stigma attached
to marital or extramarital relations with Indian women. And schools were
established in Madras, Bangalore, Lucknow and other British settlements aimed
at organising education to make Anglo-Indians fit for the departments of the
public services. (Younger, 1984)
Thus, the Anglo-Indian was the product of the
confident European expansion of the 16th century. In the years of British
colonial expansion, intermarriage between the British and the native females
was encouraged, but soon after British power was established in India, this
policy was reversed: it was feared that a mixed community might threaten
British rule.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries the
Anglo-Indians were discharged from all ranks of the army; they were barred from
the Company’s civil, military or marine services. The restrictions imposed
closed a large area of employment for them and they saw these actions as discriminatory
because previously they were treated as British and they felt themselves to be
British both by culture and inclination. Now they were no longer with the
ruling elite. According to Gaikwad, these measures reduced the Anglo-Indians to
political impotence and social degradation. (Gaikwad in Younger, 1984)
It was within this milieu that Anglo-Indian
families had to survive, but even this set-up was continuously changing.
Cottrell observed that under the British Raj, the fortunes of the Anglo-Indians
varied from the denial of jobs to favouritism in job placement. At the end of
the colonial period and over ten years after Independence, the Anglo-Indians
had a secure hold on positions in clerical jobs, railways, transport and
communication. (Cottrell, 1979)
However, Younger writes: From the 1920s onwards
the unemployment problem amongst the community became critical. During the
decades after Independence job opportunities diminished even further as
communalism, Anglo-Indian unwillingness to accept inferior jobs, the poor
educational qualifications of Anglo-Indians, Anglo-Indian resistance to
learning an Indian language and occupational specialization all contributed to
an already chronic unemployment situation within the community. (Younger, 1984,
78)
Some analysis on this can be found in D’Cruz
quoting Reuter (1918):
Physically the Eurasians are slight and weak.
Their personal appearance is subject to the greatest variations. In skin
colour, for example, they are often darker even than the Asiatic parent. They
are naturally indolent and will enter into no employment requiring exertion or
labour. This lack of energy is correlated with an incapacity for organization.
They will not assume burdensome responsibilities, but they make passable clerks
where only routine is required …the half-castes tend to develop peculiar mental
traits and attitudes which are not racial but are determined by the social
situation in which they find themselves. To the extent that this takes place,
the differences that normally exist between individuals are suppressed and the
mental and moral characteristics of the group approach uniformity. (D’Cruz,
1997)
In studies done in India, Gaikwad (1967) found
68% of employed Anglo-Indians interviewed were in the lower two categories of
his classification. Very few entered private business and most had not been to
college.
In addition, a series of interviews among
Calcutta Anglo-Indians in 1972 revealed a set of reciprocal role relations
between the sexes…greater emancipation of women, extensive unemployment of
men…Anglo-Indian women became bread-winners …men developed images of themselves
patterned after their British fathers—felt that they were too good for menial
work…Anglo-Indian girls, urged by parents not to marry too soon and to continue
to support the older generation, frequently refused to marry men of their own
community…sex roles skewed away from the traditional male dominance pattern .
(Schermerhorn, 1973)
Aspirations
for British (White) Identity
By the 19th century, the British separated
themselves from the coloured people but accepted fairer (and often wealthier)
people of dual heritage as ‘Anglo-Indian’.
Darker (and usually poorer) people were given the name ‘Eurasian’. Anglo-Indians were of British descent and British
subjects; others claimed to be British to escape prejudice. The British did not
however accept such identification. They did not see Anglo-Indians as kinsmen,
socially viewing them as “half-caste”
members who were morally and intellectually inferior to the sons and daughters
of Britain.
The Anglo-Indians tried to counter this by
trying to be more like the British; hence their campaign to be called ‘Anglo-Indians’ rather than ‘Eurasians’. ‘Anglo-Indian’ would mean a closer link with the Raj while ‘Eurasian’ was too general. (Bose, 1979)
One of the contributing factors to the growth
of community identification was that marriage outside the community had become
rare by 1919. It was no longer acceptable for the British to marry an Indian or
Anglo-Indian. (Younger, 1984) By the end of the 19th century it was taboo for all but the British men of low
status to associate with Anglo-Indians or Indians.
Lyons writes that skin colour was another
factor preventing the Anglo-Indians from being accepted by the British due to a
concern with maintaining “purity of race”. Lyons explains this concept:
Which also meant a white Britisher with real
English looks. If they are white with blue eyes and fair hair, they find it
easier to blend in with the others but if they are dark like the Indians they
find it harder to be accepted as anyone but an Indian. Amongst the
Anglo-Indians themselves there is this colour prejudice. The fairer ones
consider themselves superior and the real Anglo-Indians. In India the higher
castes are usually the lighter skin ones whereas the darker Indians are
supposedly the lower castes. According to them it was the lower castes that
were converted in numbers by the missionaries during the British Raj. The
Indians therefore, consider the Indian Christians as well as the darker
Anglo-Indians as belonging to the lower castes. (Lyons, 1998)
Hence, the Anglo-Indians adopted many of the
prejudices of the British, resulting in the rejection of the Anglo-Indians by
both British and Indian communities, and they found they were caught between
the European attitude of superiority towards Indian and Anglo-Indian and the
Indian mistrust of them due to their aloofness and Western-oriented culture.
On both the social and cultural level they were
alien to many other Indians, though kin to them on the biological level.
Gaikwad (1967) asserted that the Anglo-Indians were mid-way between two
cultural worlds and they could never get to know the West to which they aspired
to belong, nor did they have emotional ties with India, where they really belonged.
D’Cruz quotes Hedin (1934) who attempts to
place the Anglo-Indian within the general “scheme of things”: Hedin suggests
that the role of the Anglo-Indian is that of a parasite whose hold on its host
is none too secure. The Anglo-Indian lives his separate life on the border of
the official community, which supplies him with sufficient employment to keep
up his shabby and pathetic Britishness. (D’Cruz, 1997)
Thus, they were victims of dilemma and
indiscretion throughout their existence.
Identity
Dilemma
One of the problems the Anglo-Indian community
has always faced is one of Identity.
Throughout much of the 18th century, Europeans and Indians variously defined
them. Under these circumstances it was not easy for Anglo- Indians to develop a
clear conception of their own identity. Europeans tended to think of them as
Indians with some European blood; Indians thought of them as Europeans with
some Indian blood. The prejudices against them, real or imagined, or the
prejudices that they themselves had against other Indians, were an obstacle to
both group and individual identity. (Gist, 1972, 1973)
The fact that Anglo-Indians were Indian
nationals by birth but culturally oriented to Britain often made their status
confusing to themselves and to others. One Anglo-Indian school principal in
Calcutta stated the dilemma of her own identity as, ‘My heart is in England but my responsibilities are in India.’
She has since migrated to Great Britain. (Gist, 1973)
Many Anglo-Indians felt that other Indians
regard them as interlopers who do not want to qualify as authentic and loyal
Indians. Gist quotes one Indian in Bombay, who remarked with reference to the
matter of identity, that if you visit any Anglo-Indian home you almost
invariably see a picture of the British Royal Family. This is undoubtedly a
half-truth but it reinforces the image that many Indians have of the community.
(Gist, 1972)
According to D’Cruz: Gist and Wright justify
their theoretical framework through a detailed account of the concept of
marginality and its specific relevance to their study. The thesis they advance
claims that Anglo-Indians are (and were) culturally marginal to the other
Indians in India. This is because their mother tongue, religion, family
organisation and general style of life distinguishes them from Indians who are
relatively distinctive in this respect… They discover the existence of four
major stereotypes: Anglo-Indians as stooges of the British; Anglo-Indians,
especially Anglo-Indian women, as people of lax morals; Anglo-Indians as
traitors to India; and, finally, Anglo-Indians as opportunists. (D’Cruz, 1997)
Thus, it has not been easy for them to provide
a satisfactory answer to the question: “Who
am I?” Thoughtful Anglo-Indians, acutely aware of the problem of identity
and of the attitudes held by many Indians towards them, point to their records
of achievement in the interests of India and to the sacrifices made by
Anglo-Indians in the military services. Some of the leaders of the community
decry the migrations of their members to other countries, asserting that it is
their duty to remain in India and work for equal rights and opportunities for
all peoples. (Gist, 1972)
So, as a genuine community consciousness
developed, this identity dilemma lessened but it was never firmly resolved.
With the British leaving India and as opportunities for a resolution of
identity conflict through migration faded, a new identity orientation was
necessary. Many Anglo-Indians, who were unable to make such a turn-about of
identity and remained insecure without the protective imperial umbrella, opted
to leave India.
India’s
Independence (1947)
In the words of Deefholts: The world of Anglo-India
vanished on August 15, 1947, when a new nation was born. As India threw off the
shackles of three centuries of colonial rule and its people strode proud and
free into the future, the British packed their bags, their polo sticks, their
regimental jackets, and their memories—and went home to ‘Blighty’. Not
everyone, however, was glad to see them go... (Deefholts, 2001)
The somewhat sudden and unexpected departure of
the British from Indian soil, posed a series of tangled problems involving
critical choices for this community. The pivotal point for Anglo-Indians was
the hand-over of political power in 1947: suddenly experiencing the insecurity
of a minority group, thousands of Anglo-Indians left India for safer shores –
Canada, New Zealand, England and Australia.
For those Anglo-Indians who stayed behind, the
Constitution of India provided more security than they dreamt of. The official
definition of the term ‘Anglo-Indian’
accepted by the Government of India and stipulated in the new Constitution of
Independent India is:
…An Anglo-Indian means a person whose
father or any of whose other male progenitors in the male line is or was of
European descent but who is domiciled within the territory of India and is or
was born within such territory of parents habitually resident therein and not
established there for temporary purposes only… (The Constitution of India, paragraph
366)
And Younger points out that there was much
debate about English as the mother tongue of the Anglo-Indians. It was claimed
that English was essential to being an Anglo-Indian. Hence, in 1957, the
following definition was approved:
…An
Anglo-Indian means a person whose mother-tongue is English and whose father or
any of his progenitors in the male line is or was of European descent but who
is or was born within such territory of India of parents habitually resident
therein and not established there for temporary purposes only… (D’Souza in
Younger, 1984)
As regards the Anglo-Indians who remained in
India, some integrated well into the upper class Indian Hindu society. But many
were poor, ignored by their community, forgotten by the Indians and left with
their memories of past glories and a fondly created illusion of ‘home’, England. (Bose, 1979)
We can see this also in D’Cruz, who quotes
Brennan (1979) as follows:
Brennan locates the Anglo-Indian in a liminal
space, negotiating between the centripetal forces of institutions, like the
school and church, which reinforce community affiliations, and centrifugal
political and economic forces which threaten to erode traditional ethnic
identifications. (D’Cruz, 1997)
These Anglo-Indians lived in an unrealistic world
and many of them escaped into a Walter Mitty-like ‘white world’ called England,
where they imagined everything was plentiful and everyone was kind. It was
‘home’ in a sense, which India could never be. (Minto, 1974)
And D’Cruz reviewing Hedin (1934) quotes: They
always speak of England as ‘home’ though they may never have been there.
(D’Cruz, 1997)
This sense of ‘home’ is explained in Brah’s
writings as follows: Implied … is an image of ‘home’ as the site for everyday
lived experience. It is a discourse of locality, the place where feelings of
rootedness ensue from the mundane and the unexpected of daily practice. Home
here connotes the networks of family, kin, friends, colleagues and various
other ‘significant others’. It signifies the social and psychic geography of
space that is experienced in terms of a neighbourhood or a hometown that is a
community ‘imagined’ in most part through daily encounter. This ‘home’ is a
place with which we remain intimate even in moments of intense alienation from
it. It is a sense of ‘feeling at home’. (Brah, 1996, 4)
Migration
to Australia
The Anglo-Indians have been immigrating to
Australia in relatively large numbers since the early 1960s. In fact, they were
among the first Asians to emigrate in the 1960s and 1970s with the relaxation
of the White Australia Policy (Brawley in Gilbert, 1996). The earliest recorded
suggestion of their immigration was made by the editor of The Eastern Times, an Anglo-Indian newspaper on August 23, 1851.
(Varma in Gilbert, 1996) At the time, Australia was encouraging immigration and
the Anglo-Indians were looking for greener pastures. (Gilbert, 1996)
According to Gilbert, some Anglo-Indians did
migrate in 1852 and 1854, and T.G. Clarky, a Magistrate, confidently predicted
that some day there would be unlimited demand for Anglo-Indians in Australia.
An organisation called the South Australian Board of Advice and Correspondence
for Anglo-Indian Colonization was formed ‘to advise and assist Anglo-Indians
desirous to settle in South Australia’. (Varma in Gilbert, 1996, 36)
This migration to South Australia did not
eventuate because there was a hardening of attitudes against Asian immigration
in Australia; also, the Anglo-Indians were not skilled as “cultivators” and nor
did they come under the category of “cheap labour” like the ethnic Indians
studied by de Lepervanche (Gilbert, 1996). The Anglo-Indians did have technical
skills acquired from working on the railways and postal and telegraph services
in India; skills needed in an expanding Australia. It was only in 1964 when the
rules for entry of persons of mixed descent were eased that Anglo-Indians
become admissible to Australia. (Richmond and Rao in Gilbert, 1996)
And about those Anglo-Indians who migrated to
Australia, Gilbert quotes Younger: Anglo-Indians entered the professions as
doctors, engineers and journalists, gone into business, government, academic
and computer technology. Beginning with limited resources, most now possess the
trappings of material success – home, cars, television, video and surplus funds
for entertainment and overseas holidays. (Younger in Gilbert, 1996, 40)
And in Younger’s view, the reason for this
success in integrating into Australian society was their Western lifestyle.
Whiteness
& Skin Colour
In colonial society, it was the white-skinned
Anglo-Indians who would have been capable of passing themselves off as British
and would perhaps have better job opportunities and class privileges. (Gilbert,
1996)
According to Lyons: This colour prejudice has continued wherever
the Anglo-Indians have immigrated… The Anglo-Indian has always been the second
class citizen in any country because of their background, distinct Anglo-Indian
culture, accent and skin colour…Some even started regretting the change of
residence, and have kept their links with India by visiting the country as
often as they can. They soon realised that the discrimination and prejudices
against them are also present in the new country. This time it was not so much
for religion or being casteless, but because of skin colour, accent, lifestyle
and their being born in India. (Lyons, 1998)
As regards an experience of Lyons herself in
Australia she writes: I remember once my mother was very sick and I had to call
for a doctor after hours. The doctor attended to my mother and then, looked at
her critically and said to me, ‘Is she a Mrs. Lyons! She does not look anything
like a Lyons!!’ Meaning that she was dark in complexion and nothing like the
English name she carried. ‘She got that name through marriage to a Lyons of
course, there are many people with mixed bloods of the British and the Indian,’
was my reply, which put him in shame? I have encountered such predicament very
often. This is perhaps one of the reasons why most Anglo-Indians feel isolated,
and prefer to stay within their Anglo-Indian community. (Lyons, 1998)
Thus, the issue of skin colour is of particular
relevance to the Australian Anglo-Indians, who range from fair to dark. Blunt
writes: Assimilation in Australia was only thought possible if Anglo-Indians
could prove a line of predominantly European descent and if they were seen to
be white in both photographs and at interview. But in practice both of these
requirements revealed internal contradictions at the heart of White Australia
policies. While most Anglo-Indians could not produce documentary evidence to
prove their European origin, their claims could equally not be
disproved...Anglo-Indians could migrate to Australia from the late 1960s
because they were seen as culturally European, but when they arrived they were
often perceived as Indian. (Blunt, 2000)
Writing about “skin colour”, Gilbert points out
that while many Anglo-Indians are physically indistinguishable from
Anglo-Celtic Australians, many others are not and consequently became victims
of discrimination and prejudice. The White Australia policy was starting to
change during the 1960s but there were occasions when different coloured
members of the same family could not enter Australia. He quotes the following
example as a case in 1964:
Despite being claimed by his twin brother, a
man was rejected from immigrating to Australia, being classified as
‘non-European’ due to a ‘swarthy and dark’ complexion. Upon investigation
Martin found that these twin brothers were born of a British Army father and an
Indian born mother. In contrast, the other twin was fair and looked completely
European in appearance. (Martin in Gilbert, 1996, 41)
This example echoes the following: …I know now
and knew then that ‘looks’ mattered a great deal within the colonial regimes of
power…because discourses about the body were crucial to the constitution of
racism…(Brah, 1996, 3)
This section of the paper defines the term
‘globalisation’ briefly and explores Caplan’s conceptualisation of the
Anglo-Indians as colonial transnationals in relation to cultural globalisation
and international migration. Finally, it examines the survival of the
Anglo-Indian Community in an ethos of globalisation and the possible
construction of a number of different ‘little
Anglo-Indias’ corresponding to their quest for Identity along with their
assimilation and survival in Australia.
According to Schech and Haggis: The term globalisation
refers to the intensification of global interconnectedness, particularly the
spread of capitalism as a production and market system. It also refers to
innovations in technologies of communication and transportation, which are
reconfiguring social relationships spatially, temporally, and in terms of
speed. (Schech and Haggis, 2000, 58)
Thus, globalisation in this sense refers to the
way in which our world nations are tied together through communication,
economic trade and international law.
Anglo-Indians
as Transcolonial Migrants
Caplan (1998) examines the mindset that led to
the immigration of the Anglo-Indians from a transnational perspective. He
stresses that the process of moving across cultures or globalisation is not new
and that the Anglo-Indians were one of the early results of the globalisation
process. To quote Caplan:
There has been emigration to the West almost since the emergence of an
Anglo-Indian community. Until the end of the eighteenth century the
Anglo-Indian sons of British officers were sometimes sent to Britain to be
educated, and many of them simply ‘passed’ into local society. By the middle of
the nineteenth century there were organized attempts to send unemployed
artisans to parts of the British Empire. The Athenaeum, a Madras newspaper,
occasionally reported the successes of the Madras Emigration Society in placing
Anglo-Indians in Australia as compositors, shepherds, watchmakers, blacksmiths,
domestic servants, etc… (Caplan, 1998)
In this context, Caplan directs our attention
to some Anglo-Indian schools, such as Dr Graham's in Kalimpong (India), which
also tried to arrange placements abroad for their young men as seen in the
writings of Minto (1974).
Caplan suggests that the globalising process
commonly referred to as colonialism produced transnational communities from its
very inception. According to him, the Eurasians or Anglo-Indians whom Young
refers to as ‘hybrid’ groups, which resulted in intermediate communities, were
variously seen as bulwarks of colonial elites, or as lurking threats to their
power. In consequence, they were subject to a ‘frequently shifting set of
criteria that allowed them privilege at certain historical moments and
pointedly excluded them at others’ he quotes from Stoler. (Caplan, 1998)
Caplan adds: They can be seen as transnationals
not by virtue of migration across political boundaries, but through
experiencing profound displacement in terms of belonging: by residing in one
location but adjudging themselves only at home in another. It is what Gupta and
Ferguson presumably mean by ‘an imagined state of being or moral location’…
(Caplan, 1998)
Colquohoun (1997) conducted a series of studies
and focussed on the adaptation and well being of Anglo-Indians in Australia.
His findings suggest that for the Anglo-Indians adaptation to life in Australia
overall had been achieved fairly easily. However, it is interesting that the
Anglo-Indians saw themselves as different from other ethnic minorities in terms
of being western and having English as a first language. The participants also
reported that life in Australia had been different to India. Unlike India, they
felt Australia placed less emphasis on a person's status, religion or social
functions. It was again interesting that they saw the differences between
Australia and India as those same indicators, which defined them as a
community. Without those indicators it would be difficult to distinguish them
from many Australians today. (Colquhoun, 1997)
According to Blunt: Distinguishing themselves
from other Indians and from non-English speaking migrants, Anglo-Indians occupy
an ambivalent place in multicultural Australia. Many stress their successful
assimilation and emphasise the ‘Anglo’ parts of their identity, while at the
same time asserting a distinctive and visible Anglo-Indian identity in the
context of multiculturalism. While this appeal both to assimilation and to a
multicultural cosmopolitanism may appear contradictory, their coexistence
rather reveals the tensions of what Ghassan Hage calls ‘fantasies of white
supremacy in a multicultural society’ where ideas of whiteness remain dominant
in both cultural and racial terms.” (Blunt, 2000)
Also, according to Lyons: Many Anglo-Indian
migrants saw it as neither possible nor desirable to assimilate in independent
India: ‘If we had to stay [in India] then we would have had to make the best of
it, and assimilate, and lose our identity.’ In contrast, Anglo-Indian
assimilation in Australia meant identifying with the dominant white, western
culture and feeling more at home. (Lyons, 1998)
Anglo-Indians
and Diaspora
Diasporas are usually defined as ethnic groups,
which lack a territorial base within a given polity. Anglo-Indians can be seen
as a diasporic people that constructed and maintained a sense of identity when
the territorial base (British India) to which that identity refers was taken
over by the Indian Government. Consequently, it led to their migrations to the
numerous places to which they have been scattered by the loss of their
birthland (India) and they might discursively construct images of themselves and
their birthland.
According to Deefholts: The 1950s and 1960s saw
a steady stream of departures as about 150,000 Anglo-Indians, seeking wider
horizons and better job prospects, emigrated to Australia, Britain, Canada, the
U.S.A. and New Zealand. The exodus has continued through the decades up to the
present time—although now, Anglo-Indians, like their Indian contemporaries,
leave India not for reasons of uncertainty, but because the West offers a
dazzling array of educational and career opportunities…(Deefholts, 2001)
Eade and Allen (1999) write that when there are
global flows of people, information, images and capital across ethnic
boundaries and beyond nation-state frontiers the world is more complex and
heterogenous, and the local and global interweave. They point out: Global migration also creates ‘new patriotisms’
through ‘puzzling new forms of linkage between diasporic nationalisms,
delocalised political communities and revitalised political commitments at both
ends of the diasporic process. (Eade and Allen, 1999, 153)
This is evidently the case with Australian
Anglo-Indians, and to quote Blunt: Since the late 1980s, ideas about
Anglo-Indian assimilation have coexisted with an increasingly visible community
identity. The Australian Anglo-Indian Association was founded in Perth in 1988,
hosted an international reunion for Anglo-Indians in 1995, and opened the only
Anglo-Indian cultural centre in the world in 1998; there is a weekly
Anglo-Indian programme on multicultural radio in Perth; there is a residential
home for elderly Anglo-Indians in Melbourne; and there are regular social
events to raise funds for Anglo-Indians in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Government funding for multicultural projects has helped to create and shape a
distinctive Anglo-Indian identity in Australia: an identity that is distinctive
in its hybridity. (Blunt, 2000)
Vellinga (1994) found that the Anglo-Indians
are a tiny ethnic group in modern-day Australia, which is a highly diverse and
poly-ethnic society. Similarly, these diasporic Anglo-Indians have kept links
with their country of birth, as seen in Lyons writings: The Anglo-Indians are a
mostly progressive, self-sufficient and adjustable community, they have been
able to adapt themselves to the new situation and conditions presented to them
in the country they migrated to, at the same time keeping the link with the
country of their birth…The older Anglo-Indians…prefer to stay within their own
community and cling to their own distinctive lifestyle, a mixture of the
British and the Indian. While the future seems promising for the children, the
older Anglo-Indians find themselves comfortable in their own community and
culture. They prefer to organise for themselves a little India in their own
homes and the social get togethers, ‘the way it was in India itself.’ They
prefer spicy Indian food and association only with Anglo-Indians. (Lyons, 1998)
Thus, as regards the survival of the
Anglo-Indian community in an ethos of globalisation, we note the possible
construction of a number of different ‘little
Anglo-Indias’ corresponding to their quest for Identity along with keeping
links with the country of their birth.
This paper has explored the conceptualization
of the Anglo-Indians as colonial transnationals and as part of one of the
earliest processes of globalisation as seen in the writings of Caplan. Also,
the 1947 loss of their birthland may have resulted in the construction of a
number of ‘little Anglo-Indias’ corresponding to the
different experiences of Anglo-Indians along with their assimilation and
survival in Australia. While older Anglo-Indians construct ‘little Anglo-Indias’ in their homes for the community itself, the identity
constructing process is made difficult by the different senses of what it means
to be an Anglo-Indian and identity dilemmas engendered by more than fifty years
of dislocation and dispersion.
Blunt, A. 2000, ‘Postcolonial Migrations:
Anglo-Indians in ‘White Australia’’, The
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accessed 19 June 2002] URL: <./jed10.html>
Bose, M. 1979, ‘One Corner of an Indian Slum
that is Forever England’, New Society,
vol. 47, no. 848, Jan. 4, 7-9.
Brah, A. 1996, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities, Routledge,
London.
Caplan, L. 1998, ‘Colonial and Contemporary
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