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The Anglo-Indian Community The Integration of a Marginal Group

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Allen D. Grimshaw
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Extract

The Anglo-Indian community of India is one of several hybrid Eurasian populations which have found themselves in precarious social positions in some of the newly independent Asian nations. Eurasian populations originated in early periods of colonial domination when European women were scarce, and grew over the years through natural increase and occasional mixed contacts. Their original size relative to the indigenous populations and policies of both governing European and native populations have determined whether they: (1) have been submerged in the numerically dominant local population (e.g., White Russians in China); (2) have attempted to return to the European countries of their male progenitors (e.g., Indos of Indonesia); or (3) have been forced to attempt the maintenance of social and cultural solidarity as permanent minorities (e.g., Ceylonese “Burghers” and the Anglo-Indians). Events of the contemporary nationalist revolution in Asia have increased public awareness of the problems of these minority groups.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , February 1959 , pp. 227 - 240
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1959

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References

1 The term “community” has the meaning in India of “ethnic group,” namely, a group with distinctive racial or cultural characteristics. The term has no ecological referent.

Article 366(2) of the Constitution of India states, “‘an Anglo-Indian’ means a person whose father or any of whose 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.” Other definitions have also been used, and in practice the Anglo-Indian has been the person who defines himself as such. The term has come to include all products of miscegenation of Europeans and Indians. The term “Eurasian” has advantages when dealing with historical materials since prior to 1911 the term “Anglo-Indian” referred to Englishmen resident in India.

2 Cressey, Paul F., “The Anglo-Indians: A Disorganized Marginal Group,” Social Forces, XIV (1935), 263–268CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Dorris Goodrich, “The Making of an Ethnic Group: The Eurasian Community in India,” unpubl. diss. (Univ. of California, Berkeley, 1952, Microfilm).

4 Park, Robert E., “Cultural Conflict and the Marginal Man,” Race and Culture (Glencoe, Ill., 1950), pp. 372–376Google Scholar.

5 “The marginal man, as here conceived, is one whom fate has condemned to live in two societies and in two, not merely different but antagonistic cultures.” Park, p. 375.

6 Cressey, p. 263.

7 Dorris Goodrich, “Indian Nationalism and the Marginal Man,” unpubl. ms., n.d., p. 1.

8 Cressey, p. 264.

9 Cressey, p. 264.

10 Stark, Herbert Alick, Hostages to India: Or the Life Story of the Anglo-Indian Race (The Calcutta Fine Arts College, 1926), p. 142Google Scholar and passim; Dover, Cedric, Hell in the Sunshine (London, 1943), pp. 137–138Google Scholar; and Bolton, J. R. Glorney, “The Future of the Anglo-Indian,” The Spectator, 5, 604 (Dec. 6, 1935), p. 850Google Scholar.

11 D. Goodrich (1952). This is the central thesis of Goodrich's dissertation.

12 “The reduction of the cost of voyaging to India … increased the facility with which English women could come out to India. This had one important result—it accelerated … condemnation of mixed marriages.” Stark, p. 129. See also Goodrich (1952), pp. 233–234; the report of the Indian Statutory Commission (London, 1930 and hereinafter referred to as ISC), XVII, 526; and Dover, Cedric, Half-Caste (London, 1937). pp. 156–157Google Scholar.

13 While overdrawn, John Masters’ novel, Bhowani Junction (1954), gives a picture of the stresses on personality which the Anglo-Indian faced in the last months of the British period. Another novel, Jon Godden's The City and the Wave (1954), expresses the conflict well when the protagonist says, “…Are we to hang on to the old traditions and customs and dress which we have always treasured, and to live n i the poorer streets, or are we to let go and learn another way of living? Perhaps it would be better if we were to gradually die out and vanish from the scene” (p. 68).

14 Goodrich (1952), pp. 215–218, 230–231, and 258. See also Stark, pp. 54–58.

15 Goodrich (n.d.), p. 2; and Stark, p. 60.

16 Goodrich (n.d.), p. 2.

17 Standard historical works on the community include Stark; Snell, Owen, Anglo-Indians and Their Future (Bombay, 1944)Google Scholar; Wallace, Kenneth E., The Eurasian Problem Constructively Approached (Calcutta, 1930)Google Scholar; and Dover (1943).

18 In addition to the works listed in note 17 see Coupland, Reginald, The Indian Problem: Report on the Constitutional Problem in India (London, 1944)Google Scholar; Smith, William Roy, Nationalism and Reform in India (New Haven, 1938), pp. 208–210Google Scholar; and Gidney, Henry, “The Future of the Anglo-Indian Community,” Asiatic Review, XXX (Jan. 1934), 27–42Google Scholar.

19 Gidney, p. 32.

20 ISC, XVI, 276–278, 310, and 312, and Craddock, Reginald, The Dilemma in India (London, 1929), pp. 106–107Google Scholar.

21 “…while, in 1921, before the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, there were less than 1,000 unemployed Anglo-Indians in India, today after a decade of the Reforms and the operation of the Indianization of the Services, nearly 20,000 or more than one-third of the able-bodied men of the community, are unemployed—the majority of them homeless and in rags, roaming the streets in quest of food…. The most distressing feature of this economic tragedy is to be seen in the hundreds of young men and women … unable to secure employment anywhere, except at a wage on which they can not possibly exist, but which many have been forced to accept rather than starve.” Gidney, pp. 36–37.

22 Cressey, pp. 265–266.

23 It may even be that the community was characterized by too much group consciousness—and that its attempts to maintain social distance between itself and other sections of the population have been more important in the etiology of community difficulties than any lack of group unity. There can be no doubt that what other Indians saw as Anglo-Indian feelings of superiority in regard to Indians, their contemptuous racism and occasional brutality, did much to alienate those sectors of Indian society which came to have increasing political power. The possibility that this same group cohesivcness made the group identifiable and obnoxious to the British must also be considered.

24 Dover (1930). pp. 128–129.

25 Compare Stark, pp. 121–123, and Carey, W. H., The Good Old Days of the Honourable John Company, 2 vols. (Calcutta, 1906), pp. 304–305Google Scholar, on the success and meaning of this delegation.

26 Goodrich (1952), p. 20.

27 W. H. B. Moreno, “Some Anglo-Indian Terms and Origins,” Proceedings of Meetings, Indian Historical Records Commission, V, Fifth Meeting Held at Calcutta, January, 1923 (Calcutta, 1923), pp. 78–79.

28 Snell, pp. 26–29.

29 The educational history of the community is reviewed in ISC, XVI, 289–292. See also the Report of the Calcutta University Commission of 1917–19, I, 318–326. An appendix to this report is W. H. Hornell, 1919 (Calcutta University Commission, 1919, VI, 56–85). Anderson, George, “Anglo-Indian Education,” Asiatic Review, XXXI (Jan. 1939), 71–79Google Scholar, summarizes the situation as it was immediately prior to World War II.

On colonization attempts see ISC, XVI, 287; Snell, pp. 30–38; Wallace, pp. 69–71; and Curzon, George N., Speeches by Lori Curzon of Kedleston, Vice-Roy and Governor General of India, 1898–1901 (Calcutta, 1901), 376–377Google Scholar.

30 Stark, pp. 100–101.

31 Craddock (1929), p. 107. According to Craddock, the community footed about one-third of their education bill—according to community claims before the Simon Commission, the community met 69 per cent of the costs of its education (ISC, XVI, 292). For an attack on educational policies which favored Anglo-Indians and Europeans made by a member of the community, see Dover (1943), p. 128 and passim.

32 Snell, p. 38, maintained that the failure of colonization schemes had been due to a lack of planning alone, and that one solution for Anglo-Indians at the time of Independence would be to colonize the Andaman Islands.

33 ISC, XVI, 307–317. On Congress boycott see, e.g., Smith, 376–377.

34 See Lumby, E. W. R., The Transfer of Power in India (London, 1954), p. 274Google Scholar; and Coupland, passim.

35 Sapru, Sir Tej Bahadur, et al., Constitutional Proposals of the Sapru Committee (Bombay, 1946), pp. 250–254Google Scholar.

36 Sapru, pp. 250–251.

37 As promulgated 1950.

38 For example, Articles 15–16 and 25–30.

39 Articles 331, 333–334, and 336–337.

40 Goodrich, p. 51.

41 There was no question of allegiance to India when J. R. Wallace would make such a statement as, “Britishers we are, and Britishers we must and ever shall be.” Cited in Dover (1937), p. 139, and Wallace, p. 130.

42 Times of India, CXIV, No. 2, p. 3 and CXV, No. 33, p. 3.

43 Not only has the subcontinent been divided into two nations, but individual provinces have been divided, and numerous states have been divided and recombined.

44 In the Census of 1941 there were few Anglo-Indians enumerated in the areas now included in Pakistan. See note 46 below.

45 Two complaints concerning the limits of the Eurasian community appear in the writings of Anglo-Indian authors. The first is that non-Anglo-Indians claim community membership and gain privileges, thereby denying the rightful prerogatives of genuine Anglo-Indians. See ISC, XVII, 527; and Stark, pp. 132–133. The other is that because of similarities of names or because of conscious effort on the part of the respondent Anglo-Indians are included on the European electoral register, thus depriving the community of votes. See ISC, XVI, 297 and Dover (1930), pp. 132–133.

46 Government of India, Census of India, I, Part I, Table 13, 1943, pp. 98–99.

47 Government of India, Census of India, Paper No. 4, Table 3, 1953, p. 27.

48 A plea by Frank Anthony directed to community members asking them not to emigrate suggests that some of the decrease may be attributable to emigration. Sec Times of India, CXII, No. 151, p. 3.

49 In an attempt to determine the current importance and “newsworthiness” of the Anglo-Indian community the writer went through five and a half years of the Times of India (January 1, 1950—July 31, 1955). Coverage of this newspaper could be expected to be somewhat more complete and, quite possibly, somewhat more favorable in its treatment of the Anglo-Indian community than would have been true of, for example, various Congress organs. However, with particular interest in the Bombay Schools Case and in the broadest possible coverage of the community the Times of India seemed the most valuable choice if only one paper was to be used.

50 New York Times, Nov. 13, 1955, p. 2.

51 Unless otherwise specified references to news items in the text will refer to the Times of India. See above, note 49.

52 Times of India, CXIII, No. 269, p. 3.

53 Times of India, CXIV, No. 68, p. 3 and No. 356, p. 9.

54 Times of India, CXV, No. 33, p. 3.

55 Times of India, CXVI, No. 5, p. 5.

56 Times of India, CXVI, No. 14, p. 3.

57 In the three years prior to the Bombay school crisis there were few items in the Times of India on the so-called “language problem.” The Bombay Schools Case precipitated controversies over regional vs. national language, over the introduction of regional languages into administration, and over the problem of the use of regional languages on the university level.

58 Times of India, CXVI, No. 5, p. 5.

59 Times of India, CXVI, No. 8, p. 10.

60 Times of India, CXVI, No. 8, p. 10.

61 Article 30.

62 Article 337.

63 Article 29(2).

64 Times of India, CXVI, No. 35, p. 3.

65 Times of India, CXVI, No. 42, p. 3.

66 Times of India, CXVI, No. 46, p. 1. In the course of the hearings it was established by the court that the order was applicable only to schools using English as a medium of instruction thoug h the enforcement of instruction in the mother-tongue was the auspicious aim. Although a Marathi-speaking father could send his son to a Gujerati school, he could not send him to an English school. Thus the order was discriminatory in intent as well as unconstitutional. For more detailed information on the hearings see Times of India, CXVI, No. 42, p. 3; No. 43, p. 6; and No. 46, p. 1.

67 Times of India, CXVI, No. 146, pp. 1 and 11.

68 Times of India, CXVI, No. 14, p. 3; No. 18, p. 6; No. 23, p. 6; No. 27, pp. 7 and 8; No. 28, p. 6; No. 34, p. 3; No. 35, p. 3.

69 Times of India, CXVI, No. 41, p. 3, and No. 56, p. 9.

70 Times of India, CXVI, No. 80, p. 1 and No. 136, p. 1.

71 Times of India, CXVI, No. 80, p. 1 and No. 136, p. 1.

72 Times of India, CXVI, No. 22, p. 1 and No. 95, p. 11.