Anglo-Indians and Minority Politics in South Asia: Race, Boundary Making, and Communal Nationalism

340 Pages·2018·3.138 MB·English

by  Uther Charlton-Stevens

Anglo-Indians and Minority Politics in
South Asia
Anglo-Indians are a mixed race, Christian, and Anglophone minority com-
munity which arose in South Asia during the long period of European colo-
nialism. AnoftenneglectedpartoftheBritish Raj,theirpresencecomplicates
the traditional binary through which British imperialism is viewed – of ruler
and ruled, coloniser and colonised.
The book analyses the processes of ethnic group formation and political
organisation, beginning with petitions to the East India Company state,
through theRaj’sconstitutionalcommunalism,toconstitution making forthe
new India. It details how Anglo-Indians sought to preserve protected areasof
state and railway employment amidst the growing demands of Indian
nationalism. Anglo-Indians both suffered and benefitted from colonial British
prejudices,beingexpectedtoloyallyservethecolonialstateasaresultoftheir
ties of kinship and culture to the colonial power, whilst being the victims of
racial and social discrimination. Thismixedexperiencewas embodiedin their
intermediate position in the Raj’s evolving socio-racial employment hierarchy.
The question of whyand howanumericallysmallgroup,whowere privileged
relative to the great majority of people in South Asia, were granted nomi-
nated representatives and reserved employment in the new Indian constitu-
tion, amidst ageneral curtailment ofminoritygrouprights,istackled directly.
Based on a wide range of source materials from Indian and British archives,
including the Anglo-Indian Review and the debates of the Constituent
Assembly of India, the book illuminatingly foregrounds the issues facing the
smaller minorities during the drawn-out process of decolonisation in South
Asia. It will be ofinterestto students and researchers of South Asia, Imperial
and Global History, Politics, and Mixed Race Studies.
Uther Charlton-Stevens is Professor at the Institute of World Economy and
Finance at Volgograd State University, Russia. He is also a Fellow of the
Royal Asiatic Societyof Great Britain and Ireland.
Royal Asiatic Society Books
Editorial Board:
Professor Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway, University of
London (Chair)
Professor Tim Barrett, SOAS, University of London
Dr Evrim Binbas¸, Royal Holloway, University of London
Professor Anna Contadini, SOAS, University of London
Professor Michael Feener, National University of Singapore
Dr Gordon Johnson, University of Cambridge
Professor David Morgan, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Dr. BMC Brend
Dr. R. Llewellyn Jones MBE
The Royal Asiatic Society was founded in 1823 ‘for the investigation of sub-
jects connectedwith, and for the encouragement of science, literature and the
arts in relation to, Asia’. Informed by these goals, the policy of the Society’s
EditorialBoardistomakeavailableinappropriateformatstheresultsoforiginal
researchinthehumanitiesandsocialscienceshavingtodowithAsia, defined in
the broadest geographical and cultural sense and up to the present day.
For a full list of titles, please see: https://www.routledge.com/asianstudies/
series/RAS
Anglo-Indians and Minority
Politics in South Asia
Race, Boundary Making, and
Communal Nationalism
Uther Charlton-Stevens
Firstpublished2018
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To the stalwarts of the All India Anglo-Indian Association, past
and present
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Contents
List of illustrations viii
Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xiv
Abbreviations xvii
Introduction 1
1 East Indians 33
2 The ‘Eurasian problem’ 60
3 Becoming Anglo-Indians 99
4 Making a minority 134
5 Escapisms of empire? 173
6 Constituting the nation 212
Epilogue 254
Bibliography 283
Index 305
Illustrations
Figures
0.1 Andreas Wimmeron Herderian and Barthian worlds 10
0.2 Edwardian-era Anglo-Indians – three generations of Dorseys
circa 1914, sat in their garden in Poonamallee 15
3.1 AdvertisementintheAnglo-IndianReview(December1929,p.vi) 127
3.2 WAC(I)advertisementintheAnglo-IndianReview(April1943,p.7) 128
4.1 The 88 Association branches in 1929 160
4.2 ‘Seventh Annual Luncheon of the Anglo-Indian
Association, London’ 163
6.1 Cartoon arguing for the reasonableness of Anglo-Indian
demands for temporary safeguards in their memorandum to the
Simon Commission in 1928 216
Tables
2.1 Higher appointments of deputy magistrates and
deputy collectors 74
2.2 Salary scales for the ‘superior staff’ of the Salt Department by
racial and communal groupings 89
4.1 European, Anglo-Indian, and Indian Christian members – by
election or nomination – of provincial legislative councils 155
6.1 Estimated cost-of-living breakdown for Anglo-Indian and
Domiciled European railway workers furnished to the Royal
Commission on Labour 214
Foreword
Contemporary historical interest in patterns of globalisation encompasses
many strands of human activity, not least among them the movement of
peoples. Since the 18th century, at least, new technologies of travel, and new
opportunities for trade, settlement, and the exercise of forms of imperial
power led to unparalleled numbers of people moving around the globe and
living either temporarily or permanently outside their original homelands.
One of the repercussions of this was the possibility for sexual encounter and
relationship between people of different enthicities, and the emergence of
mixed or hybrid population groups. Not surprisingly there has been much
recent theorising about the nature of ‘hybridity’ of different kinds.
Uther Charlton-Stevens is well aware of this intellectual background to his
work, aswell as the salience of the historyofother mixed raced groups, as he
studies one particular mixed group in the context of European imperialism –
the so-called Anglo-Indians who emerged as a group during British rule on
the Indian subcontinent and endeavoured not just to survive but to prosper,
first under British rule, and then as imperial power waned and Indians
inherited power, leading eventually to independence and the Partition of the
subcontinent in 1947. The focus of the work is primarily political – dealing
with the politics of ‘naming’, of forming a coherent group and dealing with
boundarieswhichwerebynomeansclear,andofcreatingpatternsofpolitical
behaviour which seemed productive in the particular situation of colonial
South Asia with its emerging ‘communal politics’ in the closing decades of
British rule.
The mixed race group emerged in India in the 18th century, from legal
marriages and illicit sexual unions between European men and Indian
women. A few Indian wives were high born and publicly acknowledged and
cherished, as were their children. Far more were lowly Indian women, some-
times Christian converts, who married or lived with European soldiers (the
largest group of European males on the subcontinent in the era of Company
Ruleuntil1858).Bythe19thcenturyinterracialunionsofbothkindswerefar
rarer, and the mixed race group had essentially become an endogamous
group,takingitsplace amongmanyendogamousgroupsonthesubcontinent,
defined variously by religion, caste, language, and region. They were marked