THOSE THAT STAYED BEHIND

Anglo-Indians, a confusing identity
By Tom Norton.

In Mumbai the monsoon has been promising to arrive for the last two
weeks and cool everything down, but it still hasn't. The air is hot,
dry and thirty seven degrees, and it makes every piece of clothing wet
where it touches skin.

'Would you like me to wear a shirt?' Father Lane-Smith asks. 'I hope
this doesn't offend you?' He's sitting in a cane chair in the kitchen
of his apartment, out the window is a view of the Taj Mahal Hotel. A
fan spins lazily over his head and his chest is pale, sweaty and
covered in grey hair.

His mother was of mixed race and his father British. 'My mother,
Grandmother and everyone on that side of the family were dark, they
spoke the native language. I only learned this later because they
never spoke it in my presence. Maybe that was because they were
ashamed of their dark blood. I'm not, I'm a mixture of ten races, and
that's fine, that's what I am.'

The Father is a solid man with a white beard that could quite easily
make you mistake him for Santa Clause on vacation.

'The British Raj,' he says, 'Did us a great disservice by reserving
jobs for whites (before India's independence). We had no need for
education. Friends of mine left school and stepped into high ranking
positions in the government, in the police, postal service and others.
So while Indians were getting educated we were getting dumber. I was
lucky, my mother a school teacher. My father was British so he had no
need for education. I received all my schooling from my mother.'

The term Anglo-Indian (AI) comes from the 17th and 18th Century when
English settlers would take Indian wives, but it was the Portuguese
who first came to India and started blending the races in as early as
the 15th Century, Danish, French and British were to follow,
consequently many Indians are of a mixed heritage. If the children of
Europeans were white in appearance they were pushed into the upper
echelons of power, they were the Anglo-Indians at the top of caste
system. The term Anglo-Indian now refers to minority that stayed
behind.

'Though I consider myself a native of India, I still get mistaken for
a foreigner. Walking home I am stopped on street by people trying to
invite me to all the places that a tourist would go.' He laughs to
himself. 'They soon realise they've got the wrong guy when I answer in
Hindi.'

In 1947 he was undertaking his priesthood training in Delhi when India
gained its independence. 'It was strange to have the rules suddenly
changed on you, before being a white meant that no one would do harm
to you. It was a terrible fear factor beaten into people by the police
who were run by whites.'

India's independence naturally created a massive paradigm shift and
many AIs feel insecure in their situation which caused a mass exodus.
Not all of them that stayed agree that the job situation has improved,
administrative the defence services still hold a majority of
Anglo-Indians in high positions. A similar comparison can be seen with
people leaving South Africa before the end of the apatite.

'It's a very frustrating identity for people like me. I know a case of
two brothers, who had the same parents and live on the same street,
but one calls himself a Madrasi and other says he's a Britishier. It's
a confusing to be part of a culture that has moved on.'

Multiculturalism is a term used in the west to describe the benefits
of immigration, many post AIs are now living in America, Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, and the UK, consider themselves
Indian-Australians, Indian-Canadians, etc, but multiculturalism has
been occurring in India since the before the days of the British Raj.
Father Lane-Smith's brothers and sisters left during independence
because they didn't feel safe. 'It was a natural fear. Things were
changing under their feet. But Gandhi did things that needed to occur.
India is a much better place now.'

In contrast, youth ideology in Mumbai can be seen to consider Gandhi's
ideals as outdated and a little backward, though they still hold
strong regard for his views on non-violence. With the boom of IT and
call-centre industries, they have created a new generation of young up
coming Indians (Mumbai-ites) who are being offered an opportunity for
wealth. The west offers them a means to climb up that old social
hierarchy which still exists despite Gandhi's best efforts and
consequently he can be seen as quite anti-industry because of the
foreign businesses, that might considered to be taking advantage of
India's cheap labour force, but offer the youth opportunities for
success. To them, the west is seductive, attractive and inspirational.

'Some people are partially Indian and love to be Indian, but others
who are very Indian, in blood, disclaim it entirely and would rather
not be Indian. I prefer to call myself Indian, but if you put me
against the ropes I would have to admit I am Anglo-Indian.'

As well as being a Jesuit priest, Father Lane-Smith is a professor of
Mass Com for film and Television, he studied in Canada and suggested,
'They too should give their country back to the Indians.' So being a
western appearing man who speaks Hindi he is often being used by
directors in Bollywood films. His last role was in a film titled
'Black,' where he played an English priest. When asked if he felt
typecast, he laughed and answered, 'Aren't we all by our appearance?'