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On PASSING' - Shifting Histories of The ANGLO-InDIAN COMMUNITY - Historical Transactions
On PASSING' - Shifting Histories of The ANGLO-InDIAN COMMUNITY - Historical Transactions
Historical Transactions
ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY
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In the next in our ‘Writing Race’ series, Vishwajeet Deshmukh considers the
history of racial ‘passing’ within India’s Anglo-Indian community. Mixed-
race descendants of European fathers and Indian mothers, members of the
Anglo-Indian community are often studied in the context of their historical
assimilation within European societies. ‘Passing’, however, was also a feature
of colonial Indian society, as Anglo-Indians sought the higher status of
‘Europeans’.
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Henry Gidney, stamp, 1992. In 1926, Gidney founded the All India
(GODL).
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Stanes Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School, Connor, 1976. An Anglo-Indian School
established by Thomas Stanes in the Nilgiri Forests This picture presents the teaching
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Frank Anthony, stamp 2003. In 1942 Anthony was elected the president-in-chief of
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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.
In 2019 this reservation for the community was ended by the 104th
Constitutional Amendment, citing the now low numbers of Anglo-
Indians in India. This amendment came despite a 2013 report by the
Indian Ministry of Minority Affairs referencing distinctive challenges
faced by the Anglo-Indian community, including lack of employment,
educational opportunities and proper housing facilities, and cultural
erosion. In the wake of the 2019 amendment, Anglo-Indians are
required to focus less on ‘passing’ than avoiding politically erasure by
the Indian government.
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FURTHER READING
Blunt, Alison. Domicile and diaspora: Anglo-Indian women and the
spatial politics of home. John Wiley & Sons, 2008.
Dewey, Clive. Anglo-Indian Attitudes: Mind of the Indian Civil Service.
A&C Black, 1993.
Charlton-Stevens, Uther. “Anglo-Indians in Colonial India:
Historical Demography, Categorisation, and Identity.” In The
Palgrave International Handbook of Mixed Racial and Ethnic
Classification, pp. 669-692. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2020.
Sen, Sudarshana. “Social Organisations and Social Securities in the
Anglo-Indian Community.” In Anglo-Indian Women in Transition, pp.
161-179. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore, 2017.
Anglo-Indian Identity: Past and Present, in India and the Diaspora: edited
by Robyn Andrews and Merin Simi Raj, Switzerland, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2021.
Compton, J. M. “Indians and the Indian Civil Service, 1853-1879: A
Study in National Agitation and Imperial Embarrassment.” Journal of
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the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 3/4 (1967): 99–
113. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25202985.
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