SANCTIFIED SCORN.(anglo-indians)(Critical Essay)

A RECENT REPEAT screening of "A Calcutta Christmas" on SBS calls for some light on Anglo-Indians, and on the program itself, which was presented as of "national importance". It would have been of national importance to portray Australian Anglo-Indians, many of whom arrived as settlers in the 1970s with seven dollars apiece (thanks to currency restrictions in India at the time). They came, they settled and made good, thanks to much goodwill. Instead, the makers of "A Calcutta Christmas" homed in on a group of vulnerable frail elderlies living in a nursing home in Calcutta. Mostly women, they were portrayed as simple, irrational, even prejudiced, a target of the film their "abandonment" by relatives in Australia.

The late Indira Gandhi, when Prime Minister of India, paid tribute to Anglo-Indians. The whole country admired their spirit and their zest for life. They made a contribution to India out of all proportion to their numbers.

For 400 years, since the arrival of the British in India in 1600, Anglo-Indians were a small but significant minority in India. The British directors of the East India Company followed the pattern of the already established Portuguese and Dutch, encouraging their men to marry local women, even paying a gold mohur to the mother of each child born of these marriages. The Portuguese gave grants of land to these married men. Sketchy records show this growing group described by a variety of names, but by the time of Warren Hastings, the term Anglo-Indian appeared. By the 1750s, these people of mixed descent outnumbered the transient British in India.

The great myth of British Indian history is the error, still alive in Britain, of calling the wholly Europeans "Anglo-Indians". As in the apartheid of South Africa, it was not unknown for Europeans to threaten to sue if someone suggested that they had "coloured blood". And in India, increasingly from the 1850s onwards, "Anglo-Indian" meant just that. In 1911 and 1935, legislation was passed defining Anglo-Indians, beyond doubt, as residents of India with European ancestry in the male line. It was widely accepted that there was Indian ancestry in the female line. Because of this, throughout their history Anglo-Indians have had to contend with racial prejudice.

Anglo-Indian men fought in their thousands in all of Britain's wars in India and overseas from the Boer War onwards. After the Second World War, and after Indian independence in 1947, hundreds of thousands of Anglo-Indians emigrated to Commonwealth countries. Now they are a world minority, Australian, Canadian or British by nationality, but with a unique heritage and history.

Paul Scott's Staying On won the Booker Prize, but the plight of Anglo-Indians who stayed on in India is ignored. "A Calcutta Christmas" could have enlightened with sympathy. It did not. A striking lack of real knowledge and understanding of the people and their history was obvious.

While reform and enlightenment improve media attitudes towards other notable world minorities, myths and cliches still define Anglo-Indians in books, films and television. Those who are steeped in the history of Anglo-Indians rarely get published. This suggests indifference.