5. On Anglo-Indians

Here's a bit of general background on my obscure ethnic group, the Anglo-Indians.

This is a photograph of me at my first home in Erode, South India.

‘To understand one life, you have to swallow the world,’ wrote Salman Rushdie, and this is especially true for migrants. Like it or not, the migrant’s life is shaped by large historical events. There are usually political or economic reasons for uprooting one’s life, and subjecting oneself to the slings and arrows that come with displacement. I blame the British Empire’s demise, and its chaotic withdrawal from India, for my particular form of displacement, which makes it difficult for me to lay claim to any single homeland, or place. Technically, I’m a mixed-race Anglo-India, a tiny minority community born of the colonial encounter between Europe and India. The literal progeny of colonial desire, it is little wonder that Anglo-Indians have serious ‘mummy and daddy’ issues. Rejected by Mother India and barely tolerated by the class and race conscious British, Anglo-Indians are orphans. You might call them midnight’s orphans, for on August 15, 1947 at the stroke of midnight, a British act of parliament created the nation of state of India, and simultaneously consigned Anglo-Indians to the dustbin of history.
They, we, I became an historical footnote, a curious relic of a once proud and mighty empire. Feeling like second-class citizens in the land of their birth, most Anglo-Indians fled India. Most went to the UK, but many others made new lives in Australia, Canada and the USA. By the early nineteen sixties, my father’s family had mostly settled in London. My maternal relatives stayed put, delaying the decision to migrate until the 1970s by which time the British had closed its borders to Anglo-Indians. Lucky for them, that Australia had finally dismantled the infamous ‘White Australia Policy’. Not so lucky for me. I was born in Madras, but left for London as an infant (I was nine months old when I left India). As far as I was concerned, I was British even though the colour of my skin, and the racist epithets I endured on a daily basis told me that this was a heavily contested identity. No matter. I was to be uprooted, and transported to the other side of the world because my mother’s family procrastinated about getting out of India. I didn’t fully understand the reasons for this monumental move until many years later. I didn’t want to move. Well, that’s not entirely true.
Migration is an adventure. At least that’s how it seemed to me when I was 11 years old. I approached the big move with a mixture of excited anticipation and grief. The boundaries of my world were narrow in London. School excursions aside, I lived most of my life in a very small patch of the great city — it was a predominantly gray and drab landscape. Rows of monolithic terraced houses, some still scarred from the aftermath of Nazi bombs, provided the grim background to my childhood. The impoverished environment was nevertheless home. I was part of a close-knit community comprised of cousins, eccentric aunts and uncles, as well as school friends. These people were important to me, and the prospect of leaving them behind filled me with dread. As a child, I had no say in the matter of migration, I was powerless to prevent the inevitable. No amount of screaming and crying could change things. I packed my meager possessions and scooped up some British soil, put it in a jar, carrying it as a kind of talisman to my new home in Perth, Western Australia.