International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies
type: channel
description: The International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies publishes scholarship relevant to the Anglo-Indian experience that draws on current theory to understand that experience, interrogates literature and other types of media depicting Anglo-Indians, and engages with contemporary and historical issues for Anglo-Indians in India and the diaspora. We also welcome and encourage comparative scholarship which places the Anglo-Indian experience in dialogue with that of other social groups. Submissions are to be made by email to our Editorial Assistant who manages the blind review process: IJAIStudies@gmail.com. ISSN: 1327-1652
publisher: Published online with the institutional support of Massey University, Palmerston North, NE
language: en
publication name: International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies
issn: 1327-1652
copyright: Copyright is owned by the Author of the article, review, or other written pieces appearing in the International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The material may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author.
items: Anglo-Indian Religion Research Report on Survey Results
items: We’re Not What You Think: Contesting Stereotypes and Negotiating Belonging in The Lives of Anglo-Indians in Odisha
items: Posters At The Arch: A Tradition of Protest, Conscience, and Humour in Odisha’s Railway Colony
items: Personal Names of Hyderabad Anglo-Indians: Ethnicity, European Names, and Resistance to Nativising Tendencies
items: Editorial
items: "We're Not East Indians; We're Bleddy Anglo-Indians" Reflections on Glenn D'Cruz's "A Passage from India: Anglo-Indians in Victoria" (2004)
items: The ‘Twist’ in the Transcultural Adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Play The Glass Menagerie (1944) into Shyamaprasad’s Film Akale (2004)
items: Reading the Memories in Glenn D’cruz’s Film Vanitas (2022)
items: Unearthing Anglo-Indian Roots: A Personal Journey
items: Difference, Disadvantage and the Anglo-Indian Engagement with Affirmative Action
items: Reservations Need to Continue for Anglo-Indians: The Community’s Troubles were Highlighted in a 2013 Report
items: Solidarity of Anglo-Indians is Still the Question
items: The Use of Slang as a Linguistic Resource in the Creation of an Anglo-Indian Identity: The Case of Hyderabad Anglo-Indians
items: Voices From Within: Interpreting Australian Anglo-Indians' Responses to Cotton Mary (1999)
items: Spectral Lives and Stories of Things and Places: A Search for the Anglo-Indian Father in Glenn D'Cruz's Vanitas
items: The Artist's Introduction - Three Short Films About Anglo-Indians: Re-Viewing Cotton Mary (2002), A Passage from India (2004), Vanitas (2022)
items: Book Review: The Anglo-Indians: A Portrait of a Community
items: A Preliminary Assessment of the Anglo-Indian Community in Odisha through Memories and Lived Experiences
items: Anglo-Indian Immunity from Partition Violence
items: Book Review: Anglo-India and the End of Empire
items: Making, "Calcutta, I'm Sorry": The Idea, the Process, the Completion
items: Reflecting on Vanitas: Archives, Affects, Ethics
items: the nowhere man
items: Mentoring Aspiring Writers is One of My Goals
items: Historical Weightlessness: Writing The Secret Vindaloo
items: Grey Man's Burden

Anglo-Indian Religion Research Report on Survey Results
type: item
description: A total of 515[i] Anglo-Indians of all ages, from India and all around the world, responded to the survey that we ran from early December 2012 until the end of April 2013. It provides a revealing overview of the place of religion in the lives of Anglo-Indians. In what follows, we will outline the methods we used, the demographic data we obtained, and some of the most interesting and significant findings. [i] Of the 515 that were started 454 were completed in full.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Brent Otto
creator: Robyn Andrews
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Brent Otto, Robyn Andrews https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18

We’re Not What You Think: Contesting Stereotypes and Negotiating Belonging in The Lives of Anglo-Indians in Odisha
type: item
description: This article, ‘We’re Not What You Think: Contesting Stereotypes and Negotiating Belonging in the Lives of Anglo-Indians in Odisha’, explores how members of the Anglo-Indian community in Odisha challenge enduring stereotypes and negotiate a sense of belonging in contemporary India. While dominant narratives—shaped by colonial legacies, media portrayals, and scholarly generalizations—often homogenize the Anglo-Indian identity, this study offers a grounded, region-specific counter-narrative. Drawing on the works of Glenn D’Cruz, Dorothy McMenamin, and Megan Stuart Mills, as well as oral histories and ethnographic fieldwork in towns such as Jatni, Cuttack, and Bhubaneswar, the article examines how Anglo-Indians in Odisha resist reductive labels through professional employment contributions, cultural rootedness, and everyday acts of resilience. By interrogating the production of stereotypes in scholarship and media, and foregrounding lived experiences of otherness and inclusion, this article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of Anglo-Indian identity and belonging in postcolonial India.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Lyndon Thomas
creator: Dr. Sthitaprajna
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Lyndon Thomas, Dr. Sthitaprajna https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18

Posters At The Arch: A Tradition of Protest, Conscience, and Humour in Odisha’s Railway Colony
type: item
description: This narrative explores the unique and largely forgotten tradition of ‘posters’ within the Anglo-Indian community of Odisha – a creative practice that blended humour, protest and communal conscience in equal measure. Emerging in a pre-digital age, these anonymously drawn and handwritten posters served as sharp, witty commentaries on local behaviours, relationships, and social dynamics. Positioned prominently on the arch of the Sacred Heart Church or its adjoining walls, they became both a source of amusement and a mirror reflecting the values – and contradictions – of a tightly knit society. At the heart of this tradition was an anonymous figure affectionately known as the “Poster Man,” whose clever illustrations and well-timed captions gently called out gossip, age-gap romances, and questionable conduct, all while maintaining a tone of mischief rather than malice. Drawing on oral history interviews with senior members of the community, this study documents how these posters – recalled through detailed anecdotes – functioned as a form of satire, subtle protest, and moral reflection. While they occasionally provoked discomfort or embarrassment, they also sparked dialogue, fostered introspection, and reinforced communal bonds. This work is not only a nostalgic account of a colourful chapter in local history, but also a tribute to the Anglo-Indian community’s resilience, creativity, and capacity for self-critique. Ultimately, it serves as a meditation on how small acts of anonymous dissent can engage a community’s conscience and leave lasting cultural imprints.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Lyndon Thomas
creator: Dr. Sthitaprajna
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Lyndon Thomas, Dr. Sthitaprajna https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18

Personal Names of Hyderabad Anglo-Indians: Ethnicity, European Names, and Resistance to Nativising Tendencies
type: item
description: This study investigates how personal names of Hyderabad Anglo-Indians constitute an important aspect of their ethnic identity. A combination of judgment and random sampling was employed to elicit the data on Anglo-Indian names.[i] Their names were taken from three decades, the 1950s, 1980s, and 2000s, to arrive at the naming styles across the variables of age and gender. The data was collected from the registers of different schools located in Secunderabad, within Greater Hyderabad. In common parlance, the placenames, Secunderabad and Hyderabad are used synonymously. Additionally, the study also investigated the motivation to give Anglo-Indian names to community members, elicited through structured interviews conducted with fifteen community members. The study showed that their first names (for example, Gavin, Evelyn) clearly aligned with the naming customs of the European and English-speaking world. I suggest that this is an example of projecting a distinct identity that is British or western in style. This aspect of their identity, communicated through personal names, diverges from other Indian Christian communities (such as Telugu Catholics) who give local names to their children. [i] Judgment sampling is employed when researchers pre-decide the social variables to be correlated with language, whereas random sampling is a method of data collection in which every community member has an equal chance of being selected for study.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Smita Joseph
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Smita Joseph https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18

Editorial
type: item
description: We welcome you to the pages of the first of two general issues of the Journal for this calendar year. This issue contains three articles and a research report. The articles span different historical moments, subcultures of Anglo-Indian lived experiences, and apply a variety of disciplines in their analysis. They feature two different geographic and cultural spaces, urban Hyderabad and semi-rural Odisha. The final piece is a research report for a project that attempted to span the entire Community, in India and the diaspora, in all its demographic diversity. Smita Joseph, Assistant Professor of Sociolinguistics at the English and foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, writes about her research on the patterns of Anglo-Indian name-giving to their children in the Hyderabad area. Her analysis reveals patterns by gender and era (1950s, 1980s, and the 2000s) by which she argues that Anglo-Indian naming is a crucial site of marking ethnic identity and differentiation from other Christian ethnicities in the region. The next two articles are set in Odisha and written by local residents, Anglo-Indian Assistant Professor Lyndon Thomas, and Associate Professor Sth Sthitaprajna, both at Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA), Deemed-to-be University, Bhubaneswar. Their articles constitute a welcome break in the relative silence in scholarship on the Community in Odisha. Their first article is an entertaining account and analysis of a phenomenon that became a tradition in the Kurda Road community from 1979 to the early 1990s, whereby public ‘posters’ were anonymously created and posted in the archway outside the local Catholic church. The posters served as a means of giving quite personal social commentary on individuals or organisations. Their article describes a number of the most notable posters, discusses the social impacts, and traces the history of the first and second ‘Poster Man’. Thomas and Sthitaprajna’s second article contends with stereotyping of Anglo-Indians in Odisha. They …
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Robyn Andrews
creator: Brent Otto
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Robyn Andrews, Brent Otto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-07-18
publication date: 2025-07-18

"We're Not East Indians; We're Bleddy Anglo-Indians" Reflections on Glenn D'Cruz's "A Passage from India: Anglo-Indians in Victoria" (2004)
type: item
description: Glenn D’Cruz’s video, A Passage from India, consisted of interviews (mainly of Anglo-Indians from my hometown of Kolkata[i]) along with archival material “connected with the hazards and bureaucratic frustrations of immigrating to Australia during and shortly after the dismantling of the so-called White Australia Policy” (D'Cruz, 2023, p. 5). Using A Passage from India as a touchstone for my observation that Anglo-Indians probably never learned Anglo-Indian History as “the one detail that lights up the page”, I review the culture of migration in Kolkata of that time.[ii] I explore how such a profound deficit within the psyche of Anglo-Indians may have manifested and transacted itself in obvious and subtle ways into the procrustean[iii] Australian immigration policies of the 70s by posing several interconnected questions I have been pondering for several year now: What is the evidence for the premise that Anglo-Indians probably never learned their history? What were the possible effects on Anglo-Indians of such a profound scholastic neglect, and how did that play out with the procrustean Australian immigration policies? Is there a possible historic and foundational link between Anglo-Indian’s not knowing their history, and the self-fashioning of Anglo-Indians as a model Australian immigrant group, that is, “the poster children for the twenty-first century globalization” (D’Cruz, 2017, p. 202)? Whilst A Passage from India is a central reference point for the essay, the video also prompts autobiographical comments, and general observations including some based on my Immigration dossier from The National Archives of Australia, to advance the narrative. [i] Kolkata used to be called Calcutta [ii] Applications made by Anglo-Indians in Calcutta alone increased from 400 in 1965 to over 3,000 in 1968 (NAA: A446/182, 60/66167) as cited in Blunt, A. (2000, p.9). [iii] Procrustean means being marked by arbitrary, often ruthless, disregard of individual differences or special cir…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Keith St. Clair Butler
rights: Copyright (c) 2025 Keith St. Clair Butler https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-04-02
publication date: 2025-04-02

The ‘Twist’ in the Transcultural Adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Play The Glass Menagerie (1944) into Shyamaprasad’s Film Akale (2004)
type: item
description: The award-winning Malayalam film Akale (2004), directed by Shyamaprasad, exemplifies the transformative power of transcultural adaptation, adding a distinctive twist to The Glass Menagerie (1944), the memory play by Tennessee Williams, a luminary in American literature. The twist in Akale (2004) lies in i) its cultural adaptation to the fading stereotyped Anglo-Indian community of Kerala metaphorically symbolised as ‘glass menageries’, and ii) the stylistic shift from ‘telling’ their story to ‘showing’ or representing them on the big screen. While both texts delve into human tragedy, the cultural and cinematic adaptation explores layers of reinterpretation, shaped by and resonating with the socio-cultural and historical contexts of mid-20th-century America, in the case of The Glass Menagerie (1944) and that of the 21st-century Kerala in Akale (2004). Drawing from Linda Hutcheon’s theory of adaptation, this study posits that Shyamaprasad’s creative process goes beyond mere replication; instead, it establishes a site of intercultural dialogue. By reimagining Williams’s work for a new cultural and temporal setting, the film highlights the universality and adaptability of the art of storytelling. Keywords: Anglo-Indians, transcultural adaptation, twist, human tragedy, stereotype
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Sreelakshmi KV
creator: Nina Caldeira
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sreelakshmi KV, Nina Caldeira https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-12-27
publication date: 2024-12-27

Reading the Memories in Glenn D’cruz’s Film Vanitas (2022)
type: item
description: Vanitas, a documentary film by Glenn D’Cruz, a Melbourne based Anglo-Indian, is a tribute to his late father Antonie Joseph ‘Anto’ D’Cruz. It falls into the corpus of Anglo-Indian works dealing with colonial nostalgia and postcolonial identity. One of the striking features of this film is its thematic focus on presenting a father-son narrative, wherein Glenn narrates his father Anto D’Cruz hardships and disillusionments as an Anglo-Indian immigrant in London in the 1960s and thereafter in Australia where he died in 1983. This film is an experimental cultural text that uses animation technology, old photographs and select objects of the dead father to present a memory narrative. This article examines their significance through a close reading of the film. Keywords: colonial nostalgia, transgenerational memory, collective memory, hauntology, memorabilia, mourning
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Shyamasri Maji
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Shyamasri Maji https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-12-27
publication date: 2024-12-27

Unearthing Anglo-Indian Roots: A Personal Journey
type: item
description: History comprises countless individual stories which, taken together, allow the historian to make generalisations and paint an overall picture of particular aspects of periods in history. Through the pursuit of their family histories, genealogists can contribute to validating or questioning those generalisations. At the same time, those generalisations can help genealogists appreciate and further develop their understanding of the story of individual ancestors, suggesting avenues of research that otherwise might have never been pursued. So it was for me. A chance discovery that one branch of my family tree included an Indian forebear led me not just on a quest to identify who they were, but also to understand the society in which they and their descendants lived, the particular challenges they faced, and the ways in which they navigated these obstacles. For other people of Anglo-Indian descent seeking to understand their heritage, my pathway to unearthing my Anglo-Indian roots could suggest options to explore in their own search. In addition, the features of early 19thcentury British Indian society that my search exposed, and how these impacted on people with Indian forebears, may resonate with their own ancestors’ experience.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Sean Kelly
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Sean Kelly https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-12-27
publication date: 2024-12-27

Editorial
type: item
description: We are delighted to be publishing the second issue of the year 2024, in which we include further publications first presented in shorter form as papers at the Research Workshop in conjunction with the 12th International Anglo-Indian Reunion in Canberra. As noted in the first journal issue of the year the International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies convened this workshop, as it has done over the last four reunions, and shall again in 2026 in Kochi. This second general issue of 2024 contains two articles that began as papers presented in Canberra. The first of these articles is by Sean Kelly, entitled: “Unearthing Anglo-Indian Roots: A Personal Journey”, and documents his story of searching for and revealing the extent of his Anglo-Indian roots. As well as being the intriguing description of his own personal journey and what he discovered, it serves as a model for genealogical and historical research for other Anglo-Indians interested in discovering their own roots. The second article, also presented at the reunion workshop, is from Shyamasri Maji, and examines Glenn D’Cruz’s film, Vanitas, a documentary film created by D’Cruz as a tribute to his late father. In the article, titled “Reading the Memories in Glenn D’Cruz’s film Vanitas (2022)”, Maji examines the film through a range of theoretical lenses and argues the story D’Cruz tells can be seen as a metaphor for many in the community: that their displacement after migration creates a collective memory that haunts those involved and their progeny who are affected by it. Maji’s close reading of the film draws attention to the way the story is so effectively told: through the use of objects, animation technology and narrative. Submitted independently, outside of the workshop, the next article is a critical examination of a Malayalam film, Akale, that takes up themes of representation of Anglo-Indians in regional Indian cinema. Sreelakshmi KV and Nina Caldeira’s article is titled, “The ‘Twist’ in the Transcultural Ad…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Robyn Andrews
creator: Brent Otto
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Robyn Andrews, Brent Otto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-12-27
publication date: 2024-12-27

Difference, Disadvantage and the Anglo-Indian Engagement with Affirmative Action
type: item
description: Debates triggered by the end of legislative nomination of Anglo-Indian representatives in 2019 can be traced back to the founding moments of the Indian Republic. The Anglo-Indian representatives Frank Anthony and Stanley Henry Prater presented before the constituent assembly contrasting views of securing rights-based guarantees for their community. While Anthony foregrounded the community’s position as exceptional, and its privilege symbolic of an aspirational modernity, Prater adopted a more needs-based rhetoric. He stressed the disadvantages that faced the Anglo-Indians, sought to dispel the stereotypes about their perceived privilege, and tried allying their demands with those of the other marginalised groups. Eventually, Anthony’s viewpoint got more traction among all the members and prevailed. I show how these differing rhetorical stances impacted not just the nature of the safeguards subsequently made available to the community and their gradual withdrawal, but also the nature and scope of affirmative action measures more generally.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Upamanyu Sengupta
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Upamanyu Sengupta https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-17
publication date: 2024-11-17

Reservations Need to Continue for Anglo-Indians: The Community’s Troubles were Highlighted in a 2013 Report
type: item
description: The following invited opinion piece, by three Anglo-Indian Studies scholars, appeared on 17 December 2019 in The Hindu, in response to the Government’s move the previous month to revoke reservations for Anglo-Indian MPs and MLAs. It is republished here with permission from Srinivasan Ramani, Deputy National Editor of The Hindu, granted on 8 November 2024. The authors’ original title was “Anglo-Indian Reserved Seats Still Very Much Needed” but The Hindu gave it the headline below. It may still be read online at: https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/reservations-need-to-continue-for-anglo-indians/article30323462.ece
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Robyn Andrews
creator: Uther Charlton-Stevens
creator: Dolores Chew
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Robyn Andrews, Uther Charlton-Stevens, Dolores Chew https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-17
publication date: 2024-11-17

Solidarity of Anglo-Indians is Still the Question
type: item
description: In this essay I address the efforts by Anglo-Indians to build solidarity and strength as a community, both historically and in recent times. The question of Anglo-Indian solidarity is especially relevant currently, as the last five years have brought a legal challenge to the Community’s recognition, representation and benefits as a minority in modern India. This is not the first challenge faced by the community; for such contestations of rights for the mixed-race Anglo-Indians dates back to prescriptive rulings of the East India Company in the late eighteenth century. The present moment is critical, however, and a topic to which I can speak particularly because of my history of leadership of Anglo-Indian organisation for many years and having served in recent years as a nominated Member of Parliament representing Anglo-Indian interests. In this article I argue that a persistent problem of Anglo-Indians has been the community’s disunity and failure to make good use of opportunities for solidarity that have both been provided legally and have been created by the initiatives by Anglo-Indians themselves, over many generations. Besides sharing my insights into past failures and triumphs, I sketch out the community’s response to the Constitutional amendment in 2020 which removed Anglo-Indian representation in Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies, and suggest a way forward to provide for the good of the Community.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Charles Dias
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Charles Dias https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-17
publication date: 2024-11-17

The Use of Slang as a Linguistic Resource in the Creation of an Anglo-Indian Identity: The Case of Hyderabad Anglo-Indians
type: item
description: This study investigates how the Anglo-Indian community in Hyderabad uses slang, an ethno-linguistic artifact, to express their unique identity. A combination of interview and survey techniques was employed to elicit the data on slang. The data on slang were obtained through interviews, but the application of a t test (p < .001) on data collected from Anglo-Indians and their neighboring community, obtained through a survey, validated the usage of slang as an Anglo-Indian code. English-based slang (such as, plug, rubbermouth, fire off) and contact-induced borrowing from colloquial Telugu and Tamil (including, jao, pulling the jao, catching crows) combine to form Anglo-Indian slang. The study suggests that one of the strategies by which the community conveys its distinctive identity vis-à-vis English, and the regional second-language users of English, is through the integration of linguistic material from various sources into Anglo-Indian English. The study suggests that the Anglo-Indian community maintains distinct identities through the usage of slang or hybrid English.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Smita Joseph
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Smita Joseph https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-17
publication date: 2024-11-17

Editorial
type: item
description: In March of 2024 the International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies convened a Research Workshop in conjunction with the 12th International Anglo-Indian Reunion in Canberra. Hosting such events for interdisciplinary scholars to meet and present their research to one another as well as to a lay audience of Anglo-Indians has been a tradition of the Journal for the past four reunions spanning more than a decade. As in the past, some of the papers presented at the Workshop have been expanded by the authors and submitted to the journal for peer review and publishing. While this is a general issue of the journal it contains two articles that began as papers presented in Canberra, both of which address the watershed event for Anglo-Indians in India, Government’s removal of their nominated MPs and MLAs by amendment to the Constitution of India in early 2020. Our first article addresses the way in which language defines ethnic communities and particular subsets of them. Smita Joseph, Assistant Professor of Sociolinguistics at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad studied the slang employed by members of Hyderabad’s Anglo-Indian Community to show how they apply it as a defining feature of their ethnicity and the manner by which they situate themselves in their Indian linguistic and cultural milieu while also maintaining their European ancestry. The second article is by Upamanyu Sengupta, Assistant Professor at the Maharashtra National Law University in Mumbai, entitled ‘Difference, Disadvantage and the Anglo-Indian Engagement with Affirmative Action’. In it he goes back to the legal arguments made in the Constituent Assembly by two Anglo-Indian leaders in favour of creating the reserved, nominated, seats granted to the small and geographically dispersed Anglo-Indian community. He analyses these historic arguments in relation to the recent arguments made by government against the continuation of these reservations which resulted in their revocation. Historian …
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Robyn Andrews
creator: Brent Howitt Otto
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Robyn Andrews, Brent Howitt Otto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2024-11-17
publication date: 2024-11-17

Voices From Within: Interpreting Australian Anglo-Indians' Responses to Cotton Mary (1999)
type: item
description: This paper undertakes a critical examination of Glenn D’Cruz’s short video Re-Viewing Cotton Mary (2002) through the frameworks of socioeconomic class, gender, and spatiotemporal location. Through an exploration of the reactions and responses from members of the diasporic Australian Anglo-Indian community as they ‘re-view’ Ismail Merchant and Madhur Jaffrey’s Cotton Mary (1999), the study addresses several key questions. Firstly, it seeks to understand the diversity of perspectives among the audience and delves into the reasons behind such diversity. Secondly, the paper investigates major points of concern and contention for viewers, and explores how existing scholarship on Anglo-Indians addresses these points. It probes the convergences and divergences between audience responses and the available academic and journalistic discourse on the film.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Priya Alphonsa Mathew
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Priya Alphonsa Mathew https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-04-02
publication date: 2025-04-02

Editorial
type: item
description: This special issue of the journal focusses on three short films written and produced by literary and theatre studies scholar, Glenn D’Cruz. Glenn is the author of Midnight’s Orphans (2006), a work that is recognised as a significant contribution to scholarship on Anglo-Indians. He has also produced a number of films which reflect on aspects of Anglo-Indian experience and creative representations about Anglo-Indians. This special issue introduces readers to three of his films, via his own introduction, and offers a critical response from three scholars each of whom engages with one of these films.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Robyn Andrews
creator: Brent Otto
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Robyn Andrews, Brent Otto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-04-02
publication date: 2025-04-02

Spectral Lives and Stories of Things and Places: A Search for the Anglo-Indian Father in Glenn D'Cruz's Vanitas
type: item
description: This article attempts to unravel D'Cruz's short film, Vanitas(2022), and locate the figure of a spectral Anglo-Indian father inside the cinematic apparatus. Focusing on the lucidity of this technical medium and the diverse genres and cross-references employed by D'Cruz, it states that sometimes in the process of representing generations of trauma and identity crises of individuals, vehicles of representation are themselves overwhelmed and found lacking. D'Cruz's desire to make a film on the volatile subject of memory and guilt with the support of photographs, recorded sounds, and animated fictional constructions is itself an invitation to a dangerously confessional territory that keeps provoking its audience. In my paper, I have tried to investigate these ghostly spaces that are in reality projections of a grieving mind.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Asijit Datta
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Asijit Datta https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-04-02
publication date: 2025-04-02

The Artist's Introduction - Three Short Films About Anglo-Indians: Re-Viewing Cotton Mary (2002), A Passage from India (2004), Vanitas (2022)
type: item
description: This is Glenn D'Cruz's introduction to this special issue, in which he writes about his own professional and personal background, why he got into film making and the story behind each of the three films about Anglo-Indians which are the subject of analysis in this special issue of the International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Glenn D'Cruz
rights: Copyright (c) 2024 Glenn D'Cruz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2025-04-02
publication date: 2025-04-02

Book Review: The Anglo-Indians: A Portrait of a Community
type: item
description: In this review essay Dolores Chew assesses Barry O'Brien's 2022 book, The Anglo-Indians: A Portrait of a Community.
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Dolores Chew
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Dolores Chew https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-08-14
publication date: 2023-08-14

Editorial
type: item
description: This general issue of the journal comprises two articles and two review essays on recently published books. Each of the articles studies Anglo-Indians in a particular geographic, political and temporal frame. Dorothy McMenamin’s article is based in her extensive study of Anglo-Indians in Pakistan, focusing on the Partition. Lyndon Thomas offers us a window into his current ongoing study of Anglo-Indians in present day Odisha, and some of its preliminary conclusions. The review essays respectively address very significant recent publications: Uther Charlton-Stevens’ Anglo-India and the End of Empire (2022), reviewed by Anjana Banerjee; and, Barry O’Brien’s The Anglo-Indians: A Portrait of a Community (2022), reviewed by Dolores Chew. Dorothy McMenamin’s article, ‘Anglo-Indian Immunity from Partition Violence’ is largely based on one chapter in her recently published book, Anglo-Indian Lives in Pakistan (2023), which emerged from her PhD in history, which aimed to highlight the particular and different experiences of Anglo-Indians in Pakistan compared with India around the Partition and thereafter as both nations emerged. Central to her argument is the unique impact of the socioreligious milieu of Pakistan and India as, respectively, Muslim and Hindu majority states, to the lives of the Christian minority Anglo-Indians. This article focuses on Partition, and provides vivid oral history accounts from Anglo-Indians who lived through Partition but were very rarely victims of the violence. She also includes a number of stories of Anglo-Indian heroism. McMenamin’s work adds a rarely seen dimension within the study of Partition – the experiences of a small minority in the midst of the political turmoil, mass migration and bloodshed. Lyndon Thomas and Sthitaprajna have carried out an ethnographic study of Odisha’s Anglo-Indian community, which has hardly ever attracted any scholarly attention in the past because, perhaps, Anglo-Indians in Odisha have been overshadowed by the…
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Brent Otto
creator: Robyn Andrews
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Brent Otto, Robyn Andrews https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-08-14
publication date: 2023-08-14

A Preliminary Assessment of the Anglo-Indian Community in Odisha through Memories and Lived Experiences
type: item
description: Anglo-Indians are a mixed-race Indian minority community. The word 'Anglo' denotes their mainly British descent, and ‘Indian’ refers to the Indian ancestry of this community. V.R. Gaikwad studied the Anglo-Indian community as a cultural and linguistic minority in July 1959-January 1961 in Bangalore, Jhansi and Bilaspur(Gaikwad, 1967). Subsequent studies on Anglo-Indians have focused on the experiences of Anglo-Indians based in metro cities such as Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai while overlooking Anglo-Indians' historical and geographical presence in small towns and non–metropolitan cities. This anomaly was, to an extent, remedied in a book on Anglo-Indians in smaller towns and cities (Andrews & Gera Roy, 2021). However, there has been no known study on Anglo-Indians (AIs) in Odisha. This article explores social and cultural changes through their lived experiences and attempts to provide a historical perspective on the Community in Odisha and its relationship with the railways. It also touches on the concept of ‘home’ or desh, examining the popular notion of Anglo-Indians not being rooted in India as home, with particular reference to the community in Odisha.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Lyndon Thomas
creator: Sthitaprajna
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Lyndon Thomas, Sthitaprajna https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-08-14
publication date: 2023-08-14

Anglo-Indian Immunity from Partition Violence
type: item
description: This article is drawn from a wider research project delineating Anglo-Indian lives in Pakistan.* Anglo-Indians in that country reside amongst a predominantly Muslim population, compared to a Hindu majority in Independent India. Exploring this religious-cultural dimension exposed the non-discriminatory attitude of Muslims towards mixed race people, compared to the hierarchical exclusive ideals of caste Hindus. It is argued this difference contributed to the higher social status of Anglo-Indians in Pakistan. A pivotal period of Anglo-Indian lives in newly created Pakistan was partition in August 1947. Inevitably family memories around this momentous time included stories of communal violence witnessed at close hand by Anglo-Indians. Despite providing havens of safety for locals at risk, this research shows that Anglo-Indians were not targeted by the rampant carnage. This immunity from cycles of violence is an important addition to the continuing search for narratives encompassing the complexity of partition events and, importantly, documents the hitherto unrecognized heroism of Anglo-Indians. * This article is adapted from a chapter in the author’s book, Anglo-Indian Lives in Pakistan (2023), which was based on her PhD thesis. A doctoral scholarship enabling this research from the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, is acknowledged and greatly appreciated.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Dorothy McMenamin
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Dorothy McMenamin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-08-14
publication date: 2023-08-14

Book Review: Anglo-India and the End of Empire
type: item
description: In this review essay, Anjana Banerjee assesses a newly published work, Anglo-Indians and the End of Empire (2022) by Uther Charlton-Stevens.
subject: Book Reviews
  topic: section
creator: Anjana Banerjee
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 Anjana Banerjee https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-08-14
publication date: 2023-08-14

Making, "Calcutta, I'm Sorry": The Idea, the Process, the Completion
type: item
description: This article highlights the process of taking the germ of an idea inspired by real life and converting it imaginatively into a screen story and eventually as a full-length feature film. It also focuses on the writer-director and his early life in a small railway colony in South India. He grew up watching many movies by illegally entering a touring talkies near his home. He falls in love with the art of cinema and dreams of becoming a filmmaker one day. It took him almost fifty years to make his first film Going Away (2013). His second feature Calcutta, I'm Sorry (2022), a road film / emotional drama, was not easy to put together. He was lucky to find a producer who believed in his script and gave him a free hand to make his vision come alive. Calcutta, I'm Sorry has a big distinction: it is the first Indian film centered around Anglo-Indian characters written and directed by an Anglo-Indian. It is not a story about the Anglo-Indian community per se, but it brings out the essence of being Anglo-Indian and its core theme of redemption will resonate well with anyone from any community.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Harry MacLure
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03
starting page: 77
ending page: 87

Reflecting on Vanitas: Archives, Affects, Ethics
type: item
description: Vanitas is a short film written by Glenn D’Cruz and co-directed by Glenn D’Cruz and Steven Andrew McIntyre with animation art by John Graham. The work premiered at the Revelation Perth International Film Festival and won awards for best director and best Melbourne short film at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. It also received a special mention at the Antenna Documentary Film Festival in Sydney in October 2022. Vanitas explores D’Cruz’s often-fraught relationship with his Anglo-Indian father, Anto, who died in 1985 at the age of 53. This multi-layered work is, on one level, a belated eulogy to Anto D’Cruz, but it is also about the way some Anglo-Indians experienced the sting of racism and thwarted ambition as a consequence of historical and cultural forces that are not always easily apprehended during the messy bustle of everyday life. In this short article, D’Cruz reflects on the film’s creative and collaborative processes. It is important to be aware that while Vanitas is not a work of fiction it is a creative work that uses literary, theatrical, filmic and painterly techniques to tell its story.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Glenn D'Cruz
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03
starting page: 66
ending page: 76

the nowhere man
type: item
description: The essay, ‘the nowhere man’ begins by addressing a question a curious reader asked about how long Peppin took to write his novel, The Nowhere Man (2020). As well as answering the question, that it took a lifetime, he introduces the main protagonist, Joshua Pearse, and some details of the plot without giving too much away. The essay moves on to exploring why he writes, and also addresses issues he feels strongly about as an Anglo-Indian living in contemporary India, from the loss of political representation and their uncertain future to his firm stance about being Indian, and India being his country.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Bryan Peppin
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03
starting page: 57
ending page: 65

Mentoring Aspiring Writers is One of My Goals
type: item
description: David McMahon answers questions about aspects of being an Anglo-Indian novelist. He also explains what led him to embark on writing at an early age, and why he is committed to helping other would-be writers find their mojo. If you want his advice, contact him directly on his LinkedIn profile.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: David McMahon
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03
starting page: 42
ending page: 56

Historical Weightlessness: Writing The Secret Vindaloo
type: item
description: I offer a personal essay on the formative influences of The Secret Vindaloo (2014); why I wrote it, and the personal and literary issues that arose in a work of fiction that foregrounded Anglo-Indians. Not the least of the challenges that emerged was the sobering realisation that I, as an Anglo-Indian, had only a passing knowledge of my community, and by extension that, perhaps, Anglo-Indians, faultlessly, possess a cursory grasp of their history. ‘Historical Weightlessness’ is an organising metaphor I coined to reflect the sense of a collective inner historical gap and it’s used to drive this essay which explores issues at the intersection of racial science, illegitimacy, marginality, stereotypes, and post-colonial theory. The heartbeat of The Secret Vindaloo, its voice, authorial position, genre, form, and strategies such as metaphors, appropriation and abrogation – are also commented upon. For the readers benefit I include a summary of the novel at the start of the essay and provide extracts from the work to illuminate points being made. Finally, noting Frank Anthony’s 1943 observation that the teaching of Anglo-Indian history was being ‘completely ignored’ in our schools and that Anglo-Indian educationalists were ‘utterly ignorant’ of the subject (Charlton-Stevens, 2022, p. 112) and my sense that possibly nothing much since then has changed in the homeland, I wonder at the impact of cultural impoverishment on Anglo-Indians over time. As a result of all these reflections I plea for the prioritisation of a comprehensive Anglo-Indian course of studies starting with the Portuguese in the 15th Century up to India of the 21st Century – da Gama to Brahma – for the education of Anglo-Indians and others.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Keith St. Clair Butler
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03
starting page: 30
ending page: 41

Grey Man's Burden
type: item
description: In 1976 the author encountered Freedom at Midnight, a crucial text for modern Indian writers; other influences on him were Tristram Shandy and The Tin Drum, but the turning point came with his reading of the Baburnama. His discovery of the nama form enabled the organization of his material and shaped his book. A decade of waiting taught him patience and the crucial lesson of orientation. Indian writing in the West-- its essential Orientalism--taught him to close his eyes to a foreign audience. His Anglo- Indianness was the motor of a writing visceral in its inspiration; genetic misfits do not need to outsource their hybridity. The Trotter-Nama has survived a pot-belly burning by its author and strategic back-burnering by its UK publishers. Its recognition at home despite neglect in the West was part of the making of an independent literary culture. That project continues.
subject: Articles
  topic: section
creator: Irwin Allan Sealy
rights: Copyright (c) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
date: 2023-01-03
publication date: 2023-01-03
starting page: 24
ending page: 29