Mixed feelings: Anglo-Indian identity and its representation in film

Films trade in visual shorthand and stock characters. A wicked smoothness of the dress, a tempting redness of the lip. A Swaminathan who appears funny because of his Tamil accent, a Mrs. Braganza who leads a monastery school choir Anthem. Films take liberties with depictions and stereotypes – a modern young woman is portrayed as Christian or Parsi to justify a perceived Westernness (even recent films like the 2012 one). cocktailgive their free-spirited heroine a Western name, as if offering a reassuring justification to the more orthodox).

Some, perhaps bolder, filmmakers have ventured into more nuanced territory, peering into the worlds of minority communities that are often relegated to the background of the film universe. Some of these narratives focus on the Anglo-Indian community, the increasingly small group of people in India who claim both British and Indian ancestry.

“Air of freedom”

1975s Julie deals with these visual metaphors. How many representations of minorities it describes and describes at the same time. The Anglo-Indian heroine Julie, played by Lakshmi, has a sweet face, a charming personality and a short skirt. Her characterization is what old-timers would call everything wrong with “kids today,” a look at a persistent contemporary prejudice with very relatable roots. Her father is an alcoholic and her family drinks on special occasions. As with all heroines, many flirt with her, but there is a certain permissiveness that seems to stem from her Anglo-Indian identity.

A similar feeling is evident in Bhowani Junction (1956), a Hollywood adaptation of a novel of the same name that follows the journey of Anglo-Indian Victoria Jones (played by Ava Gardner) on the threshold of India’s independence as she struggles to find a place where she belongs. Several slurs (with shocking terms like “Chee Chee” for Anglo-Indians and “Wog” for Indians) punctuate the melodramatic plot, which runs through a web of romance, intrigue, patriotism and (mis)use of the sari both to emphasize Ava Gardner and her identity crisis. It’s an honest attempt to portray a fraught identity caught in the crossfire, but it’s somewhat undermined by the choice of white actors to play multiple Anglo-Indian and Indian roles. Actress Marne Maitland, who plays the city collector Govindaswami, is apparently the only person of Indian descent to have ever played a significant role on screen.

Different representations

Back to the subcontinent: A more reserved portrayal of post-war Anglo-Indians can be found in Aparna Sens 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981). Lonely Violet Stoneham is a widowed English teacher who loves Shakespeare and lives quite lonely at 36 Chowringhee Lane in Calcutta, with black cat Toby for company. Her brother Eddie is sick and in a retirement home, her niece Rosemary has married and moved to Australia. Companionship and warmth come in the form of old student Nandita and her friend Samaresh, but they too have better things to do than keep company with an old English teacher. Not only is Violet’s loneliness the result of social exclusion, but her belonging to the Anglo-Indian community makes her plight even more apparent. She is left more alone than she otherwise would have been and more gullible to the charms of a friendly face.

Miss Stoneham is portrayed with appropriate reserve and reserve by Jennifer Kendal, the British actress who married Shashi Kapoor and founded the Prithvi Theatre, giving the narrative an air of authenticity.

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Konkona Sen Sharma cleverly follows in her mother’s footsteps and sets off A death in the Gunj (2016), She made her directorial debut in McCluskiegunj, an Anglo-Indian city in Jharkhand, in the 1970s. The film traces the gradual unraveling of Vikrant Massey’s Shutu, a young student on holiday with his extended family. Here, heritage serves as a backdrop, explaining certain colonial conflicts within the family and having an intentional class demarcation effect that is eerily similar parasite. Once again there is a mockery of Kalki Koechlin’s Mimi, with Shutu’s aunt muttering something about her promiscuity and having a foreign mother.

The most recent and (unintentional) camp of Anglo-Indian representations comes from The Archies (2023), the “Nepo-Baby-laden” adventure set in a fictional, idyllic Anglo-Indian town called Riverdale. Here, the choice of an Anglo-Indian setting seems to justify the pastel settings and the uncertain Hindi of the main characters, with a touch of patriotism to balance the very obvious nostalgia for a colonial-era aesthetic. The fact that his characters embody the atmosphere of South Bombay is also an indication of a colonial class coding that has seeped into today’s perception of the glamorous, rich and elite.

An old storytelling trick

Using outsiderism as a tool to portray perceived immorality or lack of integrity is an old storytelling trick, and most of these films use it in some form. That the targets of this narrative feel this strongly is often emphasized in the films when Julie’s mother wants to accompany her son Jimmy to London and Patrick Taylor Bhowani He sees himself more on the side of the British and even Archie Andrews, who wants to study abroad.

The linguistic choices are interesting, if not entirely representative: they range from a casually thrown in “man” or “hoyega” to Miss Stoneham’s clear, clipped pronunciation tones, reminiscent of the past of “Wren and Martin.” It is difficult to determine a consistent Anglo-Indian accent from this selection, but some cadences were chosen deliberately.

There are also some professional similarities in some films. Julie’s father is a train driver for the railway, while Victoria’s father and Patrick are also employed by the railway. As revealed in an article about it Bhowani Junction by John Masters (the book on which the film is based), Anglo-Indians in the British era had close connections to the railways as well as the infrastructure elements created by the British.

Whether the films convey a clear picture of an inherently complicated identity is questionable. But actually the idea of ​​who can be called Anglo-Indian is fluid and a little uncertain. Before independence, the Government of India Act, 1935 described an Anglo-Indian as a person “whose father or any of his other male ancestors in the male line is or was of European descent but who is of Indian origin”. This definition was more or less retained when Anglo-Indians were listed as a minority in the Constitution in 1950 and two seats were reserved for the community in the Lok Sabha (this was ended by a constitutional amendment in 2020). Surrounded by Portuguese Indians, French Indians and those of British descent who remained in India? This would cover a wide range of lived experiences, going well beyond the popular realms marked by Ruskin Bond’s misty Mussoorie stories and those of William Dalrymple White Mughals.

Other well-known films deal with the allied, equally complex equation between British subjects and Indians during colonialism, including several Merchant Ivory productions such as Heat and Dust (1983)or A trip to India (1984). Others focus on the Indians who benefited or prospered under the Raj. There is a contemporary current that seeks a neat division into a before and an after, ignoring the existence of a complex entanglement that cannot easily be untangled or forgotten. Unfortunately, the story was never that neat. Films like “Julie” have dialogue that wouldn’t be out of place today, almost 50 years later. Maybe a nice mix of these films is what we really need to appease our colonial hangover.