British | Indian

Photo credit: provided by subject

I identify as mixed ethnicity with a unique personality. My parents are from India & Britain, they met as teenagers. They didn’t combine their cultures; my Mum adopted a British identity. 

My Mother’s family came to the UK from India in 1949. Growing up, we were simply told that they had been in India for less than fifty years. My Grandfather had apparently been born on board a ship headed to India, and my Grandmother had immediate family in Buckinghamshire. When, after my Mother died, my American cousin, an Australian relation and I started to dig into the family history. We discovered that almost everything my Grandparents had told us was a lie. They had made up their own history.

The truth is that instead of being in India for one generation, I can trace my ‘European’ ancestry back to the Dutch and Portuguese settlements on the Coromandel coast in the early 18th Century. Not one generation but, at least nine. And instead of being 100% British, our family is a diverse mix of many ethnicities, including at least three ‘native’ women, probably Tamil, and one we believe was Malay-Chinese. There was a Malay community in Madras in the late 18th Century.

The modern description of my family would be ‘Anglo-Indian’, although I find that label lazy, over-simplistic and stereotypical. But I suppose it is better than ‘Half-Caste’ or one of the other derogatory terms used since Cornwallis introduced his racist ‘Code’ in 1793. 

There were clues when I was growing up that the family history wasn’t quite as described. My Mother was somewhat darker and definitely more exotic than most Bristolian housewives. My Grandmother said that Englebert Humperdinck’s sister was one of her bridesmaids, which was likely true as the Dorsey’s were neighbours in the Anglo-Indian community of Pudupet. I always sensed we were different, without knowing why.

A couple of other truths have emerged since my Mother died. Not all ‘Anglo-Indians’ were given the right of settlement in the UK but priority was given to those who had served in the Police or the Prison Service, like my Grandfather, as they were often targeted for reprisals after Indian Independence. Immigrants to the UK were given little support upon arrival in the UK and not allowed to bring much/anything with them from India. They were also subject to distrust and discrimination, which probably explains why my Grandparents felt the need to invent a British-only history. My Mother died a ‘subject’. She was never a British ‘citizen’.

I am very proud of my mixed-race family. I am fascinated by my family’s history and the many ethnicities that share our story. It really saddens me that I don’t know the real names of the native women in my ancestry. I carry their blood and their genes, but I don’t know much about them. They are left out of the British version of history and generally dismissed by the Indian one. But at least my sons now know who we are.

Two reflections on the current debate about ethnicity and diversity. First, it is still disappointing that too many people focus too much attention on skin pigment. This debate is constrained by colour. Genes are colourless. I look ‘White’ but I am not. I am a mixture. I am me. Second, too many people offer too many opinions without understanding their own histories. I would urge everyone to research their own back-story. All families are fascinating, and you might find out that you are not quite who you think you are. And you certainly can’t trust your own Grandparent.