Anglo-Indian Influence - Lawrence School Lovedale

I begin this post by saying that my brother, an Old Lawrencian himself, married a European and the couple have three of the nicest boys who have done extremely well in life. All three boys have European partners. Thus, I am the proud uncle of three Eurasian boys and the grand-uncle of two lovely Eurasian grand-nieces. I am close to all of them.

Let me also say that in the UK, I have met with and got on with some of the finest Eurasians of Indian origin including Bill Jones, a world class Judo coach, and Richard Spence, a Director of the Bank I worked with. My classmates Colin, Trevor, Neil, Ian and Jeffrey along with the many Anglo-Indian Old Lawrencians I met in the UK are among the finest human beings one could meet.

In India, the people mentioned above would be described as Anglo-Indian but legally the definition in India of Anglo-Indian was a person who descended from a male European. Thus my relatives would not legally be classified as Anglo-Indian.

Be that as it may:

Let me begin with a stark statistic:

At the time of Independence, India’s population was 350,000,000 (three hundred and fifty million). Within that the Anglo-Indians numbered 350,000, three hundred and fifty thousand or .1% (point one percent). In other words 1 in a thousand people in India were Anglo-Indians. In Lawrence School a staggering 70% of the pupils were Anglo-Indian, a rate far beyond that seen in the general population. To put this into perspective, while only 1 in 1,000 people (0.1%) nationwide were Anglo-Indian, this community’s proportion was 700 times more prevalent in Lovedale. Such a dramatic disparity underscored the customs and practices that obtained in such a unique environment. Such disparity continued for years on end! Thus, when I joined in 1958 as a 6 year old Hindu Vegetarian Gujarati boy, sent by my parents at COLLOSSAL expense thousands of miles from Kenya to acquire an INDIAN education, what was presented was a grubby Anglo-Indian Railway Colony education. Once a relatively privileged intermediary class under the Raj, the Anglo-Indians were abruptly abandoned after Independence, left to wither in decaying enclaves as a people despised by both sides—viewed by the British as colonial relics and by Indians as turncoats of Empire. Stripped of their protected status, their neighbourhoods crumbled into squalor, their livelihoods vanished, and they became ghosts of a bygone era, clinging to frayed respectability in grimy tenements and down-at-heel cantonments.

Lawrence School Lovedale, in the decades following Independence was emphatically Anglo-Indian in outlook. Nowhere near being British, nowhere near being Indian, but Anglo-Indian. Not only were influential staff members Anglo-Indian but a huge proportion of students were also part of that community. The Anglo-Indians in question were very closely involved with the Railways and were ignorant of customs and practices prevailing in India outside of the Railway colonies that they inhabited. As such, the education imparted was distinctly Anglo-Indian and thus limited in scope and content. The Anglo-Indian community was specifically created to act as a buffer between our British colonisers and us ordinary, everyday brown-skinned Indians. My research into the community since its inception up to the mid-70s matches exactly the summary of Nobel laureate V.S. Naipaul, who wrote in 1964 ‘An Area of Darkness’ which contains the following passage:

Mimicry would be too harsh a word for what appears so comprehensive and profound: buildings, railways, a system of administration, the intellectual discipline of the civil servant and the economist. Schizophrenia might better explain the scientist who, before taking up his appointment, consults the astrologer for an auspicious day. But mimicry might be used because so much has been acquired that the schizophrenia is often concealed; because so much of what is seen remains simple mimicry, incongruous and absurd; and because no people, by their varied physical endowments, are as capable of mimicry as the Indians. The Indian officer is at a first meeting a complete English army officer. He even manages to look English; his gait and bearing is English; his mannerism, his tastes in drink are English; his slang is English. In the Indian setting the Indian English mimicry is like fantasy. It is an undiminishing absurdity; and it is only slowly that one formulates what was sensed from the first day; this is a mimicry not of England, a real country, but of the fairy-tale land of Anglo-India, of clubs and sahibs and syces and bearers. It is as if an entire society had fallen for the casual confidence of a trickster. Casual because the trickster had gone away, losing interest in his joke, but leaving the Anglo-Indians flocking to the churches of Calcutta on a Sunday morning to assert an alien faith more or less abandoned in its country of origin….Leaving ‘civil lines’, ‘cantonments’, leaving people ‘going off to the hills’; magic words now fully possessed, now spoken as of right, in what is now at last Indian Anglo-India, where smartness can be found in the cosy proletarian trivialities of Women’s Own and the Daily Mirror, and where Mrs. Hauksbee, a Millamant of the suburbs, is still the arbiter of elegance.

Note from Jitu: Civil lines were where top administrators (Civil Servants) such as District Magistrates lived. Cantonments were civilian areas controlled by the military.

However, do read this post to see how I and many others came under the influence of this artificially created, bogus community.

The rapidity with which the school was Anglo-Indianized is all the more astonishing when you look at the following extract of the school report for the year ending 31 March 1945:

All 289 boys and 206 girls were Christians. No Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsees, Jains or Jewish students.
Of the admissions 32 boys and 24 girls were Pure European, while 10 boys and 14 girls were European as defined by R.A.I which stands for Royal Anthropological Institute. Imagine the effort the school was going through to ensure no Indians were admitted! But for the R.A.I, many fair-skinned Indians and teachers could have passed off as European.
There were just 5 Anglo-Indian boys and 3 Anglo-Indian girls admitted.
Within just 5 years, in 1950, the balance changed dramatically in that, of the 377 pupils, 261 were from the Anglo-Indian community! An astonishing 70%! All of them were Christians!

None of the rest of us in Lovedale knew about the functioning of the community. No one knew what the Anglo-Indian parents did for a living, where they lived, what they ate, whose company they kept, what sort of activities they participated in or anything else. A kind of ‘mystique’ developed around that community.

It was only after many decades following my leaving school that I carried out extensive research and discovered that in reality the community was grubby, ghettoised, unpopular and on its last legs. Deservedly, it is now virtually dead as those who could, migrated, mainly to Australia, UK and Canada. Not many did well academically following school as the institutions of further education did not give them the importance that Lawrence School Lovedale gave them. Indeed, even now, the few who make it to college are, these days derogatively called ‘Peter’.

While most of us little boys were under the impression that the community was part of the ruling British colonial elite, fact is that post-Independence, the community only thrived in places like Lawrence School Lovedale.

Not only did Indians outside of Lawrence School Lovedale despise the community but so did our colonial masters, the real British. I set out what the British though of them:

Extract from Wikipedia: Lord Cornwallis, in a manner not uncommon at the time, believed that well-bred gentlemen of European extraction were superior to others, including those that were the product of mixed relationships in India. Of the latter, he wrote “as on account of their colour & extraction they are considered in this country as inferior to Europeans, I am of the opinion that those of them who possess the best abilities could not command that authority and respect which is necessary in the due discharge of the duty of an officer.” In 1791 he issued an order that “No person, the son of a Native Indian, shall henceforward be appointed by this Court to Employment in the Civil, Military, or Marine Service of the Company.”

Quote from Honoria Lawrence, wife of Sir Henry Lawrence: (The half-caste population): They do not have a very high character in general and how should they? Doubtless they inherit many dispositions from their mothers and their education must be worse than defective. They are held in great contempt by the natives and European prejudice is strong against them… and those I have heard speak were emphatic in talking of the natives with contempt.

From John Borthwick Gilchrist FRSE (19 June 1759 – 9 January 1841),Scottish surgeon, linguist, philologist and Indologist employed by East India Company, and compiler of first Hindoostani-English Dictionary:

Despite the long history of cooperation between Britain and Portugal, Portuguese in general and Portuguese mestizo in particular, were always considered by the British to be their inferiors; Gilchrist described them as the most contemptible race to be found on earth.

Richard Burton, author of Goa and the Blue Mountains said:
‘It would be, we believe, difficult to find in Asia an uglier or more degraded looking race than that which we are now describing (mestizo). The forehead is low and flat, the eyes small, quick, and restless; there is a mixture of sensuality and cunning about the region of the mouth, and a development of the lower part of the face which are truly unprepossessing, not to say revolting. In personal attractions the fair sex is little superior to the other.

Raikes, former North-West Provinces‘ commissioner and judge, spoke with the authority of long Indian experience and high office. Raikes directed his attention to the failings of Indo-Portuguese Eurasians, describing Indo-Portuguese clerks anywhere in India‘ as: vegetating rather than living, with the vices of the European added to the superstitions of the heathen.‘ Rather than limit himself to personal experience he also pronounced on events a century before he had ever set foot in India. Madras was lost to France because the British force, led by an ignorant Swede ‘was half composed of a black, degenerate, wretched race of half-caste Portuguese, utterly destitute of fighting qualities.‘ In short, Eurasian,‘ became shorthand for illegitimacy, immorality, weakness and criminality; more so when of Portuguese stock. This affected the status of Eurasians in nineteenth century India, justifying their exclusion from high-ranking positions, and diminishing their worth in Indian eyes

For Edgar Thurston, Eurasians were poor and in debt not because they were low paid but because ‘they were stupid, irresponsible, and unable to subordinate animal appetite to reason, forethought and prudence.‘ Edgar Thurston CIE (CIE stood for Companion of the Indian Empire, a Royal Honour given by the British Monarch) was a superintendent at the Madras Government Museum who contributed to studies in the zoology, ethnology and botany of India and published works related to his work at the museum.

Quote from George, Viscount Valentia British Peer from Ireland ‘Eurasian ‘half-castes‘ were the most rapidly accumulating evil.‘

March 1786 letter from EIC to Eyre Coote: the imperfections of the children, whether bodily or mental; that is whether consisting in their colour, their conformation, or their genius, would, in process of time, be communicated, by intermarriage, to the generality of the people of Great Britain; and by this means debase the succeeding generations of Englishmen.

In 1824, Thomas Munro, Governor of Madras, said ‘the proposed allowance to half-caste wives and children of European soldiers is in my opinion highly objectionable.‘

Read the following link about

RACE, RAILWAYS AND DOMICILED EUROPEANS As it gives valuable information about the lives of Eurasians.

Within the link, Lois Harding commented that she had no idea that ‘railway people were considered to be the lowest
of the low on the social scale

Company Directors in 1784 expressed concern over what they called the ‘imperfections of the children of European men by Indian women:… whether bodily or mental; that is whether consisting in their colour, their conformation, or their genius…‘ There was a perception of something inherently, irredeemably wrong with Eurasians who existed because of the moral laxity of their progenitors. This implied an innate moral laxity characteristic of a whole community. The mantra, that half-castes exhibited the worst characteristics of both parent races and few of their virtues, was common in contemporary literature. Ronald Hyam said this attitude sprang from the Cornwallis and Wellesley reforms which increased the social gulf between Britons and Indians, and discouraged miscegenation. It was later fed by scientific‘ racism.

Charles Darwin said: the degraded state of so many half-castes is in part due to reversion to a primitive and savage condition, induced by the act of crossing, as well as to the unfavourable moral conditions under which they generally exist.‘

Here is a quote from Sir Henry Lawrence himself:

”Our Sepoys come too much from the same parts of the country; Oude, the lower Dooab and upper Behar. There is too much of clanship among them, and the evil should be remedied by enlisting in the Saharunpoor and Delhi districts, in the hill regions, and in the Malay and Burmah States… We would go farther, and would encourage the now despised Eurasians to enter our ranks, either into sepoys corps where one or two here and there would be useful, or as detached companies or corps…”

Here is an extract from The Queen’s Daughters by Elizabeth W. Andrew and Katherine C. Bushnell, Missionaries who submitted their report to the House of Commons: This shows comprehensively that a relatively large proportion of Eurasians were born to prostitutes:

There is almost a nation of Eurasians who curse the day they were given an unwelcome existence. And their mothers, in large numbers, were honestly married, to their best belief and intention. Here are the real wives and the real children in the sight of a just God, and to them should England’s attention be first turned. The chaklas (brothels) hold many such unwilling prisoners, left there by treacherous husbands and fathers. Some day this wife of the officer or soldier will be turned out to perish of the disease her system could no longer throw off, and the children will either be retained as soldiers’ prostitutes or sent out to share the fate of the diseased mother.

They are as artful as a waggon-load of monkeys,” said one Anglo-Indian to us; the “most vicious and degraded of the population,” says another. And yet they are, many of them, the offspring of British men. (Note from Jitu Savani: In this context, Anglo-Indian meant White British who had settled in India. It was much later that Anglo-Indian came to be referred to as the mixed race people we know today as Anglo-Indians).

Read the link about The Eurasian problem in nineteenth century India. by Anderson, Valerie E.R. (2011) PhD Thesis, SOAS. I noticed the following sentence which says a lot about the community:

Those left, many of whom had actively chosen to stay, suffered increased prejudice from other Indians who saw them as foreign imperial lackeys 30 thought they were staying only because they could not afford to leave, or were staying because they could not prove European ancestry. However, those ‘foreign imperial lackeys’ (not Jitu Savani’s words) thrived in Lawrence School Lovedale, particularly Mac, about whom many details will be found in Pages dedicated to him. See links to him at the foot of this page.

A brief History about how a large proportion of the community came into being is appropriate. It all started with the gradual take over of India by the East India Company. Its employees were British men and such men had no access to British women Therefore the British men took, indeed were encouraged to take Indian mistresses, such women were referred to as Bibis. Lord Ochtorloney was one such employee and this Lord had 13 Indian mistresses.

There was never any known case of a white British woman having a child fathered by an Indian man.

Below is a portrait of Col. James Skinner, probably one of the very few Anglo-Indian Army Officers, together with a church he built in Delhi , which church is in use to this day.

Lord Ochtorloney and others produced many children who formed the basis of the Anglo-Indian community. This community married among themselves so generations of them thrived and prospered but strictly within the confines of their own ghettos having absolutely no contact with the wider native communities. Their aspirations were limited to what the British permitted in terms of employment, their language was always English, their religion always Christianity, their knowledge of History that of Britain which most of them were never permitted or destined to visit, their culture and way of life that which was observed from their limited inter-actions with the Colonial rulers. They viewed Indians just as the Colonial rulers did; with contempt! The one part of their lives that was unimpeachable was their loyalty to the British. This loyalty was strictly one-way; the British viewed this community with contempt. When Independence finally came on 15 August 1947, the Anglo-Indians were abandoned to their fate and this fate was for the Anglo-Indians to be obliterated as a distinct community. Many blended in with the wider Indian communities and led normal lives as any other Indians, and as stated above, those that could, emigrated particularly to Australia, UK and Canada.

Once the Suez Canal was opened, British women arrived in large numbers and so the liaisons between white men and Indian women reduced considerably; indeed the liaisons which were previously encouraged were now looked down upon.

However, a number of Anglo-Indians, called in those days Eurasians did emerge from officially sanctioned brothels set up for British soldiers posted to India. See reference to ‘The Queen’s Daughters above.

The British used the Anglo-Indian community as a buffer between themselves and Native Indians. The Anglo-Indians, entirely Christian, were perfectly happy with such an arrangement. Shashi Tharoor in his book Inglorious Empire states that at one time, only ‘Whites’ were allowed to work in the Indian Railways. When the ‘Whites’ were called away to fight in WW1, employment was open to Anglo-Indians only, not Indians. The tradition of Anglo-Indians working in the Railways carries on to this day although they form a tiny minority of the workforce.

Before 1947, there were British as well as a few Anglo-Indian children studying in Lawrence School, Lovedale. The latter were allowed in only a few years before Independence. In 1945, for instance, there were just 8 Anglo Indians admitted out of a total intake of 88. There were no Indians! The first Indian was allowed only in June 1947. He was Humayun Dhanrajgir. After the British left, the Anglo-Indians virtually took over and remained in place for decades after that. In 1950, for instance 70% of the students were Anglo-Indians! Their influence was vastly greater than any contribution they made towards the welfare of the School or indeed the country.

Teachers, clerks, typists and other such employment opportunities were afforded to Anglo-Indians but Indians were excluded. After Independence, as employment opportunities opened up, the Anglo-Indian community, having collaborated with the British were resented and thus ghettoised. It became more and more miserable and the end result was it wallowed in a cesspit of its own making. Evidence will be found in my Page Anglo-Indians Documentaries and Research Papers

This is by way of introduction. The influence of the Anglo-Community in Lawrence School Lovedale continued for decades after Independence. One such Anglo-Indian who exercised such influence was teacher W.J. McMahon who joined the School in 1956 and remained for 19 years. Mac, as he was popularly known, was loved and respected by most who came into contact with him but as far as I am concerned, he was the biggest disaster that struck my life and when he did strike, I was all of 13 years old! I will not elaborate too much about Mac here but would urge followers to read my Pages devoted to him, see links at foot of this Page

I often wondered how the disproportionate number of Eurasians/Mestizos remained in the school long after it had ceased any connection to Britain and then, after I reread the Prospectus of 1965, it struck me! A passage in Page 3 reads as follows: 300 places are reserved for ‘Entitled’ children i.e., those who were entitled to admission under the former constitution of the school as long as such children existed in India.

Here is an extract of the speech of Mr K.I. Thomas, Principal and subsequent Headmaster from Founder’s Celebrations 1950:

Mr Thomas said, “ Our total strength today is 377. Apart from 261 Entitled children who are either Anglo-Indian or British and 21 Day Scholars, we have now 91 boys and 4 girls belonging to Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Parsee communities on our rolls. Among them are four Badaga boys from the local agricultural community. I must say they are pretty hardy and are taking their full share in the various activities of the School. Our pupils speak thirteen different languages, they come from fourteen States of India and some parents working in Ethiopia, Pakistan, Ceylon and Burma have also sent their children to this School. As in the past, British people serving in India and elsewhere sent their children to Eton, Harrow, etc. for their education, sooner or later our School will also come to occupy the same position with regard to Indian parents working abroad. Our School, in a way, is only a replica of the variety of life that we see in our country. You will ask, “How do these boys and girls belonging to different communities, different social strata and different economic position, get on?” Considering the fact that for 91 years, this School was run for one set of children only, who had no contact whatsoever with the main currents of Indian life, a certain amount of adjustment was necessary for both the old students and the new entrants. We had our problems but on the whole, I can now say that we have more or less settled down to the new conditions. But, it has meant some hard work on the part of the staff and made certain administrative measures necessary, which are already before my Board of Administration. And, Sir, if in our Defence Services, under the guidance of distinguished soldiers like you, Indians, of different communities and social strata can rub shoulders with one another is a spirit of comradeship, there is no reason why we in this School should not achieve the same harmony and cohesion among different classes. Our task is all the more easier when we have to deal with youngsters, who comparatively speaking, are free from the inhibitions and prejudices of the older generation.”

Putting the statement above in a Historical perspective, it turned out to be utter rubbish. With 70% of the students being Anglo-Indian or British, the school virtually became a ‘Railway Colony’ with a heavy Christian influence! With only 1 in 3 boys being Indian, the ethos of the school couldn’t be anything other than Anglo-Indian! Emphatically, that is not what I was sent to Lovedale for; an Anglo-Indian education! Further, the Anglo-Indians, being dirt poor and emerging from dirt poor, grubby Railway Colonies hardly paid any fees and yet, the arrogance was such that we were intimidated into accepting their culture which should have been alien to us!

Here is an extract from the Prospectus of the school published by the same K. I. Thomas, 15 years later in 1965 (attached in another post):

The Lawrence School, Lovedale, was founded on 6th September 1858, and is named after Major General Sir Henry Lawrence, who first projected the idea of founding a school in the Nilgiris for the children of serving soldiers and ex-soldiers of the British Army in India, so that they could have the benefit of a sound education in a bracing and healthy climate. The School fulfilled the objects of its founder until May 1949, when it was taken over by the Ministry of Education, Government of India, to be run as a Public School, open to all casts, creeds, and communities, with 300 places places reserved for ‘Entitled Children’ i.e. those who were entitled to admission under the former constitution of the school, as long as such children existed in India. MY EMPHASIS: 17 YEARS AFTER INDEPENDENCE, EFFECTIVELY, 300 PLACES WERE RESERVED FOR ANGLO-INDIANS! THANK THE LORD FEWER OF THOSE PLACES WERE TAKEN COMPARED TO WHEN THOMAS STARTED BUT THAT WAS BECAUSE THE COMMUNITY, BY THEN IN DECLINE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO AFFORD EVEN THE NOMINAL FEES IT WOULD HAVE BEEN OBLIGED TO PAY!

There are several errors in the extract indicating that even Thomas wasn’t aware of the History of the school he had been running for 15 years viz: Sir Henry was a Brigadier-General, not a Major General which is a rank higher than a Brigadier General. He was never ever in the British Army, only in the East India Company Army. A year after his death, Queen Victoria referred to him as a Colonel (in the service of the East India Company) and never a General of any sort! The school was not founded for the children of serving and ex-soldiers of the British Army but for the orphans of such soldiers and that too mainly East India Company soldiers. The school was not founded to give the benefit of a ‘sound education’ but a basic skill, to use Sir Henry’s own words : ‘ I wish each boy to learn the use of his hands at some trade, I don’t care what it is. Let him cobble, carpenter, tailor or smith. This should be apart from telegraph survey, printing or gardening work.’ The school was founded as an asylum which was a Christian term meaning ‘a safe or inviolable place of refuge especially as offered by the CHRISTIAN Church.’ Thomas should have been aware that the institution was founded as an asylum, not a school! Further, Sir Henry sent his own children to Rugby School in England not to one of his asylums!

Children could have also been the beneficiaries of Article 337 of the Indian Constitution which stated: During the first three financial years after the commencement of this Constitution, the same grants, if any, shall be made by the Union and by each Statefor the benefit of the Anglo-Indian community in respect of education as were made in the financial year ending on the thirty-first day of March, 1948. During every succeeding period of three years the grants may be less by ten per cent than those for the immediately preceding period of three years: Provided that at the end of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution such grants, to the extent to which they are a special concession to the Anglo-Indian community, shall cease: Provided further that no educational institution shall be entitled to receive any grant under this article unless at least forty per cent of the annual admissions therein are made available to members of communities other than the Anglo-Indian community.

It is fairly obvious that a number of Eurasians/Mestizos took advantage of the connection their parents had with the erstwhile colonial power and wormed their way into the school through ‘entitlement’ as opposed to affordability. There were also teachers who wormed their way in as certainly they wouldn’t have got employment in a normal Indian school on merit.

Before Independence, there were few if any Mestizos (Portuguese/Indian mixed race) in the school as it is unlikely that there existed even a single Mestizo able to afford even the then modest fees. However, post Independence, a reading of the admissions register revealed the following obvious Mestizo names (in many cases more than one of the same surname on the same dates, implying siblings).

D’Vaz, Rozario, Rodrigues, Alemao, DeFries, D’Costa, D’Souza, Cabaral, D’Rozario, Pacheco

In addition the following Eurasian names come to light, once again with more than one to a surname, implying siblings:

Prince, Gannon, Doran, Phear, Foran, Kennedy, Phillips, Royal, Peacock, Footman, Fowles, Dodd, David

Yet others who could fall into either Mestizo or Eurasian Camp were Dedeyn and Roshier.

The register stops at 1954 but I am aware of many Mestizo/ Eurasian admissions after that; e.g., Enos, Mannas,( a character called Owen Mannas was the first prefect I came across as a 6 year beginner at Prep School), Storey (a character called Derek Storey nearly drowned in the swimming pool around 1960, fortunately, my classmate Harsha Chacko’s brother Jai was around to save him). Other names that come to mind are Whitbread, Fraser, Boosey

We were given to understand that such characters as Peter Gannon, the vice head-boy were tall fair skinned people who we needed to fear. Having only in September 2022 seen Peter Gannon in a photo, I can say he is dark-skinned and had I met him earlier, I would have regarded him as any dark-skinned Kuppuswamy or Ramalingam! Ironic, given that Gannon is an Irish name meaning fair skinned or fair haired!

Among the teachers and ancillary staff there was Mac, Mrs Brown, Mrs Enos (nee Cunningham), Mrs Prince (nee Beale), Denzil Prince, Barbara Prince, Art teacher Daniel, Miss Wilson, Miss Highmore, Mr Diaz (piano), Dr Braganza, Engineer D’Cruz, Projectionist Roland, Nurse Richtor, Steward Mrs Fowles (a domiciled European), Nurse Ivy, Mrs Parker, Dr Shaw, Dorcus Stokoe. Note: Harold Prince was domiciled European.

Those Mestizos who could, scrambled to Australia and those Eurasians who could, scrambled to both, Australia and England. Others faded into obscurity and probably died in penury (see documentary on Anglo-Indians in a documentary made in from 1986 in my Page Anglo-Indians Documentaries and Research Papers ). The following words are from the same page: Sadly, the majority of British and Anglo-Indians made little effort to appreciate Indian Art, Music, Dance, Drama. The schools also lacked this focus. Such prejudices served to drive a wedge between the communities. There is absolutely no doubt about Indian Art, Music, Dance, and Drama never being appreciated by the Anglo-Indians during my time, whether they were pupils or teachers!

With hindsight, no wonder little Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Syrian-Christian boys were taught, I REPEAT, TAUGHT, as 6 year olds to sing such rubbish as ‘My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean’ and ‘Lipstick On Your Collar’!

The point of the posts on the Anglo-Indian/Eurasian/ Mestizo is the influence these characters had on the direction the school was taking which was out of all proportion to the contribution they could make to India.

Laws and Decrees affecting Eurasians

Here is a quote from Christopher J Hawes:

Poor Relations: The Making of a Eurasian Community in British India: if ever a community could have wished for its own corporate dissolution, and for complete integration with its paternal society, it would have been the educated Eurasians of early nineteenth century India.

Anglo – Indian Influence: Lovedale V Sanawar

This Page makes clear that Lovedale had virtually been taken over by the Anglo-Indians. in 1950, at least 70% of the pupils in Lovedale were Anglo-Indians.

The same cannot be said of Sanawar:

In the first photograph, of 1948, of the 45 pupils shown, 23 (51%) are Sikhs. A few more may be non-Sikh Indians as opposed to Anglo-Indians.
In the second photograph, also of 1948, at least 5 members of the 1st eleven Hockey team are Sikhs
In the third photograph, teaching staff 1949, I can see at least 2 Sikhs. Several teaching staff are wearing gowns indicating they were graduate qualified Indian teaching staff. In those days most Lovedale staff were not qualified and most were Anglo-Indians; hardly any Anglo-Indians made it to University. Mac (see links at the foot of this Page ) was one of the first graduate Anglo-Indian staff but he only joined in 1956. There were never any Sikh teaching staff throughout the period I was there even though they were legendary sports players and therefore could have had a number qualifying to teach at least that subject.
In the 4th photograph of the 1954 Cricket Team, at least 6 are Sikhs and the rest look Indian to me.