Editorial

Authors

  • Brent Otto & Robyn Andrews

Abstract

In this issued we’re very pleased to present one article by an emerging Anglo-Indian Studies scholar, Debojoy Chanda, and another by a scholar well-known to readers of Anglo-Indian Studies literature, Glenn D’Cruz. Chanda, examines Dover’s writings on Anglo-Indians through the lens of racial theory. D’Cruz writes from the perspective of critical film studies to examine a previously published article on stereotypes of Anglo-Indians in Malayalam film.  

In his article, Debojoy Chanda analyses a body of writings by Anglo-Indian activist Cedric Dover who published from 1929-1947. Chanda supports Dover’s claim that the British use of Aryanism led to their prejudice against miscegenation and effectively disenfranchised Anglo-Indians in colonial India. He draws on Dover’s anti-philology, anti-eugenics, and ultimately, anti-racism stance arguing that there are no ‘unmixed’ peoples. Chanda further analyses Dover’s writing which critiques race as a construct and extends this analysis by arguing that Anglo-Indians were in a good position to write back against their own disenfranchisement by the British. The article provides a well-supported, complex discussion, offering an original argument in its synthesis of a range of materials, and in particular engaging deeply with racial theory.

The second article, by Glenn D’Cruz, is a response to Mathew and James (2018), published in the last issue of this journal. Their article examines the stereotyping of Anglo-Indian men and women in a number of Malayalam films from the 1970s to the present. D’Cruz draws on his own earlier work, Midnight’s Orphans: Anglo-Indians in Post/Colonial Literature(published by Peter Lang in 2006), in which he theorizes Anglo-Indian stereotypes, to critique Mathew and James’ discussion of the stereotyping they find in Malayalam films. His article is based primarily on a detailed reading of the film Hey Jude, which is one of the films discussed by Mathew and James. He calls for a more nuanced and broadly contextualized reading of this and similar films. He recognizes value and legitimacy in some of the tropes and themes the film producers draw on to portray Anglo-Indians characters’. 

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Published

2018-12-30