"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)

Abstract

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 circumstances.