Post-colonial India

ANGLO-INDIAN, a term first used in the 18th Century by Warren Hastings to describe the British in India and their Indian-born children, is now more commonly used to describe those people of dual British-Indian heritage. Today, living outside the mainstream of Indian society and often described as being caught in a time-warp, the few Anglo-Indians of India are mostly concentrated around the cities of Bangalore, Madras (Chennai), Bombay (Mumbai), Calcutta, Lucknow and Cochin. They are a small, often impoverished, minority, which some have estimated now to number as few as 100,000 in a country of close to a billion. Many of the remaining Anglo-Indians in India still cling to their own rituals and customs, living close to one another, often congregated around the local Christian church. Still a central force in their lives, the church is a last remaining connection and identification with the past. Anglo-Indians speak readily of their English past, of the days when life was better, when you could always get a decent cup of tea.

After Independence, a large wave of Anglo-Indian emigration took place. Many wealthier Anglo-Indians went to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and back "home" to England, seeking acceptance in a Westernised setting. For them, India had become a foreign country where their preoccupation with being British was often met with hostility and rejection. Those Anglo-Indians left in India were a relic of the British colonial past. Whatever alliance they had with the British had become a distortion; a historical handicap that could only be overcome with true assimilation into modern India.

Brought into being by the policies of Portuguese, Dutch and British colonists, the earliest Anglo-Indian community can be traced back to the Portuguese who established a colony on the Malabar Coast in 1498. Later, in the 17th Century, desiring greater manpower to settle their colony in Madras and a population which could negotiate local customs, the East India Company paid a gold mohur for each child born to an Indian mother and a European father.

During this initial period of colonisation, the Anglo-Indian community flourished, holding a special status as a distinct English-speaking and Christian community with knowledge of Indian customs, Western values and, most importantly, a fierce loyalty to their British progenitors. With all the conditions set for a natural collaboration, the Anglo-Indians helped generate great wealth for colonial purse-strings. The Anglo-Indians identified with and were accepted by the British, enjoying many of the same privileges and lifestyle. Under the prevailing philosophy that conditions in India would never suit a British constitution, Anglo-Indians were viewed as providing a needed "infusion of native blood".

It was not until the latter part of the 18th Century that the British began to turn against this community. By then, Anglo- Indians had become so intertwined with their British masters that they looked to England as their place of origin. Concerned with purity of race, and alarmed by how large this hybrid community had grown, the British watched with fear as native uprisings occurred in Haiti and other areas, uprooting colonial rule. Swift measures were taken to restrict the access that the Anglo-Indians had been given. Anglo-Indian children could no longer be educated in England and adults were excluded from obtaining positions with the East India Company.

It was not until the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny that the situation turned in favour of Anglo-Indians again. During the mutiny, when the native Indian army vigorously turned against the British, the Anglo-Indians fought loyally against their Indian brethren to save British lives. Deeply shaken by this bloody and violent war, the British never recovered the same level of trust in India. They did, however, want to reward the Anglo-Indians for their loyalty. New positions in the public services were offered and schools based on British principals were established for their children. Jobs were offered in the railways, post and telegraphs, nursing, customs and police, but were given with the caveat that employment was only restricted to the lower grades of the service, with no opportunity for advancement. Anglo-Indians were to be rewarded but still had to be kept in their place.

By the 20th Century, the strange psychological drift of a people alternately accepted and rejected was deeply engrained. Exclusion of Indians from jobs in the professional sphere left an educated and motivated population frustrated and with a low self-esteem. Poverty and unemployment became serious problems for the Anglo- Indian community. Discriminated against and isolated from the rest of India, the Anglo-Indian profile was a painfully lonely one. Struggling to maintain a European standard as a visible means of their identity, Anglo-Indians continued to seek a life that was self-defeating. The issue of skin colour, always of great significance, was ever more important to the Anglo-Indian. A whiter Anglo-Indian could "pass" as British, whereas a darker- skinned Anglo-Indian might be denied the rightful passage of his dual heritage, the same dubious heritage which he struggled to overcome.

ALEXANDRA VIETS

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Synopsis

Set in post-colonial India of the 1950s, Cotton Mary is the story of two Anglo-Indian (part English and part Indian) sisters, Cotton Mary and Blossom, their niece Rosie, and their tangled and complicated interactions with a British family.

As the BBC correspondent stationed in Kerala, South India, on a special assignment, John Macintosh is absent when the screenplay begins with the premature birth for a "special" child to his wife, Lily, in an old British army hospital. On the night of Vishu, Theresa Macintosh, the seven-year-old daughter is left to find her way through the town and to the local hospital for help. Staffed by Anglo-Indian nurses, including Cotton Mary and Rosie, the hospital sets the stage for the first part of the film. A crisis arises since Lily is unable to breast-feed her child. Despite efforts from the hospital staff, the child is close to death when Cotton Mary comes to the rescue by stealing the child away to her crippled sister Blossom, who is a wet nurse in a nearby Alms house. Still living in the past when her life was peopled by ladies of the Raj and their children - and remembering the time when the Alms house was a vital part of the Anglican church, Blossom and the other Alms house ladies are revived, their status vindicated by having a new "White" child in their midst. The long hallucinatory night, intercut with scenes of Theresa lost in the dramatic, and often frightening, Vishu festivities, finally comes to an end when Blossom's milk saves the child. The success that Mary has in arranging for the feeding of the baby makes her indispensable to Lily, who offers her a permanent position in her home as an "ayah" (or nanny).

Once she is inside the house, Mary's relationship to the baby and her burgeoning friendship with Lily give her a unique position from which to operate. Lily embraces Mary and delegates more and more of her responsibilities to Mary as her own eccentricities and lack of interest in motherhood absent her from the family. Unhappy with the companionship of the very traditional expatriate community, and emotionally distanced from her husband, Lily withdraws to her garden and into herself. Gradually, Mary usurps the powers of the loyal family servant,Abraham, whom she accuses of stealing, and more importantly, of being "dirty". Ultimately she is able to push Abraham out and replace him as the Master's "right hand man". Boasting to the other ayahs that Master is building her a house in England "near Wellington Castle", Mary begins to achieve the identity she desires.

As Mary continues to insinuate herself, her friend Rosie, beautiful and pale-skinned, also managed to win her way into the British home by concentrating her attentions on John Macintosh. Determined to get the life she wants, Rosie betrays Mary's confidence in her and plays along with the idea that she is helping Master with his "work". Drawn to Rosie's beauty and the gradual, but determined, detachment of his wife, John turns to Rosie as his lover.

Meanwhile, Mary's sister Blossom continues to feed the newborn baby and becomes increasingly frustrated by the lack of attention paid to her efforts. In the final of rebellion, Mary responds to Blossom's repeated demands that Madam visit her by "becoming" the Madam herself. She is momentarily triumphant as she strides into the Alms' house, her hair newly coiffed, dressed in Madam's clothes, and wearing Madam's shoes.

In the dramatic conclusion, which exposes each of the main characters' often conflicting English and Indian identities, desperation and betrayal lead the sisters, Blossom and Mary, to attack each other's aspirations. The Alms house ladies taunt Mary and reveal the truth about Rosie's relationship with John. As Lily returns to England with the children, John also rejects Rosie.

Mary is left, unable to reconcile her identity, her hopes in ruins and half-mad.

Cotton Mary, Ismail Merchant, Penguin, Rs. 250.

"Cotton Mary" is Alexandra Viets' first feature length screenplay.

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