{"id":8295,"date":"2010-08-15T02:23:59","date_gmt":"2010-08-15T02:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=8295"},"modified":"2012-08-31T14:45:30","modified_gmt":"2012-08-31T14:45:30","slug":"geographies-of-diaspora-and-mixed-descent-anglo-indians-in-india-and-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=8295","title":{"rendered":"Geographies of diaspora and mixed descent: Anglo-Indians in India and Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1002\/ijpg.287\" target=\"_blank\">Geographies of diaspora and mixed descent: Anglo-Indians in India and Britain<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/journal\/10.1002\/(ISSN)1099-1220\" target=\"_blank\">International Journal of Population Geography<\/a><br \/>\nSpecial Issue: Geographies of Diaspora<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/ijpg.v9:4\/issuetoc\" target=\"_blank\">Volume 9, Issue 4<\/a> (July\/August 2003)<br \/>\npages 281\u2013294<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1002\/ijpg.287\" target=\"_blank\">10.1002\/ijpg.287<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.geog.qmul.ac.uk\/staff\/blunta.html\" target=\"_blank\">Alison Blunt<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of Geography<br \/>\n<em>Queen Mary, University of London<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This paper explores geographies of diaspora for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anglo-Indians\" target=\"_blank\">Anglo-Indians<\/a> (formerly known as \u2018Eurasians\u2019) through a focus on their \u2018homing desire\u2019 in two diaspora spaces: firstly, an imperial diaspora in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Presidencies_and_provinces_of_British_India\" target=\"_blank\">British India<\/a>, and secondly, a decolonised diaspora in Britain after independence in 1947. Before independence, although Anglo-Indians were \u2018country-born\u2019 and domiciled in India, many imagined Britain as home and identified with British life in India even though they were largely excluded from it. Britain was often imagined as the fatherland, embodied by the memory of a British paternal ancestor, as enacted by settlement at an independent homeland for Anglo-Indians established at <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/McCluskieganj\" target=\"_blank\">McCluskieganj<\/a> in <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Bihar\" target=\"_blank\">Bihar<\/a> in 1933. By 1947, there were about 300,000 Anglo-Indians in India, but a third had migrated by the 1970s. I explore the implications not only of independence but also the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/British_Nationality_Act_1948\" target=\"_blank\">British Nationality Act of 1948<\/a>, which required many Anglo-Indians to prove the British origins of a paternal ancestor. The difficulties of tracing British ancestry are explored with reference to the work of the Society of Genealogists in London on behalf of Anglo-Indians in the subcontinent. Drawing on these records, as well as material from the Anglo-Indian press and interviews with women from one school who migrated after independence, I argue that ideas of Britain as home were intimately bound up with ideas of whiteness. Ideas about an Anglo-Indian diaspora existed long before decolonisation, and the migration of Anglo-Indians under the British Nationality Act led in many ways to a recolonisation of identity. Unlike studies that concentrate on \u2018feminising the diaspora\u2019, I argue that the diasporic \u2018homing desire\u2019 of Anglo-Indians invoked ideas of imperial masculinity in both imaginative and material terms.<\/p>\n<p>Read or purchase the article <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/ijpg.287\/pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Geographies of diaspora and mixed descent: Anglo-Indians in India and Britain International Journal of Population Geography Special Issue: Geographies of Diaspora Volume 9, Issue 4 (July\/August 2003) pages 281\u2013294 DOI: 10.1002\/ijpg.287 Alison Blunt, Professor of Geography Queen Mary, University of London This paper explores geographies of diaspora for Anglo-Indians (formerly known as \u2018Eurasians\u2019) through a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,459,125,8,26,394,10],"tags":[3515,11706,1351,3516],"class_list":["post-8295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-history","category-identitydevelopment","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-socialscience","category-uk","tag-alison-blunt","tag-geography","tag-india","tag-international-journal-of-population-geography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8295"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8295\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}