ANGLO-INDIAN LIFE WRITING: WHY IT MATTERS

The last time I saw my late father’s youngest brother—one of my many Anglo-Indian uncles—we were drinking coffee at a café tucked into the corner of a Sainsbury’s Hypermarket in Portsmouth on the south coast of England (where the majority of our family had settled after emigrating from India from the 1950s through the 1970s). It was the summer of 2010, and I had recently presented a paper on Anglo-Indian life writing at a conference in nearby Brighton. I told my uncle that although I’d spoken to the typical whopping academic audience of maybe fifteen (quite substantial for this type of conference, actually), the presentation had gone well; I might pursue a book-length project. “But what possible interest would there be in the subject of Anglo-Indians, ” my uncle asked, “apart from us? Who besides other Anglo-Indians will care?” This uncle, the family renegade—the “terror of the lot, ” as our grandmother used to call him—can routinely be counted on to pose questions that are initially annoying yet nonetheless linger. For though his questions may often be impolitic, they are usually on point, and I’ve pondered this issue ever since: Why should it matter for those of us with Anglo-Indian heritage to write our lives? Why should it matter for scholars and critics to pay attention to the Anglo-Indian perspective? Does it make a difference that fifteen academics heard what I had to say about recurrent themes in Anglo-Indian life writing? Or should those of us within academia who write about Anglo-Indian experiences be targeting an audience beyond the academy? But does the rest of the world even care? This question—whether and how Anglo-Indian life writing matters—is one that many who research and write about Anglo-Indian issues have focused on for decades. Among the most prolific and forceful advocates are, of course, Blair and Elle