Iconographies of Anglo-Indian Women: Gender Constructs and Contrasts in a Changing Society

Abstract

Of late, increasing attention has focused on (mainly male) constructions of women in colonial India. On the one side, it has been noted how European women were frequently held responsible and disparaged for upsetting the comparatively relaxed relationships existing between British (especially males) and Indians (especially females) up to the late eighteenth century. Seen as the staunchest upholders (if not the keenest advocates) of racial distinctions which evolved in the course of the nineteenth century, European women were vilified for elaborating (if not actually creating) social and cultural hierarchies which led to a widening of the distance between colonizer and colonized. At the same time, they were stereotyped as frivolous, vain, snobbish and selfish (Barr 1976: 197; 1989: 1; Brownfoot 1984: 186). Indeed, Gartrell suggests that ‘few women have been described so negatively as the British memsahibs’ (1984: 165). In drawing attention to these portrayals, a number of writers have recently pointed out, in mitigation, that the memsahibs were simply reproducing official British attitudes, were themselves proud symbols of British power, and subjects of a strict patriarchal culture within European circles (see Barr 1989: 5; Bharucha 1994: 88–9).

Nineteenth-Century Eurasians and Spatiality in Emma Roberts’ Scenes and Characteristics of Hindostan, with Sketches of Anglo-Indian Society (1835)

“…The assumption here is that it is the mother's blood that corrupts what is ideologically considered to be "unsullied descent" of the European paternal heritage. Caplan (2000) calls "common British practice" (p. 867) to craftily rationalize the elimination of Eurasians from the power structures within the company regime. However, even a cursory glance at the policies of the East India Company in the social, personal and professional spheres of the Eurasian community will illuminate the extent of the Company's ruthless and systemic attempt at racial discrimination and consequent spatial isolation of the interracial population, clearly suggesting that the Eurasian exclusion arises primarily from a fear of the métis populace, not an indulgence of native predilections about the caste purity of the rulers.…”

Untitled

“…Both the theatre and cinema were important areas of employment for young women from the community. (Caplan 2000). ⁷ The British gave the smaller religious minorities a position of privilege, who found it easy to step into petty jobs in offices and workshops.…”

The Stain of White

“…The "process of forgetting" (Carsten 1995) the white man as father, which marked the denial of the white connection in many Thiyya families, is in sharp contrast to "Anglo-Indians" (a term for Eurasian children of the British Raj), who stressed only the paternal line and effectively disregarded the maternal line (Caplan 2000). Asserting kinship to British men through genealogy and also through cultural affinities of language and dress marked the boundaries of a distinctive community (Hawes 1996).…”