Pagan Love

HAITI

 After the mulatto uprising in San Domingo in Haiti, country-born children were barred from returning to England for education and a few years later, a ban was imposed on their appointments in civil, military and marine services. Indian society did not accept the "phirangi", and so the Anglo-Indian history is fraught with many vicissitudes. Wealthy

Eurasian indigo planters, zamindars and merchants bequeathed large endowments for the education of the weaker sections. In the crash of 1833 and again during the slumps a century later, many lost their fortunes and their jobs. It is to the community's credit that they realized the needs of the time and set up educational institutions to equip their children for other jobs. Calcutta prepared boys for jobs as uncovenanted hands in upper subordinate positions. With their political strength growing in Bengal, the British saw the need to use the Eurasian as a go-between.                       

SUEZ CANAL

The opening of the Suez Canal brought the Fishing Fleets to India and mixed marriages were now frowned upon.  Their usefulness over - and the Empire established - the British pushed those very same country-born who had defended the Union Jack during the 1857 mutiny with untold valour, into privileged posts with no future .And so the Eurasian abandoned enterprise in favour of secure government service and this was a contributing cause of his economic decline.

The Anglo -Indian officer in the Indian Railways, Customs, Police or Port Commissioners has a tradition of being punctilious in work and meticulous in appearance. In the modernisation of India, the Anglo-Indian faced the perils of pioneering. He surveyed the unknown terrain, treacherous hills, malaria-ridden marshes and dangerously infested jungles. He supervised the laying of the railway tracks, or planting telegraph poles, building housing colonies in way-out areas. Rightly have