Indians In Britain

This is an analysis of the nature and impact of the Indian presence in Britain, and British reactions to it. Problems of discrimination, isolation, and deprivation turned many students to politics, they appropriated ideas and institutions, and challenged British metropolitan society.

People from the Indian sub-continent have been in Britain since the end of the seventeenth century. The presence of princes and maharajahs is well documented but this book, first published in 1986, was the first account of the ordinary people in Britain. This book will be of interest to students of history.

Moving away from orthodox narratives of the Raj and British presence in India, this book examines the significance of the networks and connections that South Asians established on British soil. Looking at the period 1858-1950, it presents readings of cultural history and points to the urgent need to open up the parameters of this field of study.

“I have not lately read a finer book than this—on any subject at all. . . . A masterpiece.” —Simon Winchester, New Statesman The photographs of three young men had stood in his grandmother’s house for as long as he could remember, beheld but never fully noticed. They had all fought in the Second World War, a fact that surprised him. Indians had never figured in his idea of the war, nor the war in his idea of India. One of them, Bobby, even looked a bit like him, but Raghu Karnad had not noticed until he was the same age as they were in their photo frames. Then he learned about the Parsi boy from the sleepy south Indian coast, so eager to follow his brothers-in-law into the colonial forces and onto the front line. Manek, dashing and confident, was a pilot with India’s fledgling air force; gentle Ganny became an army doctor in the arid North-West Frontier. Bobby’s pursuit would carry him as far as the deserts of Iraq and the green hell of the Burma battlefront. The years 1939–45 might be the most revered, deplored, and replayed in modern history. Yet India’s extraordinary role has been concealed, from itself and from the world. In riveting prose, Karnad retrieves the story of a single family—a story of love, rebellion, loyalty, and uncertainty—and with it, the greater revelation that is India’s Second World War. Farthest Field narrates the lost epic of India’s war, in which the largest volunteer army in history fought for the British Empire, even as its countrymen fought to be free of it. It carries us from Madras to Peshawar, Egypt to Burma—unfolding the saga of a young family amazed by their swiftly changing world and swept up in its violence.

Seminar paper from the year 2006 in the subject Cultural Studies - European Studies, grade: 1.3, University of Potsdam, course: The Commonwealth of Nations, 11 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In this essay, I will raise the question if the story of immigration of Asian Indians to Great Britain can be considered a "genuine success story". At first glance, no one would seriously doubt that. Asian Indians are the largest ethnic group in Britain and known as an "upwardly mobile people". They are successful entrepreneurs, restaurant owners and academics; as well as the inventors of the popular "British" national dish chicken tikka masala, which has recently "surpassed fish and chips in terms of popularity" (http: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/british_Asian). They are also important influencers of Britain`s pop culture, especially through literature and successful films such as Bend it like Beckham, East is East or the TV show The Kumars at No.42 (ibid). The Anglo-Indian influence on British popular culture (ibid). The biggest influence that British Indians have on British popular culture can be seen by the large number of Indian restaurants, most of which are actually run by owners of Bangladeshi origin. Chicken tikka masala has surpassed fish and chips in terms of popularity and become Britain`s most popular national dish, even though it is a British Asian invention which was not known in India until it was introduced after many British tourists had requested it. Although Asian Indians are a vital part of the British culture, they still have to face many obstacles; racism and unemployment as well as intergenerational conflict are amongst these problems. [...]

Anglo-Indians form the human legacy created and left behind on the Indian subcontinent by European imperialism. When Independence was achieved from the British Raj in 1947, an exodus numbering an estimated 50,000 emigrated to Great Britain between 1948–62, under the terms of the British Nationality Act of 1948. But sixty odd years after their resettlement in Britain, the “First Wave” Anglo-Indian immigrant community continues to remain obscure among India’s global diaspora. This book examines and critiques the convoluted routes of adaptation and assimilation employed by immigrant Anglo-Indians in the process of finding their niche within the context of globalization in contemporary multi-cultural Britain. As they progressed from immigrants to settlers, they underwent a cultural metamorphosis. The homogenizing labyrinth of ethnic cultures through which they negotiated their way—Indian, Anglo-Indian, then Anglo-Saxon—effaced difference but created yet another hybrid identity: British Anglo-Indianness. Through meticulous ethnographic field research conducted amidst the community in Britain over a decade, Rochelle Almeida provides evidence that immigrant Anglo-Indians remain on the cultural periphery despite more than half a century. Indeed, it might be argued that they have attained virtual invisibility—in having created an altogether interesting new amalgamated sub-culture in the UK, this Christian minority has ceased to be counted: both, among South Asia’s diaspora and within mainstream Britain. Through a critical scrutiny of multi-ethnic Anglophone literature and cinema, the modes and methods they employed in seeking integration and the reasons for their near-invisibility in Britain as an immigrant South Asian community are closely examined in this much-needed volume.