The Land Left Behind

While in India, I stumbled upon something strangely familiar, a world that was both foreign and recognisable:

The British left India in 1947, leaving behind them a fractured and altered nation. Certain colonial traditions were so culturally ingrained that they became a part of the new set of traditions in India. The Raj was no more, but the coloniser left its trace on the Indian subcontinent. In time, the colonised would reciprocate.

During the British Raj, children born to British men and Indian women began to form a new community, the Anglo-Indians.

“We are a planned race, the British planned our existence. They were instructed to make us when they were sent to the colonies. I am proud of my name. I am Anglo-Indian, yet I am first and foremost Indian. This is where I was born”.

– David Robertson of the Bow Barracks, Kolkata.

While Britain was in India, these people were unsurprisingly well-represented in administrative roles. Today they often live in tightly knit communities like the Bow Barracks in Kolkata, though many have emigrated. They are united by their language, culture and shared memories. Those who remain in India have mixed feelings about independence, though there is a certain degree of sadness attached to the feeling most remaining Anglo-Indians share: that they were people whose culture the British engineered, and then left behind.

We all live in imagined communities, unified by an imposed identification with a set of local traditions from communities within the confines of an arbitrary boarder. Our cultural identities are intrinsically entwined with our nationalities, seemingly unshakable and yet unexpectedly fragile.

Looking back at the history of mankind, nothing is static; language, culture, fashion, mentality, our fluidity and adaptability is apparent. Our cultural identities have taken many shapes and forms, and will continue to do so.