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188 M. K. NA1K

father and a Rajput mother, he was extrcmely black, spoke broken English and fluent Persian, in which language he wrote his memoirs. Job Charnock, the founder of Calcutta, had an Indian wife, and their daughter married General Coote; and three Brilish Prime Ministers had a touch of Indian blood in them : Pitt Senior, Pitt Junior and Lord Liverpool. In pre-Muliny India the Anglo-Saxon vision was singularly free from colour-prejudice. In fart, Lord Bentinck is said to have particularly favoured Eurasians. At Madras, he defended Thomas Warden (a Eurasian whom he madę Principal Collector of Malabar) against service prejudice. In Bengal, he was sympalheic to Indigo planters — some of them were Eurasians — who were unpopular. He had even thought of taking on a Eurasian lieutenant as his aide-de-camp!⁵ It is equally interesting to notę that Clive*s army contained morę Eurasians than Europeans, and the Company was so much concerned about the wclfare of Eurasians that there were regular orphanages in Calcutta for Eurasian children, though British class-consciousness madę it necessary that two separate orphanages be establishcd — one for the offsprings of officers and the other for the brats of lower ranks. And this is what the Cyclopacdia of India has to say about the Eurasians : (they) ‘have in India all the rights and privilcges of Europeans. Raves with a mixture of Europcan with Asiatic blood possess a proud and susceptible tonę of mind.’⁶

Unfortunatcly for the Eurasians, the tide began to tum against them around 1785. From 1786 onwards, Eurasian children were prohibitcd from going to England for education, because it was felt that ‘the imperfection of the children would, in process of time, be communicated to the gcnerality of the pcople of Great Britain and by this means dcbasc the succeeding gencrations of Englishmen.’⁷ Bctween 1791 and 1795, Eurasians were progressively disąualificd from almost all civil and military employment; and in early nineteenth century they were evcn banned from the Government House in Calcutta.

In 1830, the generał ban on the Eurasians was lifted. The change in the official language from Persian to English opencd up civil employment for them, while ‘many of them were in the service of the Indian princes. Their staunch loyalty to the British during the Great Mutiny also helped the cause of the Eurasians after 1919, they enlered the Railway and Tclegraph Dcpartmcnts in large numbers; thus, in 1930, there were around 14000 Eurasians in the Railways, 2000 in Tclegraph Dept., and 2000 in Customs. At the limę of Partition (1947) there were about 1,50,000 Eurasians in India. About 50,000 cmigratcd, about half of them to England and around 10,000 to Australia. Neverlhcless, Eurasians continue to be in the Indian army in numbers disproporlionately large in relation to their total population. In the war against Pakistan in 1965, 20% of the Group Caplains and 30% of the Wing Commamnders and Squadron Leaders in the Indian Air Force were Eurasians.⁸