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194 M. K. NAJDK

shoulder. The Eurasian's entire Life is an unending identity crisis, with ail its attedant menlal suffering. In John Maslers Bhowani Junction, Patrick declares, ‘We couldn’t become English because we were half Indian. We could not become Indian because we were half English. We could oniy stay where we were and be what we were/³² And in The Lady and the Unicom, Rosa lells Stephen, the Englishman, ‘How easy it must be to live if you know that you are some one’, and adds as a rejoinder to his remark, ‘we’re all some one’, ‘I mean some one worth while/³³ The reaction of Rosa’s far morę worldly sister Belle, is expectedly morę bitter: ‘We come from nowhere,... we are nothing.’³⁴ Victoria in Bhowani Junction sees in her lover Patrick ‘the worst trade-marks of our own people : inferiority feelings, resentment, perpetual readiness to be insulted — all the things I was determined to get rid of in myself.’³⁵ Ananda in D. G. StolTs Comedy in Chains is himself a Eurasian but he offcrs a fairly objeclive analysis of the situation of his tribe : he agrees that Eurasians are a ‘feeble people.. And I would add over-sensitive. But almost any adolescent will become like that if he is treated persislcntly enough as an infcrior by everybody he meels. Most Indians and Englishmen make up their minds in advance that a Eurasian is second-rate, and if he is not already that he usualiy becomes so. Terms of contempt like ‘half-caste’... have an undesirable effect, particularly on children who have been conceived illegilimately, or whose parents live cut off from local society.³⁶

There were two opposite ways in which the Eurasian sought to solve his nagging identity problem : he either tried to identify himself completely with his White father, denying the Indian element in his make-up altogcther, or far less commonly-accepted his Indian origin unapologctically. The first way was naturally almost the rule (with an occasional exception) during the colonial days, when possible white identification (and even a partiai one at that) was bound to be rewarding. Writing during the twilight days of the British Empire, C. N. Weston comments : ‘There has been in the past a cringing attitude towards the Englishman, because he had the power to bestow favours. Today the influence of patronage is rapidly on the wane... and Anglo-Indians (= Eurasians) are forced by circumstances to stand on their own feet,... Their attitude towards the Indian too has changed for the better. It was common in my boyhood days to hear Anglo-Indians talk of Indians as ‘niggers,’ This attitude has been changed completely and Anglo-Indians are realizing that Indians are their equals and brolhers in the family of peoptes of India. They are compelled by circumstances to make this adjustment, but there is undoubtedly a real change of heart too in my comrtiunity towards the Indian.’³⁷

The Eurasian *s desperate — and half-comic and half-patheiic attempt to pass otT as pure White has been well-illustrated in several dramatic episodes