[BITList] Fwd: [vsdh] Fwd: [INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ] Hugh Purcell on what happened to the Raj

[Michael Feltham]

This is from an Indian List that my brother, John, belongs to.

Best Wishes to the BITList

Mike
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Subject: [INDIA-BRITISH-RAJ] Hugh Purcell on what happened to the Raj
Reply-To: india-british-raj at rootsweb.com

August 27. 2008

The end of Empire

by Hugh Purcell (author of After the Raj: the Last Stayers-On and
the Legacy of British India, published by The History Press.)

Snipped from
http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080828/ART/389281423/-1/NEWS

Quote:

On my frequent visits to India over the last 40 years, I have often
wondered what happened to the Raj - a word used after the British
left India in 1947 to stand for the British rule and its legacy.

It did not just disappear. On my first visit in 1964 there was still a
thriving British commercial community in Calcutta and British planters
still dominated the tea gardens. Over the hill stations and former
British clubs hung a mist of Raj nostalgia. All that has disappeared,
except among enclaves of Anglo-Indians (descendants of a white
father and Indian mother) who still yearn for Great Britain, a country
they have probably never seen.

But you need not look far to find the legacy of the Raj; the Indian
heritage
industry taps into it, the Indian armed forces keep alive its
traditions,
the Indian Christian churches sing its hymns, the wonderful Indo-British
language still comes up with new words. Above all, there are still a
few remarkable survivors living in India connecting the present with
the past.

They grew up in India, did not go home to Britain when India became
independent in 1947, but lived the rest of their lives within the new
nation. Now there are probably no more than 50 or so left (excluding
Anglo-Indians) out of a population of 1.2 billion. For my book, After
the Raj, I tracked down a dozen of them living throughout the country.
Three of them, whose combined age amounted to 262, have passed
away since I interviewed them. Indians call these men and women who
never left the koi hais (meaning "anyone there?") and the women mems,
short for memsahibs. A reference book, Hanklyn-Janklin, a dictionary
of the Indo-British language written by Nigel Hankin, one of those who
stayed on after 1947, says koi hai is "the call with which, in British
days,
masters were alleged to summon their servants. Hence 'an old koi hai'
means a long-term European resident of India."

The men and women I interviewed are all associated with the legacy of
British rule. I met a boxwallah or two (businessmen), a tea planter, a
missionary, a linguist, a tiger hunter and Indian Army officer, a
taxidermist, three Anglo-Indians, the famous BBC Indian correspondent
Sir Mark Tully, who has lived his life in India, and the manager of a
once exclusive British club. Lastly, and fittingly, I met the founder of
the British Association of Cemeteries in South Asia, which preserves
the records of those who never left, and whose remains are buried in
India.

Unquote

--- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar



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ooroo

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