Ramya S, a doctoral student of Digital Literature in the Department of English at Anna University in India explores the history of Anglo-Indian history through a series of digital stories, Peppr Watcher.
As a part of my doctoral research on Digital Humanities, I have been looking into various aspects and sub-genres of DH. Among many available, Digital storytelling drew my attention, as a traditional method of storytelling articulated through technology, a combination that justifies the purpose of Digital Humanities to serve as a tool or medium to approach and analyse Humanities.
Unlike Netflix and Amazon Prime for movies, we don’t have a specific hub for digital storytelling other than YouTube. As I was surfing for more digital stories on feminism in Digital Humanities for my publication, I came across “Pepper Watcher”, a YouTube channel solely aimed at Anglo-Indians in Madras. It’s a digital story series narrated by Richard O’ Connor, with eight episodes, each digital video is about 40 to 50 minutes in duration, containing documentaries, images, videos, interviews, and audio.
The History of Anglo-Indians
The story is about the history of Anglo-Indians, their culture, and the present scenario. During my childhood, my grandma used to share her experiences about “missiamma” (female) and “Durai ayya” (male) (in Chennai aka Madras Anglo- Indians are addressed so). On my way back from school, I often saw elderly women dressed in gowns waiting to cross the roads; they always look different from the mass and always remind me of our country’s rich and complex history and Indian diversity.
Richard elaborates, “The Anglo-Indian presence in Madras goes back 500 years ago to the time when Portuguese alighted on the coromandel coast and then decided to settle three kilometers long the beachfront, locally called Santhome (St. Thomas church)”. “Santhome was the cradle of Anglo-Indian community”, says Dr. Beatrix D’Souza a former Member of Parliament. When the Portuguese stepped into what was then Malabar, King Alfonso allowed them to marry Indian women specifying that they should be fair women from good families. The Portuguese intermarried with locals with both Tamil and Telugu (Indian languages) heritages, giving birth to the Luso-Indian community.”
The story depicts the lifestyle of Anglos in the Indian context with neat houses and gardens, picket fences, and social gatherings. It narrates their history as the Dutch, Danish, French, and British followed the Portuguese as soldiers and traders and inter-married the locals: their offspring are collectively called Eurasians, and in time these mixed races came to be called Anglo-Indians. The conflict between the two different identities among Anglo-Indians is depicted in the interviews. Auckland Natasha says,“when I went to Britain, I thought I am a British with an Indian flag but the British didn’t seem to know who I was, that was a good reality check”. Jennifer Arul, an imminent broadcast journalist, shares with viewers, “Apart from just knowing that you were born and brought up as an Anglo-Indian, I think that’s it, because I believe that if you’re living in India we cannot go hopping back, we are here and we have to accept it.” Reeta O’Connor, a resident at St Mary’s colony, says “Though many of my family members are settled in foreign countries, I would like to stay in Madras till my last days.” Unfortunately, the church has been trying to evict Reeta from the land and she is fighting this in court.
Anglo-Indian Schools in Madras
The story also narrates the contributions of the Anglo-Indians and their schools to the construction of current Madras. Some of the schools mentioned are St. Bede’s Academy, with Anglo-Indian students and teachers. “Anglo-Indian boys with Muslim and Hindu friends would gather around and play hockey”, says Prof. Eugenie Pinto, former Principal of Queen Mary’s College.
A former student shares nostalgically “At St. Bede’s school, there were two groups, first, group of students who excelled in Mathematics, … mostly Brahmins, Maravedis (Hindi speaking Tamil residents) and Gujaratis. The second is the majority of the population who were weak in Mathematics and sent to Trigonometry classes: that included Anglo-Indians and the rest. And they also had music bands and sports clubs.” Even today, the Christian institutions in India give special preferences to music, play enactments, and sports, I still remember singing Tamil Christian songs in western-style music,
Fr Don Bosco a rector of St Bede’s school (2012 - 2017) says, “The Anglo- Indian community is disappearing in Madras as they are migrating to Australia, New Zealand, and other countries, secondly [concerning] the system of boarding life, the coming generation are not interested, especially in the rules, recreations, and timetable […] since they expect more freedom.”
The Anglo-Indian community is a declining but close-knit one that is deeply rooted in the making of Indian history and has shared different cultural identities. The digital story has brought back many vivid memories of my childhood and I felt as a fellow Indian sharing the same history and emotions of a diverse country that it was my privilege and duty to bring their rich culture to a bigger stage.
Reference
Pepper Watcher, YouTube, 12 June 2017, https://youtube.com/channel/UCe-MMDf9uMsr7BovcbFqD6A. Accessed 7 Oct. 2021. [not available outside India]