User:Gaurav/Good content

I just use this page to write down interesting content which was deleted off other parts of Wikipedia for reasons of scope (i.e. those which aren't copyvios or otherwise valid quick deletions). If you can find a good home for this content, please move it there and delete it from here. Thanks! -- Gaurav (talk) 17:27, 9 October 2010 (UTC)


 * From Anglo-Indian  -- Gaurav (talk) 17:27, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

By the mid-19th century, there were more than 40,000 Indian seamen, diplomats, scholars, soldiers, officials, tourists, businessmen and students who had come to Britain. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there were around 70,000 Indians in Britain, 51,616 of whom were lascar seamen (when World War I began). In addition, a number of British officers and soldiers who had Indian wives and Anglo-Indian children in India often brought them over to Britain in the 19th century. Anglo-Indians in Britain usually assimilated into British society through marriage with the local white population, thus Anglo-Indians in Britain never formed their own distinct community like those in India, where Anglo-Indians usually married among one another instead.

In 1902, Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie and Lord George Hamilton expressed concerns over Indian students, rajas (royalty), sepoys (soldiers) and lascars (seamen) in Britain having relationships with local white females. In 1909, the journalist C. Hamilton McGuiness noted that it was common to see Indian males with white females "on the tops of buses, in the streets, at the theatres and almost everywhere one goes". He advocated police intervention against such interracial liaisons to protect the "honour" of white females, but without much success.

During World War I, there were 135,000 Indian soldiers serving in Britain and France, where many intermarried and cohabited with white females. While French authorities were not concerned with interracial relationships, British authorities attempted to limit such activity by implementing curfews for wounded Indian troops in British hospitals and preventing female nurses from taking care of them. Following World War I, there was a large surplus of females in Britain, and there were increasing numbers of seamen arriving from abroad, mainly the Indian subcontinent. This led to increased intermarriage and cohabitation with local white females, which raised concerns over miscegenation and led to several race riots at the time. Concerns were repeatedly voiced over white adolescent girls forming relationships with Indian seamen in the 1920s. In the 1920s to 1940s, several writers raised concerns over an increasing 'mixed-breed' population, born mainly from foreign Asian (mostly Indian) fathers and local white mothers, occasionally out of wedlock. They denounced white girls who mixed with Asian men as 'shameless' and called for a ban on the breeding of 'half-caste' children, though these attempts at imposing anti-miscegenation laws were unsuccessful. As Indian women began arriving to Britain in large numbers from the 1970s, mostly as family members, a majority of Indians in Britain chose to marry among one another, leading to decreased intermarriage rates but an overall population growth in the British Indian community.

According to the United Kingdom Census 2001, British Asian men from all South Asian ethnic groups intermarried with another ethnic group (including white and black) more than Asian women. Among Asians, British Indians intermarried with a different ethnic group the most both absolutely and proportionately, followed by British Pakistanis and British Bangladeshis. White and Indian marriages account for 11% of all inter-ethnic marriages in Britain, while 26% of inter-ethnic marriages in Britain are between white and 'mixed-race' (including Anglo-Indian) people. As of 2005, it is estimated that at least a fifth of Indian males in Britain have white partners. As of 2006, there are 246,400 British citizens of mixed white and South Asian (mostly Indian) descent in Britain. This accounts for 30% of the 'British Mixed-Race' population.