Education of the Anglo-Indian Community

Abstract

Anglo-Indian schools have evolved slowly to sustain the community’s educational needs and have now evolved as a source of economic security for the community. The schools have become an integral part of the community’s identity. But even here there exists a gender and class bias. Most female Anglo-Indians are lower-grade teachers. Very few Anglo-Indian women teach at the senior levels and there are only a handful of them serving as principals or as representatives of the Council under the Inter-State Board for Anglo-Indian education. Anglo-Indian male teachers, on the contrary, teach in higher grades and are more qualified than female teachers. Clearly, then, there exists a power grid in these institutions dominated by gender bias. Moreover, there are fewer girls’ schools in Kolkata the boys’ schools. This perhaps marks a continuation of colonial habits, when women’s education was not a priority of the community. There is also a class differentiation within Anglo-Indian schools among the students. For some Anglo-Indians of the upper class, premier Anglo-Indian schools are institutions where they are members of the board. For some higher-class students, admission to such schools may be easy, but they find it difficult to maintain the standards set by the schools. Further, most Anglo-Indians who are employed in these schools are either in low-paid clerical jobs or are employed as teachers in the lower grades, where the payment is similarly low. Not only that, but as Robyn Andrews says, the use of the English language in these Anglo-Indian schools has proved to be paradoxical for the community. Though learning English has been of premier importance in India, the community which has English as its mother tongue (knowledge and facility in English is a mark of higher class status among the Indian population in general) has not been fully literate. This again has its reflection in the job market. Until recently, Anglo-Indians have been employed as stenographers, secretaries, and in other clerical jobs with low wages. It was only after the 1990s that Anglo-Indian boys and girls began to show an interest in pursuing higher studies and thus greater occupational diversity. The younger generation aspires to upward mobility through better-paying jobs. But this is a very recent trend; and since unemployment is a social problem in India, the qualifications of the Anglo-Indians seeking jobs remain an important problem. The insistence on drawing boundaries between ‘we’ and ‘they’—between ‘their’ and ‘our’ schools—and the need to attend reputable Anglo-Indian schools in spite of economic hardship hinder the progress of Anglo-Indians in school and subsequently leave a deep imprint on their personality. Their pride is hurt when they fail to perform well at school, and they recoil at the limits and boundaries of the Anglo-Indian identity. So the Anglo-Indian schools that had emerged before independence as a means to uphold their identity and ensure their survival as a community have now become a hindrance to the progress of the new members of the community, reinforcing a separateness that grows more difficult to sustain as the years go by. The women of the community face a particular problem in these schools. The social status of the women teachers of lower grade is usually low, and their lower remuneration does not help improve their economic position either. Moreover, the stereotypical occupation pattern, that of a lower-grade teacher, puts them in a vulnerable position. They cannot break out of it and at the same time this stereotype imposes a pressure to carry on becoming teachers. Further, the decreasing number of teachers at school, especially women teachers in lower grades, tends to isolate them socially and culturally in their workplace. Yet they find it hard to break away from the stereotypical occupation patterns. Thus, we have a vicious cycle pushing Anglo-Indian women further and further into a marginal position.