The name is absent

possessed Christian values. The missionaries started
schools which provided such a Christian work force.

The European traders and their military advisers also
needed the support of a family which meant women and
children. Family life was supported by Christian religious
practices and traditions which were reflected in the
education of Anglo-Indians. The present day Anglo-Indian
schools owe their existence to these two reasons.

2.1. The acceptance of Christianity

Hinduism rejected the Anglo-Indian "mixed" community. The
Hindu caste system, being spiritually aristocratic,
rejected the Hindu woman who bore children of Europeans and
thus lost their caste. Similarly, Indian Islam at that
time did not accept what they saw as miscegenation. These
religious traditions forced the Anglo-Indians to become
Christians, because they were living on the periphery of
two different social worlds, and the link of the
Anglo-Indian with the Indian

. . . served only to vitiate its standing in the
other. (10)

The choice of Christianity, if ever there was one, was made
because of social reasons. Christianity was thrust upon
the community. It did solve the dilemma of the dual
European and Indian heritage among the Anglo-Indians.
Christianity offered them a common identity and group
consciousness. In the vast sub-continent of Hindu and
Muslim India the Anglo-Indians therefore developed as a
small but self-conscious Christian community. (11)

The European and Indian intermixture has been the subject
of many anthropological studies. Attempts have been made

49

BIEL
LONDON
. VNIV _j

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