Hostages To India

This classical book brilliantly portrays the history of the Anglo Indian community and presents a magnificent historical reconstruction. It is an enduring work on Anglo Indians, from their darkest to finest hour. The author pulls no punches in this exceptionally well researched book and shows the hidden part of Anglo Indian life over a period of 500 years. The book is an outstanding testament against the colonial racism of the period and the courage of a small community of people. The book is a good read, containing chapters which entertain as well as inform, as when the author describes the ladies of the "fishing fleet" who would arrive from England to India to find husbands, which resulted in the great Indian marriage bazaar in Calcutta. The book describes the thriving and vibrant Anglo Indian Community and their subsequent impoverishment due to various administrative acts by the East India Company who saw Anglo Indian success as a threat. It chronicles the various measures the community took to obtain justice from England by sending emissaries from India to lobby parliament. The others three Non Fiction titles in the Anglo Indian Heritage series are: (1) 'These Are the Anglo-Indians' by Reginald Maher - (2) Frank Anthony: The Story of the Anglo Indian Community - (3) 'Cimmeri? Or Eurasians and Their Future' by Cedric Dover. The books are called the Anglo Indian Heritage books as they chronicle the rich and colorful history of the Anglo Indian Community.