Making sense of my Anglo-Indian heritage
Leeming family, Calcutta/Kolkata.
A couple of years ago, I came to a realisation. A lot of the independent work I’ve made over the years has centred on groups of people with quite a solid sense of identity - something I personally lack. I think that’s partly what attracts me to them.
My parents both migrated to the UK – my mum from Ireland and my dad from India. I have an Irish name but can’t claim to be Irish, and while I was born and grew up in Wales I am not Welsh – my family just ended up there for work. I now live in England but will certainly never be English (because colonialism). I’m obviously not Indian but this heritage felt the most complicated, as my dad’s family was from a historically mixed community, the Anglo Indians, whose very existence was a result of India’s colonisation. Even this seems unbelievable to most people who I tell because I am white. I felt awkward discussing it as a consequence.
My DNA origins map.
Once I had articulated these thoughts to myself, I couldn’t put them aside. When Manchester Museum opened its brilliant co-curated South Asia Gallery a couple of years ago, I was moved to see the Anglo Indian community represented within the wider subcontinental diaspora for the first time in my life (featuring this gorgeous work by Manchester artist Michelle Olivier). I started researching this history myself, and trying to understand their social context. I'm not someone who likes to centre myself in my work but this felt like an interesting jumping off point to think about colonialism more generally and how it lives on today. So I kind of self-facilitated a little creative project using some of the approaches I use with participants where I’m talking about their experiences and lives.
This work has very much only been made for myself – I have felt coy sharing it with my own relatives, let alone anyone else. But I’m starting to think there’s a value in just putting things ‘out there’ and seeing what happens. I’ve learned more about my father’s family and their historical context along the way and this has helped me understand him a bit better. I still feel on the edge of identities but now I appreciate that I come from a long line of people like that.
I wrote an essay about all of this - specifically about the many gaps and silences within this history – and ended up making a little zine of the work – all of which can be read here. This is all part of getting it out of my head, and making space for whatever comes next.
