Charity Schools for the Half-Castes:Race, education and the British Empire

Talk given at a Workshop on ‘Empires of Charity’, University of Warwick,, 4 March 2017
Charity Schools for the Half-Castes:
Race, education and the British Empire
Rajesh Kochhar
Panjab University Mathematics Department
Chandigarh
rkochhar2000@gmail.com

The White man’s first burden in India
was his illegitimate offspring. The
first British educational concerns in India arose
from genetic considerations rather than the
administrative. They pertained to half-castes or
Eurasians, the offspring of Protestant European
fathers and local women who were either Roman
Catholics of Portuguese extraction or low
class/low caste Hindus and Muslims. The Whites
despised the half-castes, but would not leave them
either on the street or in the care of their maternal
side.

Note on terminology
The population, which had even a remote 16th
century Portuguese paternal ancestor, was
called Portuguese. Half-castes were referred to
as such even in the British Parliamentary
records. Their self-description was Indo-Briton
or East Indian.
• At the time, the term Anglo-Indian was used to
denote Europeans living in India. In 1911, the
term was transferred to Eurasians ‘at their own
request’.

Indian Constitution’s 1950 legal definition of
Anglo-Indian includes the erstwhile Portuguese
as well.
-1911: Anglo-Indian= Europeans in India
1911-1947: Anglo-Indian=Half-caste
1950+ : Anglo-Indian =Half-caste + Portuguese.
Because of the change in and expansion of
meaning with time, one should be careful while
backdating the term.

The use of the term ‘native’ here should be seen as
a technical term, conveying the spirit and the
philosophy of the time. The word Indian implies
collectivity and solidarity which was absent in
earlier times. Its use should not be backdated.
• -

Purely trading days
In the early days, Madras was no more than an
appendage to the nearby Portuguese
settlement. Similarly, the Portuguese had
substantial presence in Bombay and Calcutta.
The first women the British traders came into
contact in India with were the Portuguese,
who, under the influence of the ‘Popish
priests’, insisted on bringing up the children in
their own religion.

So acute was the problem that towards the end
of the 17th century, an exasperated Court of
Directors even suggested that Madras should
encourage its men to take native wives, ‘as the
children of Indian women would be much more
amenable to authority than those of Portuguese
Roman Catholics’.

Beginning of charity education
From 1674 till 1713, Anglican Church at Madras
made arrangements for joint teaching of
Eurasian, Portuguese and native children
through the Portuguese language. Things
changed with the 1714 arrival of the new
chaplain Rev. William Stevenson. He declared,
after consultations with SPCK, that ‘the children
of European fathers’ should not be ‘boarded with
ignorant mean people’ and that a charity school
should be ‘erected after the model of those in
England’.

This led to the segregation of half-castes from
others and the beginning of English education in
India. A ‘Child who is fatherless’ was officially
designated orphan and declared to be the
responsibility of the government, Anglican
Church and the Europeans. Accordingly, the first
ever English-language school in India, St
Mary’s Church Charity School was opened at
Madras in 1715. It was followed by Bombay
(1719) and Calcutta (1729)

At Madras (and presumably elsewhere also), the
boys were “taught to read, write, and cast
accounts’ while the girls were ‘instructed in
reading and the necessary parts of housewifery’.
For teaching English, Madras depended on a
1707 text book written by a master of a free
school in Stratford Bow in Middlesex, and
published from London. Thomas Dyche’s A
Guide to the English Tongue, which paid
particular attention to preventing Vicious
Pronunciation [ital in original], was reprinted at
Tranquebar Mission Press in 1716.

The Indian reprint is historically significant because
it was the first ever English book printed in India.
Over the next 150 years, a number of free and
charity schools as well as military and civil asylums
were opened. Superintendence and teaching were
largely entrusted to chaplains and missionaries.
Subsequently, mergers and relocations took place
and words like asylum or orphanage were dropped
from the names of the institutions.

Ironically, some of the most prestigious and
expensive private schools in India today began
life as free schools and orphanages for half-
castes.
-
A large number of European troops had to be
brought into India to accomplish the military
conquest that took 60 long years 1757-1818.
Increased warfare meant increased sexual
activity.

There were far greater number of European men
in India than women. The government
encouraged its low-paid soldiers to form
informal liaisons with local women, as a better
option than visiting prostitutes and contracting
venereal diseases. Military regulations however
did not permit marriage. Marriage would have
bestowed legal status on the native wife and the
mixed-race children which was unacceptable.
The begetting of half-castes was seen as an
undesirable but unavoidable corollary of
Empire building.

Children of half-castes were also known as
half-castes. In 1811, the European Protestants
population was estimated to be about 40000
while the number of half-castes was placed
three times higher, at 110,000.
Advent and growth of half-caste education can
be understood in terms of an overlapping
three-stage model

(i) Charity institutions of various kinds were
opened with major support coming from
government ,Church, and missionaries. Funds
and support were received from England-based
Anglican bodies like SPCK and SPG. In
general, North America and Europe donated
funds for missionary work with heathens in
India. But I do not think funds for half-caste
care were solicited . It would have been
amounted to advertising the sinful life style of
the British soldiery in India.

(ii) Missionaries and other educators opened
academies and schools where relatively well-
off parents sent their half-caste children for
education on payment.
(iii) Finally, schools and colleges in the real
sense of the word were established by the
Eurasians themselves for their own children

Military asylums
In the 1780s military orphan schools/asylums
were set up first in Calcutta and then in
Madras. Separate arrangement was made for
boys and girls. Additionally in Calcutta
children of officers were segregated from those
of soldiers. The Upper School was largely
funded through subscriptions from officers.
Subscribers in turn could send their own
children as boarders. Obviously there were
military officers happily living with their
native partners and willing to educate their
children,

In 1786, the Court of Directors refused
permission to permit half-caste children of the
officers to be sent to England.. Even though it
was said for form’s sake that ‘an English climate
would be injurious to the children of Indian
mothers’, the real reason for debarment was
racial. It was feared that English stock would be
damaged if it assimilated with the half-castes
who inherited ‘vicious dispositions’ from their
mothers.

While the mother’s genes were unwelcome in
England, father’s genes could create trouble in
India. Though there was ‘nothing to fear from
the sloth of the Hindus’ or ‘the rapidly declining
consequence of the Mussulman’, there were
apprehensions that the ‘tribe’ of half-castes
might ‘become too powerful to control’.
Government policy towards half-castes was
based on two considerations. They should not be
permitted to damage the government either from
within or without.

The English administrators recalled an incident that
had taken place in 1632. The Portuguese in
Hooghly sustained themselves against the Mughal
army for three and a half months ‘displaying ‘the
most heroic bravery, worthy of the days of
Albuquerque’, till they were betrayed by a
Portuguese half-caste, De Mello by name.
The colonial attitude hardened further after the
1791 Haitian revolution which was inspired by the
French Revolution and led by the Mulattos.

Standing orders issued during 1791-1795
debarred half-castes from service civil, military
and marine service of the Company as also from
working as sworn officers of the Company’s
ships between India and Europe. The only
opening available to them in the military was as
fifers, drummers, bandsmen and farriers’. The
Company reserved these posts for the sons of
soldiers ( that is to the exclusion of sons of
officers).
Half-castes were debarred from positions
reserved for natives as well.

The policy that half-castes should be brought up
in the religion of their father was another way of
saying that they should not be permitted to mix
with the vast populace of India.
Note that there were no legitimate half-caste
children. When official orders, reports and
contemporaneous records refer to legitimate and
illegitimate children, they are merely using
these terms as euphemism for all-white and
mixed-race children respectively.

It was obligatory for soldiers to send their
children to the Lower School no matter whether
they were willing to raise them or not. As soon
as a half-caste was born to a soldier, the father
was given a monthly allowance. No altruism
was involved, however. The allowance gave the
government a right over the child.

Soldiers’ children were permitted to remain with
their parents only till the age of three when they
were ‘peremptorily’ taken away and placed in
the Lower School. As a classical example of
double-speak the snatching of children from the
lap of unwilling mothers was called ‘humane’.

Even if no decent openings were made available
to half-caste boys, they were taught well, if we
go by the curriculum. Upper school boys were
taught arithmetic, trigonometry, geography with
the help of a globe, and rudiments of astronomy,
mechanics and natural philosophy. ( What text
books did they use?)

While boys at the Military Asylums were
prepared for a suitable career, in the case of the
girls, the Asylums’ aim was to marry them off.
When the boys excelled they were rewarded
with books, but for girls the reward consisted of
a pair of ear-rings or a breast pin, a suit of
ribbands, or a sash. To enhance their prospects,
even a dance instructor was engaged!

Statistics shows that about half of the girls ended
up getting married, chiefly to ‘Non-
Commissioned Officers, and Privates, Drummers
&c. in the King’s and Company’s Regiments, and
to other persons of reputable character’. (What
was the life of women who remained unmarried?)
The marriage market was heavily weighted in
favour of girls who had their father’s complexion
and features rather than the mother’s.
-
To get a feel for actual numbers involved, it may
be noted that in the four-decade period 1783-1820
end, 750 students were enrolled in the Upper
School and about 3000 in the Lower School.

Calcutta Free School
For those not eligible for admission to the
Military Orphan Schools, Calcutta Free School
was established in 1789. It accommodated large
number of boarders, day scholars and pay-
students. Interestingly, in 1790 the school began
admitting even ‘natives’ as paying day scholars.
They would have enrolled to learn English. The
arrangement however was discontinued in 1802.
No details are available, however. Later, the Free
School focused on education of ‘a plain practical
character’. Eventually, Railways became a great
employer of half-castes of all kinds.

Madras
Madras Male Military Asylum figures in the
educational history of England as well. Its first
superintendent, Rev. Dr. Andrew Bell, is well
known in England for introducing the
monitorial method of teaching which he had
earlier noticed in South India and employed in
the Asylum. In the Madras or Bell or Bell-
Lancaster method, bright and senior students
instructed other boys. Once England accepted
the method, it was used in British India as
well.

Closure of military asylums
Two Lawrence Military Asylums were
established: at Sanawar, Simla Hills, North
India (1847) and Ootacamund, Nilgiri Hills,
South India (1858). Through a long drawn
process, Calcutta and Madras military asylums
were merged with the nearby Lawrence. The
Lawrence asylums were meant only for
legitimate children while the older ones at
Calcutta and Madras had been open to
illegitimate offspring as well.

So obviously, no further need was felt for care
of illegitimate half-castes.
Interestingly, when Madras Female Orphan
Asylum was shut down in 1904, all European-
looking girls were sent to Lawrence Asylum
while others were transferred to the local civil
asylum. Surely an exercise in eugenics!

Bombay
Half- caste education was an isolated
phenomenon except in Bombay. From 1665 till
the 1818 defeat of the Mahrattas, the British
remained confined to the island of Bombay
where they had Parsees as well as Hindus and
some Muslim sections for company.
Accordingly, the relationship between the
colonialists and natives was far more cordial on
Bombay island than elsewhere.

Bombay Native Education Society was set up in
1822 as an off-shoot of Society for Promoting the
Education of the Poor, established in 1815, with
Bombay’s first Archdeacon as Secretary. . As a
result, in Bombay and nowhere else, native
education emerged as a corollary of half-caste
education.
In the meantime, Hindu College (School Section) ,
came up in Calcutta in 1817.

Natives however could not have written modern
textbooks by themselves. The task was
undertaken by Calcutta School-book Society set
up in 1818 under the joint management of
Europeans, Hindus and Muslims. This was the
first forum in colonial India where the British
and the natives sat at the same table. Society
books, largely authored by chaplains and
missionaries ,were used throughout India.

Eurasian schools and colleges
The next stage in half-caste education was the
initiative from within the community. Eurasians
in Calcutta, preferring to call themselves East
Indian, opened a ‘proper’ school in 1823 naming
it Parental Academic Institution to signify that it
would be managed by the parents and guardians
of the students (boys) and not by charity.
Within the Eurasian community however there
was open antagonism between Anglicans and
Dissenters, which weakened the educational
movement.

Ironically, the greatest bequest for Eurasian
education came from a Roman Catholic
Frenchman, the Lucknow based nabob Maj.-
Gen. Claude Martin (d. 1800) who left
considerable wealth for ‘English education and
religion’. Next, a former inmate of Madras
Military Asylum, Capt. John Doveton (d. 1853),
came to a large inheritance from his paternal
uncle, an old India hand, which he left for
Eurasian education.

La Martiniere in Lucknow and Calcutta and
Doveton Colleges in Calcutta and Madras, 1836-
1855, gave a great fillip to formal education for
Eurasians. It is through them that large-scale
education for Eurasian girls began in the real
sense of the word. (Doveton Madras closed in
1916, but others are flourishing even today.)

Closing remarks
The British policy on half-castes was a
success. Eurasians emerged as a separate entity
, English-speaking, Protestant and largely
Anglican, and completely decoupled from the
natives and thePOrtuguese. Half-castes never
thought of rebelling against the father’s side,
only yearned for acceptance.

Now-a-days many persons of European/Eurasian
heritage are taking interest in the institutions
which their ancestors attended, grom the point of
view of family history.
Half-caste education however
forms an interesting part of early
colonial history in India and
merits a detached, detailed and
rigorous study for its own sake.//

Thank
you
Rajesh Kochhar
rkochhar2000@gmail.com

Charity Schools for the Half-Castes: Race, education and the British Empire

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