Challenge. A numerically large, distinct and surviving British community in S Asia

Ak-84

Banned
Your challenge is to leave another legacy of colonialism in India. You need to some how create a large British community in what is now the independent nations of India, Pakistan and BD.

This community should be large say several million people. Which is large enough to ve viable and distinct. History should follow OTL as nearly as possible, meaning Independence should come as it did and so should partition although the forms of the above can be different.

So, how do you do it.
 
You mean something similar in status to white South Africans, minus apartheid?
Well, was there ever an especially large number of British colonists in India? I mean, I know there were troops and administrators and what have you, but actual settlers similar to what the French had in Algeria?
 

Ak-84

Banned
The number of Europeans was about 500,000 to 750,000 at its peak. They were especially prominent in cities such as Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Lahore. Many were businessmen and professsionals.
 
The number of Europeans was about 500,000 to 750,000 at its peak. They were especially prominent in cities such as Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Lahore. Many were businessmen and professsionals.

The problem was that unlike the French in Algeria the British in India were transient.
Settlers go to a country (Algeria, America, South Africa etc.) buy land and houses set up their lives. They marry have kids and die there and the children follow in their footsteps.
Apart from a tiny minority (mainly Tea planters in Assam and Sri Lanka c. 20,000) most British in India were transient, they were businessmen sent out to run the Indian branch of a corporation (like HSBC) for a few years or Civil Servants or soldiers who came home at the end of their posting with their families.
With Independence the majority who worked for the British government in some form or another as soldiers, civil servants or police are going to go home. Keeping the business community is much easier, even today there are over ten thousands of British ex-pats living in India, including my cousin who works for HSBC. All you need for that is to have different post-independence governments who don't nationalise and "Indianise" so much of the economy and you could easily keep a transient but renewing British ex-pat community in the tens of thousands.
 

Ak-84

Banned
Not true. There was a large class of people who lived several generation in India. The dominated the business and professional clSses at least till the turn of the century.
 
Though I dont know how many there are, I have met one Indian citizen who was culturally Indian and English by ethnicity. Neither he nor his parents had ever lived in the U.K.
 
Interesting challenge. My mother was born in India, during the Raj. I have a great picture somewhere of my grandfather in a pith helmet, shorts and long socks. :cool:
 
Keeping the business community is much easier, even today there are over ten thousands of British ex-pats living in India, including my cousin who works for HSBC. All you need for that is to have different post-independence governments who don't nationalise and "Indianise" so much of the economy and you could easily keep a transient but renewing British ex-pat community in the tens of thousands.

Yes but expats aren't meaningfully part of the society they live in. As someone living in Asia and having observed expat communities, the majority of them tend to insulate themselves from the societies around them and living in an artificially hermetically sealed neocolonial environment. This is getting better these days but it would certainly be the case in the 50s, which is not a good way of getting a stable as opposed to a transient community (which is what the OP seemed to be getting at). Also, lets face it- the majority of those who stayed on during the Colonial period were there because they could get special treatment and have a much lower cost of living than if they had gone back to the UK. With Independence a lot of the special treatment goes out the window. The Brits who stayed (and there were quite a number of them) were the ones who sincerely felt India was their home- they were not a majority among the British in India.
 
Top