Page 13 - Demo

THE REVIEW
JANUARY’19-JUNE’19 13
PUNE AGM 2018
and care for them and earn enough for the family. That’s how I look at it. Basically, it’s their choice. Many people have asked me what will happen
to our community? So many of our girls are marrying out - how can we stop this? The answer is, ‘No, we can’t!’ Yes, we certainly would like them to.... You and I have no right to force other persons, even our children to marry someone to keep our community alive.
Yes, what you can do is clever things like organizing national youth meets! Because they came for a good time, they participated, it was a wonderful experience and as Oscar Nigli keeps saying, ‘They grow in confidence after attending the National Youth Meet,’ and I agree with him. But, guess what? This time at Patna, where the Galstaun family and the deRozario family, and
the two schools, St Dominic Savio and Don Bosco Academy, and the branches, Danapur and Patna— they all did a wonderful job. There was a couple that came to me and said, ‘Sir, we want to talk to you.’ I said, ‘Yes, what’s happened?’ He said, ‘Sir, my name is Elvis. I’m from Vizag. This is Patricia. She’s from Jamshedpur. Can you promise us that you’ll come for our wedding?’ He said, ‘Sir, we met at the NYM last year and later this year, we’re going to get married.’ That’s the way to do it!
When I became the President-in-Chief on 4 December 2016, when I walked in only with my mother to the Delegates’ Ball, I felt sad. I didn’t feel very good. My wife was busy with her Calcutta branch, my three daughters didn’t come with me. Friends, they’re very Anglo-Indian in every way, you can meet them. I am happy to tell you that at the Delegates’ Ball this year, I will not to walk only with one lady, I shall walk with five ladies—my wife, my mother and my three daughters—who have come to the AGM because they wanted
to come. They have come to help me, yes, but
they have come primarily to be with wonderful Anglo-Indians of their age group, of the same and opposite gender. That’s the way forward!
The irony is that if you look down or frown
upon intermarriage, you’re actually questioning our very birth. The irony is the Anglo-Indian community would not have existed if there was
no intermarriage. Because of intermarriage, you and I are here. You can’t object to intermarriage now. In fact, you have to embrace the people they have married and embrace the children, who
may not technically be Anglo-Indians according
to the Green Book and the Constitution of India. Do you know when the first Anglo-Indian could technically have been born? Nine months after Vasco da Gama landed here, according to me. They didn’t come with any ladies. The Portuguese came in 1498 and they had a Governor of Portuguese India, a very clever man called Afonso de Albuquerque. He traded from the Malabar coast right up to Diu in Goa. Then he said, hang on, there’s another thing we can do: we can get our guys, who are alone, to marry local girls. And he not only got it done, he encouraged it. I don’t know whether you know this, but history will tell you that most of those who came from Europe actually encouraged it, starting with the Portuguese. Afonso de Albuquerque and others actually gave property and houses to his soldiers in Cochin if they married Indian girls, as an incentive as it were. In fact, they went on to say that the soldiers should only marry girls ‘of a certain standing’,
not any and everybody. The others came and they did the same: the Dutch weren’t fussy, the French, Dupleix himself married a Eurasian— those days we were called Eurasians—a girl
from Chandernagore. The British came and
said, ‘We are not going to do this.’ They didn’t even allow their East India Company officers to marry Eurasians, and do you know why? It’s a very interesting religious reason. Most of the Eurasian girls at that time were of Portuguese descent, because they came first and they spread. So if a Britisher was marrying a Eurasian, it was a problem for them because they were all Protestants, and the women of Portuguese origin were Catholics. But finally, even they realised that this is not going to last, and in the year 1675, the Court of Directors wrote a note to their agent at Fort St George about this practice and said