Angling for the Angles!

ANGLO-PHILES IN INDIA

An anonymous poster has raised two interesting points on my last post.
He/she says
1.Anglophiles in india are a dead tribe
2.They are basically a post-colonial creation
3.They may have been Francophiles too, given that Anglophilia is merely an obsession with an "Other"
4.They are basically doomed-as the society which created it has long disaapeared.
On this my retort would be:
1.Anglophiles in India are no mere post-colonial creatures.Though, physically so, their mental universe is steeped in a way of life harking back to the British Raj.
2.Therefore Anglophiles in India are bound by an organic link to the coloniser:the British, and not the French, Dutch et al(except of course in those terrains/enclaves where other European powers were the colonisers)
3.I donot think they are dead.They will exist till my generation-late baby-boomers coming of age in an India of the 1970's and 1980's , especially in erstwhile colonial bridgeheads like Calcutta, pass away.Yes, old boy(or girl) we are still alive and kicking
4.The conception of an "Other" is not post-colonial in entirety.It harks back to the assumptions, attractions, repulsions, mimicry and synthesis evolved by the experience of British Empire.
5.I should also think that the British themselves are not immune to this "special relationship"-given the obsession of the British media till the present day with anything South Asian?!
Admitted, the British also had colonies in Africa and the Carribean-where too, notions of Anglophilia in various permutations and combinations must be in existence.Since here, we discuss India and the Indian subcontinent, I keep my comments predominantly for this area, which I also speak of from my personal experience.
I suspect that a lot of the denial of Anglophilia as it exists in the present day is because the peculiar concatenation of imperial ideology, policies, mental constructs-indeed the whole Weltanschaung of British empire and "Britishness" in its original avatar, are unpopular and decried by the very society which created it.
In that sense, I do agree entirely with the anonymous writer that whether in India or in Britain, those of us who cling on to Anglophilia or the identity of a predominantly monocultural, white Britain are in a minority, in grave danger of appearing either as obsequious anti-patriots or if in Britain as reviled racists.
That doesnot however mean we give in to the tyranny of the majority and pretend we donot exist!!
P.S I cannot resist ending this with a quote from my late grandfather, who died three years ago at a ripe old age of 93.he used to say, he is passionately in love with his one and only mistress, though he also loved his wife, my grandmother.His mistress? He called her "the English language"!!