Dr Graham's Homes, a charity based in Kalimpong, provides support
for disadvantaged Indian children. The charity was founded in 1900
with slightly different objects - to look after the illegitimate children of
tea planters. Jane McCabe is a New Zealand historian and is concerned
with one particular aspect of the charity - the very considerable efforts
by Dr Graham to find work and a home for these children in New
Zealand. Dr Graham believed that miscegenation between Europeans
and Maori people in New Zealand would allow the Kalimpong children
easily to blend into the general New Zealand racial mix. Dr Graham's
somewhat naive understanding of New Zealand, and the success or lack
of it of his plans are explored in considerable detail. Dr McCabe is
herself a member of one of these families and much of the book is
concerned with her personal discovery of this history.
The book is divided into three main sections: the Indian background,
the New Zealand settlements; and the aftermath. Genealogists
are likely to be most interested in the first of these and it has to be
confessed this is the weakest part of the book. The author is not at
home in Indian genealogical sources and it shows. On p18 she remarks
that the children could never know who their mothers were as there
were no birth certificates for the children. This is incorrect. The system
in India was for baptism certificates not birth certificates (the
'Ecclesiastical Returns'), though they also contained information as to
birth. Many of the children were baptized. Some 20 minutes of work on
my computer uncovered baptism records for five of the families Dr
McCabe writes about and in three of these we have mothers' names. I
am sure further work would uncover more. Dr McCabe writes at length
about the mothers of the children but has very little to say about the
fathers. In view of the distances to be covered round the tea garden (Dr
McCabe always uses the word 'plantation' which suggest slavery in the Southern US or Caribbean), it was essential that a planter could ride,
which usually meant being of an upper middle class family. Some were
packed off to India following youthful indiscretions. Pay at the tea
garden was poor. Assistant Managers were discouraged or even
forbidden from marrying, and were often many miles from any other
European. It is hardly surprising the tea planters took bibis. It may also
be the case that the women reckoned being the planter's bibi was
preferable to picking tea all day. The book is a mixture of social
history and a journalist reporting a personal journey. Like much
modern journalism there is a heavy emphasis on the emotional, which
gets in the way of the historical, and leads Dr McCabe to look at
matters through 21st century eyes. An example is the disruption caused
by uprooting the children from their parents and packing them off to Dr
Graham's Homes. No doubt it was a shock to the children and some
were bitterly unhappy. But if they had been born the right side of the
blanket, something similar would still have happened. They would
have been sent away to boarding school - possibly in India or more
probably in England. It is fashionable to consider parents who sent their
children to boarding school as sadistic tyrants and the children as
permanently crippled emotionally. I don't think that was how either
children or parents saw it during the Raj.
Another aspect is Dr Graham's determination that the children should
have little to do with their mothers. This may seem like callous cultural
arrogance. I suggest the main driver here was Dr Graham's devout
Presbyterian faith. He would have seen his duty as keeping the
children away from paganism. I am sure there were children who did
not go to the Homes and when the planter left merged back into the
family of their mother. It is easy for our godless age to underestimate
the strength of religious feeling of people like Dr Graham. I hope I
have not been too hard on the author in criticising the Indian section of
her book. The New Zealand section is admirable. She is clearly fully
conversant with her sources and has used them judiciously. She
explains how Dr Graham got his young adults to New Zealand, the
bureaucracy he had to contend with, and his strenuous effort to get his
charges jobs - for the most part the boys in agriculture and the girls in
domestic service. Ease of access to New Zealand deteriorated over the
20th century as protectionism, racism and the economic depression all
came into play. Dr Graham never gave up. He cultivated a large
number of well-wishers in New Zealand and was expert in dealing with
obstacles. Finally there is the aftermath and again we are back with
journalism and get a heavy emotional flavour. Nevertheless the closing
chapters on the efforts of the New Zealand descendants to find their
Indian (and British) heritage are moving.
Dr McCabe is to be congratulated on a fascinating piece of reportage.
Other aspects of Dr Graham's Homes would merit investigation. Only
about half the children got to New Zealand. What of those who stayed
in India, or came to England, or even in one or two cases America? A
new book awaits.
|