1/n
Famous actresses such as Merle Oberon and Vivien Leigh of “Gone with the Wind” fame hid their Anglo-Indian ancestry. Merle Oberon claimed to be Australian despite being Mumbai born & Vivian claimed French ancestry. Many Anglo-Indians hid their origins to escape racism.

2/n
When the British first came to India, many of them took Indian women as “wives”. Over time, the Urdu term bibi came to mean mistress in British slang for an Indian "wife". British officers would “marry” Indian women for cohabitation but rarely married them legally.

3/n
These were often not actual marriages by social standards at all. British officers used their power to exploit Indian women & left them with children and no support when they went back to England. Often these women were left helpless & poverty stricken.

4/n
The East India Company, encouraged British employees to marry & start families with Hindu women of upper castes. The Company even offered a stipend to Indian mothers if they baptized their children from a British employee, to promote Hindu conversion to Christianity.

5/n
The British coined a horrible term to describe children born of such Anglo-Indian unions: kutcha-butcha meaning half-baked bread. This reference to the mixed skin color of such children marked them as inferior & attached a stigma to their racial identity as not “pure” white.