We often hear of significant populations of "mulatto" (half white, half black) individuals in histories of the Americas, particularly the Caribbean, the Deep South, and South America (including Brazil). I was wondering if something similar occurred in other British/European colonies, and what happened to those particular people during the decolonization period.
There are really two separate communities of “Anglo-Indians” with different geographic origins. The earlier community originates with Indian men who crewed ships owned by the British East India Company. They settled in England in the early 18th century and took British wives. The other group is the result of British men posted in India who took Indian wives in the latter half of the 18th century. Their cultures are quite different, one being more British and the other more Indian.
In 1757 when the Brits won the Battle of Plassey and gained their first toe-hold in India, they realized they were going to be there for the long term. Since there were no British women in India at the time, they started marrying Indian women. But this custom was relatively short lived. Around 1800, British women began arriving in India in large numbers, mostly the sisters, daughters or other dependents of men posted in India. As the pool of British women grew, marriages to Indians became uncommon. After the mutiny of 1857, new laws made interracial marriages illegal.
Anglo-Indians were somewhat isolated by society – the Brits didn’t accept them as their own, the Indians thought them traitors. As a result, they created their own subculture, adopting Christianity, speaking English, developing their own Anglo-Indian cuisine. Being shunned by both the Brits and Indians, they intermarried among themselves. But their community grew and prospered, to the point that it numbered around 800,000 people at independence in 1947. Note that by this time British-Indian marriages were a thing of the distant past, so these were just the descendants of those “first-generation” Anglo-Indians of the late 18th century.
During the independence movement things became a bit uncomfortable for them because the prevalent anti-British sentiment rubbed off on them. Some of them emigrated away at this time, to the UK, but mostly to other commonwealth countries. But plenty remained in India, enough of them that Nehru awarded two permanent seats to them in Parliament.
The Indian constitution provides protection to religious and linguistic groups, so they have been a recognized minority group ever since independence. But the social barriers have slowly eroded and most of them have blended into the Indian population and are no longer a separate group. But there are still around 350,000 who officially identify as “Anglo-Indian”, at least for legal purposes.
The Anglo-Indian community in England goes back to the Indian sailors in the early 1700’s who settled in England and took British wives. Around the time of WWI, there were over 50,000 Indian men living in Britain with British wives and their Anglo-Indian children. Later, their numbers were augmented by Anglo-Indians from India who migrated to England during the Independence movement. I don’t know how many of their descendants exist today, but I’m guessing it’s fewer than the number of Anglo-Indians in India. In England, they’re generally just part of the “mixed race” community.