http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IE420071001052341&Page=4&Headline=British+comedian+discovers+he+is...+Indian!&Title=Features+-+People+&+Lifestyle&Topic=0&

British comedian discovers he is... Indian!
Monday October 1 2007 15:45 IST
IANS
LONDON: Well-known British comedian and theatre actor Alistair McGowan's search for his roots has led him to discover he is Anglo-Indian - a fact his father tried to hide from him all his life.

“My father's parents died before I was born and the only connection with India that I can remember are occasional telephone calls from an Indian woman asking to speak to 'George McGowan please'.”

“My sister Kay and I would hear him say 'Hello Auntie-ji' (or Aunty Jean, as we thought then), and vaguely hear him use some Indian-sounding words.”

But when his father died in 2003, Alistair McGowan had to dig out his birth certificate in order to obtain the death certificate. “On the 74-year-old slip of paper, under the word 'caste', was the term 'Anglo-Indian',” the 43-year-old actor wrote in the Sunday Times.

His discovery and a subsequent search for roots that takes him to Kolkata and Uttar Pradesh is to be shown on BBC television on Thursday.

Although McGowan is white, his story is not entirely surprising. Relationships between British men and Indian women were commonplace - even encouraged - during the colonial years. But many modern-day Britons used to be less than forthcoming in acknowledging their Anglo-Indian roots.

This was put down to a legacy of racism, the desire to 'fit in' and the somewhat fuzzy identities and allegiances of many Anglo-Indians themselves.

McGowan's father, who was born in Kolkata, hid his Indian roots by telling his children that they were “an English family who happened to be living in India”. And when he moved to Worcestershire in southeast England after marriage, he claimed he was slightly dark-skinned because he had spent the summer working in greenhouses.

Visiting Kolkata and Chunar in Uttar Pradesh for the BBC film, Alistair McGowan says that once he had established his Anglo-Indian roots, he found out that he was the first McGowan to be born in Britain in more than 200 years.

The previous 'Anglo' was John McGowan, who went to India in 1750, “clearly seduced not only by a local Indian girl (Maria de la Cruz) but by the fact that he would be paid to have children with her” - a reference to a reported colonial policy to pay British soldiers to widen their genetic pool.

The biggest shock for Alistair, however, lay in the discovery that John McGowan had sailed to India from Ireland - whereas the family myth was that the McGowans were from Scotland.

“We have no actual records of John's birth and family myth that says Scotland. My heart says Scotland. I will cling on to Scotland. And embrace India. Like a true Englishman.”

How dare he.
string him up

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