ABSTRACT
For many Anglo-Indians, the Second World War brought a high point of opportunities and affluence. It also reemphasised the claims of the majority to an identity and a destiny more interwoven with Britain and its empire than with the idea of an Indian nation. The ideology of imperial loyalism was at first inverted by nationalists so as to construct supporters of the imperial state as traitors to the nation. Then, in the success of its project, nationalism tended to efface memories that the empire too had commanded the loyalty of a significant portion of its subject population and drawn many of them into whole-hearted belief in the moral force of loyalty to a monarchical empire. Following Partition Anglo-Indians who resided in or opted for Pakistan felt similar pressure to redesignate themselves as the mixed race group in Burma had done in 1935.
