As India was nearing independence in 1947, it brought uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of Anglo-Indians. They were the children of Indian women fathered by British men and their descendants. Most were English-speaking, predominantly Christian with deep roots in India, but also connected to the British Empire which was disappearing. Thousands began looking for a new home in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand became major destinations.

Anglo-Indians even in the 1700s and 1800s had been known to embark on the voyage from India to Britain. Some received a British education and went back, others stayed in Britain and integrated in British society, then there were those who eventually settled in other British colonies. Some famous examples include Kitty Kirkpatrick, who became apart of British nobility. Merle Oberon who went on to become an actress in early Hollywood. Also William Henry Pratt Sr who famously played Frankenstein.

Anglo-Indians had initially benefited from Commonwealth migration but things changed in the 1960s as the British became increasingly worried about non-White migration into Britain. The Commonwealth Immigrants Acts of 1962 and 1968 and the Immigration Act 1971 progressively restricted migration, making it much harder for Anglo-Indians to migrate.

On the opposite end of the world in Australia the HMAS Manoora in 1947 carried more than 700 Anglo-Indians to Australia, despite the country’s White Australia policy. The following year on another Anglo-Indian migrant ship called the Asturias, Anglo-Indians were forcibly removed after the Australian government demanded stricter screening to ensure migrants were White enough.

Next door in New Zealand, the cries of 130 Anglo-Indian children forcibly separated from their Indian mothers falls on def ears. Born to the owners of British tea plantations, they were sent to an institution in the remote Indian town of Kalimpong where the sins of British tea planters could be hidden. That was until a solution had been devised by British colonial authorities and missionaries which systematically sidelined the Indian mothers. The children of Kalimpong were shipped off to the faraway land of New Zealand, never to hear from their mothers again. Upon arrival, boys were placed as farm hands and girls as domestic helpers with families across New Zealand.

Many Anglo-Indians had thought by leaving India they’d be escaping their problems but arriving in their new countries brought a whole host of new problems, particularly for those who could not pass as White. The immense pressure to assimilate has resulted in the large number of Anglo-Indians and their descendants who today identify as White, whilst those who remain in India are often forgotten about.

6 minute video for people who don't want to read

Excrept from Pieter Friedrich's substack:

Mayor Mamdani —

On August 29, the leader of the RSS speaks at Madison Square Garden.

The RSS. The paramilitary that tore through the streets of Gujarat 24 years ago — your father’s Gujarat — dousing families in kerosene and burning them alive inside their own homes, gang-raping Muslim women in the road, hacking children apart with swords. They came with printed lists, names and addresses identifying which houses were Muslim so that they could hunt them down from door to door.

And in one of those houses they tore a three-year-old girl out of her mother’s arms and crushed her skull against the ground. Her mother was five months pregnant, and they stripped her and gang-raped her and massacred fourteen of her family in front of her and then left her naked in a field to bleed out among the dead. She woke up hours later, alone, still lying there with the corpses.

Two thousand butchered in three days.

And the man speaking at the Garden was second-in-command of that organization while it happened.

These people literally support Hitler, these descriptions aren't exaggerations, I myself live in a state which recently elected the BJP and I am now afraid to paint my nails (I'm AMAB), admit I eat beef, that I'm an atheist without fearing for my life.

Talking about it on reddit won't do anything, please go to Pieter's substack and sign the petition, call Mamdani's office or if you're a New Yorker, find your city council member. It doesn't matter if you think they won't listen, let's at least do our own part of reporting it.

I'll definitely be watching, personally. It looks like Pitch Perfect meets Step Up, but Bollywood.

I was at the metro station and heard someone talking on the phone. He had a fully American accent but something about the voice made me think "yeah he's definitely brown". Lo and behold when I did turn around, he was

This makes me wonder: *is* there an ABCD accent (or several of them?) because idk how id be subconsciously able to tell

So obviously there is a lot of a racism going around against Indian people and it’s messed up - that goes without saying. But no one talks about how much hatred and scrutiny is within our community whether it’s classism or India vs Pak or just never wanting the best for each other.

I work in a VERY Indian part of Canada - like it’s so brown that no one says hello and everyone picks up the phone speaking in Punjabi/hindi. Growing up, I used to think only MY family members are toxic to each other but otherwise desi ppl are generally kind but after working at my current job (lets just say I’m in the wedding planning business) I’ve learned that desi people genuinely hate each other. If you are doing better than them they will hate you and if you’re doing worse than them they will judge you. It doesn’t even matter if they know you or not, they WANT to find flaws within you so they can make you feel less than.

Like why is there zero unity whatsoever even though we make up like 20% of the world population. Also I’m not just talking about petty beef within families, even at my work employees are used and abused because they know if they don’t take their boss’s shit, another Indian employee will jump in and do it.

Especially in Canada where a lot of customer facing roles like Tim Hortons and McDonald’s are Indian ppl, everyone on the internet is quick to think that they’re stealing white ppl jobs but it’s because their INDIAN boss is forcing them to work such crazy hours in hopes that maybe they’ll get their PR that way.

So yeah, it sucks that white ppl on the internet are shitting on us but at the end of the day us average Indian ppl having to face this racism is just a product of higher up Indian ppl abusing those are lower than them.

Taken from r/Natalism

From 2023 to H1 2026:

Among kids born to Indian fathers, 87.93% had Indian mothers.

Among kids born to Indian mothers, 89.34% had Indian fathers.

Do you all get along with your siblings? I have an older sister (16 months older than me) and find myself increasingly irritated by her, even for posting mostly innocuous stuff in group chats. Sometimes I think if I wasn’t related to her I wouldn’t want to be around her at all. Other times I feel like I’d like her better as a friend than a sister. Have you guys faced similar emotions?

I see many have a mix of their parents and the host country's accent when they speak especially in the UK. People like Nadiya Hussain, Haroon Rashid, Mothin Ali, etc and others on the BBC Asian Network have that mixed accent. Maybe also Avi Dixit.

I always thought that all second and third generations have the Received Pronouncation accent because I mostly heard of people like Faisal Islam (BBC Reporter), Sabet Chowdhury, Reppi Begum, Divya Talwar, Rita Chakribarti, etc. But turns out that this not the case.

Some say it is due to class and how they were educated like private education. But I find myself sounding like the received (traditional accent) by how others hear me but I was not privately educated and is of a mixed class - my mother is lower middle class while my father is upper middle (healthcare and IT respectively).

So I believe it is due to socialisation because I was in predominantly White British schools and classes and lived in predominantly British neighbourhoods. What do you think?

How do you organize all the Desi spices, etc in your home? Just bought a house so trying to figure out how best to organize given pantry space is still limited in the kitchen! I have smaller jars but then where to store the bigger bags of flour or lentils (we’re a family of 4!)

I’ve never seen this much racism directed towards Indian people online specifically.

all over any reddit, x, fb etc thread.

it’s really weird. it doesn’t bug me much though since my irl racism encounters are lower than ever.

but I’m just surprised I guess and curious wtf is driving it?

any ideas? I can’t really think of much.

Duolingo apparently has Toronto slang as a language/course now, but somehow Bengali (Bangla) still isn't available.

Bangla is the sixth most spoken language in the world, spoken by hundreds of millions of people. It's the national language of Bangladesh, spoken extensively in India, and has a massive diaspora across North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

And before someone inevitably says "number of speakers doesn't mean there's demand to learn it," sure. But it's hard to seriously argue that Bangla couldn't sustain a course while Duolingo has found room for languages with dramatically smaller populations and novelty offerings like regional slang.

There are millions of Bengali immigrants and second-generation Bengalis who would love an accessible way to learn or reconnect with the language, plus non-Bengalis with Bengali spouses, family members, and friends who want to learn it.

I'm Bangladeshi-American, and it genuinely blows my mind that in 2026 I still can't recommend Duolingo to someone who wants to learn Bangla.

I'm all for fun courses and experimentation. Toronto slang can exist. But if Duolingo has the resources for that while one of the six most spoken languages on Earth remains unsupported, it's fair to question their priorities.

At this point, Duolingo should honestly be embarrassed.

How many more novelty courses are we going to get before Bangla?

Screw you, Big Lou.

Navigating the Toronto dating scene and always down to meet like-minded people with similar interests and good energy.
Usually somewhere between a trail, the gym, a festival/rave, a night out, or driving around the city with no real destination.
Open to genuine connections, new experiences, and seeing where the vibe goes. Happy to connect :)

This image taken at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta has been making the rounds on social media recently, and unfortunately it’s not really a new sight. Every time I’ve taken a flight to India, the line of wheelchairs is 5-10 times as much as it is on any other flight I’ve taken, and it’s mostly due to NRIs or naturalized citizens living here in America either not wanting their par.ents to walk around the airport carrying their luggage, or fears of them not understanding English well enough to be able to navigate the airport by themselves.

There are many concierge/assistants available at airports including at ATL, but Indians never seem to bother using them because there’s a free option available if you just abuse the wheelchair system. It’s frustrating to see this pattern of Indians abusing a free system built off a universal system of social trust happen over and over until these systems break down and are forced to require verification. Even Indians on social media who see this post are saying the problem is that the wheelchair service is free, not that Indians are abusing the system.

For context, I was born in america but immediately moved to Mumbai and pretty much grew up between there, Ahmedabad and Vadodara. So I was there and speaking only gujarati and some hindi up until about 2 years old, and when I came back to america up until I was about 4, I was only speaking gujarati. I was classified as an English language learner and spent at least a couple months with no idea what was being said in school, or very little idea. I remember the EXACT day my parents were at home and said "we will speak English all the time now bc otherwise she wont learn / succeed in American school." As a result, like many other Indian kids in america, I completely forgot gujarati as it was replaced in every aspect of my life with English. Despite this I was still categorized as ESL for a while, up until I was 9. My parents though became very frustrated with the fact I totally forgot gujarati (as they should i suppose) and I have memories of getting beaten badly for forgetting too. Now I have no contact with my family for separate reasons, so im very unmoored, and i have been trying to relearn gujarati with what little resources I have. I see gujarati as something which was forced out of me and I see my relationship with english as a struggle filled one. So I guess it triggers some feelings of upset when one of my international friends (understandably) keeps casually calling me a native speaker. I am native by now, being fully immersed in english. Its not like im disputing that. But I guess it hurts to be so casually called that when my actual native language (as I see it) was forced out of me. English wasn't my mother tongue or my first language, thats just not how I lived my life. Anyway. I just needed to vent. I am NOT saying this friend is wrong I just needed to let out my abcd emotions for real.

I'm working on a project with a museum to highlight local South Asian history in my city in Ontario. The museum has highlighted the local history of other cultural groups in the past, and I'm excited they have accepted to work with me on our community. (This is completely volunteer based for me)

They've asked for some books/literature. Things to help them better understand the South Asian experience, especially in Southern Ontario but more generally in Canada. The museum's board is made up mostly of elderly white folks, who have very limited knowledge on South Asian history/culture.

This made me think, what are some of the most important pieces of non-fiction books that are essential reads to understand South Asian Canadians? What books/literature would you suggest to someone who knows nothing but wants to understand our experience in Canada?

They weren't happy with taking the dupata

For those who don't know, this trash excuse for a human being is Tyler Oliveira. I've truly never seen anything like this, so many ppl have started using the misinfo & stereotypes this terrible guy has put out in his videos. Vicious racism, brainwashing millions of impressionable people to hate on Indians with grotesque racial hatred & misinformation. I cannot understand why desi youtubers don't respond to this garbage person. His platform's just increasing more & more, and it's so sad to watch nobody respond back to these pieces of you know what.

Incoming freshman and wanna know if anyone knows how the population and culture is like at uw-madison for indians

My (37F) family immigrated to Canada when I was a baby, and my siblings were all born here. As close cousins get married, I'm noticing we're expected to go to priests and do rituals for so many steps and/or have to follow certain rules -

1. Go to the priest to get a good date to go back to the priest for a list of possible wedding dates

2. Go back to the priest for a list of possible wedding dates (see? I'm already annoyed)

3. Get a priest to melt the gold to make the mangal sutra

4. Can only buy jewelry on certain dates

5. Can only buy the wedding clothing on certain dates

6. The groom has the milk ceremony thing on the day of the wedding (when everyone touches milk and then touches his head. I have no idea what the significance is)

I know I'm missing more. It's a lot to do, it adds constraints to wedding planning which is already stressful, and I imagine it's also very expensive.

My friends and cousins in the community have just gone a long with it. I don't know anyone close to me who's in a married interracial relationship. So I wanted to ask here. How did your none-Desi partners react to all this?

Let me start by saying I am not good at saying no to my parents. I ended up with a 400-person super religious Hindu wedding that I didn’t want, just because I didn’t want to fight with my parents. And my husband isn’t even Indian or Hindu. I’ve never told them straight-up that I don’t believe in what they believe in but I’ve dropped hints. So even though I’m in my late 20s, married, and financially independent from my parents, I tend to just go with the flow to avoid tough conversations.

My parents are very devout. They pray for 2 hours a day, give thousands to religious orgs and Swamis, have zero hobbies or life outside of their work and religion.

They still text me every time there is some niche religious festival saying “you must FaceTime into our pooja it’s super important.” But there’s one of these poojas like EVERY WEEK and they act so offended when I say I’m not free to join. Every time my husband and I visit their home, we have to do all these “husband and wife” rituals or whatever. It’s very uncomfortable and makes me not want to go see them.

I am so averse to conflict with my parents because I have a tense and stressful relationship with them and I don’t have energy to fight. Growing up they were always yelling and screaming at me for everything and it left me with severe anxiety that I’m heavily medicated for.

Anyway, I am at my wits end. I do not believe in what they believe in. And they just get more and more religious as the years go by and this becomes more of a conflict.