Race, Religion and Law in Colonial India Trials of an Interracial Family

In a crowded commercial neighborhood of the south Indian city of Bellary, there once stood a distillery owned and operated by a Tamilspeaking Protestant named Matthew Abraham. Matthew came from the low-ranking paraiyar community (one among many so-called untouchable groups). In 1820, he married a woman of Anglo-Portuguese descent, Charlotte Fox.1 Since 1800, Bellary was under the rule of the English East India Company. So strategic was Bellary’s location that the Company established a military cantonment in the northwest section of the city. During the 1830s, Matthew became wealthy by producing liquor and selling it to the troops. His younger brother Francis assisted him at the distillery and assumed its management after his death. For a time, the interracial couple, their two “half-caste” sons, Francis, and members of their extended family shared a common household and enjoyed a relatively affluent lifestyle under Company rule.