What looks like a typical Anglo-Indian family (1st photo) is actually a thoroughly Indian family


 the man (1882–1946) is American-born Samuel Evans Stokes Jr.—later Satyanand Stokes—who left for British India in 1904 to work as a missionary in a leprosy home, and permanently settled there to the dismay of his privileged Quaker family—living in the Simla hills region of the Punjab Province (now in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh), extending his work to other charitable acts serving the poor and campaigning for social justice, thenceforth even going on to become a freedom fighter—making him the only American member of the nationalist party Congress and participant in the Indian independence movement.


He learnt Hindustani, Western Pahari and Sanskrit, relinquished Western clothing (2nd photo shows him wearing the indigenous Khadi), married a local woman Agnes Benjamin in 1912 who hailed from a Christian convert family and with whom he had seven children, founded Tara school—named after a deceased child of his—to educate local children, had a crucial role in the abolition of the system of impressed labor in the region, worked closely with Gandhi and other leaders, opposed the British rule which led to his imprisonment for six months for sedition in 1921, introduced an apple variety imported from Louisiana that he thought suitable for the Western Himalayan climate which greatly invigorated the regional economy, wrote on philosophy and mysticism, and converted to Hinduism in 1932—his wife following suit and becoming Priyadevi. 

His legacy continues mostly in the form of the renowned Himachal apples, but he was largely forgotten until his granddaughter Asha Sharma published his biography in 1999.

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