Colonel James Skinner was an Anglo-Indian military adventurer and soldier of the East India Company of British India. Prior to this he also served briefly as a mercenary in the Maratha Army. He became known as Sikandar Sahib later in life and is most known for two cavalry regiments he raised for the British at Hansi in 1803, known as 1st Skinner's Horse and 3rd Skinner's Horse, which are still units of the Indian Army.

Anglo-Indian people fall into three different groups: people of mixed-race origin with Indian and British ancestry, people of unmixed Indian descent born or living in the United Kingdom, and people of unmixed British descent born or living in India. The latter sense is now mostly historical. People fitting the middle definition are more usually known as British Asian or British Indian. This article focuses primarily on the modern definition, a distinct minority community of mixed-race Eurasian ancestry, whose first language is ordinarily English.