Looking into colonial past and hard questions for community

Many historians and social scientists have shown a particular interest in Kenya’s South Asian minority, perhaps because this community stands out as being especially successful in business, industry and commerce.

Having an Indian or South Asian identity within an African context is also a fascinating subject for those who seek to understand multiracial societies in both the colonial and post-independence period.

POST-INDEPENDENCE
South Asian identity in Kenya has been examined widely, so much so that there are several terms that have been used describe this minority; from Kenyan Asian to Asian African to Kenyan Indian, the terminology varies, depending on who is using it.

The most widely covered subject in literary and scholarly works has been the role of South Asians of Indian or Pakistani origin in Kenya’s independence struggle.

One such book, Liberating Minds, Restoring Kenyan History: Anti-Imperialist Resistance by Progressive South Asian Kenyans 1884-1965, by Nazmi Durrani, was launched last month in Nairobi.

KENYA'S LIBERATION

The French scholar Michel Adam also recently released the English translation of an anthology he edited called Indian Africa.

Many sections of my book Triple Heritage are also devoted to this topic and several writers before and after me have written on the subject.

The historian Robert Gregory published one of the most authoritative books on race relations in East Africa under British imperialism — India and East Africa.

Dana Seidenberg’s Uhuru and the Kenya Indians is an important research tool for those seeking to understand the role Indians in Kenya played in the country’s liberation.

HEROES

More recent books by Zarina Patel and Pheroze Nowrojee, and others, have shed light on the lives of forgotten heroes, such as the trade unionist Makhan Singh and politician Pio Gama Pinto, and members of their own families.

There have also been attempts to explore social aspects of this community.

The late Cynthia Salvadori spent a lifetime trying to demystify and describe the diverse cultures of the many religions and subgroups that the South Asian community in Kenya belongs to.

Neera Kapur-Dromsom’s memoir From Jhelum to Tana provides insights into the complex lives of her extended Kenyan Punjabi family, particularly the women.

RACE RELATIONS

Academics such as Godwin Siundu and J.K.S. Makokha have examined Kenyan Asian literature and the role it has played in shaping perceptions of this minority.

Yash and Dharam Ghai described the social fabric of this minority in their seminal Portrait of a minority: Asians in East Africa published in 1960s.

Shiva Naipaul’s North of South is a searing indictment of race relations between Kenyan Asians and Africans in a post-colonial context.

M.G. Vassanji’s The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is one of best fictional accounts of contemporary Kenya and its South Asian minority that I have read so far.

MIDDLEMEN

These are all good and important works that document the stories of a minority that has been vilified and praised in equal measure.

However, there seems to be a nostalgic obsession with the colonial past that tends to paint the South Asian community as one that stood arm in arm with African struggles for independence, and which identified with African aspirations.

Yet, we know that many South Asians in Kenya were ambivalent about the country’s independence because, having gained some “privileges” as the “middlemen” sandwiched between the British colonisers and their African subjects, they were not sure whether the new African rulers would be sympathetic towards them and accept them as equal citizens.

ETHNICITY
I am all for documenting history, but I think we would be doing a disservice to scholarship and literature if we failed to document the role members of this minority are playing in events shaping Kenya today.

For example, how have Vimal Shah and Manu Chandaria’s giant companies impacted the economy of the East African region?

What role are the young South Asians playing in politics, the economy, sports, science, medicine and the arts?

How has the ethnicity-based politics impacted this minority?

CORRUPTION
And why have some notorious members of this community become the face of so many of the country’s mega financial scandals, be it Goldenberg, Anglo Leasing or the collapsed banks?

Is this because, like Vikram in Vassanji’s novel, this minority has learned that corruption facilitated by patronage networks pays and ensures one’s economic survival?

These are some of the hard questions that I would like contemporary scholars and writers to examine.

[email protected]