1 00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:07,060 I'm. Thanks very much, dificil, for inviting me and and for putting this on. 2 00:00:07,060 --> 00:00:19,340 It's yeah, it's a real pleasure and also a bit weird for me to be speaking because my, my, my mother and my grandparents were both expelled in 1972. 3 00:00:19,340 --> 00:00:26,360 And so this is something that kind of exists in family memory and story and just very from a kind of scholarly lens is is quite different. 4 00:00:26,360 --> 00:00:30,570 So, yeah, I'll make a start. 5 00:00:30,570 --> 00:00:39,150 So of the handful of sociological and ethnographic studies of East Africa's Indian communities that appeared during the 1960s, 6 00:00:39,150 --> 00:00:47,070 only one did not use the term Asian and its title in the Indians and Uganda Caste and Sex in a Plural Society, 7 00:00:47,070 --> 00:00:51,390 published as part of Ernest Gelinas Human Nature of Human Society series. 8 00:00:51,390 --> 00:01:01,620 In 1968, the sociologist Ajustes Morris opted to use the word Indian rather than what he saw as the more ambiguous and imprecise label Asian. 9 00:01:01,620 --> 00:01:09,720 Despite the fact that the latter was already far more common in administrated as well as scholarly parlance three years earlier, 10 00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:18,540 Durham Guy, a lecturer in economics at Macquarie, noted in a footnote on the first page of his edited volume Portrait of a Minority Asians 11 00:01:18,540 --> 00:01:23,790 in East Africa quote practically all of them are of Indian and Pakistani origin. 12 00:01:23,790 --> 00:01:31,920 The term Asian came into use only after the partition of India, as the more accurate Indian was no longer acceptable to the Muslims. 13 00:01:31,920 --> 00:01:36,630 Asian is used here to conform with current usage. It does not include the Arabs. 14 00:01:36,630 --> 00:01:44,250 For example, in the Asians of East Africa in 1960, a former colonial administrator in Zanzibar, 15 00:01:44,250 --> 00:01:52,530 Lawrence Hollingsworth, used Indian as a purely historical term to refer to the inhabitants of an undivided India. 16 00:01:52,530 --> 00:02:00,900 Morris, by continuing to use India, was compelled in his preface to pre-emptively apologise to his quote friends in the Indian community, 17 00:02:00,900 --> 00:02:07,650 many of whom are Pakistani origin lest they consider it impolite or offensive. 18 00:02:07,650 --> 00:02:12,240 The term Asian emerged emerged before 1947, 19 00:02:12,240 --> 00:02:22,800 really kind of came into use and was thrust into use after 1947 as a kind of superficial container meant to evade the problem of discursive, 20 00:02:22,800 --> 00:02:28,620 mixing up diaspora with the citizens of new post-colonial states like India and Pakistan. 21 00:02:28,620 --> 00:02:35,010 But at the same time, satisfying existing colonial policies of multiracial ism in East Africa. 22 00:02:35,010 --> 00:02:39,330 Later, the term Asian would follow, the community had named to Europe, 23 00:02:39,330 --> 00:02:48,150 helping to bridge the uneven and awkward transition from race to ethnicity that took place in the latter half of the 20th century. 24 00:02:48,150 --> 00:02:53,160 Many here will probably be familiar with the fact that British Census forms List Asian 25 00:02:53,160 --> 00:02:58,140 or Asian British as one of a handful of possible ethnicities one can choose from, 26 00:02:58,140 --> 00:03:07,030 which then paradoxically break down into nationality like Asian, Indian, Asian, like, say, Asian and Bangladeshi, etc. 27 00:03:07,030 --> 00:03:14,830 The use by the census of Asian in this particular way was a catchall category, formalised only in 2001 actually, 28 00:03:14,830 --> 00:03:21,550 and was in fact the result of several own focus groups dating back to the 1990s. 29 00:03:21,550 --> 00:03:33,520 This very brief and selective genealogy of the term demonstrates how indefinite and to some extent, accidental Asian really was as a category. 30 00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:40,030 Indeed, even when Asian was used by mid-century researchers like the guy or the historian James Mangold, 31 00:03:40,030 --> 00:03:44,200 it was deployed begrudgingly, always as a kind of outer shell, 32 00:03:44,200 --> 00:03:51,070 aspirational for some and annoying for others, and always followed up by a caveat that it was in any case, 33 00:03:51,070 --> 00:03:55,150 very difficult to group these diverse communities together in the first place. 34 00:03:55,150 --> 00:04:00,250 Splintered as they were and always have been along different lines. 35 00:04:00,250 --> 00:04:04,780 As does Morris himself observed the relatively open ended question. 36 00:04:04,780 --> 00:04:12,580 What is your community, which is the question that he posed to his subjects in Uganda in the 1950s, 37 00:04:12,580 --> 00:04:19,990 was always answered by the name of a caste or sex, and certainly not by invoking India, Asia or Africa. 38 00:04:19,990 --> 00:04:25,540 If anything, Maurice realised the conversation would always tilt towards the particular, 39 00:04:25,540 --> 00:04:29,920 not the abstract leading eventually and inevitably to the bedrock. 40 00:04:29,920 --> 00:04:34,930 The question the Murray Jackie Typekit. What is your past? 41 00:04:34,930 --> 00:04:41,140 This splintering, as I have already alluded to, was itself the object of study and reflection, 42 00:04:41,140 --> 00:04:49,090 especially by East African nations who saw it as a major problem of their for their community in a decolonising world. 43 00:04:49,090 --> 00:05:00,580 So the this kind of inherent disunity that this that even the assumption of Asian is a casual category sort of created, argued Yoshiki, 44 00:05:00,580 --> 00:05:09,730 a Kenyan born scholar of constitutional law writing in the 1960s had the effect that the quote Asian community was unable to formulate a joint, 45 00:05:09,730 --> 00:05:13,870 coherent and consistent policy vis-a-vis African nationalism. 46 00:05:13,870 --> 00:05:17,420 We've heard a little bit about this already. 47 00:05:17,420 --> 00:05:24,440 So this despite the kind of complexities and ambiguity of this term, much of the work on the political and to a lesser extent, 48 00:05:24,440 --> 00:05:29,150 the intellectual history of East Africans Asians has assumed a coherence, 49 00:05:29,150 --> 00:05:38,100 focussing as it usually does on the claims put forth through the various Asian associations in the moments before and after decolonisation. 50 00:05:38,100 --> 00:05:43,730 So a lot of attention has been given to the the language deployed by the Asian associations. 51 00:05:43,730 --> 00:05:49,490 And yet, as historians of anti-colonial thought have suggested for some time now, India has a political difference. 52 00:05:49,490 --> 00:05:57,890 We're often located and articulated not only at the level of party politics and the contours of such associations, but in the language of religion. 53 00:05:57,890 --> 00:06:04,070 And what we might call the fabric of the social and was often meant to be resolved there as well. 54 00:06:04,070 --> 00:06:10,880 One well-known example, which we've already heard about is the discussion around intermarriage and intimacy between Indians and Africans. 55 00:06:10,880 --> 00:06:18,590 Famously articulated by Tom Moir in Kenya a bit later, Idi Amin in East Africa met in Uganda. 56 00:06:18,590 --> 00:06:27,470 So today I want to explore the claims of Indian communities in Uganda who did not try to craft a united front as Asians, 57 00:06:27,470 --> 00:06:36,590 namely merchant communities like the US. These groups tended instead to proceed in a negative way that is by not calling themselves 58 00:06:36,590 --> 00:06:42,380 Asians and by detaching themselves from the subcontinent and Indian signifiers. 59 00:06:42,380 --> 00:06:50,240 So but someone like Ibrahim, nothing you could say in a visit to England in 1963 quote We have no connexion whatever with India or Pakistan. 60 00:06:50,240 --> 00:06:54,860 Indeed, I am more of a stranger in India or Pakistan than in England. 61 00:06:54,860 --> 00:07:05,120 This came at a time and already concerned about this at a time when the when the very idea of an Asian world led by India was gaining currency. 62 00:07:05,120 --> 00:07:12,140 So, you know, we should remember that India was often referred to as Asia in miniature and in 1947 hosted the first 63 00:07:12,140 --> 00:07:18,590 Asian Relations Conference at which members from Kenya were invited to observe but not to participate. 64 00:07:18,590 --> 00:07:30,200 And while much has been written on the Afro-Asian Solidarity movements that were quite active at this time, these containers, of course, 65 00:07:30,200 --> 00:07:34,190 they were crafted as containers for anti-colonial political thought that Africa and Asia 66 00:07:34,190 --> 00:07:38,690 first had to be kind of like exclusively cleaved apart and then reunited on new terms, 67 00:07:38,690 --> 00:07:51,200 right? So in addition to sort of rejecting Asian, these groups would also try and craft as well as inhabit new ideas of brotherhood rooted in Islam, 68 00:07:51,200 --> 00:07:58,040 which it was hoped would transcend difference in the whole detaching themselves from Asia in this way. 69 00:07:58,040 --> 00:08:02,810 This coincided with an insistence on their new intimacy with Africans, 70 00:08:02,810 --> 00:08:11,660 one rooted for Islam and ideas of brotherhood that always grounded in the fabric of the social communities like the courtyards. 71 00:08:11,660 --> 00:08:17,210 And the would throughout the 1950s and 60s deployed the language of fraternity seeking 72 00:08:17,210 --> 00:08:22,550 to convert themselves from what they had been neighbours into brothers and friends. 73 00:08:22,550 --> 00:08:29,180 And I think the language of fraternity and brotherhood really opens up the space for accusations of betrayal and 74 00:08:29,180 --> 00:08:34,800 accusations of cheating and the familiar language that we kind of are inside deployed against Asian communities. 75 00:08:34,800 --> 00:08:42,820 So I'm looking at it from the other end. So this move had a precedent from the colonial period already in 1933, 76 00:08:42,820 --> 00:08:46,840 when the colonial government attempted to bring various independently run Indian 77 00:08:46,840 --> 00:08:52,330 schools across East Africa together into larger non-denominational alternatives. 78 00:08:52,330 --> 00:08:58,000 Groups like the Coolidge's demanded that their schools remain separate, writing to the colonial office. 79 00:08:58,000 --> 00:09:02,290 They premised this idea premised this on the idea that there was a fundamental 80 00:09:02,290 --> 00:09:07,720 distinction between the Ismaili hijackers and other Indian communities in the region. 81 00:09:07,720 --> 00:09:11,320 Quote Most of the other Indians still have their roots in the motherland, 82 00:09:11,320 --> 00:09:16,600 send their children across the ocean for education and retired to India later in life. 83 00:09:16,600 --> 00:09:21,250 The smileys, on the other hand, have made East Africa their home in the fullest sense. 84 00:09:21,250 --> 00:09:26,050 So this is used not to, you know, not in conversation with African nationalists as exact language. 85 00:09:26,050 --> 00:09:32,360 We use them decades later. But in conversation with the colonial state. 86 00:09:32,360 --> 00:09:38,600 Well, other communities in the kind of circular migration around the Indian Ocean had become common amongst the draftees, 87 00:09:38,600 --> 00:09:45,680 for example, other good draftees, for example, were bound to return to India and this collapse in the totality of Asia. 88 00:09:45,680 --> 00:09:50,700 Groups like the Coolidge's were to be regarded as intimately connected to lack. 89 00:09:50,700 --> 00:09:54,780 This language of proximity, as well as distinction would continue, 90 00:09:54,780 --> 00:09:59,610 and this kind of speaks to what council is saying about closeness and distance kind of operating simultaneously, 91 00:09:59,610 --> 00:10:08,010 the language of proximity, as well as a distinction, would continue into the early 1950s when a dinner, which included both culture and were students. 92 00:10:08,010 --> 00:10:14,190 The Aga Khan explicitly instructed those in attendance to quote, Stop calling yourselves Asians. 93 00:10:14,190 --> 00:10:18,720 The idea argued that they would have no hope of continuing in Africa unless they 94 00:10:18,720 --> 00:10:23,670 quote succeeded in winning the esteem of the African people quote in Africa. 95 00:10:23,670 --> 00:10:28,890 The day will come when the people of that vast continent and this is in the nineteen fifty two and Africa. 96 00:10:28,890 --> 00:10:33,090 The day will come when the people of that vast continent will want to know who the foreigners are. 97 00:10:33,090 --> 00:10:39,090 I don't like the idea of calling yourselves Asians in Africa anymore, and I like the idea of the African living in India, 98 00:10:39,090 --> 00:10:43,800 Pakistan or Burma, continuing and continuing to call himself an African. 99 00:10:43,800 --> 00:10:48,120 When you live permanently in a country, you become a member of that country. 100 00:10:48,120 --> 00:10:56,270 He invited the students in attendance to look across the Indian Ocean for instruction, taking as an example, the Indian community in Burma. 101 00:10:56,270 --> 00:11:01,800 Could they have identified themselves 100 percent? They don't live across the border. 102 00:11:01,800 --> 00:11:07,530 Whatever country you choose to live in, work for it, mix it with people and achieve its outlook. 103 00:11:07,530 --> 00:11:14,580 It was, of course, it was, of course, in reference to Burma, where in 1962 hundreds of thousands of Indians were also expelled. 104 00:11:14,580 --> 00:11:20,460 But the colonial administrator turned scholar James Furnival Wood, first coined the term plural society, 105 00:11:20,460 --> 00:11:26,940 which sociologists like Morris, who studied Uganda, would invoke to make sense of the spaces that he observed. 106 00:11:26,940 --> 00:11:36,870 The concept, which Furnival coined in his 1948 book Colonial Policy and Practise Described, based mostly on his observations in Rangoon, 107 00:11:36,870 --> 00:11:44,660 a society in which separate sections mixed but do not combine interacting in the market, but not socially. 108 00:11:44,660 --> 00:11:50,450 Shortly after the August speech, the Canadians began a wholesale rejection of Asiatic dress, 109 00:11:50,450 --> 00:11:54,470 especially women cajole women across Africa as well as in Burma. 110 00:11:54,470 --> 00:12:02,840 The tellingly not in India, Pakistan began to shed the dupatta and began wearing what was then called the colonial frock 111 00:12:02,840 --> 00:12:08,390 in order to embed themselves firmly into what the other called the Africa of the future. 112 00:12:08,390 --> 00:12:14,060 This sartorial switch aesthetically rejected an Indian pass in favour of an abstract that presents 113 00:12:14,060 --> 00:12:18,380 women in positions of leadership and the wives of those in leadership to the wives of monkeys, 114 00:12:18,380 --> 00:12:22,550 for instance, were actively encouraged to take up these new forms of dress, 115 00:12:22,550 --> 00:12:30,350 which were which were to be made from quote economic material in order to line up with new ideas of African socialism. 116 00:12:30,350 --> 00:12:39,680 Those who could not afford new colonial frocks, one community publication noted, were advised to simply make them out of old saris for quote. 117 00:12:39,680 --> 00:12:45,440 Many such saris could be in fact turned into Western costume for growing girls and to be worn until used 118 00:12:45,440 --> 00:12:53,240 by wear and tear saris were literally being cut up and refashioned into dresses in order to reject Asia. 119 00:12:53,240 --> 00:12:58,340 These instructions were not always taken seriously or wholeheartedly. 120 00:12:58,340 --> 00:13:02,240 Many women did not give up their Asiatic clothing so eagerly, 121 00:13:02,240 --> 00:13:10,250 and some women recalled in oral history work that I did some years ago how other Indian communities 122 00:13:10,250 --> 00:13:17,140 in East Africa sort of laughed at them when they would make use dresses out of sorrows. 123 00:13:17,140 --> 00:13:25,750 So in addition to this detachment from and refusal of Asia was a constructive attempt to remake Islam out of East Africa, 124 00:13:25,750 --> 00:13:33,190 ideas of Muslim Brotherhood and universal Islam underpinned the formation of groups like the East African Muslim Welfare Society, 125 00:13:33,190 --> 00:13:39,520 which I've written about before. This was an ecumenical Muslim Muslim missionary association formed out of Kampala 126 00:13:39,520 --> 00:13:43,900 and then relocated to Mombasa that was run almost entirely by the boycott. 127 00:13:43,900 --> 00:13:49,060 Whereas in the US, the society financed the construction of the Grand Mosque, 128 00:13:49,060 --> 00:13:56,680 located on one of Kampala Seven Hills built on a plot of land gifted by Prince Mother and opened in the early 1950s, 129 00:13:56,680 --> 00:14:01,240 appealing to the Brotherhood of Islam via the construction of a generic and crucially, 130 00:14:01,240 --> 00:14:08,530 a shared mosque, as well as as well as convening large eve gatherings like this one was a direct response to 131 00:14:08,530 --> 00:14:14,290 the fact that both the US and the borrowers were known in Swahili as sectarian Wajahat. 132 00:14:14,290 --> 00:14:20,860 Those who attended the Jamaat rather than and distinct from the Sunni mosque, 133 00:14:20,860 --> 00:14:25,060 those who attended the mosque, which is of course, theoretically open to all. 134 00:14:25,060 --> 00:14:33,160 And I think the picture that was shared of of of the man in the mosque with a cache. 135 00:14:33,160 --> 00:14:37,390 Of course, it's it speaks of multiple registers. It speaks to a level of economics in the cash. 136 00:14:37,390 --> 00:14:41,770 But also this is a closed space, right, that you would never be able to photograph otherwise. 137 00:14:41,770 --> 00:14:49,600 And so the making visible of an otherwise closed Indian space is also doing a lot of work there. 138 00:14:49,600 --> 00:14:53,380 But despite their many attempts to advocate for Muslim Brotherhood, 139 00:14:53,380 --> 00:15:00,640 the very fact that the courtyards in the boroughs took it upon themselves to agitate for Islam in East Africa seems to have annoyed Idi Amin, 140 00:15:00,640 --> 00:15:09,310 whose particular conception of Islam at the time had relied on novel ideas of Nubian authenticity and a direct relationship with Muslims to God. 141 00:15:09,310 --> 00:15:16,570 In March of 1972, Amin said to an audience of Korans and borders that he did not approve of quote factions in the Muslim 142 00:15:16,570 --> 00:15:23,090 community and that there was now a Muslim supreme council on which each district would be represented. 143 00:15:23,090 --> 00:15:29,540 Further arguing that any assistance by anyone to the Muslim religion should not be given to an individual, 144 00:15:29,540 --> 00:15:33,350 such as a religious leader like the Aga Khan or the side, 145 00:15:33,350 --> 00:15:44,810 but only to the council and then after 1972, when the Quetta Gymkhana was repurposed into the headquarters for the Muslim Supreme Council. 146 00:15:44,810 --> 00:15:50,090 So it means new Muslim Council is put into that place. 147 00:15:50,090 --> 00:15:55,130 Whatever remedy Amin's reaction decades later, in the moments surrounding decolonisation, 148 00:15:55,130 --> 00:16:02,780 Islam's apparently Democratic ability to transcend racial difference would be marshalled in various community publications, 149 00:16:02,780 --> 00:16:08,330 such as in this article, which appeared in 1951 in the first international editor, 150 00:16:08,330 --> 00:16:14,660 Salam in both English and Redragon, only to be reprinted several times across the region. 151 00:16:14,660 --> 00:16:22,350 And it's titled fraternisation Africans. The author observed that the quote spread of Islam itself could only be attributed 152 00:16:22,350 --> 00:16:27,300 to the most fundamental and great principle fraternity amongst its co-religionists, 153 00:16:27,300 --> 00:16:34,200 Islam Solid Foundation was one brotherhood amongst men and women without the distinction of caste, colour or creed. 154 00:16:34,200 --> 00:16:39,060 The author went on to provide various pieces of practical advice to these communities, 155 00:16:39,060 --> 00:16:43,830 ranging from how to treat domestic servants to matters of education. 156 00:16:43,830 --> 00:16:50,460 Most notable was the advice given to merchants who were instructed not only to trade fairly with their African customers, 157 00:16:50,460 --> 00:16:57,120 but to greet them warmly and enquire after their interests, their works, their families quote. 158 00:16:57,120 --> 00:17:05,130 In our social relations, we have set a very good example of brotherhood by inviting many African leaders a position to our communal social functions. 159 00:17:05,130 --> 00:17:10,650 But that is not enough. Much more closer contact with the general masses now more than necessary. 160 00:17:10,650 --> 00:17:13,020 While leaders are invited to communal functions, 161 00:17:13,020 --> 00:17:19,920 let us also invite our own individual to our own individual homes and parties, those amongst the masses we know and have come. 162 00:17:19,920 --> 00:17:22,770 As I've come to know, as our colleagues and friends, 163 00:17:22,770 --> 00:17:29,550 our youngsters who work in offices and shops along with their African brethren should make an early start in this direction. 164 00:17:29,550 --> 00:17:33,420 Such close contact will not only give us an opportunity to know each other well, 165 00:17:33,420 --> 00:17:39,540 but only by bringing down so that not only might not only bring down social barriers and wipe out an embarrassment, 166 00:17:39,540 --> 00:17:46,170 but by way of healthy discussions will be a great proving ground. Proving ground to create mutual understanding and confidence. 167 00:17:46,170 --> 00:17:56,430 A friendship to last a lifetime. But in my view, the most striking enactment of this new insistence on intimacy came in 1958, 168 00:17:56,430 --> 00:18:03,390 when you began writing about adopting children from African communities and raising them as their own. 169 00:18:03,390 --> 00:18:12,060 Well, it was no doubt meant to respond directly to accusations that a target targeted Indian idea that Indian and dogma and closeness. 170 00:18:12,060 --> 00:18:16,830 The question of adoption itself remained a controversial one in Muslim legal thought, 171 00:18:16,830 --> 00:18:21,420 while raising an orphan or another's child has broadly encouraged adoption in the 172 00:18:21,420 --> 00:18:27,180 sense of raising another another's kin as one's heir was was forbidden in Islam. 173 00:18:27,180 --> 00:18:31,470 Although there's, of course, debate about this one announcement, 174 00:18:31,470 --> 00:18:37,050 reprinted in different quarter publications across East Africa, was titled Doing One's Duty. 175 00:18:37,050 --> 00:18:46,430 And it reads as follows Those who are able to do so should adopt as many African children as possible and bring them up as their heirs. 176 00:18:46,430 --> 00:18:51,100 Today, there are hundreds of smiling families who are in a position to adopt African children. 177 00:18:51,100 --> 00:18:59,280 Quote The Imam has imposed this duty on his followers and every Israeli should therefore honestly and sincerely consider whether he is capable, 178 00:18:59,280 --> 00:19:05,890 shouldering the responsibility and if so, compliance. We pray that you will do your duty. 179 00:19:05,890 --> 00:19:09,100 It's framing in this way meant that by the 1960s, 180 00:19:09,100 --> 00:19:17,770 the relationship between Indians and Africans was conceived of as one of both obligation and duty a familial and fraternal relationship. 181 00:19:17,770 --> 00:19:22,810 It is worth recalling that means 1971 conference on the Indian question, 182 00:19:22,810 --> 00:19:28,240 where he gathered together at different Asian communities was framed similarly in terms 183 00:19:28,240 --> 00:19:34,040 of a father of a family trying to bring his quarrelling or divided children together. 184 00:19:34,040 --> 00:19:42,850 Well, this intimacy was meant to be enacted in whole. It was also to be extended outwards and made visible at a public. 185 00:19:42,850 --> 00:19:50,410 In late February of 1972, the Abercrombie admin publicly opened the new headquarters of the Industrial Promotional Services, 186 00:19:50,410 --> 00:19:59,020 a joint venture between the state and the Islamic community, meant in a thoroughly post-colonial way to promote industrialisation scales. 187 00:19:59,020 --> 00:20:06,160 In his remarks at the opening, Amin said explicitly that groups like the has had quote identified themselves more 188 00:20:06,160 --> 00:20:10,720 closely with the African citizens of Uganda than any other non-African community, 189 00:20:10,720 --> 00:20:16,990 but that they should take further steps to invest not only in commercial blocs and office buildings like the IBS, 190 00:20:16,990 --> 00:20:20,350 but in low cost housing in urban areas. 191 00:20:20,350 --> 00:20:29,020 It was also crucial, I argued, for them to take African Ugandans into their businesses and quite literally open up the site of the. 192 00:20:29,020 --> 00:20:35,200 The I.P.S was housed in a modernist office building, which not unlike the colonial frock, 193 00:20:35,200 --> 00:20:43,900 was managed to aesthetically signal a departure from the ubiquitous the small, portable shop that was always associated with Indian merchants. 194 00:20:43,900 --> 00:20:50,950 Later that year, after the announcement of the expulsion, immigrant immigration officials from Canada would set up their temporary offices 195 00:20:50,950 --> 00:20:56,050 at the ibis buildings as they processed applications from Uganda's Asians. 196 00:20:56,050 --> 00:20:57,877 Thanks very much.