I'm. Thanks very much, dificil, for inviting me and and for putting this on.
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.
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.
So, yeah, I'll make a start.
So of the handful of sociological and ethnographic studies of East Africa's Indian communities that appeared during the 1960s,
only one did not use the term Asian and its title in the Indians and Uganda Caste and Sex in a Plural Society,
published as part of Ernest Gelinas Human Nature of Human Society series.
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.
Despite the fact that the latter was already far more common in administrated as well as scholarly parlance three years earlier,
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
in East Africa quote practically all of them are of Indian and Pakistani origin.
The term Asian came into use only after the partition of India, as the more accurate Indian was no longer acceptable to the Muslims.
Asian is used here to conform with current usage. It does not include the Arabs.
For example, in the Asians of East Africa in 1960, a former colonial administrator in Zanzibar,
Lawrence Hollingsworth, used Indian as a purely historical term to refer to the inhabitants of an undivided India.
Morris, by continuing to use India, was compelled in his preface to pre-emptively apologise to his quote friends in the Indian community,
many of whom are Pakistani origin lest they consider it impolite or offensive.
The term Asian emerged emerged before 1947,
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,
mixing up diaspora with the citizens of new post-colonial states like India and Pakistan.
But at the same time, satisfying existing colonial policies of multiracial ism in East Africa.
Later, the term Asian would follow, the community had named to Europe,
helping to bridge the uneven and awkward transition from race to ethnicity that took place in the latter half of the 20th century.
Many here will probably be familiar with the fact that British Census forms List Asian
or Asian British as one of a handful of possible ethnicities one can choose from,
which then paradoxically break down into nationality like Asian, Indian, Asian, like, say, Asian and Bangladeshi, etc.
The use by the census of Asian in this particular way was a catchall category, formalised only in 2001 actually,
and was in fact the result of several own focus groups dating back to the 1990s.
This very brief and selective genealogy of the term demonstrates how indefinite and to some extent, accidental Asian really was as a category.
Indeed, even when Asian was used by mid-century researchers like the guy or the historian James Mangold,
it was deployed begrudgingly, always as a kind of outer shell,
aspirational for some and annoying for others, and always followed up by a caveat that it was in any case,
very difficult to group these diverse communities together in the first place.
Splintered as they were and always have been along different lines.
As does Morris himself observed the relatively open ended question.
What is your community, which is the question that he posed to his subjects in Uganda in the 1950s,
was always answered by the name of a caste or sex, and certainly not by invoking India, Asia or Africa.
If anything, Maurice realised the conversation would always tilt towards the particular,
not the abstract leading eventually and inevitably to the bedrock.
The question the Murray Jackie Typekit. What is your past?
This splintering, as I have already alluded to, was itself the object of study and reflection,
especially by East African nations who saw it as a major problem of their for their community in a decolonising world.
So the this kind of inherent disunity that this that even the assumption of Asian is a casual category sort of created, argued Yoshiki,
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,
coherent and consistent policy vis-a-vis African nationalism.
We've heard a little bit about this already.
So this despite the kind of complexities and ambiguity of this term, much of the work on the political and to a lesser extent,
the intellectual history of East Africans Asians has assumed a coherence,
focussing as it usually does on the claims put forth through the various Asian associations in the moments before and after decolonisation.
So a lot of attention has been given to the the language deployed by the Asian associations.
And yet, as historians of anti-colonial thought have suggested for some time now, India has a political difference.
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.
And what we might call the fabric of the social and was often meant to be resolved there as well.
One well-known example, which we've already heard about is the discussion around intermarriage and intimacy between Indians and Africans.
Famously articulated by Tom Moir in Kenya a bit later, Idi Amin in East Africa met in Uganda.
So today I want to explore the claims of Indian communities in Uganda who did not try to craft a united front as Asians,
namely merchant communities like the US. These groups tended instead to proceed in a negative way that is by not calling themselves
Asians and by detaching themselves from the subcontinent and Indian signifiers.
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.
Indeed, I am more of a stranger in India or Pakistan than in England.
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.
So, you know, we should remember that India was often referred to as Asia in miniature and in 1947 hosted the first
Asian Relations Conference at which members from Kenya were invited to observe but not to participate.
And while much has been written on the Afro-Asian Solidarity movements that were quite active at this time, these containers, of course,
they were crafted as containers for anti-colonial political thought that Africa and Asia
first had to be kind of like exclusively cleaved apart and then reunited on new terms,
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,
which it was hoped would transcend difference in the whole detaching themselves from Asia in this way.
This coincided with an insistence on their new intimacy with Africans,
one rooted for Islam and ideas of brotherhood that always grounded in the fabric of the social communities like the courtyards.
And the would throughout the 1950s and 60s deployed the language of fraternity seeking
to convert themselves from what they had been neighbours into brothers and friends.
And I think the language of fraternity and brotherhood really opens up the space for accusations of betrayal and
accusations of cheating and the familiar language that we kind of are inside deployed against Asian communities.
So I'm looking at it from the other end. So this move had a precedent from the colonial period already in 1933,
when the colonial government attempted to bring various independently run Indian
schools across East Africa together into larger non-denominational alternatives.
Groups like the Coolidge's demanded that their schools remain separate, writing to the colonial office.
They premised this idea premised this on the idea that there was a fundamental
distinction between the Ismaili hijackers and other Indian communities in the region.
Quote Most of the other Indians still have their roots in the motherland,
send their children across the ocean for education and retired to India later in life.
The smileys, on the other hand, have made East Africa their home in the fullest sense.
So this is used not to, you know, not in conversation with African nationalists as exact language.
We use them decades later. But in conversation with the colonial state.
Well, other communities in the kind of circular migration around the Indian Ocean had become common amongst the draftees,
for example, other good draftees, for example, were bound to return to India and this collapse in the totality of Asia.
Groups like the Coolidge's were to be regarded as intimately connected to lack.
This language of proximity, as well as distinction would continue,
and this kind of speaks to what council is saying about closeness and distance kind of operating simultaneously,
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.
The Aga Khan explicitly instructed those in attendance to quote, Stop calling yourselves Asians.
The idea argued that they would have no hope of continuing in Africa unless they
quote succeeded in winning the esteem of the African people quote in Africa.
The day will come when the people of that vast continent and this is in the nineteen fifty two and Africa.
The day will come when the people of that vast continent will want to know who the foreigners are.
I don't like the idea of calling yourselves Asians in Africa anymore, and I like the idea of the African living in India,
Pakistan or Burma, continuing and continuing to call himself an African.
When you live permanently in a country, you become a member of that country.
He invited the students in attendance to look across the Indian Ocean for instruction, taking as an example, the Indian community in Burma.
Could they have identified themselves 100 percent? They don't live across the border.
Whatever country you choose to live in, work for it, mix it with people and achieve its outlook.
It was, of course, it was, of course, in reference to Burma, where in 1962 hundreds of thousands of Indians were also expelled.
But the colonial administrator turned scholar James Furnival Wood, first coined the term plural society,
which sociologists like Morris, who studied Uganda, would invoke to make sense of the spaces that he observed.
The concept, which Furnival coined in his 1948 book Colonial Policy and Practise Described, based mostly on his observations in Rangoon,
a society in which separate sections mixed but do not combine interacting in the market, but not socially.
Shortly after the August speech, the Canadians began a wholesale rejection of Asiatic dress,
especially women cajole women across Africa as well as in Burma.
The tellingly not in India, Pakistan began to shed the dupatta and began wearing what was then called the colonial frock
in order to embed themselves firmly into what the other called the Africa of the future.
This sartorial switch aesthetically rejected an Indian pass in favour of an abstract that presents
women in positions of leadership and the wives of those in leadership to the wives of monkeys,
for instance, were actively encouraged to take up these new forms of dress,
which were which were to be made from quote economic material in order to line up with new ideas of African socialism.
Those who could not afford new colonial frocks, one community publication noted, were advised to simply make them out of old saris for quote.
Many such saris could be in fact turned into Western costume for growing girls and to be worn until used
by wear and tear saris were literally being cut up and refashioned into dresses in order to reject Asia.
These instructions were not always taken seriously or wholeheartedly.
Many women did not give up their Asiatic clothing so eagerly,
and some women recalled in oral history work that I did some years ago how other Indian communities
in East Africa sort of laughed at them when they would make use dresses out of sorrows.
So in addition to this detachment from and refusal of Asia was a constructive attempt to remake Islam out of East Africa,
ideas of Muslim Brotherhood and universal Islam underpinned the formation of groups like the East African Muslim Welfare Society,
which I've written about before. This was an ecumenical Muslim Muslim missionary association formed out of Kampala
and then relocated to Mombasa that was run almost entirely by the boycott.
Whereas in the US, the society financed the construction of the Grand Mosque,
located on one of Kampala Seven Hills built on a plot of land gifted by Prince Mother and opened in the early 1950s,
appealing to the Brotherhood of Islam via the construction of a generic and crucially,
a shared mosque, as well as as well as convening large eve gatherings like this one was a direct response to
the fact that both the US and the borrowers were known in Swahili as sectarian Wajahat.
Those who attended the Jamaat rather than and distinct from the Sunni mosque,
those who attended the mosque, which is of course, theoretically open to all.
And I think the picture that was shared of of of the man in the mosque with a cache.
Of course, it's it speaks of multiple registers. It speaks to a level of economics in the cash.
But also this is a closed space, right, that you would never be able to photograph otherwise.
And so the making visible of an otherwise closed Indian space is also doing a lot of work there.
But despite their many attempts to advocate for Muslim Brotherhood,
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,
whose particular conception of Islam at the time had relied on novel ideas of Nubian authenticity and a direct relationship with Muslims to God.
In March of 1972, Amin said to an audience of Korans and borders that he did not approve of quote factions in the Muslim
community and that there was now a Muslim supreme council on which each district would be represented.
Further arguing that any assistance by anyone to the Muslim religion should not be given to an individual,
such as a religious leader like the Aga Khan or the side,
but only to the council and then after 1972, when the Quetta Gymkhana was repurposed into the headquarters for the Muslim Supreme Council.
So it means new Muslim Council is put into that place.
Whatever remedy Amin's reaction decades later, in the moments surrounding decolonisation,
Islam's apparently Democratic ability to transcend racial difference would be marshalled in various community publications,
such as in this article, which appeared in 1951 in the first international editor,
Salam in both English and Redragon, only to be reprinted several times across the region.
And it's titled fraternisation Africans. The author observed that the quote spread of Islam itself could only be attributed
to the most fundamental and great principle fraternity amongst its co-religionists,
Islam Solid Foundation was one brotherhood amongst men and women without the distinction of caste, colour or creed.
The author went on to provide various pieces of practical advice to these communities,
ranging from how to treat domestic servants to matters of education.
Most notable was the advice given to merchants who were instructed not only to trade fairly with their African customers,
but to greet them warmly and enquire after their interests, their works, their families quote.
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.
But that is not enough. Much more closer contact with the general masses now more than necessary.
While leaders are invited to communal functions,
let us also invite our own individual to our own individual homes and parties, those amongst the masses we know and have come.
As I've come to know, as our colleagues and friends,
our youngsters who work in offices and shops along with their African brethren should make an early start in this direction.
Such close contact will not only give us an opportunity to know each other well,
but only by bringing down so that not only might not only bring down social barriers and wipe out an embarrassment,
but by way of healthy discussions will be a great proving ground. Proving ground to create mutual understanding and confidence.
A friendship to last a lifetime. But in my view, the most striking enactment of this new insistence on intimacy came in 1958,
when you began writing about adopting children from African communities and raising them as their own.
Well, it was no doubt meant to respond directly to accusations that a target targeted Indian idea that Indian and dogma and closeness.
The question of adoption itself remained a controversial one in Muslim legal thought,
while raising an orphan or another's child has broadly encouraged adoption in the
sense of raising another another's kin as one's heir was was forbidden in Islam.
Although there's, of course, debate about this one announcement,
reprinted in different quarter publications across East Africa, was titled Doing One's Duty.
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.
Today, there are hundreds of smiling families who are in a position to adopt African children.
Quote The Imam has imposed this duty on his followers and every Israeli should therefore honestly and sincerely consider whether he is capable,
shouldering the responsibility and if so, compliance. We pray that you will do your duty.
It's framing in this way meant that by the 1960s,
the relationship between Indians and Africans was conceived of as one of both obligation and duty a familial and fraternal relationship.
It is worth recalling that means 1971 conference on the Indian question,
where he gathered together at different Asian communities was framed similarly in terms
of a father of a family trying to bring his quarrelling or divided children together.
Well, this intimacy was meant to be enacted in whole. It was also to be extended outwards and made visible at a public.
In late February of 1972, the Abercrombie admin publicly opened the new headquarters of the Industrial Promotional Services,
a joint venture between the state and the Islamic community, meant in a thoroughly post-colonial way to promote industrialisation scales.
In his remarks at the opening, Amin said explicitly that groups like the has had quote identified themselves more
closely with the African citizens of Uganda than any other non-African community,
but that they should take further steps to invest not only in commercial blocs and office buildings like the IBS,
but in low cost housing in urban areas.
It was also crucial, I argued, for them to take African Ugandans into their businesses and quite literally open up the site of the.
The I.P.S was housed in a modernist office building, which not unlike the colonial frock,
was managed to aesthetically signal a departure from the ubiquitous the small, portable shop that was always associated with Indian merchants.
Later that year, after the announcement of the expulsion, immigrant immigration officials from Canada would set up their temporary offices
at the ibis buildings as they processed applications from Uganda's Asians.
Thanks very much.