Material Matters Graduate Student Discussion Group
Posted: October 2nd, 2014A “tragic blindness”: South Asians in Kenya and their Negotiations between Pan-Indianism & Pan Anti-Colonialism
Heena Mistry, 1st Year PhD Student, History
Tuesday, October 7th, 1:30 pm, Speaker’s Corner, Stauffer Library
In 1893, the construction of the Ugandan Railway and the consolidation of British colonial control over East Africa marked the beginning of large scale migrations of South Asians to Kenya. Although South Asians were a diverse group, containing a plethora of religious, linguistic, national, and caste identities, the British colonial administration, nationalists from the Indian subcontinent, and Kenyan nationalists referred to them using the homogenizing categories of “Indian” or “Asian.” While in Kenya, various South Asian communal groups perpetuated their traditional individualisms, integrated, or adopted new identities. However, elite South Asians occasionally unified on the basis of a manufactured common “Indian” heritage in order to advance or protect their interests despite their communal diversities. I argue that after India’s independence in1947, it became unclear whether and Indian identity in Kenya constituted a Pan-Indian or Pan-Anticolonial consciousness, and that this confusion is one of many factors that made the place of South Asians unstable in colonial and independent Kenya.
Material Matters is an interdisciplinary graduate student discussion group. Our weekly meetings foster discussion among students across a variety of disciplines, and begin with a short talk to spark the conversation.
All graduate students are invited to join the discussion!
Material Matters Tuesday, October 7th, 1:30pm Speaker’s Corner, Stauffer Library
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