Indian Africa

Minorities of Indian-Pakistani Origin in Eastern Africa

Adam Michel

• Publisher: Africae
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9782957305810
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania have minorities from the Indian sub-continent amongst their population. The East African Indians mostly reside in the main cities, particularly Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar, Mombasa, Kampala; they can also be found in smaller urban centres and in the remotest of rural townships. They play a leading social and economic role as the)' work in business, manufacturing and the service industry, and make up a large proportion of the liberal professions. They are divided into multiple socio-religious communities, but united in a mutual feeling of meta-cultural identity. This book aims at painting a broad picture of the communities of Indian origin in East Africa, striving to include changes that have occurred since the end of the 1980s. The different contributions explore questions of race and citizenship, national loyalties and cosmopolitan identities, local attachment and transnational networks. Drawing upon anthropology, history, sociology and demography, Indian Africa depicts a multifaceted population and analyses how the past and the present shape their sense of belonging, their relations with others, their professional and political engagement. This book is a must-read for contemporary researchers, students, policy practioners as well as the general reader.

Table of contents

• Introductory pages
• Table of contents
• Preliminary
• Acknowledgements
• Initials and Acronyms
• Authors
• Note on Transliteration and Spelling of Indian Languages
• Foreword on Bibliography and Methodology
• From the Trading-Post Indians to the Indian-Africans
• Panorama of Socio-Religious Communities
• East African Indians: How Many Are They?
• Family, Family Life and Marriage among Indian Communities in East Africa
• Nizarite Ismailis in Kenya
• Bohras in East Africa: Orthodoxy and Reformism
• Merchants and Industrialists of Indo-Pakistani Origin in Kenya: A Sociological Overview
• Living Apart Together: Economic and Spatial Logic of Indian Communities in Nakuru (Kenya)
• Migrations and Identity of Indian-Pakistani Minorities in Uganda
• The Minorities of Indian Origin in Tanzania
• “Indians are Exploiters and Africans Idlers!”
• Indians and Others: Worlds Unknown to Each Other—Extracts of reports from the Kenyan press
• Portraits and Fragments of Life Histories in Kenya
• Glossary and Inventory of Main Places
• Index