Becoming Zimbabwean

A History of Indians in Rhodesia

Trishula Rachna Patel

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN: 9780813954509
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African History
• Index: History

The first comprehensive history of Indian migrants and their descendants in Zimbabwe

Becoming Zimbabwean tells the long-overdue story of the Indian community in the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. Centering the stories of individuals and families, and building on a foundation of extensive archival research, Trishula Rachna Patel—a Zimbabwean of Indian origin herself—shows that the history of Indians in Zimbabwe is not of a transient diaspora but one of deliberate permanence.

Indians initially played a critical part in the settler colonial process in Southern Rhodesia, but as new generations were born and raised, their politics and social lives evolved to localized forms of citizenship. Eventually, they functioned as part of the resistance to the Rhodesian white minority government, either through participation in the system as nonwhites or by joining the Black anticolonial nationalist movement. They did all this through their shops, African-rooted institutions that became social, economic, and political spaces through which Indians became Zimbabwean. In this highly readable and authoritative study, Patel makes clear that Zimbabwe cannot be properly understood without accounting for the substantial Indian community that has woven itself into the fabric of the nation.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Undesirables and Pioneers: Crossing the Indian Ocean, 1890–1923
• 2. Between White Picket Fences and Black Reserves: The Development of Indian Trading Streets, 1923–1945
• 3. Purity Schools and Hindu Daughters: Indian Education, 1930–1950
• 4. The Dukkan and the Courtroom: Indian Legal Challenges, 1950–1965
• 5. “Rhodesians First, Asians Second”: Politics, Modernity, and War in Salisbury, 1965–1980
• 6. The Kumalos of Lobengula Street: Anticolonialism in Bulawayo, 1950–1980
• Epilogue: Air Rhodesia Flight 825
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index