ASIANS OF EAST AFRICA: THE NEXT GENERATION

By Khalid Malik

This is about a generation gap that has been created by more than just the inevitable father-son difference in thinking. It is not only the breach which has to occur between two generations, as has happened through ages. It is this inevitability compounded further by a giant leap across the oceans.

Generation gap can and often does create difficult situations in settled societies, as in the past when generations lived together — settled — under one roof, or the young ones got married, moved out, but continued to live in the same town as their parents, or at least in the same country. In such cases the difference between the values and perceptions of the two tended to be gradual and somewhat nominal. The families met frequently, or in the very least on festive occasions, birthdays, anniversaries and so forth, thereby keeping their relations bonded, no matter how loosely. Thus the generation gap was often kept from widening into an un-retractable gulf.

In the case of people of pre-partition India who had settled in East Africa, the early 1960s attaining of independence by Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika (Tanzania now) started a cultural transition which has come to raise the question: are we now witnessing the end of the unique society once known as the East African Asians?

Lumped together in one group by the racial segregation policy of the British administration, these people had, by compulsion, formed a closely knit community; yet each thrived with a proud heritage of its own. Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and Parsees followed their own religion, often spoke their own language, and married people of their own kind. But they were united by the “Asian” label, and everyone was quite content with the status quo.

A minuscule number of young men, mainly Punjabis, who went to Britain for further education married British natives, often settling down in England instead of returning home to East Africa. A smaller number of men and women married across the communal divide within East Africa.

The form of apartheid enforced by government, though abhorred today, nevertheless provided the enterprising Asian great opportunities to thrive in his business, and his profession. More so as independence approached and the British overlords, both in civil service, the private sector, and the settling farming community, packed up their bags and left in a hurry. The “European grade” jobs and the fertile highland farms, once reserved for “whites only” were a godsend to the Asian community. Having waited on the sidelines for longer than they should have, they happily availed the opportunity. The Europeans for their part were glad to be able to dispose of their homes and farms, for which the Asians paid them handsomely.

There followed a period of several years of extreme prosperity for the Asian in all arenas of endeavor. He successfully ventured into new businesses and industry. Jobs at the highest level gave him the opportunity to earn two-to-three times the income that he had earned previously.

Then, as all good things must come to an end, the new masters “ the Afro-Africans” realized that the post-independence electioneering promises they had made to their people could never be met if businesses and top jobs were not wrested away from the Asians and given to Africans. In short order, first, in 1967 the Tanzanian government of Julius Nyerere took away all the businesses and properties owned by Asians, by nationalizing them.

Then, in 1969 Jomo Kenyatta’s Kenya government revoked the trade licenses held by Asians, and stopped issuing, and renewing work permits to the working class Asians, effectively putting them out of work. Idi Amin went one better: in 1972 he simply took away all the Asian businesses and properties without compensation, and threw them all out of Uganda, most of whom had lived there for three or four generations!

Now, who is going to explain all this to the next generation of those Asians who, by various strategies used by the above three governments, were cheated out of all they had achieved by dint of their hard work over decades? Many, if not most of the younger generation simply did not understand the cruel implications of the treatment meted out to their parents. They became engrossed in their studies in the new lands that they were taken to, and then in their involvement in earning a livelihood for themselves. In the process they seem to have had neither the time nor the inclination to give much thought to what their elders had been through.

When asked by their new compatriots as to what their background is or where their roots are, at first they are most likely to have explained their genealogy, from what little they knew of it. In time, one senses, that they got fed up of repeating the whole thing over and over. The answer then, sensibly, became short and sweet: “I am a Canadian (or American, or Brit, depending on where the family has settled after leaving East Africa).”

That was all very well and good in as far as it went. However, it seems that the further they pushed back talk of their ancestry the more they denied its very existence. And when they found themselves in discussion with their elders about the extraordinary past in their previous adopted homes in Africa they began to question the amazing achievements of their forebear in the African wilderness.

Ironically, whereas time and again you read media reports in western countries about the unique culture that Afro-Asians have evolved into, and their consequent achievements in their newly adopted countries, some of their self-righteous progeny even question: “What culture.” They are either blind to what is abundantly visible to other observers, or they just want to project that wherever they have reached in life is in no way connected to what they have received from their parents.

This process of denial would appear to have lead to the youngsters dissociating themselves from their past. In western society, where time is at a premium, the less they have had to talk about their past the easier their communication with others became.

In time the process of this denial seems to have affected a good number of the youngsters. It is a fact that if you do not want to talk about something you deny that it ever happened. You erase the memory of facts that you want to do without, or you do a selective blanking out.

Such a process has had a rather unfortunate effect in the above mentioned situation. To defend the position that such youngsters have taken they argue that the life of their parents in Africa was not as good as it was made out to be. Worse still, they deny, or simply fail to see the unique culture that had evolved over the three-to-four generations of the people of the Indian sub-continent who had settled in East Africa.

And worse still is the failure of the young to see the relevance and importance of the Asian in the development of the region, not to mention the hard work they did in difficult and dangerous times to create a completely new life style and standards for their descendants from the living standards with which the first Asian immigrants came to Africa.

It is evident that the young generation, too busy trying to cope with the ever competitive student life, and later, their survival in the job market, have little time, patience or interest in knowing why and how they are in the very fortunate position that they find themselves in! One day, maybe, they will want to know. It is hoped that that day is not in the too distant future. It is hoped that this writing will help them understand how and why they became such good Canadians, Americans or British.

It is hoped that they will come to realize how hard their forefathers worked and the sacrifices they made to earn a better future for today’s youngsters; it is hoped the realization will come before it is too late.

Scores of Asians were brought to East Africa to work on the railroads in the late 1800s and early 1900s, by the British.