BY TOM ODHIAMBO
The reported request by Kenyan-Asians to be considered Kenya’s 44th tribe is very disturbing. Why would people who are Kenyans in all ways imaginable and defined by the Constitution of Kenya be asking today, hundreds of years since their ancestors landed on these shores and established families and homes be asking to be made Kenyans? And why the 44th tribe, if we may digress? Who are the 43rd tribe? Definitely not the Makonde! There are more tribes in Kenya than the number 42 that is cited all the time. And in any case, will this 44th tribe be Kenyan-Asians or Kenyan-Indians?
Nevertheless, Kenyan-Asians or Kenyan-Indians, since people of Indian origin are actually the majority in the category of Kenyans who trace their ancestry to Asia, have all the rights to be Kenyans. One only needs to read the history of Indians in Kenya to know that there is an umbilical connection between Indians and Kenya/Kenyans. And this history isn’t just about the Indian laborers who built the Kenya-Uganda Railway and later operated it. It goes beyond that into many parts of the country and its life.
This is why reading Sharad Rao’s book, Indian Dukawallas: Their Contribution to Political and Economic Development of Kenya (Free Press Publishers, 2016) is refreshing. This book joins a number of books on the history of Asians/Indians in Kenya but it adds a different serving to a recent literary menu that includes Mohinder Dillon’s My Camera, My Life and The In-between World of Kenya’s Media: South Asian Journalism 1900-1992 by Zarina Patel. These two books talk about the lives of Kenyan-Indians who have worked in the media since the 1900s. But Sharad Rao writes about the contribution of Kenyan-Indians in many different sectors of the society.
Indian Dukawallas is a book that a general reader would find very informative. The academic historian, economist, sociologist, anthropologist or student of political studies would find very rich as a source of further information; it is a very condensed archive of individual and community histories. It has bits and pieces of Kenya’s commercial, legal, medical, journalistic or political histories spread across its more than 300 pages. It details the lives of various Kenyan-Indians from the precolonial times when Indians traded on the coast of Kenya through the colonial to the post-independence periods when they settled here and migrated for various reasons. In this sense then the word ‘Dukawallas’ suggests different elements of Kenyan-Indians. It is a metaphor for a community identity.
The term speaks to the entrepreneurial spirit and character of Kenyan-Indians. The Indian laborers may have come to cut the dense forests, drill through hills and lay the rail. But they also became the backbone of the emergent money-based economy. They established shops along the railway and in emerging modern settlements. They became the pioneer traders in parts of the country where the colonial establishment hadn’t established its footprints. They sold goods that were sourced in Europe, America and Asia, and even those that they made in their backyards or workshops. In this process, they also established a network of craftsmen and tradesmen, which gave birth to carpenters, masons, electricians, cobblers, tailors etc, in the Kenyan countryside at a time when technical schools hadn’t been established in many parts of the country.
Thus, the Kenyan professional in the immediate postcolonial period was either an Indian-Kenyan or an African Kenyan working under the supervision of an Indian. The Kenyan-Indians understudied the Europeans (who often had inferior skills and knowledge) and were understudied in turn by Africans. This is why and how Kenyan-Indians produced the pioneer teachers, clerks, bank managers, doctors, lawyers, pilots, journalists, industrialists, engineers, trade unionists hoteliers etc. But it is as shop owners and traders that Kenyan-Indians have been most respected by other Kenyans. Kenya is dotted with centers that had/have several shops that have been managed by Indian-Kenyan families for generations.
Often, the parents will run the shop and bequeath it to one of their sons, as increasingly young Kenyan-Asians have been migrating to Europe, Canada or America. ‘So and so and sons’ shop is a common sight in many Kenyan towns. In many cases these are wholesale shops, where one can find all kinds of goods. But there are also specialist shops in some urban centers, either a butchery, tailoring shop, a leather workshop etc.
But what Sharad Rao does in Indian Dukawallas is to present one with a canvas on which he has painted Indians in various industries, trades and professions. So, there are stories of Kenyan-Indians in the legal profession, including Judges Channan Singh, Majid Cockar, Chuni Madan, Saeed Cockar, Abdul Rauf, Pritam Singh Brar, Alnashir Visram, Farah Amin, Kalpana Rawal, among others. Sharad Rao himself is a distinguished lawyer who has served the country in various capacities.
Rao pays homage, through brief biographies of several individuals, of Asians/Indian-Kenyans in politics, commerce, medicine, banking, insurance, agriculture, transport, education, art, culture and sports, among other occupations and interests. These sketches, many of individuals that ordinary Kenyans do not generally know, in some way capture histories of how Kenyan-Indians have built trade empires since they arrived in colonial Kenya. Some of these corporations and institutions are leading contributors to the Kenyan economy. For instance, Kenyan-Indians today play a significant role in the motor-vehicle industry, insurance, medicine and healthcare, banking and ICT.
So, how can a community, which literally runs the Kenyan economy be requesting to be accommodated as Kenyans? What makes one Kenyan? Is it confirmation by the State? Or is it the fact of living in the country, working here, paying taxes and doing one’s other civic duties? If there is any community that can call itself proudly Kenyan – especially in a world where money defines individual and collective identity – then Kenyan-Asians is that community.
