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Domnic Fernandes continues (Part III) his reminiscence of
Mapusa of the 1950s
http://www.goanet.org/index.php?name=News&file=article&sidB6
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Indian approach: A cosmopolitan approach
Kenya Times
By Godwin Murunga
THE Indian question is back on the discussion table thanks to Zarina
Patel's recent biography of Makhan Singh. In Kenya, this is a vexed
question that often stirs emotions rather than engineer reasoned debate.
On the one hand are those who associate Indians with racist corruption
and exploitation that go with their commercial engagements. On the other
hand are those who argue that Indian commercial acumen and business
enterprise is everything that drives Kenya's economic success. Without
Indians, this literature argues, Kenya would not be the economic miracle
it turned out to be.
There is a third school that takes a middle ground; acknowledging the
rather secluded nature of Indian living in Kenya but suggesting that
such a communal reading of Indian experience in Kenya fails to
acknowledge the individual diversity of the community.
When Prof. Elisha Atieno-Odhiambo was a 'serious' historian; that is,
before he started co-authoring with David Cohen, he divided the Asians
community in Kenya into five groups to explain their role in politics
and relationship to Africans. The largest group was made of petty
trader, the dukawallahs, who kept aloof from politics. The second group,
made of clerks, employees of the railway and harbours organization and
the banks was the most politically minded while the third class made of
artisans often supported the second. The fourth and fifth class
dominated the leadership roles and was made of lawyers and professional
politicians respectively...
... Because of this residential pattern, even Europeans went to the
Bazaar to access important services including medical ones. Dr. Rosendo
Ayres Ribeiro, a Goan, was the first private medical practitioner in
Nairobi. He arrived in Nairobi in 1900 and lived in the Bazaar with his
assistant Mr. C. Pinto and only left after the plague outbreak of 1902
to stay at the station. He "visited the sick among all communities." He
diagnosed and reported the 1902 bubonic plague among two of his Somali
patients. So, we also know that there were Somalis.
Third, the Bazaar was also the commercial centre of the town. This fact
combined with a fourth factor to justify its indispensable centrality to
the town and help explain the defeat the insular attitude of the white
settlers. The fourth factor was that given the nature of the town in the
very early years, it was imperative for communities not to rely on each
other. Indians and Europeans relied on Africans for food supplies.
Europeans relied on Indian merchants for the importation of essential
equipment...
Full text at:
http://www.timesnews.co.ke/11apr06/editorials/comm1.html
~(^^)~
Avelino
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