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Indian 'nation' of commerce
By DAVID G. MAILLU
The Indian is one of the British colonial baggage offloaded in the
Kenyan colony, imported from India to work on the construction of the
railway line. The line was not built for the benefit of the natives.
It was built with sheer selfish interest to lay down the foundation
for colonialism and promotion of the British supreme and economic
expansionism. At that time, no British mind could have dared imagine
that one day the railway line would be lost only to benefit the
natives. But one could as well argue that by the time the British
crown had lost to the natives, the British had already recovered the
expense of building that line and accrued immense economic benefits
from it.
No British would have imagined that its human cargo from India would
one day find home and citizenry in Kenya. At whose expense? Of course,
the colonial predatory culture would have dismissed and forgotten
about the damage, as Africans would put it bluntly, the way one
forgets what comes out of one's own bowels. Or shall one say that by
man-made catastrophe Kenyans acquired a new tribe called Indians?
The Indian nation, imposed on Kenyans by the British colonial
kleptomania, brought three distinct communities that few Kenyans are
aware of. The Hindu, the Goan, and the rest. Initially, these three
groups have lived with practical dislike for one another. The Goans,
coming from the Christian colony, were actually the first ones to be
sympathetic with the natives, perhaps, because they found comrades
sharing the same religion. They expressed their solidarity even
through marriage at a time the other two groups protected their women
the way lions protect their young ones from predators.
Hindu religion gave the other group opportunity to form cultural
cocoons to protect their lot. Up to this day, the three would rather
be perceived as the Kenyan Indian clans who, once in a while, might
see reason why they should not be counted as one community.
"We snatched freedom from the British," first president of Kenya, Jomo
Kenyatta, used to describe how Kenyans retrieved what had been stolen
from them. The thieves had been a people who described Africans as
savages, and who so cleverly baptized their own savagery as a move to
civilize a primitive community. During that snatching, the British ran
away and left behind their colonial liability, hence the Indian
baggage for Kenyans to decide how to rid themselves of it. But by then
Kenyans had discovered that, after all, Indians were human beings and
victims of historical human calamities. Idi Amin in Uganda expelled
his baggage to follow the master in UK.
Wise people learn a lot from catastrophes, and some catastrophes
eventually establish themselves as having been blessings in disguise.
That explains the Kenyan Indian paradox. Perhaps one might drive the
subject home by asking, "What would have been the fate of Kenya today
if the British people had not imported Indians to Kenya from their
colony in India? Certainly, Kenya would be a different nation
economically.
While the British colony existed, the Indian was accorded second class
human value in Kenya, and the native was accorded the third class. In
other words, during colonial days Indians were bosses to natives. The
position of the Indian during that time had given him the foundation
to build an economic power base. By the time the British left Kenya,
the Indian had acquired big muscles to continue being number-one in
the new Kenya, hence replacing the vacated throne of the British,
ready to negotiate terms with the upcoming African who was now
starting his economic journey from the first step.
The collapse of British colonial power did not actually affect the
Indian appreciably. If anything, it opened up new and exciting
economic opportunities. While the African was trying to set up
commercial banks to help his business ventures, the Indian had his
banks in place long ago and in operation and now already to fund him
for higher economic frontiers. The African new business challenger and
competitor was the long experienced Indian entrepreneur. How did the
African view his competitor? What new tricks had the Indian behind the
sleeves?There is a saying that if someone gives you a lemon, instead
of throwing away the lemon, try to make lemonade out of it. That was
what the African learnt from the British lemon given to him. He took
the opportunity of learning the art and tricks of business from the
Indian. Indirectly, out of coincident, the Indian became the trainer
and the African became the apprentice. In order to survive within
those parameters (and if it is true that business in a cutthroat game)
then the Indian had to design new cutting-throat techniques.
Commerce is the god of Indian culture and Kenyan natives have to learn
the hardest way how to survive within the Indian industrial mafia
empires which do not believe in the benefits of life after death in
paradise as promised by Christianity, where your woes will come to an
end and thereafter live happily. In the Indian mafia business, money
is God, and your paradise is here on earth, not anywhere else. This is
the industrial pace the African entrepreneur is challenged to run –
survival for the fittest.
The good part of it is that the African does not need to go to India
to learn running business. The Indian is just standing at next door.
This may explain why the pace of the Kenyan business is a frightening
threat to the entrepreneurs of neighbouring countries. Uganda learnt
the value of Indian businessman much later and put in place new
conditions to seduce the Diaspora Indian businessman back Uganda.
Should Kenya be proud of the Indian? How does the Kenyan Indian
perceive himself in Kenya? What is the relationship between the Kenyan
Indian "nation" and the native nations? Who beats who in the game?
After the Indian had been forsaken by the British, did they adjust
correctly to live among the natives?
It was a shock for them to be abandoned by the British. The lucky
ones, given British passports and classified as British subjects,
emigrated following the captor empire of their forefathers. But there
were others who turned out to be African subject. Or those who, in
spite of having the British passports, decided on hanging around to
carry on with their business just as long as the political
temperatures accommodated them, ready to wind up their business
fastest if the worst struck. Then they would go home.
The Indian community in Kenya was divided between those who had to go
and those who had to remain, sometimes separating families. The clever
ones made secrets deals in which they acquired both passports behind
the scenes, just in order to play the survival game safely. Today,
since grass is greener in yonder the pasture, most of them live with
the dream that one day they would pack up and go to the spiritually
promised land. In them meantime, they live with fears of persecution
awaiting them round the corner. In other words, it not the question of
their commitment or love for the country that make them stay on. It is
just because one can make bucks quicker out here while the sun shines.
There are those, of course, who have no other place to go and are
destined to die and be cremated here. As the saying goes, they have
got to learn to live bearing the African shell. Cross cultural
adjustment with Africans, the only move that would initially make
Africans feel they have become one with Indians as a nation, has been
the catch 22 eating into the Indian homestead. The cross on which
their destiny is crucified is called sex. Although the Indian
population in Kenya is, by far and away, bigger than that of white
people, sexual contact between Indians and Africans is gravely rare.
Marriage between the two nations is, if there is any at all, quite
rare. Intermarriage between white people and Africans is no more a new
thing across the cultural status of the community. It makes Africans
say "If Wazungu can have our girls and we can have theirs, then we are
a common human society."
The Indian makes every possible precaution to keep the sex treasure
closed up from Africans for religious, family or business protection
reasons or whatever. However, that stand has created a volatile
relationship that has left too many questions unanswered. The African
treats the Indian with great suspicion added to a strong feeling that
the Kenyan Indians suffer from superiority and racist complexes.
The Indian, they say, makes money in Kenya and invests the interests
overseas. A good number of them are busy buying homes in Indian,
Europe and Canada and any little political tremor in Kenya stirs them
up to think about leaving the country. There is a simmering tension
between Africans and the Indian nation in the country, spurred by
accusations from many angles. Increasing the African political
temperature is the Indian-industrial mafia. Unless otherwise addressed
by a radical cultural adjustment of the Indian, that tension will most
certainly develop into a time bomb.
The catch 22 is whether the Kenyan Indian has any future programme to
break his racial cocoon, in which he would let individuals take a
plunge into the Kenyan cultural melting pot and begin to play the
social game with natives on equal terms. In other words, the Kenyan
woman and man, irrespective of his/her religious, racial and material
status differences, should have absolute freedom of interrelation.
Until that highway has been constructed and opened, the volatility of
the relationship will built the boil that one day will reach maximum
growth and burst for the worst. Nature has such demands that any new
birth is bought by spilling human blood.
The author is a renown with an international acclaim. He holds
Doctorate in African Literature and Political Philosophy.
--
TUMCHER AXIRVAD ASSUM;
DEV BOREM KORUM.
Gabe Menezes.
London, England
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