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Given the Africa connection of many on Goanet, this may be of interest ***** Magazine > The Hindu, November 7, 2004 THE SHASHI THAROOR COLUMN `We're all Kenyans here' Did this Asian home in Kenya have room for African angels too? THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY In 1969, before the turmoil ... an Asian trader in Nairobi. "HERE," said Mr. Shankardass, leading me to his garden, "we live in heaven." I looked around the lush African foliage, multicoloured flowers ablaze amidst the verdant Nairobi green. "It certainly looks like Paradise," I replied. "I don't mean the garden," my 86-year-old host replied. "I mean Kenya." Mr. Shankardass' garden was a metaphor: a fertile place in magnificent bloom, it stood for the life that Asians were able to lead in this corner of East Africa. Mr. Shankardass and his wife were both born in Kenya, when it was a British colony. They had grown up amidst anti-colonial ferment, in which most Asians - descended mainly from 19th-Century migrants and indentured workers from the Indian subcontinent - made common cause with their African fellow-subjects. But when Independence came, some Africans looked on the Asians as interlopers, foreigners depriving the locals of jobs and economic opportunity. In next-door Uganda in 1972, the dictator Idi Amin gave his entire Asian population 72 hours to leave the country for good. The mass expulsion of Ugandan Asians, mainly people who had never known any other home, sent tremors through the Asian community in Kenya and Tanzania as well. But their fears proved unfounded. Asians stayed on in Kenya as honoured and respected citizens, building flourishing businesses and excelling in the professions. Mr. Shankardass' garden was emblematic of that. But I couldn't help wondering, as I devoured a delicious Punjabi lunch on his porch with three generations of his Kenya-born family, whether the garden was an oasis as well, isolating the Asians from the Africans amongst whom they prospered. Indians abroad are often an insular people, focusing on their own community, customs and (as I could savour it) cuisine. Did Mr. Shankardass' heaven have room for African angels too? It didn't take me long to find out I needn't have worried. Later that day I attended a party in my honour thrown by another Kenyan Asian, the media entrepreneur Sudhir Vidyarthi, to whom I had been introduced by my good friend and former U.N. colleague Salim Lone, a Kashmiri Kenyan. Mr. Vidyarthi's father had run an anti-British newspaper, The Colonial Times, in which the legendary Jomo Kenyatta had first published his nationalist screeds. The elder Vidyarthi had gone to jail for his pains, and his son had continued in the family tradition, as a courageous anti-establishment publisher. A striking ethnic mix Sudhir Vidyarthi's garden, with its outdoor deck and outsize bar, was even grander and more impressive than Mr. Shankardass', but as 50 guests milled about on the patio, what struck me most was their ethnic mix. An Indian DJ bantered with the African CEO of a rival radio station; a Ugandan Asian journalist questioned the newly appointed Government spokesman; a senior government official, a striking woman with a vivid tribal scar down her cheek, held forth to an older lady in a graceful sari. Asians and Africans melded seamlessly into one. "We're all Kenyans here," my host said simply. A group of Kenyan South Asians was publishing a magazine called Awaaz, subtitled the Authoritative Journal of Kenyan South Asian History. I was given a copy of the latest issue. On the cover was a photo of the recently deceased Pranlal Sheth, a hero of Kenyan independence who was then deported from his country by the Kenyatta Government and died in exile in England. If that seemed discouraging, the same issue carried a review of a new play by a Kenyan-Indian playwright, Kuldip Sondhi, dealing with shop demolitions in Mombasa. And a portfolio of photographs by the legendary Mohammed Amin, who first broke the news of the Ethiopian famine with his searing pictures, lost a leg in the Somali civil war but went on immortalising East Africa through his lens till he was killed in a plane crash five years ago. There was much talk at the party about a new exhibition that had just been mounted by the National Museum of Kenya. It was called "The Asian African Heritage: Identity and History"; through photographs, documents and artefacts, the exhibition depicted two centuries of Asian assimilation into Kenya. Indian labour had built forts in Kenya as early as the 16th Century; Indian masons and carpenters had practised their craft in even larger numbers from 1820, and over 31,000 contract labourers from Punjab and Gujarat had built the famous Mombasa railroad, 2,500 of them perishing in the process. The city of Nairobi (like 43 other railway towns along the line) was erected by Indian hands. "This is our home," said Pheroze Nowrojee, who had authored the text of the exhibition. "Our social identity rests on our bi-continental tradition. We are both Asian and African. We are Asian African." Sudhir Vidyarthi soon emerged, proudly holding a little black toddler in his arms. "Meet my new daughter," he beamed. "She's been with us since she was four months old; the official adoption comes through next week." His excitement was as palpable as his affection for the girl, who nibbled at Indian hors d'oeuvres from his palm. "Give Daddy a kiss," he told her in Swahili, and the tiny tot, bits of samosa and kebab still on her lips, duly obliged. I looked at them - Asian father, African daughter, sharing Indian food and chatting in an East African tongue - and I raised a silent toast to their Kenyan garden. I only wished I knew the Swahili word for heaven. -- Question everything - Karl Marx
