: Sana Aiyar’s ‘Indians in Kenya’ brings the politics affecting Indian diasporas out of the shadows #IndiaNEWS I am one of those Indians who are the subject of Sana Aiyar’s book. My association

Sana Aiyar’s ‘Indians in Kenya’ brings the politics affecting Indian diasporas out of the shadows #IndiaNEWS
I am one of those Indians who are the subject of Sana Aiyar’s book. My association with Kenya coincides roughly with the period she covers, my grandfather arriving in the 1890s, while I left Kenya for all intents and purposes when I went to study in the United Kingdom in 1966. Reading Aiyar’s book, its scholarly tone notwithstanding, was for me an emotional journey.Before I came to my senses, I felt a surge of incredulous anger at Shiva Naipaul’s comment, quoted in the first paragraph of the introduction, that Indians were a “shadowy�? presence …“just there�?. Naipaul’s comment, as I soon realised, was made in 1976, over a decade after Uhuru, when Indians had left Kenya in large numbers – 28% of the entire Indian population between 1962 and 1968, according to Aiyar’s figures, forming what she calls a “voluntary�? exodus.A Kenyan Asian (a term Aiyar eschews for reasons she explains) might well take issue with both the “voluntary�? and the grouping of the years (Asians did not leave Kenya in numbers, as did Europeans, with the declaration of Uhuru in 1963). These are minor issues, however, although they bear on the nature of the commitment of Indians to Kenya.The Kenya of my...Read more

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