Brown men, Black women, White anxiety
Indian migration, interracial marriages and colonial categorisation in British East Africa
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51185/journals/rhca.2022.varia04Keywords:
British East Africa, Indian migration, racial identity, exogamy, mixed-race, IslamAbstract
Intermarriage between Indian early migrants and indigenous women in British East Africa have never been the subject of a historical study. Built on both colonial archives and Indian sources, this article explores this little-known phenomenon and brings to light the discrepancy between the colonial administration’s racial concerns and the lived experience of Indian settlers (whether former indentured labourers, merchants or civil servants). For the colonial authorities, anxious to regulate Indian intra-imperial migration, children born of these mixed unions challenged the racial categorisation on which colonial policies and control of land were built, and also indicated permanent Indian settlement in the region. In contrast, the analysis of Kenyan-Indian family stories suggests that cultural factors including religion were more influential in determining these unions’ acceptability. It also appears that mixed families were in some instances able to subvert racial categorization and to circumvent segregationist measures to their social and economic advantage.
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