Sunday, April 25, 2021

Different Shades of Diaspora — My Lived Experiences from East Africa by Urmila Jhaveri. Part 1 of 3.


Urmila Jhaveri at the GRFDT Conference.

I consider it an honor, privilege and a pleasure indeed to be here and thank the organizers of JNU - GRDFT for inviting me to address this distinguished conference. I would also like to thank Dr. Sadanand Sahoo and Lavanya Regunathan Fischer for their help and encouragement. I must also confess that I feel very nervous being here because I am not an Academic like you all are. In fact, as I understand it, being Diaspora myself I am a part of the subject matter under discussion. My paper is based on our personal experiences gained during a lifetime lived in East Africa since Colonial times, sharing pre and post Independence struggles and its great and no so great moments. It is a long story, difficult to describe within a short period. However, I will try to give a glimpse of a few salient points of our experiences from East Africa with the hope that this brief account of mine will be of use to researchers and scholars interested in this part of our history.

THE EARLY MIGRANTS

Migration from India to Africa has been going on for more than a century and a half. This flow turned into a great influx during British Raj in India due to its scorched earth policy which caused horrific famines and prompted young men barely in their teens from Gujarat, Punjab and coastal regions to cross the mighty Indian Ocean by dhows and reach Zanzibar, Malindi and other villages on the coast of East Africa in search of a better life.(Sourabh,2015) 

In addition, many Lohanas and members of other communities from Gujarat converted and became Ismaili Khoja, migrated to Africa, and settled down well with the full support of the Agakhan. (khojawiki.org)

Apart from that, the British brought some 31,983 indentured laborers as coolies to build the railways in East Africa. Many of these artisans were devoured by man-eating lions and succumbed to the hazards of jungle life by scores.(Agora, 2015)

These young migrants, unskilled and starting from scratch cleared the jungles inch by inch, followed the Rail, opened their small shops - dukas in their tin-roofed shacks and huts and started planting seeds brought from their villages in India. (Kersi Rustomji, 2015) 

They thus opened up vast areas of the hinterland and steadily laid the foundation for development where nobody had dared to go. Gradually, many of them through sheer dint of their hard work, became renowned entrepreneurs, industrialists, businessmen and philanthropists. They built schools, hospitals, libraries, museums, ran many welfare organizations and donated handsomely for worthy causes.

MY FAMILY HISTORY IN BRIEF :

My own story began in early 1920s when my Gujarati parents Labhuben and Tarachand Gandhi arrived in Zanzibar by dhow from Jamnagar – Gujarat where my father joined the Arab Sultan’s government as a customs officer. I was born in the nearby island of Pemba in 1931. (presently part of Tanzania) My father then moved to Dar-es-Salaam and joined his elder brother to help run,’ Gandhi Medical Store, established in 1925. I grew up in Dar-es-Salaam during the harsh colonial regime, got married, had two lovely kids Atool and Abha by the time I was 21 years old. And together with my husband Kantilal Jhaveri took part in post and pre-independence struggles in Tanganyika - Tanzania. We experienced the exuberance of achieving independence and the birth of a new nation as well as the trauma of the Zanzibar Revolution, forced marriages, Army mutiny, Nationalization of assets, Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, Uganda debacle and so on.

Now after spending, eight decades of my life in Dar -es-Salaam, here I am as a returnee holding an OCI card (Regunathan Fischer & Shah Ramnik, 2015)   and a family spread out across the continents. We moved to Delhi for medical treatment where my husband passed away in 2014, leaving me to finish the rest of our ' manzil ' as best as I can.

CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES

Tanganyika was a British Territory and similar to Apartheid in SA all aspects of our lives were strictly controlled:  Europeans, Asians, Africans were completely isolated in separate compartments; Europeans occupied the highest positions and best localities, they were the Boss. Africans were placed in the lowest rung and the Asians were kept in the middle buffer zone to keep the status quo against the Africans and keep them downtrodden in the lowest rung as part of the British divide and rule policy.

Moreover, there were Hindus, Muslims and their sub casts. Intercommunity relations were generally harmonious and we were all Indians.  But the rivalries between the two communities flared up from time to time after 1947. People thus continued to lead their lives absorbed in running their businesses, bound by the strict restrictions set by the Colonial Government and their own self-imposed conventions. I grew up in this environment, unmindful and preoccupied with growing up wide-eyed and learning lessons.

At the onset of World War II, our family had bought a sisal farm in Pugu from a German friend.  Before leaving in a hurry, he had confided that there were Diamonds and Rubies on his land.  Consequently, my father was running the farm and exploring for diamonds and rubies. It was like a thriller. We lived right in the jungle in a two-roomed brick house with a kitchen in the open verandah and the toilet in the garden. And in the dark of the night we used to hear elephants trumpeting, lions roaring and monkeys chattering while sharing my mother’s bed safely tucked under a blanket.

Bapuji never found any diamonds or rubies with his rudimentary equipment. Ultimately, they sold the farm. Since then rich veins of minerals have been found in that region.

He then bought a huge coconut farm in Bagamoyo. Situated on the edge of blue-green expanse of the Indian Ocean, it was serene and peaceful. However, in the days gone by, Bagamoyo was a notorious terminus from where dhows sailed with traumatised and chained human beings as a commodity for sale in Zanzibar and onwards.

The spacious central two-storied building that we used to occupy was formerly the Head Quarters Watch Tower of the slave traders. It was surrounded by about 30 dingy rooms where these captives were kept. The huge creaking gates were locked up at night for fear of lions entering the compound and attacking goats and people. But in spite of all the precautions, we could still hear the lions growling around and donkeys braying in fear.

To celebrate the harvest season Bapuji used to organize the traditional Ngoma dance. It started with melodious Tarab songs, drums rolling, hips swinging gracefully, bells jingling and ended with young men with painted faces adorned with cowry shells, animal skins, bobbing feathers and eyes flashing making fantastic somersaults. It was all very exciting and marvelous fun.

(with thanks to Opinion Magazine for permission to re-publish this story and to Bhadra Vadgama for alerting me to Urmila Jhaveri's amazing story).

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