Indian Transnationalisms in colonial and postcolonial Mozambique

Abstract

The presence of Indians in Mozambique since the second half of the 19th century is closely linked with the socio-economic and political transformations of the Swahili coast, as well as with the migratory movements between India and Austral Africa which began in 1860, namely with the wave of Gujarati “passengers” who paid their own passage, first to South Africa, later also to Delagoa Bay (Lourenco Marques). Based on the family life histories of the main Indian (Hindu, Sunni and Ismaili) family businesses of Mozambique, we intend to illustrate how the consolidation of a transnational migratory culture (which re-actualised connections with the origin and/or with other diasporic nuclei throughout East Africa) had a fundamental role in the construction of the status of middleman trading minorities they received during the colonial period. This transnational culture was also vital in the management of the ambivalence displayed by the Portuguese colonial authorities that granted them protection when they may had political, economic and social benefits to offer in exchange, and used them as scapegoats in times of crisis and nationalistic exacerbation, e.g. in 1961. In post-colonial Mozambique, Indian transnationalisms acquire an additional importance: they opened new successful migration destinations, and presented new (possibly illegal) strategies of rapid wealth amassment in a Marxist-Leninist regime and the constitution of corruption elites based upon transnational connections.

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