The Indian Question in Afrocentric Politics

For African-Indian relationships, the idealism of Afro-Asian solidarity did not often match realities on the ground, which were volatile and rapidly changing from the 1940s. This essay explores how Idi Amin's expulsion of Asians was embedded in a racial calculus that had a history beyond Uganda in 1972, in the context of ongoing struggles for African independence, Pan-Africanism, the Cold War, and religious nationalism in the Middle East. The Indian question in Africa was a political and sociocultural one—emblematic of division and partition based on ethno-religious and cultural difference and hierarchy—and not simply an economic one for Africans. The Ugandan expulsion was complex and not a single event but one made in multiple registers, as wider continental African perspectives reveal.