Overseas Indians
Molly Mortimer
Attention to Peking's political shadow— the overseas Chinese—is natural; less attention is generally paid to the equally hard problem of overseas Indians. These present the same racial and economic problems, as the overseas Chinese, made worse by their unfortunate fecundity. Fiji is the classic case today, where the immigrant Indian has outbred the indigenous Fijian; his demand for political control makes a mockery of one man one vote democracy — to the Fijian.
In all there are some ten million overseas Indians, spread, some in sizeable minorities, over twenty odd countries. In Mauritius they have taken over control through superior numbers. In Guyana there is grave inter-racial feeling between the Forbes Burnham negro government and the Indians, once led by Cheddi Jagan. Indians (or Asians) have been hated for many years in East Africa, where they total about 400,000. Pick up any local paper over the last twenty years and this is evident from the correspondent columns. This hatred, it is true, stems partly from envy at a hardworking intelligent people and partly from fear of exploitation; but deeper goes the basic non-assimilable racial antipathy.
Few are ready to give South Africa much credit (even for producing Gandhi!) but her policy of separate development has allowed a wealthy Indian minority to thrive in the Republic and to live in peace (apart from some vicious riots with Zulu). It is noteworthy that there were no takers for the Government's offer of repatriation to India after the war. The South African Indian Council, which, with limited legislative powers, looks after the interests of the 600,000 Indians and is accepted by the Government as a permanent part of the population, controls considerable economic interests; and by and large the state of Asians in other parts of Africa makes increasingly laughable the old Indian complaint, often made before UNO-of the treatment of her minority in South Africa. Probably the best sign for the future of South Africa's Asians is the unpublicised efforts of businessmen in India and South Africa to normalise relationships, largely under the aegis of Mr Pillay, a weaithy Indian of Maritsburg, and with the unofficial support of Mr Rajah, Chairman of the Indian Council. How long before the Indian Government can admit this remains obscure; in the meantime many an Asian in black Africa looks south with envy.
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