This recently published book, tellingly titled, Uganda an Indian Colony: 1897-1972, by historian, Prof Samwiri Lwanga Lunyiigo is surely the book of our time and our struggles.  Perhaps the most important book to be ever published in Uganda since independence.

Carefully woven into one powerful narrative that zooms in on Indians in Uganda, and East African, without the too-common corruption of the Indian story with the politics of President Idi Amin, Lwanga-Lunyiigo tells the commercial life of native Ugandans—from Bunyoro, Lango to Buganda powerfully roaming the Great Lakes region—before colonialism.

Most importantly, without tackling the topic directly, Lunyiigo historicizes and gives much-needed context to the 1972 economic war by President Amin.  In effect, he invites us to think about the so-called repossession of the so-called departed Asian properties from long durée perspective. 

He invites us to see Amin-Asian conundrum as the epitome of our struggle for independence. Telling this story through coffee and cotton trade, oppressive ordinances and legislations against cooperatives, Lunyiigo challenges us to see past and present struggles in Uganda (or Africa) as struggles over resources—as struggles against imperialism. 

This book is a long-awaited intervention on the ways in which Indian vulnerability has been institutionalized to absolute neo-colonial advantage while systematically silencing their otherwise obvious identity as deputies of the British colonizers.  To give Mahmood Mamdani a quick translation, “Indian/Asians were neither natives nor settlers,” but workers, associates, and deputies of the British colonizers.

Indians promised a colony

Working for but also with competition from only their masters British officials, Lwanga-Lunyiigo makes the point—elaborating Prof Mahmood Mamdani that Indians were the only one to get independence after 1962.

Mamdani wrote: “One can state without exaggeration that to the extent any group in Uganda society become independent in 1962, it was the Asian (Indian) bourgeoisie.” [“And Fire Does Not Always Beget Ash: Critical Reflections on the NRM,” Monitor Publications Ltd., Kampala, 1995, p85].

After 1962, the Indians got their turn to run the show without their often intrusive superiors – and some of the big capitalist exploiters had already conscripted Obote into their ranks with Madhvani, a major capitalist, being, ironically, chair of the otherwise socialist move to the left.

One of the major arguments of this book is that the dominant status Indians came to enjoy in Uganda’s economy (East Africa, more generally) was only possible because the British colonisers—those who had brought them—privilleged them, and systematically compromised local investment. Indians practically were carried on the backs of British colonialists to dominate the economy.

Lwanga-Lunyiigo demonstrates that Indians came to East Africa, not just to work on the projects of the British, but also on the promise that East Africa was going to be their colony. They were being rewarded for fighting alongside the British in places such as the Middle East, Sudan, and Ethiopia.

Upon this promise, which was however rejected by the colonial office in London, Indians demanded for special status in East Africa.  The war generals in charge of East Africa put in place systems that privilleged their Indian associates.  Lunyiigo writes:

Sir Harry Hamilton Johnston, Sir Hesketh Bell, Sir Hayes Sadler and other Indian British colonial luminaries such as Captain (later Lord) Lugard wanted Indians to virtually take East Africa.  Sir Harry Johnston wanted East Africa to be the America of the Hindus – Entebbe, the future (Calcutta), Mau Plateau – (Simla), Mombasa (Bombay) and Fort Portal, Darjeeling).  Hesketh Bell pressed for state-aided immigration from India to crown colonies and Hayes Sadler supported this too.

Indians special business geniuses?

Privilleged by the British generals, in a small period, the Indians who had come with no capital and aboard leaking boats had become business magnets. Lwanga-Lunyiigo writes:

…Indians did not have capital.  The mighty Madhvani and Metha prioneers came here in their teens with only the clothes on their backs but in a short 15 to 20 years were emerging as economic giants through the processing of cotton.  Many other Indians joined this and other economic fields with the help and encouragement of the British.  There is no magic to their prosperity.

But to thrive as they did, they had to practically fight native businesses, through especially legislation against native businesses and initiatives, but also through outright abuse. 

The book is extensive on the ways in which the colonial government practically stifled and consquently killed local economies (salt, timber, export trade, pottery), which had existed way before colonialism, and natives would be reduced to simple labourers and producrs of raw materials.  The colonial government did this through ordinances, legislations, and licenses which created monopolies especially in coffee and cotton trade for Indians, and British at the expense of Natives.

Indeed, Indians actually behaved like colonialists, pilaging, exploiting, and enslaving, oftentimes in ways that shocked the British colonisers. Lwanga also captures the squaller conditions in which Natives were pushed especually those who worked on Indian plantations to the point that many opted to run away from the firms and set their own businesses.

Even then, the Indians found them and molested them, which was a statement of Indian racism against African Natives, which has been meticulously documented about Indian hero, Mahatma Ghandi in South Africa.  While these claims could sound scandalous in these times, one has to read this work of a historian, and appreciate the meticulous citation of sources.

No Native Cooperatives, open robbery

Lunyiigo spends a great deal of time on this detailing how Natives sought to organise themselves and prosper, in direct competition with the Indians. But for close to 50 years, cooperatives were outlawed, made expensive through licenses, while on the other hand, Indian cooperatives thrived. 

The sadder part of this tel is that while Natives had been legislated out of business, Indians also practially stole the produce of the Natives.  Citing Mr J.E. Philipps – district commissioner of Lango, the story goes that  Indians traders put Natives produce on their lories and drove off without payment. Lunyiigo writes: “…Lorries are loaded with peasants’ cotton and then drive off and disappear.  They leave the cotton owners behind and by the time they reach the ginneries, they are unable to identify their cotton.  This was robbery on a vast scale.”

Natives lost a great deal of merchandise in this open robbery. Indeed, in the Cotton Commission Report (1948) the commissioners stated that £500,000 and more are illegally filched annually from the native peasants by African and Indian buyers and ginners.  Of course, there were no African ginners and the African buyers of cotton worked for Indian ginners, Lwanga noted. This story of Indian trickery and theft of natives, produce is specifically heartbreaking:

At the beginning of the cotton harvesting season in November, gifts of kerosene, cotton piece goods, cigarettes, soap, etc are sent to the chiefs, marked bags are sent to the peasants so that the ginneries own the cotton through the marked bags. 

Chiefs take the bribe – they get a honorarium from the buyers and their cotton is bought at a higher price than what is paid to peasants.  The Lango DC reported that some drivers (Indians) carry guns and are not averse to breaking legs.  Since the drivers were Indian, they would only be dealt with through the British judicial process which was very difficult to access by the natives. 

Without the imposition of taxes and the commutation of forced labour, Luwalo and Arododo the majority of these Africans would not produce cotton at all.  The falsification of scales is executed through the introduction of a piece of rubber cleverly concealed in an easily removable one–cent coin. 

A spare pair of correct scale is also often kept in the background to be brought out for inspection whenever any inquisitive or officious person is seen in the distance. The dupery practiced by falsified scales must mean the loss of several million shillings to the people of this Protectorate.

Pilage and reposession

Later in the book, Lwanga-Lunyiigo offers some calculations on how much money actually left the region, especially Uganda into foreign banks, and how Indians mastered manipulating the system to take all capital out of the country.  Most of this money actually ended in the United Kingdom and explains why after the 1972 economic war, Britain was hardpressed to take on most of the expelled Asians because it would mean a run on their banks.

Between 1955 and 1972 there was an outflow of capital from Uganda averaging around £. 12 million a year.  It reached a peak of £. 17.2 in 1958. This country that lacked capital was exporting large monetary sums, mainly in the form of invisible payments due largely to the non-African business community (largely Indian) preferring to send their earnings out of Uganda rather than reinvesting here, laments (Donald) Kaberuka. By 1972 one of the British banks had £. 240 million belonging to East African Asians and yet there was an acute shortage of development funds in East Africa.

Lwanga-Lunyiigo then tackles the repossession of properties, and the return of Indian dominance in the economy as he winds up the book.  Through a series of political processes, especially the Structural Adjustment Programmes, Lunyiigo demonstrates how the economy is slowly but surely returning to foreigners.  But the book should not be judged by the concluding chapter, its strength is in narrating Indian identity as sub-colonialists, who upon independence had to do what the British colonialists had done: Leave.

But since they were not seen in those terms – as imperialists – they were left in the country to continue the interests of those that had brought them to the continent, and the British loved it.  Strangely, over 25,000 Indians wanted to relocate to the UK, but UK had denied them entry.  When Idi Amin gave them marching orders, they were dully pleased and actually thanked him profusely.  

Also, Lwanga reminds us that expulsion of Indians happened in many places including Kenya, which expelled more Indians without compensation, Tanzania, Burma and Pakistan. So, expulsion would not be an issue, but rather, the British economic interest that Amin destabilized brought him all the hate and anger ever imagined in anti-colonial history.