REFLECTIONS

 

The world in one country – South African Indians integrate
By Eric Jethro

Indians are now an integral part of the post apartheid nation
 and are found in all spheres of public life

 

Indians first arrived in South Africa in the nineteenth century to relieve the labour shortage in the fledgling sugar industry. Before them lay an unknown land and unfamiliar people. They landed between two cultures and races at opposite ends of the human spectrum. At one end were the whites, mainly British, Christians, technologically advanced and in control. At the other end were the blacks, technologically underdeveloped and with no defined religion and recently dispossessed of their land.  Hinduism, the religion of the majority of the new arrivals, could not slot easily into either of the aforementioned people’s culture, language or religion. Hence the three cultural-racial groups had to coexist in parallel with each other, rubbing shoulders only in the marketplace or workplace. After nearly a century and a half the situation hasn’t changed much.

It became clear from the outset that survival in their new homeland depended on the settlers learning English as there was no likelihood of non-Indians learning Indian languages. The settlers would also need to acclimatise themselves with the prevailing western customs and culture which were totally different from those of their home country. Assimilation required educational facilities and these were practically non existent for adults let alone children.  In the beginning acculturation was a slow process but as educational facilities improved so did the rate of acculturation.

Christianity being the religion of the ruling class was and is the dominant religion in South Africa with its values superimposed on the political system. Most blacks have embraced Christianity despite the discrimination they suffered in the apartheid era. However, blacks have separate churches with their own clergy, etc. In the recent past blacks have come to dominate the Christian scene since the appointment of the first Anglican archbishop, Desmond Tutu.  The Dutch Reformed Church, the church of the Afrikaners – the original white settlers – held blacks to be an inferior race ordained by God to be so.  Despite the political changes that have taken place in South Africa many whites find it difficult to accept blacks as their equals; a view held by a few Indians as well.

South African Indians shouldn’t be regarded as a monolithic group; they reflect the differences extant in India. The first arrivals were mainly farm labourers from Tamil Nadu who were nearly all Hindus of a lower caste. Among later arrivals were a few Brahmins, Ksatriyas and Vaishyas.  Hindi speaking Hindus mainly from north India and Gujarat speaking Hindus from Gujarat observed a different version of Hinduism from Tamil and Telegu speaking Hindus. 

Marriage across linguistic/religious/racial lines until recently was extremely rare indeed.  In a country divided along racial lines by the apartheid system the Indian community paradoxically imposed upon itself further subdivisions based on language, religion and economic standing. These subdivisions conspired to weaken the ties between the different groups; consequently community cohesiveness was a very loose thing, only political action against anti-Indian legislation brought the disparate groups together. The subdivisions of the Indians wasn’t something imposed on them from outside, it just happened naturally as each group felt more comfortable with others of the same religion and language. Hence there are no collective get-togethers of Indians anywhere in South Africa. As an interesting aside, I observed that even among the small number of South African Indians who have settled in the UK the different  groups still keep close contact and friendship with others of the same linguistic and religious group as themselves.

Religious festivals such as Eid, Diwali and Christmas are very much private affairs; each group celebrating their particular festival in their own way and among themselves. When I was at school we got two days off for Diwali because Tamilians and Telegus celebrated on the first day and on the following day the Hindi and Guajarati speakers had their turn. [I believe that Diwali is now on the same day.]  

Most Indians are concentrated in and around Durban – South Africa’s second city. However, there is a large Islamic presence in the South Western Cape province mainly in Cape Town. These Muslims are made up of people from the former Dutch colonies in the East Indies. They are referred to as Malays but virtually none of them have Malay ancestry. Their name derives from Malayal, the lingua franca among traders across the Dutch East Indies. The early Dutch settlers brought them over as ‘slaves’ from Singapore, Malabar, Indonesia and Coromandel. These so-called slaves were educated and skilled craftsmen, prized as builders and carpenters, and their women were excellent cooks and seamstresses. They brought with them Sufism – the mystical branch of Islam. Among them also were teachers and scholars. They have a strong cultural identity and take pride in their traditions and customs. They have hardly intermarried with other ethnic groups. Anomalously they are not officially classified as Asians but as ‘coloureds’ the term used for people of mixed black and white ancestry. Their home language is Afrikaans mixed with a few words of Malayal. 

Religious-cultural literature has always been an important part of the Indian identity and has proved to be their survival kit in a strange new world. Despite a paucity of Hindu priests the stories from the ancient scriptures such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana have been transmitted orally.  The South African Hindu Maha Sabha which was founded in 1912 publishes from time to time brochures and pamphlets.  Another Hindu organisation playing an active role in publishing books, booklets, pamphlets and journals is the Ramakrishna Centre founded in 1942 by Swami Nischalanda. The centre has its own press which publishes a journal called Jyoti. The Divine Life Society established in 1949 by Swami Sahajananda, also has its own press and publishes a variety of books and booklets. There are also Christian and Muslim organisations engaged in publishing literature relating to their religions. Much of South African Indian publications have tended to be on religious/political related subjects. Unfortunately there has not been much in the way of creative writing. South Africa has enough material for the creative writer to seize upon. Perhaps some day an author will arise and bring glory to the community utilising the material around him/her. 

The Hare Krishna Movement also have a presence in South Africa. They do very much the same things there that they do in Britain and elsewhere in the world. They have a newly built temple south of Durban which has a visual impact on passers by from the nearby motorway. They run a restaurant serving vegetarian food, and also give free food to the poor and unemployed. Muslims too have charitable organisations providing care and assistance for those of their own faith, and so do the Christians. Incidentally, there are no starving masses in South Africa, but there are those who suffer hardship of one sort or another. 

What of the future of the Indians in South Africa and their languages and culture? Indians have an indomitable spirit which can survive under the harshest of social and political conditions but as for the survival of Indian languages against numerically stronger languages the odds are that they will die a slow death. Attempts to revive them may be made but this may only be for studying them for scholarly or religious purposes rather than as a means of connecting with others. With growing unemployment and the high crime rate many Indians have emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA to start a new life, not to transplant their language and culture but to adapt to the life of their new homelands.  The few of us of Indian descent who have made our homes here in the UK have found the change from South Africa to the UK less painful than our forebears when they arrived in South Africa, mainly because of our fluency in English and our familiarity with Western customs and behaviour.

With English being the lingua franca of most South Africans the mixing of the different ethnic and linguistic groups has been facilitated as they all now have a common language, common interests and destiny.  Race relations in South Africa are good. Indians are now an integral part of the post apartheid nation and are found in all spheres of public life. They don’t have one foot planted in India and another in South Africa. Their future is bound up with the rest of the people of that beautiful country. As the slogan of the South African Tourist Board proclaims, “It’s the world in one country.” 

Eric Jethro was born in South Africa where his maternal grandfather arrived in the 1860s as an indentured labourer. He now lives in Leeds, West Yorkshire after retiring from teaching at the Middlesex Polytechnic, London.