I doubt whether my parents would have ever imagined in the early years of their married life how multinational our family would later become: I am a US citizen, my sister lives in India, and my brother is an Australian citizen. Three siblings in three countries on three different continents!
Such a multinational existence is obvious when I visit India
The other day, when I called up my father, it turned out that father and son think alike--he had apparently been thinking about the American connections within the extended family. "Not many on the West Coast" he remarked. Indeed. Most are in the Eastern and Central time zones.
“Foreign” is not foreign anymore.
But, African countries rarely seem to show up in such a global life—seldom do I ever run into anyone in India who has a son or daughter living anywhere in Africa . Other than a cousin of my dad's, who seems to spend half the year in Malawi, the familial connections don't extend to Africa, it seems. Well, other than that prehistoric one, of course!
Things might have been different if that Sierra Leone connection had worked out. As I noted in this post, I was all too excited when my father mentioned about a chance to work in Sierra Leone
It is one heck of a statement on Africa's economic conditions, and the political stability too, when despite the global wanderings of the cousins, nephews and nieces, there is hardly any mention of any African country at all.
It is a small world, after all, yes. But, Africa continues to be so far away. That doesn't sound right. Hopefully, not for long.
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"It is a small world, after all, yes. But, Africa continues to be so far away. That doesn't sound right. Hopefully, not for long."
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Oh there are a zillion Indian families in Africa. Indian immigration to various parts of the world has followed a regional line in the past. Our tribe of professional immigrants from Chennai is largely US bound. But the number of Tamilians in South Africa and Gujaratis in other parts is huge as are Sindhis in Hong Kong. Punjabis in Canada, Gujaratis again in the UK (so much so that those who could not fathom the idea of a surnameless name made me Ramesh Patel !).
There was an exodus from East Africa to the UK when Idi Amin expelled them from Uganda, but even there, there are lots of Indians now.
I know a number of my classmates from business school currently in Africa. I've had the good fortune of traveling to a number of countries there and almost uniformly, they've been great places to go to.
So yes, the land of our forefathers (THE forefather ?) is a wonderful place. Actually there is an economic boom going on in many countries, especially Eastern and Southern Africa. Rwanda , despite all the recent torturous history, is economically one of the best performing countries for quite a few years now.
well, a zillion Indian families in Africa is not really the case. there are quite a few there, yes, and quite a few were also kicked out, yes.
but, the numbers in the middle east gulf countries alone would easily dwarf that number, i think. will be interesting to look up the data.
and then the patterns of migration to north america, aus/nz, uk, .... african countries pale in comparison in terms of the indian diaspora.
and, yes, rwanda is one galloping economy now. but, we should keep in mind that growth from low levels will appear rapid, and that rwanda is a pretty tiny country. the big guys in africa--nigeria, egypt, sa, kenya, are not really that fast growing either. and other big guys like congo are in deep doodoo ...
i didn't mean to suggest in my post that there is nothing going on in africa. but that the fact that it is not attracting as much from india as these other countries do is an indicator of economics and stability in most of africa.
(if not for the british empire dragging indian workers to its various colonies around the world, especially to africa and the west indies, one can make a counterfactual argument that the indian presence would have been way minimal for idi amin to even target them. but, interestingly, even after idi amin kicked out the indians, chappati continues on as pretty much a national dish in that part of the world!)
Depends on the definition of "Indian" and "zillion" :) According to Wikipedia, there are some 16m persons of Indian origin living outside the subcontinent. Of course, the Middle East is huge (6m) and much bigger than anywhere else in the world, including the US (3m). But South Africa is not far behind - 1.2 m. For a long time Durban had the highest number of Indians in the world outside of India, until Dubai appropriated that title.
And yes, all that migration to Africa happened because of the British and yes, these days its only a trickle. But even a trickle out of 1.2 billion is a lot :)
Africa has far more promise than we think and there are lots of traders and businessmen in India who are taking advantage. Its not only China which is heavily involved in Africa. One of my classmates is doing business with South Sudan of all places !!!!
yes, from my JHSS class too ... I am not sure if you remember a Vijayaraghavan ... often he seems to be in some African country or the other regarding his business ...
yes, i hope that economic conditions will pick up in Africa and more and more Indians will begin to diffuse into that continent too ...
here, in eugene, i recently met a high school student who is from uganda. she said she makes awesome chappatis ...
i find that aspect to be so fascinating. i remember in tanzania too people were eating chappatis like just regular food. i think we in tamil nadu made a bigger deal about chappati! it is one awesome world ...
Not to shift the focus of the conversation away from Africa, but where does Latin America fit into this conversation. I did a quick check and it appears Indian migration to Latin America has been very low. Please share any thoughts or contrary evidence.
Hey Chris, the short answer is "not much." But, that is more because of the distance and language than anything else.
But, even within that, there is a geographic area that has people of Indian descent. In Surinam, Guyana, and across the waters in the West Indian islands.
A neat story, I have. hey, wait, let me blog about that ... see you at that post, for "the rest of the story" ;)
Ok, assignment completed ;)
http://sriramkhe.blogspot.com/2013/05/on-latin-american-indians-east-indians.html
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