HYDERABAD : In her recent book, ‘What Gandhi Didn’t See: Being Indian In South Africa, author Zainab Priya Dala looks back from the vantage point of her own personal history -- a fourth-generation South African-Indian of mixed lineage -- and recalls that, as a child, she was hesitant about accepting her Indian identity, but contends that she has now come to terms with it.
She has shared memories of her growing up in South Africa in the 1980s -- a time of the State of Emergency, the atrocious Tricameral System advocated and supported by many South African-Indians, and the heightened efforts to have Nelson Mandela released from prison and finally usher in a democratic government.
“The largest challenge I think I faced was negotiating the apparent and false safety of being an Indian rather than a Black child, and watching many of my community accept the Tricameral System, which was a means devised by the ruling White government to give a place in Parliament to Indians,” Dala said in an email from Durban in South Africa.
She said she could see that the Indian community were being given more privileges and access to basic human needs as compared to the Black community, and this unfairness went against her formative ideas of democracy. “It irked me that many Indian people benefited and lapped up these handouts and enriched themselves on a false sense of fairness.
I felt that we were betraying Nelson Mandela by our complicit acceptance of this better life, and when he was released, I hoped that the playing fields would be leveled. But, the further challenge then came for me when I saw that unfairness seemed to again rear its head in that,” she recalled.
She goes on to mention in her book that the truth is “I am South African”, explaining that she relates more to a Black woman than a woman from India.
Dala, who lived and worked in Dublin and has now moved to Durban, said the defining roots of South African-Indians remain in religion and cultural practices, but that is only when they are in their own communities and families.
“When we are out there in social situations and workplaces, we have developed this ability to be chameleons, and fit ourselves into the melting pot that is contemporary South African society,” she added.
“I think after South Africa became a democracy and issues of colour were removed from the table, people began to finally look at themselves and possibly felt safer to ask the questions of their lineage.”
“They felt more freedom to find out about where they came from instead of hiding it all away,” she said, in response to a question.