Kenya: "Indians Were Brought to Africa.... as Slaves...!"

Well, indentured servitude, but this is absolutely true.

And it certainly informs the racial politics of the current Anglo-Zionist push to reconquer East Africa, made plain by the events of he last week;

"The official approach, British and local, to both slavery and free porter labour included a genuine belief that the man doing the work had real interests which deserved concern and protection. No such concern was evident among parliamentarians, missionaries or administrators for those at work on the construction of the Uganda Railway. It was decided to build the railway as quickly as possible; its construction was viewed almost as a military attack — casualties were inevitable and might be large if the objective were to be attained and momentum not lost."

—Anthony Clayton & Donald C. Savage

"The railroad, the embodiment of the eager, masterful, materialistic civilization of today, was pushed through a region in which nature, both as regards wild man and wild beast, does not differ materially from what it was in Europe in the late Pleistocene. ”

Theodore Roosevelt, 1909

I quote The Enemy:

"Kenyan Asians are those born in or resident in Kenya with ancestral roots in South Asia. There are currently over 100,000 Kenyan Asians, most living in the major urban areas of Nairobi and Mombasa with others living in rural areas."

There is obviously a major class issue here - Kenyan Asians are urban bourgeoise of the professions. 

This is the legacy of Empire.

A little history:

1968: More Kenyan Asians flee to Britain

Another 96 Indians and Pakistanis from Kenya have arrived in Britain today, the latest in a growing exodus of Kenyan Asians fleeing from laws which prevent them making a living.

The party included nine children under two, and all flew in on cut-price one-way tickets costing about £60 - less than half the normal single fare.

Omar Sharmar, an Indian who was forced to close his haulage business in Mombasa when the government refused to grant him a licence, estimates he has lost £2,000.

At the present rate I think this will continue for at least a year, if not more Kenyan airline official

"Only Kenyan citizens are being allowed work permits," he said. "I was forced to sell my fleet of lorries and come to Britain to look for a new life."

An airline official in Nairobi estimated that the charter flights had taken between 1,200 and 1,500 Kenyan Asians in to Britain.

"We did find some difficulty filling the planes until last week," he said.

"But in the last two or three days that attitude has changed, and there doesn't seem to be any difficulty at all now. At the present rate I think this will continue for at least a year, if not more."

Immigration laws in Kenya are becoming increasingly draconian. Foreigners can only hold a job until a Kenyan national can be found to replace them: and more and more cities, including Nairobi, are demanding that the government bans non-Kenyans from owning a shop or trading in municipal markets.

If the Kenyan government caves in to such demands, the result is likely to be chaos, as most shops are owned by foreigners, and not enough citizens have the capital or knowledge to run small businesses.

Already, the tens of thousands of Asians, who have until now dominated commerce, industry and most key jobs in the country, are finding their lives made impossible.

Although most turned down the chance to take Kenyan nationality when it was offered to them, more than 100,000 did take up the chance to get British passports.

They are now arriving at the rate of more than 1,000 a month to start a new life in the UK, a country which most have never seen.

In Context:

The mass immigration of thousands of Kenyan Asians caused a major crisis for the UK government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

The Home Secretary, James Callaghan, rushed through new legislation aimed specifically at curbing the flow of immigrants from East Africa.

The 1968 Commonwealth Immigration Act introduced a requirement to demonstrate a "close connection" with the UK.

There were deep cabinet splits over the legislation: cabinet papers have since quoted the then Commonwealth Secretary, George Thomson, saying that "to pass such legislation would be wrong in principle, clearly discrimination on the grounds of colour, and contrary to everything we stand for."

The criticisms, as well as growing tension on the issue provoked by Conservative MP Enoch Powell's infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech in April 1968, brought the issue of immigration to the fore, and ultimately led to the Race Relations Act of 1976.

There are currently about 70,000 Indians in Kenya - about 0.25% of the population. Many have been there for four generations, yet they remain politically powerless, and there is still pressure in some quarters to expel them from the country altogether. 

Again, I quote The Enemy:

"Built during the Scramble for Africa, the Uganda Railway was the one genuinely strategic railway to be constructed in tropical Africa at that time.

It was "a truly imperial project, built by the British government with little purpose other than to cement its colonial power". 2,498 workers would die during its construction.

The Uganda Railway was named after its ultimate destination, for its entire original 660-mile length actually lay in what would become Kenya.

Construction began at the port city of Mombasa in British East Africa in 1896, and finished at the line's terminus, Kisumu, on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria, in 1901.

200,000 individual 30 feet rail-lengths and 1.2 million sleepers, 200,000 fish-plates, 400,000 fish-bolts and 4.8 million steel keys including steel girders for viaducts and causeways had to be imported, necessitating the creation of a modern port at Kilindini in Mombasa. With their new steam-powered access to Uganda, the British could transport people and soldiers about to ensure their domination of the region. 

Prior to the railway's construction, the British East Africa Company had begun the Mackinnon-Sclater road, a 600 miles (970 km) ox-cart track from Mombasa to Busia in Kenya, in 1890. The railway followed a similar route and soon superseded it.

The railway is 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 3⁄8 in) gauge[7] and virtually all single-track. The project cost about £5 million to complete and the first services started in 1903.

Construction was carried out principally by labourers from British India, 32,000 of whom were brought in because of a lack of indigenous labour. While most of the surviving Indians returned home, 6,724 decided to remain after the line's completion, creating a community of Indian East Africans.

(In the 1970s, those of their descendants who would not take Kenyan citizenship (renouncing others) were expelled by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin).

The railway was a huge logistical achievement and became strategically and economically vital for both Uganda and Kenya. It helped to suppress slavery, by removing the need for humans in the transport of goods, and in the First World War campaign against General Paul Erich von Lettow-Vorbeck in German East Africa, modern Tanzania. The railway allowed heavy equipment to be transported far inland with relative ease. Up until that time the main form of transport in the interior was ox-drawn wagon. 

The railway also allowed coffee and tea to be exported and encouraged colonial settlement and other types of commerce. In order to help pay for the project, the UK government encouraged white settlers to farm large tracts of Kenyan highlands which the railway had made accessible. This policy would shape the development of Kenya for decades.

"By the 1920s, there existed a sizeable Asian population who demanded a role in the developing political life of what became Kenya Colony. At the forefront of the early pioneers was A.M. Jeevanjee, who established Kenya's first newspaper now known as the The Standard. 

Racial hostilities gradually intensified in the 1920s, however Indians, enjoying significantly greater economic strength than black Africans, had greater bargaining power with the colonial government. 

As early as 1920, they turned down the offer of two seats on the legislative council as this was not representative of the size of their community. Tensions with Europeans remained high until 1927 when Indians won the right to five seats on the council, compared to eleven reserved for the Europeans. 

Both parties prevented any African representation."

"Visiting Kenya in the 1970s, the Indo-Trinidadian writer Shiva Naipaul referring to the inward focus of the Asian community, commented that "the Indian in East Africa brought India with him and kept it inviolate".

Today, the Indian community in Kenya is estimated at over 100,000 and is dispersed throughout the country. Those who remained saw a gradual improvement in their legal status, however the Asian community continued to be cautiously inward and self-reliant. Despite varying degrees of acculturation, most have retained their strong Indian ties and traditions, and are a close-knit, endogamous community.

Despite constituting less than 1% of the population, they play a key role in the economy. Many are engaged in business and retail, and the community enjoys a relatively prosperous status. Prominent names such as Naushad Merali and Manu Chandaria have also moved into philanthropy. 

In terms of religion, most Kenyan Asians are Hindus but there are large numbers of Muslims and Sikhs. Indian temples and mosques can be found all over the country, whilst there are more than 20 Sikh gurdwaras."

The Tsavo Man-Eaters were a pair of notorious man-eating lions responsible for the deaths of a number of construction workers on the Kenya-Uganda Railway from March through December 1898.

In March 1898 the British started building a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in Kenya. The project was led by Lt. Col. John Henry Patterson. During the next nine months of construction, two maneless male Tsavo lions stalked the campsite, dragging Indian workers from their tents at night and devouring them. 

Crews tried to scare off the lions and built campfires and bomas of thorn fences around their camp for protection to keep the man-eaters out, to no avail; the lions crawled through the thorn fences. After the new attacks, hundreds of workers fled from Tsavo, halting construction on the bridge. Patterson set traps and tried several times to ambush the lions at night from a tree. 

After repeated unsuccessful endeavours, he shot the first lion on 9 December 1898. 

Twenty days later, the second lion was found and killed. The first lion killed measured nine feet, eight inches (3 m) from nose to tip of tail. It took eight men to carry the carcass back to camp. The construction crew returned and completed the bridge in February 1899. The exact number of people killed by the lions is unclear. Patterson gave several figures, overall claiming that there were 135 victims.

Patterson writes in his account that he wounded the first lion with one bullet from a Martini-Enfield chambered in .303 calibre. This shot struck the lion in its back leg, but it escaped. Later, it returned at night and began stalking Patterson as he tried to hunt it. He shot it through the shoulder, penetrating its heart with a .303 Lee Enfield, and found it lying dead the next morning not far from his platform. 

The second lion was shot at most nine times, five with a .303 Lee Enfield, three with a Martini-Henry carbine, and once with an unidentified rifle. The first was fired from atop a scaffolding Patterson had built near goat kills done by the lion. 

Two, both from the Lee Einfield, were shot into it ten days later as the lion was stalking Patterson and trying to flee. 

When they had found the lion the next day thereafter, Patterson shot it three more times with the Lee Enfield, severely crippling it, and shot it three times with the Martini-Henry carbine, twice in the chest, and once in the head, which killed it. He claimed it died gnawing on a fallen tree branch, still trying to reach him.

After 25 years as Patterson's floor rugs, the lions' skins were sold to the Chicago Field Museum in 1924 for a sum of US$5,000 (US $66,389.37 in 2012).

The lions' skins arrived at the museum in very poor condition. The lions were then reconstructed and are now on permanent display along with the original skulls.

Patterson's accounts were published in his 1907 book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.

Indophobia.

"Former British colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa have many citizens of South Asian descent (see Asians in Africa). They were brought there by the British Empire from British India to do clerical work for the Empire. In academic discourse, racial prejudices directed against these people from their host countries fall also constitute Indophobia.

The most prominent case is the ethnic cleansing of Indians and other South Asians (sometimes simply called "Asian") in Uganda by Idi Amin.

(See Expulsion of Asians from Uganda.)

According to H.H. Patel, many Indians in East Africa and Uganda were tailors and bankers, leading to stereotyping.

Some Indians considered Indian culture to be more advanced than Uganda's. Indophobia in Uganda existed under Milton Obote, before Amin's rise. The 1968 Committee on "Africanisation in Commerce and Industry" in Uganda made far-reaching Indophobic proposals.

A system of work permits and trade licenses was introduced in 1969 to Indians' economic and professional activities. Indians were segregated and discriminated against in all walks of life. After Amin came to power, he exploited these divisions to spread propaganda against Indians.

Indians were stereotyped as "only traders" and thereby "inbred" to their profession. Indians were attacked as "dukawallas" (an occupational term that degenerated into an anti-Indian slur during Amin's time). They were stereotyped as "greedy, conniving," without racial identity or loyalty but "always cheating, conspiring and plotting" to subvert Uganda.

Amin used this to justify a campaign of "de-Indianisation", eventually resulting in the expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Uganda's Indian minority.

Some 80,000 were expelled, leading about 25,000 to settle in the United Kingdom."

"In 2008, the BBC was criticised for referring to those who carried out the November 2008 Mumbai attacks as "gunmen."

This followed complaints that the BBC expresses racism against Indians stemming from the British Raj. Rediff reporter Arindam Banerji chronicled cases of alleged Indophobic bias from the BBC regarding reportage, selection bias, misrepresentation and fabrications.

Hindu groups[which?] in the United Kingdom accused the BBC of anti-Hindu bigotry and whitewashing Islamist hate groups that demonise the British Indian Hindu minority.

Journalist Mobashar Jawed "M.J." Akbar chose to boycott the BBC when he spoke of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. British parliamentarian Stephen Pound referred to the BBCs alleged whitewashing of the attacks as 

"the worst sort of mealy mouthed posturing. It is desperation to avoid causing offence which ultimately causes more offence to everyone."

Writing for The Hindu' Business Line, reporter Premen Addy criticised BBC reporting on South Asia as consistently Indophobic and pro-Islamist and that they under-report India's economic and social achievements, while exaggerating its problems. 

In addition, Addy alludes to discrimination against Indian anchors and reporters in favour of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis who are hostile to India.[original research?]

Writing for the 2008 edition of the peer-reviewed Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Alasdair Pinkerton analysed BBC Indian coverage from independence through 2008. Pinkerton suggested a tumultuous history involving allegations of Indophobic bias, particularly during the cold war and concludes that BBC coverage of South Asian geopolitics and economics shows pervasive Indophobic bias.

In the journal of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, media analyst Ajai K. Rai strongly criticised the BBC for Indophobic bias. He found a lack of depth and fairness in BBC reporting on conflict zones in South Asia and that the BBC had, on at least one occasion, fabricated photographs while reporting on the Kashmir conflict to make India look bad. 

He claimed that the network made false allegations that the Indian Army stormed a sacred Muslim shrine, the tomb of Hazrat Sheikh Noor-u-din Noorani in Charari Sharief only retracted the claim after strong criticism."

Due to India's size and diversity, anti-Indian activities occur within and outside the country. Anti-state violence is attributable to Islamic, Naxalite and ethnic nationalist radical movements. 

The provinces with ongoing activities against the state include Bihar, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmirand five of the Seven Sister States. In the past, the Punjab insurgency led to militant activities in the state and New Delhi (largely due the government's invasion of the Sikh holy place in Operation Blue Star). 

As of 2006, at least 232 of the country’s 608 districts were afflicted by various insurgencies.

In August 2008, National Security Advisor M K Narayanan claimed that as many as 800 terrorist cells operated in India.

David Coleman Headley (born Daood Sayed Gilani; 30 June 1960) is a Pakistani American spy who conspired with the Lashkar-e-Taiba organization and Pakistani intelligence officers in plotting the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Between 2002 and 2005, Headley made several trips to Pakistan for Lashkar training while simultaneously working as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Under the direction of Lashkar chiefs, Headley performed five spying missions in Mumbai to scout targets for the attacks, which killed 168 people. 

The following year, he performed a similar mission in Copenhagen to help plan an attack against the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which had published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. He was arrested at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago while on his way to Pakistan in October 2009.

The Indian public has followed Headley's story closely, considering him to be their equivalent of Osama bin Laden. U.S. authorities gave Indian investigators direct access to Headley, but some in India have questioned why the U.S. had not shared suspicions about him with Indian authorities before the Mumbai attacks.

At the trial of Tahawwur Hussain Rana, an alleged co-conspirator, Headley gave detailed information about the participation of Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in carrying out the attacks.

However, in 2011, Headley testified that the ISI leadership was not involved in planning the attacks.

Since his arrest and guilty plea, Headley has cooperated with U.S. and Indian authorities and given information about his associates.

On January 24, 2013, a U.S. federal court sentenced Headley to 35 years in prison for his role in the Mumbai attacks.

While government officials in India cite full cooperation by U.S. authorities, the opposition parties and others in India have demanded explanations of why Headley was allowed to travel freely for years between India, Pakistan, and the U.S., and why he was working undercover for the DEA. 

Some Indian analysts have speculated that David Headley was a double agent for the Central Intelligence Agency that had infiltrated LeT, an accusation denied by the CIA.

 As soon as Headley was arrested in Chicago, the Indian media had a barrage of questions for the government about him, whose answers were slow in coming. Among other questions, Indian investigators wanted the FBI to share its tapes of Headley's communications with his Pakistani handlers to match with the voices taped on cell phones during the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Following intense coverage and speculation in the Indian press, U.S. ambassador Timothy J. Roemer told reporters in New Delhi that the United States is working at the "highest level" to provide India access to Headley, even as it is passing along answers to questions in "real time".

News reports in October 2010 revealed that U.S. authorities had much advance knowledge about Headley's terrorist associations and activities. Headley's American and Moroccan wives had contacted American authorities in 2005 and 2007, respectively, complaining about his terrorist activities. The Moroccan wife told reporters that she had even shown the U.S. embassy in Islamabad photographs of their stay at the Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, warning them that he was doing something on behalf of Lashkar-e-Taiba.