From Kings Cross to Kew: Following the History of Zambia's Indian Community through British Imperial Archives
I
In the summer months of 2005 I traveled to London for the purpose of carrying out archival research in the Oriental and India Office Collection (OIOC) of the British Library at Kings Cross. My aim was to document the history of Indian immigration to the former British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia), about which very little has been published. The OIOC contains a vast amount of material relating to Asia and Africa—reportedly some 14 kilometers of shelving2 —including the India Office Records (IOR) and its key manuscripts detailing Indians' migration to British Central Africa.3
Indians' arrival into Northern Rhodesian territory can be traced in these archives to 1905, and I was interested in the period from then until the independence of the country in 1964. The information held in the IOR is particularly [End Page 55] rich: because the India Office acted as an intermediary among the Colonial Office in London, the Governor's Office in Northern Rhodesia, and the Government of India in New Delhi, the records bring together and represent the concerns of all the official actors. However, when India achieved sovereignty in 1947 the doors of the India Office closed and matters relating to the Indian diaspora were transferred to the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Dominion and Colonial Offices, whose interests were empire-wide. These sets of files are presently held in the National Archives at Kew.
Thus, while the pages that make up the official history of Indians' arrival into the territory can be found in the IOR, the later chapters of this account are situated an hour and two tube lines southwest of there. The distance between the archives is not merely of geographical significance for the researcher: the two sites also mark the two main phases of Indian immigration into Northern Rhodesia. The shift in administrative offices after 1947 resulted in a distancing of diplomatic relations that is evidenced in the volume, character, and tone of official correspondence relating to Indian immigrants in central Africa; this distancing and the wider changes in both Indian and central African politics signaled the unraveling of the British Empire.
II
The India Office—"a government in miniature"—was inaugurated in a Government of India Act in 1858.4 It brought together the East India Company and the Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India (the "Board of Control") into a single administration under the British Crown. The London-based department was staffed by British officials, and a Secretary of State for India was appointed head. In addition to keeping the records of the former East India Company, the IOR contains substantial amounts of the material that the Office generated in its refurbished role as a political go-between in the Empire. The political links between India and southern Africa had strengthened considerably during the life of the India Office: in a broad survey of southern African Sources in the collection, J. Geber writes that "emigration of Indians to Africa replaced slavery as the new form of labour movement between the two continents, and it was the emigrants' position that was to become the most significant aspect of relations between India and southern Africa."5
Indeed, in South Africa from 1860 onwards, Indian indentured laborers, or "coolies," had been brought from all over the sub-continent at the behest [End Page 56] of the white settlers in Natal and the Transvaal to fill the demand for cheap contract workers for their plantations.6 Before long the ships carrying the cargoes of workers also brought a mercantile class, known as "Passenger" Indians. When these better educated, relatively affluent, and predominantly Muslim Indians arrived, they were met with hostility from the white settlers, who sought in the ensuing decades to suppress the newcomers through...
