Students, Sex, and Threatened Solidarity: East African Bodies and Indian Angst, 1955–1970*

During the late 1950s, Indian leader Jawaharlal Nehru worked to enhance existing connections between India and East Africa, promote an Indian-dominated nonaligned world, and provide an alternative vision to both British imperial and Cold War paradigms of authority. As part of this mandate for third world unity, the Indian government offered scholarships to East African students who possessed their own agendas for furthering their education. By examining the neglected relationship between East African students and the Indians they encountered, this article highlights the transnationality of East African youth as they traveled to India only to experience alienation by the Indian public who, as the hosts in new transnational zones of contact, mimicked colonial anxieties and fears of African intimacy.