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C H A P T E R 6 The Unwieldy Fetish Desi Fantasies, roots toUrism, anD DiasporiC Desires the standard narrative of indian identity in south africa was presented in a fully formed and explicit fashion in a series of articles in the Post in 2010 that commemorated the 150th anniversary of indian indenture in the country. The key themes were loss and recovery: indenture was a traumatic migratory experience forced by abject poverty and colonial despotism. Despite internal differences indians were united by a natural urge to retain core values—family life and kin relations, religious cosmologies, food and aesthetics—in the face of a hostile and indifferent colonial society. The ties with india were severed and indians were left at the mercy of the apartheid state. The postapartheid society has inflicted a new set of losses—of jobs and personal safety—but also offered new connections with a global indian diaspora. The fundamental assumption in this narrative is that attachments to india are natural and fundamental. This requires some qualification: First, the diverse communities that left the indian subcontinent between 1860 and the 1890s left one colonial territory for another one, and the identification with “india” was not yet there. The imagination of a unified indian nation only gained popular momentum from the 1930s onward. second, those leaving south asia did so for diverse reasons . a substantial number of those who settled in south africa were indentured for the second time—that is, had returned to india only to sign up for a second round of indenture.1 For those who came as passengers , the trip to south africa was integral to the commercial enterprise of mainly Gujarati trading communities who followed British colonial expansion through eastern and southern africa. Third, india only emerged as an important point of reference in the 1930s and ’40s. Yusuf Dadoo was like many others across the world inspired by the strength of india’s nationalist movement, and he called india “a resting place of the imagination,” by which he meant a place that demonstrated the dignity of self-government (raman 2003). During the same period, the The Unwieldy Fetish • 201 Urdu language emerged as the preeminent symbol of a unified Muslim nationalism in South asia and also in South africa. Fourth, many of the Indian institutions in South africa were a result of apartheid’s project of separate development, including the promotion of “eastern values,” language, and religions at schools and cultural and educational institutions designed for Indians. Fifth, there were many and diverse contacts between South africa and India during the decades of apartheid. Durban newspapers of the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s abound with articles on Indian religious groups, films, and popular music troupes that circulated with only minimal hindrances. These visits were important occasions for both the south african state and local indian politicians to demonstrate their cultural credentials. From the point of view of the indian government, the cultural boycott was only applied with diligence to performances of high culture. india as an Unwieldy Fetish For all these qualifications, india features prominently in south african indian life—through Bollywood films and associated music, fashion, and gossip; a rapidly growing tourism and pilgrimage industry ; and hindu and muslim religious organizations with roots in the subcontinent. how can one understand the relationship between south african indians, india, and “indianness” in a dynamic fashion that avoids reified notions of indian culture and indian religious practice? all major works on the postindenture world struggle with this question.2 my proposition is that the attachment to things and phenomena that are “indian” are best thought of as fetishistic. in a subtle study of tamils in malaysia, Willford argues that the dominant malay modernist ideology has transformed the “ethnic past” of the nation’s discrete elements to an “uncanny double” (2006, 5). This “backward” and disavowed attachment to hindu rituals and identity emerges in full force around ritual events and other manifestations of folk “indianness” (117). such events manifest disturbing echoes of the indic past throughout southeast asia that need to be expunged in order to create pure and strong malay muslims. in south africa, the fetishization of indianness is structured by the fact that indians have historically been seen as completely alien to the land. india was a site of authenticity, “our motherland,” but also a site of non-african loyalties. The coolie past was indeed seen as a shameful and imperfect past, not because it was indian but because it was not...

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