Indian settler state in east Africa

Could an Indian majority state or an Indian controlled state form in east Africa and What would its relations be with the rest of Africa and with India
 
Remember how many thousand Indians Idi Amin Dada exiled from Uganda.
Durban still has large numbers of East Indians.
Somehow you need Indian traders to supplant Moselm traders and you need Hindi to replace Swahili was the dominant trade language.
 
Maybe have an alt-South Africa where Apartheid doesn't happen, and the White and Indian bourgeoisie and middle-classes form a united front against the natives and coloured population. After the various East African states gain independence and begin passing policies that impact their Indian populations, South Africa offers to take them in, with the White elite seeing them as a potential ally against socialism and African nationalism.

If you want a fully Indian state, have things go to shit, and this South Africa balkanise, with one of the successor states declaring themselves the homeland of Afro-Indians.
 
Depending on your definition of East Africa, this is arguably OTL - Mauritius is usually counted as part of Africa and it's population is something like two-thirds ethnically Indian.

On the mainland though, most Indians were brought there by the British Empire so you probably need a reason for the British to either bring even more Indians in or concentrate enough of them in one area to form a viable political entity. Your best bet for this is probably somewhere like the coastal provinces of Kenya or Zanzibar which, as an island, offers similar advantages to Mauritius when it comes to directing population.
 
Depending on your definition of East Africa, this is arguably OTL - Mauritius is usually counted as part of Africa and it's population is something like two-thirds ethnically Indian.

On the mainland though, most Indians were brought there by the British Empire so you probably need a reason for the British to either bring even more Indians in or concentrate enough of them in one area to form a viable political entity. Your best bet for this is probably somewhere like the coastal provinces of Kenya or Zanzibar which, as an island, offers similar advantages to Mauritius when it comes to directing population.

Agreed. But you'd need a Zanzibar wank where Indians can be a plurality in Zanzibar, and the Sultanate gains independence separately and evolves into the Indian version of Singapore. You can have a 20th century Zanzibar wank without this, but to make Zanzibar Indian you need more Indians.

The African mainland is a lot harder, unless you want a city state like Mombasa, Mogadishu, or Kismayo. Zanzibar is definitely the easiest. I would add Arabs to the people who would be helpful in this state, since at least in Zanzibar there were quite a few (not least of all the Sultan of Zanzibar, who I'm assuming for the most likely chance of Zanzibari success must be effectively powerless and led by Lee Kuan Yew-style Prime Minister). As mentioned, white African immigrants are useful, if you want a Singapore-style state. Maybe more whites fleeing Kenya in the 1950s?

In any case, such a state can absorb Indian migration from elsewhere in East Africa (especially if there's Idi Amin-style ethnic cleansings going on).

I've mentioned Zanzibar and Singapore a lot, but a key difference is that the Indian population in East Africa was always more fragmented than the Chinese population in Singapore. Maybe something like Lee Kuan Yew's Speak Mandarin Campaign, to improve links with India? I don't know which language you'd pick, though. Probably Hindi, since it's India's main language, even though most Indian East Africans spoke Gujarati or Tamil. Could be cool if the government chooses a non-Hindi Indian language, although perhaps unlikely. In any case, English will be the main language of this state, due to the links with India and Britain.
 
Agreed. But you'd need a Zanzibar wank where Indians can be a plurality in Zanzibar, and the Sultanate gains independence separately and evolves into the Indian version of Singapore. You can have a 20th century Zanzibar wank without this, but to make Zanzibar Indian you need more Indians.

The African mainland is a lot harder, unless you want a city state like Mombasa, Mogadishu, or Kismayo. Zanzibar is definitely the easiest. I would add Arabs to the people who would be helpful in this state, since at least in Zanzibar there were quite a few (not least of all the Sultan of Zanzibar, who I'm assuming for the most likely chance of Zanzibari success must be effectively powerless and led by Lee Kuan Yew-style Prime Minister). As mentioned, white African immigrants are useful, if you want a Singapore-style state. Maybe more whites fleeing Kenya in the 1950s?

In any case, such a state can absorb Indian migration from elsewhere in East Africa (especially if there's Idi Amin-style ethnic cleansings going on).

I've mentioned Zanzibar and Singapore a lot, but a key difference is that the Indian population in East Africa was always more fragmented than the Chinese population in Singapore. Maybe something like Lee Kuan Yew's Speak Mandarin Campaign, to improve links with India? I don't know which language you'd pick, though. Probably Hindi, since it's India's main language, even though most Indian East Africans spoke Gujarati or Tamil. Could be cool if the government chooses a non-Hindi Indian language, although perhaps unlikely. In any case, English will be the main language of this state, due to the links with India and Britain.

Well, the main Indian language in Malaysia and Singapore is Tamil rather than Hindi, so it's definitely possible for a unifying language to be non-Hindi. As for the Speak Mandarin Campaign, a lot of this has to do with the education system and media, which progressively removed the southern Chinese dialects spoken by immigrants in the region in favour of a common Mandarin tongue (already considered the lingua franca in China during the colonial era). If you want a unifying Indian language, it's best to go with English. Using any one of the Indian languages risks alienating every Indian that doesn't use it, since they're not dialects but full languages by themselves. Of course, if any one Indian group dominates the community as the Tamils do here, then it's fine to use the majority language.
 
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