The Indian Voice: Connecting Self-Representation and Identity Formulation in Diaspora

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines a previously overlooked publication titled The Indian Voice of British East Africa, Uganda and Zanzibar. Printed in Nairobi between 1911 and 1913, the Indian Voice has been dismissed by some scholars as “insignificant” in the wider context of Kenya’s militant press. As an important tool for discovering, exploring and analyzing the nature of racial hierarchies, diasporic identity and belonging, this article argues that the Indian Voice can be used to understand how “new kinds of self-representation” both emerged and dissolved in early twentieth-century East Africa. By contextualizing the historical significance of the newspaper, it demonstrates how the Indian Voice offers an invaluable means of generating new insights into the complex cultural and political formulations of Indian identities in diaspora. In doing so, this article contributes to remapping the historical perspective of East African Indians within the early colonial period.