Paper short abstract:

From the 1930s onwards Punjabi Muslim associations played a role in Swahili religious literature and the circulation of ideas across the East Africa Indian Ocean. This paper will look at some circulating multilingual texts and family-run bookshops in colonial and postcolonial contemporary Kenya.

Paper long abstract:

In the early decades of colonialism, East Africa became—as Thomas Metcalf puts it in his Imperial Connections—“almost an extension of India” (Metcalf 2007, 166, quoted in Green 2012, 131). Urdu, which had been a transregional lingua franca in the Indian Ocean, also became “an African language” (see Green 2011) and, I would argue, the other way around: Swahili, which had been a transregional lingua franca in East Africa, became a language used by Indians on the African continent. From the 1930s onwards Punjabi Muslim associations played a role in Swahili religious literature, book production, and the circulation of ideas across the East Africa Indian Ocean. While locating the intellectual inquiry of this paper in printing diaspora and African literature, I am proposing to look at vernacular Muslim texts that transcend the 'nation' , in which identities are negotiated and transnational communities of belonging are created. This paper will offer a view on India and its legacy in East Africa by looking at some circulating multilingual texts and family-run Islamic bookshops in colonial and postcolonial contemporary Kenya. I will consider how Swahili is articulated in relation to, for example, Urdu, Gujarati and English in a multilingual cosmopolis and how do Muslims intellectuals who define themselves within the Swahili language imagine their local and global belongings.