Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses puritan Indians attempts to add a social category on the basis of religious purity so as to exclude Indian Muslims and ‘Indo-Africans’ from puritan schools and social circles in colonial Bulawayo, resulting in wrangles as the puritan Indians appeal for separatism.

Paper long abstract:

Indians were among the earliest immigrants to enter Southern Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe). The Rhodesian colonial social and education system followed a strict hierarchical racial segregation system comprising the Europeans, 'Coloureds' and Africans in that order. Indians and other 'Asiatic' immigrants were categorised under Coloureds. The Indian immigrant population was diverse and differentiated mainly along religious and racial lines. The paper analyses how this diversity of the Indian immigrant population generated conflict. The paper pays particular attention to the influence of religion on racial relations between Indians, African, 'Indo-Africans' and 'Coloureds' in the colonial Bulawayo, and how the immigrant Indian population residing Bulawayo used education and religion to negotiate the urban colonial terrain. This paper analyses the appeals by 'puritan' Indians to the colonial administration to add a fourth racial category on the basis of religious purity, which would exclude Muslim Indians, whose religion allowed them to marry outside their race. In the resultant controversy the colonial government threatened to withdraw funding to the school if the principle of racial purity was applied. The paper will analyse the effects of European ambivalence to the Indian population on race relations in general , and more particularly on relations with African nationalist who were calling for end to racial discrimination.