Expulsion of Asians From Uganda

Expulsion Of Asians From Uganda

On 4 August 1972, the then President of Uganda, Idi Amin, ordered the expulsion of his country's Indian and Pakistani minority, giving them 90 days to leave Uganda. Amin said that he had had a dream in which God told him to order the expulsion.

The ethnic cleansing of Indians in Uganda was conducted in an Indophobic climate in which the Ugandan government claimed that the Indians were hoarding wealth and goods to the detriment of indigenous Africans and "sabotaging" the Ugandan economy.

Former British colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa have many citizens of South Asian descent. They were brought there by the British Empire from British India to do clerical work in Imperial service, or unskilled/semi-skilled manual labour such as construction or farm work. In the 1890s, 32,000 labourers from British India were brought to East Africa under indentured labour contracts to work on the construction of the Uganda Railway. Most of the surviving Indians returned home, but 6,724 decided to remain in East Africa after the line's completion.

Many Indians in East Africa and Uganda were in the sartorial and banking businesses, where they were employed by the British. Since the representation of Indians in these occupations was high, stereotyping of Indians in Uganda as tailors or bankers was common. Asians had significant influence on the economy, constituting 1% of the population while receiving a fifth of the national income. Gated ethnic communities served elite healthcare and schooling services. Additionally, the tariff system in Uganda had historically been oriented toward the economic interests of Asian traders.

Some Indians perceived themselves as coming from a more advanced culture than Uganda, a view not appreciated by Ugandans. Indophobia in Uganda thus pre-dated Amin, and also existed under Milton Obote. The 1968 Committee on "Africanization in Commerce and Industry" in Uganda made far-reaching Indophobic proposals. A system of work permits and trade licenses was introduced in 1969 to restrict the role of Indians in economic and professional activities. Indians were segregated and discriminated against in all walks of life.

After Idi Amin came to power, he exploited pre-existing Indophobia and spread propaganda against Indians involving stereotyping and scapegoating the Indian minority. Indians were stereotyped as "only traders" and "inbred" to their profession. Indians were labelled as "dukawallas" (an occupational term that degenerated into an anti-Indian slur during Amin's time), and stereotyped as "greedy, conniving", without any racial identity or loyalty but "always cheating, conspiring and plotting" to subvert Uganda. Amin used this propaganda to justify a campaign of "de-Indianization", eventually resulting in the expulsion and ethnic cleansing of Uganda's Indian minority.

Neither was the expulsion the first in Uganda's history, the country's Kenyan minority having been expelled in 1969.