‘Two feet’ as citizenship strategy: an anthropological perspective on instrumental approaches to citizenship among people of Indian origin in Tanzania

ABSTRACT

With point of departure in the emic concept of ‘two feet,’ the article explores how transnationalism by ‘keeping a foot in the door’ is being practiced among people of Indian origin living in Tanzania. Indians settled in East Africa in the late nineteenth century and since the end of colonial rule they have been aware of distributing different citizenships within the families in order to stay transnationally mobile after independence. Numerous Indians moved to the U.K. and Canada in the years following independence and those who stayed back made sure to ‘keep the door open’ and thus secure a potential future abroad. ‘Two feet,’ the article argues, is a practice that ensures a necessary level of social protection for the East African Indians. Shedding light on ways in which lifeworlds stretched across national borders unfold on a micro level, the article shows how ‘two feet’ is a gendered practice in which women’s purity becomes intertwined with transnational mobility and the potentiality of different places.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• migration
• transnationalism
• Indian minority
• East Africa
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Cecil Marie Schou Pallesen holds an MA degree in Anthropology and is a PhD candidate at Aarhus University.

Notes

1 Dukawallah is derived from the Hindi words dukaan, ‘store’, and wallah, ‘owner’ (Seidenberg, 1983).

2 It is worth noting, though, that a number of Indians returned to India shortly after arriving in East Africa due to unsuccessful businesses (see Oonk, 2006); it was only the successful traders, which in Oonk’s words were those who ‘had a good name’ and hence for whom help from the family and community was available, who managed to stay and later on settle in Zanzibar and Tanzania (Oonk, 2006, pp. 70, 76).

3 Nanji Kalidas Mehta, ‘the most respected and influential Asian not only in Uganda, but probably in all East Africa’ (Gregory, 1991, p. 54, see also Himbara, 1997, p. 10) maintained strong bonds to India through transnational business. This might explain why he, as one of few Indians, chose to return to India instead of travelling to the UK at the time of the Ugandan expulsion in 1972.

4 See, for instance, Tuxen (2013) who examines the use of the website shaadi.com in Indian diasporas.