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Reading Cultural
Representations of the
Double Diaspora
Britain, East Africa, Gujarat
Maya Parmar
Reading Cultural Representations of the
Double Diaspora
 Maya Parmar

Reading Cultural
Representations of the
Double Diaspora
Britain, East Africa, Gujarat
Maya Parmar
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
The Open University
Milton Keynes, UK

ISBN 978-3-030-18082-9    ISBN 978-3-030-18083-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18083-6

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Dedicated to my dearest parents, Mr Vijay Parmar
and Mrs Bindubala Parmar,
and all those who journeyed before them
 Preface

‘I feel ke [that] this [Britain] is my home, this is where I belong […] even
though I was born in Kenya.’
(Vijay Parmar, 23 September 2016)

Returning to Kenya for the first time after 50 years, having settled in
Britain, Vijay Parmar, a member of the ‘double diaspora’, articulates, in
the code-switching linguistics of English and Gujarati, his reflections
around the themes of home-making and belonging. He clearly expresses
an attachment to Britain, positioning it as home, though also signposted
in that articulation is an interplay with his birthplace of Kenya. Both Vijay
Parmar and his wife Bindubala Parmar were born in Nairobi, Kenya, whilst
their familial and cultural heritage stems back to Gujarat, India. As teenag-
ers they migrated to Britain: Bindubala Parmar with her respective family
in 1970; Vijay Parmar on his own, to join his uncle already located in
London in 1964. Their families had established lives in Kenya, over a long
period. For example, on Bindubala’s grandmother’s paternal side, genea-
logical research suggests that the lineage in East Africa spans back to 1865.
Testifying to an entrepreneurial streak, later generations on each side
arrived to establish small shopkeeper businesses, servicing fledgling com-
munities within the tripartite colonial hierarchy. These settled lives in the
East African territories of not only Kenya, but Uganda and Tanzania, were
often interspersed with return excursions to India, for family reunions,
marriages and births.
On coming to Britain, Vijay Parmar found work with an elderly Jewish
Holocaust survivor from Vienna (Austria), as an apprentice to his watch and

vii
viii PREFACE

clock repair business, in Willesden Green (London). When Mr Grunberg

retired, he left the business to Parmar, having lost his own son to Holocaust
atrocities. Subsequently, Parmar’s lifetime entrepreneurship—his bread and
butter—was conceived via the business ‘Grunberg and Parmar’, and so too
was his belonging to Britain cemented, in and above that tendered to India
or Africa. ‘Grunberg and Parmar’ was an effective enterprise in its day and,
like this overall account, is one example of the experiences amongst what I
call the ‘double diaspora’, that community that has migrated from India to
East Africa, now in Britain.
That diaspora has deep roots spanning the world. This book is shaped
around those global and historical migratory flows, in conjunction with
the continuities and discontinuities of the stories of a people once on the
margins in some ways, yet skilled and paradoxically renowned for their
success in resettlement and integration. The diaspora subsequently is
rather ‘un-postcolonial’. Through their entrepreneurial success they are
no longer on the economic margins of British society, given their relative
affluence, as well as their social integration. Often they have established a
successful, comfortable place in Britain and within the diaspora, despite
underpinning experiences of pain, loss and trauma. Subsequently, this is a
diaspora that has not been immediately visible within the scholarly criti-
cisms of postcolonialism and cultural literary studies.
Despite their prominence and success in Britain, whether in business or
in social integration, corresponding relevant scholarly investigations,
which explore the postcolonial cultural life of the diaspora, are largely
absent from contemporary debate. This absence has manifested itself for a
number of reasons. On the one hand, there is a distinct gap in creative
writing produced by the double diaspora, or about the diaspora. The com-
munity favours other pursuits, and there has been a notable collective lack
of interest in literary culture. On the other, an intellectual climate that has
primarily converged on an unfragmented ‘South Asian’ diaspora has led to
the obscuration in critical discourse of the particular twofold nature of
migration intrinsic to the double diasporic condition.
In this monograph, I address this lacuna in postcolonial, diaspora and
cultural studies by examining this double diaspora, of the contemporary
period, in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In doing so, the study
locates itself in relation to wider debates concerning the South Asian dias-
pora, yet too splinters the monolithic category of the South Asian migrant
 PREFACE ix

community. Thinking conceptually about a unified, opaque British South

Asian diaspora is now dated: instead in diaspora studies it is apposite to
refocus our purview to examine the mosaic composition of this broad
migrant group. By splintering the opaque category of ‘South Asian’, we
reveal a nuanced picture of life in the British diaspora, whether that takes
account of, by way of example, religious, class, caste, regional or linguistic
difference. I specifically address an absence in discourse on the regional
Gujarati diaspora, migrated to Britain, via East Africa, by scrutinising the
gaps and joints in established scholarship.
Being a daughter of double migrants, of the entrepreneurial and resil-
ient Vijay and Bindubala Parmar whose narratives I outline here, I have a
deep curiosity around these fissures. I grew up in a Gujarati British house-
hold where, typically and for example, we used a kisu to slice the family-­
favourite savoury snack of mogo. Whilst kisu is the Swahili for knife and
mogo means cassava, a root vegetable integrated into the South Asian dia-
sporic diet in East Africa, both testify implicitly to an East African heritage.
Manifested in the everyday cultural practices of British Gujarati lives—as
exemplified here through language and culinary rituals—are the markers
of a migrant past distinct from India, rooted in East Africa. They trace a
history embedded in not only Gujaratiness, but also in Kenya, and a pres-
ent lived experience of life in Britain. These traces of cultural memory are
entangled with the diasporic body. This book oscillates around many of
these refrains and reflections, wishing to carve out a space in scholarship
for the migrant realities that are so often overlooked. Growing up, and
being educated, in Britain, I could not access these stories; they were not
to be found. It is rather unnerving to look into the mirror of history, of
literature, and find no reflection.

Exeter, UK Maya Parmar

Earlier versions of material in this book have appeared in Parmar, Maya.

2013. Reading the Double Diaspora: Representing Gujarati East African
Cultural Identity in Britain. Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association for
Anglo-American Studies, 35 (1): 137–155.
 Acknowledgements

I thank you sincerely, Professor Ananya Kabir, for your unparalleled intel-
lectual generosity and your contagious and infinite energy. This project
would not have been possible without your care.
The many years I studied at the University of Leeds, and in the School
of English, have shaped my thinking and established the foundations of
my research life. I am indebted to the University’s Joseph Wright
Scholarship and the vibrancy of the postcolonial research community in
Leeds. Professor John McLeod, your eloquent counsel and steadfast pres-
ence throughout the years have offered me instrumental insight and clarity.
Grants I have received from the Open University, British Institute for
Eastern Africa, University of Leeds, Arts Council England and the Gujarat
Studies Association, for research, book production, conference participa-
tion and outreach work, have developed and maximised my research
experience.
Brilliant colleagues have tendered encouragement and guidance in
abundance. I am grateful to Drs Zara Dinnen, Florian Stadtler and
Shafquat Towheed, and Professors Susheila Nasta, David Johnson and
Suman Gupta for their precious time.
Many of those listed above have been careful and patient readers of ele-
ments of this book, providing invaluable feedback. Earlier versions of the
work also benefitted from insight from Dr Katie Beswick and
Matthew Martin.
I thank Yasmin Alibhai-Brown for sharing her script of Nowhere to
belong and for corresponding with me about her, and my, work.

xi
xii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Family members have been liberal with their precious memories, and
infinitely flexible. The families of Karsandas C. Parmar, Ramesh C. Parmar,
Vinu H. Chauhan, Kantibhai Chauhan, Athmarambhai L. Parmar,
Ishwarbhai Chauhan and Chandrakantbhai C. Parmar have provided pho-
tographs for my research. The family archive of Ramanbhai M. Chauhan
has featured primarily in my analytical practice, and I am indebted to
Aman R. Chauhan for his generosity in sharing his father’s photographs.
I acknowledge the publishers of this book, Palgrave Macmillan, and in
particular Senior Commissioning Editor Shaun Vigil and Assistant Editor
Glenn Ramirez, who each offered patient support and advice. There is also
the anonymous peer-reviewer of my proposal, who intuitively grasped the
fundamental thrust of the book, thus tendering perceptive reflections and
recommendations.
It is not only intellectual endorsements that have made this work pos-
sible: this book is as much a product of the love I have had the privilege of
benefitting from over a lifetime. There have been numerous gestures of
tireless support, in advancement of my progress and happiness, from
Bindu Parmar. Thank you truly, Mum. For the drive and ambition he has
instilled in me, I am grateful to my dear father, Vijay Parmar.
The final acknowledgement belongs to my long-time companion and
champion, Christopher Hoole. You were there at the beginning, the mid-
dle and the end. Your hard work is an example to me; your patience a gift.
Thank you for journeying with me: with you, I am home.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 The Gastropoetics of The Settler’s Cookbook: Diasporic

Trauma and Embodied Narratives 33

3 The Performing Body of Navratri: Dancing Dandiya,

Dressing to Impress 73

4 Picturing the Modern Self: Vernacular Modernity and

Temporal Synchronicity119

5 Conclusion159

6 Epilogue167

Bibliography191

Index209

xiii
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Aarti in progress (HLC, Sept 2011) 85

Fig. 3.2 Male ‘folk’ dress (KMH, Oct 2010) 100
Fig. 3.3 Male ‘folk’ dress (HLC, Sept 2011) 101
Fig. 3.4 Sari and lehenga styles (HLC, Oct 2010) 103
Fig. 3.5 Dandiya players with dandiya, Vijay Parmar and Vinod
Chauhan (Leicester, c. 1970) 105
Fig. 4.1 Sari-clad woman in outside kitchen, Jayaben Parmar (Kenya) 120
Fig. 4.2 Album page (Kenya) 128
Fig. 4.3 Headshot, Raman Masa (Kenya) 129
Fig. 4.4 Raman Masa outside bank (Kenya) 130
Fig. 4.5 Indu Masi on beach (Kenya) 133
Fig. 4.6 Children in Western Wear (Kenya) 135
Fig. 4.7 Indu Masi in Punjabi suit (Kenya) 137
Fig. 4.8 Men and women taking tea in garden (Britain) 139
Fig. 4.9 Kitchen frame (India) 145
Fig. 4.10 Family trip (Kenya) 152

xv
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction
Producing Culture in the Double Diaspora

Three generations of my family have been born on three different

continents: most of my grandparents in India, both parents in Kenya,
me in England along with my sister and cousins. Asia. Africa. Europe.
Every continent we’ve been through has left a mark on us.
(V. Patel 2016, 222; my emphasis)

Vinay Patel, in the penultimate paragraph of his short story and this epi-
graph, rightly alerts his reader to the deep-rooted mark left upon the ‘dou-
ble diaspora’, by their multiple migrations and travels through three
continents. Yet, in Britain today and historically, there is a gap in the
everyday modes of popular twice-migrant representation: an absence in
how members of the diaspora mark themselves out. As I explore in detail
throughout this book, the diaspora that has migrated from Gujarat to East
Africa, and later settled in Britain, is hidden in literary and cultural studies,
and often obscured in relevant scholarly debates. Patel’s short story
appears in the critically acclaimed collection entitled The good immigrant
(Shukla 2016).1 It is amongst several accounts that do gesture towards
Indian East African twice migration and the prolific British diaspora that
emerges from this journeying; nonetheless, this theme is never fully surfaced
and probed. The collection of short stories is not exclusively about the

1
In my conclusion I signpost additional, recent work by Shukla, which addresses the
theme of the twice migrant.

© The Author(s) 2019 1

M. Parmar, Reading Cultural Representations of the Double
Diaspora, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18083-6_1
2 M. PARMAR

Indian East African community in Britain; rather, it is about a range of

migrant experiences. However, the trope of twice migration appears in
four of the 21 narratives in some shape or form (those by Sabrina Mahfouz,
Himesh Patel, Vinay Patel and Nikesh Shukla).
For example, Himesh Patel, in ‘Window of opportunity’, offers the
classic double diaspora account of migration, diligence, hardship and eco-
nomic savvy. His family, from India, and later Kenya, moved to Britain
(2016, 58–9), to eventually establish corner shops in two Cambridgeshire
villages. His intergenerational narrative is one of entrepreneurship, which
resonates throughout the double diaspora experience, though it is never
fully explored through this lens. Himesh Patel is an actor known for his
role as Tamwar Masood, a British Pakistani Muslim, in the BBC soap
opera EastEnders (2007–2016). In his short story Patel suggests that the
Masood family is ‘widely regarded as a kind of generic representation of
the South Asian family’ (2016, 66), while also drawing comparisons
between his own identity as a Hindu Gujarati and his character’s religious
identity. If this conflation of ‘Asianness’ is useful in articulating Patel’s
own formulation of identity, it conversely and simultaneously serves to
hide the very specific lived experience of the prolific double diaspora.
An exceptional community of people, this diaspora is disproportionally
successful and influential in resettlement, both in East Africa and in Britain.
Often showcased as an example of migrant achievement, as Himesh Patel
does, their accomplishments are paradoxically underpinned by legacies of
trauma and deracination. Reading cultural representations attends to this
gap, by studying the cultural life of the prolific Gujarati East African com-
munity in Britain today. Subsequently, I probe what it is to be not just from
India, but also Africa: how cultural identity forms within, as this book
popularises and discusses later, the ‘double diaspora’. First, we must con-
sider the historical trajectory that led to the emergence of the British dou-
ble diaspora.

Historical Context: The Indian in East Africa

The Indian East African community that now exists in Britain, and which
is both prolific and celebrated as dynamic, is a product of multiple migra-
tions and resettlements that span many generations. They first migrated
from India to East Africa—specifically Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania—in
several capacities over an extended period of time. During the late 1800s
many Indians undertook both voluntary and coerced indentured labour in
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

East Africa under British colonial rule, as African labour in the region was
either ‘unavailable or unreliable’ (Bharati 1972, 8).2 By 1895 it is recorded
that Kenya had over 13,000 of these workers who constructed the railways
that still function in the territory. Figures of Indian indentured labour dur-
ing this period in East Africa totalled approximately 32,000. Whilst some
of these workers—who were not only labourers, but clerks, surveyors and
accountants—remained in East Africa, others returned to India or died
during their service (Ghai and Ghai 1971, 2).3
Despite the ubiquitous understanding that the massive importation of
labour during the 1890s was the first appearance of Indians in East Africa,
‘one of the essential characteristics of South Asian settlement in this par-
ticular region of the world is its antiquity’ (Twaddle 1990, 151–2).4 Long
before the introduction of indentured labour in East Africa, there existed
Indian and Arab traders and adventurers in the coastal cities.5 This is the
consequence of a long, shared oceanic history between India and Africa, a
narrative of South Asian maritime navigation and encounter, which is
underrepresented in critical study. The Indian Ocean was indeed in pre-­
colonial times a productive conduit between two territories: a space of
transformation, modernity and mobility. It enabled criss-crossing, mer-
cantile and cultural, long before the intervention of European influence in
East Africa.
As a result of these maritime networks, in 1844 it was estimated that
1200 Indians already lived in the coastal cities of East Africa (D. P. Ghai
1965, 3). As time went on more members of this community penetrated
the interior provinces of East Africa and engendered an established Indian
presence. Significantly, these Indian communities, while being religiously,
linguistically and by caste heterogeneous, by and large derived from the
western region of the subcontinent, primarily Gujarat.6 Thus, despite a

2
See also Tandon and Raphael (1978, 6).
3
For figures, see Mangat (1969, 39). See also Bhana and Pachai (1984) for a study that
elucidates indentured condition for Indians, with particular reference to South Africa.
4
See also Mangat (1969, chap. 1).
5
Ghosh’s In an antique land (1992) illuminates the significant mercantile activity in the
Indian Ocean that existed long before the advent of the Europeans in the area, who—accord-
ing to the text—upset established and amiable links.
6
Whilst some migrants came from Punjab and Goa, amongst the South Asians in East
Africa, Gujarati-speaking communities accounted for a tremendous 70% of the population.
See, for instance, Tandon and Raphael (1978), Ghai and Ghai (1971), D. P. Ghai (1965) and
Mehta (2001). In his first chapter, Bharati (1972) details a clear breakdown of the South
4 M. PARMAR

‘Eurocentric historiography’ that ignores the presence of a South Asian

community in East Africa before the imposition of colonisation, Indians—
Gujaratis in particular—have long been in the region. It is from the colo-
nial period onwards that we can recognise an established and substantial
diaspora of South Asians in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Subsequently
these migrants have been integral architects of East Africa’s economy.7 As
discussed later, they have not only contributed to building the region’s
railways, but further actively provided commerce in the form of dukas
(shops), and later have contributed significantly to the commercial public
sphere in Britain.
The role of South Asians in developing the East African economy can,
however, be attributed to influences other than simply the longevity of the
population in the region. The western region in India is acclaimed for its
commercial endeavours, and within the subcontinent itself Gujarat has
thus been identified as the ‘entrepreneurial hub of India’ (Mehta and Joshi
2002, 73).8 Concurrently, in a similar vein of enterprise, it is not surprising
that ‘wherever freed indentured labourers have formed communities of
rural labourers, they have been followed by Gujarati traders and business-
men, who supply them with Indian clothes, jewellery and foodstuffs’
(Collingham 2006, 244). Although here Lizzie Collingham refers specifi-
cally to the diasporas in Mauritius, Trinidad, Jamaica, South Africa and
Fiji, this is indeed true of East Africa as well, as attested by my own family
history. Following indentured labourers from India, who chose to stay in
either Uganda or Kenya, many South Asians sought to fill the gap in the
market for Indian commodities. They also catered for Western settlers and
Africans, proving cheap and resourceful in the service they offered.

Asian community. Writing more recently, Herbert (2006, 134) echoes these assertions that
a ‘majority’ of ‘East African Asians’ were Gujaratis, but ‘there were also Goans and Punjabis’.
7
Mehta (2001) firstly outlines the recent return—on invitation of the region’s president—
of Gujarati businessmen to Uganda to rejuvenate business. The article secondly suggests that
the initial success of the Gujarati as trader and entrepreneur lies in the kinship networks
established amongst the community in East Africa. It seems to me, as such, the Gujarati trad-
ers were paramount to the economical development of their adopted African homes. In
addition, as evidence of ‘Eurocentric historiography’ that marginalises the Indian social and
economic contribution to East Africa and refuses their longevity in the region, Mehta also
cites James Stapleton in The gate hangs well (p. 1738). It is also worth noting, again, Ghosh’s
In an antique land (1992) for the alternative historiography to western records that it offers
of non-European communities in the Indian Ocean.
8
Dwyer (1994, 166) discusses the advantageous geography of the state, which, she sug-
gests, has contributed to Gujarat’s commercial success.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

Interestingly, D. P. Ghai describes the dukas as being ‘owned almost exclu-

sively by Gujarati speaking Asians’ (1965, 14). It is these migrants who
came to Africa of their free will and formed the overwhelming majority of
360,000 Gujarati Indians in the region (Tinker 1975, 15).9 The identifica-
tion of financial opportunity, and the success the Indian community had
in seizing this prospect in East Africa, suggests that entrepreneurial skills
were transferred from Gujarat to Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.10
Indeed, in her book centred on pre-colonial Gujarat, Samira Sheikh
explains that ‘revenues from trade made a crucial difference to the finances
of whatever group was in power in [early] Gujarat. This may be as true of
Gujarat of the twenty-first century as of the twelfth’ (2010, 5). It would
seem thus that the Gujarati’s aptitude for trade and commerce extends
from skills that have been cultivated since pre-colonial times. These entre-
preneurial skills can be associated with the multiplicity and diversity Gujarat
is known for. The etymology of the word ‘Gujarat’ in fact signifies the
non-static nature of the region: ‘The term Gujarat is widely acknowledged
to derive from the Gurjaras or Gujjaras, clans of “cattle-rearers, husband-
men and soldiers” who settled in or passed through north and north-
western India from about the first century CE’ (25). Because people were
continually migrating to and from Gujarat, making the region ‘virtually a
moving frontier of immigration’ (ibid.), the area was both linguistically
and religiously heterogeneous. A legacy of migration, and the multiplicity
of identity of early peoples in Gujarat, emanating from their varied origins,
perhaps account for their successes in commerce: having a varied skill set
and being inclined to travel far and wide must have helped in trade. As
such, there was a self-prophesying mythologisation of their natural
abilities as adventurers and pioneers. The Gujaratis of today, not just in the
region but all over the world, are not only renowned for these skills, but
are also endowed with them. The economic successes of the Gujarati
are therefore self-perpetuating: if the nature and self-perception of the
community are based on a productive myth of enterprise and entrepreneur­
ial skills, a virtuous circle of further cultural and financial ­entrepreneurship

9
The largest population of Indians in East Africa fell easily to Kenya (2.3% of the popula-
tion), then Uganda and Tanzania (1% of the population respectively).
10
See Bharati (1972, chap. 3) for a detailed account of the economic and entrepreneurial
endeavours of Indians in East Africa. Bose also discusses the ‘Ugandan Asian’ ‘business-
minded people’ (1982, 457).
6 M. PARMAR

is entered into. The Gujarati follows in the footsteps of this productive

myth and maintains the relevant skills for success.
Furthermore, I contend that it is this nature and multiplicity of identity
that led many Gujaratis to East Africa, where they lived affluently. As suc-
cessful settlers in East Africa, the South Asian community comfortably
composed the middle stratum that created a cushion between the ruling
British and the oppressed and subjugated Africans (Robinson 1995, 331;
Tandon and Raphael 1978, 10; Mangat 1969, 131). In this privileged
position, with flourishing finances, the immigration of Indians into urban
areas of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania continued, until the 1940s, when
the British—in a bid to preserve the social hierarchy—prevented the
‘wholly unrestricted immigration from the Indian subcontinent’ (Twaddle
1990, 156). This was followed by the conclusion of British colonial rule in
the 1960s and subsequent African independence.11 As a result of contro-
versial Africanisation policies, large numbers of Indians—long settled in
this region—left their homes.12 Whilst in Kenya and Tanzania the migra-
tion of South Asians was due to political upheaval and uncertainty, in
Uganda the Indian community was brutally expelled by the dictator Idi
Amin in 1972. Accused of non-integration, being ‘the saboteurs of the
[Ugandan] economy’ (O’Brien 1973, 93) and commonly dubbed as
‘brown Jews’,13 the 30,000 to 50,000 strong Indian population in Uganda
had just 90 days to uproot, forcing them to abandon any semblance of
their settled and established lives and homes.14
11
See Elkins (2005), which discloses the genocidal, undocumented end to colonisation in
Kenya.
12
Africanisation policies primarily sought to privilege the African population over minority
groups in East Africa. Bharati (1972, chap. 3) outlines some of the initial moves to elevate
the African above the South Asian. For example, he delineates the withdrawal of import
licences after 1965 in East Africa, which ‘automatically “discriminate[ed]” against the Asian’
(113). Mamdani too outlines pre-independence intentions of elevating the African (1976,
chap. 7). He, however, also illustrates post-independence changes (chap. 8). For example, he
discusses the policies that were introduced to expand the volume of trade carried out by
Africans (236). Of course the most notorious of Africanisation policies falls to Idi Amin’s act
of expelling Indians from Uganda in 1972. He gave the community only 90 days to leave
with limited possessions and virtually nowhere to go. According to Mattausch, this period of
90 days was a caustic play on the 90-day credit Indian shopkeepers extended to customers
(1998, 134).
13
See Bharati (1972, chap. 5) for scholarship on Indian relationships with Africans.
14
Figures on the number of South Asian Ugandans expelled vary. The sum of 80,000
expellees, according to Tandon and Raphael (1978, 18), is a misleading exaggeration dis-
seminated by the National Front. More realistic estimates are around 30,000.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

Historical Context: Arriving in Britain

Exercising their British nationality, over a number of years as many as
200,000 Indians chose to come to the UK to start new lives as double
migrants—moving first from India and later from East Africa. Others left
Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to resettle in countries that helped ‘share the
burden’ (Alibhai-Brown 2001, 73), such as Canada.15 For many, ‘return-
ing’ to India or Pakistan was not an aspiration, as they had rarely been to
these places, and did not regard them as ‘home’.16 As Yasmin Alibhai-­
Brown’s cookbook memoir illustrates—as I shall explore in the next chap-
ter—‘home’ was in East Africa.17 This affair of dislocation was far from
painless, and for the forcibly expelled Ugandan South Asians it was fraught
with further anxiety given the threats of military camps for remaining
members of the community (O’Brien 1973, 96), and the transition into
refugee camps in Britain (Mamdani 1993, 266). The second migration
divided families further, scattering the diaspora all over the world, and
resulted in one more life-changing move. It is this traumatic past that
underpins the future of the community, and as the various texts and artic-
ulations that I shall examine reveal, this pain is more acute within the
double diaspora because of the multiple dislocations it has thereby experi-
enced. As well as these ordeals, reflecting a rejection of responsibility to its
minority population in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania that had already long
existed and manifested itself in other ways, the British government slowly
closed down avenues of migration available to South Asian East Africans
through limiting immigration legalisation. The changes to immigration
law effectively left some of these migrants stateless and created further
hardship for others, who faced a hostile East Africa on the one hand and a
reticent India and Britain on the other.18
As with their arrival in East Africa, many of those who migrated to
Britain sought out urban areas where kinship networks already existed,

15
See Tandon and Raphael (1978).
16
See Mangat (1969, 175) and Y. P. Ghai (1965, 151) for information regarding the
younger generation’s differing sense of homeland.
17
Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala (2003) exposes a similar sentiment: the father of an Indian
family that has fled East Africa to ultimately settle in the US, longs for his home in Uganda
and fights to return.
18
See Ghai and Ghai for details on how the Indian government remained ‘aloof’ during
this fraught period of displacement (1971, 7).
8 M. PARMAR

such as the Midlands and London.19 Extended families bought commu-

nal homes to reside in, and together embarked on commercial ventures,
utilising well-honed skills. Parminder Bhachu, who coined the term
‘twice migrants’, explains that these doubly displaced groups differed
from those who migrated directly from the subcontinent, because they
not only arrived later, but they also had ‘skills [that] helped them to
establish themselves much more rapidly than direct migrants who ha[d]
not possessed the same expertise, linguistic facility, and communications
network to develop community structures at the same pace’ (1985, 6).
Furthermore, Bhachu points out that, despite diminishing ties with India,
the twice migrant is in fact more culturally ‘traditionalist’ than the sin-
gle migrant.20
Paradoxically, and in spite of the ‘stringent’ maintenance of traditions,
twice migrants have a longer-term commitment to wherever they settle.21
Because the South Asian East African in Britain has generally never lived
in India and is in the most part unlikely to return to Africa for political and
social reasons, Britain becomes a more permanent residence over previous
‘homelands’.22 However, as I shall discuss later in this introduction, and
explicate as the monograph unfolds, there is a sense that the twice migrant
is continually looking ahead. There is a desire to move forwards and prog-
ress, which could effect further movement. Nevertheless, the diaspora is
under no illusion, and the ‘myth of return’—a phrase popularised by
Muhammad Anwar (1979) pertaining to the assumption by the migrant
that one day they will return to the homeland—does not exist. ‘The fusion
of these factors’, Joanna Herbert explains, ‘facilitated the considerable
economic and social success which is associated with East African Asians
and enabled them to emerge from one of the poorest minority ethnic
groups to one of the richest’ (2008, 18).

19
See Robinson for a full breakdown of where Indians settled in Britain (1995, 334). See
also Mehta (2001) for a discussion of how kinship networks attributed to the economic suc-
cess of the Gujarati East African.
20
Alibhai-Brown comments upon this characteristic of the Indian East African diaspora in
Britain: ‘Real links [with India] did weaken, but the mythical India kept a hold and has fol-
lowed us [Indian East Africans] here [in Britain]’ (2009, 12).
21
See Bhachu for a discussion of the Indian East African diaspora’s paradoxical commit-
ment to ‘fundamental traditions’ and their permanent settlement in Britain (1985, 4–5).
22
There are of course exceptions to this. Notably, the invitation of return from the
Ugandan government to the Indian expellees.
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

An example of this success is the city of Leicester, where a large propor-

tion of Indian East Africans have chosen to settle.23 The city has been
identified as a European role model for multiculturalism. Despite the ini-
tial efforts of Leicester council to deter migrant Ugandans from the area
through advertisements in the East African newspaper Ugandan Argus,24
Indians are now a significant facet of the landscape and have been con-
gratulated on regenerating failing areas such as Belgrave Road.
Commenting upon Belgrave Road, Panikos Panayi indeed notes that ‘East
African Asians, especially Hindus, played the most significant role in the
initial transformation of this part of the city’ (2002, 68). There has also
been an absence of riots in the area, which have plagued other cities with
an ethnically diverse population. On the surface Leicester is an example of
racial harmony and multiculturalism; though this reading is cursory and
singular, given the competing discourses denied.25
These outward achievements, which are achievements nonetheless,
mirror those in East Africa of developing the economy and society, and
can be traced forwards to the demographic of Leicester. The high propor-
tion of Gujaratis that resided in East Africa is reflected in the overall
Indian population in Leicester, as the landscape of South Asians consists
of predominantly Gujaratis.26 The successes of Leicester’s multicultural-
ism and the major presence of Gujaratis have been linked, and again attest
to the entrepreneurial nature of these people, as well as their ability to
settle and resettle.27 It would seem thus the experiences of numerous
displacements, alongside a keen commercial nature, have created the
Gujarati as an expert in successful resettlement and relocation, a charac-
teristic that has been clearly acknowledged and celebrated within dis-
courses of multiculturalism.
Whilst these are the well-documented accomplishments of the transient
South Asian East African, there is, I argue, a narrative of trauma that is

23
Regarding this success see Bose (1979) and Marett (1989).
24
Whilst the advertisement has been widely commented upon, see Virdee for the full
wording of the advertisement (2009, 5). Virdee also outlines the support the advertisement
acquired from authorities and other newspapers.
25
See Herbert (2008) for a vigorous, multivocal examination of Leicester as a multicultural
city.
26
Whilst there are no exact figures, writing in 1979, Bose (1979) estimates that 70% of the
South Asian population in Leicester was Gujarati.
27
As well as Bose (1979) and Herbert (2008), see Virdee (2009) for a further a reading of
Asians in Leicester.
10 M. PARMAR

silenced as a result of the accomplishments that dominate the discourse. It

is this traumatic impact and effect of the multiple and challenging disloca-
tions faced by the South Asian East African diaspora in Britain that this
study is concerned with. These alternative narratives and articulations
must be recognised and elucidated, and my research thus aims to investi-
gate several questions: how does a contemporary community fraught with
upheaval make and remake individual and collective identity? How are the
negotiations of representation and trauma managed? What modes of rep-
resentation are deployed in a bid for community and self-reconstruction
amongst this diaspora of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? How
can one determine these identities when they are firmly concealed by other
hegemonic interlocutions? Finally, what cultural narratives of representa-
tion do the favoured forms of social knowledge reveal? In the work of
addressing these questions, let us begin by considering the research that
exists within this field of study, to provide the appropriate intellectual
framework.

Researching the Single Diaspora, Overlooking

the Double

In their settlement and dislocation from East Africa the South Asian dia-
sporic community, on the one hand, has been well investigated through
both a sociological and historical lens, by, for instance, Michael Twaddle
(1975, 1990), Yash Tandon and Arnold Raphael (1978), Yash Ghai and
Dharam P. Ghai (1971), Dharam Ghai (1965), Agehananda Bharati
(1972) and J. S. Mangat (1969). Research into the Ugandan South Asian
diaspora has enjoyed further scholarship, owing to Idi Amin’s infamous
expulsion order of 1972 (O’Brien 1973; Mamdani 1976, 1993). More
generally there is also sociological research on South Asians in South Africa
by scholars such as Surendra Bhana and Bridglal Pachai (1984). On the
other hand, there has been scarcely any work on the South Asian East
African diaspora in Britain. Where analysis has been undertaken, for exam-
ple, by sociologist Parminder Bhachu (1985) and Maritsa Poros (2011), or
into the South Asian community in Leicester, there still remains a resound-
ing silence on this topic within the disciplines of literary and cultural stud-
ies.28 Within these fields, this particular diasporic community has perhaps

28
Bhachu’s research is limited to the East African Sikh diaspora in Britain, thus whilst I
interpret her ethnographic work to comment upon the wider East African community in
Britain, read independently it is unilateral in its focus.
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

been overlooked for three reasons: firstly, because of the paucity of fictional
writings concerned with this subject, and indeed a lack of interest in liter-
ary production by this diasporic community29; secondly, because of the
twofold nature of the migration itself; and thirdly, because of the non-
postcolonial nature of the settled migrant group.
The studies listed, though extremely useful, are now in several instances
rather dated. They are, however, complemented by recent research by the
scholars Dan Ojwang and Gurauv Desai. Ojwang’s book-length study
oscillates around the theme of ‘East African Asians’ and an examination of
the literary outputs from within this diaspora from all over the world
(2013). In his monograph, Desai examines the historical economic and
cultural exchanges of the Indian Ocean, with an interest in literary texts by
South Asian writers in and about East Africa (2013). The research I offer
in this book narrows its geographical focus to the double diaspora in
Britain, yet broadens its purview to explore not just literary outputs, but a
collection of non-literary ‘texts’ that perform cultural identity. By examin-
ing the prolific double diaspora in Britain, through a range of cultural
expressions—including the written text, dance, culinary and dress prac-
tices, as well as visual materials and digital practices—this research is
unique and a crucial and appropriate addition to the studies that currently
compose the field. As I elaborate later, it is the relationship between
embodied practice and cultural identity that drives my analysis. I explore
how the body performs and represents community and individuated
belonging in the double diaspora. Subsequently, I attend to a gap in the
current critical offerings on the South Asian East African diaspora.
The paucity in research on the South Asian East African migrant is
surprising given the abundant findings and fictional writings on the cul-
tural implications of the diasporic South Asian community in Britain.
For example, Susheila Nasta (2001), Peter van der Veer (1995) and
Roger Ballard (1994) have undertaken milestone works in this field,
with more recent offerings by N. Ali et al. (2006). Yasmin Hussain

29
Knott (1994, 223) notes that younger generations of Gujaratis in Leeds generally aspire
to study university-level engineering, accountancy and ‘a range of other science-based sub-
jects’, as well as law, highlighting a silence where the pursuit of the arts and humanities is
concerned. The devaluation of more creative subjects such as music and dance as a ‘waste’ by
Indian parents in East Africa (Bharati 1965, 53) goes some way to foregrounding this later
disavowal of the arts and humanities at university level, and perhaps concurrently accounts
for the lack of literary production within the diaspora. I return to this idea in my conclusion
chapter.
12 M. PARMAR

(2005) has further considered the concept of the South Asian diaspora
with reference to gender; whilst Rozina Visram’s ground-breaking
Asians in Britain: 400 years of history (2002) firmly positions those from
the subcontinent as participants in British life for over four centuries,
evidencing the historical intricacies of this exchange. There has also
been reflection on the novels of M. G. Vassanji, an Indian East African
who has now settled in Canada. For instance, while in her doctoral
research Stephanie Jones (2003) is predominantly concerned with East
African Anglophone literature, her primary materials do include several
of Vassanji’s works. Where Vassanji’s fictional writings are considered,
however, the British aspect of this diasporic community is bypassed for
the investigation of the Canadian diasporic community, owing to the
author’s final settlement.
There is also a canon of literature pertaining to the experience of the
South Asian who migrated to East Africa—rather than for the migrant for
whom East Africa was the first of many displacements—and it includes
works by Peter Nazareth (1972, 1984) and a limited edited collection of
oral histories of South Asian experience in Kenya by Cynthia Salvadori
(1996).30 There are, however, a select few texts pertaining to the double
diaspora. These are currently limited to works by Parita Mukta, Jameela
Siddiqi, Sudha Bhuchar and Kristine Landon-Smith, and Yasmin Alibhai-­
Brown. Alibhai-Brown’s The settler’s cookbook (2009) draws our attention
to the interface between embodied practice and cultural identity, via culi-
nary practices. She deploys food, as well as autobiography, to shed light on
this doubly displaced community, and follows in the tradition of several
other diaspora writers who invoke the same fusion genre (Candappa 2006;
Umedaly and Spence 2006).31
Like Alibhai-Brown, Mukta’s Shards of memory (2002) assumes the auto-
biographical mode. There are four parts to the biography, each dedicated to
a family member, starting with Mukta’s disempowered paternal grand-
mother, then progressing to her father, and later her uncle and daughter.
Distinctly absent is Mukta’s maternal side, and in particular details on her

30
Noteworthy too is Merely a matter of colour: Ugandan Asian anthology, which, as Ruvani
Ranasinha (2007, 52) discusses, is a literary collection comprised of Caribbean and East
African South Asians. Included in the anthology are works by Nazareth and Mahmood
Mamdani, and the collection’s aim was to subvert the mainstream negative rhetoric prolifer-
ating around the arrival of South Asians from East Africa.
31
Though not concerned with diaspora, of the same fusion genre is Laura Esquivel’s
widely acclaimed Like water for chocolate (1993).
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

mother and maternal great-grandmother, who is widowed yet chooses to

evade that stigma and recast herself as an independent woman. Alibhai-
Brown conversely celebrates strong women, positioning herself as one, whilst
too elevating and honouring her own mother in the cookbook memoir.
Generally, Mukta focuses on family networks in East Africa and Britain.
Specifically, the trauma and disenfranchisement of widowhood suffered by
the author’s paternal grandmother preoccupies the work, rather than the
lived experience of migration and resettlement. Hunger is a trope that haunts
the narrative, which is relevant to the commentaries in the following chapter.
Bhuchar and Landon-Smith’s play Strictly dandia (2004) derives from a
small-scale production concerned with ethnic and caste rivalries. Nevertheless,
Strictly dandia represents effectively cultural and socio-religious identity
within the North London Navratri space, and this critical commentary is
integrated into my readings and is examined in my chapter on dance.
Jameela Siddiqi’s first novel The feast of the nine virgins (2001) also
draws upon a diaspora displaced from India to East Africa, later settled in
Britain. The narrative operates on multiple levels in this experimental fic-
tion, with character transformations and revelations, alongside overlap-
ping plots lines. Partly set in historical East Africa, amongst the everyday
lives of the South Asian community, and partly set in contemporary
London where a Bollywood movie is being produced, the fiction comes to
a climatic and chaotic end, drawing these discrete sections together
through character overlaps. Siddiqi offers a wide lens through which to
view life in East Africa, and in particular her fictionalised region named
‘Pearl’, which is most closely aligned to Uganda. Whilst Alibhai-Brown
and Mukta converge upon very specific familial-related networks, thus
only writing about one section of a community in and from East Africa,
The feast of the nine virgins draws together an assortment of competing
classes, castes, religions, languages and practices amongst its ‘Indians’ in
Pearl. There is the miserly and detested shopkeeper Mohanji, who lives in
unnecessary poverty and deprivation despite his excessive wealth, together
with the elite professional teacher Mrs. Henara, who holds herself above
those around her, patronising in particular the shopkeeper class. Through
these characters Siddiqi draws hierarchies within the often simply per-
ceived ‘Indian’ community in East Africa. She thus exposes a hierarchy
within the hierarchy, of the Indians sandwiched between the European
settlers and the black communities of East Africa. Unlike Alibhai-Brown
or Mukta, Siddiqi’s novel reveals a layered community in East Africa, one
that defies the homogenisations of a unified Indian community in Uganda,
Kenya and Tanzania.
14 M. PARMAR

Each of these works by Siddiqi, Mukta, Bhuchar and Landon-Smith

and Alibhai-Brown offer some intervention into representations of the
double diaspora, which I draw upon; however, the selection remains lim-
ited. Whilst textual fictional representation of the double diaspora is nar-
row, there is, furthermore, a paucity of culturally significant films interested
in this community. Though the double diaspora has produced a number
of successful creative pioneers,32 including the film director Gurinder
Chadha, who was born in Kenya before migrating to the UK at a young
age, representation of the twice-migrant experience is largely absent in
film. Chadha’s Bend it like Beckham (2003) and the popular East is east
(O’Donnell 2001) give insight into the South Asian diasporas they por-
tray; however, they again are only concerned with those displaced once.
Mississippi Masala (Nair 2003) does engage with narratives of double dis-
placement; however, it is the experience of the South Asian East African
community in the US that is accounted for there. Alibhai-Brown herself
tells us that ‘there are no films about our old lives’ (2009, 13), and I
would argue that indeed there are none about the new ones. In film, con-
sequently, the Gujarati East African in Britain is once more overlooked.
The absence of a signature novel or film concerned with the discourse
of the British East African South Asian, it seems, thus has inhibited pal-
pable literary research. Perhaps this absence, as Mihir Bose suggests, is a
‘necessary amnesia’. Quoting A bend in the river, Bose explicates V. S.
Naipaul’s argument that there is an ‘Asian inability to record and evaluate;
[South Asians] rely […] on Europeans to recognise even their own fore-
bears’ achievements’ (Bose 1982, 456). Though this interpretation is
ruthless and erroneous, ignoring the lacuna in scholarship composed by
anyone at all and failing to take into account that which does exist, of the
fictional text one is compelled to ponder: where is the iconic novel that
attempts to represent the Gujarati East African in Britain? Where is its
Brick Lane (Ali 2003) or White teeth (Smith 2001)? And if it does not
exist, why not?
In answering these questions I reflect upon other forms of cultural pro-
duction that represent twice-migrant identity in Britain. These alternative
instances of cultural production—culinary, dance and dress practices, as

32
In the arts, a notable pioneer is the co-founder of Tara Arts, a landmark theatre company
established in response to the racist violence and abuse of 1970s Britain, Jatinder Verma.
Verma was born in Tanzania before growing up in Kenya, and then migrating to Britain in
1968.
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

well as visual materials—are posited here as ‘texts’ themselves. Though

they are not text-based, these forms of cultural productions are exposed to
close readings within this work. It is the critical treatment of these prac-
tices and materials that reveal complex, creative and multiple instances of
identity amongst the double diaspora. Culinary, dance and dress practices
are all forms of key cultural texts, which too have the commonality of
‘embodiment’. I am interested in the role certain forms of embodied prac-
tice have in shaping and mediating cultural representations, and how they
can reveal the complexities of selfhood and collective identity amongst the
double diaspora. The analysis of the body is thus fundamental in this work,
and significant to the selection of primary material. Given that the texts of
gastropoetics, dance and dress, when closely read, offer exciting opportu-
nities in the task of interpreting culture, I prioritise the body, and there-
fore the embodied practice. Whether it is the dancing body, the body
cooking or recipe writing, or indeed posing for a family frame or in ‘tradi-
tional’ attire, there is a cultural significance to these everyday acts. A sus-
tained focus on material culture, via embodied practice and close reading
practices, in this way, enables a thus far hidden diaspora to be revealed in
critical discourse.
In the close reading of these texts my research not only goes some way
to addressing the lacuna in scholarship on the cultural identity of the
Gujarati East African in Britain, revealing hidden narratives of the double
diaspora, it also complicates the singularity of migratory movement often
embedded in the meaning of the term ‘diaspora’. Usually understood as
the scattering or dispersal of a group of people, the term ‘diaspora’ privi-
leges singular movement, signposting ‘unidirectional’ migration, from a
homeland to a place of settlement (Shukla 2003, 11). I seek to challenge
this understanding of British diasporic communities, and in doing so illu-
minate the complexities of this South Asian diaspora, often discussed in
monolithic terms, rendering the multidimensional nature of the commu-
nities that lie within this umbrella group invisible. This monograph thus
intervenes in wider postcolonial conceptual debates centred on the term
‘diaspora’.
In broadening the literary critical interpretive practice of ‘close reading’
to the analysis of other modes of ‘texts’, which exist beyond the written, I
draw from other forms of cultural production to read the double diaspora.
This methodology enables the twice-displaced community to be investi-
gated whilst capitalising upon analytical practices of literary studies. I delin-
eate this methodological approach in more depth later in the introduction;
16 M. PARMAR

first let us consider the disciplinary crossover, with the rich field of literary
studies, and the wider context of the South Asian diaspora and postcolonial
studies. There is a well-established canon of South Asian diasporic writers
in English, including Attia Hosain, V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Hanif
Kureishi, Amitav Ghosh and Meera Syal.33 Many common themes emerge
within the writings of these authors, including that of the relationship of
the migrant to the homeland, as well as how identity—for example, class,
race and sexuality—is formed in the diaspora. These authors furthermore
often produce literatures of resistance. This monograph, in its analyses,
builds upon and contributes to these earlier formulations of diaspora and
postcolonial literatures.
For example, I demonstrate how Alibhai-Brown’s cookbook memoir
can be understood as a form of resistance via its recipe writing. My chapter
on the cookbook explicates the possibilities of recipe writing as a form of
cultural resistance against eradication, either physical or notional.
Throughout, and as another instance, I explore notions of belonging.
There is an ambivalence in diasporic home-making for Alibhai-Brown,
which mimics the preoccupations of some earlier diaspora writers; yet,
elsewhere there are expressions of dynamic traversals of multiple identities,
particularly via dance. I thus expand the space carved out in postcolonial
literary studies, to explore, for example, notions of resistance and belong-
ing, situating this work on the double diaspora within this larger tradition,
whilst reaching beyond it to other forms of cultural production.
Throughout the chapters that follow I endeavour to draw attention to
how my analysis is situated in relation to the work that has gone before,
and which I develop.

Limiting Language
A central argument of my second chapter, centred on culinary practices,
relates to the limitations of language, and the management of representa-
tion and trauma, by the South Asian East African diaspora in Britain. Whilst
these limits bear upon the representation of the community and subjectivity,
they concurrently affect the articulation of this work, because it is entrenched
in the act of writing. Thus here I clarify the terms I employ. Whilst some
secondary criticism might refer to ‘Asian’, which pertains to peoples and

33
Whilst I have listed postcolonial authors here, there are a number of diasporic writers in
English from an earlier period; see Ranasinha (2007) for an analysis.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

cultures of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, I endeavour to use more specific

nomenclature. For example, I refer to ‘India’ and ‘Indian East Africans’ or
‘Gujarati East Africans’, to signify those who have moved from India, and
the region of Gujarat, to Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.34 With the all-
encompassing reference to ‘India’, however, problems quickly arise. The
creation of the separate entities of Pakistan and India during the 1947 parti-
tion, the subsequent creation of Bangladesh in 1971 and the non-existence
of a unified state during pre-colonial times result in the concept of ‘India’,
and indeed ‘Indian’, being contentious and distorted.35 Unified modern
India itself is a contemporary creation, and what constitutes that space is
contested.36 Its use is therefore slippery. Here I use the term primarily in
reference to the twice migrant, and refer to the Gujaratis, Punjabis and
Goans that experienced double displacement. When making reference to
the peoples from Gujarat, I use this more specific language. Similarly, my
use of ‘East Africa’ is not to suggest the region is homogenous, or that the
Indian population that is connected to these parts are in uniformity. Instead
‘East Africa’ is another placeholder: the specificity of the region and its peo-
ples being revealed as each chapter progresses and precise evidence is
investigated.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown’s own heritage helps articulate these difficulties
of terminology: her father, having disowned the place and the family who
live there, was from Karachi and her maternal grandfather was from Gujarat.
Whilst according to patriarchal paradigms we might perceive Alibhai-
Brown to be Pakistani in identity, because of the tangible presence of her
maternal family, coupled with the absence of any relations with her father’s
family in Karachi, the author rather affiliates with her Indian identity.37

34
Whilst the Indian population in East Africa consisted of a Gujarati majority, there were
Indians from other regions such as Goa and Punjab. I choose to illuminate the Gujarati East
African experience in Britain because not only am I a member of this community—thus have
an invested interest in my research—but also because it is members of this community (e.g.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Gurinder Chadha) that have produced recent instances of cultural
production concerned with the British Indian East African diaspora which I shall incorporate
in my research.
35
Sheikh (2010), with reference to Gujarat in particular, explains that a unified India itself
did not exist in the imaginations of its people in pre-colonial times and that regions were
demarcated by princely states that operated independently.
36
For example, the region of Kashmir is violently disputed, and divided, between Pakistan
and India. See Kabir (2009).
37
The preference of the term ‘Indian’ is particularly evident in the early sections of The
settler’s cookbook where Alibhai-Brown outlines the history of the Indians in East Africa. She
Another random document with
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Yea, he reproved kings for their sakes;
21. he reproved kings] Genesis xx. 3‒7.

²²Saying, Touch not mine anointed ones,

And do my prophets no harm.

22. my prophets] Genesis xx. 7.

23‒33 (= Psalms xcvi. 1‒13).

²³Sing unto the Lord, all the earth;

Shew forth his salvation from day to day.

²⁴Declare his glory among the nations,

His marvellous works among all the peoples.

23. Sing unto the Lord] In Psalms xcvi. 1, 2 this exhortation is
thrice repeated; in Chronicles it is once given. Note that verse 2a of
the Psalm is also omitted here.

²⁵For great is the Lord, and highly to be praised:

He also is to be feared above all gods.

25. to be feared above all gods] i.e. to be feared as being above
all “that are called gods,” these being “things of nought” (verse 26,
Revised Version margin). The real existence of false gods is not
assumed.
²⁶For all the gods of the peoples are idols ¹:

But the Lord made the heavens.

¹ Or, things of nought.

26. made the heavens] A fine epithet. Compare Jeremiah x. 11,

The gods that have not made the heavens ... shall perish from the
earth.

²⁷Honour and majesty are before him:

Strength and gladness are in his place.

27. are before him] i.e. are His, belong to Him as His attributes.
Perhaps also before him refers to God’s abode in heaven, while the
parallel expression in his place (Psalms xcvi. 6, in his sanctuary)
refers to His temple on earth.

Strength and gladness] Psalms xcvi. 6, Strength and beauty. The

reference seems to be to the strength and gladness (or beauty)
which God bestows on Israel (Psalms lxviii. 35; Isaiah lxi. 3).

in his place] Read with Psalms xcvi. 6, in his sanctuary.

Compare the two preceding notes.

²⁸Give unto the Lord, ye kindreds of the peoples,

Give unto the Lord glory and strength.

28. of the peoples] An expectation that the Gentiles will turn to
the worship of the true God is expressed not rarely in the Psalms;
compare Psalms xxii. 27, Psalms lxviii. 31, 32; and is, of course, one
of the greatest contributions of Old Testament faith to the religious
aspirations of humanity.

²⁹Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name:

Bring an offering, and come before him:

Worship the Lord in the beauty ¹ of holiness.

¹ Or, in holy array.

29. before him] Psalms xcvi. 8, into his courts.

Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness] Render as margin,

worship the Lord in holy attire (see Kirkpatrick on Psalms xxix. 2,
Psalms xcvi. 9; and compare Exodus xxviii. 2). Compare 2
Chronicles xx. 21.

³⁰Tremble before him, all the earth:

The world also is stablished that it cannot be moved.

30. The world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved] In
Psalms xcvi. 10 this clause is preceded by the words, Say among
the nations, The Lord reigneth, and is followed by the words, He
shall judge the peoples with equity.

³¹Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice;

And let them say among the nations, The Lord

reigneth.
³²Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof;

Let the field exult, and all that is therein;

31. And let them say] Psalms xcvi. 10, Say [ye]. The clause is
displaced in Chronicles; compare note on verse 30.

The Lord reigneth] i.e. the Lord is claiming His kingdom over the
earth by coming to judge the earth; compare verse 33. Contrast
Habakkuk i. 14, where the prophet complains that Jehovah is not
asserting Himself as the ruler of men.

³³Then shall the trees of the wood sing for joy before
the Lord,

For he cometh to judge the earth.

33. to judge the earth] The joy with which the coming judgement
is greeted arises from the fact that the Hebrews regarded a judge as
a champion of the oppressed and not as a precise interpreter of
statutes.

34‒36 (= Psalms cvi. 1, 47, 48).

³⁴O give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good:

For his mercy endureth for ever.

34. his mercy endureth for ever] Compare Exodus xx. 6,
“shewing mercy unto a thousand generations of them that love me”
(Revised Version margin).

³⁵And say ye, Save us, O God of our salvation,

And gather us together and deliver us from the
nations,

To give thanks unto thy holy name,

And to triumph in thy praise.

35. gather us together] A phrase which shows very clearly that
the standpoint of the Psalmist is post-exilic.

³⁶Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,

From everlasting even to everlasting.

And all the people said, Amen, and praised

the Lord.
36. said, Amen, and praised the Lord] In the Psalms (cvi. 48)
“say, Amen! Hallelujah! (i.e. Praise ye the Lord!).” This verse belongs
not properly to the Psalm, but is the doxology marking the conclusion
of the fourth “book” of the Psalms. Apparently then the Psalms had
already been arranged in the five collections or “books,” into which
they were finally divided, by the time of the Chronicler; but the
argument is not conclusive since (1) the doxology may be really part
of the Psalm, and (2) there is the possibility that verses 7‒36 are a
later insertion in Chronicles.

37‒43.
The Service before the Ark and the Service at Gibeon.

The description of the disposition of the Priests and Levites for

the worship in Jerusalem and in Gibeon which was begun in verses
4‒6 is here resumed. verses 37, 38 summarise verses 4‒6.
 ³⁷So he left there, before the ark of the
covenant of the Lord, Asaph and his
brethren, to minister before the ark continually,
as every day’s work required: ³⁸and Obed-
edom with their brethren, threescore and
eight; Obed-edom also the son of Jeduthun
and Hosah to be doorkeepers:
38. Obed-edom with their brethren] A name or names seems to
be missing after Obed-edom. The LXX. cuts the knot by reading
simply “and his brethren.” Probably we should insert after Obed-
edom the words “and Hosah” from the last part of the verse: see the
following note.

Obed-edom also the son of Jeduthun] If the view of xv. 19‒21

and xvi. 5 taken above be correct, these words also may be deleted
as a harmonising gloss, added by someone who wished to insist on
Obed-edom as a singer, and hence gave him a place in the line of
Jeduthun, one of the three great choral guilds.

³⁹and Zadok. the priest, and his brethren the

priests, before the tabernacle of the Lord in
the high place that was at Gibeon,
39. Zadok the priest] As Zadok alone is here mentioned as
“before the tabernacle,” the Chronicler perhaps implies that Abiathar
(Ahimelech) the other high-priest was in charge of the Ark in
Jerusalem. On Zadok and Abiathar, see xv. 11, note.

the tabernacle of the Lord in the high place that was at Gibeon]
See prefatory note to chapter xiii.; and 2 Chronicles i. 3.

⁴⁰to offer burnt offerings unto the Lord upon

the altar of burnt offering continually morning
 and evening, even according to all that is
written in the law of the Lord, which he
commanded unto Israel;
40. the altar of burnt offering] 2 Chronicles i. 5, 6.

morning and evening] Exodus xxix. 38, 39 (= Numbers xxviii. 3,

4).

⁴¹and with them Heman and Jeduthun, and the

rest that were chosen, who were expressed by
name, to give thanks to the Lord, because his
mercy endureth for ever;
41. Jeduthun] Psalms xxxix., lxii., lxxvii. (titles). In vi. 33‒47, xv.
17, 19 the names of the leading singers are given as Heman, Asaph,
and Ethan. Here and in xxv. 1 ff. however Jeduthun seems to take
the place of Ethan. Probably there was a variation in the tradition as
to the third name, two families competing each for the honour of its
own ancestor.

⁴²and with them Heman and Jeduthun with

trumpets and cymbals for those that should
sound aloud, and with instruments for the
songs of God: and the sons of Jeduthun to be
at the gate. ⁴³And all the people departed
every man to his house: and David returned to
bless his house.
42. and with them, etc.] The words with them are possibly
repeated in error from verse 41. Render perhaps, And Heman and
Jeduthun had trumpets and cymbals. For trumpets compare xv.
24 (note).
 sons of Jeduthun] Perhaps a gloss connected with the statement
in verse 38, where see note on Obed-edom also the son of
Jeduthun.

to be at the gate] David’s organisation of the doorkeepers is

given in xxvi. 1‒19.

Chapter XVII.
1‒27 (= 2 Samuel vii. 1‒29).
God’s Answer to David’s expressed desire to build a Temple.
David’s Thanksgiving.

This passage is a reproduction with some omissions and

variations of 2 Samuel vii. The text is generally smoother in
Chronicles, and in some cases (e.g. in verse 6) we cannot doubt that
the Chronicler has preserved an older and better reading than the
present text of Samuel, whilst in other instances the Chronicler has
consciously emended his text of Samuel.

¹And it came to pass, when David dwelt in

his house, that David said to Nathan the
prophet, Lo, I dwell in an house of cedar, but
the ark of the covenant of the Lord dwelleth
under curtains.
1. in his house] Samuel adds, and the Lord had given him rest
from all his enemies round about. The Chronicler omits these words
probably because his next three chapters (xviii.‒xx.) are devoted to
wars (compare 2 Samuel viii. and x.).
 Nathan] The prophet of the court in the reign of David: see e.g. 2
Samuel xii.; 1 Kings i.

the ark of the covenant] So called because it contained the two

tables of the covenant, 1 Kings viii. 9.

²And Nathan said unto David, Do all that is in

thine heart; for God is with thee.
2. in thine heart] The heart according to Hebrew thought is the
seat of intention and purpose.

³And it came to pass the same night, that the

word of God came to Nathan, saying, ⁴Go and
tell David my servant, Thus saith the Lord,
Thou shalt not build me an house to dwell in:
3. the same night] Genesis xx. 3; 1 Samuel iii. 2, 3; 1 Kings iii. 5;
Job iv. 12, 13.

⁵for I have not dwelt in an house since the day

that I brought up Israel, unto this day; but have
gone ¹ from tent to tent, and from one
tabernacle to another.
¹ Hebrew have been.

5. I brought up Israel] i.e. out of Egypt (so Samuel).

but have gone from tent to tent, and from one tabernacle to
another] Samuel but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle. The
Hebrew text of Chronicles defies translation; that of Samuel is better.
 ⁶In all places wherein I have walked with all
Israel, spake I a word with any of the judges of
Israel, whom I commanded to feed my people,
saying, Why have ye not built me an house of
cedar?
6. the judges] A better reading than the tribes (Samuel).

⁷Now therefore thus shalt thou say unto my

servant David, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I
took thee from the sheepcote ¹, from following
the sheep, that thou shouldest be prince ² over
my people Israel: ⁸and I have been with thee
whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off
all thine enemies from before thee; and I will
make thee a name, like unto the name of the
great ones that are in the earth.
¹ Or, pasture. ² Or, leader.

7. sheepcote] Better as margin pasture.

⁹And I will appoint a place for my people

Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell
in their own place, and be moved no more;
neither shall the children of wickedness waste
them any more, as at the first,
9. I will appoint, etc.] i.e. will establish them in Canaan with
complete ascendancy over their enemies.
 waste them] Samuel afflict them.

¹⁰and as from the day that I commanded

judges to be over my people Israel; and I will ¹
subdue all thine enemies. Moreover I tell thee
that the Lord will build thee an house.
¹ Or, have subdued.

10. build thee an house] Samuel make thee an house, the house
meant being a dynasty, and not a building.

¹¹And it shall come to pass, when thy days be

fulfilled that thou must go to be with thy
fathers, that I will set up thy seed after thee,
which shall be of thy sons; and I will establish
his kingdom.
11. that thou must go to be with] Samuel and thou shalt sleep
with, the usual euphemism for “to die.”

¹²He shall build me an house, and I will

establish his throne for ever.
12. me an house] Samuel an house for my name.

¹³I will be his father, and he shall be my son:

and I will not take my mercy away from him,
as I took it from him that was before thee:
13. my son] Here Samuel adds, If he commit iniquity, I will
chasten him with the rod of men and with the stripes of the children
of men: this the Chronicler omits in order that not even a suggestion
of the coming evil days might at this stage rest on David and his line.

from him that was before thee] Samuel from Saul whom I put
away before thee. The reading in Chronicles is to be preferred.

¹⁴but I will settle him in mine house and in my

kingdom for ever: and his throne shall be
established for ever. ¹⁵According to all these
words, and according to all this vision, so did
Nathan speak unto David.
14. I will settle him in mine house and in my kingdom for ever]
Samuel And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established for
ever before thee (but read before me). The reading in Samuel is no
doubt the original. The change made in Chronicles neatly expresses
the Chronicler’s conviction that the kingdom of Israel was not a
human but a Divine institution, its true ruler being God Himself.

in mine house] Numbers xii. 7; compare 1 Timothy iii. 15.

¹⁶Then David the king went in, and sat

before the Lord; and he said, Who am I, O
Lord God, and what is my house, that thou
hast brought me thus far?
16. went in] i.e. into the tent which he had pitched for the Ark; xvi.
1.

sat before the Lord] So LXX. and 2 Samuel vii. 18. The Targum
rightly paraphrases, “and tarried in prayer before Jehovah.”

¹⁷And this was a small thing in thine eyes, O

God; but thou hast spoken of thy servant’s
 house for a great while to come, and hast
regarded me according to the estate of a man
of high degree, O Lord God.
17. and hast regarded me according to the estate of a man of
high degree] In 2 Samuel vii. 19, and this too after the manner of
men, or rather and this is the law for men (an exclamation), but the
text both in Samuel and Chronicles is certainly corrupt. The Hebrew
phrase is not quite the same in the two passages, and there is
nothing in Samuel corresponding with the words of high degree, but
the text of Chronicles seems to be derived from that of Samuel An
emendation “and hast let me see the generations of men for ever,”
i.e. the fortunes of my distant descendants, has met with some
approval, but no really satisfactory translation or explanation has yet
been given of the Hebrew.

¹⁸What can David say yet more unto thee

concerning the honour which is done to thy
servant? for thou knowest thy servant.
18. concerning the honour which is done to thy servant] Again an
obscure text. Following Samuel we should probably omit these
words.

thou knowest] Approvest, acceptest; compare Psalms i. 6,

Psalms ci. 4; Jeremiah i. 5.

¹⁹O Lord, for thy servant’s sake, and

according to thine own heart, hast thou
wrought all this greatness, to make known all
these great things. ²⁰O Lord, there is none
like thee, neither is there any God beside
 thee, according to all that we have heard with
our ears.
19. for thy servant’s sake] 2 Samuel vii. 21, for thy word’s sake,
but the LXX. of 2 Samuel agrees with the text of Chronicles.

²¹And ¹ what one nation in the earth is like thy

people Israel, whom God went to redeem unto
himself for a people, to make thee a name by
great and terrible things, in driving out nations
from before thy people, which thou
redeemedst out of Egypt? ²²For thy people
Israel didst thou make thine own people for
ever; and thou, Lord, becamest their God.
¹ Or, And who is like thy people Israel, a nation that is alone in
the earth &c.

21. what one nation in the earth is like thy people Israel] Better as
margin, who is like thy people Israel, a nation that is alone in the
earth. Compare Targum a people unique and chosen in the earth.

²³And now, O Lord, let the word that thou hast

spoken concerning thy servant, and
concerning his house, be established for ever,
and do as thou hast spoken.
23. be established] Literally be made Amen (i.e. “sure”).

²⁴And ¹ let thy name be established and

magnified for ever, saying, The Lord of hosts
 is the God of Israel, even a God to Israel: and
the house of David thy servant is established
before thee.
¹ Or, Yea, let it be established, and let thy name be magnified
&c.

24. And let thy name ... magnified] Better, as margin, Yea, let it
be established, and let thy name be magnified.

even a God to Israel] delete as a dittography.

²⁵For thou, O my God, hast revealed to thy

servant that thou wilt build him an house:
therefore hath thy servant found in his heart to
pray before thee. ²⁶And now, O Lord, thou art
God, and hast promised this good thing unto
thy servant:
25. hath ... found ... to pray] i.e. hath found words and courage to
pray.

²⁷and now it hath pleased thee to bless the

house of thy servant, that it may continue for
ever before thee: for thou, O Lord, hast
blessed, and it is blessed for ever.
27. hast blessed, and it is blessed for ever] 2 Samuel vii. 29,
thou, O Lord God, hast spoken it; and with thy blessing let the house
of thy servant be blessed for ever.
 Chapter XVIII.
1‒17 (= 2 Samuel viii. 1‒18).
A Summary of David’s Foreign Wars. David’s Officials.

This chapter like the last is taken from 2 Samuel with a few
omissions and variations. The Chronicler paraphrases (verses 1,
17), omits (verse 2), has a different reading (verses 4, 8, 10, 12). In
some cases the better reading is in Chronicles.

The campaigns (except perhaps that against Moab) seem to be

narrated in chronological order. David first makes sure of his most
pressing enemy the Philistines (verse 1); then feeling safe towards
the south-west he turns towards the north-east secure on the
Euphrates (but see note verse 3) a station (valuable for trade) held
by the Syrians of Zobah (verse 3); the Syrians of Damascus fearing
to be excluded from the River by David’s success come to the help
of their kinsmen (verse 5); lastly the Edomites, urged perhaps by the
Syrians to make a diversion in their favour and thinking it safe to
attack Judah during the absence of David, join in the war, but are
signally defeated by a detachment under Joab and Abishai (verse
12).

The war with Moab (verse 2) is surprising, if it took place at an

early date in David’s reign, for he seems to have been on specially
friendly terms with the king of Moab during his exile; compare 1
Samuel xxii. 3, 4 and Kirkpatrick on 2 Samuel viii. 2.

1‒13 (= 2 Samuel viii. 1‒14).

A Summary of David’s Foreign Wars.
 ¹And after this it came to pass, that David
smote the Philistines, and subdued them, and
took Gath and her towns out of the hand of the
Philistines.
1. after this] The phrase is adopted from 2 Samuel viii. 1 and
probably came originally from a still earlier book of annals, in which
the context may have been different. We cannot therefore say at
what period of David’s reign the conquest of Gath took place.

took Gath and her towns] It is impossible to say for certain

whether this is the original text or only an interpretation of the
obscure reading in 2 Samuel viii. 1, took the bridle of the mother city
(Revised Version).

²And he smote Moab; and the Moabites

became servants to David, and brought
presents.
2. smote Moab] The Chronicler at this point omits, as he often
omits, some difficult words of Samuel. 2 Samuel viii. 2 seems to say
that David put two-thirds of the Moabites (presumably the warriors)
to death, but the meaning of the verse is uncertain.

brought presents] i.e. tribute, in acknowledgment of David’s

superiority. The same Hebrew phrase (translated “bring an offering”)
is used Psalms xcvi. 8 of sacrificing to Jehovah.

³And David smote Hadarezer king of Zobah

unto ¹ Hamath, as he went to stablish his
dominion by the river Euphrates.
¹ Or, by.
 3. Hadarezer] So spelt in 2 Samuel x. 16‒19, but in 2 Samuel viii.
3‒12, Hadadezer, the right form (as inscriptions show).

Zobah unto Hamath] Render as margin Zobah by Hamath, the

position of Zobah being fixed by the note that it was near Hamath.

Hamath] The modern Hama on the Orontes, midway between

Antioch and Damascus, but somewhat further to the east than either.
See below verse 9; also xiii. 5 and 2 Chronicles viii. 3.

as he went to stablish his dominion] He may refer to Hadarezer

or to David; the latter, probably, is the Chronicler’s intention. The
reading in 2 Samuel viii. 3 (“to recover his dominion”—Revised
Version) should be emended to the text in Chronicles.

by the river Euphrates] The utter improbability that David

exercised any authority in regions so far north throws no doubt upon
the reading, for the Chronicler and the author of Samuel may easily
have believed that he did so.

⁴And David took from him a thousand chariots,

and seven thousand horsemen, and twenty
thousand footmen: and David houghed all the
chariot horses, but reserved of them for an
hundred chariots.
4. a thousand chariots, and seven thousand horsemen] Samuel a
thousand and seven hundred horsemen (so Hebrew but LXX. of
Samuel agrees with Chronicles). Houghed = “hamstrung.”

⁵And when the Syrians ¹ of Damascus ² came to

succour Hadarezer king of Zobah, David
smote of the Syrians ¹ two and twenty
thousand men.
 ¹ Hebrew Aram. ² Hebrew Darmesek.

5. Damascus] The name is variously written in Hebrew,

Darmesek (Chronicles), Dammesek (Genesis, 1 Kings), Dummesek
(2 Kings xvi. 10). See G. A. Smith, Damascus in Encyclopedia Biblia.

came to succour] By interposing between David and his own land

and so threatening his rear.

⁶Then David put garrisons in Syria ¹ of

Damascus ²; and the Syrians ¹ became servants
to David, and brought presents. And the Lord
gave victory ³ to David whithersoever he went.
¹ Hebrew Aram. ² Hebrew Darmesek.

³ Or, saved David.

6. put garrisons in Syria of Damascus] margin in Aram of

Darmesek, i.e. in the Aramean kingdom of which Damascus was the
capital. David’s purpose of course was to secure his rear in any
future operations towards Hamath or towards the Euphrates.

⁷And David took the shields of gold that were

on the servants of Hadarezer, and brought
them to Jerusalem.
7. shields of gold] “shields” = Hebrew shĕlātim. The meaning of
the Hebrew word is doubtful; most probably it does not mean
“shield,” for (1) a shield would not be described as “upon” the person
to whom it belonged, (2) the early authorities, i.e. the LXX.
translators, the Targum, and the Peshitṭa (on 2 Samuel viii. 7; 2
Kings xi. 10; Jeremiah li. 11; Ezekiel xxvii. 11) never give “shield,” but
either leave the word untranslated or give various conjectural
renderings. A later authority (Targum on 1 Chronicles xviii. 7; 2
Chronicles xxiii. 9) gives “shield,” while LXX. gives “collars” (κλοιούς)
here, and “arms” or “shields” (τὰ ὅπλα) in 2 Chronicles.

The most probable rendering of the word is “suits of armour” (see

Barnes, Expository Times, x. 43 ff.).

and brought them to Jerusalem] So Hebrew LXX. Targum, but the

Peshitṭa (all important MSS.) omits the words, and they may be a
gloss introduced from 2 Samuel viii. 7.

⁸And from Tibhath and from Cun, cities of

Hadarezer, David took very much brass,
wherewith Solomon made the brasen sea, and
the pillars, and the vessels of brass.
8. Tibhath] compare Tebah, the name of an Aramean family,
Genesis xxii. 24. Nothing is known certainly of the position of the city.
In 2 Samuel viii. 8 Betah (= Tebah).

Cun] 2 Samuel viii. 8, “Berothai.” Nothing is certainly known of a

city of either name; but “Berothai” may be the same as “Berothah”
(Ezekiel xlvii. 16).

very much brass] Compare xxi. 14, xxix. 2.

brass] Not the metal generally so called. Revised Version (margin

note to Genesis iv. 22) gives copper as an alternative rendering. The
“brass” of the ancients (χαλκός, LXX.) corresponds rather to bronze.

the brasen sea, etc.] Compare 2 Chronicles iv. 11‒18.

⁹And when Tou king of Hamath heard that

David had smitten all the host of Hadarezer
king of Zobah,