The “Asian question” in Kenya: history and new trends

Karpov Grigory Doctor of History Senior Researcher, Institute of Africa, Russian Academy of Sciences 123001, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Spiridonovka, 30/1 gkarpov86@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The "Asian question" in Kenya is a special case of the problems of the emergence, development and current state of the Indian diaspora in the countries of East Africa. During the migration processes of the colonial and postcolonial era, a whole community was formed – "Kenyan Asians", representatives of British India and their descendants living in Kenya and Western countries (primarily Great Britain).

Western science has devoted a huge amount of historiographical material to visitors from South Asia in the East African region. There are at least 600 scientific articles and monographs on this topic. The study of the influence of Indian capital on the development of the Kenyan economy is widely presented^[1]. The fate of Indians who were forced to leave the country in the first years of its independence was not ignored^[2]. Among the most interesting works, including non-trivial aspects of the history of Indian migrants in Kenya, one can note works analyzing, for example, the role of Indian doctors in colonial medicine^[3], the participation of immigrants from India in the formation of the law enforcement system^[4], local press focused on this diaspora^[5].

Indians of Kenyan origin today are at the junction of three civilizational centers - South Asian, East African and Western European. This is a curious example of the non-standard fate of a relatively small ethnic group, the study of which, in our opinion, extremely enriches with details and unexpected discoveries the developments already available in domestic science on African migration^[6], the policy of Western^[7] and Eastern states^[8] in relation to Africa, decolonization and integration of migrants^[9].

Considering the "Asian issue" in Kenya, it would be inexcusable to ignore the factor of demographic, economic and social influence, sometimes even pressure, on Western European countries from African and Asian countries, including through their diasporas, firmly established in the former metropolises. The lack of working resources forces the EU to look for human reserves from the outside. Due to the high birth rate^[10], Africa in the future can offer hundreds of millions of migrant workers, including those of Indian origin, to the world market.

Background

No matter how exotic it may sound, but Indians in East Africa can be considered almost representatives of the local population. Traces of their presence in this region are found as early as the I century A.D. Relatively stable trade contacts have been known since the II century A.D., and by the XIII century we can talk about the existence of regular trade routes of Indians (and Arabs) through the East African coast.

The main place of Indian presence in the XV–XVIII centuries in East Africa was Zanzibar, the main center of the slave trade between India, Africa and Oman. South Asian migrants played a key role in this business. The Portuguese authorities did not prohibit this kind of business activity. Neither did the authorities of the Sultanate of Oman, who controlled this territory from the end of the XVII century until the arrival of British colonizers in the middle of the XIX century.

Already at that time, the sociability and cohabitability of Indians with Portuguese Christians and Muslim Arabs were noted. The idea of "family ownership" ("joint family") of property was spread among South Asians. This approach allowed the Indians to consolidate huge financial and administrative resources. In this regard, the families of Sewji, Dhamji, Paroo, and Topan were known for their authority. An example of entrepreneurial and managerial success can be considered Tariya Topan (1823-1891), who managed to simultaneously win the trust and favor of the Sultan of Oman, becoming honorary Prime Minister of Zanzibar, and the British, receiving a knighthood from Queen Victoria ^{[3, p. 19-20]}.

The spread of British influence in Kenya dramatically intensified the influx of migrants from South Asia to the mainland of the country, their number increased from 2 thousand in 1895 to about 50 thousand by 1940, and by 1948 approached 100 thousand. Historical ties with this region and relative proximity to India allowed visitors to maintain their own identity, preserve the traditions and cultural practices of the country of origin. In this respect, East Africa favourably differed from other remote places of settlement of Indians (Mauritius, Fiji, Jamaica, Trinidad, Panama, Australia, etc.). In total, by 1920, about 1.5 million Indians lived outside British India ^{[3, p. 24-25]}.

The authorities of colonial Kenya attracted Indians for the construction of the Ugandan Railway in 1896-1901, for public service in law enforcement agencies, medical institutions, customs ^[11].Traditional merchant migration was expanding, significantly supplemented by peasant resettlement from poor regions of India, where droughts, crop failures and famine often raged. An important role was played by the religious factor that prompted Ismaili Muslims from South Asia to seek a new haven in Africa^{[12, p. 442-444]}. Indians were engaged in usury, worked in banks, conducted business where Europeans, due to completely unbearable climatic conditions, could not work productively on a permanent basis. Sincere admiration of the British for their professionalism was caused by a few privileged stratum of Indian advisers and officials who served under the sultans of Zanzibar^{[3, p. 20-21]}.

Indian doctors have made a huge contribution to the development of Western medicine in East Africa by taking on contract labor from South Asia and the local population. By the end of the First World War, the number of doctors of Indian origin in the Colonial Medical Service of Kenya was almost twice the number of European doctors.

In the colonial era, from the 1880s to 1963, South Asian migrants in Kenya played the usual role of a mediating minority ("middleman minority") between Europeans and the African population proper^{[2, p. 741]}. However, unlike previous times, Indian communities in the late XIX — first half of the XX century. significantly increased economic power. The British authorities did not restrict entrepreneurial activity on the ground. South Asians created retail outlets and enterprises engaged in the production and sale of a wide range of food and industrial goods, including sugar cane, tea, rubber, cotton, fruit, soda, soap, furniture, gin, beer, etc.^[13] Indian business also penetrated into the construction, real estate, transport^{[14, p. 8]}.

With the growth of the number and economic influence of the Indian diaspora in Kenya, ambitions in the socio-political field began to inevitably arise, claims to equal participation with Europeans in the management of the colony. The metropolis and the European settlers, of course, could not take such a step. Gradually increasing from the beginning of the XX century, by the 1920s this discourse led to the emergence of the so-called "Indian question" in the colony, preceding the "Asian question" already in independent Kenya.

The essence of the problem

From a formal point of view, there was equality of all its "subjects" in the British Empire. It was assumed that if the representatives of the colonies adhere to their values and norms of behavior that do not contradict the general imperial principles, then they can enter state and military service, have the right to representation in government. The theory asserted the principle of "separate development", also known as "philosophical apartheid", where each of the participants in the construction of the empire grew and developed in a common civilizational canvas with the British, but with different speed and cultural background.  In practice, "baaskap" ("baasskap") or "practical apartheid" ("practical apartheid") dominated, resulting in ordinary segregation based on racial and ethnic characteristics ^{[4, p. 402-403]}. South African terminology should not confuse us here, similar principles were in effect in Kenya, with a difference only in details and without an official declaration of the apartheid regime.

In 1926, about 15 thousand Europeans, 30 thousand Indians and 2.6 million indigenous people lived in Kenya, in 1950 – 30 thousand, 135 thousand and 5.2 million, respectively^{[4, p. 401]}. The relations between these communities could not be called harmonious, each group had its own interests, zones of influence, claims to the metropolis and other groups. European migrants, immigrants from India and Africans settled, as a rule, separately, maintaining their culture and forming a closed social infrastructure (schools, hospitals, clubs, etc.). Having established a virtual monopoly in the trade sphere, South Asian merchants with extensive business experience, according to a number of contemporaries, turned into a real disaster for Africans. Traders from South Asia in Kenya did not neglect anything that was characteristic of wild capitalism, including dumping, cartel collusion, obtaining super profits, price wars, speculation, fraud, huge loan interest ^{[1, p. 327-329]}.

In the eyes of the indigenous people, Indian migrants often looked like colonial collaborators, former slave traders, comfortably settled under the new owners-the British. They aroused hostility by openly dismissive attitude towards Africans. The latter, according to the oldest and most enduring Indian tradition of reverence for the light color (eyes, skin, hair) and even its shades, Indians often called "black people" ("kala lok")^{[3, p. 30–31]}.

And it was against this background that the Indian diaspora of Kenya began to make claims to local authorities and the metropolis for equal voting rights with Europeans, as well as for obtaining land in the White Highlands, a fertile area of the country with a temperate climate, reserved exclusively for European settlers at the level of the Ministry of Colonial Affairs in 1908 ^{[15, p. 259-270]}. This decision was confirmed twice more – in 1920 and in 1922 .

South Asian migrants, of course, tried to defend their interests. Their earliest speech (a rally in Mombasa) dates back to 1906. The main thing was the demand to stop discrimination in terms of political rights and settlement opportunities.  In 1912, a corresponding collective appeal was published. However, all this did not affect the policy of the colonial authorities at all, restrictive measures against Indians continued to be introduced. The Land Ordinance of 1915 ("1915 Land Ordinance"), the Racial Segregation Act of 1918 ("Segregation of Races Act"), the Municipal Representation Ordinance of 1919 ("Municipal Corporation Ordinance"), the Electoral Law of 1919 ("Electoral Representation Ordinance") effectively excluded the possibility for Indians to claim voting rights^{[3, p. 67]}.

At the same time, mixing the problem of unsanitary conditions in public places with racial rhetoric and cultural issues, the colonial authorities imposed restrictions on the resettlement of Indians and Africans.  In general, increased attention was paid to health issues in Kenya. Special, well-founded, fears were caused by the threat of the spread of the plague. From 1900 to 1913, a series of decisions were made in this area, where the key preventive measures were local bans on the movement of Indians and Africans, but not Europeans, for whom a priori a higher level of personal and public hygiene was recognized. Violators of the settlement rules could be sentenced to imprisonment for up to one month^{[3, p. 82]}.

For visitors from India, accustomed to the centuries-old paradigm of caste segregation in their historical homeland, this approach was very painful, it brought them closer to Africans, which caused cultural dissonance. The Indians insisted that if they themselves adhere to European standards of life, then they cannot be forcibly resettled only in the appropriate quarters and districts. The European authorities remained adamant on this issue. The separation persisted, reaching an absolute character, if we were talking about poor and non-influential representatives of the South Asian diaspora ^{[16, p. 261-262]}. 

Serious tensions also took place around the issue of the migration of Indians to Kenya. Two "Imperial Conferences", 1918 and 1921, secured for the members of the British Commonwealth the right to control the composition of their own population by restricting the arrival of immigrants from any community. The Indians believed that a handful of immigrants from Europe, literally several thousand people, could not represent the interests of the whole of Kenya and decide who could come to the colony. The European colonists argued that they were not yet ready to share responsibility for the fate of Kenya with the Indians, even despite India's anomalous place in the dominion system as a territory where there was an unambiguously high, but not Western civilization ^{[16, p. 263-264]}.

Let us take into account that at the end of the XIX — beginning of the XX centuries there was a slow but inevitable "Indianization" of the officer corps of the armed forces in India, which also alarmed British-born servicemen and forced them to consider East Africa as a place where, after retirement, they could find a haven with a cloudless future for themselves and their descendants. The growth of the Indian diaspora and its influence in Kenya did not go hand in hand with these plans. The Europeans were ready to defend their interests and privileges by force, up to a full-fledged armed uprising ^{[17, p. 349-353]}.

The end of the First World War and subsequently the constant disputes of the British authorities about the right of nations to self-determination fueled the growth of Indian nationalism wherever there were South Asian diasporas. The Indians doubted what had previously looked unshakable - the unconditional superiority of the white man and his right to universal domination. The height of political discussions and public opposition on this issue occurred in the early 1920s. The parties could not come to a common denominator. In 1923, three delegations arrived in London from Kenya: European, Indian (Asian) and missionary, representing the interests of Africans. The result of a series of meetings, consultations and negotiations was the "Devonshire Declaration" of 1923 ("Devonshire White Paper"), a document that in the true English spirit contained an attempt at compromise between various forces. Five seats were allocated to Indians in the Legislative Council under the Governor of the colony, restrictions on migration from South Asia imposed by Europeans were lifted, although the metropolis left the right to introduce such measures to the local colonial government. In 1927, representatives of migrants of Indian and Arab origin were elected to the Legislative Council for the first time. In fact, the real power in the colony still belonged to the governor, who pursued the policy of the metropolis. On other issues (segregation and land distribution), migrants from India have not achieved significant results.

  Contemporaries of those events had no illusions about the effectiveness of this solution. It was from 1923 that the term "Indian question" became widespread in relation to the situation of South Asians in Kenya. The problem was not solved, it was driven deep into the depths, where it continued to slowly smolder, waiting in the wings in order to flare up with new painful tensions and conflicts. While the metropolis had enough resources to control the situation in the colony, local socio-political forces were increasing their influence without getting involved in an open confrontation.

The European colonialists maintained a biased attitude towards the Indians. Quasi-scientific racial studies, which were very popular in the 1910s and 1940s, played their role here, emphasizing on the "earth", on the "working", so to speak, material, the physical and mental inferiority of Indians. To promote the ideas of eugenics in 1933, the "Kenyan Society for the Study of Race Improvement" was even created, on the basis of which thematic public lectures were held, during which South Asians were presented as carriers of dangerous diseases, adherents of total unsanitary conditions and complete ignorance in matters of hygiene^{[3, p. 68-70]}.  

Indians have been accumulating political capital, including in terms of developing and supporting the ideas of anti-colonialism. At the beginning of the XX century, a series of newspapers of varying degrees of radicalism appeared under the leadership of the Indian diaspora. For example, Kenya's oldest weekly newspaper, the African Standard, was founded in 1902 by Alibhai Jivanji, one of the leaders of the South Asian community, and in 1905 it was transformed into the East African Standard. From 1911 to 1914, the Indian Voice was published, in 1921-1922 - the East African Chronicle, where the editor was the famous Indian journalist Manilal Desai.  From 1923 to 1930, the newspaper "Democrat" ("Democrat") was published. In total, by the early 1950s, there were at least 50 publications in Kenya that directly or indirectly criticized colonial rule and supported the ideas of local nationalism^{[5, p. 158-161]}.

The contradictions accumulated during the colonial era in the relationship between socio-political forces instantly manifested themselves with the independence of Kenya in 1963. The young Kenyan statehood tried to quickly and radically close the "Indian question".

An attempt at a solution in the 1960s and 1970s.

The beginning of the postcolonial era radically changed the situation of Kenyan Indians. Literally from the first months of Kenya's independence, South Asian migrants have been subjected to severe discrimination by the newly-minted African authorities. In 1963, Indians were offered Kenyan citizenship in exchange for British citizenship within two years. Most of them, of course, chose British passports and, as restrictive measures were introduced for non-citizens (when applying for a job, choosing a place of residence, etc.), they were forced to leave the country. According to the Migration Act of 1967 ("The Kenyan Immigration Act, I967"), a mandatory work permit rule was introduced for all non-citizens. The Law on Trade ("Trade Licensing Act"), adopted in the same year, limited the territory of the country where they could engage in this activity. People from South Asia began to be actively dismissed from the civil service, replacing them with local personnel. In Swahili, a derogatory term denoting Kenyans of Indian origin, "wahindi" ("wahindi"), has even spread ^{[2, p. 747-748]}.

One of the main points of emigration of Indian Kenyans was the United Kingdom. Citizenship, the English language, historical and cultural ties with the former metropolis in every way contributed to this process. By the beginning of 1967, about 1,000 migrants from Kenya were arriving in the UK every month. In the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s, an average of 6-7 thousand Indian Kenyans moved to Foggy Albion annually.  The peak of Kenyan migration occurred at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, when several tens of thousands of people with non-African roots were forced to leave this country^{[18, p. 17]}. Prior to the adoption by the British authorities of the Migration Act of 1968 ("Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968"), visitors from Kenya did not face official restrictions on entry to the United Kingdom, later they could apply for a quota for in-demand specialists ^{[19, p. 815]}.

In total, the number of residents of Indian origin in five African countries (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi) decreased from 345 thousand in 1968 to about 85 thousand by 1984 (in Kenya – no more than 40 thousand). In 2009, the South Asian diaspora of the country was estimated by the Kenyan authorities themselves approximately 46 thousand people^{[2, p. 737]}.

In the UK, Indians from Kenya have made great strides. They formed the basis of the Kenyan community in this country. As of 1991, 112 thousand Kenyans and their descendants lived in the United Kingdom. By 2001, this figure had increased to 129 thousand^[20] According to the 2011 census, the number of immigrants from Kenya was approximately 140 thousand people^[21]. According to the Kenyan authorities, at least 200 thousand Kenyan citizens (legally and illegally) now live in the UK^[22].

While Kenyans of South Asian origin were trying to adapt to the changed environment in every sense, and their relatives and friends were trying to settle in a new place in the former metropolis, the Africanization of the Kenyan state was in full swing. In 1972, for example, an official recommendation ("Kenya's Ndegwa Commission 1972") explicitly stated that government employees can participate in business or ownership of corporate property to improve their well-being. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a rapid bureaucratization of the private sector. The consequences of this policy hit the country's economy particularly hard in the 1990s, when, in particular, the development of the manufacturing industry experienced stagnation (the contribution of this sector to GDP did not exceed 12%) ^{[14, p. 14-15]}.

By the elementary exclusion of Indians from the life of Kenyan society, the country's authorities tried to solve the long overdue "Indian question". For the realities of the first decades of Kenya's independence, especially the 1970s and 1980s, it would seem that the issue of the status and rights of Kenyans of Indian origin was removed from the agenda, due to the emigration from the country of an asset that could claim some economic and political influence in the new conditions. However, in the 1990s-2000s, interest in this issue revived.

Modern realities

Permanent interethnic and intertribal conflicts, political instability, deterioration of the socio-economic situation, rising unemployment, explosive inflation, and a drop in tourist flow in the 1970s and 2000s made Kenya unattractive not only for immigration, but also for indigenous residents. In the 1990s-2000s, the process of active emigration of Kenyans proper to neighboring African states and Western countries began ^{[18, p. 17]}. According to the situation in 2010, in the list of reasons for coming to the United Kingdom, for example, people from Kenya, as a rule, indicate job search (31.1%) and education (25.2%), family reunification (16.8%) is noticeable ^{[23, p. 13]}. The number of Africans of Kenyan origin in this country by 2020 amounted to about 15 thousand people^[24]. According to the British government in 2015 Kenya was ranked 145 (out of 175) in terms of corruption and 136 (out of 189) in terms of ease of doing business^[25].

If according to the Kenyan authorities in 2006, about 430 thousand Kenyans officially lived abroad, then by the 2010s the total number of Kenyans who left their homeland already exceeded 1 million people. 90% of them left the country due to economic problems in search of a better life ("greener pastures" - greener pastures)^[26]. In this regard, the situation in Kenya is not getting significantly better. Among the most popular routes of Kenyan emigration, in addition to the United Kingdom, you can find the USA, Canada, Germany and Tanzania. The outflow of educated specialists from the country is extremely high. As of 2006, up to 26% of Kenyans who have received higher education have left the country (doctors – up to 50%, nurses – about 8%) ^{[23, p. 1]}. By the way, the US authorities did not object at all to this migration flow and even stimulated it. For example, according to the Migration Law of 1990 ("United States' Immigration Act of 1990"), immigrants from Kenya could obtain a work permit in the United States under a simplified scenario ^{[2, p. 741]}. The prolonged mass outflow of medical personnel, together with the deterioration of the economic situation and the migration of the population from rural areas to urban slums, has not been in vain for the health situation in Kenya. In particular, the infant mortality rate (aged 0-14 years), which has been steadily decreasing since the 1970s, increased again in the 2000s ^{[27, p. 793-794]}

At the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, there was a shift among the country's establishment towards a more positive assessment of the role and place of Indians in Kenyan society. This phenomenon was forced, in the conditions of the economic downturn, the ruling circles began to show readiness to consider the possibility of cooperation with any force capable of improving the situation in the country with direct investments, money transfers to relatives, maintaining the existing real sector or creating new enterprises. In the 1990s, a new, up-to-date, discourse began to form on the revision of the assessment of the contribution of South Asian capital to the Kenyan economy and the prospects for its presence in the country in the near future. Unlike the previous "Indian question", where the Indians themselves were the initiators of the changes, this time the Kenyan authorities were the initiators, and the former problem appeared in a new light and with a more generalized name - the "Asian question". The problematic of this discourse revolves around the question of how important and necessary for the development of the country was, is and will be the presence of specialists and entrepreneurs of Indian origin in it. The authorities could not quickly replace them with local personnel and create a purely African entrepreneurial class after Kenya gained independence, realized this and were forced to attract foreign specialists, which was not always justified from an economic point of view ^{[14, p. 5-6]}.

On the other hand, the competition for a well-paid job and a place in the sun in an entrepreneurial environment with people from South Asia, representatives of the local population, of course, can not always withstand. As a result, there is a dilemma of permanent discrimination, either natural, resulting from the dominance of Indians in business and management, or artificial, created by the authorities in relation to South Asian migrants in the interests of the local population. And the economic and financial development of Kenya is in the balance here. Can it be carried out only with the support of its own human resources, or is it absolutely impossible to do without people of non-African origin? There is no exact answer, and only practice and time can dot the "i" here.

In the 2000s and 2010s, the "Asian question" began to play with fresh colors due to the influx of a new type of migrants from India to Kenya, coming on work visas, but without plans to stay in the country forever or create their own business, which was typical of visitors in the colonial era. In this case, Kenya acts as a transit point in the modern transnational migration flow between Afro-Asian countries and the West. Indians cannot always immediately emigrate to the USA or the UK, coming to Kenya serves as an intermediate step for them on this difficult path. For example, according to the Kenyan Bureau of Statistics, in 2012 about 10 thousand one–year work permits were issued to migrants of South Asian origin, and at that time about 35 thousand Indians and their descendants lived in the country (in reality - up to 50 thousand) ^{[2, p. 736]}.

The mass emigration of Kenyans of Indian origin in the 1960s and 1970s weakened the positions of Indian capital, but did not bring them down, but only adjusted the model of implementing influence on the state of affairs in the country. Despite the obvious financial power and authority in the field of real politics, the modern Indian diaspora in Kenya tries to be relatively neutral, maintaining an "imperceptible 'political' identity". This position is largely based on the postcolonial experience of life in independent Kenya, where political trends and conjuncture are set by Kenyans. Of course, the events in Uganda also left their imprint, where under Amin the Indian diaspora was expelled from the country and its assets were nationalized ^{[28, p. 88-90]}.

The loyal attitude towards diasporas in modern Kenya is also fixed in the Constitution of 2010, which provides for dual citizenship, equality and prohibition of discrimination based on gender, race, religion, ethnicity. Thanks to this, the Indian community can maintain and develop ties with its historical homeland, including in the field of culture and the media (for example, invite Hollywood actors to visit), make financial transfers, and attract investments. For the Indians themselves, as noted above, Kenya can serve as a springboard for further migration to the United States and Great Britain.

By 2000-2010, Indian business managed to significantly improve the situation that shook in the second half of the XX century. South Asian capital is powerfully represented in the private sector, trade, finance, banking, transport, urban planning, industrial and housing construction. Indian corporations ("Tata International", "Mahindra", "Essar energy overseas", "Reliance", "Mohan Meakin" and "Kirloskar") are actively working not only in Kenya, in East Africa as a whole. Kenyan Indians are not cut off from their historical homeland and diasporas in other countries. They identify themselves, and what is very important, they are identified by the external environment, namely as "persons of Indian origin" ("person of Indian origin"), with all their characteristics, skills, inclinations. Thus, through socio-cultural and economic contacts, "Pan-Indianism" ("Pan-Indianism") develops, without encountering sharp rejection in the countries of presence of Indian migrants, although the practice of allocated areas for their residence takes place ^{[28, p. 94]}.

The modern Kenyan authorities are quite satisfied with this state of affairs, because Indians with regular money transfers to their historical homeland significantly help the country's economy. By the early 2010s, at least 8% of all Kenyans lived in various diasporas abroad (USA, EU, China). Initially, in the 1960s and 1970s, the departure of intellectual cadres, the "brain drain", and the emigration of labor resources, the "brawn drain", were perceived rather negatively, since they deprived the country of promising young people, reduced the potential for internal development. Since the 1980s, this phenomenon has been perceived rather positively, despite the fact that foreign exchange resources in this case, for example, did not actually flow into the country's production sector, remaining a point of growth in the level of consumption and price increases (as a consequence, inflation), primarily for real estate ^{[18, p. 16-20]}.

Remittances from relatives from abroad have been and will remain for the coming decades one of the main ways to support poor Kenyan families in the country of exodus. For example, in 2008-2009, $1.6 billion annually came to Kenya through this channel from abroad, which was 4.9% of the country's GDP. Compared with the volume of such revenues in 1999, the growth was 400% (only $ 432 million came to the country that year). It can be assumed that the real figures are much higher, because these data do not include opaque schemes, including hawala and the usual transportation of cash. As of 2006, half (51%) of all transactions were from the UK, a fifth (19%) – from the USA (although there were about three times fewer Kenyans living there than in the Foggy Albion), 7% - from Canada, 6% - from Tanzania (where at that time lived the second largest Kenyan diaspora – more than 100 thousand people), very insignificant arrivals were observed from Germany, Uganda and other countries ^{[23, p. 1-5]}.

In the 2010s, the volume of transfers at least doubled. In particular, in January 2021 alone (according to the Central Bank of Kenya), the country received $278.4 million, which is 7.3% more than in January 2020. December 2020 in this respect was a record in the entire history of the country ($ 299 million came). In total, over the 12 months of 2020, Kenyan diasporas sent 3.1 billion dollars to their historical homeland (10.8% more than a year earlier)^[29]. The structure of money transfers by country has changed. The Kenyan communities of the USA (about half of the transfers) are now in the first place in terms of the volume of money sent, the EU is in second place (up to a quarter of the volume)^[30]. As of 2018, Kenya ranks third among all Sub-Saharan African countries in terms of financial assistance from foreign diasporas, second only to Ghana and Nigeria^[31]. The extent to which this is a significant source of financing for the country can be judged by the plans of the Kenyan authorities to conduct a full-fledged study of this phenomenon in January-February 2021, to analyze the entire structure of these transactions^[32]. It is not by chance that in the strategic program adopted until 2030 ("Kenya Vision 2030"), the diaspora is designated as one of the most important components of domestic and foreign policy. Since 2010, Kenyans with dual citizenship have been granted the right to vote in their historical homeland^{[18, p. 19]}.

  Thus, it can be noted that the centuries-old presence of immigrants from India in Kenya and East Africa as a whole has left a huge mark on the history of the region. The Indian diaspora from the end of the XIX century to the beginning of the XXI century demonstrated amazing activity and perseverance, significantly influencing the local economy and politics. South Asians have gone through a difficult path from the "Indian question", which implied the claims of Indians to equal rights with European colonists, to the "Asian question", which includes the recognition by the African authorities of the desirability of the continued presence of Indians in Kenya. Forced migration to the UK united their community and consolidated the awareness of their own uniqueness. Successes on the path of integration into British society with not lost cultural and financial ties with India and the country of origin give the Indians of Kenyan origin a basis for further development. The South Asian diaspora in the postcolonial era has undergone noticeable changes related to the perception of its role and place in the relationship between the former colonies, India and Kenya, and now – independent states with their own internal and external interests.