Race and Medicine

Abstract

By the time the main line of the Uganda Railway had reached the shores of Lake Victoria in 1901, the Indian population of Kenya was not only an accepted part of colonial society, but one that was publicly esteemed for its positive influence. Remarkably, within 20 years this image had almost totally reversed, with the 1923 Devonshire Declaration effectively putting a formal limit on fully participative Indian social integration in Kenya. While the events surrounding the ‘Indian Question’ that resulted in Devonshire are well described within the scholarly literature, the indirect impacts of this policy on medical recruitment and retention have never been explored.² Yet within both the political and medical realms anti-Indian discourses did not appear out of the blue and were the culmination of mutually reinforcing events and attitudes that subtly transformed Kenyan society since the early 1900s. On one hand, changes in perceptions towards the Indian community can be traced to the allegiances and priorities of a number of key individuals. In other ways, attitudinal changes reflected in policy decisions can be linked to broader discourses surrounding race that were solidifying in East Africa at the time. Various political milestones can be identified in the hardening of attitudes to Indians in Kenya, while simultaneously medical ideas evolved in such a way as to specifically target the Indian population. These events make the dramatic pruning of Assistant and Sub-Assistant Surgeons from the Colonial Medical Service after 1923 comprehensible.

Physically, the Indian is not a wholesome influence because of his incurable repugnance to sanitation and hygiene…. The moral depravity of the Indian is equally damaging to the African, who in his natural state is at least innocent of the worst vices of the East. The Indian is the inciter to crime as well as vice,…. The presence of the Indian in this country is inimical to the moral and physical welfare and the economic advancement of the native.¹