Abstract
Indian private doctors experienced long and varied careers, they were held in respect and esteem in the Kenyan Indian community and they regularly acted as local philanthropists and community spokespeople. Yet, Indians— even if professionally qualified and ostensibly middle class in their tastes and demeanour—were always to constitute a second class to the white ruling elite.2 As demonstrated in Chapter 6, Indians were ultimately, if unofficially, excluded from the Colonial Medical Service, but this was not the only site in which they experienced discrimination. Ample evidence also exists of the racial struggles of Indian private practitioners. Indian doctors were far from able to enjoy the social, political and professional benefits of their European counterparts with most finding that, even if they supported British governance, the colonial politics of race continually touched the remit and nature of both their public and private lives.
That the standard of health which prevails among Europeans in Kenya is very much higher than that which prevails among either Asians or Africans, there can be no doubt.1
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Notes
Quoted in John Iliffe, East African Doctors: A History of the Modern Profession, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 30.
WL/CMAC/PP/HCT/A5 Elizabeth Bray, Hugh Trowell: Pioneer Nutritionist, unpublished biography, London 1988, p. 4.
Angela Ribeiro, ‘Doctor on a Zebra’ in Cynthia Salvadori, We Came in Dhows, Nairobi, Paperchase Kenya Ltd, 1996, Vol. II, p. 23.
Salvadori, We Came in Dhows, Paperchase Kenya Ltd, 1996, Vol. III, p.175.
A. Hicks, ‘Historical Note’, Nairobi Hospital Proceedings, Vol. 1, 1997, p.69.
Robert G. Gregory, South Asians in In East Africa: An Economic And Social History 1890–1990, Oxford, Westview Press, 1993, p. 35.
K.V. Adalja, ‘Thirty Two Years in General Practice in Nairobi’, East African Medical Journal, 36, 1959, pp. 442–8, 443.
J.R. Gregory, Under the Sun (A Memoir of Dr R.W. Burkitt of Kenya), Nairobi, English Press, 1951, p. 84; Adalja, ‘Thirty Two Years’, p. 447.
Isak Dinesen, Letters from Africa 1914–1931, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1981, p. 314. It should be noted that Dr Sorabjee was an UK educated Parsee.
Examples include: John A. Carman, A Medial History of the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya: A Personal Memoir, London, Rex Collings, 1976; Gregory, Under the Sun
Roger Jeffery, ‘Doctors and Congress: The Role of Medical Men and Medical Politics in Indian Nationalism’, in Mike Shepperdson and Colin Simmons (eds.), The Indian National Congress and the Political Economy of India, 1885–1985, Aldershot, Brookfield, USA, Avebury, 1988, pp. 160–73, 160.
Aiyar would argue that Indian nationalism also called for common cause with African nationalist movements. Sana Aiyar, ‘Empire, Race and the Indians in Colonial Kenya’s Contested Public Political Sphere, 1919–1923’, Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, 81, 1, 2011, pp. 132–54; Cross-racial anti-colonial nationalism became even more evident between 1930–1950.
See Sana Aiyar, ‘Anticolonial Homelands Across the Indian Ocean: The Politics of the Indian Diaspora in Kenya, ca. 1930–1950’, American Historical Review, 116.4, 2011, pp. 987–1013.
Zarina Patel, Challenge to Colonialism: The Struggle of Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee for Equal Rights in Kenya, Nairobi, Publisher Distributon Services, 1997, p. 152, 181;
D.A. Seidenberg, Uhuru and the Kenya Indians: The Role of a Minority Community in Kenya Politics, 1939–1963, New Delhi, Vikas Publishing House, 1983, p. 19; also see the EAINAC and the CMA Muslim Central Association split with Dr Rana: S. Aiyar, ‘Anticolonial Homelands across the Indian Ocean: The Politics of the Indian Diaspora in Kenya, ca. 1930–1950’, American Historical Review, 116.4, pp. 987–1013.
Anna Crozier, Practising Colonial Medicine: The Colonial Medical Service in East Africa, London, I.B. Tauris, 2007, pp. 89–90.
K.V. Adalja, Obituary, East African Medical Journal, 41.8, 1964, p. 387;
J. Stuart, A Jubilee History of Nairobi, Nairobi, East African Standard, 1950, p.24.
M.D. Gautama, ‘Obituary’, The East African Medical Journal, 36.3, 1959, p. 178.
J.S. Mangat, A History of the Asians in East Africa, c.1886–1945, Oxford University Press, 1969, p. 20.
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© 2015 Anna Greenwood and Harshad Topiwala
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Greenwood, A., Topiwala, H. (2015). Private Doctors: Practising Medicine in a Segregated World. In: Indian Doctors in Kenya, 1895–1940. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137440532_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137440532_8
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