Race as postcolonial strategy

Abstract

This chapter examines the fraying of Afro-Indian alliances and the search for cultural diplomatic alternatives. In 1974, Senegalese President Léopold Senghor and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi jointly created Indo-African studies departments at the University of Dakar and Annamalai University. This project was a non-Western alternative to “area studies,” serving the imperative for postcolonial and decolonial education and the political need to improve lingering racial tensions following Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians from Uganda and African students’ refusal of scholarships to Indian universities because of fears of racism. The idea of “Black India” in Dravidian self-assertion, begun decades earlier in India to promote independent statehood for South Indian peoples, found resonance in Senegal, in Cheikh Anta Diop’s Afrocentrism and Senghor’s négritude. The Afro-Dravidian project, building on this resonance, legitimized new subjects in postcolonial universities and popularized the notion of South India as Black.