The Hindu : International / India & World : Indians doing well, blending well

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 14, 2004

International

International - India & World

Indians doing well, blending well

By Vinay Kumar

DAR ES SALAAM, SEPT. 13. The strong and vibrant Indian community in Tanzania has given many areas of its capital an unmistakable Indian flavour. While strolling along the popular Coco Beach you can get "potato kachori" as well as other Indian delicacies such as "tandoori chicken," spiced up the Indian way.

"I am a third generation Indian here. My grandfather landed here and both my father and I were born in Dar-es-Salaam," says Navin Kanabar, who heads Yuasa Battery Limited and owns an upmarket Indian restaurant "Al Cove."

Mr. Kanabar, who speaks fluent Hindi, was among the hundreds of people of Indian origin, who gathered at the residence of the Indian High Commissioner here the other night, to meet the visiting President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. He and his wife, who hails from Mumbai, will be travelling to Goa in December for the wedding of their son.

P.K. Vali, director of his engineering firm, Basanam Investments Limited, came to Dar-es-Salaam in the late 1980s when he was working with Telco and has made it his home since then. His wife, Vijay Vali, teaches at the Indian School here, which has up to Class 10 and follows the Central Board of Secondary Education curriculum. "There is no problem as Tanzania is the best country in terms of economy and law and order in the whole of East Africa," she says.

Imbibing local culture

Surinder Singh Oshan has been settled here since 1980, working as a communications expert with a Canadian firm. Both he and his wife seemed happy with life in the Tanzanian capital. However, the thread that binds the Indian community together in Tanzania is their readiness to imbibe the local culture and values. The Indian community here has earned a reputation for setting up successful businesses and industrial units and providing job opportunities for the local people. "Some of the Indian families are really wealthy and influential," says another Indian. If in the 1960s the presence of the Indian community had swelled to nearly a lakh, it is estimated to be around 40,000 in Dar-es-Salaam and other cities.

There are a number of Indian social, religious and cultural organisations — the Shree Lohan Mahajan, the Gayatri Parivar, a Goan community, the Maharashtra Mandal and the Kalakendra, to name a few — and you will find a Kishore Takra, a Kanti Bhai Patel or a Sudipto Das heading these bodies.

A look at the religious organisations of the people of Indian origin reveals the presence of the Arya Samaj, the Hindu Union, the Hindi Sunni Muslim, the Kutchi Memon Jamaat, the Sri Chinmaya Mission, the Anjuman-e-Najmi Jamaat, the Shree DSM Brahm Mandal, the Siri Guru Singh Sabha, the Shree Jain Sangh and the Shree Namdhari Satsang Mandal.

Local interest in India is evident from the newspaper headlines, which have devoted a fair amount of column space to President Kalam's visit. The Sunday Observer ran a column on Mr. Kalam's achievements as a missile scientist.

A comment in the Daily News is titled "India is Poor's Development Model" and another column in the same daily asks Tanzania to learn from India's experience in the social and economic fields.

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