Title: South African Indians, Monarchy and the New Commonwealth: Transnational Conversations and Perspectives, 1946–1948
Abstract: India figures strongly in Hilary Sapire’s treatment of issues raised by the 1947 Royal Tour to South Africa, a spectacular event that turned out to be a last hurrah for Jan Smuts as well as the start of soon-to-be Queen Elizabeth II’s personal connection and identification with the Commonwealth. Sapire focuses on the sizeable Indian diaspora in South Africa, its political radicalisation and its growing identification with African nationalist resistance. She shows how the presence of the monarchy in 1947 highlighted divisions within the Indian community between imperial loyalists who commended deference and activists who viewed the monarchy as part of the repressive structure of empire and, by extension, as complicit in South African racial segregation. Sapire argues that the 1947 Royal Visit aroused some of the first organised anti-apartheid sentiment in Britain while also influencing Indian and perhaps South African official positions at the 1949 Commonwealth conference in London. She also reintroduces Gandhi back in to post-1914 South African scholarship, by showing how he chose to back the boycott, by contrast with Nehru who advised only against ‘overt demonstrations’ against the Royal Visit.
Publication Year: 2020
Publication Date: 2020-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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