Complicating Decolonisation: Mozambican Indian Experiences in the Twentieth Century

ABSTRACT

This article explores repercussions of independence movements and global decolonisation processes. It argues that an analysis of such processes needs to take into account not only the bilateral dealings between coloniser and colonised, but also needs to include other, perhaps less obvious, actors. Decolonisation involved a power game not only among European powers striving to keep their empires intact at the time, but also between erstwhile empires and emerging nation-states, between statesmen, political activists, and local populations. Through the analysis of Indian experiences in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique after Goa's inclusion in the Indian Union in 1961, this paper illustrates how different parts of the world were interlinked by complex cross-currents during the decolonisation period, and how their connected histories played out in the unfolding of events between the 1950s and 1970s, as well as their ongoing legacy.