I think the Sunaks/Mau Mau story is a
load of crap: Consider this: Comment from John Lonsdale. Emeritus Professor at Trinity College, Cambridge. Trinity College, perhaps the greatest student of
Kenyan political history: “Thanks
Cyprian, and good to hear from you. I had not thought to ask about
subversive Sunaks: seems rather unlikely to judge from the present
generation! Which of course is no way to do history. I think an
older, pre-East African Sunak generation was not far removed from the Amritsar
massacre. All good wishes, John.
I found the following piece but I have no idea who wrote it or how it was sourced. I can confirm that in my earlier research that there were two groups of Asians who were part of the Kenya Police Reserves but their role was short-lived.
Pio Gama Pinto was the only Asian I know who worked very closely with the Mau Mau, especially the Nairobi chapter. He raised money and collected ammunition for the Mau Mau. He was also a tactical strategist. There is no record of him ever taking any of the oaths but that does not mean he did not do it. In fact, I know he revelled in his role with the Mau Mau. Just before he was assassinated he had planned to help the freedom movement in Southern Africa as well as the Portuguese states in Western Africa. He had planned to move his operations to Mtwapa in Tanzania.
On 24th April 1954, a campaign by the British colonial government to purge Nairobi of Mau Mau fighters in Nairobi began. The campaign was known as Operation Anvil.
One of the first places to be raided was the Indian High Commission in Nairobi. Accusing the embassy of assisting Mau Mau and for providing “terrorists” with material support, British military officers roughed up staff members and bundled African staff working at the High Commission Commission into trucks outside.
Of course, the Indian Government sent out a strongly worded protest letter to London, complaining about “diplomatic impunity” on the part of the British administration in Nairobi.
In his defence, sent to the War Office in London, Kenya’s Governor, Evelyn Baring (pictured, inspecting a guard of honour), explained that the action was justified as it was “backed by intelligence”.
And although the British government thereafter sent a meek apology, stating that “unfortunate words” were used during the operation, three further raids to the High Commission were authorized between June and November of 1954.
In the run up to the raid, it had become clear to the British that the
support that Asians in Kenya were rendering the independence struggle was
significant. Asians may not have entered the forests to actively fight
alongside Mau Mau, but stories abound of cases in which members of their
community provided material and moral support to the freedom struggle.
I start off with a tale of two Jaswant Singhs: One was a Punjabi Sikh
born in Lakhpur, Punjab, in 1935. He was the son of an engineer who had come to
Kenya in 1914 to work on the railway. In 1947, Jaswant returned to India for
his education but did not stay for long. He returned to Kenya in 1947 to serve
in the Kenya Police Reserves as part of the mandatory Asian call-up. (I read
somewhere there were two teams of Asians in the Kenya Police Reserve but they
were not written in despatches).
During the emergency, he became sympathetic to the Mau Mau cause. For a
period of at least five months, he not only manufactured arms and ammunition
but also secretly taught freedom fighters in his area on how to use and service
guns.
In May of 1954, Jaswant was arrested for his involvement in Mau Mau and
detained, alongside other “most wanted” Indian prisoners, for a total of four
and a half years at Takwa, in faraway Lamu.
Then there was another Jaswant Singh who suffered a worse fate. Based in
Molo, and typical of Kalasingas’ engineering mien, he was a carpenter, mason,
plumber, electrician, tractor driver, builder, radio and motor mechanic, lorry
driver, welder and gun maker all rolled into one.
Singh was arrested in September of 1954 for being
in possession of two rounds of .32 ammunition that he intended to supply Mau Mau.
Prior to his arrest, a Gîkûyû woman had offered to take him to a forest near
Molo to meet with Mau Mau fighters. The Mau Mau fighters turned out to be the
Kikuyu Home Guard, who arrested and handed him over to the colonial
authorities. The Kalasinga was later sentenced to death.
Thakorbai Mangaldas Patel, a professional photographer, was another
Asian who was incarcerated for his contribution to the freedom struggle. For
weeks, he helped members of the Agîkûyû community forge their history-of-employment
cards during the emergency.
When he was caught, aged only 25, he was put on a charge of “consorting
with terrorist(s)”. He was however acquitted of that charge and instead jailed
for five years with hard labour on the charge of document forgery.
22/ In 1948, Dedan Kimathi was employed briefly at
Keith Sawmills in Kiganjo, Nyeri. Its owner was Kundanlal Watson, who purchased
two additional sawmills in Meru. At the height of the emergency, freedom
fighters would send him appeals for food through his cook, who had taken “muuma”
(oath). So, Kundanlal would occasionally leave some food for the fighters at a
cave near one of his sawmills. He also discreetly supplied piping for use in
making guns.
Acting on a tip off, and having no concrete evidence with which to
convict Kundanlal, the colonial police shut down one of his Meru sawmills. When
interviewed in the 1980s, Kundanlal said he became sympathetic to the freedom
struggle when he saw truckloads of Mau Mau, some of whom were dead and others
alive, emerging from the forests. The Mau Mau freedom struggle also reminded
him of the agitation that had led...
26/ ...to India gaining independence, he added.
27/ Yet another Asian who owned a sawmill near Karatina
was Qassam Dar. He had left Lahore (Pakistan) in 1947 to join his cousin in
Kenya, and later immersed himself in the timber business. In October of 1952,
which is the very month the colonial government declared a state of emergency in Kenya, a freedom fighter called
Mukunga reportedly called on his premises to administer muuma to sawmill
employees. Dar agreed to take the oath, pledging his loyalty to Mau Mau. The
oathing ritual required him to take a bite of meat and also drink blood. And as
he revealed later in 2006, whilst he took a bite of the meat, he politely
declined to drink blood, explaining to Mukunga that his religion (Islam) barred
him from doing so.
From then on, freedom fighters would secretly collect food, clothing,
medicine and newspapers, from a spot near his house at night. But one day, a
faction of Mau Mau fighters confronted him and threatened to kill him “as his
skin is different”.
It took the intervention of his oathed workers and Warûhiu Itote
(General China) to save him. The Mau Mau fighters were told that Dar was “one
of us”. They spared him but took his gun. As he was a licensed gun owner, Dar
was forced to report the “theft”. The police authorities did not quite believe
him and put him under surveillance. They weren’t quite convinced that the Mau
Mau fighters spared him without inflicting any physical harm.
Weeks later, an Italian mechanic who lived near Dar’s house reported him
to the police. The Italian had stumbled on the hideout within the sawmiller’s
residence from which Mau Mau fighters collected supplies at night. Dar was out
in his sawmill when the police came over to investigate the hideout.
So when he returned home that night, his gîkûyû maid sent him out to
town in the pretext that food supplies had ran out. Some Mau Mau fighters had
told her that they’d return in the night to kill the mechanic. She feared the
attack would happen while her boss was at home.
It wasn’t long before Dar was arrested, however. He gave himself away
when he climbed a tree at his house and whistled to fighters in the forest to
come over and collect supplies. Armed European police officers lurking nearby
immediately placed him under arrest.
Besides banning him from ever setting foot in GEMA country, police
threatened to deport him either to Manyani, where his sawmill workers were
sent, or to Pakistan, his native country.
He pleaded with them to send him to Kakamega, where he ran another
sawmill. To this request, the police agreed but made it mandatory for him to be
reporting to the nearest police station on a weekly basis (sounds familiar?).
This Dar did until the end of the emergency.
In those days (of emergency), members of the Agîkûyû community were not
allowed to shuttle between the farm regions and towns. That is partly why they
had the kipande; to not only help identify them but also restrict their
movements.
Karatina trader, Hassanali Manji, who was also fluent in the gîkûyû
language, would deliver salaries of town workers to their families in the rural
areas. He also secretly supplied food to forest fighters.
Then there is another interesting story among
others cited in the book, “Indians In Kenya: The Politics Of Diaspora, by Sana
Aiyar. It is the story of an Asian lady, Malvi Keharchand Kent, who would
refuse police on patrol and search duties to enter her house on the plea that
it was prayer time. As her farm workers hid under the bed, she would sit on it,
holding her prayer beads in mock prayer.
As the freedom struggle in Kenya raged, authorities in London commissioned
a special probe on the Mau Mau. The probe was led by F.D. Corfield, a former
Governor of Khartoum. (Courtesy of HistoryKE)
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