Current Research

I am working on two books engaging my research interests (see home page for more on that). One project is a conversion of my PhD thesis into a book looking at the history of hundi during the British colonial period until the 21st century. An artery of credit for Indian merchant networks over centuries, the indigenous credit system hundi has received no systematic attention in histories of the Indian subcontinent. It was a system that was rather badly understood and defined, yet a highly negotiable instrument and source of liquid capital. It was also the backbone of Indian merchant networks. (You can read more about that over on my creditumdebitum blog pages - click on creditum debitum on the menu bar.) I looked at how British colonial legal transplants impacted on the hundi system. I also examined how colonial officials attempted, as part of their imperial project, to figure out what and how much they should borrow from English cultural contexts as opposed to Indian indigenous customs. In many ways, this book is an economic history as well as that of British empire building through the growth of the legal architecture.

Indian indentured labourers arriving in South Africa, Source: Wikimedia Commons

The other monograph is the fruit of extensive transnational research in India, South Africa and Britain thanks to fellowships held in South Africa and currently Germany. In this project I am looking at the changing status of Indian South Africans through the foreign relations of Britain, India and South Africa from colonial times through decolonisation.

Commonly referred to as 'The Indian Question' in the African context, discourses on Indian migration and settlement have primarily revolved around the issue of rights and entitlement as settlers in South Africa. I focus on the political, economic and legal conditions that gave rise to the so-called 'Indian Question'. I also look at how all of this influenced the construction of changing race and ethnic identification in South Africa during and after the British colonial period.