Peoples and Cultures

Population:     1,700,000 (2007, field source, community contact)
Religion:        Hindu, Muslim, Christian
Registry of Peoples codes:  Indian, English-speaking:  104017
                                              Indian, Muslim, South African:  114983
Related --                             Malay, Cape:  114855
Registry of Languages code (Ethnologue):  English:  eng

Early in 2007, a friend also living in South Africa consulted with me about the various sub-groups of Indians in South Africa.  The Indians are a population segment of the Republic of South Africa which have been indigenized for about 200 years.  The question was to what extent they still identified themselves by the original languages or geographical areas or castes their ancestors originally came from.

Ethnic Sub-Groups
He had found that in some listings of ethnicites of the world, the Indians of South Africa were listed as one primary people, then segments within that were identified by languages spoken in India, and reported to be spoken as the mother tongue by various different Indian communities of South Africa.

My friend indicated that from what he had observed and what his Indian acquaintances had told him, the Indians of South Africa no longer identify themselves by any language divisions, or indeed even by particular religious divisions.  Muslims do maintain a separate corporate identity to some degree, especially in contrast to the Hindu community.  One question in this regard was the degree to which Muslim or Hindu individuals could relate within the same family, or how these two communities would relate to a convert to Christianity.

My friend and I spent a long time looking at information on these communities, his sources and the census categories, as well as other factors that might assist in clarifying our idea of the Indian entities.

Previous Sources
I had earlier also talked with the another acquaintance who lived among the Indian community in Durban, where the large percentage of Indians live in South Africa.  She indicated that the Indians don't think of themselves much in terms of the languages or ethnic communities they originally came from.

In December 2006 I had read a 2006 publication on the cultures of South Africa (Barbara Elion with Mercia Strieman, Clues to Culture, Camps Bay, South Africa: One Life Media, 2006), which was a good but simple cultural survey of the ethnicities and current cultural characteristics of South African people.  This book referred to the various Indian languages and some differences in customs in the different groups.  It left the impression that all these various languages are still spoken in the communities.

Followup
I supplemented this with a probe into Internet resources on Indians of South Africa.  I found some sociological and other academic papers addressing these questions.

One source reported on a sociolinguistic study on the status of the Telugu language among the Indians of South Africa.  This extensive report concluded that the Telugu language was only a cultural relic, no longer being spoken as a home language.  A few older individuals still know the language.  Indians of Telugu extraction speak English as a mother tongue.  This also appears to be the case for the Indian community as a whole.

The general upshot agrees with my friend's contention and with my Durban friend's report that the Indians as a whole consider themselves as one ethnic group and English is their main language (very few still speak an Indian language).  It does appear that there is some retention of some artifacts of the cultural heritage of the various "communities" in India.

For instance, there are different kinds of wedding ceremonies and festival practices.  These don't seem to create definitive or exclusive barriers of identity between the families of different original languages or ethnic heritage.

Indian Informant
I had a chance to speak with an unrelated Indian informant, who for a while attended a Bible Study group I attend.  He is a Christian convert from a Hindu family.  He filled in one matter I wanted to be sure about, and that is whether a Christian convert would be accepted into his original Indian family who remain Hindu or Jain, etc.  He said that in general there is no problem.  This report matches what my aforementioned friend's Indian acquaintances have told him.  In regard to my question about the Muslims being a separate ethnicity, my Indian friend replied that yes, of course, the Muslims are "something else again."

Indian Business People
In observing and talking with Hindu business people in Johannesburg, I have further found that they (at least some) do not even observe the Hindu food rules that we knew from our East African Indian communities.  The East African Indians maintained contacts with their respective Indian ethnic and language communities.  They continue speaking and teaching their languages, even sending children for high school and/or university in India.

It seems that in South Africa the religious differences among Indians, like the different sects of Hinduism, Sikhism or Jainism, are minimal and not a primary identifying factor for them as an ethnicity.  This differs radically from the situation we lived with for 25 years in Kenya.

Islam
Sources differ on the percentage of the Indian community of South Africa who are Muslims.  It seems roughly 60% of South African Indians are Muslim.  One or more sources put the number as high as 80%.  Islam is visible and generally associated with the Indians in the popular mind.  The Cape Malay, though, are also generally Muslims, while uniquely Malay.

Muslims Segments
One question that came up in a discussion of this topic is whether an ethnic list should have one primary ethnic category for Muslim, with various segments as sub-groups.  One obvious additional Muslim community in South Africa is the Cape Malay.

It appears from what I have seen so far that the Indian Muslims should be considered a separate ethnic entity from the Cape Malay Muslims.  I am not clear on the status of the few Black African Muslim.  I would surmise from what I do know that they would still be counted with their Zulu or other ethnicity.  Some from Mozambique would be of other ethnicities.

Additionally, as a basic taxonomic database approach, however, it does not seem that the term "Muslim" designates an appropriate primary ethnic category.  The other ethnic characteristics seem to define the separate ethnic communities here.

Islam as a Cultural Component
Islam, or any other cultural religion, is definitely a component of any ethnic group's culture, east or west.  It is true that Islam is often the primary distinguishing characteristic between two otherwise similar communities.  However, to describe an ethnicity, the full range of characteristics that comprise what we refer to as "ethnicity" must be taken into account.

In most geopolitical situations "Muslim" is not an ethnic indicator.  The term is used this way in Bosnia, where all peoples are of the same ethnolinguistic origin, but differ only by religion.  The designation "Muslim" there is an alternative for "Bozniak," meaning Bosnian.  Unfortunately this term is not adequate either, since that is just the word for "Bosnian," and also means a citizen of Bosnia, without regard to religion.  I think there are a few other local situations in which the term "Muslim" might have ethnic connotations.  Normally "Muslim" by itself is not an ethnic category, just as "Christian" would not be.

Indian Caste Context
In India itself, the various ethnic-caste communities are designated by religious sub-divisions, with separate entities for Muslim, Hindu, Christian or Sikh, etc.  This is due to the unique situation there in which religion is almost exclusively an ethnic trait.

This seems to be somewhat the characteristic in South African Indians, but without the caste-language complications.  Because they do not identify with the language or home state origins so much now, it appears the Muslim are an identifiably distinct community within the Indians of South Africa.  But even there, we observe some intermarrying.

Real-World Accounting
The real-world self-identities are the primary reference point in trying to account for the ethnicities of the world.  A balance of various factors is taken into account in determining which seem to be weighed more heavily within each ethnic group.  Technical considerations determine taxonomies and categories also.

Factors related to linguistic principles, literacy requirements and geographical considerations need to be looked at.  Sometimes, we find even political considerations become important to maintain  the proper balance of internal group self-identity and formal standards of analysis.

An attempt is made to be consistent, using a standard approach to keep entries as comparable as possible, while attempting to represent the unique self-identities.  We want to faithfully represent group self-identity while maintaining consistency in formal standards of analysis and reporting.

Concluding Observations
1.  The general picture is that Indians of South Africa comprise one general ethnic category; the former language and ethnic history categories are only artifacts.  It seems to me that is similar to the usage among former immigrant communities in the US, such as Irish, Scottish, Polish, etc.  There seems to be no barrier between Indian Christians and Indian Hindus in the same family and home or in general social interaction.

2.  The traditional language community distinctions seem not to be a component in the self-identity of the Indians of South Africa.

3.  The Indians of South Africa should be classified as a separate ethnic entity from any South Asian ethnic group in the Indian sub-continent.  The Registry of Peoples (ROP) recognizes this by providing a unique indentificaiton code for the Indians of South Africa.

4.  Muslim identity among Indians seems to be more distinctive.  For ethnic classification purposes, it seems that Indian Muslims should be considered as a separate ethnic entity from other South African Indians.  Alternatively, Indian Muslims of South Africa could be classified as a distinct sub-group of a broader primary ethnicity of South African Indians.   The ROP provides a separate unique code for the Indian Muslims in South Africa.  This separate ethnic classification is indicated by contacts in the community and by the use of such classifications in various ethnic databases that consider this Muslim religious identity a significant enough distinction to require a separate ethnic identity.

I discovered that there are a number of instances of Mulsims married to Hindus.  While it does not appear that these individuals are banned or shunned by their Muslim families, the children of such marriages seem invariably to be considered Muslim and are given Muslim names.  This seems to indicate a definite separate ethnic identity.  This is an area to watch for further indications of the degree of interaction between Indian Muslims and Indian non-Mulsims.

Conclusion
For a database of ethnicity, I suggest that subdivisions of language for Indians of South Africa be removed.  It would be valid to have two primary entries:  Indians, Muslim; Indians, Other.  An alternative solution is two subdivisions under one primary entity of Indians in South Africa.

OBJ

First written 22 August
Finalized as an article and posted on Thoughts and Resources 3 September 2007
Rewritten 20 September 2007

Orville Boyd Jenkins, Ed.D., Ph.D.
Copyright © 2007 Orville Boyd Jenkins
Permission granted for free download and transmission for personal or educational use.  Other rights reserved.

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