The Other Mohan In Britain’s Indian Ocean Empire

On a quest to understand why her great-grandfather, Mohanlal, set sail for South Africa from pre-independent India, Amrita Shah takes the reader into an era of unprecedented global mobility. At the turn of the twentieth century, as millions of Europeans travelled to overseas colonies, new forms of migration from Asia also took place. Mohanlal’s co-travellers included traders, indentured workers, interpreters, soldiers, slaves, prostitutes, lascars and smugglers. A clash between the needs of white settlers and the aspirations of Indian migrants in South Africa saw the emergence of Gandhi’s Satyagraha campaign, which attracted many, including Mohanlal. The confrontation, though, was only a strand in the as yet untold story of enterprise and opportunity practiced by ordinary migrants like Mohanlal.