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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2020
Grounded in written historical records and oral sources, this exploratory article addresses the Portuguese policy that targeted Indian nationals settled in Mozambique in the aftermath of the liberation/occupation of Portuguese India in December 1961. It equally tackles the views, concerns, and responses developed by Indian nationals to cope with their confinement in internment camps, frozen assets, seizures and liquidation, and deportation. The analysis evinces the inbuilt ambivalence in the way Portuguese colonial authorities constructed the internment of Indian nationals as humanitarian and protective measures, while displaying their dispossession and repatriation as harsh retaliatory political measures, at odds with the purported political and legal principles of colonial governance based on Portuguese Luso-tropical exceptionalism. The differentiated impact of such political measures, far from being univocal and uncompromising, is discussed as marred by innumerable contradictions resulting from the Portuguese economic vulnerability and dependence on Indian subaltern elites in Mozambique. Furthermore, the article presents a particular analytical sensitivity to the ambivalence surrounding the modes in which men and women of Indian origin related to Portuguese colonial power and responded to its governance.
Susana Trovão is a researcher at CRIA—Centro em Rede de Investigação em Antropologia, and a full professor at the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Sandra Araújo is a research associate at ICS, UL – Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa. The authors are most thankful to the anonymous referees and Andreas Stucki for their valuable comments and suggestions. This article was supported by the FCT (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) through UID/ANT/04038/2019—CRIA (Centre for Research in Anthropology).