The African-Indian Antithesis? The 1949 Durban ‘Riots’ in South Africa

Contextualised within a broader study of the South Asian diaspora, this chapter focuses on relations between two subordinate groups in a colonial context. Within South African historiography, few attempts have been made to analyse interaction between African and Indian people. Work on race and ethnicity has largely concentrated on African-white or Indian-white relations, thus omitting a crucial dimension for the understanding of ethnic conflict in South Africa.