Remembering Interracial Intimacies: South Asian Perspectives on Black/Brown Sex and Romance in Colonial East Africa

Bringing together historical evidence, postcolonial fiction and memory work, this study recovers South Asian cultural attitudes towards interracial heterosexual romance from the margins of East African history. It asks why Black/brown intimacy was treated as taboo and denied legitimacy within South Asian diasporic communities in British‐ruled Zanzibar, Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika. In doing so, it shows how those who pursued relationships across racial lines challenged South Asian patriarchal structures and anti‐Black prejudice. The article examines honour‐based gender norms and colourist hierarchies that shaped the performance of South Asian manhood and womanhood overseas, interrogating how women's interracial desires were policed in punitive ways—and how this violence has been preserved in collective memory.