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Hinduism in Uganda arrived when the colonial British Empire brought Hindus along with other Indian workers to its East African colonies in late 19th and early 20th centuries. [1] [2] The largest arrival of Hindu immigrants to Uganda, some educated and skilled but mostly poor and struggling from the famine-prone areas of Punjab and Gujarat, was to help construct the Kenya-Uganda Railway connecting landlocked parts of Uganda and Kenya with the port city of Mombasa. [3] [4] The largest departure of Hindus from Uganda occurred when General Idi Amin expelled them and seized their properties in 1972. [3] [4] [5]
In addition to building major infrastructure projects, Hindus were a part of a global movement of workers to parts of British East Africa, aimed at helping the British government to establish services, retail markets and administrative support. [1] [2] [6] The British invited Indian laborers as local skilled labor was unavailable. At the peak of the infrastructure projects in Uganda-Kenya, 32,000 people were brought in from India. [7] Nearly 2,500 workers died because of difficult and unsafe working conditions during these projects. After the project ended, nearly 70% of the workers returned to India, while some 6,000 were absorbed in railway and other British operations such as retail and administration. [7] [8] Those who remained included Hindus, Muslims, Jains and Sikhs. Many from this ethnic group became financially successful. [3]
According to ARDA, there were about 355,497 (0.93%) Hindus in Uganda in 2015 [9] In 2020, ARDA figures showed that Hindus made up 0.8% of the population. [10]
Year | Pop. | ±% |
---|---|---|
1970 | 65,000 | — |
2015 | 355,497 | +446.9% |
Source: [11] [12] |
Year | Percent | Increase |
---|---|---|
1970 | 0.69% | - |
2015 | 0.93% | +0.24% |
After colonialism ended, Hindus (along with Jains and Sikhs) were discriminated against in East Africa including Uganda. This was a part of the policies of various East African governments in their promotion of Africanization based on laws and policies under which commercial and professional sectors of the economy had to be owned by indigenous Africans. [13] [14] The Hindus, along with Jains, Sikhs, Jews and other religious groups, were affected during this period of xenophobic targeting of Asians and Europeans by African leaders. [15] [16] [17]
When General Idi Amin came to power by overthrowing an elected government in Uganda, he adopted a policy of religious and ethnic cleansing against people of Asian religions. Himself a Muslim, he announced that he had a dream, where "Allah told him that the Asians, exploiters who did not want to integrate with the Africans, had to go". [18] [19] [20] In 1972, he selectively expelled the Hindus along with other Asians from Uganda, and seized their properties. [21] Most of those expelled were second or third generation Hindus, many with dual Ugandan and British citizenship. While he expelled Hindus and people of other religions with origins in India, Idi Amin did not expel Christians of British or French origins living in Uganda. [21]
According to Kim Knott, professor of Religious and Secular Studies at Lancaster University, there were 65,000 Hindus in Uganda in 1970, but all were expelled by Idi Amin. [22] The expelled Hindus mass migrated to other countries during this period, [1] [3] particularly the United Kingdom (28,000 refugees [note 1] ), India (15,000 refugees), Canada (8,000 refugees), the United States (1,500 refugees) and in smaller numbers to other countries such as Australia. [4] [23] The expulsion removed most of Uganda's "industrialists, traders, artisans and civil servants", states Christopher Senyonjo, and their properties were re-allocated to civilians and Ugandan Army officials who supported Idi Amin. [25] Uganda faced a shortage of skilled professionals such as doctors, bankers, nurses and teachers. It triggered a financial crisis and a collapse of businesses, including cement and sugar production, causing long-term economic devastation in Uganda. [26]
Twenty years after the Idi Amin expulsion, Uganda reversed its laws selectively targeting Hindus and other Indian religions. [3] This policy, offered in cooperation with the World Bank, included a return of properties seized by Idi Amin's government, such as empty and unused factories, back to the families if they returned and recreated employment. [5]
Hindus are a tiny minority in the total Ugandan population of about 27 million. The official demographics lists Christians and Muslims separately, but includes Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists and traditional African religions as others. Approximately 65% of the South Asians living in Uganda are Hindus. [3] There is a Swaminarayan temple in Kampala. [27]
Hinduism is an Indian religion or dharma, a religious and universal order or way of life by which followers abide. As a religion, it is the world's third-largest, with approximately 1.2 billion followers, or 15% of the global population, known as Hindus. The word Hindu is an exonym and while Hinduism has been called the oldest religion in the world, it has also been described as sanātana dharma, a modern usage, based on the belief that its origins lie beyond human history, as revealed in the Hindu texts. Another endonym is Vaidika Dharma, the dharma related to the Vedas.
Hindus are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism. Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for people living in the Indian subcontinent.
Indian religions, sometimes also termed Dharmic religions or Indic religions, are the religions that originated in the Indian subcontinent. These religions, which include Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism, are also classified as Eastern religions. Although Indian religions are connected through the history of India, they constitute a wide range of religious communities, and are not confined to the Indian subcontinent.
Idi Amin Dada Oumee was a Ugandan military officer and politician who served as the third president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He ruled as a military dictator and is considered one of the most brutal despots in modern world history.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Hinduism:
Bhajan refers to any devotional song with a religious theme or spiritual ideas, specifically among Indian religions, in any language. The term bhajanam means reverence and originates from the root word bhaj, which means to revere, as in 'Bhaja Govindam' . The term bhajana also means sharing.
The Second Republic of Uganda existed from 1971 to 1979, when Uganda was ruled by Idi Amin's military dictatorship.
Sampradaya, in Indian origin religions, namely Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, can be translated as 'tradition', 'spiritual lineage', 'sect', or 'religious system'. To ensure continuity and transmission of dharma, various sampradayas have the Guru-shishya parampara in which parampara or lineage of successive gurus (masters) and shishyas (disciples) serves as a spiritual channel and provides a reliable network of relationships that lends stability to a religious identity. Shramana is vedic term for seeker or shishya. Identification with and followership of sampradayas is not static, as sampradayas allows flexibility where one can leave one sampradaya and enter another or practice religious syncretism by simultaneously following more than one sampradaya. Samparda is a punjabi language term, used in Sikhism, for sampradayas.
Hinduism is a minority religion in the United States of America, constituting 1% of the population. The vast majority of American Hindus are immigrants mainly from India, some from Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, and a minority from Bhutan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Additionally, the United States has a number of converts to Hinduism.
Hinduism is the third largest religious group in the United Kingdom, after Christianity and Islam; the religion is followed by around 1.7% of the total population of the nation. Hindus had a presence in the United Kingdom since the early 19th century, as at the time India was part of the British Empire. Many Indians in the British Indian Army settled in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. According to 2021 United Kingdom census, 1,032,775 residents (1.7%) identified themselves as Hindus.
Swaminarayan, also known as Sahajanand Swami, was a yogi and ascetic, who is believed by followers to be a manifestation of Krishna, or as the highest manifestation of Purushottama, and around whom the Swaminarayan Sampradaya developed.
Since its independence in 1947, India has accepted various groups of refugees from neighbouring countries, including partition refugees from former British Indian territories that now constitute Pakistan and Bangladesh, Tibetan refugees that arrived in 1959, Chakma refugees from present day Bangladesh in early 1960s, other Bangladeshi refugees in 1965 and 1971, Sri Lankan Tamil refugees from the 1980s and most recently Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. In 1992, India was seen to be hosting 400,000 refugees from eight countries. According to records with the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, as on January 1,2021, there were 58,843 Sri Lankan refugees staying in 108 refugee camps in Tamil Nadu and 54 in Odisha and 72,312 Tibetan refugees have been living in India.
The Gujarati people, or Gujaratis, are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who reside in or can trace their ancestry or heritage to a region of the Indian subcontinent primarily centered in the present-day western Indian state of Gujarat. They primarily speak Gujarati, an Indo-Aryan language. While Gujaratis mainly inhabit Gujarat, they have a diaspora worldwide. Gujaratis in India and the diaspora are prominent entrepreneurs and industrialists and maintain high social capital. Many notable independence activists were Gujarati, including Mahatma Gandhi and Vallabhbhai Patel.
Hinduism is a minority faith in Zimbabwe.
Communal violence is a form of violence that is perpetrated across ethnic or communal lines, the violent parties feel solidarity for their respective groups, and victims are chosen based upon group membership. The term includes conflicts, riots and other forms of violence between communities of different religious faith or ethnic origins.
Hinduism in Malawi arrived when Indian colonists and mercantilists were brought by the colonial British administrators in late 19th and early 20th-century in what was then known as British Central Africa and later Nyasaland. They were a part of a global movement of workers to parts of East Africa, to help build infrastructure projects, establish services, retail markets and for administrative support. The immigrants, some educated and skilled but mostly poor and struggling in famine prone areas of Punjab, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, helped construct the first railway line between Malawi and Mozambique.
In early August 1972, the President of Uganda Idi Amin ordered the expulsion of his country's Indian minority giving them 90 days to leave the country. At the time, South Asians in East Africa were simply known as "Asians". They had come to dominate trade under British colonial policies.
There is a sizable community of people of Indian origin living in Uganda. In 2003, there were an estimated 20,000 people of Asian descent (majority of Indians and Pakistanis living in Uganda, compared to approximately 100,000 before they were expelled by the dictator Idi Amin in 1972.
Hinduism is a minority religion in Wales constituting 0.4% of its population. Under half of Welsh Hindus settled there in the second half of the 20th century.
The history of Jainism in Africa is relatively short when compared with the histories of Judaism, Christianity and Islam on the same continent. There are about 20,000 Jains and around 10 Jain organizations in Africa.
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