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Working Paper 91/2011: Les départs des Ismailis du Mozambique: Réflexions sur le départ d’une communauté et sa relation au secret

Les départs des Ismailis du Mozambique: Réflexions sur le départ d'une communauté et sa relation au secret


Title: Working Paper 91/2011: Les départs des Ismailis du Mozambique: Réflexions sur le départ d'une communauté et sa relation au secret

Author(s): Khouri, Nicole; Leite, Joana Pereira; Mascarenhas, Maria José

Publication Date: 2011

Publisher: ISEG - CEsA

Quotation: Khouri, Nicole, Joana Pereira Leite e Maria José Mascarenhas. 2011. "Les départs des Ismailis du Mozambique: Réflexions sur le départ d'une communauté et sa relation au secret". Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão. CEsA - Documentos de Trabalho nº 91/2011.

Abstract: Asked about their relations with the different groups that made up Mozambican colonial society during the last decades of Portuguese colonization, members of the Ismaili community spoke of their departure, which took place between 1973 and 1976, as part of 'a "natural" scansion that closed their installation in the colony for two or three generations. Talking about a community and organized departure turned out to be a very delicate undertaking, as if the attributes of this event referred to something forbidden or difficult to say to outsiders, in this case to researchers. The question of a collective departure of an entire community first left the door open to many interpretations linked to the immediate history of this event.

Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/3441

Category: Working paper

Abstract:

When asked about their relations with the different groups that constituted colonial Mozambican society during the last decades of Portuguese colonisation, members of the Ismaili community spoke of their departure, which occurred between 1973 and 1976, as part of a ‘natural’ split that ended their settlement in the colony for two or three generations. Talking about a collective and organised departure proved to be a very delicate task, as if the attributes of this event referred to something forbidden or difficult to say to outsiders, in this case researchers. The question of the collective departure of an entire community initially opened the door to many interpretations linked to the immediate history of this event. It should be noted that, first of all, the mobilisation for a collective departure of the Ismaili community before April 1974 could have greatly upset the Portuguese colonial regime, which still did not believe that it would end in Mozambique. The organisation of this departure as a collective fact gave it the sign of the irreversibility of a time and the death knell of the colonial order. Did the Ismaili community betray the government of the colony by taking this step even before the fall of the colonial regime? Had not their leader, the Aga Khan III, assured the Salazar government of his community’s loyalty to the direction of Portuguese policy? Seen from the Mozambican side, would the collective departure have betrayed the African populations on whose land this community had flourished? Had it also betrayed the white Mozambicans who had stayed and thus made a different choice? That he had made a different choice? Needless to say, for Frelimo, leaving obviously meant betraying the ideals of the independence struggle. Les départs des Ismailis du Mozambique: Réflexions sur le départ d’une communauté et sa relation au secret aims to relate the collective and organised departure of the Ismaili community from Mozambique between January 1973 and December 1976, a central element of secrecy, to its various manifestations in the accounts of the departures of its own members.

 

Quotation:

Khouri, Nicole, Joana Pereira Leite e Maria José Mascarenhas. 2011. “Les départs des Ismailis du Mozambique: Réflexions sur le départ d’une communauté et sa relation au secret”. Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão. CEsA – Documentos de Trabalho nº 91/2011.


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