Africa-India Connections

On this week's episode, AFROFILES sits down with Dr. Shobana Shankar, professor of African History at Stony Brook University and author of the An Uneasy Embrace: Africa, India and the Spectre of Race. For generations, Africans and South Asians have sustained networks of trade, migration, politics, intellectual exchange, cultural production, and religious thinking. Afro-Asian connections have been, at times, the source of generative cross-pollination and solidarity, but the relationship has also been tense, ambivalent, and multiple. Centering the discussion on South Asia’s influence in West Africa, Dr. Shankar details the entangled histories of missionaries and converts, scientists and academics, linguists, filmmakers, and Pan African politicians.