76 SOCIAL SCIENTIST the Africans all the more about their lack of commitment. At present Indians are a small minority in Africa. In Malaysia, though 11 percent of the population, they have always been a subordinate community, politically weak and economically very vulnerable. What happened to the Indian settlers in Uganda and Burma was much worse : suddenly one day, they were ordered to leave these countries where they had made the fortunes. It is true that their presence in both countries made them very ^visible' but they would have survived except for the coming to power of military dictators who wanted to demonstrate their effectiveness through a show of xenophobia. There are 250,000 survivors still in Burma doing menial jobs that the Burmese wouldn't do; and about 1000 in Uganda who try to make themselves invisible. In Britain, despite several attempts by different well-meaning people.the ^integration'of the Asian immigrants remains a hope; still fifty-seven percent of the Indians arc involved in manual work and it is only the middle class which integrates most. But the fact is that among Indians themselves, there is no unity:se village politics, with its factions and feuds, is exported unchanged into the English setting" (p 180); and ^there are open antagonisms between the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis which cannot be resolved within the brotherhood of Islam" (p 186). Misplaced Detachment Thus the particular circumstances in which Indian emigrants live vary from country to country. Tinker describes these situations and how they were reached. There is no doubt the study is well-researched; the labyrinth of political alliances that the Indians entered into, the changes in their economic position over time (or the lack of it), their present status in the host society and the reasons for it are all presented and proven with a vast amount of facts and figures. But there it ends; it goes no further. A number of questions which have been posed time and again and some of which the author himself raises, come to mind: Do the Asians have a class image or a ^race' image? Do they cf create their own difficulties... or are they scapegoats'?" These and other such questions are left unanswered. In fact, the author explicitly refuses to take a position; "The book is about things as they are, not how they might be, or ought to be". What he has tried to do is to collate a lot of factual material in an ostensibly detached manner. Instead of trying to take a clear position on the role of Indians in different societies, he views them in a generally sympathetic fashion. But the book is ample proof that such a self imposed indifference can in fact lead to the misrepresentation of facts. Two instances may be pointed out in this regard. This sympa-thy, is totally unwarranted, for example, in the case of the Chettyars in Burma who became the main focus of anti-Indian feeling during the