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Feb 10, 2007 at 05:28 AM |
 Pioneer Kenyan Freedom Fighter - Chanan Singh
When Chanan Singh left India at the age of sixteen he had not finished school. When he died in 1977 he was one of Kenyas most accomplished public figures - B.Sc. (Economics) (London), Associate Member of the Institute of Transportation (A.M. Inst. T.), Fellow of the Royal Economics Society (F.R.E.S.), Barrister at Law of Lincoln`s Inn, a Judge of the High Court, a fearless advocate of thirty years standing, a prolific writer of its history, an outstanding journalist, an incorruptible fighter for the independence of Kenya, President of the Law Society of Kenya, a notable Parliamentarian, and an Assistant Minister (then Parliamentary Secretary) to the Prime Minister, Jomo Kenyatta, a true Kenyan patriot who had served his country selflessly for over fifty years.
What brought about this transformation, the architect of which was Chanan Singh himself ? The commitments that motivated this man were his love for his country, his love of knowledge and learning, and his opposition to injustice, whether injustice in the workplace, in the courtroom, in the political arena or colonialism as the overriding injustice.
Chanan Singh was born in Ikolaha in the Punjab, India in 1908. On arrival in Kenya in 1923 he took employment as an artisan and Loco Fitter with the railways. In 1925 he transferred to a clerical post with the railways. While working, he studied by himself and passed the London Matriculation in 1931, thus completing his secondary school education at the age of twenty-three. He did not stop there. His determination saw him graduate with a degree in Economics from London University in 1940.
While still in railway service he commenced his many strands of public service. He was active in the trade union movement, and he served on numerous committees on behalf of his fellow workers. On these committees he worked hard to gather facts and figures which would help to improve working conditions and terms of service. He edited RailAsian. He finally left the railway employment with the then Kenya & Uganda Railways & Harbours in 1945 after 22 years service.
By that time he had also qualified as a barrister. On leaving employment he opened practice as an advocate of the High Court of Kenya. His approach as an advocate remained in the mould of public service. He became honorary legal adviser to his former colleagues in the railways, as well as to a number of social service institutions. The well-known cases in which Chanan Singh appeared also reflected his fearless advocacy of individual freedom and human rights. In 1947 Chanan Singh, under D.N. Khanna, Advocate, appeared for Makhan Singh, the renowned founder with Fred Kubai of the trade union movement in Kenya. The case was against the order of deportation served by the colonial government on Makhan Singh. The appeal was unsuccessful, but the deportation never took place, and Makhan Singh went on to lay the foundations of the modern trade union movement and to organize the strike against the Royal Charter for the City of Nairobi. Soon thereafter, in 1951, he was detained, and remained in detention till 1961.
In 1951 Chanan Singh appeared for Senior Chief Koinange. There had been laws forbidding Africans from growing coffee in Kenya for a long time, and Senior Chief Koinange had always challenged such bans. In 1949 new controls were established under the African Grown Coffee Rules controlling the growing of coffee by African farmers. This was aimed at keeping Kenya`s agricultural wealth in the control of the colonial settlers and keeping the economy out of African hands. Senior Chief Koinange defiantly planted acres and acres of coffee. The charge said that "On July 3rd. 1951, a nursery of some 10,000 coffee seedlings was located upon the land of one Koinange Mbiu at Kiambaa in the Kikuyu District of the Kikuyu Land Unit." He was brought to court and convicted. Chanan Singh was his lawyer in the appeal. Chanan Singh questioned the rules on the basis that they were discriminatory and unconstitutional; and that they were ultra vires the principal act.
He succeeded, and the High Court set aside the conviction and sentence.
Chanan Singh by now was deep into the politics of the time. He had started in the Indian Youth League rising to serve as its President. He was then the secretary and later, the President of the Nairobi Indian Association. He was also a member of the Central Executive Committee of the Kenya Indian Congress, at that time one of the most important bodies in the political life of Kenya. At this same time he commenced his national journalistic work which was to last for the next sixteen years. He became one of the editorial writers for the influential Colonial Times, and later its Editor. He was a regular contributor on anti-colonial issues, constantly campaigning for the Common Roll in elections and for the end of colonial rule.
In addition to all this Chanan Singh continued to serve on numerous Government Committees and Boards. On these he brought the belief that the voices of disadvantaged groups must always be presented and heard; and secondly, that reliable and comprehensive facts and figures must always be marshalled in their support. This meant a lot of hard work. For Chanan Singh always had a quiet but firm contempt for politicians, or lawyers, who spouted generalizations unsupported by facts, research or authority. He never spared himself in such tasks. Examples of his service in these unpublicized arenas, were among others The Cost of Living Committee, the Taxation Enquiry Committee, the Asian Civil Service Board, the Committee on Asian and European Educational Expenditure, the African Cash Wages Committee, and the Social Security Committee. He brought to these unglamorous tasks devotion, learning and his own past experience as an untrained worker, and he placed all these at the service of those he represented.
Chanan Singh continued with his legal practice and the high respect that he was held in by his colleagues was reflected in his election in 1958 as the President of the Law Society of Kenya.
In 1952 he was elected to Parliament (then the Legislative Council) as the Member from Nairobi Central and served till 1956. He was again elected in February 1961. He chose to join the Opposition K.A.N.U. ranks in the May 1961 Parliament, when a minority government formed by K.A.D.U. was taking office. In 1962 Chanan Singh was appointed Parliamentary Secretary (Assistant Minister), Minister of State for Constitutional Affairs. During this critical period in Kenya`s struggle he broke from the Kenya Indian Congress, and with other progressive persons in the Asian African community founded the influential Kenya Freedom Party of which he was elected Chairman. In 1963 following on the May general elections when KANU swept into power, Chanan Singh was elected by fellow MPs as a Specially Elected Member (KANU) to the House of Representatives. He was appointed Parliamentary Secretary (Assistant Minister) to the Prime Minister, Jomo Kenyatta.
In 1964 Chanan Singh resigned from Parliament and took up the office of Puisne Judge of the High Court of Kenya. He remained at this post till his death in 1977.
Throughout his public life Chanan Singh was a prolific writer, as a journalist, as a political worker and as a historian. In addition to his editorials and regular features for the newspapers, he wrote numerous knowledgeable and tightly argued memoranda for submission to the colonial and London authorities on a wide variety of subjects including public finance, education, racial equality, the franchise, immigration, and price control. Into these he put in a huge amount of conscientious hard work.
His enthusiasm for the law as distinct from his practice and judicial duties, was manifest in the regular articles (Some Notes on the Development of Law in East Africa to the End of the Consular Jurisdiction (1969)) and notes (Hindu Law in Kenya) that he published in the East Africa Law Journal and other legal publications. His interest in history could be seen in the papers that he read to the annual conferences of the Historical Association of Kenya and the contributions he made to various books, such as Kenneth King`s Kenya Historical Biographies,(1970) (on the life of M.A. Desai), and Dharam Ghai`s Portrait of A Minority (1965) (on the historical background of the Asian African community in East Africa). His publications include A Short History of the Gandhi Memorial Academy Society (1963).
His partner in all this was Mrs. Bhagwanti Singh. When we went to their house we were always welcomed by her with warm hospitality. For her steely but quiet determination for those causes matched his. In the house we had to move carefully from the moment we entered. Whether in the front room or the dining room or the other rooms of the house, every spare space on the floor was taken up with books. Books for which, first shelves, and then rooms, had long ago become insufficient. Books which then had begun spreading to every bit of empty floor space in the house, and which now rose in tall columns all around us. We circumnavigated our way around them each visit. Notes and newspaper cuttings flagged many volumes. For he was addicted to reference materials of all kinds, whether back issues, off-prints, brochures, magazines, speeches, articles, memos or copies of letters, and to cross-referencing itself.
He was an inveterate collector. The possession of books and publications on East Africa was one of the few indulgences he permitted himself. But as much as possession, was the search for these items. Thus the distinguished lawyer A. R. Kapila, an old friend, remembers the most characteristic image of Chanan Singh, not as judge, committee man or politician, but as a figure in the street poring over the second-hand books of a pavement book-seller, patiently going through them.
He was a voracious reader, as his extensive library testified. He was a careful and thoughtful reader, as the penciled annotations in every single one of his books testify. He mined the material in the books he read, very often making a handwritten index at the back of the book. These set out the subjects of his own interest covered by the text, but not found in the printed index. So paramountcy, or wage structures, or population or customary law variously found themselves added on.
One of his favorite such subjects was the Indian Diaspora.
He was a quiet and modest man, who was universally respected and whose continuous efforts for Kenya`s freedom were known, acknowledged and appreciated by all who knew what was going on. He was widely expected to be appointed a Minister in the first Independence Cabinet. When the announcements were made, his name was not there. He was only an assistant minister. Many years later I asked him why he had not been appointed a full minister. He said in his dry manner, "Kenyatta thought I was Mboya`s man, Mboya thought I was Kenyatta`s man." Both Kenyatta and Mboya misread Chanan Singh. He was nobody`s man. His independence of mind and spirit was clear and manifest, and his record spoke for itself. I rather believe that that was indeed what kept him out. In December 1963 Kenyatta did not want an independent minded Cabinet member at all. The direction that his government was to take in the continued protection of British interests had already been decided. This was reflected in the inclusion as Minister for Agriculture of Bruce Mackenzie, who we now know was a British spy working for the British MI6. Chanan Singh would not have fitted into all this. None of the Asian Africans in KANU would have. That I believe is why there was no Asian African Minister in the KANU Independence Cabinet to formally represent the community. In KANU they stood firmly, like Bildad Kaggia and Oginga Odinga, as members who rejected colonial control whether before or after Independence, and their whole political life had been dedicated to that proposition. One by one, KANU lost them : Chanan Singh to be a High Court Judge in 1964, Pio Pinto assassinated in 1965; Joseph Murumbi resigning in 1966, Pranlal Sheth deported in 1966, Fitz de Souza retiring in 1969, Makhan Singh never appointed to any part in the trade union movement. Their whole political lives had been against imperialism. Nor were they persons who could either be bought, or threatened away from their long-held positions. The best option for Kenyatta was never to include them in the first place. Chanan Singh was one such exclusion. (Chanan Singh`s answer is also significant in revealing that, at Independence, Kenyatta had to share power with Mboya in the appointment of the first Cabinet. Such parity did not last long.
Chanan Singh never sought publicity for himself. He always sought justice for everyone else. His immense contributions to the freedom struggle were truly selfless. It was not that he thought of himself last. He did not think of himself at all. His sole concerns were for the country and the rejection of oppression.
Pheroze Nowrojee is a lawyer and political and human rights activist. He is presently the Chairman of the Asian African Heritage Trust and treasurer of the Social Democratic Party.
I'm are really Grateful to EACA and voice of EACA, Kenya, Africa. Who let us use this information and share with my fellow villagers of Ikolaha. Thanks to MR. Zahid Rajan (Editor) and credit to http://www.eaca.or.ke/chanan.htm
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Last Updated ( Feb 10, 2007 at 05:57 AM )
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Chanan Singh 
