ABSTRACT This article examines the ways in which identity in South Africa, between 1948 and 1994, was inextricably connected to the apartheid regime’s programmes of divide and rule which furthered and entrenched the already existing racial divisions in the country. Differences between people were iterated and strengthened through political and social discourse, and any commonalities between people across ‘racial’ boundaries were disregarded. In so doing then the heterogeneity within the racial boundary of the so called category ‘Indian’ was ignored, to present a ‘race’, that appeared uniform in composition and structure to the rest of South Africa, and the world. Through data obtained from newspaper articles published in The Mercury between 1948 and 1994, this article will show how tension between ‘race groups’ was fostered to prevent joint struggle against the regime, and how categorizing administratively became even more fundamental to the regimes political plans. In addition, this article further contends that the notion of ‘Indians’ as the foreign other pervaded social discourse even after they were officially recognized as a permanent part of the population in South Africa in 1961.

中文翻译：

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永远的外国人：南非的印度人身份（1948-1994）

摘要 本文考察了 1948 年至 1994 年间南非的身份认同与种族隔离政权的分而治之的计划密不可分的方式，这些计划进一步加深并巩固了该国现有的种族分裂。人与人之间的差异通过政治和社会话语得到反复和加强，而跨越“种族”界限的人与人之间的任何共同点都被忽视了。在这样做时，所谓的“印第安人”类别的种族边界内的异质性被忽略了，以呈现一个“种族”，在组成和结构上对南非其他地区和世界来说似乎是一致的。通过从 1948 年至 1994 年间发表在 The Mercury 的报纸文章中获得的数据，本文将展示“种族群体”之间的紧张关系如何被培养以防止共同对抗政权，以及行政分类如何成为政权政治计划的基础。此外，本文进一步争辩说，即使在 1961 年他们被正式承认为南非人口的永久组成部分之后，“印度人”作为外来他者的概念仍然普遍存在。