Feature image: Syed Raza Ali’s wedding to Ponnoo VelooSammy in 1936. Featured in Dr. Ashwin Desai, Dr.Goolam Vahed and Dr. Thembisa Waetjen’s Many Lives. 150 Years of Being Indian in South Africa. Publisher: Shuter & Shooter Publishers (Pty) Ltd
The stately Carlton Hotel in downtown Johannesburg organised a lavish reception on 18 January 1936. The mining magnate and South Africa’s richest man, Ernst Oppenheimer and his wife, Caroline hosted nearly 800 guests, mostly whites, to celebrate the wedding of Syed Raza Ali and Ponnoo Veloo Sammy. Earlier that day, the widower in his 50s and his nine-year younger bride had exchanged vows in a civil ceremony, where the Oppenheimers had acted as chief witnesses.
This wedding stirred a scandal that for South Africa’s Indians, according to historian Uma Dhupelia-Mesthrie, was comparable to events then taking place in England where King Edward was resolved to marry Wallis Simpson. The ensuing constitutional crisis in England had ended with the abdication of the King.
Syed Raza Ali was no king, but as India’s chief diplomat – officially designated as ‘Agent’, or ‘Agent General’ from January 1936 – in South Africa, his wedding roused public feelings. A late middle-aged widower diplomat falling in love with a much younger woman became more than just a thing of social ridicule and popular gossip. It raised questions about the social role of an Indian diplomat in a racially segregated society. Furthermore, the fact that Raza Ali was a Muslim and Sammy a Hindu exposed deep communal rifts within the local community.
