What is difficult about African liberation organized around ideas of nationalism?

Although there is no outright violence between the Africans and the group of Indian people living in the area, there is still a level of tension between them, which provides a reminder that racism exists in lesser ways, even when there is violence on a greater scale. Although they are not mentioned in relation to Mau Mau raids or government killings, there are more subtle ways in which the Indians are presented as being lesser people. For example, the African people do not want to spend money in their shops and resent that they are able to offer lower prices than the African stores, forcing people to work with them. They are also seen as cowards for refusing to fight alongside the English in World War II (even though there is also much resentment from the black community for the African lives lost in the white man’s war), and as demeaning in their interactions with black people, by ignoring them when a white person enters the shop. This level of racism is insidious in the novel, highlighting that it is not only violence that causes problems in society.