Abstract
“Women, it has been shown here, generally suffered greater hardships than men. They shouldered the dual burden of plantation work and the double standards of morality, and carried the blame for many of the ills of indenture. To be sure, they were not the chaste heroines of Indian mythology that the Indian nationalists made them out to be, but neither, on the other hand, were they the immoral ‘doe rabbits’ of the overseers’ accounts. Kunti’s private cry was, in a very real sense, a protest against the veil of dishonour that Indian women wore, or rather were made to wear, during their indenture on Fiji plantations.”
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- 1.
The official documentation on Kunti’s case can be found in Minute Paper(M.P.) 8779/13 and M.P. 6609/14. Totaram Sanadhya provides the perspective of a contemporary observer in his Fiji Dvip Me Mere Ikkis Varsh (My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands) (Varanasi: Privately published, 4th edn., 1973).
- 2.
Bharat Mitra, 8 May 1914 and Leader, 13 August 1913. Translations are found in the files cited above.
- 3.
K.L. Gillion, Fiji’s Indian Migrants. A History to the End of Indenture in 1920 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 182.
- 4.
Leader, 13 August 1913.
- 5.
R.E. Enthoven, C.I.E., I.C.S., Secretary to the Government of India, to Colonial Secretary, Fiji, 10 June 1914, M.P. 6609/14. An earlier request was sent on 17 September 1913.
- 6.
A. Montgomery to Colonial Secretary, 8 January 1914, M.P. 8779/13.
- 7.
Information in this paragraph as also in the next, on the social background of the indentured women, is derived from my Girmitiyas. The Origins of the Fiji Indians (Canberra: Journal of Pacific History, 1983), Chapter 4.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 98.
- 9.
C.F. Andrews and W.W. Pearson, Indian Indentured Labour in Fiji (Perth: Privately published, 1918), Appendix, p. 6.
- 10.
Walter Gill, Turn North-East at the Tombstone (Adelaide: Rigby, 1969), p. 73.
- 11.
Vijay Naidu, The Violence of Indenture in Fiji (Suva: World University Service, 1981), p. 11.
- 12.
This is the subject of a separate article presently in preparation. Hence only the main conclusions, without supporting statistical and other evidence, are presented here.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Annual Report of the Protector of Immigrants, Trinidad (1895), par. 19. See also the Report for 1893, par. 20. The situation was much the same in Fiji. For an analysis of Trinidadian indenture, see studies in John La Gauerre (ed.), Calcutta to Caroni. The East Indians of Trinidad (Port of Spain: Longman, 1974).
- 15.
See fn. 12.
- 16.
Naidu, Violence of Indenture, op. cit., p. 71.
- 17.
Quotes from Fiji Annual Reports on Immigration for these years.
- 18.
Fiji Colonial Secretary Office (C.S.O.) files 5079/99.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
See Ordinance no. 1 of 1891, Part VII.
- 22.
Gillion, Fiji’s Indian Migrants, op. cit., p. 105; see also Gill, Turn North-East at the Tombstone, op. cit., for more graphic descriptions.
- 23.
Ahmed All (ed.), The Indenture Experience in Fiji (Suva: Fiji Museum, 1979), p. xx.
- 24.
C.S.O. 746/99.
- 25.
Ali, The Indenture Experience, op. cit., p. xix.
- 26.
Andrews, Indian Indentured Labour in Fiji, op. cit., p. 34.
- 27.
C.S.O. 1050/86.
- 28.
C.S.O. 5730/97.
- 29.
C.S.O. 2941/97.
- 30.
C.S.O. 1317/97; C.S.O. 443/13; C.S.O. 2555/93, etc.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
C.S.O. 3453/08.
- 33.
C.S.O. 5079/99.
- 34.
See Gillion, Fiji’s Indian Migrants, op. cit., p. 107.
- 35.
C.S.O. 589/89.
- 36.
Fiji Annual Report on Immigration (1885), p. 13.
- 37.
Annual Report (1887), p. 5.
- 38.
C.S.O. 589/89.
- 39.
Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery. The Export of Indian Labour Abroad, 1830–1920 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 204.
- 40.
Annual Reports (1887), p. 14; (1895), p. 11.
- 41.
Annual Report (1906), p. 17.
- 42.
Annual Report (1902), p. 18.
- 43.
Annual Reports (1890), p. 11; (1891), p. 32; (1898), p. 15; (1904), p. 17; (1906), p. 7.
- 44.
Annual Reports (1888), p. 5; (1889), p. 10; (1891), p. 12.
- 45.
C.S.O. 3121/93.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
C.S.O. 487/96.
- 48.
See C.S.O. 7395/10.
- 49.
Annual Report (1889), p. 10.
- 50.
C.S.O. 3121/93.
- 51.
See the works of Gillion, Tinker and Ali cited above.
- 52.
Annual Report (1882), par. 41.
- 53.
C.S.O. 1955/92.
- 54.
Ibid; Annual Report (1886), p. 15.
- 55.
C.S.O. 511/86.
- 56.
Annual Report (1885).
- 57.
Annual Report (1884), par. 44.
- 58.
Indian Immigration Amendment Ordinance, XVII (1887).
- 59.
Table 2 is compiled from figures in Annual Reports (1897), p. 28; (1899), p. 35; (1902), p. 36. The pattern continued. See the Report for 1907, p. 22.
- 60.
Annual Report (1912); p. 15.
- 61.
C.S.O. 2777/95; Annual Reports (1893), p. 29; (1894), p. 9.
- 62.
C.S.O. 7/97.
- 63.
C.S.O. 3481/87.
- 64.
See Tinker, A New System of Slavery, op. cit., Ali, Indenture Experience in Fiji, op. cit.; and studies in Kay Saunders (ed.), Patterns of Indenture in the British Empire (London: Croom Helm, 1984).
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Professor Doris Ladd and Ms Caroline Hadf ield for their helpful comments and advice. This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Indian indentured women of Fiji.
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Lal, B.V. (2018). Kunti’s Cry: Indentured Women on Fiji Plantations. In: Misir, P. (eds) The Subaltern Indian Woman. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5166-1_6
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