~Dr. Brij V. Lal
My great-great-grandparents were Pathans from Peshawar living in a free India a century before colonial partition separated our people along religious and perceived racial lines. Moving freely along the Himalayan foothills and through the fertile lands of the Punjab, they settled in Makha, a bedroom suburb of the growing town of Mansa, where my Dadda (great-grandfather), Abdul Gaffur Khan, was born. Probably not much later in his life, after moving to Allahabad with his family, he met and married Azima, my Daddi (great-grandmother), and from there the story of my family and our people deviates from those familiar with the history of India and its citizens.
In the late eighteenty century, Dadda and Daddi embarked to Calcutta, beginning a journey to Fiji and five years of what can only be described as narak (hell) that forever changed their view of themselves, their place in the world, their cultural beliefs, and ways of life.
Fiji offered impoverished Indians the opportunity to make a new and better future for themselves.1 Most were cultivators or herders and were younger sons, but all were searching for a security that India could not offer. These people showed remarkable courage and self-respect by leaving their known world in search for a better life across the Kaala Paani (black waters).2
History of indenture in Fiji
The Fiji Islands are a chain of approximately 245 tropical islands located in the South Pacific, 3,000 km east of Australia and 1,000 km north of New Zealand.3 Inhabited by Indigenous Fijians of Melanesian descent, this island seems as far as one could get from India.
In 1874, after prolonged settlements by British colonialists, the UK reluctantly accepted the cession of Fiji but a caveat for secession was that colonialists could not disturb the Indigenous Fijian way of life, meaning they could not become serfs for planters.4 Fiji’s first governor, Arthur Gordon, had previously governed Mauritius and adopted its approach to meeting the need for cheap labour: the indentured system. Gordon decided on sugar cane as the main export crop for the Fijian economy, inviting the Australian-owned Colonial Sugar Refinery Company to establish the industry.5 Vancouver’s own BT Rogers (of Rogers Sugar fame) controlled the Vancouver-Fiji Sugar Company, and until 1973 (when they left Fiji for good), the refineries ran the colony’s economy.6
As a result, the British Empire began shipping indentured labourers to Fiji in 1879.7 In the 41-year period of girmit, eighty-seven ships transported 60,553 Girmitiyas (including births and deaths at sea) to Fijian shores.8 The first ship from Calcutta landed in 1879 (approximately 75 percent of Girmitiyas sailed from the North Indian depot in Calcutta), the first from the southern depot in Madras in 1902, and the last in 1916.9 Voyages took up to three months, each ship transporting approximately 700 people per sailing.10 Migrants were forced to live together and were given tasks as cooks, cleaners or guards. Each was allotted a 1.5-ft.-by-6-ft. area for personal space and were given dog biscuits to eat that were so hard they had to be soaked in water and broken by fists.11
The colonialists considered indenture a road to social and economic advancement of India’s poor and low castes, but did not anticipate the social chaos and personal disorganization indentured emigration would produce12—a “coolie” class of labourers separated by race whose role in society was purely economic and nothing more.13 Servitude was enforced under an “agreement”—girmit as this albatross was referred to by Girmitiyas (indentured labourers of Fiji)—specifying accommodation, basic provisions, typical working conditions, nature of work (related to the cultivation and manufacture of agricultural products), and remuneration of one shilling a day for men and seven pence for women, far more than one could earn at home.14 Recruits were given the option to return to India at their own expense after five years or for free after ten years of servitude.15 But this agreement had significant gaps between what was written on paper and what was practised on the ground; in short, it was slavery.16
The Girmitiyas’ first introduction to treachery were the wily arkatis (recruiters) in India, who took advantage of villagers’ gullibility and ignorance by painting glorious pictures of indentured life filled with tales of easy work, quick money, and a promise for a better future.17
In the depots, everyone was forced to sleep in the same room, eat together, and congregate—all customs that broke Indian social taboos.18 Many refused to eat for fear of being stripped of their caste but hunger made them relent, and thus caste and status were replaced by the coolie class.19 The indenture system systematically violated caste orders, forcing Girmitiyas into a new reality through no decision of their own.20 Girmitiyas could no longer go home for fear of being shunned and rejected.21
At the depots, Girmitiyas were It must have been quite intimidating standing in court and not only meeting a European for the first time but also hearing the English language as well. Arkatis had already coached Girmitiyas to please the by responding with “” when asked about emigrating from Fiji, and thus, 165 people every 20 minutes were ushered past the magistrate like sheep. Signing thumbprints to their girmits, these brave souls embarked on an unknown journey without knowledge of the distance to Fiji or the hardships that lay ahead.
