Memories of Indenture by Brij V. Lal.Pdf

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Memories of Indenture by Brij V. Lal.Pdf Chapter Title: Memories of indenture Book Title: Levelling Wind Book Subtitle: Remembering Fiji Book Author(s): BRIJ V. LAL Published by: ANU Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvr7fcdk.7 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms This content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. ANU Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Levelling Wind This content downloaded from 137.158.158.62 on Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:46:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms PART 1 Past Present: Indenture and its Legacy This content downloaded from 137.158.158.62 on Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:46:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms LEVELLING WIND Figure 1. Map of the world showing India and Fiji Source . © The Australian National University CC BY SA 3 .0 CartoGIS 18‑237a_KP . 2 This content downloaded from 137.158.158.62 on Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:46:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1 Memories of indenture1 How the log came to the mill How the tree was defeated and Lapped to log Really Does not matter now. — Sasenarine Persaud2 November 2017 marked the 100th anniversary of the end of Indian indentured immigration to the sugar colonies of the British Empire. The occasion was marked by celebrations and conferences across the Indian indentured diaspora. Much changed in the intervening hundred years, especially in our approach to our past. Once reviled and rejected, indentured immigration is now revered as the foundational cornerstone of our history, the place where it all began. There has similarly been a reevaluation in our attitude to thegirmitiyas —the humble men and women who crossed the kala pani (dark, dreaded seas) to distant places around the globe. In the following essay, I revisit the ways in which we have understood the girmit experience in Fiji and more generally. 1 Originally appeared as ‘Avatars of Fiji’s girmit narrative’, in Narratives and Identity Construction in the Pacific Islands, ed. Farzana Goundar (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2015), pp. 177–93. 2 Sasenarine Persaud, ‘Let the past go pass, my love’, in They Came in Ships: An Anthology of Indo- Guyanese Prose and Poetry, ed. Ian McDonald, Joel Benjamin, Lakshmi Kallicharan and Lloyd Seawar (Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 1998), pp. 223–28, at p. 228. 3 This content downloaded from 137.158.158.62 on Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:46:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms LEVELLING WIND Every so often for the past two decades or so, Indo-Fijians in Fiji and in the steadily growing and vibrant Fijian diaspora across North America and Australasia organise a ‘Girmit Divas’, on 14 May, to mark the arrival of Indian indentured immigrants in Fiji. Floats and processions are organised, plays performed, specially composed songs sung, poetry recited and school essay competitions held. The occasion has a carnival atmosphere about it, joyous and celebratory, not, as one might expect, solemn and contemplative. The story of girmit (indenture) has gone through several ‘reincarnations’, running the whole gamut from shame in its earliest phase through embarrassment in its middle passage to celebration in the latest, but the underlying narrative is essentially the same, a sad tale stressing suffering and sacrifice on the part of the indentured workers in the most inhospitable of conditions and in the face of impossible odds. Commemoration of girmit is for the most part a phenomenon of the postindependence period. It was a dormant issue during the period of colonial rule (1879–1970) for obvious reasons. There was a world of difference between the official rendition of indenture and the collective memory of the indentured labourers. Colonial officialdom and the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR), the largest employer of Fiji’s indentured labour force, saw girmit as a positive, ameliorating experience for the labourers. It had brought a people—caught up in the quagmire of misery and destitution in India, imprisoned in a pernicious social system of inequality and oppression— and given them an opportunity for improvement they could not have ever dreamed of in their homeland. The dislocation had come at a cost, to be sure, but it was worth it in the long run. The narrative of (and for) the indentured labourers emphasised the complete opposite: degradation, violence and brutality in a system with no redeeming features at all, reducing everyone to a simple unit of labour to be exploited for the benefit of others. There was in this view no redemption, only rupture. Given the vastly contrasting and deeply contested claims about the nature and meaning of the indenture experience, the subject slipped from public discourse into virtual oblivion, and there it remained for several generations. In this chapter, I discuss the changing nature of both the scholarly treatment and the public imagination of the Fiji indenture experience. But, first, some background. Indian indentured immigrants were first brought to Fiji in 1879—five years after Fiji became a British Crown colony—as part of first Governor Sir Arthur Gordon’s policy to lay the foundations of a reluctantly acquired 4 This content downloaded from 137.158.158.62 on Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:46:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 1 . MEMORIES OF INDENTURE plantation colony.3 Indigenous Fijians were prohibited from commercial employment and sources of labour were scarce in other Pacific Islands, embroiled in controversy or tainted with blood. So, Gordon turned to India, which was already a supplier of indentured labour to sugar colonies in various parts of the world (the Caribbean, South Africa and Mauritius). Between 1879 and 1916, over 60,000 Indian indentured men, women and children came to Fiji—the adults on a five-year contract, after which they could return to their homeland at their own expense or on a free passage after 10 years’ ‘industrial residence’ in the colony. The majority stayed on, encouraged by the government and the planters who were keen to have a large pool of local labour within Fiji. Since indentured emigration was state-sponsored, the Government of India was kept informed about the condition of its subjects in the colony, but in the late nineteenth century, that interest was largely passive and pro forma. From the beginning of the twentieth century, irregularities in the indenture system began to surface to public notice and their exposure brought some amelioration. But when reported sexual abuse of women reached the Indian public and threatened massive civil protest, the Government of India intervened and, ignoring pleas from Fiji, abolished the indenture system. The last indentures were cancelled on 1 January 1920. Until then, the indentured labourers were confined to their plantation estates in a stringently supervised routine of work in and around the colony’s sugar industry. They are for the most part mute and voiceless on the pages of annual reports and other memoranda in the files of the colonial secretary’s office in Suva. They appear only as objects of investigation for some breach of the labour regulation or because of violence inflicted and self-inflicted. For these breaches, the indentured labourers themselves were often held responsible. In part, this was inevitable. The labourers were widely believed to be people of bad stock, from the lowest and most wretched sections of Indian society, the flotsam and jetsam of humanity, picked up from the overflowing streets of urban centres and despatched like cattle to the colonies. Nothing much could therefore be expected of people from this kind of socially corrupted and morally compromised background. They got what they deserved. 3 K.L. Gillion, Fiji’s Indian Migrants: A History to the End of Indenture in 1920 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1962), Chs 1 and 4. 5 This content downloaded from 137.158.158.62 on Thu, 03 Dec 2020 12:46:10 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms LEVELLING WIND Bad stock was, of course, part of the ideology that justified the system. The truth was more complex. The immigrants were a representative sample of late nineteenth-century rural Indian society.4 They emigrated in roughly the same proportion as their size in the total population. Migrants represented all the major castes and classes: higher castes, traders and artisans, agriculturalists and labourers, victims of profound changes taking place in rural India under the impact of the British revenue policy, which induced poverty, dislocation and the fragmentation of land holdings. Famines and droughts added their own share to the increasing rural misery. The result was a resort to migration to urban centres for employment, making remittances an integral part of the rural economy in the Indo- Gangetic Plain of North India. Men were leaving as well as women. It was from this uprooted mass of humanity on the move that the indentured immigrants came, some undoubtedly victims of fraudulent recruiting practices by the arkatis (recruiters), but others in search of better opportunities elsewhere.
Recommended publications
  • Review Articles
    In the wake of the Leonidas 93 Review Articles In the Wake of the Leonidas reflections on Indo-Fijian indenture historiography Doug Munro Abstract The historiography of Indo-Fijian indenture came into its own with the publication of Ken Gillion’s Fiji’s Indian Migrants in 1962. A work of ‘balanced’ scholarship, it contrasts with the more ‘emotional’ A New System of Slavery (1974) by Hugh Tinker, which places greater stress on the iniquities of the indenture system. These two texts set the terms of discussion when the centenary of the arrival of Indian indentured labourers in Fiji, in 1979, gave impetus to further study by historians from the University of the South Pacific, notably Ahmed Ali, Vijay Naidu and Brij V Lal. This article evaluates the ongoing state of scholarship and asks why the momentum has not been maintained. Keywords Fiji; historiography; indenture; Indians; Indo-Fijians; plantations The Journal of Pacific Studies, Volume 28, no.1, 2005, 93–117 © by JPacS Editorial Board (SSED,USP) 93 94 The Journal of Pacific Studies Vol.28 no.1, 2005 NEW ZEALAND OBSERVED 1940 as a centenary, Australia marked a bicentenary in 1988, and 1992 was remembered with flourishes as the Columbus quincentenary. Temporal markers such as these are celebrated and, additionally, they serve to provide the impetus for historical research. That is what happened in Fiji in 1979 with the centenary of the arrival, on the Leonidas, of the first 463 Indian indentured labourers (girmitiya) to Fiji. The centenary celebrations included a round of festivities and commemorations, as well as special issues of newspapers.
    [Show full text]
  • The Abolition of Indian Indentured Migration to Mauritius C. Bates, M
    The abolition of Indian Indentured Migration to Mauritius C. Bates, M. Carter & V. Govinden ABSTRACT The passing of a bill in 1917 in the Indian Legislative Council to abolish the use of contracts of indenture to recruit Indian migrants to work overseas has been hailed as a great achievement for Indian nationalists, helping to raise the status of Indians overseas, and improving the working lives of Indian labourers. However, there was a large gap between the passage of this bill and its implementation, which has been overlooked by historians. In Mauritius, the last ship carrying indentured workers arrived as late as 1924 and the last contract of indenture did not expire until 1929. The delay was justified in terms of allowing employers time to ‘adjust’ to the new ‘freer’ labour market conditions. In practice, this adjustment had already begun two decades earlier. Falling sugar prices and the growth of the settled population on Mauritius, had already led to a dramatic reduction in the number of indentured workers being recruited from India compared with the hey-days of sugar in the nineteenth century. Time- expired labourers and their descendants working on short or informal contracts had become the back-bone of the economy. In successive years in the 1900s no migrant ships set sail at all for Mauritius and a growing proportion of Indians who did arrive in the late 19th and early 20th century were traveling as ‘free passengers’. Indians had already found their niche within the economy and rather than look to the colonial government for recognition and enfranchisement, were busy enfranchising themselves.
    [Show full text]
  • The Odys-S-Ey of I Ndentuf1e
    The Odys-s-ey of I ndentuf1e No one who under"dand<; the hido7'ian ~ cmit would plead <;e7'iou<;ly that all g7'DUp<; <;hould 7'eceive equal time. We know m07'e about mme g7'DUp<; than othe7'<; not only becau<;e of the pred/ection ofhi<;to7'iam 07' the nature of thei7' mU7'Ce<; but frequently becau<;e we <;hould know m07'e about mme g7'DUp<; ofind'Vldual, in te7'm<; of thei7' imporlance and thei7' effect<; upon othe7'<;. The p7'Dblem i<; that hido7'iam have tended to <;pend too much of thei7' time in the company of the 'move7'<; and <;hake7'<; I and too hUle in the unive7'<;e of the mar<; ofmankind. I LClW1"enCe 'W. Levine 'Indians are ubiquitous', wrote the Calcutta newspaper The Statesman on 5 August 1980. According to it, there were then only five countries in the world where Indians 'have not yet chosen to stay': Cape Verde Islands, Guinea Bissau, North Korea, Mauritania and Romania. Today, according to one recent estimate, 8.6 million people of South Asian origin live outside the subcontinent, in the United Kingdom and Europe (1.48 million), Africa 42 the oJy~~ey of inJentu1'e (1.39 million), Southeast Asia (1.86 million), the Middle East (1.32 million), Caribbean and Latin America (958,000), North America (729,000), and the Pacific (954,000).2 The creation of this diaspora is a remarkable phenomenon. The resurgence of interest in overseas Indian communities, especially since the 1970s} has perhaps been inspired by the intensification of the great debate over the nature of slavery in the United States, the precarious political position of Indians in a number of former British colonies, and the increasing visibility of overseas Indians in the international labour and capital markets.
    [Show full text]
  • Fijian Studies Vol 14, No
    2 Fijian Studies Vol 14, No. 1 Documents 'Defactualization': A Brief Note on the Making Ganesh Chand 138 of Syria Wreck Rescue Record Fijian Studies The McGregor Report (On the Syria Rescue William McGregor 145 Operation [1884]) A Journal of Contemporary Fiji 'Letter from Alex Cockburn to Acting Colonial Alexander Cockburn 155 Secretary Dr. William McGregor Vol. 14 No. 1 Special Issue on History: Fact, Fiction, & Factions May 2016 Dr. William McGregor to Arthur Gordon, William McGregor 158 11 June 1884' Articles Of Journals and Journeys: Reflections Brij V. Lal 5 A Room to Write: End of Life without Fiction Subramani 25 The Tamarind Tree: Vignettes from a plantation Brij V. Lal 35 frontier in Fiji Faction, Fact and Fiction Doug Munro 51 Fact, Fiction & Faction: A Selection of Published Works Tombstone Blues: Is Josephine Earp's Memoir of Jefferson Decker 63 her Legendary Husband a Hoax? Fact, Fiction or Faction Pamela Rushby 67 Totaram Sanadhya’s Experience of Racism in Purushottama 71 early White Australia (a transcreated narrative) Bilimoria Indian Indentured Labourers of Guyana – Khalil Rahman Ali 89 A Historical Fiction Perspective Dialogue Hope and Disappointment: Nearly Impossible Satish Rai 99 Task of Searching Ancestral Roots in India The Fiji-Indian: A Complex Fate Satendra Nandan 109 Message from Fiji Media Watch: Agatha Ferei Furivai 127 World Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2015 On Open Letter James Bhagwan 130 World Press Freedom Day Address, 2016 Shailendra Singh 133 Fijian Studies Vol. 14 No. 1 © Fiji Institute of Applied Studies 1 When no one is left to tell the story, would there be no history? On History: Fact, Fiction, & Factions Fijian Studies Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • The Social Consequences of Control: Accounting for Indentured Labour in Fiji 1879 - 1920
    This may be the author’s version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source: Sharma, Umesh & Irvine, Helen (2016) The social consequences of control: Accounting for indentured labour in Fiji 1879 - 1920. Qualitative Research in Accounting and Management, 13(2), pp. 1-31. This file was downloaded from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/91954/ c Copyright 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this ver- sion to appear here (http://eprints.qut.edu.au). Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Notice: Please note that this document may not be the Version of Record (i.e. published version) of the work. Author manuscript versions (as Sub- mitted for peer review or as Accepted for publication after peer review) can be identified by an absence of publisher branding and/or typeset appear- ance. If there is any doubt, please refer to the published source. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRAM-04-2015-0039 The social consequences of control: Accounting for indentured labour in Fiji 1879 – 1920 Umesh Sharma Department of Accounting, Waikato Management School, University of Waikato PB3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand. Phone +64-7-8562889; Fax: +64-7-8384332 E-mail: [email protected] Helen Irvine School of Accountancy, Queensland University of Technology GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Phone: +61-7-31382856; Fax: +61-7-31381812 Email: [email protected] Abstract Purpose: This is a study of the social consequences of accounting controls over labour.
    [Show full text]
  • Pacific Missionary George Brown 1835–1917
    Bibliography Primary Sources Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW Brown, George, Correspondence and Papers, 1911–13, ML A1686-18 CY 1365. Brown, George, Correspondence and Papers, vol. 7, Miscellaneous, ML A1686- 24. Brown, George, Correspondence, 1908–1916, ML MSS 263/1 CY 3405. Brown, George, Journal, 1860–71, ML A1686-8-9 CY 225. Brown, George, Journal, 1872–75, ML 1686-25. Brown, George, Journal, 1874–1876, ML A 1686-10-12 CY 2759. Brown, George, Journal, 1877–Dec 1879, ML A1686-13, 14, 15 CY 2762. Brown, George, Journal, 1888, ML A1686-16-17. Brown, George, Letter Book, 1871–76, ML A1686-2 CY 2767. Brown, George, Letter Book, 1876–1880, ML A1686-3 CY 2772. Brown, George, Letter Book, ML A1686-1. Brown, George, Letter Books, 1880, ML A1686-18. Brown, George, Letter Books, 1886–1887, ML A1686-4 CY 2810. Brown, George, Letter Books, 1888–1889, ML A1686-5 CY 2810. Brown, George, Letter Books, 1888–1890, ML A1686-6 CY 2799. Brown, George, Letter Books, 1902–1909, ML A1686-7 CY 2810. Brown, George, Letters, 1862–78, ML MOM 102. Brown, George, Manuscript of autobiography, ML A 4096-97. Brown, George, Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Correspondence and Papers, 1890–1895, ML A1686 CY 1365. 339 Pacific Missionary George Brown 1835–1917 Dyson, Martin, Papers, Journal, 1858–1865, ML A 2579 CY 269. Dyson, Martin, Papers, Life History, ML A 2580 CY Reel 270. Minute Book of Wesleyan Methodist Conference, New South Wales, 1892–94, ML 287.1/7. Minute Book, Wesleyan Methodist Church General Conference, 1890–1913, ML Methodist Church 581.
    [Show full text]
  • The MARKINGS of the Outsider-Writer
    The MAKING of the Mahatma: The MARKINGS of the Outsider-Writer Professor Satendra Nandan This talk with given at the National Press Club, Canberra, ACT, Australia to mark the UN’s International NON-VIOLENCE Day. 3 October 2017 In 1939 a couple of things happened that touched my later life in one of the smallest islands in the largest ocean: an Australian writer published his first novel that year and went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973; in September the Second World War began and a member of my family joined the colonial Fijian Army. And because of Patrick White and the Royal Fiji Military Forces I’m here tonight speaKing to you. It’s a rare privilege. Canberra is our beautiful city, as lovely as its transplanted trees and its many people in their autumnal glow. In that sense we’re all transplanted, if not quite translated. Not yet, though the English Test is getting tougher! Canberra has another significance: the man who designed this city—its laKes, gardens, avenues with such imaginative spirituality—is buried in LucKnow, not far from the villages from where my four grandparents, with their jahajibhais and jahajins—shipmates—were transported in sailing ships from 1879 to the South Seas to work on the sugar estates owned by the C S R Company of Australia : men and women, some with their children, who had never seen a ship or a sea-wave or an island. They developed a special mateship to survive in the South Seas. 60,000 of them.
    [Show full text]
  • The Experiences of Indo-Fijian Immigrant Women in California
    LOOKING BACKWARD, MOVING FORWARD: THE EXPERIENCES OF INDO-FIJIAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN CALIFORNIA A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of Anthropology San José State University In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Ambrita Nand December 2015 © 2015 Ambrita Nand ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled LOOKING BACKWARD, MOVING FORWARD: THE EXPERIENCES OF INDO-FIJIAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN CALIFORNIA by Ambrita Nand APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY December 2015 Dr. Chuck Darrah Department of Anthropology Dr. James Freeman Department of Anthropology Dr. Roberto Gonzalez Department of Anthropology ABSTRACT LOOKING BACKWARD, MOVING FORWARD: THE EXPERIENCES OF INDO- FIJIAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN CALIFORNIA This study helps address gaps in knowledge concerning the lives of Indo-Fijian immigrant women in California and offers a space for their voices to be heard. The subsequent chapters investigate the lives of five Indo-Fijian immigrant women and their experiences upon migrating to Modesto, California. Using a qualitative research approach, data were collected through participant-observations, semi-structured in-depth interviews and informal conversations. The data are presented as anthropological silhouettes, a form of life-writing (the recording of events and experiences of a life), which explores each individual woman’s experience with life in Fiji to her eventual migration and transition to life in California. The study reveals heterogeneity amongst the women’s experiences and perspectives as well as commonalities that arise in their collective experiences as Indo-Fijian immigrant women residing in the city of Modesto. Overall, the anthropological silhouettes reveal that migration has led to shifts in the women’s identities and their prescribed gender roles.
    [Show full text]
  • A Majority of Fiji Indians Are the Descendants of the Indentured
    Pacific Dynamics: Volume 1 Number 1 July 2017 Journal of Interdisciplinary Research http://pacificdynamics.nz Indo-Fijian Counter Hegemony in Fiji: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 A historical structural approach ISSN: 2463-641X Sanjay Ramesh University of Sydney Abstract Indo-Fijians make up about 37 per cent of Fiji’s current population and have a unique language and culture, which evolved since Indians fist arrived into Fiji as indentured labourers on board the ship Leonidas in 1879. Since their arrival in the British colony as sugar plantation labourers, Indo-Fijian activists led counter hegemonic movements against the colonial government during and after indenture in 1920-21, 1943 and 1960. Indo-Fijian activists demanded political equality with Europeans and constantly agitated for better wages and living conditions through disruptive strikes and boycotts. After independence, the focus of Indo-Fijians shifted to political equality with indigenous Fijians and access to land leases from indigenous landowners on reasonable terms; and these were ongoing themes in the 1972, 1977 and 1982 elections. However, Indo-Fijian counter hegemony took a new form in 1987 with the formation of the multiracial Fiji Labour Party and National Federation Party coalition government but indigenous Fijian nationalists and the military deposed the government and established discriminatory policies against Indo-Fijians which were dismantled by the Fiji Labour Party-led coalition government in 1999. However, indigenous nationalists regrouped and deposed the government in 2000, prompting another round of protests and resistance from Indo-Fijians. Using Gramscian conceptualisation of counter hegemony as disruptive protest, resistance and dissent, I argue that political mobilisation of indentured labourers and their descendants was aimed at restoring political rights, honour, self-respect and dignity lost during colonial and post-colonial periods in Fiji.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Abstract: This Article Considers How the Experiences of South Asian
    1 Abstract: This article considers how the experiences of South Asian indentured laborers in Fiji links the Pacific labor migrations of the late 19th and early 20th century to larger global movements of workers. In doing so, it offers one avenue through which to incorporate the Pacific into the study of world history. Keywords: South Asia, Indentured Labor, Fiji, Pacific Islanders, Plantations Short Title: Girmit Connections to Global Networks Girmit Connections to Global Networks: South Asians and the Pacific Labor Trade Recent efforts by Matt Matsuda as well as David Armitage and Alison Bashford have attempted to center the Pacific within a world-historical context.1 These are both welcome endeavors since there remains a distinct lack of consideration in world history for a region that makes up one-third of the planet’s surface. This omission of the Pacific by many world historians has a downstream effect, as it results in teachers being ill-equipped in terms of accessible ways to incorporate the Pacific into their world history classrooms. Consequently, it is not only necessary to incorporate the Pacific into world history in order to add more diverse experiences into world-historical narratives, but to do so in ways that enable teachers to build lessons or draw examples from for use in classroom settings. The migrations of contract laborers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provide one avenue through which to connect the movements of Pacific peoples to a larger global network. As one of many boundary-crossing processes, migrations enable historians to approach the past in ways that complicate national and colonial narratives.
    [Show full text]
  • The Repatriation Debate After the Abolition of Indenture |CIRCLE| Text Transcript
    The Repatriation Debate After the Abolition of Indenture |CIRCLE| Text Transcript This is a text transcript of the webinar “The Repatriation Debate after the Abolition of Indenture” presented by the Canada India Research Centre for Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at the University of Guelph. The event was moderated by Ashna Jassi, PhD candidate, Department of Psychology, University of Guelph. It was recorded October 7, 2020. The guest speaker was Dr. Heena Mistry, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Training Specialist, Wilfrid Laurier University. Transcript: Ashna Jassi: Alright, perhaps it's a good time to get started and people can continue to join the meeting. First, I want to say hi to everyone. Welcome to our webinar! Thank you so much for joining us and I hope you're all keeping well and safe as we get into the fall months. My name is Ashna Jassi and I'll be chairing today's webinar with Dr. Heena Mistry. To give you a little bit more information about me, I'm a PhD candidate in social psychology at the University of Guelph. I'm also a graduate member of the CIRCLE Committee, and today's webinar is brought to us by CIRCLE, which is the Canada India Research Center for Learning and Engagement. CIRCLE was established in February 2020 at the University of Guelph and it aims to be an interdisciplinary nucleus in Canada for cutting edge research on the India and the Indian diaspora to showcase, advocate, catalyze and foster an equitable, respectful and sustained exchange of knowledge between Canadian and Indian scholars on complex and emerging, and unexplored topics related to sustainability and social and economic well-being.
    [Show full text]
  • In Exile at Home-A Fiji-Indian Story
    In Exile at Home-A Fiji-Indian Story Satish C. Rai Submitted in part fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor in Creati e Arts Copyright © 2010 by Satish Rai School of Humanities and Languages The (ni ersity )estern Sydney Sydney May 2011 Declaration I, Satish Rai, declare that the exegesis In Exile at Home-A Fiji-Indian Story is approximately 32,008 words in length including preface, notes, appendix, quotes and references. his thesis contains no material that has been previously submitted, in whole or in part, for the award of any other academic diploma or degree, except indicated otherwise. his thesis is my own work, based on the findings of my primary and secondary research which have been acknowledged. Signature.......................................... (Date) '''''''' Name: Satish Chand Rai Student ID No: 9,031,0. Statement by Super isor he research in this exegesis was performed under my supervision and to my knowledge is the sole work of Mr. Satish Rai. Signature.......................................... (Date) ''''''' Name'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''.. Designation''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 2 ACK,O)L.D/M.,TS he candidature would not have been successfully completed without assistance from many people around the world and I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all them. Naming all of these people is not possible but I would like to acknowledge the following individuals who were at the forefront with their assistance and without whom this thesis may not have been reali0ed. 1irstly, my heart2felt gratitude to Associate Professor 5udith Snodgrass, who provided much needed advice and guidance when the need was greatest. Professor Subramani is the only supervisor who supervised this candidature from its beginning to the end.
    [Show full text]