Origins of the Indo-Fijian American Identity in the East Bay (Ca)
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THE TWICE-MIGRANTS: ORIGINS OF THE INDO-FIJIAN AMERICAN IDENTITY IN THE EAST BAY (CA) ______________ A University Thesis Presented to the Faculty of California State University, East Bay ______________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts in History ______________ By Monica Anjileen Devi December, 2012 Copyright © 2012 by Monica Anjileen Devi ii THE TWICE-MIGRANTS: ORIGINS OF THE INDO-FIJIAN AMERICAN IDENTITY IN THE EAST BAY (CA) By Monica Anjileen Devi Approved: Date: ~~ Dee E Andrews: Advi7fr --- r ", ), f --it" r /'(·c \·-<l VL---_~, LJia Ivey, Readert 0 111 Table of Contents Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………………v List of Tables and Maps……………………………………………………………..........vi List of Pictures…………………………………………………………………........vii-viii Introduction: Searching for the Promised Land………………………………………..….1 Chapter One: First Migration: Indians Come Fiji…………………..……………………13 Chapter Two: Formation of the Indo-Fijian Identity and Mass Exodus……..…………..38 Chapter Three: Second Migration: Indo-Fijians Come to California…….……………...76 Chapter Four: Formation of the Indo-Fijian American Identity….……..……………….96 Chapter Five: A Snippet of the Life of Raj Kamal Singh: Indo-Fijian American Business and Community Leader in the East Bay………...…….……………………...126 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...156 Appendix 1: Research Methodology………………....……………….………………..159 Appendix 2: Names of Participants………………………………………………….…161 Appendix 3: Questionnaires and Interview Questions…...……………………………..163 Appendix 4: CSUEB Institutional Review Board Approval for Human Subjects Research……………………………….………………………………………………..169 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………170 iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Dee Andrews for her encouragement, guidance and support, not only during the thesis writing process but also throughout my undergraduate and graduate years at Cal State, East Bay. So many times she believed in me when I had stopped believing in myself. Without her encouragement, I would have not taken up the task of writing a thesis. Thank you Professor Andrews. You are the best! A true inspiration!!! Also, much thanks to Professor Ivey for taking out valuable time from her busy schedule and being willing to be the Reader. I truly appreciate it, Professor! Thank you. Special thanks to Mr. Kevin Heller for his patience and guidance during the Thesis formatting and editing process. And last but not least, heartfelt thanks to all the participants in this study who went out of their way to answer my questions, especially Mr. Raj K. Singh for a personal interview. Thank you everyone! Without your participation, this thesis would not have been possible. v List of Maps and Tables Map of Fiji…………………………………………………………………………….18 Map of Fiji in Relation to World Map………………………………………………...18 Table 1: Girmit Summary……………………………………………………………..34 Table 2: Colonial British Indian Indentured Labor Transportation by Country………35 vi List of Pictures Ratu Seru Epenisa Cakobau……………………………………………………………...19 Gangadei and Sarju……………..…………..……………………………………………28 A Girmit Woman’s Pass…….…….….………………………………………………….36 A Girmit Girl’s Pass…….………..…….………………………………………………...37 Marches during the 1987 Coup……...…………………………………………………...59 Paradise in Peril: Fiji Beach 1….….……………….…………………………………….69 Paradise in Peril: Fiji Beach 2……..………….………………………………………….70 Paradise in Peril: Gyan and Sapaya Datt……….….…………………………………….71 Paradise in Peril: Ethnic Indians and Fijian Praying…..………………………………...72 Flag of Fiji after Independence….…………….…………………………………………73 Sitiveni Rabuka, 1987 Coup Leader………..……………………………………………73 Mahendra Chaudhary and Wife….……….……………………………………………...74 George Speight, the 2000 Coup Leader.………….……………………………………...75 Fiji Fruit Cake and Fiji Soda.………..………………………………………………….109 Raj Singh…………………..……………………………………………………………143 Raj Singh with his clients…….………………………………………………………...144 Fundraiser Poster for Samaaj Sewa Fiji USA 2011…….………………………………145 Raj Singh with Children in Fiji….………………………………………………….146-47 Raj Singh with his wife Fameeza Singh………………………………………………..148 Raj Singh’s Daughters…......……………………………………………………….148-49 Christmas..…...…………………………………………………………………………150 vii Thanksgiving…..…………...…………………………………………………………...151 Diwali Celebration…………………………………………………………………..152-54 Eid Celebration………………...……………………………………………………….154 Holi Celebration……………...…………………………………………………………155 viii 1 Introduction Searching for the Promised Land I left Fiji in 1991 sad and disillusioned. Sad because the country of my birth, where my ancestors’ bones lie interred, no longer made me feel welcome. Disillusioned because a nation once internationally hailed as peaceful paradise and a showcase for democracy and multicultural harmony turned out in the end, to be purgatory for half its people. For beneath the thin veneer of civilised and enlightened society lurked serious undercurrents of racial tension and hostility. These surfaced with devastating effect after an obscure army colonel and his cohorts ousted the new democratically elected Fiji Labour-National Federation Party Government of Dr Timoci Bavadra at gunpoint on 14 May, 1987. This treasonous act started Fiji’s descent chaos and lawlessness, which continue to plague the country and will continue to do so into the future.1 Vijendra Kumar’s account of his departure from his homeland captures the experience of many Fiji Indians of his time. Kumar migrated to Australia with his family after suffering from the racial tension and harassment following the Coup of 1987 in Fiji. Many Fiji Indians have suffered similar and even worse experiences during and after the two coups (1989 and 2000), leading many of them to migrate to countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States. During and after the two coups, Fiji Indians suffered severely from attacks by indigenous Fijians. Their homes were pillaged and businesses destroyed, and many were beaten badly. This thesis examines the origins and the experience of the identity of twice migrants: the Indo-Fijians of California, more specifically of the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay area, who left Fiji between the years of 1950 and 2000. 1 Vijendra Kumar, “Goodbye to Paradise,” in Bittersweet: The Indo-Fijian Experience, ed. Brij Lal (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2004), 323. 2 The majority of Fiji Indians in Fiji are the descendants of indentured Indian laborers brought to Fiji by the British between the years 1879 and 1916 to work on sugar plantations in colonial Fiji. Although these Indians preserved many of their Indian traditions and much of their Indian culture, their practices underwent many changes in the new world environment of Fiji. Many India-born migrants had lost all personal ties to India and the Fiji-born Indians knew no other home than Fiji. Generations later, economic hardships, ethnic tensions, and violence during and after the two coups compelled thousands of Indo-Fijians to take their second migrations to countries overseas, making them “twice migrants” in their long, multiple-generation passage away from India. The subject of the sources of Indo-Fijian American identity forms one part of the larger topic of what is now known as “transnational migration.” Historian Donna Gabaccia maintains that this new trend immigration history started as early as the 1970s when scholars began increasingly to view immigration history as “migration history”: part of much larger movements of peoples around the world.2 But as early as 1951, Oscar Handlin observed in The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (1951) that American immigration historians were showing an interest in “studying connections between immigrants and their homelands….”3 This interest further developed through scholarly interactions with their foreign colleagues who studied emigration in countries that kept records and carried out studies on the out- 2 Donna R Gabaccia “Do We Still Need Immigration History?” Polish American Studies 55, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 61. 3 Ibid. 3 migrations. American scholars became increasingly interested in the background of the immigrant groups they were studying and in “interpreting the consequences of homeland experience and culture for immigrant life here.”4 Many historians started to learn the languages of the immigrant groups they were studying, enabling them to do primary research in the homelands of the immigrant groups. The term “migrant” became the comprehensive term for “immigrant” and “emigrant” to account for both sides of these often massive population movements. Soon “immigration” historians were “extracting the study of migration from particular national historiographies, and groping toward a history from which to interpret migration and migrant lives.”5 However, it was the “discovery by immigration historians of the circulatory nature of many migrations in the late nineteenth and an early twentieth century” which helped to move scholars away from national toward world histories.6 Many historians began to realize that many new immigrants worked in the United States but were not permanent settlers. They would also search for work in many other countries, not just the United States, while maintaining ties with families and communities in their homeland. They had no plans of settling permanently in the States: in this sense, they were neither immigrant nor emigrants. Gabaccia explains, “Not only did migrants from Italy or Russia migrate to many destinations, and not just to the U.S., but they were in no sense ‘immigrant’ or ’emigrants’—many