Dr Rajen Prasad
I am the grandson of a Girmitya.
My grandparents came to Fiji in the late 1880s under an agreement that contained the conditions of their employment.
This term was shortened to Girmit and those who came to Fiji under that system were known as Girmityas.
Sparse knowledge
My parents and my maternal grandparents told me very little about their experiences and consequently I grew up with sparse detailed knowledge about their early life and the conditions of their lives in the coolie lines.
As an adult, I remember asking my grandmother about her arrival in Fiji.
She told me about her quarantine on Nukulau Island in Suva harbour, an island I visited the day after she spoke to me about her time there.
It was exactly as she described it.
She had never returned to that island all her life although she could see it from her home in Tamavua.
As a student of Anthropology at the University of Auckland, I read some early Fiji history and began to develop a consciousness about my history and the experiences of my grandparents.
There always seemed to be some reticence amongst the older members of my family to discuss the Girmit period with us.
Encouragement to understand
Instead, there was the constant encouragement to get the best education we could.
Few of us would have understood the reluctance of my elders in my family without the exposition about Girmit and the excesses visited on our loved ones provided by contemporary writers like Brij Lal and Satendra Nandan and more recently our very own Rajendra Prasad in Tears in Paradise.
I now realise that it was too painful for my parents and grandparents to relate to us the degrading and inhumane conditions under which they lived in the coolie lines in Fiji.
They worked hard to ensure we did not have to endure the same conditions and consequently they provided me with every opportunity to set me free from the conditions that our forefathers could not escape.
Girmit Day in New Zealand
In May 2008, I took my daughter to a Girmit Day celebrations in Lower Hutt.
There were some stirring speeches about Girmityas, their early experiences and the importance of celebrating Girmit Day in New Zealand.
On the way home, my daughter, who is a second generation adult New Zealander confronted me and asked why I had not told her about the early experiences of her great grandparents.
I did not have an answer but I did commit to doing what I could to ensure every Indian with a connection to Fiji understood our history.
I urge all Fiji Indians to do everything possible to ensure that our children have an in-depth and meaningful appreciation of their history.
This entails celebrating Girmit Day and to recall the stories that are now available in print about that period.
My Girmit history binds me to every Fiji Indian in the past and to the children of every Fiji Indian who now call New Zealand home.
Let us be informed about these stories for they are our heritage and whatever positive resolutions we form as a result of that realisation is the on-going legacy our forefathers have bequeathed us.
Dr Rajen Prasad is a former Race Relations Conciliator, Member of Parliament on Labour List and Special Envoy of the Commonwealth Secretary General to the Kingdom of Lesotho. The above article appeared in Indian Newslink, May 1, 2009 commemorating the 130th Anniversary of the arrival of indentured labourers in Fiji from India (May 14, 1879).
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Photo Caption:
Third and fourth generations after the Girmitya. Dr Prasad with son Pramen, daughter-in-law Alini Asish and wife Prem.
(From Indian Newslink Archives)
