Identity is a complex and fraught subject.
‘Who we are?’ is the result of myriad forces, visible and invisible, often beyond easy comprehension – our history and heritage, our environment.
Indo-Fijians are the product of a particular set of social and cultural forces, which makes them a distinct people. They form a part of a larger mosaic of the Indian Diaspora descended from the indenture system. But even among these communities, Indo-Fijians have certain attributes that make them distinctive.
It has been my good fortune over the last few decades to visit most countries where Indians went as indentured labourers during the 19th and early 20th Centuries: Trinidad, Guyana, Suriname, Mauritius, South Africa, and Southeast Asia.
We have many things in common with our Diasporic cousins, namely, an egalitarian ethos, impatience with rituals and protocols of hierarchy, zest for living here and now.
Horoscope and hierarchy are not for us. We say in jest that we are not true NRIs (Non- Resident Indians). We are true Not Really Indians.
Modified culture
In one respect, we are different from the others. In Fiji, Indian culture and language have survived with certain modifications. That was inevitable but survived to a much greater degree than elsewhere, certainly the Caribbean.
Why has this been so?
An important contributing factor is that in Fiji, in contrast to many other places, indenture was a limited detention, not a life sentence. It lasted for five or at the most ten years, after which our people were free to settle wherever they could find land.
The Government left the free settlers to their own devices. Perforce, therefore, we had to rely on our own resources. We built a new society in Fiji from the fragments of a remembered past. Our contact with India was never completely severed, as it was in many other places.
Racial segregation
The policy of racial segregation practised by the Colonial state closed off certain options for upward mobility, forcing us to rely on our own resources.
We established social and cultural institutions (Sanatan, Arya Samaj, Fiji Muslim League, TISI Sangam and others) that kept us moored to our cultural roots.
Christianity made no inroads into the Fiji Indian community as it did in the West Indies, where the Canadian Presbyterian Mission had been operating since the 1860s. This was partly because the Christian missions focused their efforts on the indigenous Fijians and partly because Christianity was seen as the religion of the Colonial masters and the Colonial Sugar Refining (CSR) Company.
Indian Newspapers
We had our own newspapers. The ‘Fiji Samachar’ started in 1924, ‘Shanti Dut’ in 1935, ‘Jagriti’ in 1949 and several in the 1950s, including ‘Jai Fiji,’ ‘Fiji Sandesh,’ ‘Kisan,’ and ‘Sangam.’
These newspapers gave us local and international news that countered the tenor of the established newspapers such as ‘The Fiji Times,’ which had demonstrably jaundiced views about India and Indo-Fijians.
India was the land of teeming, impoverished millions and Indo-Fijians, as a people, were of bad stock, up to no good. That was the Colonial narrative.
The vernacular papers challenged that view and stiffened our spine, instilled pride in ourselves. At the same time, they provided a creative output for our writers and poets, such as Kamala Prasad Mishra, LB Master, Kashi Ram Kumud and many others.
Our stories and experiences found space in print.
They found a place on radio as well.
Radio and film
The Fiji Broadcasting Commission was established as a statutory organisation, modelled on the BBC in 1954 broadcasting in all the three principal languages of Fiji.
Plays were performed and songs by local artists sung on radio. It broke barriers and boundaries, levelled hierarchy and connected us as a community, so that a person in Bua knew what was happening in Ba, a Raralevu wallah was informed about the goings-on in Rakiraki.
Hindi movies, which began arriving in Fiji from the late 1920s, played their part in maintaining Indian culture. They provided a respite from the mundane realities of village life, enlivened our cultural communication, connected us to other worlds, and conveyed values that the community appreciated: humility, respect for elders and social customs, family solidarity, the virtues of hard work, the abhorrence of vanity besides good old romance full of sad, syrupy songs and endless dancing around trees.
There was no ‘dubbing’ then, and hence we had to know the language to understand the dialogue on the screen. We hummed the songs in the villages and recalled the dialogues in endless detail. We imagined ourselves to be the heroes of the screen – Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand and fell hopelessly in love with the heroines – Nargis, Wahida Rahman and others.
Education connects
The type of education Fiji had in the post-war years was a crucial factor in maintaining Indian culture and the Hindi language.
The ‘Pothis’ of Pandit Amichand informed us of the worldview of an entire generation of Fiji children, keeping us connected through little ditties and fables to the land of our forebears, and to broad social and philosophical currents that underpinned our culture.
We were not deracinated as some other communities elsewhere were. We passed on what we read to our unlettered parents, and these formed an integral part of our collective memory as a community.
Changing times
The forces that shaped the worldview of the post-war generation of Indo-Fijian children have changed.
Travel and technology have fundamentally altered our notions of home and homeland, belonging and attachment. The village community where the Indo-Fijian culture took root has fragmented with the non-renewal of leases and the steady drift of the displaced farmers to the mushrooming squatter settlements where nearly 20% of our people live.
That is their destination; it will not be their destiny.
More likely, it will be the first leg of a much longer journey.
The world that formed and deformed our generation will have little meaning or relevance for the children of today.
What have inherited will go with us.
Professor Brij Lal is Professor of Pacific and Asian History at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, Australian National University, Canberra. The above is an excerpt from the speech that he delivered at the Girmit Anniversary celebrations of the Fiji Girmit Foundation of New Zealand on May 18, 2014
