Women, Gender and the Legacy of Slavery and Indenture

Farzana Gounder, Kalpana Hiralal, Amba Pande, Maurits S. Hassankhan, Farzana Gounder, Kalpana Hiralal, Amba Pande, Maurits S. Hassankhan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367676230
• eBook ISBN: 9781000295207
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
• Index: Social Sciences

The age of imperialism ushered in a new phenomenon of large-scale organized migration of labourers through the systems of slavery and indenture, which were devised to feed the colonial political-economy. Another feature of such migrations was that it led to the permanent settlement of the uprooted African and Asian labourers in the new lands. These developments, in the long run, intertwined the histories of the 'ruler' and the 'ruled', the so-called 'civilized' and the 'uncivilized' along with the people from various continents, thus giving rise to plural societies. The narratives, however, remained dominated by the colonial legacies and frames of reference. Today such historical colonial narratives are being challenged and clarified through multi-disciplinary academic engagements. The authors in this volume take gender as a prominent analytical category and raise new questions and understandings in the way we conceptualize, document and write about gendered migrations in the diaspora.

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PART 1

PERSPECTIVES FROM THE DIASPORA ON INDENTURED MIGRATION

CHAPTER 1

‘A Most Callous Indifference’ Sutrhdei’s Story

Brij V. Lal

Death lies on her face like untimely frost.

SHAKESPEARE, Romeo and Juliet 4.5.28

How do we write about a past where records don’t exist, or exist only partially, and memory is not properly archived? Yet, unwritten pasts must be remembered for they, too, are a part of our lives. This conundrum confronts all of us who write about the experience of indenture in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Written records are partial and fragmentary, but often that is all we have to go by. This is where imaginative reconstruction comes in, as in the case of the story that follows. We begin with the documented facts but then put flesh on their bare bones, read against the grain, draw upon similar cases to provide a fuller picture of what happened and why. Factual accuracy is important, but a higher purpose is to capture the truth of the experience through ‘true imagination’. Sometimes, the truth of an experience or a fact is best understood in its imaginative version. This is Sukhdei’s story, but I have drawn on my lifetime’s knowledge of the indenture experience to create a composite picture which, I hope, does justice to the tragic experience of one woman. This is Sukhdei’s story, but not hers alone.

There is a spot on the banks of the Sigatoka River a few chains^* from Ram Sami’s village shop which men avoid and try not to walk past at night. Many say they have seen the figure of a frail woman with dishevelled white hair and dressed in white clothes wandering aimlessly at various times of the night, lost. Some swear that they have heard soft sounds of wailing at odd hours and others recall the fragrance of scents sprinkled on dead bodies during funeral ceremonies to keep the stench of death at bay. A mango tree stands forlornly in overgrown para grass. Some old timers remember this as the place where a deranged woman drowned herself. That is all they remember about her and the remote past of their forebears. The woman’s name was Sukhdei. At the time of her death in the early years of the twentieth century, the tragic events which led to it were widely talked about in the Indian indentured community right across Viti Levu. The story of complicity and attempted cover up, the violence and treachery which surrounded Sukhdei’s case finally ended in Fiji’s Supreme Court, a very rare event almost unprecedented. Who, then, was Sukhdei and what was the true story of her ordeal? This imaginative reconstruction based on fragments of written and oral evidence seeks to answer this question.

* Chain is a unit measuring distance equivalent to 22 yards or 66 feet.

Sukhdei, five foot something and a loner, was a girmitiya from the district of Mathura, in western Uttar Pradesh. She was seven months pregnant when she came to Fiji in July 1910. She was eighteen or thereabouts when she was assigned to the CSR’s Tuva sector. A month after arriving in Fiji, she gave birth to a child (on 16 August) who died four days later. A pregnant unmarried woman would, have been a source of great shame to her family and the broader community, the situation made even worse in this case by the fact that Sukhdei was a Brahmin, or the priestly class, from a holy region that was the playground of Lord Krishna. She would most certainly have been thrown out from the village to fend for herself, or killed to avoid giving her family a bad name. At the Emigration Depot at Metiabruz, Calcutta, she was introduced to Ballu, a Fiji-bound immigrant from the district of Benares and they came together as husband and wife. There must have been many Sukhdeis among the indentured women who easily fell into the recruiters’ net and emigrated to the colonies, victims of violence and sexual molestation by their own men, broken and discarded.

Sukhdei was one of 13,596 Indian women who came to Fiji, all adults, as indentured labourers. She was one of 262 from the district of Mathura, and one of 510 who were Brahmins. The majority came as single migrants though there were about four thousand who came as members of families. But whether they came alone or in families, they were all assumed to have ‘fallen into the depths of degradation and vice’, as the Emigration Agent of Trinidad put it, unsteady, rudderless vessels, as an otherwise sympathetic observer C.F. Andrews put it, or immoral ‘doe rabbits’, as an overseer in Fiji described them. And accordingly they bore the brunt of the blame for the social ills of indenture. Their faces were hidden behind a ‘veil of dishonour.’

Sukhdei’s misfortune was not uncommon on the plantations as infants fell to high mortality rates especially in the wet cane areas of south-eastern Viti Levu. Nearly a quarter of infants in the 1890s died within a year of birth from a variety of ailments including anaemia, respiratory illnesses, diarrhoea and dysentery and the general unsanitary conditions of the lines. Things improved over time, but the danger of death was ever present and tore at the heart of many a family. The girmitiyas bore their tragedies stoically but not so the overseers and government officials who routinely held the mothers responsible who they thought lacked the ‘motherly instinct’. Weren’t they, after all, the flotsam and jetsam of Indian society, the lowest of the lowest? This deeply entrenched view among the planters, despite much evidence to the contrary, blunted sensitivity to the indentured labourers. Some parents pooled money together to hire a dai, a maid, to look after their children in the lines while they went out to work, but many mothers also took their children with them to the fields to suckle them during breaks. Exposure to the elements held its own peril.

Two days after the death of her child, Sukhdei was ordered to work crushing stones with a hammer for the railway track being built to cart cane to the recently opened Lautoka sugar mill. Sending mothers to work so soon after childbirth was against the regulations, but on the plantations, especially on the remote ones, where official inspections were infrequent and the opportunity to file complaints limited, it was not the courts but overseers who had the final say. And Sukhdei was desperately unlucky to have Herbert Brackman as her overseer, or kulambar.

Brackman was a particularly violent man, volatile, quick to anger at the slightest hint of disobedience, or what he perceived to be disobedience. The possibility of miscommunication or misunderstanding never crossed his mind. In his thirties, he had worked with Kanaka labour in the cane growing district of Mackay, Queensland, before coming to Fiji to work for the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. It was rumoured that he had been ‘advised’ to leave Mackay before things got out of hand because of his rough treatment of the workers under him. At least two overseers had been hacked to death for systematically mistreating their labourers. Brackman had become a marked man. His first posting in Fiji was to the Naqiqi sector in northern Vanua Levu where, with a free hand, he unleashed what officials called ‘a reign of terror’ on the sugar estate. He had once poured a pot of hot water on his servant because he was unhappy with the way his breakfast had been prepared. The Stipendiary Magistrate at Labasa exonerated him of all blame because he had found ‘no criminal intent’ in his behaviour. Fearing reprisal against him for his violence and brutality, the CSR quietly transferred him to Viti Levu, to the newly opened and remote Tuva sector where, it was hoped, he would escape official notice. But Brackman was Brackman, a creature of habit who continued with his old ways.

Totaram, Brackman’s sirdar, foreman, was not much better. Sirdars were the lynchpin of the system, the overseers’ ears and eyes on the ground, chosen for the role for their ability as enforcers and taskmasters. On some plantations, they made a little extra by operating a store on the side, with the concurrence of the plantation manager as a reward for loyalty even though this was strictly against the spirit of the labour ordinance. They could also be relied upon to procure women for the overseers who were invariably young and unmarried. Some were not averse to ‘sampling’ women under their charge themselves though the constant fear of a sharpened cane knife in the hands of an enraged man kept matters in check. Totaram, an Ahir (cow herder) from Gorakhpur, had arrived in Fiji in 1905. He was a big man with a fierce handlebar moustache and a no nonsense demeanour. A man with a very short fuse, he was feared in the lines. He often talked with his fist, people said. And he had big ambitions for himself too. He knew which side of his bread was buttered, as the expression goes. If he played his cards right, he might be transferred to a bigger sector with greater opportunities for himself. The combination of Brackman and Totaram proved deadly for Sukhdei.

At around 11 o’clock, Totaram came on his routine round of inspection. Seeing Sukhdei resting under a mango tree, he barked, ‘What is this? Why aren’t you crushing stones? E tumhar baap ke kam hai? [You are not working for your father]’. Sukhdei, weak and bleeding, replied, ‘Hamar haal theek nahi hai. Hum nahi kar sakta e kaam. [I am not well. I can’t do this work]. Kutch aur kaam deo. [Give me some other work].’ Totaram interpreted this as insolence, this woman talking back to him like that? Who the hell did she think she was? He advanced towards her, slapped her a few times and ordered her back to work. ‘Agar hum phir tummhe sustaate dekha to hum tumhar khaal utaar dega. [If I find you shirking work again, I will strip the skin off your back].’ Someone uttered a muffled obscenity, but no one did anything, continuing with their work as if nothing had happened. The alleged abuse would be offered as mitigating evidence in Totaram’s favour. On his way back, Totaram reported Sukhdei to Brackman when he inquired about work on the new railway track.

When Brackman came on his daily round of inspection around midday and saw Sukhdei resting, he remembered what Totaram had told him and flew into a rage even after Sukhdei had told him about the loss of her child and her weak state. She pointed to her bloodied dress. Could the saheb please give her some other work, she pleaded, sobbing. Brackman refused, ‘No, I cannot give you other work.’ ‘Come on, get up. Jaldi, jaldi. Quick, fast.’ When Sukhdei remained seated on the ground, he walked towards her, grabbed her hair and slapped her face hard. ‘You talking back to me like that? I will teach you a lesson you will never forget.’ Suddenly, Brackman lost his senses. He was like a man possessed. He lifted Sukhdei and threw her down hard on the stones she was crushing and kicked her several times, as Sukhdei recalled in her testimony to the St...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Part 1: Perspectives from the Diaspora on Indentured Migration
• Part 2: Perspectives from the ‘Home’ Country on Indentured Migration
• Part 3: Gender, Sexuality and Agency
• Notes on Contributors
• Index