Girmit Day talk

On May 14th there was a celebration held at the Girmit Centre in Lautoka in memory of the Indentured Labourers who came from India to work on the sugar cane farms. Rajat was the chief guest for the function and gave the following talk.

Girmit Divas 14/5/14

Brij Lal in his book entitled “Girmityas” writes a concluding poem and dedicates the authorship to the ghost of one girmitya perhaps of the Leonidas.

 

Pity me not then,

Nor mourn for a dying decrepit man.

Think of what I was

And what you can be

For I hope –

As I see you grope

Your journey from here

Will be without fear

As mine might have been

 

Today marks the day when the Leonidas arrived off the port of Levuka but because it was getting dark and the captain was new to the reef guarded waters he was unable to enter the harbor. The next day when the Colonial Secretary approached the ship he was advised that there had been cholera and small pox on board. He was alarmed as a few years earlier an outbreak of measles had killed almost 40,000 of the 160,000 natives of Fiji. The Chief Medical Officer, Dr William MacGregor was assigned the task of ensuring that the new immigrants were disease free before being allowed to mingle freely. He quarantined the new arrivals on Yanuca Lailai for a period of 3 months.

It is of interest that all the 498 Indians on board who departed Calcutta on 28 January 1879 were disease free. It was a white sailor who had come on board infected. Macgregor’s other strategy was to vaccinate the natives for such new diseases. This led to the commencement of the Fiji School of Medicine where the first Fijian vaccinators were trained. A school building at Lautoka Hospital is named Macgregor House.

On this first voyage 35 of the girmityas died. The journey was arduous. The conditions cramped and dehumanizing. The caste bound beliefs and customs were challenged. Many embraced a common bond which joined people from various backgrounds but some could not. The ship’s doctor made some interesting observations : “A coolie under treatment will often become despondent and tell you he knows he is going to die and sometimes will do it inspite of you “, another observation “I know that many die from nostalgia pure and simple”. “some get depressed thinking of what they have done”.

There are several excellent books by Ahmed Ali, Brij Lal, Vijay Naidu and others in which details of the girmit history and experience are recorded. In preparing for this talk I was moved to tears as I read Totaram Sanadhya’s book entitled My Twenty One Years in the Fiji Islands, accounts of utter inhumane conditions in which our forebears lived and worked. Hannah Dudley and Burton’s accounts of brutality, moral degradation, unhygienic living conditions and appalling indignity that existed corroborates Totaram’s tales. It is no wonder that death rates were high, violence was common and many who could not bear the pain anymore committed suicide. Snell in his assessment of the indenture system called it a form of slavery. He writes that the pitiable living and working conditions of the girmityas were exacerbated by the greed of the sugar millers and the economic manipulations of the time to get the last ounce of labour for the pittance paid.

I have dwelt enough on the past and we must not become prisoners of those cruel times. My Hindu spiritual heritage tells me that the wise live in the present, the knowledge of the past making them wiser, stronger and less fearful of the future.

Of course we can be proud of the success stories of many of the girmitya progeny who have succeeded. We have nurtured a golfing legend, one of our sons became a Governor General, we have many leaders of industry, in the legal profession, in medicine, in commerce, in diplomacy, in scholarship – and the list goes on. The 61,000 girmityas who came to Fiji for various reasons during a period of 1879 and 1916 have contributed to several generations of development and expertise not only in Fiji but in Australia, NZ, Canada, US, UK and in many countries of the Pacific. Their suffering led to our success.

Our 61,000 girmitya forefathers suffered brutality in the hands of colonisers from Britain, overseers from Australia and New Zealand. Yet we bear these countries and their people no grudges. Our contributions to their economies are unstinting and many amongst us, some 140,000 have migrated to new shores starting a phase that some have called ‘twice banished’ – from India to Fiji and now from Fiji to elsewhere, many leaving their birthplace because of the events of this day in 1987.

I want to say a little about reconciliation.

Reconciliation can mean different things to different people. For me the concept is about coming to terms with one’s situation and being happy and productive in it. Living in the hurts of the past can make us prisoners of anger, despondency and fear. Fear is a huge burden which impedes progress.

Our ancestors the girmityas took the courageous plunge and ventured out from the security of their familiarity. Many with nothing more than the clothes they wore. We today have much and have every reason to be optimistic. When the Leonidas berthed in Fiji 135 years ago our fate and destiny took a new turn. We enjoy a level of freedom, education, and mobility that our forefathers would not have dreamed of. Let us dedicate ourselves to the same commitment to development that our forefathers made. A girmitya who came to Fiji in 1890 started the first school in Wairuku in 1898. The Arya Samaj, Sangam, Methodist Mission , Roman Catholics and others worked hard to make education accessible to the poorest. Their efforts has paid dividends. Each one of us in this room can commit ourselves to serving for the improvement of all our people without distinction based on race, colour, religion, gender or disability. Our heritage is a progressive heritage which teaches sathya, dharma, prema, ahimsa and shanti. These 5 principles are the same which guided Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and more recently Nelson Mandela. We can’t aspire to the same greatness which they did but we can heed to John F Kennedy’s call “ask not what the nation can do for you, ask what you can do for the nation.”

Dr Rajat Gyaneshwar with Mr Y.P. Reddy, the Chairman of the Girmit Committee and the person who had the most to do with the establishment of the Girmit Centre in 1979, to celebrate the centenary of the first arrival of Indians to Fiji in 1879. Mr Reddy is a firm supporter of VSHC and a leader of the Fiji Sangam movement. The lady with them is perhaps the last surviving girmitya in Fiji. She is aged 102.

This photo was taken by Dr Bhupesh Chandra of FNU.