Girmitiya

The project was underpinned by greed on a global scale, because girmitiyas weren't just a feature of Fiji, but of many other countries right round the world. Many routes, many ways, many dodgy practices building towards the same exploitation of fellow humans. You've read about it before too, over here. 

Grasses, both yellow and green. View from the lookout point in the Garden
of the Sleeping Giant. Sale of indigenous land to outsiders is prohibited.

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To give a gist of the background - by mid 1830s slavery was abolished through out the Western world. The resultant shortage of labour led to the cunning repurposing and renaming of 'slaves' as 'indentured labourers.' They were recruited from various parts of the of the world, from India, from China and from the South Pacific Islands to work in far away lands, as taking slaves from Africa was no longer legal. 

The first such bonded labourers came to Fiji from Bihar and the United Provinces of British India. Most of them were illiterate farm workers, from areas prone to natural disasters and therefore without a steady source of income. They were rich pickings for this exploitative practice - recruited through local Indian agents who were paid a commission per recruit. The new recruits were taken to a magistrate and duly signed a so-called 'agreement' to work for a specific number of years in a distant foreign land. Many had no understanding of how distant and their exact terms of service. Most thought they were escaping their poverty stricken, precarious lives at home for a steadier, more prosperous life and much lighter work. A few wanted criminals thought to avoid the police, some might have wanted to avoid family feuds and  violence/persecution. 

The word 'agreement' was broken down to 'girmit' in their local dialect and they called themselves 'girmitiya' or 'the ones of the girmit.' Today the exact spot where they embarked on a hazardous journey in search of a better life is marked by the Mai-Baap (Mother-Father) Memorial at the Suriname Jetty on the river Hooghly, Kolkata. From this jetty, the first ship carrying indentured Indian labourers had departed in 1873 for Suriname, then a Dutch colony. A similar monument stands at the other end of the voyage at Paramaribo in Suriname.  

Gorgeous! - wherever and whenever you look...

The first shipload of 463 girmitiyas arrived in Fiji in May 1879, the initial  of the 61,000 migrants who sailed to Fiji and whose descendants today form the Indo-Fijian community, nearly a third of the population. Their journey from Calcutta on Leonidas had not been smooth, marked by epidemics on board - cholera, smallpox and dysentery had affected many and already killed 17. The ship was quarantined when it reached Levuka. The conditions upon disembarkation finally were unspeakably abysmal. 

They were asked to work from before dawn to late in the evening in the sugar cane fields with pay so meagre that many couldn't scrape together enough for the fare home after their term of servitude was over. The shanties they were put up were known as 'coolie lines' - unsanitary, cramped quarters without privacy - disease and death by suicide were common. 

The idea of getting bonded labourers from India was the brainchild of Fiji's first governor, Sir Arthur Gordon. 

Upon assuming the post, he had formulated his 'native policy' to preserve the Fijian's way of life. The three basic premises of that were 1) Fijian land sale was not permitted 2) The Fijian social hierarchy of clans and the rule of the chiefs was to be undisturbed and 3) A taxation system that required Fijians to work their own lands rather than settler plantations and so provide the government and themselves with an income. In effect, he concurred with Colonial Secretary Thurston and the Great Council of Chiefs that 'no indigenous Fijians will go from home to be worked from morning to night, upon paltry pay, indifferent fare, and anything but mild treatment, if they can avoid doing so...' 

Remember that indigenous Fijians were members of a rigid clan system and also formidable, fierce warriors unhesitant to take up arms and kill at the merest pretext. Disrupting their ways of life might have created much violence and little profit - this also could have played into Gordon's policy decisions. At any rate, he decided to preserve the Fijian's ways at the cost of the Indian's. 

Initially neither the European settlers nor the Fijian press liked the idea of importing migrant labour from India. The plantation owners were loath to pay the expenses to bring the labourers out to Fiji, after having been done out of what they felt was a cheap and abundant source closer home. The press felt that Fijian interests would be better served by bringing Polynesians from similar geographical environments, social systems and with shared values rather than a group of complete strangers who knew nothing of the country...

However, Gordon's policy won in the end and there were 85+ voyages made to Fiji bringing in a total of 61,000 girmitiyas. Deprived of their unique caste identities, their social leaders and elders, their traditional belief systems, these Indian labourers were to become marginalised and vulnerable - outcastes and adrift from their own homeland and unacceptable as equals, unable to fit in their new environment. They were always radically different, kept isolated from the indigenous Fijians who perceived their numbers, their sudden influx as a threat.

By the time the indenture system was abandoned in the 1920s due to public outrage in Britain, the Fijian society was rigidly stratified into indigenous Fijians with rights to land ownership,  traditional ways of life and crown protection, a small highly privileged foreign settler class who supported the indigenous Fijians, and a marginalised girmitiya population without any rights or political voice. As can be easily imagined, this was to have far reaching consequences  for the country.

All this month I'll be writing about Aspects of Fiji, which is where I'm at the mo. And where the sum of the constituent parts is gloriously greater than the whole!

Did you know that the GINI index in Fiji was 30.8 in 2019, down from 38.1 in 2002? The GINI index is a measure of income inequality, with 0 being perfectly equal and 100 being perfectly unequal. Historical data shows that Fiji is moving towards a reasonable level of income equality in the 21st century. The pandemic however, may have had an adverse impact, data for the period is not yet readily available. 

And did you know that the Fiji Girmit Centre was established by the Fiji Girmit Council in Lautoka in 1979 to mark the centenary of the arrival of the indentured workers? It was built on prime land given by then Prime Minister of Fiji Sir Ratu Kamesese Mara and the first stage of the project was inaugurated by the Indian Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi. The Girmit Centre promotes, preserves and propagates the Indo Fijian culture. Recently, a Girmit exhibition has been opened in the Fiji Museum in Suva also.  Girmit Day is marked in Fiji on 14th May every year on the anniversary of the landing of the first 463 Indian indentured workers brought in by Leonidas in 1879.  

~ Thank you for reading ~

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2023