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Literature of Girmitiya
History, Culture and
Identity
Edited by
Neha Singh · Sajaudeen Chapparban
Literature of Girmitiya
 Neha Singh · Sajaudeen Chapparban
Editors

Literature of Girmitiya
History, Culture and Identity
Editors
Neha Singh Sajaudeen Chapparban
Department of Languages, Centre for Diaspora Studies
Literatures and Cultural Studies, Central University of Gujarat
School of Humanities and Social Gandhinagar, India
Sciences
Manipal University Jaipur
Rajasthan, India

ISBN 978-981-19-4620-2 ISBN 978-981-19-4621-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4621-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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 Contents

1 Literature of Girmitiya: History, Culture, and Identity 1

Neha Singh and Sajaudeen Chapparban

Part I Language, Literature, and Identity

2 Language, Literature and Cultural Identity:
A Narrative from the Malaysian Tamil Diaspora 23
M. Mahalingam
3 Poetics of the Crossing: Rerouting Identity in Indian
Indenture 43
Anjali Singh
4 Unutterable Sufferings of Girmitiyas in Amitav
Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies 59
Pulkita Anand
5 A Critical Reflection on Imperialism, Nostalgia
and Traumatic Experiences in Totaram Sanadhya’s
My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands 73
Rabindra Kumar Verma

v
vi CONTENTS

Part II Culture, Music, and Songs

6 Tracing the Girmitiya Consciousness in Bhojpuri
Folkloric Songs: A Study of Three Bhojpuri Video
Songs 91
Anisha Badal-Caussy and Jay Ganesh Dawosing
7 The Poetics of Unsung Chutney Singer Lakhan
Karriah of Trinidad 111
Kumar Mahabir
8 Preservation of Cultural Heritage: A Case Study
of Asians in Mauritius 127
Zareen Beebeejaun-Muslum
9 Relocating Cultural Identity: Pattern and Conditions
of Indian Diaspora in Fiji 145
Sushma Pandey
10 Vivid Girmitiya Sacraments and Ganga Talao 179
Anshuman Rana

Part III Migration and History

11 Girmit as a Global Labour Regime: Essentials,
Expansion and Exceptions 197
Amit Kumar Mishra
12 ‘Convicts’ as the Indentured Labour: Contribution
of Indians to the Development in Southeast Asia 227
Aparna Tripathi
13 The Girmityas and Power Politics: A Genealogical
Analysis of Colonial Fiji 241
Dhanya Joy
14 Indentured Labour Migration from Bombay
Presidency: A Study of Marathi-Speaking Community
in Mauritius 255
Dhanraj Gusinge

Index 267
 Notes on Contributors

Pulkita Anand is Assistant Professor of English at Shahid Chandrasekhar

Govt. PG College, Jhabua. Her areas of research are Indian Writing in
English, British Drama, Gender studies and Afro-American literature. She
is the author of a book. She has participated in many workshops, sympo-
siums, international conferences, and national seminars and has written
papers that have been published in reputed journals. Her creative work
has been published in various journals.
Anisha Badal-Caussy is Lecturer from the Department of Mauritian
Studies at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Mauritius. Her research inter-
ests are Mauritian Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Border Studies,
Cultural Studies, Feminism, and Postmodernism. She has participated in
many national and international conferences.
Mrs. Zareen Beebeejaun-Muslum is a senior lecturer at the Depart-
ment of Mauritian Studies, Mahatma Gandhi Institute. She has lectured
for more than fifteen years in the field of Sociology and Anthropology.
Apart from teaching, her research interests are as follows: Gender Issues,
Contemporary Mauritian Society, HIV/AIDS related stigma and discrim-
ination, Social impact of Type II Diabetes amongothers. She recently
collaborated on a book publication titled ‘Achieving Work-Family-Balance
(WFB) among professional working women in Mauritius’.
Sajaudeen Chapparban is Assistant Professor in the Centre for Diaspora
Studies at Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India.

vii
viii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Jay Ganesh Dawosing is a Lecturer from the Department of Bhojpuri,

Folklore and Oral Traditions at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Mauritius.
His research interests are Bhojpuri Language and Culture, Bhojpuri folk
songs, Heritage, Folklore and Oral Traditions. He has published several
papers and is an active researcher in his fields of interest.
Dhanraj Gusinge is Assistant Professor in Department of History at
Guru Ghasidas Vishwavidyalaya, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh. He completed
his Ph.D. entitled ‘History and Cultural Identity of Marathi Diaspora in
Mauritius’ under the Centre for Diaspora Studies at Central University
of Gujarat. He completed his M.Phil. entitled ‘Indian Diaspora in Mauri-
tius: A Historical Study of Indentureship (1834–1920)’ from the Central
University of Gujarat. He was awarded the ICSSR Doctoral Fellowship
in 2018–2019. He has presented research papers in various International
and National Seminar/Conferences. His area of interest includes Indian
Diaspora, Migration, Indian History, Culture and Identity.
Dhanya Joy is Assistant Professor of English at St. Joseph’s College for
Women, Alappuzha (affiliated to Kerala University, India). Her interests
span an eclectic range of cross-disciplinary domains including literary
theory, film studies, philosophy and life studies. She has published
research papers in various national and international journals. She is
currently working on the post-theoretical implications in the works of
Jorge Luis Borges, the master craftsman of Argentine literature.
Kumar Mahabir is a full-time anthropologist at the University of Guyana
(UG) and a Fellow of The Eccles Centre for American Studies—British
Library. He is also the founder and chief director of the weekly Sunday
ZOOM program hosted by the Indo-Caribbean Cultural Centre (ICC).
Dr. Mahabir is also a former Assistant Professor at the University of
Trinidad and Tobago (UTT). He obtained his Ph.D. in Anthropology
from the University of Florida (UF) in the USA, and his M.Phil. and B.A.
degrees in Literature in English from the University of the West Indies
(UW). He is the author of 12 books to date.
M. Mahalingam is currently working as Associate Professor at the Faculty
of Law of SGT University, Gurugram, Delhi-NCR, India. He has been
teaching history and sociology to law students since 2015. He has
numerous research publications to his credit. He is currently a Co-project
director for the research project of the Indian Council of Social Science
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ix

Research (ICSSR) entitled ‘The Plight of Migrant Labourers During the

Covid-19 Pandemic in Delhi- A Socio-Legal Study’.
Amit Kumar Mishra is Associate Professor, School of Global Affairs
at Ambedkar University Delhi, New Delhi. His research, teaching and
publications explore south asian diaspora, transnational migrations, and
diaspora-development. He was consultant to Truth and Justice Commis-
sion (Mauritius), Fellow Weatherhead Initiative on Global History
(Harvard University) and a member of UNESCO Indentured Labour
Route Project.
Sushma Pandey is currently working with ‘Jharkhand Anti Trafficking
Network’ as Project Coordinator, (SPARK Ranchi Jharkhand). She has
Ph.D. in diaspora studies and is a recipient of ICSSR Foreign Travel
grant. She conducted ethnographic research in Fiji. She has published a
paper on the topic of Invisible Indentured History of Women Migration
During Social Reform in India International Journal of Social Science
and Economic Research. She is a part-time research intern at women’s
studies centre Ranchi Dept. of Economics, Ranchi University, Supported
by Indian Association for Women’s Studies (IAWS). She worked with
Tribal Research Institute Ranchi Jharkhand. As a research associate, she
completed In-house Project ‘Megaliths of Jharkhand, Encyclopedia of
Tribes of Jharkhand’. She also worked with ‘Azim Premji University’ as
Research Associate on the project ‘15 meters back’: schemes to support
women working in traditionally male jobs, competition, and violence. She
has working experience with Himalayan Heritage Research and Develop-
ment Society (HHRDS) as a Cultural Counsellor/Program Coordinator
Sikkim and Uttarakhand.
Anshuman Rana is currently Assistant Professor and Head of the Depart-
ment in the Institute of Media Studies, Shri Ramswaroop Memorial
University, Lucknow. He holds a Doctorate in Diaspora Studies. He
has done his bachelor’s and master’s in Journalism and Mass Commu-
nication. His research interest lies in Lifestyle migration, Development
Communication and Culture Studies.
Neha Singh is Assistant Professor in the Department of Languages,
Literatures and Cultural Studies at Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan,
India.
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Anjali Singh holds a Ph.D. in English. Her areas of interest include

Indenture Studies, Migration Studies, Postcolonial Literature, Women’s
Writing, and Gender and Queer Studies. She has travelled widely and has
also presented research papers in Australia and Fiji, apart from publishing
papers in several peer-reviewed and referred journals. Her book Voices
and Silences: Narratives of the Girmitiyas and Jahajis from Fiji and the
Caribbean (2022) has been co-published by Manohar Publishers and
Routledge.
Aparna Tripathi is currently working as Ph.D. Research Scholar at
the Centre for Diaspora Studies, Central University of Gujarat, Gand-
hinagar, Gujarat. She has been awarded her M.Phil. from the same
centre. She published more than 4 papers in international and nation-
ally reputed journals and also published 2 book chapters in the edited
books. She obtained her B.A.(Hons.) and M.A. in Political Science
from Banaras Hindu University. Her research interests include Political
Thought, Indian Foreign Policy, Indian Diaspora in Southeast Asia and
USA and International Relations.
Rabindra Kumar Verma teaches English at the Department of
Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies, Manipal University Jaipur.
He has earned 11 years of teaching experience in the domain of English
literature, language and literary theory and criticism. He was awarded
D.Phil. in 2011 by the Department of English & Modern European
Languages, University of Allahabad, India. He has published more
than 25 research papers in national, international, and Scopus-indexed
journals, and book chapters in the edited books.
 List of Figures

Fig. 13.1 Fiji: Ethnic Composition (2007):

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.
www.britannica.com/place/Fiji-republic-Pacific-Ocean
/People 242
Fig. 13.2 Sample of emigration pass:
www.fijigirmit.org/ph_passes.htm 245
Fig. 13.3 A group of Girmityas:
www.fijigirmit.org/ph_girmitold.htm 248
Fig. 14.1 Marathi language in Mauritius (Source Census
of Mauritius, 1990, 2000, 2011) 263

Map 8.1 The main regions and districts of recruitment for Indian
indentured labourers (1826–1910) (Source Aapravasi
Ghat Trust Fund Collection, published in Peerthum
[2017]. They came to the Mauritian Shore’s: The
Life-Stories and the History of Indentured Labourers
in Mauritius [1826–1937]: Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund) 131
Map 14.1 Marathi Settlement in Mauritius (Source Mauritius
Marathi Cultural Centre Trust [2012], p. 33) 262

xi
 List of Tables

Table 6.1 Traditional Girmitiya song Calcutta Se Chootal Jahaaj

rewritten by Suchita Ramdin (1989), performed
by Roots Foundation and translated by Prof. Ramesh
Ramdoyal depicts their agony during the unending
voyage to an unknown world which fate had chosen
as their new home, leaving behind their beloved ones,
and their country, their hope of seeing their motherland
gone forever 95
Table 6.2 Girmitiya song Girmitiya Kantraki (2017),
a Champaran Talkies Production, produced by Neetu
Chandra and sung by Raj Mohan in the attire
of an Indentured Labourer and the video has a cartoon
story of the girmitiya in Suriname 97
Table 6.3 Girmitiya song Fiji Bidesia sung by Ranpoo Singh
in 2010, written by late Master Santa Prasad Bahadur
Korokade India School, Lekutu, Bua, Fiji Islands, 1961 98
Table 8.1 Number of convicts in Mauritius 1815–1848 129
Table 8.2 Arrival and departures of Indian immigrants
between 1834 and 1912 130
Table 9.1 Chronology of indentured system 152
Table 9.2 Year- and country-wise migration 153
Table 9.3 Number of laborers emigrated to colonies 153
Table 9.4 Percentage of Port-Wise migration (1835–1844) 154
Table 9.5 Numbers of emigrating Indian indentured laborers 155
Table 9.6 Districts wise recruitment 155

xiii
xiv LIST OF TABLES

Table 9.7 District-Wise North Indian migration in Fiji 156

Table 9.8 District-wise caste composition of emigrants 156
Table 9.9 Commissions of agents for laborer recruitment 158
Table 9.10 Labor recruitment for Kangani system 160
Table 9.11 Indians employed in Fiji during 1911 165
Table 9.12 Free Indian population in Fiji, 1908–1912 165
Table 9.13 Emigrants from Calcutta to Fiji, 1891–1902 167
Table 9.14 Emigration from Calcutta to Fiji by age, 1879–1916 168
Table 9.15 Cost of rations in Fiji 170
Table 9.16 Daily wages of indentured labor in Fiji 172
Table 9.17 Male and female percentage of emigration
during the colonial period 173
Table 11.1 Production of sugar and arrival of Indian indentured
labourers in Mauritius 216
 CHAPTER 1

Literature of Girmitiya: History, Culture,

and Identity

Neha Singh and Sajaudeen Chapparban

Introduction
People have been moving from one place to another for various socioe-
conomic and political reasons since ancient times. In recent times also
there is a visible increase in human mobility across national and interna-
tional boundaries. People are relocating to other villages, cities, states, and
nations. Studies of migratory mechanisms categorized human mobility
into national and international and temporary and permanent migration.
These human mobilities are further divided on the basis of two primary
characteristics, that is how and why they chose to migrate from their place
of origin. There are various driving factors that instigate people to migrate
which include political, social, cultural, economic as well as demographic.

N. Singh (B)
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Manipal University Jaipur, Jaipur,
India
e-mail: neha87always@gmail.com
S. Chapparban
Centre for Diaspora Studies, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, India

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023
N. Singh and S. Chapparban (eds.), Literature of Girmitiya,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-4621-9_1
2 N. SINGH AND S. CHAPPARBAN

Everett Lee,1 a renowned demographer calls these factor ‘push and pull
factors’ and categorized migration as a ‘permanent or semi-permanent
change of residence’. Indians have also been migrating for various push
and pull factors and crossing the ‘social-cultural setting2 ’ which leads to
the formulation of Diaspora. Chapparban (2020) argued the ‘Sociocul-
tural setting is an attachment with feeling, memories, and familiarity with
the things which an individual loved and experiences at the primary stage
of life. This similarity can span a settlement category such as a locality,
city, region, state, country, or continent. It varies from place to place
depending upon sociocultural similarities and dissimilarities. It can also
be a setting that is marked by social category and dominance of that
particular category be it race, culture, religion, ethnicity, or language
group which also constitutes the identity of a settlement category. If a
person migrates from one sociocultural setting to another sociocultural
setting, he experiences a difference in the host society, and this expe-
rience of being different in another sociocultural setting is called the
post-migration feelings and diasporic sense. The pre-migration feelings
are always positively colored with new hopes, dreams, and a better life
full of passion and eagerness. These feelings vary in the forced migratory
patterns’ (2020: 1880). Indians who migrated during the colonial time
under the indentured laborer system crossed the sociocultural settings
which led to the formulation of early Indian diaspora communities in
the new sociocultural setting of the different host societies. Etymolog-
ically, as Clifford3 follows, the word ‘diaspora’ comes from the Greek
roots ‘dia’ and ‘speirein,’ which means ‘to disperse.’ It was first applied
to the Agean population later to the Jewish exile, Africans, Chinese,
Indians, Palestinians, Armenians, and more recently to almost all patterns
of contemporary migrations, mostly to all international migrations in the
post-nation societies.
Jacobsen and Pratap4 say although South Asia is a peculiar and notice-
able cultural zone, this doesn’t entail that all its cultures are identical.
Perversely, South Asia is indeed one of the world’s largest linguistically,

1 Lee, E. S. (1966). A Theory of Migration. Demography, 3(1), 47–57.

2 Chapparban, S. (2020). Psychology of Diaspora. In David Leeming ed., Encyclopedia
of Psychology and Religion. 3rd edition: Publisher: Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.
3 Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology, 9(3), 302–338.
4 Jacobsen, K. A., & Kumar, P. (Eds.). (2018). South Asians in the Diaspora: Histories
and Religious Traditions. Brill.
 1 LITERATURE OF GIRMITIYA: HISTORY, CULTURE … 3

religiously, and ethnically multifarious regions. South Asian affiliates with

varied countries of origin, speak different languages and practice different
faiths. India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bhutan consist
of the six contemporary nation-states that represent South Asia. India,
being a multicultural society and diverse of these republics, is further
subdivided by religious, linguistic, and racial identities.
Across the world, the South Asian diaspora is a conspicuous interlude.
The first era of migration spanned the 1830s till the South Asian countries
gained their freedom. The mobilization of people from the South Asian
region to establish the British colonies is what defines this time period
as the colonial era. In response to the great depression requirements of
the British regime, this exodus was largely orchestrated by the British
colonial state. The end of enslavement in the British Empire coincided
with an increase in the need for plantation consumables like sugar and
the viability of agricultural production to include coffee, tea, and subse-
quently rubber, which led to the development of a new kind of labor
engagement for Indians. Indentured laborers (also known as contract
laborers) from India were employed to address the issue of the shortage
of laborers, mostly in the British plantations across continents. Conse-
quently, the colonial administration began the process of hiring cheap
labor from South Asia and transported them to Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana,
East Africa, South Africa, Trinidad & Tobago, Caribbean islands, etc.
The insinuation that the stated contract payments were far relatively
higher than what could be earned by continuing to work in India was
supposed to be to the worker’s advantage. There is evidence to suggest
that, irrespective of the contractual system in place, laborers were at a
disadvantageous position within the framework of that notorious system:
frequently debilitated from exposure to unidentifiable diseases, they were
rarely given better healthcare outlined in their contracts. This made them
unable to accomplish their full contract obligations due to sickness; and
in Mauritius, this was the reason for being susceptible to the infamous
‘double-cut,’ wherein one day of absence from work resulted in a two-day
pay cut.5
The present book aims to critically engage in one of the earliest notice-
able forms of Indian migration under the indentured labor system of the
British colonial enterprise, on the eve of the abolition of slavery. Earlier,

5 Brennan, L. (1998). Across the Kala Pani: An Introduction. South Asia: Journal of
South Asian Studies, 21(1), 1–18.
4 N. SINGH AND S. CHAPPARBAN

enslaving lives was a common phenomenon in world history. Early colo-

nial commercial development in the new world and the Caribbean islands
was highlighted by the emergence of large plantations sustained by a labor
pool composed mainly of purchased slaves from the West African coast.
Plantations as modern agricultural architecture and servitude as a labor-
organizing entity both seem to have a long-standing tradition within
western civilization’s frameworks. Burnard6 explicates the idea that slavery
has been chronicled in the European continent since the Greco-Roman
era when slave labor was used to construct the structural fabric of human
civilization.
Western European states benefited enormously from the trans-Atlantic
slave trade before the prohibition on slave ownership in the nineteenth
century. Slaves were transported to the Americas from Africa to labor
in mines, on plantations, and in other colonial development projects.
The termination of the transatlantic slave trade was likely attributable to
Britain’s measures and in 1807, the British Parliament outlawed slavery.
Slavery in Britain’s territories was repealed in 1833, liberating more than
three-quarters of a million slaves. Using its naval power, Britain imple-
mented its anti-slavery stance over the world at the same time and for
decades afterward. According to Gwyn Campbell,7 it is critical to consider
both the historical connection between different manifestations of unfree
labor as well as the movements from slavery to abolition to alternative
methods of labor.
It is essential to clarify the circumstances during which Indian emigra-
tion evolved amid the colonial system to fully understand its peculiarities.
It is vital to consider how indentured labor emerged as an immediate
result of the British empire’s global domination and the construction of its
financial power, and how the prohibition of slave labor in British colonies
spurred the labor supply. Slave labor from the African slave trade was
used to develop the early plantation empires. The British initially hired
workers from China and other European countries, but they fled the
plantation due to their unsuitability for the tropical climate and meager
wages. The British resorted to Eastern India’s financial recession areas
(primarily today’s Bihar and Uttar Pradesh) or some provinces of the

6 Burnard, Trevor G. Planters, Merchants, and Slaves: Plantation Societies in British

America, 1650–1820. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2015.
7 Campbell, G. (2004). Structure of Slavery in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia.
Routledge.
 1 LITERATURE OF GIRMITIYA: HISTORY, CULTURE … 5

Madras and Bombay Presidency to recruit labor. The abolition of slavery

had a considerable influence on plantation-dominated economies, notably
because former slaves were unwilling to compromise for the planters’
wages. Thus, the ‘apprenticeship’ system was explored as a remedy, which
permitted farming to flourish by engaging former slaves as apprentices.
The plan was essentially a four- to six-year compulsory apprenticeship for
former slaves over the age of six and a half.
The indentured system was introduced as a model of contract labor for
this reason, with workers signing a five-year agreement to operate in the
plantation system. According to Brij V Lal,8 there were also initiatives to
recruit Chinese labor and they were thought to be inappropriate for long-
term plantation labor because they would depart at the first opportunity
to profit through commerce and supporting processes. They also reject to
work on meagre wages on plantation. Brij V Lal puts forth his argument
on Indian migration that these failures placed special emphasis on India
as a sustainable and long-term supply of labor. India was indeed the main
source of labor for the British Empire’s sugar estates in the nineteenth
century.
“Pressure to emigrate has always been significant enough to create
a stream of emigrants considerably larger than they are actually offered
possibilities,” Kingsley Davis9 said of emigration in India. Local recruiters
known as arkitas /arkatiyas enlisted laborers in India by painting a rosy
and glossy picture of the working environment in the plantation colonies.
They also kidnapped people and took them to a coolie depot, where they
commenced their trek to the new world. One of the earliest records of
studies on Girmitiya can be traced back to the study of Brij V Lal in
the 1980s. Gounder et al. (2020) observed in their book that the first
in-depth statistical examination of the demographic underpinnings of the
girmitiyas was offered by Brij Lal’s thesis in 1983. Lal proved unequivo-
cally that, contrary to the colonial myth of indenture, the girmitiyas were
not India’s ‘flotsam and jetsam.’10 Instead, the girmitiyas represented

8 V Lal, B. (2012). Chalo Jahaji: On a Journey Through Indenture in Fiji. ANU Press.
9 Davis, K. (1988). Social Science Approaches to International Migration. Population
and Development Review, 14, 245–261.
10 Gounder, F., Hiralal, K., Pande, A., & Hassankhan, M. S. (Eds.). (2020). Women,
Gender and the Legacy of Slavery and Indenture. Routledge.
6 N. SINGH AND S. CHAPPARBAN

a mixture of castes and classes in India. David Northrup11 explicitly

forefronts the idea that almost all indentured laborers were acquired by
abduction and threat of force, and were gravely deluded about their
itineraries, responsibilities, and remuneration by nefarious recruiters, espe-
cially at the beginning of the trade. Certain events gave rise to derogatory
nicknames, such as ‘blackbirding’ in the South Pacific, the ‘pig trade’ in
China, and the ‘coolie trade’ in India.
British colonization resulted in overseas migration from India, both in
India and on archipelagos. Local recruiters were also forced to rely on
sirdars, or labor group leaders, who volunteered to help the recruiters
and the emigration agent, as Marina Carter12 recounts in her book ‘Sir-
dars, Servants, and Settlers.’ As indentured servants, many Indians sailed
overseas territories such as Guyana, Trinidad & Tobago, Mauritius, Fiji,
and others. The British government then began the process of recruiting
laborers from the Asian colonies. As a corollary, in 1834, the first group of
36 dhangars (hill coolie) of Eastern India was transported to Mauritius to
serve in the plantations. Previously, the British tried bringing convict labor
to Mauritius to develop infrastructure. Hugh Tinker13 calls this recruit-
ment of indenture labor a ‘new form of slavery (Tinker, 1974).’ After
working for the term of the contract they were allowed to be free. It was
estimated that around 30 million people migrated to different parts of the
world between 1834 and 1937 whereas, in the period between 1901 and
1937, a total of 451,000 laborers migrated (Tinker, 1974).
The experiences of women in this infamous system of indentured
labor become equally important because they had varied experiences and
contributions to the colonial plantation settlements in the British Empire.
Satish Rai14 in his documentary ‘In Exile at Home: A Fiji Indian Story’
explored how this whole system of transportation of laborers was imple-
mented. According to his documentary, it was thought that girmitiyas had
migrated to Fiji voluntarily, and the majority of them didn’t come back,

11 Northrup, D. (1995). Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834–1922.

Cambridge University Press.
12 Carter, M. (1995). Servants, Sirdars, and Settlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834–1874.
Oxford University Press, USA.
13 Hugh, T. (1974). A New System of Slavery. The Export of Indian Labour Overseas,
London, Hansib Educational Book.
14 Rai, S. C. (2010). In Exile at Home: A Fiji-Indian Story. University of Western
Sydney (Australia).
 1 LITERATURE OF GIRMITIYA: HISTORY, CULTURE … 7

instead preferring to reside in Fiji for sustainable development. The newly

discovered facts debunked this myth and sparked an investigation into the
reasons for the 35,000 girmitiyas’ refusal to repatriate to their ancestral
homeland in India. The central problem to investigate was whether girmi-
tiyas wanted to settle in Fiji or if they did so because of being prohibited
from relocating to India and building a home in exile. In his documentary,
Shahista Shaman said women were vital in the formation of the planta-
tion economy. Many of the women were alienated from their friends. Fiji
lured women with farming backgrounds and arkatias kidnapped many
of them. After being recruited from cities and religious centers, naive
Indians were escorted to Calcutta or Madras for immigration clearance
and deportation to colonies. People were sobbing and had no idea where
they were sailing. During the travel to a distant land, emotional anguish
was experienced. These girmitiyas arrived in Fiji after a three-month trek,
where they were segregated and relocated to a plantation. In this film ‘In
exile at home,’ Satendra Nandan claimed that girmitiyas were tricked into
fleeing their homes in India to serve in Fiji. Additionally, the fact that
they committed to visiting Fiji only for five or ten years suggested that
they were only passing through. He described this historical migration
as chaotic. He says hard work was nothing new to them; it was a never-
ending pace of labor in the absence of civilization and community. It was
a mentally taxing time for women because they had to work incredibly
hard during their gestation and immediately after childbirth.
Colonialism not only shaped the capital and trade but also human life
and mobility across the cultures, borders, and communities, whose lega-
cies left indelible marks and dark shadows on the lives, culture, literature,
and identity of colonized subjects even in the postcolonial times. Inden-
tured/Girmitiya migration is one of the largest colonial enterprises that
forced millions of people from China, Arab countries, and the Indian
subcontinent/South Asia to leave their beloved families, home, memo-
ries, culture, and people behind to join indentured colonies beyond the
kalapani.15 Although they rebuilt/re-created many things that they left
behind in the places of arrival, these catastrophic departures fractured
their psyches, hyphenated their identities, and had significant effects on
their lives and their generations.

15 Kalapani is a term that was common parlance among the Indian masses during the
sea voyages during the colonial time. Sea journeys of indentured laborers and deportation
of anti-colonial voices to island prisons.
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mammy's
baby
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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eBook.

Title: Mammy's baby

Author: Amy Ella Blanchard

Illustrator: Ida Waugh

Release date: January 12, 2024 [eBook #72695]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Worthington Co, 1890

Credits: Bob Taylor, Aaron Adrignola and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file
was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAMMY'S

BABY ***
Mammy’s Baby.
Illustrated By

Ida Waugh,
Verses by

Amy Ella Blanchard

Worthington Co. New York.

Copyright 1890 by Worthington Co.

NEW YORK.
“See How Strong I Am.”

So strong are you, my baby?

I see that very plain;
For you can hold above your head
Papa’s big, heavy cane.

Why, soon you can be lifting,

For your mamma, the chairs;
Or bringing heavy books to her,
Or helping her up-stairs.

Then you can mail her letters,

And run her errands, too;
There is no end of all the things
My baby soon will do.

You soon will be quite manly,

Too soon, mamma thinks, dear;
For she’d like to keep her baby
Many, many a year.
 Care.

Mamma has gone for a moment,

And all the world is awry,
For it takes so very little
To make this baby cry.
 Don’t Care.

All alone they have left him

With only tables and chairs,
And so he laughs and plays to himself,
And never a bit he cares.
 Two Nameless Kittens.

Two little kittens, quite aristocratic,

Lived in a rummagy, cobwebbed attic.
They were no commonplace cats, if you please,
But sleek-coated, fine-furred, thorough Maltese.
Said one to the other, “It is a shame
That we two kittens have never a name.
We belong to no one, none belongs to us,
Though I’ve heard some call our mother ‘Ma’am Puss.’”
“Hark!” said the other, “here mother comes now.
We’ll both of us set up a dismal meow.
If she boxes our ears, or gives a cuff,
Or asks if we haven’t had food enough,
We’ll tell her our grief is deeper than that,
We think it a shame that so proud a cat
Should have two children with no names, at all.
And then we will mew and cat-er-waul,
Till she tells us how she came to be named.
We will let her know that we feel ashamed.”
With a waving tail, and a stately tread,
In came the mother cat, stopped short, and said,
“What has happened, children, since I went out?
What in the world is this fuss about?”
“O, mother, mother! we cannot be blamed;
Tell us, dear mother, why we are not named;
We are so ashamed, oh, what shall we do!
Meow, meow! O, dear mother! Meow, meow! Mew, mew!”
“Well,” said their mother, “blood will tell, I’m sure;
Such ambitious kittens show Maltese, pure.
Let me think, my dears, of some right good plan;
Now, keep very still, for I must and can.”
Then, softly licking one little, grey kit,
By the nape of the neck she picked up it,
And marched off grandly, came back for the other,
And laid it down gently beside its brother.
On the bed of her mistress, Florence Flippet,
One on her muff, and one on her tippet,
Then sat down, placidly washing her face,
Well pleased that her kits were in a good place.
“I declare!” said Florence, “what is on my bed?
A tail—paws—claws—and a little grey head,
Two new kittens, as I live. I declare!
I wonder who on earth could put them there.
Oh, they’re yours, Ma’am Puss; well, they are too sweet.
I will keep them both; to make them complete
Each shall have a ribbon, one red, one blue.
Indeed, Ma’am Puss, I’m much obliged to you.
They shall have milk whenever they can sip it,
I’ll call one Muff, and the other one Tippet.”
Ma’am Puss winked slyly, not saying a word,
Rubbed against her mistress, and softly purred.
That is all about it, for so, you see, it came
These aristocratic kittens each had a name.
 In Mischief.

Four little kits in a basket,

O, the naughty kits!
Scattering the things about the floor,
Pulling them to bits.

Here is a ball of worsted,

O, the naughty kits!
It is the very ball that Belle
Uses when she knits.

There is a ball in a tangle,

O, the naughty kits!
Here is some silk all in a snarl,
There a pair of mitts.

One of these frolicsome kittens—

O, the naughty kits!
Has tried the baby’s stocking on,
To see how it fits.

Belle, meanwhile, in the parlor,

O, the naughty kits!
Never dreams of this frolic;
By the window sits.

When she comes back and finds you,

O, you naughty kits!
I’ve an idea you’ll be frightened
Nearly out of your wits.