The Subaltern Indian Woman: Domination and Social Degradation

302 Pages·2017·2.82 MB·English

by  Prem Misir

THE
SUBALTERN
INDIAN
WOMAN
Domination and
Social Degradation
Prem Misir
edited by
The Subaltern Indian Woman
Prem Misir
Editor
The Subaltern Indian
Woman
Domination and Social Degradation
Editor
Prem Misir
The University of Fiji
Saweni, Lautoka, Fiji
ISBN 978-981-10-5165-4 ISBN 978-981-10-5166-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-5166-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017955282
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F
oreword
The indenture system, described by Hugh Tinker as modern slavery, had
a major impact on the lives of millions of people in many countries, and it
closely shaped the future development of many societies. Although much
has been written about the indenture system, this collection of edited
chapters is very timely because of the centennial celebrations of the end of
indenture system in 1917.
For many people like me, the offspring of indentured laborers, inden-
ture has a very personal and deep meaning. As a student and early researcher,
I conducted a number of interviews with the survivors of the indenture
system in Fiji. These interviews refreshed and made more real the story and
sufferings of indentured laborers in Fiji (and in other indenture societies,
since the system was exploitative and inhumane inherently).
The indenture system and colonial practice of divide and rule, together
with the inherent racism of colonialism, have powerfully shaped Fiji’s
development and are responsible for its turbulent history.
Women’s lives and experiences have not been the subject of much writ-
ing on indenture, certainly in the case of Fiji, so this collection is especially
valuable.
Placed in remote labor lines in foreign lands among majority male inden-
tured laborers and their foreign supervisors, Indian women were often
exposed to all kinds of horrendous treatment during their indenture, whether
it was about completing tasks on the farms or being held in coolie lines; even
bearing and minding children in atrocious conditions. Being unprotected and
marginalized, faced with harsh kulumbars (White overseers) and their Indian
agents, and put to hard labor in the plantations was a fearful and dreadful
v
vi FoREWoRD
existence for women. Narak was the term they used for their lives, which
included rampant sexual violence, rapes, and suicides. Given the powerlessness
of the indentured Indians and the superior unchecked authority of colonial
officials and the Colonial Sugar Refining Company Limited, which in effect
became the government for indentured laborers, women suffered enormously
during indenture. Indian men did their best in the circumstances to protect the
modesty of Indian women, but their own powerlessness meant that they could
not do so effectively.
The indenture experiences of Indian women greatly affected their sub-
sequent lives in many ways—the reorganizing of family lives, revamping of
social, moral and religious values, together with their determination to
give their children education as a way of avoiding them being exploited in
the future. After indenture, mainly through the efforts of their communi-
ties and through their own grit and determination, women were able to
recover and develop their families and society. At least in Fiji, women were
able to use their experience to strengthen themselves and become even
more determined to succeed in giving their children and families a better
future. While gender issues remain a challenge, Fijian women of Indian
origin have been pushing the boundaries and excelling in many fields. The
sufferings of their great-great-grandparents were not in vain.
This collection contains a diverse range of very interesting chapters cov-
ering the conception of Indian women both among colonials and Indian
society itself; the role of women in India in campaigning for the abolition
of the indenture system; reflections on the indenture experience of women
in Surinam and the position of women there now; the indenture experi-
ence of women in Fiji; the position of Indian women in Jamaica; the “gen-
dered politics” of South Africa; violence against indentured women in Fiji;
and a comparative reflection of post-indenture women in Caribbean, Fiji,
Mauritius and South Africa. This collection combines the benefits of
detailed country-based studies with comparative studies and gives scholars
the benefit of reflections on something that has shaped the lives of so
many people. The fact that many of the writers are themselves descendants
of indentured laborers gives this collection a unique poignancy. I com-
mend this very timely book to all scholars of indenture and those inter-
ested in gender and contemporary developments in societies experiencing
the indenture system.
Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Rajesh Chandra
The University of the South Pacific
P
reFace
This anthology owes its origins to the 2017 centennial academic conference
in Fiji, celebrating 100 years of the abolition of the indenture system of
Indian labor that victimized and dehumanized Indian women, men and
children from 1834 through 1917. Within this context in August 2016,
the Commemoration of Centennial of Abolition of Indian Indentureship
(CCAII) requested that the University of Fiji should be a major sponsor
of its academic conference. The University of Fiji Council unreservedly
approved this entreaty that the university should support this major his-
torical event. As it turned out, this centennial academic conference mar-
shaled the largest historic gathering of international scholars in Fiji to
focus on the end of bonded labor and its influence in shaping the history
of the post-indentured Indian diaspora, surely with far-reaching historical
and international significance.
This book’s especial focus is on Indian women in indentureship under
British colonialism and its aftermath. First, this volume portrays the anti-
thetical and contradictory experiences of the Indian indentured females,
their degradation and dehumanization; and, secondly, it depicts how the
colonial politics of change and control impacted the Indian indentured
woman on overseas European-owned plantations during indentureship
and in the post-indenture era.
The intent in this anthology is to show that Indian indentured and
post-indentured women possessed the capacity for ameliorative action.
Notwithstanding the capacity of colonized Indian women to pursue action
to change their situation, an apt depiction of their troubles included the
following, among others: they did not pen their own histories; they were
vii
viii PREFACE
subordinate to the main events by virtue of their race, gender, and class;
they faced hindrances in telling their own stories, and other people told
their stories; other people carved their experiences and opportunity struc-
tures; and they were not a human agency in their fight against race, gender,
and class oppression.
There is a limited presence in the colonial historiography of the Indian
woman as a subaltern; the Indian woman as human agency; analysis of the
race, gender, and class oppression of the Indian woman; and the Indian
woman’s subordination and male domination (chapter “Introduction and
overview: Indian Indentured Women a Human Agency”). Notwithstanding
the capacity of colonized Indian women for human agency, the fact that
colonizers manipulated gender through negative images as a tool to prog-
ress their civilizing mission to advance the imperialist cause and to dilute
the agency impact (chapter “Devoted Wife/Sensuous Bibi: Colonial
Constructions of the Indian Woman, 1860–1900”). The agency impact
became increasingly impotent as the colonizers perceived colonial rule as
the conduit to create a new humanizing and moral Indian woman as a
façade for the enduring oppression of women (chapter “Conceiving the
Coolie Woman: Indentured Labour, Indian Women and Colonial
Discourse”); of which not only class, but also gender and race could be
explanatory factors (chapter “Female Indentured Labor in Suriname: For
Better or for Worse?”); indeed, there are some, possibly using Western
modes of analysis and perspectives, who feel that women attained benefits
too through indentureship (chapter “The Position of Indian Women in
Surinam”). Then there was Kunti’s cry to solidify the colonized Indian
woman’s capacity as an agency; a cry which also became a dissent against
the veil of dishonor, the twofold burden of plantation grind, the binary
standards of morality and the conduit of the troubled indenture (chapter
“Kunti’s Cry: Indentured Women on Fiji Plantations”). ordinary and
elite women’s powerful activism in colonial India to end indenture awak-
ened the impetus of the colonized women’s agency in both India and on
overseas plantations; and Kunti’s drama in India and Andrews and
Pearson’s visits to overseas plantations in no small measure linked the
Indian women in these two colonized locations—India and the European-
owned overseas plantations—where Andrews appealed to women in India
to help their sisters on the plantations and disseminated the horrors of the
Indian indentured women’s lives to a larger audience (chapters “Kunti,
Lakshmibhai and the “Ladies”: Women’s Labour and the Abolition of
Indentured Emigration from India” and “Fallen Through the Nationalist
PREFAC E ix
and Feminist Grids of Analysis: Political Campaigning of Indian Women
Against Indentured Labour Emigration”). Then the anthology moves
after 1917 toward the post- indentured Indian women as a subaltern
group, which was evolving into a human agency (chapters “Constructing
Visibility: Indian Women in the Jamaican Segment of the Indian Diaspora”,
“ ‘Time to Show our True Colors’: The Gendered Politics of ‘Indianness’
in Post-Apartheid South Africa” and “Reflexivity and the Diaspora: Indian
Women in Post-Indenture Caribbean, Fiji, Mauritius and South Africa”).
Finally, the violence against post- indentured Indian women in Fiji, where
amid patriarchy and imperialism, subject-constitution, and object-forma-
tion there is an Indo-Fijian women’s resistance against their experience of
violence, is a sure sign of their agency activism (chapter “The Indo-Fijian
Woman’s Story: Violence Against Women”).
The complexity of the colonized woman as a human agency was deep-
ened by that fact that there was race, gender and class oppression through
colonization at two levels: one, colonization of the females themselves in
both British India as well as on the colonial plantations; and two, textual
colonization, where historical scholarship ineffectively uses Western modes
of analysis and perspectives to explain the colonized Indian woman’s pre-
dicament; there was no usage of the “third world” view to understand the
Indian women from their perspective. This biased historiography presents
the Indian women as if they had no capacity for action; that is, Indian
women did not constitute a human agency—whereas these women pos-
sessed the capacity for actions to impact the world. Within the agency para-
digm, women have capacity for action; in some contexts, they may not have
had an adequate capacity for action and so had to depend on other people.
In the end, this jaundiced historiography fails to present the colonized
Indian woman as an agent, having multiple relations with other people
which were dialogical and polyphonic.
I am grateful to the Senior Editor at Palgrave Macmillan Ms Sagarika
Ghosh for useful advisement on my book manuscript, with additional guid-
ance from Ms Nupoor Singh and Ms Sandeep Kaur. I also am very appre-
ciative of the field workers’ collection of the data in relation to Chapter 12:
The Indo-Fijian Woman’s Story: Violence Against Women; indeed, a special
thanks to the women who participated in this study of violence against
women.
Vice-Chancellor Professor Prem Misir
The University of Fiji
c
ontents
Introduction and Overview: Indian Indentured
Women as Human Agency 1
Prem Misir
Devoted Wife/Sensuous Bibi: Colonial Constructions
of the Indian Woman, 1860–1900 47
Indrani Sen
Conceiving the Coolie Woman: Indentured Labour,
Indian Women and Colonial Discourse 73
Mishi Faruqee
Female Indentured Labor in Suriname: For Better
or for Worse? 93
Rosemarijn Hoefte
The Position of Indian Women in Surinam 117
P.C. Emmer
Kunti’s Cry: Indentured Women on Fiji Plantations 127
Brij V. Lal
xi